Kenneth Copeland - The 13 Attributes of God
— Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. We're going into the exceeding great and precious covenant promises of God. In that, as we read that, let's turn over there now at our golden text for this is in II Peter 1:3-4, according as his divine power, divine power, hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and excellence: whereby he's called us to glory in excellence. If you just stop right there, we'd just be hanging there.
— Yes, sir.
— Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious (covenant) promises: that by these promises, you might be partakers of the divine nature. They are divine promises. In other words, God made promise. He made covenant. And men of men, remember in the book of Matthew, Jesus said, who do you say that I am? Peter jumped up and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, Simon Bar-Jonah. You are blessed, and you are Peter. He never went by anything else again.
— No.
— That was a covenant name change. He renamed him and he was Simon Peter, instead of Simon Bar-Jonah. Now that's powerful knowledge. I have a holy divine gift that was bought and paid for. And He, our God, our savior loved us so much that He made the receiving of it as simple as He could possibly make it. The shortest salvation prayer on record is when Saul of Tarsus...
— Yes.
— ...got knocked off his horse and fell to the ground. He said, Lord...
— That's it.
— Who are you?
— Because that's the very first thing that God reveals himself to Moses as, Lord.
— And then he changed his name.
— Yes, he did. To Paul, the apostle.
— The apostle to the Gentiles. Paul was probably, in my opinion, but I'm pretty confident in it, he was probably the greatest Hebrew scholar ever.
— Oh yes.
— Trained by the best.
— Second only to Jesus.
— Yes. Agreed.
— I would put that. Because he had such depth of revelation and he knew by experience. He knew on the inside of him. So much of that first covenant he knew by heart.
— In many ways, he's like Moses. He's trying to do his calling. And he thinks his calling is to get rid of this fanatical group of these Christians over here. They weren't called Christians at the time, but to get rid of them, the believers in this false Messiah.
— The followers.
— And so he's doing everything he can by the flesh and God knocks him down. Moses was doing everything he could to deliver an Israelite and it cost him. So Paul will go to Arabia and he'll say, Sinai in Arabia. He'll go to Arabia and spend three years there being taught of the Lord. Where? Where this all happened.
— It didn't say he spent three years there.
— Okay. Teach me.
— Turn to it.
— All right. It's in Galatians.
— 15. When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years.
— Okay.
— It doesn't say how long he was there.
— You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I'm writing that down.
— It doesn't say how long he was there.
— Ah, I thank You, Lord. See, He revealed Himself to me today.
— Yes He did.
— Right there.
— And that's when he learned to take communion. As I received from the Lord, he said on the night which he was betrayed. I received this from the Lord. He spent a lot of time there.
— But isn't it interesting he's not in Jerusalem in any of that? Because it goes to his calling as an apostle to the Gentile.
— He went out said, real sure enough Gentile country.
— Yes he did. Yes, he did. Well, that's good. Thank you for that.
— Well, now another thing too, concerning that. He went into the desert.
— Yes, sir.
— Where his forefathers spent 40 years, he went into a desert place. It's rough in that desert.
— In Arabia.
— Yeah. Very little water in a hostile territory. They were in a hostile territory, surrounded by bad animals and bad actors.
— Right. He's not in the Promised Land.
— No, he's in the wilderness.
— He's in the wilderness. But it's in those times, David will write this way, it's how you behave in the cave. When Dave was in the cave.
— That's right.
— It's how you behave in that time that will determine how you come out of that time. So back to those 13 attributes of God and Paul understood this. If we could, let's go back to Exodus and let me show it to you. It's Exodus 34. This is after breaking the tablets of stone, or tablets of stone, the Sapphire tablets he's made. He's made tablets of stone. And in verse in chapter 33, Moses will ask something that he shouldn't have asked for really is show me your glory and God will answer him, I can't do that. You can't see my face and live. The Lord said, "Behold, there's a place by me where you shall stand upon a rock". There's a place by me. Well now, what is that place? There's a place by him. Who's by him. Jesus is by him for a moment in time.
— May I point out something about that in the 33rd chapter?
— Yes, sir.
— Verse 11. And the Lord spoke unto Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. That's very strong covenant.
— Panim El Panim is what it is in Hebrew, face to face.
— He's a friend, a covenant friend of God. Now there, verse 17, and the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that you have spoken: for thou hast found grace... you have found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And he said, show me your glory! I'm your friend you've found grace. Alright, show me your glory. He wasn't even talking about glory and he just burst forth with it. And it was the spirit of God that had already created such a hunger on Moses. And in his mind, I must know more. I must know more. I must know more. I have to know more. He couldn't turn to a book like this and find it out.
