Kenneth Copeland - Expect Your Miracles by Faith
Hello everybody. Come on in here. Take your chair right there. Well, they're all full but just come on in anyway, because we're having a good time on the fundamentals of faith. I'll say it again. These two airplanes fundamentally are the same, but as you can see, they're fundamentally a whole lot different. This is a piston powered airplane. This is a jet. At the time that I got, I received my type rating in this airplane here, the citation X, it was the fastest civilian airplane on the planet at that time and I flew that airplane for 15 years. Until and then the other manufacturer caught up with it. It was the cruise speed, was mock 0.92. That's 92% of the speed of sound. It was a very fast airplane.
The dive test on these when Boeing, when Stearman first manufactured, then Boeing took it up, the dive test because students were going to be in this thing and that old Stearman was built so well, that they kept going up higher and higher and higher and higher and diving it right straight down and they couldn't tear it up. When they didn't dive test on this course, it went super sonic. But it's magnificent. It's just a machine. The human body is a machine. It has to have exhaust, it has to have air to breathe. That engine has to have air to breathe. Amen. The human physical body is a machine of and you need to keep them in good repair. Actually this is the manufacturer's handbook and we learn how to keep it well. If you'll pay attention to it, it'll teach you how to eat so that you can live to be 120 years old.
Now over in the new covenant, it's voluntary. In the first one, it was a law, particularly for the fact that by the time this was written, these people had been in Egypt all this time and they just had to eat anything you could find just to stay alive. It had to be straightened up. Now then, Romans chapter 10 please. Now we said this, if we know what faith is, well we found that out. It is the confirmation, it is the title deed to the things we hope for and it is the evidence of things we can not see. It's the evidence of things that we can't see or feel. You can't feel it. You can feel the results of it. But faith is a powerful, powerful spiritual force that just happens to be the name of it. F-A-I-T-H.
Now, we found out last week that faith in that name, faith in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, did the same thing that Jesus did, when he was actually here on the earth and taught them about His name. Now we have the Spirit of God through the Apostle Paul in chapter 10 of the book of Romans. Verse five, "Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the man that does those things shall live by them, but the righteousness which is of faith speaks". It speaks, "On this wise say not in thine heart. Who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above. Who shall descend into the deep? That is to bring Christ again from the dead"? That's talking about his burial and resurrection. Now, what does it say? "The word is nigh thee, even in your mouth and in your heart, your spirit, your inner person. That is the Word of Faith which we preach". That's what I'm preaching now. The Word of Faith.
Now in a moment, you'll see why it says it. If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus or Jesus as Lord and shall believe in thine heart that God has aised him from the dead, thou shall be saved. There's a salvation prayer right there. Now, when I prayed it, I didn't know that was in the Bible. I just said, Jesus come into my heart, because that's what my Sunday school teacher told me. But it worked. "For with the heart man believes unto righteousness, with the mouth, confession is made unto". I want you to get that. Confession is made unto salvation. Confession is made unto healing. Confession is made unto prosperity. Let's settle something right here.
In the 27th, 28th and 29th chapters of the book of Deuteronomy, we find the blessing of Abraham and the curse of the law. But now we know from the book of Galatians, 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, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit of what the promised Spirit, promised in his Word". "By faith". There it is again. Most people don't... You ask, "What are we redeemed from"? I don't know. I learned that from Brother Hagin. I would've been the same way, because I was scripturally illiterate when I received the Lord Jesus. Now, a lot of people receive him as savior and he is not Lord at all. To be Lord, you do what he says. That's what he said.
Now listen to this, "For the scripture says, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed". All right, you just start believing that. I'm not going to be ashamed in this. Now I may look goofy to other people. Well, so what? For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. Well we fall in the category of the Greeks. That's anybody that's not Jewish. For the same Lord overall is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. There it is again. How then shall they call on him and whom they have not believed. They can't. How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? They can't. How shall they hear without a preacher? They can't. How shall they preach except they be sent or be anointed?
I've heard some of that. There was a man, big part of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship back in the day, when, and I was too, and he made this statement. He said, "I preached, pastored a church, for over 20 years and realized I had never been born again". He said, "You have no idea what a difference it made in my life". Then he said, "I got baptized in the Holy Ghost," and he... "Where has all this been"? It's right there in the book all the time. But he said, "I thought it'd all been passed away". A lot of people have had that. But that's just lack of knowledge from lack of studying. "It is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Esaias saith, Lord who hath believed our report? So then," say so then.
So then, the bottom line is this, faith... Notice cometh is in italics. Faith, by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing and hearing and hearing and hearing and hearing. Recurrent training here, recurrent training here. All the time. So that... I really enjoyed it when we actually had cassette tapes. The CDs... How do you stop that thing and wind it back up? How do you make this thing do that? It was so easy. Amen. Back then, in those early days, Gloria and I didn't watch television. We didn't watch anything. We were too busy. We were just too busy, because we were feeding on his Word. We were feeding our faith.
Faith was coming, Faith came and as you know, I was on the flight crew of Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association. I was traveling with him. But I had Brother Hagin's tapes. I was watch him and listening to him preach and act on faith in the miracle ministry and I saw miracles. I'll tell you. Oh, oh. One time this young man came out there and all in braces out on the stage. This was in an auditorium, and he looked like a mechanical man. He had these crutches like this, came out there and Brother Roberts talked to him for a few minutes. He would always do that. He would talk with him, talk with him. He would say things like, "Now, now," and he'd call your name and he'd say, "Now with me, Christ is right here. He's right here, and because of his Word, I know he wants you well and he wants you well right now".
