Kenneth Copeland - God's Truth Brings You Freedom
— Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. This is our beautiful daughter, Kellie, and this is our class here this morning. And this is always a wonderful time of year when Christmas is finished. And but now we're headed into a new year. The thing that I'd like to share with you is this. When you live by faith, your life is sustained by faith. You never have to change your lifestyle because of the times. So your New Year's resolution was already made... Now there are things that need to be changed. You have to do it by faith, and it has to be done with a quality decision, not some wishy-washy thing, like Brother Hagin would say, the wishy-washy well wishers are not going to get there. So but you do it by faith and you base it on truth.
So that's where we're going into 2023. I was with Pastor George and it just popped throughout my spirit and out of my mouth. I said, "George, 2023 is going to be as good as it could be". And it depends on what you do with the Word. And it's amazing how the Word of God will stabilize everything in your life when it becomes... When Jesus is not only Savior but truly Lord. And you've heard me say this, I learned this a long time ago, that it was established in Gloria and me, that I am his to command. I am at his command. I am at his pleasure. And there's been some things that he said to me that... Oh... But let's go to the eighth chapter of John's gospel. This will be our golden text for this week's study, and we will begin reading with the 25th verse, actually in order to study this, read the entire eighth chapter, because there's several things that Jesus ministers here that is truly amazing. "Then they said unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning".
And I haven't changed... You know, "I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him. They understood not that he spake to them of the Father. Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am..." See "he", and "that" is in italics, "that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself. But as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my Word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free".
Now, that is a statement of authority. The truth will make you free. He didn't say it will set you free. He said it would make you free. You cannot exchange those two words because he said you will know you will have... the Greek is Ginosko. You will have an intimate relationship with me and with my Word. Why? Because he and his Word are the same. Now, John started this. Let's just look over here at the very beginning, when the way he began to write this... Well come on pages, four, three, two, one. "In the beginning was the Word..." Isn't that good, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not".
And you just continue to read and look at the 14th verse, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory". Oh, my... So we could call John a Word man, right? And back when Kellie was little, she'll attest to this that that they all of us, they called us Word birds. Amen, well, you know, they used to call us tapeworms. Well, we were now tape... We were on tapes. So anyway, when we first originally learned this from reel to reel tape and then cassette tapes, they took a giant step backwards and went CDs cause you stop that tape, run it back, stop it. You just monkey with it all you want to and now...
— I have to admit I don't miss trying to take a pencil and fix my tape.
— I do...
— You do?
— I got good at that. Anyway, so now you shall know the truth. I want to tell you a story. Back in the day, a number of years ago, there was a little motorcycle shop over in Mansfield, and it was just a nice ride, you know. And so one afternoon I got on my bike and I rode over there and walked in the door and they're not a specialty shop. They had all kinds of things. And I don't remember what kind of bike you rode... They had something for everyone to work with. And I walked in the door and a very good friend of mine, Jimmy Hester, was sitting there at the counter on the phone, and I walked in there and so he had a big smile on his face. And he's laughing and he hung that up. "Well", he said, "I got a good report". My doctor said, "I have the heart of a 16-year-old boy". I said, "That's great, Jimmy". He said, "No, you don't know. I have a story to tell you. My grandfather died with a bad heart. My father died with a bad heart. I went to your mother's prayer group". Now my mother's prayer group. She'd start a prayer group and they'd get so big you couldn't get to my dad's house on Monday night. She'd close it down and wait for about a year and turn that one over to somebody and start a church, wait about a year and do it all over again. And she kept doing that.
— There was a whole lot going on. I was about five or six years old and now, I don't even know if I've ever told you this. I'd sit on the stairs and I could tip my head down where I thought they wouldn't see me and watch what was going on. It was not silent, quiet prayer. They were casting out devils, coughing up demons... I mean, it was wild down there, I was real young. You know, I was like five years old when she cast alcohol, tobacco and cigarettes out of me... Cough it out honey, cough it out. That's what was going on down there. I loved it.