— No, he didn't have it.
— He didn't have it.
— The first five books hadn't been written yet. He's going to do that. When he sees His glory is what's going to enable him to write it all.
— There you are.
— Because he wasn't able to write it all. And so he says, I'll pass by. Remember he passed by him. He said he saw his hinder parts. He saw his history. That's how he saw all the stuff as he went by. He placed him in the cleft of the rock. There's a place where you can stand by me. That's Jesus. For a moment in time, he took him out of his time and he put him in Christ.
— Yes he did.
— So that he could see it.
— The rock of our salvation.
— Yes, sir. The cleft of the rock. He saw stood there for a moment in time. You and I live there. Oh, glory to God.
— You know, we have no concept. We don't have any... we can see it a little bit. In the year 2021, the leading cause of death in the world was abortion. That's close. But I didn't hear of any of those people that got hungry enough to eat their children or that kind of thing. There was so much darkness here that it isn't here that way anymore. The spirit of God is in the earth.
— Yes.
— In his fullness, in the entire earth. That happened on the day of Pentecost. And all of the angels that had been separated in that first covenant. It's no longer Jacob's ladder. The ladder is gone.
— And the sound that they heard as... it didn't say it was a rushing, mighty wind. It said as a rushing, mighty wind. I'm convinced that it was the sound of that... You can't number the angels that came into this atmosphere. And the spirit of God in all of His power, came into this atmosphere at one time and it shook everybody up.
— I believe that.
— And it changed this atmosphere from complete darkness to light. And if we walk in the light as He is in the light, His blood cleanses us from all sin. But then we have to confess that sin to get rid of it. But that's an exceeding great and precious promise.
— Yes, sir. That's a better... in the better company. Because they weren't here in his time, in Moses' time. But they're now here in the earth.
— And that darkness was dark, dark, deep darkness. And there was a manifestation of it in the book of Exodus.
— Right.
— It got so dark nobody could move. That means it was not just where you couldn't see, it was oppressive. You didn't dare move. You had the sense that, if I move I'll die. You just stood in one place as long as you could. And we don't have any idea what that's like.
— See Lucifer tried with Moses. What'd he do? He killed the children to try to get rid of Moses. He'll do the same thing with Jesus. He does the exact same thing. And now they're doing it today. Killing children.
— Yeah.
— And it's nothing new. Except now there's a difference. There's light in the world. And this is why the earth is groaning to see the sons of God be made manifest in us, for us to exhibit His attribute. So he gets on the mountain, he's there and the cloud comes down over him. And you can see it in chapter 34:5. Listen to this. And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. Now here's where we get to the attributes. Verse six, and the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful, O God, and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means, now listen to this, clear the guilty; visiting the inequity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made hast, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He said, if I've found grace in thy sight, O Lord, well, he already had, God already said that. Let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance. See, when he saw the true attributes of God, he repented.
— Yes he did.
— For the people as their leader. And verse 10 says, and he said, Behold, I will make a covenant: before all the people I will do marvels, such as not been done in all the earth, nor in all the nations: and all the people which thou art shall all the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. In other words, I'm going to shake the...
— Elaborate on that word, terrible. It was awesome. Magnificent.
— It's translated bad.
— Yeah, it is.
— It means to the unbeliever, to the world, to the people who are against you, oh, it's going to be terrible. But it is an awesome, it's a reverential thing. It's a holy thing. You're going to be set apart and at such a level that you'll see it when they cross over, Rahab said, we were afraid of you.
— Yeah, horrified.
— We were terrified of you. And it's not because they had done anything particularly to them. It's the attributes of God in them.
— Now I see that in the years that I've studied this and thought about it and meditated on it, you can see it over in the blessing of the law. There are people that will be afraid of you. That's the reason they're so persecuted. The devil is afraid of him. Horribly afraid of him. He keeps killing them. They keep coming back. The only nation born out of World War II was Israel.
— That's right.
— World War I was fought for that reason. Allenby opened it up and they wouldn't go home.
— That's right.
— So World War II began and the man that started it was Adolf Hitler, a Jew hater. And brought about the Holocaust. And they went home. But there was godly timing involved because he kept saying, I will bring you home. I will bring you home. I will bring you home. And they kept saying next year, Jerusalem. Next year, Jerusalem. We keep saying next year, the return of Jesus. This year, the return of Jesus. They kept saying next year, Jerusalem. And when next year came, they went home.
