Kenneth Copeland - Living Who You Are in Christ
—Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. Now, we started all of this by talk about the exceeding great and precious covenant promises that by those promises, because of those exceeding great and precious promises, we have provided for us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We are well taken care of.
—Yes, sir.
—Well, last week in developing that, you took us back over into the first covenant...
—Book of Exodus.
—In the book of Exodus...
—Where God revealed...
—...attributes of God.
—Of God. And He expects us to have those. Now in the new covenant, it's available to us.
—Yes, it is.
—It's given to us. We should be walking in at the higher level I believe, than we are.
—Well, oh, yeah. Well, always, Greg. There's always a higher level than this.
—Yes, sir.
—Because there's no end to it. Spiritual things don't have any limit. Physical things do, but spiritual growth is unlimited.
—Everything Moses was talking about and promising at Mount Sinai has been given to us by Jesus.
—Yes.
—Jesus fulfilled all of that.
—Yes you did.
—And now that's been given to us and that's why we're studying the golden verse there in II Peter. It's Peter's version, really, Paul had written about love and the fruit of the Spirit, but he begins talking about this. "Whereby are given unto us exceedingly great, precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature".
—Yes.
—We are protectors of the faith.
—He and Paul, they knew one another well.
—Yes.
—The apostle Peter, he made the statement. He said, "Some of the things," I'm just paraphrasing it, "Some of the things that our dear brother Paul writes are hard to understand, but so are other scriptures".
—Yes.
—Now there was no New Testament, but he recognized the same attributes in Paul that was in Jesus because he knew Jesus personally.
—Yes.
—he called his writings scripture. That's very significant.
—It is. Now I'm just speculating here, but I believe that Peter had to overcome knowing Jesus in the flesh.
—Yes.
—To know him after the Spirit like Paul did.
—Yes, he did.
—Paul may not have ever known Jesus after the flesh. I don't know. They overlap a little bit. He would've been young, but Peter knew him, touched him, handled him, and he had to overcome knowing Jesus in the flesh to know him by the Spirit. We know him by the Spirit.
—By the Spirit. Yes.
—As a result. This is why these writings are so important in this. This is why we were talking about faith. He comes right out of that saying, "We are takers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust". Then he says, "Besides this giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to virtue, knowledge". See, knowledge was the problem they had at Mount Sinai. They didn't know him.
—Now that word virtue actually translated excellence.
—Okay.
—You must add to your faith, excellence. If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you ever going to have time to do it again? That's the secret of sloppy work. Most of the time, somebody that does that, the work just breaks down and he never gets a chance because whomever that was involved won't go back to that mechanic anymore. Excellent work. I'm reading the biography of Smith Wigglesworth. Now, he had to go to work when he was six years old so he was illiterate. Then his wife taught him how to read but he was a plumber and he had such an excellent spirit about him that he just couldn't be satisfied without perfect work. He took a job plumbing several houses for this man and then he came in and reported, "It's done". The man said, "You can't do that that fast so it must be shoddy work". He went over there and checked all of those different houses and he said, "I was very much mistaken, it is perfect work". But here's a man so full of God that his work had to be excellent.
—Yes.
—And everything Smith Wigglesworth did had to be excellent.
—Friend of mine in the military years ago was going to transition, he was going to become a drill sergeant. He wanted to become a drill sergeant and train the next group of enlisted coming in. I remember talking to him about this, didn't make sense, now does make sense to me at this stage of my life. He said, "The Air Force, we're not so much on shooting the guns and the physical stuff. It's all mental and it's all attention to detail". I remember saying to him, I said, "Why is that"? He said, "Because we about to graduate young men that cannot not put a bolt back correctly on an airplane".
—Oh yeah.
—"Somebody'll die".
—Yeah, you'll kill somebody.
—They have to be attention to detail. Boy, we did that all through bootcamp. Everything was attention to detail. We wrote the serial numbers down, Brother Copeland, of the money we had in our drawer and we had to be able to double check that. The drill sergeant would check my money list with my money in my drawer and if I spent something I had to line through it, initial it...
—Developing...
—Add the new...
—A sense of excellence.
—That's exactly what it was.
—In everything you did so that later you didn't foul it up and hurt somebody.
—Well and waste millions of dollars on a plane because somebody didn't follow through.
—Let's take this message to Washington DC.
—Amen. Amen.
—Mainly in Congress.
—Yeah. Because that's what's lacking, isn't it?
—Yes.
—In this book, I don't want to touch on it again here, Walking in the Fruit of the Spirit by Gloria Copeland, this chapter two, she talks about living like who you really are. If you're a born again believer, all fruit of the Spirit are already within you. You learn that you're born again, You put your faith in Jesus, the moment you received him as Lord, you were born again and became a partaker of his divine nature, what we just read, really that's what the fruit of the Spirit are. They're manifestations of the nature of God that's inside you. Then she says, "Why do I need to study about the fruit then? Don't they just flow out of my life automatically without me even the thinking about it"? It's because your spirit isn't the only thing you have to deal with. You still have to deal with your flesh and your flesh has to be taught and trained, I'd say this, discipled.
