Kenneth Copeland - Consider Jesus, Your Everlasting Covenant
— Hello, everybody. "Father, we thank You for these blood covenants of promise through Your Holy Bible. Your Word is good. You're not a man that You should lie. Neither the son of man that You should repent. Have You not said it? Will You not make it good? Then the son of man could have lied, but did not and lived a perfect life. And he used the words of the covenant to put down his enemy, Satan. And we thank You for that. And we praise You and thank You that we can do the same. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen". The covenant and the contradiction. Now there's a five step outline on this. And so I'm just going to give you the outlines of it. Number one, as for me, and we've talked about that. Number two, he considered not his own body, he considered only the covenant. I consider not my body 86 years old, but only what he had promised. Number three, consider Jesus, blood of the everlasting covenant. He swore by himself better priest and better covenant. This same Jesus in the book of Acts is now the same yesterday, today, and forever. And because he is the High Priest of this blood agreement.
— That's right.
— You remember the resurrection after three days and three nights.
— Right.
— Early, early, early. All it had to do is pass midnight. And there it was. And Mary, this little woman out of whom went what? Seven Devil? She was there. He said, "Don't touch me. I have not yet ascended to my Father. And your Father"? Well, that is in the book of Hebrews. That's what happened then. He had to appear before the Most High God. His blood had to be put on the heavenly mercy seat. You could say the heavenly Ark of the Covenant.
— That's right. That's what it is. Moses saw heaven and recreated things here for the tabernacle he saw there. Brother Copeland, you were talking about yesterday about the blood, life being in the blood. And you just talked about it again. So I'm going to jump in right here... That he hadn't gone yet to take his blood up there. I often wondered, Adam standing right there, Eve standing right there, the Lord standing right there. Why didn't he just... Why didn't he just take care of the sin problem right then? Why didn't he do that? He didn't have human blood.
— That's right.
— The Word had not become flesh yet. Now, man had human blood that God created. But he had a God Spirit. He'd been given a spirit. He lost that. I mean, he saw in the Spirit, but he lost that connection with that. He had to wait till he had human blood. And so all these covenants are getting us into that position to win that one promised seed will come on the earth.
— The fullness of time.
— It's exactly right.
— God invented time. So the fullness of time, that man's that the pieces... when you put all the pieces, it's like doing a puzzle. When you put all the pieces together. Ah... There's Jesus. The future ages to come had to be revealed. There had to be a man so much like Jesus, so full of love, so committed to put that on paper. And it was the man that was the one that was standing so close to that cross. And he was standing there with his mother and he's hanging on this cross. He said, "Behold your son, behold your mother". And he wrote the last book of the Bible so God could trust the man of love and to be so brutally strict. He he did not get away, go away from him. It was John. His gospel is the most complete. His is the one where we find out totally about what happened and all of the promises and so forth that were made. The 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 chapter in John.
— Beautiful.
— I mean, he laid it out by the Spirit of God. So then we find out through him that love did all this for us, that God is love. It didn't say he's power, but he is love. And we find out then that love wanted mankind back so badly that he devised a plan. It was a life plan. And it cost animals their blood. Innocent animals.
— I often wondered why that was because man was given dominion over the animals. I've heard people pray. And that's a real thing lately... for God to take dominion over Congress, for God to take dominion over UN or for him to send angels to take dominion. No, we were given dominion.
— That's right.
— That's praying a myth.
— Well, this would be a good time to introduce this. The day was April 30th, 1789. Now, that's 234 years ago. This is 15 minutes in God time. This was a day of making covenant with Almighty God for the United States of America. A proclamation was made for the sacred gathering at Federal Hall. Come and see your president take his oath today that God will accept this land as he is. At 9 a.m. the bells rang throughout the city. George Washington made his official oath of New York... of office in New York City. He laid his hand on the Bible, not just merely open the Bible. He specifically opened it up and laid his hand upon the covenant God made with Abraham in the book of Genesis. Then lifting his other arm up toward heaven, Washington made a vow to lead our nation and honor the God of Israel and his covenant. After Washington invoked his oath and covenant under the Lord and sealed it with "So help me God", he bowed his knee to the ground in reverence and kissed the Bible. Afterward, Washington called the senators and newly elected officials to join him as they walked arm in arm down the streets of New York's St Paul's Chapel. There they bowed together, prayed and dedicated this land, our beloved America, to God. The day that George Washington was inaugurated was the day the covenant was invoked, and America belonged to God Almighty.
— That's right.
— The first recorded act of Congress was to make covenant with God. Then I have the prayers that he prayed. Now, not all... Some of them were prayed that day. But these are prayers you should be praying in church. Well, the Lord reprimanded me because I've known this for years and I let it slip, no more because I pray for the nation. I thank God for the food. I pray for my partners. I pray for the nation. So it's Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and George. And I'm crying out. And the book of Exodus said his people cried out to hear him. And he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So we're invoking the covenant for this nation. Amen. And I intend to scatter this as far as I can get it. The Liberty Bell comes quoting in the book of Leviticus that there be liberty throughout the land. And they rang it until they broke it, cracked that thing. They rang it so hard. And for a long, long time, the 4th of July was a day of prayer. And now it's barbecue and beer. Not at my house. No, no.
— But we're coming as people... I think part of what's wrong with America is we've been circumcised by the heart. We are bought with the blood. We were bought with a price. And we've not either understood... There's a contradiction to our covenant with our nation right now. There is a big contradiction. And it's not Democrats or Republicans.
— A love of money.
— Abraham was wealthy, but he was wealthy the right way by covenant...