— I walked up there one night on my dad's front porch there and I knew the prayer group was going on and there was two... I found out later there was two Baptist preachers, and they walked out and they walked right by me. And one of them said, "Have you ever heard anything like that before"? He said, "No, but I'll tell you one thing. This is the first time in my life I ever felt sorry for the devil". He said "That woman beat him up, didn't she"?
— That makes what you're about to say about Jimmy Hester make a lot of sense.
— So someone took him over there... to be prayed for over his heart. And he said, "Kenneth, they took me in there". And so right there in front of her. And in fact, she had me sit down in a chair and I was facing her and she said, "Tell me about this". He said, "Well, my grandfather died with a bad heart. My dad died with a bad heart. And I have a bad heart now". She said, "Tell me the truth about this". He said, "Well, my grandfather died of a bad heart. My grandfather died of a bad heart. I've got a bad heart now". She said, "Tell me the truth about this". He said, "Well, lady, I told you..." He went through it all again. And he said, "Kenneth, she boxed my ears. She slapped her hands over my ears and she said, 'Isaiah 53 is the truth about this.' And slapped me". And he said "It got my attention" and he said, well, okay.
Well, he said "I pastor a church there in Arlington, Texas. And that turned me around. I am totally convinced she saw death on me. That happened there more than once. She saw death on me. And when she boxed my ears, my ears actually rang, she popped me over the ears and shouted in my face and got my attention and I just got my physical. And I have the heart of a 16-year-old boy". Glory to God. And when he did go, he went in his mid eighties instead of being 56 or 57 years old. Jerry Savelle and I were there at his home-going, glory to God, isn't that a good story. And he was just a mighty man of God and one of my very, very good friends in the flying days. And in fact, I worked with him for a while in the airplane business. His name is Tommy Baker. And I came home off road... Well call Tommy Baker. So I called him and they said, "Oh, no, Mr. Copeland, Mr. Baker passed away a few days ago". Oh, I missed him.
Well, R.W. Schambach came to town, and it was in Arlington, and he was on a church property that Big Tent. Glory to God. We came back off the road and I found that out. And I said, "Gloria let's go hear Schamboozle". She said okay. Oh, he even call himself that, you know, anyway. Oh boy. You talk about a preacher and so... Oh, Jimmy Hester sent word for me to come up there on the platform, and they set everybody down and I said, "Come on Gloria". She said, "No, I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna sit here with Mrs. Schambach and you can go on up there". So I sat down there. Jimmy said, "Kenneth, you know a man by the name of Tommy Baker"? I said, "Of course". He said, "I think you need to know something. He came to see me. I don't know how he got my name, but he came to see me and I tried to get a hold of Kenneth, but he's out of town. I just want you to know he came to my office" and he said, "We prayed together and he was gloriously saved".
Oh, glory to God, that was that man that would have been dead before that. That's the point I want to make. If he hadn't done and if my mother hadn't done and he didn't know the truth about this. You know, we just forget about him being trustworthy. He followed the father who was trustworthy. But when you said that, he always has his ear towards us, like what you needed, you in your heart, may not have even asked him to soothe that place that you didn't get back to him in time. But the Lord was there for him as well as you. And when we... What Jimmy Hester said was really important, I think, to touch on is that he said "She got my attention".
And these things that we're talking about this week about the truth, that's the problem. We hear the truth. We hear it on... sometimes we hear it so much, it doesn't... the Lord in it doesn't have our attention, hey, that I'm sending you that word. You're going to need that word. I'm sending you that word to heal that question you asked me last week. If we have ears to hear, we can do these things. If we let him have our attention and give him our ear, or, as the words says considered... he says, consider Jesus, it says keep your mind or eyes on the realities of heaven, that's giving that truth the place in our lives. So I'm going to hear it and I'm going to hear it. When the preacher's preaching, I'm going to hear that truth. I'm not just let it pass through my head.
— Well, then you hear people say, "Well, now this is my truth". And when you hear somebody say that, you just brace yourself because it's going to be plumb off the wall in most cases. Let's go back in and read this again. I do nothing of myself. Now, that is a key phrase. "I do nothing of myself. but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things which please him. As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my Word, then are ye my disciples indeed; You shall know. You shall be intimately acquainted with the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily..." I got two Verily Verily so you better listen, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free," There it is again. Make you free. "You shall be free indeed. But I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my Word hath no place in you".
