Kenneth Copeland - Consistently Speak The WORD
— Now we're having a good time. Are you having a good time out of this? That words being spiritual containers? And so in today's lesson, let's go over to the Word of God in his Word in Hebrews.
— Okay.
— The letter to the Hebrews.
— Yes sir.
— Okay. Excuse me please. Chapter three. "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession". Now the same Greek word is translated confession. And you go to other translations and it's always, and in other places in the Bible, it is confession. "Who was faithful to him that appointed him as also Moses was faithful in all his house". Now verse six, "But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end". Now chapter four, "Let us fear lest a promise," these are covenant promises, right? "Being left of us entering into the rest, you should come short of it". Now verse 11, "Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature not manifest in his sight". Now I want you to notice what he said here. He said the Word of God, He. The Word of God. We're reading his words right now.
— Yes.
— Verse 14, "Seeing then that we have a great high priest, passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly under the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in a time of need". Hold fast to your confession of faith. Don't hold fast to a confession of fear.
— Now he's a high priest. What does a high priest do? High priest ministers to the Lord what you bring him. You bring your sacrifice, your lamb. "Your gifts have come up before me," he said of Cornelius, "As a sweet," your prayer and your giving has come up. He is your high priest. So he is the high priest of my words.
— Yes, he is.
— Now, if I would say words he can't do anything with, that's not his fault. I mean, he just has to sit on his hands. But if I'll say his Word, if you'll confess me before men or say the same thing I say before men, I will turn and confess you or say the same thing you just said before the Father. And the Father, all his promises are yes and amen. So he puts his amen on it or so be it on it. When I say what Jesus says, Jesus turns to the Father and says what I say and the Father says, "So be it. Done".
— Now we know why it is so important to renew our minds.
— They were always trying to trip Jesus up with his own words. Let me show you. Can we go to Luke chapter four and I'll show you Jesus stopping when the scroll is brought to him in Nazareth, in his own church, his own synagogue, if you will. Luke 4:16. "And he came to Nazareth where he'd been brought up and as his custom was," that's important, as his custom was, "he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 'the Spirit, the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach the deliverance to the captives, recovering a sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.'" And he closed the book.
— Yes, he did.
— He stopped. Brother Copeland, you don't do that. In synagogue, in Hebrew society, you don't stop in the middle of a verse. You finish the verse, you finish what's being read. You don't leave anything out.
— He was in the 61st chapter of Isaiah.
— Isaiah 61 verse one and two.
— Yes.
— Here it is. You're ready? "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives. Opening a prison to them that are bound, proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord," comma "And the day of vengeance of our God". He stopped because he knew the power of his words. It's not time for that. That's not his time. That's in our future. That's his second coming. The day of vengeance, honey, it's coming.
— That is enough to make him mad. Who does he think he is?
— He stopped. This is why all the eyes of everybody in the room was on him. Why'd he do that? Why'd he stop reading? Why did he close it and hand it back? He didn't finish the verse. They knew the verse. But why'd do you do it? And they said, "This has been fulfilled in your ears". He said, This has been fulfilled in your ears because he didn't finish that last part.
— Today.
— Today.
— That's what made him mad.
— That's right. So it's significant that he stopped at the comma. He's intentionally limited his reading to the mission of his first coming of why he's there today. This day scripture has been fulfilled. His second coming will be the second part of that verse.
— Yes it is.