—Yes.
—Disciplined to yield and cooperate with the forces in your recreated spirit so that it confirms who you really are in your new spiritual identity.
—Now let's go over here to the fifth chapter of Galatians.
—Yes.
—Where this is written. Verse 19. "Now the works of the flesh". It doesn't start there. No, "But if ye be led to the Spirit, it doesn't start there. This I say, 'Then walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.'" It doesn't start there. "But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed to one another". It doesn't start there. It starts with the 14th verse.
—Sure.
—"For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself". Back up to the 6th, actually the 5th verse, "For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith for in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith works by love. That's where it starts".
—Yes, sir.
—And then the teachings then go from there. "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these. Adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance or strife, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions. He actually said strife twice.
—Twice. Yes, he did.
—Strife is the killer of dreams. That was a big, huge problem among the disciples of Jesus and they really didn't get it until it was over and he introduced the commandment of love. "Envyings, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like of the which I tell you before as I have also told you in time passed that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the Spirit". Now remember now we talked about this. In the Greek text, the alphabet is ... And it doesn't even resemble anything that we've ever seen as English or Spanish or German speaking people. We've never even seen anything like that. So the translator had the make up their mind whether it should be capitalized indicating the Holy Spirit but here it should be the human spirit. But the born again child of God has the Holy Spirit. So it's cooperation with the Holy Spirit by the human spirit. The fruit of the human spirit, born again human spirit. We'll put it like that, "Is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith," or actually faithfulness, "Meekness, temperance, against such there is no law and they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and the loss. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit". Now, we need to back up here and point out something else. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit. The flesh does not lust or put pressure on the Holy Spirit. It puts pressure...
—Your spirit.
—On your spirit.
—That's right.
—Now I want to say something about this 16th verse. "This I say then, 'Walk in the Spirit and you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh.'" "Well, if I could just, oh, Pastor Greg, if I could just get over in the Spirit. Oh, let me read that. Oh, oh. Oh, if I could just walk in the Spirit, I wouldn't fulfill the lust of the flesh". That's not true. You can walk in the Spirit and just fight the flesh all the time without any victory over it. "But if I could just get far enough in there, it would work". No. Because these things are about faith. Faith...
—That's true. That's true.
—Is started out, faith works by love and the first fruit of your human spirit is love because you were born of love, God is love, and He has faith. So you do this thing by faith.
—He would never have said in verse 25, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit". My recreated spirit lives in the Spirit.
—Yeah.
—But I have to walk.
—You have to walk there and you have to do that by faith.
—Yes, sir. There's no other way to do it.
—No, that's right.
—Because that's what they lacked at the mountain of God, Sinai, they lacked faith. They were turned away because of their unbelief, because their lack of faith. Going on to chapter 6 and look at this. "Brethren, if a man be overtaken"...
—Yes, yes, yes,
—"In a fault, ye which are spiritual," because you are spiritual, "Restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering I said also lest thou be tempted". Look at this, "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ".
—Which is love your neighbor as yourself.
—That's it. It's not a hard thing to do. Don't criticize a person when they fall. Don't criticize person when they struggle ... Or don't talk about it, gossip about it. Especially your pastor.
—Oh yeah.
—Sorry. Don't do it.
—I haven't seen this recently, but back in the day and particularly before Gloria and I got into ministry at and I was still in the business of flying. In our presence, there would be a man and his wife and they'd run one another down. I could never do that and neither could she. We build one another up all the time and she was constantly building me up because I was discouraged at what I was doing. At that time I didn't know I was called to preach and I was discouraged at it because I couldn't make it work. She was constantly building up. This one woman told Gloria, she said, "I'll tell you right now, I'm going to tell Emmett," he and I worked together in the aviation. She said, "I'm going to tell Emmett it's me or those airplanes". Gloria said, "You better not". She said, "If I was to tell Kenneth that, he'd say, 'Well, I'll think about it but right now I'm on the way to the airport.'" It was good advice. She did that and guess what? She was out. That man who started out as an agricultural pilot and he came to me in the sales department and he said, "I want you to teach me how to sell". He said, "I'm instructing around here, I get $5 an hour, and all you guys have to do is sell one airplane". He said, "I can't make that in a month". Well, I said, "Emmett, first thing we have to do is teach you how to shake hands, brother". It was that elementary. I got him to look me in the eye and talk about this thing. He got out and started selling crop dusters because that's the only thing he knew anything about. Then he got born again and then he got turned on God and he sold so many crop dusters that the boss called him in and said, "Don't sell another one, new one, until you get rid of all of these old broken down things you took in on trade," and he's just selling them. Finally he got out of that and got over in the jet business and became a jet salesman. Glory to God.
