Kenneth Copeland - Psalm 91, Living in Divine Protection
— Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. Excuse me. During the break, the Word of the Lord has come to me. This nation, as other nations of the world, are under attack. The people of the nations do not understand. Ephesians, chapter six. We do. We're told: Put on the full armor of God. For we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world and wicked spirits in the heavenlies. That's the reason Jesus said there will always be wars and rumors of wars. That's not God's plan. That's the devil's plan. He is a killer. He is a thief. Jesus said he came to steal, to kill and to destroy. I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. And we've been seeing wars and rumors of wars all of these years. I'm old enough to have lived through World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and it started all over again because of the times in which we live. We are blessed people to have this covenant Book. So on this Friday after Thanksgiving, this is not Black Friday. I don't know who named that. But let us turn to Psalm 91. I want to point out something here that most people have not yet caught on to. I want to remind you, in Genesis 17, God appeared to Abraham, and he said that the English Bible says, "I am Almighty God". He said, "I am El Shaddai. I am the God who's more than enough. I will be everything to you as a nation. I will be a Father to you. I will be a nurse to you. I will take care of you. I will heal you. I enter into this covenant with you today. Your name will no longer be Abram. It will be Abraham", entered into a covenant of circumcision. And he changed his name.
— Yes.
— The covenant name change. That's the first record we have of that. And it's still practiced today. We entered into a covenant of marriage in Little Rock, Arkansas, April Friday, April 13th, about 8:00 in the evening. And Gloria Jean Neece became Gloria Jean Copeland. And we've been married. We've been in constant covenant of love with one another for a little over 60 years. In fact, 60 years and about six months.
— Amen.
— Now, Psalm 91. " He that dwells lives in the secret place of the Most High". There is no higher than the Most High. Glory to God. Amen, ...Shall abide under the shadow of Shaddai. Abide under the shadow of more than enough. This has become known as the soldier's Psalm, and soldiers have gone into combat believing this, and commanders given that to their whole company and come out with no casualties because they demanded that they commit to memory every verse that we dwell, we live as born again children of God, wherever you are on the earth, in whatever language you read this Psalm, we stay there, dwell there. I don't care what's happening in your country. I don't care what's happening in your city or in your neighborhood, in the schools. Teach your children this Psalm. You're dwelling in the shadow of the God that's more than enough. Glory to God. Now any time you have a continuing disaster, a continuing thing. School shootings, school shootings, school problem, school this, school that. My spiritual father Oral Roberts talked to me about these things. And then Brother Hagin talked about it. The door has been opened to the devil some place. So you stop blaming people. You stop blaming politicians. They don't know the answer to it either. I do. The same Supreme Court, same one that made they legislated abortion, Roe versus Wade... Same one. Same time. One atheist woman. She tried... She applied to live in the Soviet Union. They wouldn't have her. So she said, Well, we'll just have to change America. She had one son. She started in, I don't want my son pray in a school prayer. I don't want to see a Bible in that classroom. I don't want to... She just kept on suing everybody she could think of. That's what opened the door to the schools. Now let's close it. Madalyn O'Hair. The son she was all worried about got born again and she disowned him. Really sweet guy. But it's time the truth be known and close that door. The door of Roe versus Wade has been closed. But it's time for the body of Christ to close this one. And make that public. Get it right back out there. I remember when I was a little boy, we would come to school in the morning. We did the Pledge of Allegiance and we enjoyed that. And our teacher would ask anyone if they would like to pray. Well, everybody in there raised their hands. And so she would let someone pray and then she would pray. But the Bible was a revered book. Oh, my goodness. It was something that... And all of my teachers, all of them, all the way up were all Christians. And the Bible was very important to them. And they didn't mind punishing us. It didn't hurt our little... It didn't give us our little selves a bad attitude. It straightened our attitudes out. I remember one teacher, Arleen Free. I'm telling you, she and her sister, Pete Webb, they were both friends of my mother's. And she had say, if you have to spank him, spank him, but you tell me and I'm going to spank him when he gets home. Pretty well straighten my little self up.
— Sure. And I remember one time Arleen Free said, Kenneth, you know better than do what you did. I said, "Yes, ma'am". She says, "You just come back after class". I knew I was in trouble. Hey, I was a seventh grader. She bit me over her desk, got her big old paddle both hands, one lick, and lifted me up off the ground. Oh... I was decidedly different in Mrs. Free's class. I didn't respect her less. I respected her more.
— Yeah.
— Cause after class, everything's all right. She didn't correct me in front of everyone else. She just said, "Would you see me after class"? That was before Madalyn O'Hair. Now, we've had nearly 50 years of her. She wound up being kidnapped. And I'm thinking that when she was kidnapped, took her out in the desert. And it would have been a really good time for her to cry out to God, because people like her most atheist are running from God in the first place. Because we don't know... I don't personally know enough about her background to know that. But I know what it did to the Supreme Court. We're coming back under the shadow of the Most High, glory to God. And I'm looking forward to the day that we stand in a classroom and read this to high school students. And I do it anyway. With long life, he'll satisfy you and show you his salvation. Amen. But I want you to see that in the shadow of Shaddai. And I like to put it like God said it, in the shadow of El Shaddai. in His shadow. We live there. But El Shaddai is my Father. Amen.