— That's right. God's not late. So in this verse, when he passes before him and the cloud comes down over him, he right then gives the attributes that they pray every year. And I'll show you something here. The word where it says in verse six, The Lord, The Lord God. Why would it say that three times? The Lord, the Lord God. Well, there's the Trinity there. Well, but that word is Adonai. It's Yodhe Vavhe Yodhe Vavhe El in Hebrew. Yodhe Vavhe, Yodhe Vavhe, El, if you read it in the Hebrew. I am the God before the people sin. I am the God after the people sin. And I am El the all powerful one. That's where we get the name El Shaddai. Elohim. It's the creative name and the redemptive names coming together right there. It is, I Am That I Am. That's what it is. And then you go into the other words there. In Hebrew, it would be rachamin. It means compassionate. Ver hannun, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth. These are the attributes of God. Listen to the attributes. Merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving inequity and transgression and sin. I love what it says here, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Earlier in the broadcast, we talked about the three types of in inequity, the three types of sin in Hebrew. There they all are right there. And that by no means will clear the guilty. Now I'm not just going to forgive everybody. You have to ask for this. It is conditional.
— And you have to repent.
— Yes you do. It is conditional on this. And so abounding...
— And that extending mercy or hesed. Let's remind ourselves what that means. It's a covenant word that's hard to express in English. It has a sense about it that is difficult. But it's the greater making covenant with the lesser.
— Yes.
— In order to bring the lesser up to equal standing with the greater. Equal standing in wealth. Equal standing in power. Equal standing with God. Well then Jesus accomplished that through the new birth.
— Yes. Because we were created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
— Yes, sir.
— The hesed is extended to the thousandth thousandth generation extending kindness.
— Yes, sir. That's how big He is. So in Hebrew, it's vera hesed. Abounding. It's just abounding out of Him. The next word is ve-emet. Truth. And in truth, Jesus is that grace and truth personified...
— Glory to God.
— ...in our lives. And then he says that maintaining noter hesed lahaphim, maintaining loving kindness for a thousand generations is what it says. And so he forgives premeditated sins. He forgives sins committed in rebellion. He forgives sins made by mistake. He's saying, Moses. He prayed this to Moses. If your people will pray this I'll forgive them because I've just made a covenant with you and with your people. When he bowed his knee and said, do this with us, he said, I'll make a covenant with you. And so now whenever your people pray this, all who call upon the name of the Lord. What's the very first thing He revealed? His name.
— His name.
— The very first... all who called upon the name of the Lord shall be saved because it goes all the way back to that verse right there.
— And this great apostle brought that into the 10th chapter of the book of Romans.
— Yes sir. Yes he did.
— He said it. He wrote it and you can see now where he based it.
— Sure. Now Jesus will do it. We'll take a day to look at this. Jesus will do it. He'll say in John 16, those final...that covenant meal, he gives them last instructions. He'll say, in that day, you'll ask the Father in my name and he will do it.
— Yes. See up to you've asked me nothing. But in that day whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, I will do it. Then in the 23rd verse, 16:23, he said, and whatsoever, you shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. It just sounds like it doesn't take a whole lot of faith here to get it.
— No.
— It's faith in the name, that covenant name of all names.
— See, this is not something Jesus made up on the fly. This goes back Exodus chapter 34.
— Well, after all he wrote it.
— He was right there. Moses is in him when that's happening so that the glory cloud can happen. You have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all right there making that covenant. Anytime you call upon the name.
— And in that covenant meal...
— Yes, sir.
— ... the night that changed heaven and earth, he said, I will not leave you as orphans. I will send another comforter, advocate, standby, intercessor. He has been with you, but He will be in you. The world cannot receive Him because they can't see Him. Then 50 days later, He came.
— That's right.
— They couldn't see Him but they knew it was Him. How? It went all the way back to the tower of Babel when the language of the world was confused. And we got a supernatural language with which we can communicate with our God and our Father and build up our own spirit in doing so.
— That's right. And think about now when this happened, that first tablet and all that, that's Pentecost after Passover when they came out of Egypt. 3,000 died that day in the rebellion with the golden calf. Moses melted it down and had them drink it. I mean, he was that mad. But 3,000 died that day. But when the Holy Ghost came in you...
— 3,000 ...
— ... were added that day to the church. It is not a coincidence that the numbers match because He watches over His Word to perform it. He's fulfilling every single thing to the letter. And this is why when we're led of the Spirit as sons of God, when we're led, you're being led to fulfill the works of Jesus in the earth. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He's leading you to actually fulfill something. Are you getting this? Because you're a little Christ.
— That's right.
— In the earth. I'm the body so I'm fulfilling whatever it is that needs to... See, prayers were prayed, Brother Copeland, by your ancestors that you're fulfilling.
— Yes, that's right. And we're out of time.
— Hallelujah.
— Glory to God. We'll be back in just a moment. Give the Lord praise.