— But this is why it even to the minuteness detail of that, Jesus is watching over his words because he's reading the Word which is himself. Over and over and over you see him teaching. If you take the Bible and you go from about Genesis 12 right there all the way to Acts 2, that's Israel. We're in the back part of this Book back here. And everything he's doing is fulfillment of something else that had been done before and getting it right that had been gotten wrong. And they're all trying to trip him up in his words all the time. They use the Word to trip him up in the word, which is what Satan did. One of my favorite examples of this in Jesus is Matthew 22:41-46 and it says, "When the Pharisees," they never could see him for who he was. They couldn't break the code. The code had been there. He taught the disciples out of the First Testament. That's the Bible he used. That's the Bible Paul used. And he would teach about himself on the road to Emmaus. He's talking to those people and they said, "Didn't our hearts burn within him," as he taught them from Moses concerning himself. And let me read this to you. "When the Pharisees were gathered together," this is Matthew 22:41, "Jesus asked them saying, 'What think you of Christ or the Messiah. Who is Messiah? Whose son is he?' They said into him, 'The son of David.'" Now see, that's covenant talk. He's giving them clues. "He said unto them, 'How then doeth David in Spirit called him Lord, saying, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit down in my right hand until I make thy enemies thy foot stool?'" Jesus is quoting Psalm 110 right there. "If David then called him Lord, how is he his son? No man was able to answer him a word". Now this is my favorite part. "Neither does any man from that day forward ask him any more questions". They stop asking him questions right then. If you'll continue to speak the Word, you'll get to a place where that enemy will stop asking you questions because he knows what's going to come out. If you'll be consistent to do like he did and speak the Word. There are places in my life right now, and I know somebody will say, "Oh, you shouldn't say this". There are places in my life that the enemy does not tempt me in anymore because the victory is there. I know what the Word is, I'm even tempted. If he were to come at me with that, I'd be like, what? 20 years ago maybe, not now.
— Well, I'd like him by trying to tempt me to go back smoking cigarettes. You got to be kidding me. But now, at the time it was very, very difficult. That was just really hard to do. But then the first time that I came under ministry was in that same meeting in Houston with Hilton Sutton, Charles Rogers. I drove up there with a package of cigarettes and I stuck them up over the sun visor of the car. Now, I was working for my dad and I was in Tyler, Texas. I didn't have enough money to go back and get Gloria and go to Houston and I knew I was way out of place. So I called my dad and told him, I said, "You know I'm out of place. I can't do this any longer and I'm going to Houston. There's a meeting down there with Hilton Sutton and Charles Rogers". And I called Gloria and I said, "I don't have money enough for gasoline enough to come back and get you. I'm going on down there". She said, "Okay". So we prayed. Now two weeks went by and a man just walked up there and handed me a bunch of money and he said, "Go home and get your wife," so I did. And I looked up there and I, "Well look at you," and they were gone. And I'd been delivered of it already a couple of times. I won't go into all of them dumb stuff that'd got me back in it. And that, it was over. I didn't quit. That concentrated church all day. I didn't remember them.
— It was gone from your thinking. So then you didn't say anything about it either to reinforce more.
— It was gone from my thinking.
— That's recurrent training. That's recurrent training.
— And then for now for the devil to try to tempt me with that it would be ludicrous. And he knows that and so do I.
— That's what Victory Campaigns, Southwest Believers' Convention are the recurrent training. That's why you need to be there. There's an interesting word in the Hebrew. You know how I have to do, I have to look stuff up. And the verb to think in scripture and the noun thought are used very liberally in translation in the Hebrew. No fewer than 22 different Hebrew or Aramaic words come out as think or thought. Now the main Hebrew word often translated to think is actually this word "amar". It's very interesting. But it's not to think. It means to say. Yet in English a lot of times it's translated as to think. So right there in the original language, I've got what I think controls what I say.
— It sure does.
— And so we've translated as think but it literally means to say. It's sometimes found in this expression, amar belibo, which means to say in one's heart. Not to think in one's heart, to say in one's heart. Because if I think this in my heart long enough, I'm going to say this. And this is why words are containers of your spirit man.
— Yeah. And I've wondered about this a lot of times. Two parts of this passage of Scripture, Jesus is gone. Peter said, "I'm going fishing". They said, "We're going with you". So they looked up and there was Jesus on the shore cooking fish. Where did he get the fish? One of the things I'm going to ask him, Sir, where'd you get those fish? And then he'll be glad to tell me how he spoke and they jumped out of the water.
— Or he created them right there.
— Or angels are involved.
— Or angels are involved. Yeah. Probably so.
— Anyway, Peter said, "It's the Lord". So they just jumped overboard and swam ashore. So they ate the fish.
— He did that before, didn't he? He jumped overboard and went up to greet him.
