Kenneth Copeland - God, the Covenant, and the Contradiction
So now we'll go to Leviticus 26. Look at the third verse, "If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them," and I made a note right out here, Romans 13:9, "Love your neighbors yourself". "Then," you notice it? "If you do this, then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall reach into the..." or the overlap.
The prosperous, "Shall reach under the vintage, the vintage shall reach under the sowing time, and you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely. I will give you peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid. I will rid evil beasts out of the land. Neither shall the sword go through your land, you shall chase your enemies and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase 100, 100 of you shall chase 10,000 to flight, your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you, and you shall eat old store and bring forth the old because of the new".
"I will establish my covenant". What covenant? The covenant He made with Abraham. Abram, AbraHam, HaShem in the middle of his name. And the first name change was made. Saul of Tarsus became Paul, the apostle. Simon Barjona, when he shouted out, "'You're the Christ, the Son of the Living God.' Blessed are you Simon Barjona for you are Peter". And he became Simon Peter for the rest of his life. Covenant changes names. And then talking about hesed, what a powerful, powerful thing. I just went through all, all the scripture, particularly the Psalms. loving kindness, compassion, mercy, all hesed.
In 2 Chronicles, 20:5, "Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem in the house of the Lord before the new court and said, 'Oh Lord God, our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? Rulest thou not over all the kingdoms of the heathen, and in thine hand is there not power and might so that none is able to withstand Thee? Are you not our God who did drive out the inhabitants of this land before that people Israel gave to the seed of Abraham, thy friend?'" Hey, make a capital F right there. "Abraham thy friend forever and dwell therein... Built thee a sanctuary therein, by the same saying". And make all kinds of notes about that. They got, they received detailed instructions from the Spirit of God where that army was coming from, where they would find them, how they would find them.
Well that information's still available today when you know covenant. Anyway, wilderness of Tekoa, And you come on over here, verse, yeah the 20th verse. "They rose early in the morning and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa". Now they knew that because of the covenant they had with God, the Spirit of God called on a young man in the congregation and gave exact directions of the battle where they would be, when they would be there. "Hear me O Judah, you inhabitants of Jerusalem, believe in the Lord, your God, so shall you be established, believe His prophets and you so shall you prosper. And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of His holiness as they went out before the army and to say, praise the Lord for His hesed endures forever".
Covenant hesed. Absolute, total completely blood obligation between God and this nation. "When they began to sing and praise, the Lord sent ambushments against Ammon and Moab, Mount Seir and all of that". Now listen, verse 23, "The children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir and utterly slay and destroy them. When they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, everyone helped to destroy the other". The devil going to kill himself if you give him enough rope. Verse 24, "There were dead bodies fallen to the earth and none escaped. Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil of them, they found among them in abundance, both riches with the dead bodies and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves more than they could carry, more than they could carry away". Hesed. "More than they could carry away, and they were three days gathering up the spoil". It was so much. "And on the fourth day they assembled themselves in the valley of Berachah, there they blessed the Lord. Therefore the name of the place was called the valley of blessing".
God and His people were more than enough for that massive army. I want you to see the power. He established His covenant, you find it all over that first covenant... To establish the covenant. Deuteronomy, don't get hung up on the 28th chapter, read the 27th. Dear Lord. It explains the whole thing. There were two mountains. One of them is lush and green, and the other one is a bald headed ugly looking thing, they're there today. The mountain of cursing and the mountain of blessing. This is a people that didn't know a thing in the world about that covenant, they knew they had one, but they didn't understand it, they'd been in captivity so long so it had to be demonstrated.
So half of the tribes on one mountain and the other, listen, there's lots of people out there. So they can shout across that valley and be heard. And it wasn't written the blessing, and then the curse, it was verse to verse, to verse, to verse, to verse. They would shout over and bless half of them, the other half would shout over and curse the other. To get that thing over to each of them, that if you keep these commandments, you will be blessed. If you don't, and it starts out correctly, "Harken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and all of these blessings will come on you and overtake you". Then you come on down to 14th, 15th verse, "all these curses will come on you and overtake you". God didn't have to actively bless them or curse them. An amen would go pretty good there. Anyway, I wanted to get down to this.