— Yes. And Gloria and Kenneth started out with zero. You've heard me say it. I was talking about ORU. I said, "If we go up there with these two small children will starve out". She said, "Kenneth, we're starving now. We might as well starve in the will of God". But by learning from two members of the great cloud of witnesses, Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin, we learned the laws of faith. We learned these things that we're talking about right here and right now. I've heard Kenneth Hagin refer to these things. About the legalness of the Word of God. It had to be absolutely legal. It had to be so absolutely perfect in order to get something perfect into this earth, which was imperfect.
— He watches over that Word to perform it. And what Abraham did, we talked about it yesterday, immediately that day.
— I mean, he acted on it immediately. The corresponding action was immediate
— And that was a painful one. Sometimes the thing that God asked us to do is painful like that. But do we do it immediately?
— But we have been circumcised with the heart.
— Yes, sir.
— And I am totally convinced it is as real that there is a cut there that I guarantee you the devil can't see it. It's there, and particularly if the result corresponds with. We are new creatures.
— Yes, we are. And so this is why our whole focus, because Abraham's focus by hope, because he couldn't see it, he didn't know that his name would be Jesus. Now he's met with God. God came and visited him, but he said with his own mouth, he set the action. The Lord himself will provide the sacrifice or the body. But he was walking through it. He was intent on killing Isaac.
— Oh, yeah, and so was Isaac.
— Isaac was in agreement with him.
— And he got up on that. And in fact, he said, "Where's the sacrifice"?
— Isaac's not five years old.
— No...
— he's a grown man.
— Yeah, he's grown.
— He's carrying the wood on his shoulders like Jesus carried the cross.
— But then the faith man told his helper, he said, "The lad and I'll be back".
— Yes, he did.
— And you see it over in the book of Hebrews. It says... That's worth reading. And verse 17... 11:17 "By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises of blood offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure". He saw it in the Spirit. He had the knife here. He fully planned to see that boy raised up from those ashes, which he figured is going to be the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. There was a ram stuck in the thicket.
— And that's symbolic of Jesus, the Lamb of God with the crown of thorns on his head.
— But I've often wondered who that ram belonged to. Whose was that? I had somebody telling me, "God just created it". No, he didn't. He did that in the beginning.
— Well, if I'm looking at a human person, I'm just going to reason it out. We're spitballing here against the wall, Melchizedek king of Salem... This is what will become Jerusalem. It's the same place. Is it his? I don't know.
— I expect it was, didn't thought of that, but he was very wealthy.
— Yeah, he was and Abraham paid tithe to him.
— Yes, he did.
— When he first met him, he said, "Blessed be Abraham".
— It had to be a ram that was worthy to be a sacrifice.
— Yes, sir.
— It had to belong to someone who was in position to cause that to be. Well, who was Melchizedek?
— Shem.
— Okay. Now caught in a thicket that takes me back to the burning bush, which was... all tight together. This is why circumcision, the outward mark on your flesh is not where your faith should be. Moses is not where your faith should be. It should be where Abraham's faith was, and you can find it over Hebrews Chapter 3. Consider Jesus. We have got to consider Jesus
— all the time. Well, okay, go right on here in verse 12. "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds". Now we have the cure for worry. Glory to God.
— Verse four: "And you have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin".
— But he did.
— He did.
— He bled through his pores in the Garden of Gethsemane.
— Every place he bled reversed the curse. So stress is a curse. And he bled from that place of stress that reversed the curse. The sweat of your brow, your work, when they placed the crown of thorns of blood, that curse reversed. He was bruised for our iniquities. A bruise is an inner bleed. A wound inside. He was bruised for all the wounds that you carried inside, the curse has been broken, amen.
— Now, who do you suppose was the tailor that wove his clothes together that they had no seam? Isn't that amazing? Who made the clothes that clothed the Mad Men of Gadara? In Luke 23:26. "And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus". Oh, I wonder what happened to him. He carried the cross of the Master. But here's something I want you to see. "And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him". Now get the picture. He's been beaten nearly to death. That thing had woven into it pieces of flint and bone. So that everywhere that whip went, it wasn't just... It's called the Cat o' nine tails. And everywhere it went, it just gouged into the flesh out of there to the bone, and he bleeding all over his back. And you can imagine the pain involved in this? No, you can't, because he's headed to hell and knows it. My God... anyway. Under that condition, "There followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them..." He stopped long enough to teach some women and take care of them. I have no mental concept of a man... "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry"? He stopped to teach.
— Brother Copeland, it sounds like he's talking about our day.
— It is
— That's abortion...
— Revelation 6:16, John wrote about it. He was there.
— Sure. Yes, he was.
— When I read that, I began to... I said to me, just like it is now and it's been in the last few days, 56 years, I didn't see that. But I've been asking the Lord, and stay before the Lord, to widen my concept and new messages that will bring attention to him and to people that are lost. This is the man, by those stripes we are healed. But right in the middle of all of that, he stopped and said, "Don't cry for me". How could you help but cry for him? He wanted to put a stop on that because they were hurting him. In his concept, they were hurting more than he was. And if you read the rest of that, by your faith, there's some of those that are going to see him in a few hours from now because he appeared to over 500. Don't you know, you know, those women were involved in it because if you go to the eighth chapter of the book of Luke, they were the ones that are financing his ministry.
— That's right.
— Praise God. I don't know what to do now,
— I'm telling you. Oh, she says... How long have we been out? 5 minutes. I didn't know. Carol is saying, we're out of time. Okay. We'll be right back.