— He's first. It's missed in the English Bible. Now he denied the Lord three times. Jesus said, "Peter, do you love me"? He said, "You know I love you". "Feed my sheep". He asked him again, "Do you love me"? "Lord, you know I love you". That's not what he said. Jesus said, "Do you agape me"? He said, "You know I phileo you". The second time agape is unconditional love. God loves with agape love. The second time he said, "Do you agape me"? He said, "Lord, you know I phileo you". That's natural love. The third time he said, "Do you phileo me"? So he came down to his level. He said, "Feed my sheep". Now I've wondered, years and years and years and years I've thought about that and thought about that. He almost denied him again. I think he was afraid he couldn't do that. He couldn't come to that place of unconditional love because he knew Jesus had unconditional love or he wouldn't have loved him at all after what he did. I think he was so fearful he couldn't say it.
— He couldn't in himself, but he could in Christ. It's the only way we can love that way. It's not possible in your natural.
— The day of Pentecost hadn't happened yet.
— That's exactly right.
— That's the reason why. But I'm convinced that he was afraid that he couldn't hold up to it. And so Jesus then came down on his level and he could go along with that. But then after the day of Pentecost-
— He was a total different person.
— He's a completely different person.
— He gets up and preaches chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. I mean, he's totally different when the Holy Ghost came in. I used to say it this way, that the Holy Ghost will take the chicken out of you because he denied him when the rooster was growing here. He was a chicken that day. But anyway, it doesn't translate into Spanish, but it translates into English. In Judges 15:2 to the point I was making about words or thoughts and saying, there's a Hebrew text that says Amora Marti, it mean literally means I said a saying. In our English Bible it says, I really thought. No, no, no, he didn't think, he said. Now he said because he thought. The idea of saying whether intentional or external relates to an intentional act in Hebrew. In Hebrew to say is an intentional act. And this is why he's having Peter say something. This is why Jesus is saying something. It's not just shooting your mouth off.
— He insisted that he say it.
— Yes, he had to. This is what was...
— How many times?
— We start with Hebrews, high priest of my say.
— How many times? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, how many times do you say I say unto you? Jairus's daughter. He said, "Lay your hands on and she'll live". Well, he did. He took her by the hand. But he said, "Daughter, I say unto you". I say, I say, I say, I say it. I say it. The power release is in words.
— He would say this, when coming against tradition, He would say, "You've heard it said, but I say unto you".
— I say it.
— In other words, you've heard this. Now it's not true, but now I say this unto you. And what he's doing is correcting that error. Anytime he ever asks you a question, listen to him, I mean what saying to you.
— Look at this fourth verse in Luke four, no, chapter five, verse four. "Now, when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a haul". Now that's what he said. "Simon answering said unto him, 'Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing. Nevertheless at thy word, I will let down the net.'" That is not what he said. Now people have tried to make a big deal out of this, but I'm going to show you something. "And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fish and their net broke and they beckoned under their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. They came and filled both the ships so that they began to sink. Simon Peter saw it. He fell down at Jesus' knees". He's knee deep and fish. "Saying, 'Depart from me for I am a sinful man, oh Lord.' for he was astonished and all that were with him at the haul of fish that they had taken". Now why did the net break? When you go over there to that place, they had so much fish in the net, they couldn't pull it on that day that they saw Jesus on shore and that net didn't break. I had flown Jerry Savelle to Victoria, Texas to preach in a church of men that was both our friends. Well, he stood up to receive the offering and he talked about the net breaking, boat sinking. And I'd always had a little scratching at me over that. And the Word of the Lord came to me and the Lord said that net was rotten. And he took me back to all those other places. And when you read that story, you find out they weren't even listening to him. They were washing their nets.
— That's when he called them. They were mending nets.
— Yes. And then as I studied it, I went before the Lord about it. He said, "Peter had a net that was old and he knew they weren't going to catch anything out there. He's just going to take the preacher fishing because he's been on this lake for years".
— They've been doing it all night, hadn't caught anything.
— And didn't catch anything.
— We're never going to catch anything in the daytime with our net.
— The Galilee is so clear that you throw a net, the fish run away from the net. But they never had the creator in the boat with them. So I'm taking those little fish are saying, "Take me, take me". He took that one old rotten net. And of course it just came all to pieces. That's the reason he said get away from me, I am a sinful man. He's thinking, "Because I took this a rotten net. I know better than that and I never thought we were going to catch anything anyway and look at this".
— See, it makes sense now. I'm the one that's saying his desire and his will in the earth. This is why I have to change the what I say.
— And we're out on time again. But it's a good time.
— It's a good time.
— We'll be back in just a quick minute.