Kenneth Copeland - Keep God's Word and Live in Good Health
Now let's go to the 103rd Psalm. Oh, glory to God. This is one of my absolute favorite Psalms. Read it with me. "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;" All right, now, Psalm 68:19. "Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits". This is a daily thing. Every day. Every day. You need to faith claim it, every day. Every day. He forgives you your iniquities and heals you of your diseases.
Now, the 107 Psalm. "O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good:" Say: he is good. "For his mercy, his hesed endureth for ever". Verse 17, "Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death". They draw near unto the gates of death. Are you there with me now? Now listen, "They draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. He sent his Word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions". He sent his Word and healed them. Now let's go again to Proverbs Chapter 4, verse 13. "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is your life. My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health..." The cross references medicine "to all their flesh".
Now go to John Chapter 6, verse 63, Verse 61, "When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the Spirit that quickeneth; or makes alive the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life". These are life words. Now go back to the book of Deuteronomy Chapter 30. Now this is God speaking. "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you," In other words, you don't have any excuse... "that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore you choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:" How do you choose it? You speak life words, you bring that seed alive by speaking it. Jesus said the sower sows the Word.
So the Word is a seed. And when it gets down into your heart, it will produce whatever it is. That's the reason the Bible talks about seeds so much. It began in, actually in the Garden of Eden. And so the seed is the source of life. Even weeds want to live. Seeds are a marvelous thing. And the whole Bible talks about words as seeds, seeds of life. We saw it right there. Words of life, words of death. And that's when the Lord even back... Way, way, way, way, way, way, way back. While I was a student there at Oral Roberts University, and so Gloria and I made a pact. And she didn't talk much, so I got in trouble more. She said, "I talked enough for both of us," boy that's right. But, anyway, we'd say that's your confession and I believe every word of it. I had to break the habit of saying death. I mean, the Lord scolded me about that. He said, "You stop that. Don't use the words of death and the laws of sin and death to express yourself".
Well, and I don't like this. Fantastic, that means it's a fantasy, incredible, that means you can't trust it. Why don't we use Bible words? Marvelous. Awesome. Those are Bible words. Yeah but Brother Copeland how am I supposed to say it, "Thrill me to life, I mean what..." Only reason you don't like that is because your mother and daddy taught you to say, "It thrills you to death". And it didn't, you lied, you didn't die. But you keep saying it, and you will. Well, I'll see you tomorrow if a train don't run over me. And this happened in the life of a young man, in the life of Kenneth Hagin and Buddy Harrison. He kept saying, I'll never reach 40 years old. He just kept saying it, a few days before his 40th birthday, he just started downhill and went into a coma. Now, here's what the Spirit of God said to Brother Hagin. He began to pray about it and he said, "Certain spiritual laws"...
Now, this is big on healing. Certain spiritual laws have been put into motion that cannot be reversed at this time. Now, he and his brother were very close, almost like twins. And Brother Hagin mentioned that. He said, "Brother Hagin he said that all the time. He said, he started saying that to me when we were just young boys. He'd just get curious and say, 'You know, I'll never live to be 40'". Certain spiritual laws have been put into motion. It cannot be changed at this time. Now we can change it. But you can't, whatever they are. Well, I guess I'll just be broke all my life. You can change that. But it needs to be a constantly consistent thing. The Spirit of the Lord... Gloria was in prayer and making notes on tapes. I was in class and she was there with children at home. And so she just turned the tapes of Brother Hagin and run them back and so forth. And in the middle of that, the Spirit of God said to her, "In consistency lies the power". Being consistent, being constant, constantly saying the same thing, saying it and saying it until it gets down in your heart.
Now, Brother Hagin said it like this. You can say something, you can think thoughts and say them until they get down into your spirit and they'll change your life. Now, I was always overweight. I did not like exercise and then the Lord turned me around by saying, "Will you get your spirit in the best condition that it can be in"? And I said, "Yes, I will". Well, you can't do that sitting on a couch. You have to get in the Word, will you get your soul, your mind, your will and your emotions in the best condition it can be in? Will you get your body in the best condition. You can't sit around on any one of the three. I said, "Yes, I will".