—Hallelujah.
—Remarried and had a marvelous, very wealthy man, and then on down the road, he succumbed to cancer and went to heaven.
—Praise the Lord.
—Started out he didn't know how to shake hands.
—Amen.
—But Jesus happened to him.
—That's exactly right.
—Then more and he began to learn about the laws of prosperity and back there then because of my dad I knew some of that. Then so I talked to him about it and he grew in it and finally became a powerful aircraft salesman.
—My father calls those things which be not as though they were.
—Yes.
—If I'm going to be in His image, reflect Him, act like Him, have His character and nature concerning my family, concerning my wife, concerning my children, concerning my church, I need to call those things...
—Yes.
—That be not as though they were. I need to speak what I want it to be. Side of every man and I go with David Abigail on this, he meets Abigail and she comes out and she sees the king, David, and she says, "Mr. King, my husband's a fool". I'm paraphrasing this. She knew that inside of everybody is a king or a fool and whichever one I talk to is the one I'm going to get. Well, it ends up playing out well for her, she becomes David's wife as a result of it. She spoke to the king, not to the fool and acknowledged this. That's what we've got to learn to do. Listen to this right here.
—You always...
—Yeah.
—You always speak the end result.
—Yes.
—You do it whether you realize it or not. If you're speaking negative, you are speaking the end result.
—That's right.
—When he spoke to that fig tree, he didn't tell it to die.
—No.
—He said, "No man eat fruit of you again ever".
—What's his purpose? What's the fake tree's purpose? To give food, fruit.
—Nine words.
—Yes, sir.
—Then he came back. They ask him about it, Peter asked him about it. He said, "Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, 'Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea.'" Nine words.
—Nine words. Look at that. I never saw that.
—"And not doubt in his heart, but believe that those things which he says will come to pass, he will have whatsoever he says". Now you can flip that on the other side you are having whatsoever you say, whether you know it or not.
—That's right. That was the last week of his life on the earth.
—Yes.
—He was in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem, that's where it happened. He's the second Adam, that's a fulfillment, when he cursed the fig tree, it was a fulfillment.
—Yes, it was.
—Because what happened when Adam and Eve ate of the tree? They went and covered themselves with fig leaves.
—Made him a fig leaf suit.
—That's exactly what they did and he cursed no more covering sin. I'm going to deal with it.
—And it took the blood of an animal to clothe them.
—That's exactly right. That's exactly what he did. He clothed them this. Listen to this. Miss Gloria says, "Born again believers are unique species of beings. We're supernatural spirits of living in natural bodies. First, let me tell you what we don't do. As New Testament believers, we don't overcome the pull of our flesh by living like the people did in the Old Testament. We don't muster up our own natural willpower and try in our own strength to conquer our fleshly tendencies to keep God's laws. That approach never succeeds. The flesh can't be brought in line that way. It can only be brought into submission by the nature of God that comes from within us as we allow our spirits to take the..."
—Yes. Now lust is pressure. That's what the word means. It's been used in connection with sex and that's tremendous pressure. Now we were talking about grief and the Lord said this to me, "A woman grieves and when that weeping comes up voluntarily, it doesn't feel bad, it feels good, and it is very, very close to sexual satisfaction because it is part of your emotional makeup. So if you don't know any better, you keep yielding to it and yielding to it and yielding to it and yielding to it, to the point where you are completely cried out". Then the Spirit of the Lord in teaching me about this, this sounds like it was a few minutes, but it was over a period of time. He said, "Now all the people are gone home. All the potato salad is gone". "And maybe they cleaned up the dishes and maybe they didn't, probably somebody did. Now there she sits, cried out, hurting. They're all gone home and they're all gone back to their lives and she sits there so spiritually dry it is literally killing her. If somebody doesn't minister to her properly, it'll cut her life short and that grief will stay in her and she tries everything from turning his picture upside down to everything you can think of until, well, now it's finally out of my thinking. No, it isn't. The spirit of it is still there. Just the slightest little thing". But if you know the joy of the Lord, that's your strength.
—Yes, yes, yes, yes.
—You attack that thing. Now in this last minute that we have here, I'll demonstrate this. Habits are a lust against the flesh. There are good habits, but the bad ones, well, we're out of time, but the way I got rid of coffee and I abused it. The Lord said, "Take communion". Now I was hurting in my joints and everything else. "Take communion, get all your fixings and everything, put it on a plate, push it away and say, 'I have no need of you again in my life here after forever.'" It was gone. I haven't had any coffee since, and it's been 40-some-odd years and I had no withdrawal, I had no headache, praise God. We're out of time. Come on, glory to God. Thank You, Jesus.
—Hallelujah. Amen.