I'm expecting a miracle. Are you? Then he would more nearly every time would say "You know, God is a good God". You have to expect the miracle by faith. He just laid hands on that young man. He went back, then he crutches, one went that way and one went the other way. He just sat down and started pulling braces off. Got on with it, and turned around and walked from one end to that stage to the other and turned around and ran to the other end and left all of the junk laying up there on the top platform. I saw a woman spit a tumor out on the ground. We were in a tent at that time, in the tent. She spit that thing up. It was still moving. Faith came. Faith came. Faith came.
Well, I would come home and I had professors. ORU was one of the first in the nation to do this in a major university. I could go to the study hall, because I'd be gone a week and they had a little booth there and I could put a headset on and go back and get the lectures. They were taped and go back and get those. I would have professors that been in the ministry longer than I was old. For a while I couldn't understand that, they would come in there and say, "Brother Copeland, would you pray for this for me please"? But the thing that had happened, the word was getting around. I wasn't but 30 years old. The word was getting around, that if I prayed for you or with you, the miracle was there.
Well, Brother Roberts had laid hands on me, I was listening to those tapes of Brother Hagin's just night and day, night and day. Faith came. Well that still will. The CDs work. They just, I'm just get a little gripy about them, but it's possible to do that. But now they've taken CDs out of the cars, unless you've got a real high end car. Put them on your phone. Absolutely. I still have Brother Hagin. He's been in heaven since 2003. Now if I listen to him long enough, I sound like him. Because that's where I learned it.
Now, notice this, "But I say, have they not heard," so it's the hearing. Jesus said... Go to Mark 4, "The sower sows the Word". Ah. The Word is a seed and all of the different kinds of heart. Gloria said, "You need to take a soil sample, of what happened in the heart," the human heart and these different things. Here's a good checklist and you can see, you can just go down through here. Have I let it slip? Well in the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews, "But the gospel was preached unto them, the same as others, but they didn't mix it with faith". Amen.
Faith, we're talking about the fundamentals of faith. Now then, let's go over here to the fourth chapter of Romans and we get down to, "Faith calls things that be not, as though they were". In Romans four... Well Lord, let's go back up to verse 12. "The father of circumcision to them, who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our Father Abraham, walking in his faith steps, which he had being yet uncircumcised". That just became, that changed the blood of the covenant. The first one in the 15th chapter of Genesis. Very, very detailed. Study it. The animal would be cut down the spine and allowed to fall and so forth. That's when God made promises to him. So shall thy seed be.
Then in the 17th chapter of Genesis, the blood covenant of circumcision. Now there was human blood shed. All of this is tied. All of it, I mean all of it points to Jesus. Then, and all of it is about the blessing. We're redeemed from the curse, but then the blood of Jesus. Now to catch up with this, look at verse three. "What sayeth the scripture, Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness". He believed God. He believed what he said. He didn't have a book. God would have to appear to him and say it. He appeared to him in the 17th chapter of Genesis and Abram fell on his face. Praise God.
Now, and let's come on over here, verse 14, "If they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and so forth and so on". Now verse 16, "Therefore," look at it, "It is of faith". It is of faith. Why? So that it might be by grace. "To the end, the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to that only, which is of the law. But to that which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him or like unto him". I like to say it like this, "In his presence," and he did. "Before him whom he believed even God, who quickeneth the dead, he makes alive the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were".
He calls things that don't exist as though they do, because he's the creator. He has the authority. He said, "I have made you the father of many nations," not I'm going to. He said I've already done it. Now that's what you are. I'm going to change your name and I'm going to put my name in the middle of yours to indicate we are in covenant together. Abram became Abraham, that H in the middle, Hashem. Yod Hey Vav Hey right in the middle of his name. The first recorded incident in history where there was a covenant and a name change. It's practiced today and 99 and nine tenths and 99 tenths of a nine tenths of the people that he had married don't have any idea where it came from. I do know of some women that don't want the name of their husband. Well, bless your darling heart. That's not even a covenant. It is not. What is it? It's an agreement, prenuptial agreement. That's not a covenant. Amen.
What difference does it make if they love one another? You're kidding me? I'm not going to even go there. I don't want, I want to keep, I don't want to get mad and aggravated and upset. I'll do that later. I don't want to get you upset either. Now, we see this, that is calling faith, number four, call things that be not as though they were. Okay, let's do that. Turn with me to 1 Peter two. Thank You Jesus. Verse 24. But now what, hey, there's 23 verses ahead of that. A lot of people turn to this verse and just for some reason doesn't seem like they receive their healing. Most of the time it's in these verses up here. Laying aside all malice, all guile, hypocrisies, envies, all evil speakings. Oh. That's a mouthful. That needs to be dealt with.
Now, you come down here, verse 23, "Who when he was reviled, reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judges righteously, who his own self bare our sins in his own body, that we being dead to sins". We be dead to sins? Well, there's things I've that... There's been situations there. You remember when we read the 107th Psalm? Well, there's some soul searching needs to be done here. You need to go take communion.
Go to 2 Corinthians 11. Take communion. Judge yourself, that you be not judged. All of that is part of this. "By whose stripes ye were healed". Now... there's a lot of people need to learn to call things and be not as though they were. Right here, there's a lot of hang up on this. Amen. I've seen it in my own ministry and we'll talk about it, before we get through here. But right now we are out of time again. But we'll be back in just a moment. Hallelujah. Thank You, Jesus.