So I was all excited and I had committed to get in that exercise, get on that treadmill every day. So I walked in there and then in my exercise room, I have an A-frame. And I walked up to that A-frame and caught those little ropes to pull it down here like this. I tell you, I was thrilled and I caught that rope and I said, "God, I hate this". I said, "No, no, Lord, I repent. I repent". I physically felt that spirit get off my body. I said, "I love this. I love this room. And this room will change my life". And it has. And I walk in there every day and I say, "Oh, I love it in here. Look what has happened to me. I love it. I'm stronger than I've ever been". But I have to say it. Now I'm going to teach you to say something and say it. "Lord Jesus, you sacrificed your body for mine. Now I am sacrificing my body for yours". You just got through saying you're going to have to start exercising. That's what'll keep you healthy.
Now it's a marvelous thing to get healed. That's not wellness. That's healing. Until I heard Brother Hagin, I didn't know you could live in divine health. But you can. And I quote Gloria, "If you do what's right in the natural and you do what's right in the supernatural, you can live in divine health". You just stay well all the time. And it takes, you have to exercise your spirit. You have to exercise your emotions and your mind and your will and you have to exercise your body. And it all has to be based on the covenants of God. And you can find the answer to all of it in the Word of God, and he'll back his Word. He said, "I will watch over my Word to perform it".
All right, now then, let's go into Deuteronomy 28. And we know this in the 28th chapter. "And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake you". Don't read the 28th without reading the 27th. I mean, a lot of messed up thinking and a whole lot of real bad preaching has come out of this 28 chapter. For instance, "The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation". Since when... the Lord is not out giving people the flu. Now back when John and Kellie were small, we took our flu shot and we started right there.
Then we went to Galatians 3:13 that said, "We've been redeemed from the curse..." Now go over here to 27th. I sat them down in the living room. I said, "We're going to take a flu shot" and John's eyes got big. He didn't know whether he wanted to do that or not. So I had my Bible and had it opened up there at the 28th and then at Galatians 3:13, Christ redeemed us from the flu. So I read "fever and inflammation" and then I read "he redeemed us from the flu". I read and I just did that back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And as long as they lived under our roof, they never had the flu or any other kind of sickness and disease. We didn't have to take them... now, we would have taken them to the doctor if necessary, but it wasn't necessary. Learn to do these things.
But now look over here at the 27th verse. Now, here is a people that have a covenant with God, but had lost sight of it. So the Lord God set up a situation where they could get an image of God and the devil. He didn't mention the devil. Just a little bit through Isaiah. The Lord, didn't say anything about him till you got over here in the New Testament, because they had following. He just had to take the blame for a lot of things. So now notice this. "And Moses with the elders of Israel commanded the people, saying, Keep all the commandments which I command you this day. And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan" and so forth.
Verse 9, "And Moses and the priests the Levites spake unto all Israel, saying, Take heed, and hearken, O Israel; this day thou art become the people of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt therefore obey the voice of the Lord... And Moses charged the people the same day, saying, These shall stand upon mount Gerizim to bless the people, when ye are come over Jordan; Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Joseph, and Benjamin: And these shall stand upon mount Ebal to curse; Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali". They divided them up. Six tribes on one side and six on the other. And there were... Listen, large number of people out there that day.
Now, those mountains are still there, one of them is bright and lush and that was the blessing mountain and the other one is bare and bald. That's the curse mountain and they were shouting back and forth. This was responsive shouting. It's recorded in the book: The blessing first and then the curse later. But that's really not the way it was going down. They were shouting back and forth... to get a picture of what it would mean to follow God and keep his commandments and live in good health and prosperity. Can you see that? The blessing of the law and the curse of the law. But now we are interested over in the curse side in the 61st verse.
"Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them of the Lord bring upon thee until thou be destroyed". Well, now we know it is not the Lord bringing it upon you. And all of that is right here in the Pentateuch, first five books of the Bible because in Exodus, the destroyer is revealed. Glory to God. But we know from this that every sickness and every disease not even written down is a curse. It is not a blessing. And people have erroneously taken this, not study it, go back and study it all the way through the first covenant and find out all of these things and find out when all of that actually happened and so forth, and then begin to preach that it's God that will make you sick. Well, after all, the Bible said... No, the Bible didn't say that. It said the Lord would do it. I know it said that, but it didn't say that.
All right Galatians Chapter 3. Now this is what the Lord said. Galatians is a short book, read the whole book. It is so good. Chapter three. Look at that 2nd verse. "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith"? Now, look at verse 6. "Even as Abraham believed God, or had faith in God... and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture... the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached..." The Scripture preached to Abraham. Well, the Scripture's preaching to us this morning.