Now then, and we went through the Genesis 15 and 17 and so forth. Now, remember we talked about, as for me, my covenant is with me and thee, not you and me but me, I'm the big one, Thee, you're the little one. But I want to enter into a blood agreement with you. Agreement that is so sacred that it cannot be broken. Can't be broken... without somebody dying. And then God said, "Well now wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, don't kill a man, kill an animal". That's where that came from. It's all in the blood, you know what the scripture said, "The life of the body is in the blood". Adam's name was red for blood. It started out by naming the man blood. Because God already knew, He already had that plan yeah, before the foundation of the world. Anyway.
So now come on over. Let's go to two places. We'll go to Romans 4. The gospel of Romans. I love them all but the book of Romans is so powerful. And you need to read that whole chapter, but for the sake of time, we'll, verse 11, "He received the sign, the mark of circumcision. A seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe. Though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also. And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of the faith of our father, Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised". You have to get that, he believed God before circumcision ever came. Then why the circumcision? Blood.
Now with David and Jonathan, they entered a blood covenant together, and the mark was visible, right here. And I questioned the Lord, why circumcision? And here's the answer that I received. "I wanted it to be a mark that is not visible so that the sign of the covenant was his vast wealth". Isn't that good? Because people get proud of that mark. Because it warned people. You have no idea who the other half of that covenant is. So I don't care who this fellow is, large or small, it'd probably be better you let him alone. Because there's somebody out there probably bigger than he is. But with father Abraham, God made him wealthier than anybody. And the power of that covenant turned his age back.
Most people don't talk about this. After Sarah died, he remarried and had six more sons. And lived to be what? 175 years old. Now go check it out, go read. After she was that old, she was then desired, once again. It changed them. It changed their outer look. Glory to God. Now let's go in here, fourth chapter of Romans. 14th verse, "If they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void and the promise made of no effect". See that covenant promise of no effect because the law worketh wrath where there is no law, there's no transgression. Therefore it is of faith so that it might be by grace to the end that covenant promise or its benefits might be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who's the father of us all, as it is written, "I have made thee a father of many nations," that little mark, number one, "like unto him before him".
In other words, he copied him right to his face. Oh, Brother Copeland, how could you do that? He's in covenant with him. He is equal to him... Because of Hesed. "As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations before him and like him, whom he believed even God who makes alive the dead and calls those things that be not as though they were who against hope believed in hope that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be. Being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead when he was about 100 years old, neither yet the deadness Sarah's womb, he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, being fully persuaded". He was able to perform. "Therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness".
It was not written for his sake alone, imputed unto him, but for us also to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus, our Lord from the dead who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification, or our righteousness. He considered not his own body, neither the deadness of Sarah's womb. Now God is a covenant making God. The title of this message is, God the covenant and the contradiction. Where the healing covenant for Israel, it was a national covenant, it was healing for the people in their bodies. It used to really irritate me about that serpent on that pole. And then we find out that it was a type of Christ on a pole. I said, I don't care what you put the serpent up there for? And He said, "I took his nature. I became obedient to death". That's the devil's nature, he's dead. He is death going somewhere to happen? He said, "I took his nature on the cross and I instructed him to put that serpent up there of brass". And when you look at it, you're healed. Well all you have to do now is look at that cross. Amen.
So now let's go to the covenant book of Hebrews. If you want to learn covenant go to the book of Hebrews. And to settle this for you, we talked about Hebrews 3:1. He is the apostle and the high priest of our confession. So as a high priest and we are confessing His Word receiving, then He is right there, He is right there with you as the high priest, "the" all judgment has been turned over to the hands of the son. Why? Because He's been here. And he is right there, your high priest, dwelling on the inside of you by His representative, the spirit of truth, the covenant spirit of truth.
So that when you're confessing those words, He is there to see to it when you speak them in faith that they come to pass. Hallelujah. Oh dear Lord. But look first at Hebrews 13:20. Verse one, "Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain stranger for thereby some have entertained angels unaware". In the 20th verse, "Now the God of Shalom," nothing missing, nothing broken, "that brought again from the dead, our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the ever lasting covenant". Lord, God. The ever lasting covenant. It is forever and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever and all of the blood, not a drop or two of it. All of the blood of Jesus is in the heavenly mercy seat of God. And it lives there today, it is ever alive. That blood is still alive. It is not running in His veins, dare I say it. It's running in ours.