— Verse two. I will say.
— I will say.
— More word containers. I will say of the Lord, He's my refuge, my fortress, my God, in him will I trust. Now I wrote out there faith.
— Yes.
— Hebrew word for trust is emunah. That's the word for faith in Hebrew. So in him I'll have faith, I have trust that because that's what that word means in Hebrew. That word for trust is the word we use for faith in the Hebrew. So I will say of the Lord, He's my faith. He's the source of my faith. My faith is in him.
— And you come over here at this 90th Psalm. Now am I correct in saying, this says prayer of Moses, the man of God.
— Yes.
— Am I correct in saying when a Psalm is not identified, it's attributed to the one before it?
— Okay.
— So the 91st Psalm answers the 90th.
— Sure.
— Cause Moses is lamenting and he's interceding in the 90th Psalm that the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; He's lamenting that their days are being cut short because of disobedience. And it came down to the place where he had gone to Moses. No, nobody over 20 is getting out of here. They're all going to die.
— Well, he was certainly known about the plagues because in ten.
— He called all of that, all of that is in this 91st Psalm because it refers to the plagues. It refers to all of those things that were going on all that time. And then he talks about the adder and the young lion.
— Well, Abraham was introduced to El Shaddai, as you just mentioned a moment ago. Moses was introduced to God as I am. I am means in the Hebrew, I will be whatever I need to be. This is what this Psalm 91 is. If I need to be this, I'll be this one. I'll be this. I'll be that. I'll be a pillar, I'll be a cloud. I'll be water out of a rock. I'll be manna fallen from heaven, I'll be quail, I'll be whatever I need to be for you. So what I'm going to be, it's an extension of El Shaddai.
— Now, God had the authority to make it. He didn't say, you're going to become. He said, I have made you a father of many nations. I have made you that. He already had done that. So now Abraham had to receive it by faith and call himself father of many nations. So when God entered covenant with him and changed his name and put his name in the middle, then every time he said his name, he said, father of many nations. And here's this old man going around saying, father of many nations. And he has no children.
— And Sarah is calling him, and everybody around him is calling him that.
— What's he doing? Well, it says it in the fourth chapter of the book of Romans. Shall we look? Oh Lord God. It's good. This is where faith comes in here. Romans Chapter four and verse 13. For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. That's the reason God didn't kill Cain.
— That's it.
— ... for murder. There wasn't anything against it. And that's the reason this book had to be written. There had to be law.
— That's right. That's right.
— It began as the law and the promise of prophets. So God establish commandments of law.
— Without the law, we would have never recognized Jesus. Because it points to him. Everything points to him.
— "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the covenant promise 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 is the father of us all, As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him" Or the cross references, like unto him. I like to say it this way, right in God's face, who even God, "who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were". God said, I have made you a father of many nations, and he wasn't. But his will was and his plan was so he had the authority to make him the father of many nations.
— He made a covenant with a man and a family. The family, through time became a nation. This is Moses, back to Psalm that now that covenant extends to a nation, then inside the nation will go to a family again. Yes.
— Back to David. We're part of that family now in the covenant of Abraham.
— And God had the authority to do that.
— Yes, he did have the authority....
— Now, I always enjoy this type. Napoleon, as you know, small man in stature. So he rode the biggest horse that he'd found. Always. And he was reviewing the troops and that big horse bolted. And this young man just stepped out from the ranks and caught that horse and straddled him down. Napoleon said, "Thank you, Captain". He said, "Sir, but I am... I'm but a private".
— No, sir, thank you, Captain. You will review the troops with me. Suddenly he's a captain. Why? Napoleon had the authority to make him a captain?
— Yes, yes.
— Now, Robert Scott, the man that wrote God Is My Copilot. He was an outstanding pilot, and flying was just his thing. Well, the war was getting going, and it was... And the general said, "Scotty, I need you to be a colonel". Well, he was a major in the Army Air Force. He said, I need you to be a colonel. And then later he gave him his wings. You know, a colonel is...
— Is a bird. Call a bird, colonel with their eagle's wing. And he gave it. He had the authority. He made him a colonel. He didn't come rank by rank he needed to come to... He was a major. He needed to come through lieutenant colonel and then become a colonel. No, not not, the general didn't need a lieutenant colonel. He needed a colonel because of command. He needed someone with full command to step into this. God needed someone in full command to develop him a nation. And he made him the father of many nation.
— Yes, sir. That's beautiful.
— And out of all of that, what was it all about to begin with? The blessing of the Lord. The first sound a human ear ever heard was the blessing. We know what Adam did with it. Came down through the years. The blessing was on Joseph. The blessing was Abraham is called Abraham's blessing. Then after that, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. Jesus. As he left, he blessed them.
— That's right.
— We are the blessed ones and we're out of time again today. Oh. Oh, glory to God.