Oh, that's huge. My Word has no place in you. Kellie early one morning, oh it was before daylight and I got up and I was headed out on the porch to pray for partners and so forth. Early... And I walked out of the bedroom and into my bathroom and started in there to make a cup of tea early. And I heard it down in here, my Word has no place in you, I'm telling you it was like I got gut punched and it hit me so hard and hurt me so... I just went on back in there and went back to bed. And I began to search and seek what the Lord was... What do you mean? It has no place in you... In me... And he didn't say anything.
So I began to research and repent and go back to these scriptures and read them again and again and again. And I had done what I had was a major problem with me. I get so busy preaching that I was not spending any quality time in the Word for myself, but I had to just back off and take my correction and abort to take off and go back to the barn and then wait and just seek him and repent, repent and repent and solve that because I was corrected. Well, it's better to be corrected than to crash and burn. I mean, that had to occur. But it's just those moments that in his preciousness and goodness, he got my attention. I mean, it was about 4:30 in the morning and he absolutely got my attention, put me back in the bed and I laid back down in there, began to pray in tongues and repent and got up later that day and straighten some things out between the two of us and I let things slip is what had happened.
— Now Dad, when you took that and you didn't just... Sometimes I think the Lord is telling us something when we're like, I rebuke you, devil. You know, we are not... It's easy not to hear, to take, to receive the truth. But when we do, he set you free. I can look back, especially in the last ten years of my life. When he said something like that to me, like he said to me, "You disdain worship". I'm like... Not me. But those are the moments of freedom, we have to realize saying he said he would set us free. That's what that was. He set you free of something that was becoming a chain, becoming a hole, becoming a draining weakness out of you, might not even have connected, something that might happen in your body or in your mind or in your circumstances. And you might not have ever connected that to that, except for God. And the Word says, Paul told the Athenians that he's not a disinterested bystander.
So we should expect those intimate places where he's getting rid of those things hurting us... He set you free. I just had to point that out because, you know the truth, you knew the truth, you accepted it, you responded to his words. You got quiet with him and he set you free. My spiritual father Oral Roberts would say it like this. He said, "You have to stay in the Word". And he said, "There are things that when problems come, when your finances get bottled up or something and you just don't know what to do". He said "People that do not live and walk by faith will never get the answer to that because the answers in the wisdom of God most of the time". But he said, "You have to stay in this book and you have to stay on those scriptures that cover that situation. And you have to stay there and stay there till you know it. And until you know that you know that you know that you know that you know that you know that the devil can't stop you in this. And once you come to that place of knowing..."
Well see that's what Jesus would say. Continue in my Word, and you will know the truth. And the truth will make you free. When God appeared to Abraham, he said, "I have made you the father of many nations". That authority. Well, this is him. When you understand and you know that you know that you know that you know that you know that you understand you comprehend and you know and you know that every word in this book is a blood backed and blood bought. These are blood covenants. It's not the old English translators were trying to tell us something, but it got lost in there that this is the will and testament of God. And we're heirs. But it just becomes an Old Testament, New Testament. Nobody takes time to go to that. But when you check it out and see what it actually is and what those two places, what testament actually was and translated their covenants.
— I have a thought. You know, I've had times when I had a legal document to read and I'm like, I don't understand why. I don't understand what this means I need to do. But as the one who is... you've called him the testator of the Testament who died and rose again to see this come to pass. I can ask him. Read this to me. I can ask him what is he saying to me? And it's amazing. I've started really reading the words with the understanding that he's there with me in his presence. And it just opens the Word. It seems so much more personal to me what that Word means to me. I've had him even read the words in a way to me that gave it a different meaning than I personally would have put on the meaning like, how can I know these hidden thoughts from Psalm 19:12? He read that to me one day, and I'd never experienced that.
— And we are out of time.
— Awe...
— Well, doesn't it say he's our advocate.
— Yes...
— That's attorney.
— Yes,
— He'll read the will...
— He will. He'll read your mail and the will.
— Amen, we'll be back in just a moment. Praise God.