Kenneth Copeland - God's Plan Is To BLESS You
Let's turn now to the 27th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 27. Let me come down there. In this 27th chapter, now remember this, there's a lot of people here, not a few, something in the area of a million and a half to two million people. Now, when they're shouting, they can make a lot of noise. They have been trapped. They're just out of Egypt. They know about the 10 commandments. Now, Moses has taught that. He got that from God personally. They know that. That's the law. So the Almighty God, their covenant partner needed to get over to them that it's his desire to bless them, but there's problems if they break that law. So now you come over here to the 27th chapter. Look in the ninth verse. "Moses and the priests, the Levites spoke unto Israel saying, 'Take heed and hearken.'"
Now Gloria said, "Here, Ken," so I'm listening. "Hearken, oh Israel, this day. Thou art become the people of the Lord thy God". You listen up. This day. This is it. You're going to find out about your covenant with Abraham today. You're going to learn this. "Thou shall therefore obey the voice of the Lord thy God and do his commandments and his statutes, which I command thee this day". And Moses charged the peoples the same day saying, "These shall stand upon Mount Gerizim to bless the people when you are come over Jordan. Simeon, Levi, Judah," you notice Judah the blessing, Jesus of the tribe of Judah. "Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin". The apostle Paul is a Benjamite. "And these shall stand upon Mount Ebal to curse Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali".
So half of the tribe is split down the middle. Six on one side and six on the other. Now, I want you to see pictures of those two mountains. Would you put that up there please? Now I want you to notice that Shechem in the middle there. Mount Ebal, look how bald it is. Mount Gerizim, the blessing. Trees and so forth grow over there. Now, Mount Ebal is alkaline. You can't grow anything on Mount Ebal. But Gerizim is a blessing. Things flourish over there. It's a good place to be. So this was show and tell. Get this in your mind. See this. "And the Levites shall speak and say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice 'cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, abomination under the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsmen," and so forth. And all the people answer, "Amen". Can you imagine a couple of million people shouting, "Amen, so be it"? Or another way, "That's the way it is".
Now then, let's go to the 28th chapter. Now, people preaching over the years have preached on this curse and blamed God with it. Church, listen to me, don't start anywhere without reading the whole neighborhood. First Peter 2:24. There's 23 verses before that. And they are very, very important. James chapter five called on the elders of the church. There's four chapters before that and it starts out on faith in the very first two verses. This is a problem. Now, I didn't mean you have to just read that every time you go in. But read it enough to where you know what the requirements are. Because God's already done his part, now we need to do ours.
Now, you come over here at this 28th chapter and now you see what is actually the synopsis of this. It shall come to pass. Now, they're going through all this. It shall come to pass. It shall come to pass. "If thou shalt hearken diligently under the voice of the Lord, thy God to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command thee this day, all of these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee if you will hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God". Now, after that, he begins to name the sicknesses and the diseases. There are a lot of things there. They've been in Egypt so long, they've been forced to eat things they would never eat just to stay alive. And so he's having to teach them so they live a long time. And here's all of the blessings. Oh, blessed when you come in, blessed...
Now, I want you to look in this fourth. "Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, and the increase of thy kine". K-I-N-E not K-I-N-D. That is big. Now, this is agriculture people. That meant their auction, that meant their implements, whatever they need to do the job. What does your church need? What land does your church need? That's your kine. He'll bless you with your kine. And you've heard me tell, Liz, that night I was flying in to the local airport there in Fort Worth, and I heard those words coming to you from the Revival Capital of the World.
Well, at that moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. And then come to find out, it was during World War II, a Naval air station operated by the Marine Corps, and there's over 1500 acres in it. And what they did, during that time, the government would condemn the land under the War Act. You couldn't not sell it, but they would give you top dollar for it. And there was some great oak trees on that right where we eventually in 2000 built our home out there, and there's some oak trees out there. I talked to the man that this was his dad's farm and he was raised on that farm. And I noticed these trees are all in a row. And he said, "Copeland, my dad planted those trees. He planted those pecan trees over there".
God knew that one day there would be a Kenneth Copeland Bible College out in the middle of the countryside and they would need land. They will eventually need a ballpark. They will need student housing, and their parents are going to want to move out there close to their family. And now there's a company just decided that they're going to build 10,000 homes within a three minute drive of EMIC. Hey, that was my kine. I got blessed. The ministry needed that. I didn't know it, but he set that up years ago in the early '70s to have all this time to develop it and build it up and develop it and build it up, blessed with our kine and the flocks of your sheep. And so now, look at the eighth verse, "The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your storehouses".
Storehouses, not storehouse. Oh, you're prospering, you got storehouses. "In all that you set your hand into, he will bless you in the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The Lord shall establish the holy people". Now, here's the problem. This is why the Jewish people are so persecuted. This blessing is operating on them. It's big time. "The Lord shall establish you a holy people unto himself, as he has sworn under thee, if you'll keep the commandments of the Lord thy God walk in his ways. And all of the people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will be afraid of you". And they will persecute you with everything they have because they're afraid of you.
Isn't that what bothered Pharaoh? There's too many of them, and everything they do works because of Joseph. But he forgot about Joseph. And so he said, "There's too many of them, kill all the little boys". But Moses was floating in a little boat in the Nile River, that special child. And Pharaoh's daughter said, "He is a special child". Little did she know. Can you see it, the blessing was on that family? Now, let's go over here on the curse side of this. Now, at verse 15, here we are again. "It shall come to pass, if you'll not hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God to observe and do all of his commandments and his statutes which are commended this day, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you".
So he didn't have to actively do it. They're just there. Adam saw to that. They're just there because the devil's here. Now, he's lost his authority that he received from Adam. He's the god of this world still. But he has a problem, the Jews are on one side of the world and the Christians are all over the world. And there's a number of us know our authority and can put him to flight and take authority over him and cut him off at the knees everywhere he starts to bring that curse on us. No, you don't. You don't put that curse on me. When the kids were small and we were living in a little small house there in south end of Fort Worth, it was a funny thing, we had just seen that we were not to borrow money. And we didn't have any place to live.
We came back from Tulsa. I wanted to stay up there from now on. But the Lord said, "No, no, no, no, no. You're coming home". Going back to Fort Worth? "Lord," I said, "You know what happened to you in your hometown. I don't want to do that". "No," he said, "I'll take care of you". So anyway. And this little area out there South of town, and this whole project out there. Really nice little houses and well built. And my dad found that place. And so he talked to this man and told him that Gloria and I were in the ministry and we were moving back to Fort Worth. And he said, "Now, listen, you tell that young preacher that I'll build him whatever style he wants. "And he said, "I carry my own paper. He can set his own payments".
So my dad came back with this wonderful deal. And I said, "Dad, I can't do it". "Why not"? I said, "I promise God we wouldn't borrow money". He didn't like that. He said the same thing Mr. Pewitt said to me over the land, he said, "You got anything against rent"? I said, "No, sir". He said, "I'm going to buy the house. I can buy it and make money on it and you can pay me rent". I said, "That's fair enough". So we're living in that little house, and it was nice. And so the kids had their own room, we had ours, and everything was nice. So the flu's going around. So I said, "Come on, kids. We're going to take our flu shot". John's eyes got big.
So we had that big, old, large... people could call them ottomans, it's a foot stool. And so we gathered around that thing and I opened up right here to Deuteronomy 28:22. "The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption". What would that be? TV? COVID in the lungs? So I read this, "With a fever and extreme burning and blasting and mildew or mold in your house, and pursue you until you perish". And I said, "Now, you see that? You see that, Kellie? You see that, John"? "Uh-huh". But now listen to this. This is what we have. "The law is not of faith, but the man that does them shall live in them. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith".
And you read this little book of Galatians, it's just faith, faith, faith, faith, faith. Faith of Abraham, faith of Abraham, faith of Abraham, faith of the gospel, faith, faith, faith. We're redeemed from it. I said we're redeemed from this. Hallelujah. But we needed to know what was going on here and try to excuse God for this. It was a demonstration for a people that needed to see and understand. Half of them stood on a mountain that wouldn't grow anything. And that was the cursed mountain. And the other mountain where the others were, was a mountain that was flourished. And it was there, they could see. "Well, yeah, look at this. So let's stay over here". He demonstrated that his aim and his whole idea was to bless.
Now, let's talk about the 10 commandments. When's the last time you read those? And you need to read that neighborhood. He made it very clear, "You do this and I will bless you". He wasn't setting out a bunch of rules to hurt them and making it hard on their lives. So what he's saying, "Don't have other gods and I'll take care of you. Don't be coveting another man's wife, I'll get you a better looking one than she is. Don't mess with her, dear. Don't be doing that. It'll get you into trouble. Don't be lying about things. You tell the truth and I'll protect you". See the whole thing, the whole idea was blessing.