Kenneth Copeland - Our Covenant Is Backed by Jesus
— Hello everybody I'm Kenneth Copeland, of course you know who he is, that is Professor Greg Stephens. I have a wonderful announcement. Those of you that are really, really do just love the Amplified Classic, would you like to have a new one? Well, it is now KCM Amplified edition. And thanks to members of the staff of which one of them is sitting right here that had presence of mind enough to call and ask. And so it's new and in October it will be in a leather bag. Really nice and we'll have all of our reference notes in it and everything so you can get a new Classic Amplified that's not all beat up and torn up, amen. Father we thank You for things like this and we praise You and honor You in Jesus' name. It is a good thing to serve the Lord our God. Thank You. Praise You for it, amen. Let's open our Bibles. We're going to be talking about God, the covenant and the contradiction. And that's the title of Greg and my new book. So we're talking about that, but it'll come up right now. Let's go to the 17th chapter of Genesis and the 16th verse of the 16th chapter. "And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram. And when Abram was ninety years old and nine," that's old. "The Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God;" He said, I am El Shaddai. The God who is more than enough. The nurse, the caretaker. Greg, same thing with you, Gloria was everything, Kellie was first... Everything to her, then everything to John, everything. She was their food. She took care of them. She was with them night and day. I wasn't, she could understand them. I couldn't understand a thing they said She'd tell me what they said and I learned from that. And that's what that word means. I'm the God that's more than enough. Later came Jehovah the God of power. But so let's go here. "He appeared to him", that's interesting, "and said unto him, I am El Shaddai, walk before me and be perfect, be blameless..." And we'll talk about that "and I will make my covenant between me and thee and we'll multiply thee exceedingly. Abraham fell on his face and God talked with him saying, As for me," excuse me, "as for me"... You don't have to accept this, it's not going to stop my plan if you don't. But you're first choice. Well now Abram can be thinking, "What if he's chosen somebody else and they didn't do it". Hmm. "As for me, behold, my covenant..." It's my covenant. It's not yours yet. You're not part of it yet. There are conditions to this thing. "My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be called Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee". The cross reference says, "The father of a great multitude". So as we've considered before, this is the first known time of any kind of covenant where a name was changed. And both the man and the wife, their names were changed.
— They're one, because they're one.
— They're one that has to happen.
— It had to happen.
— So Abraham, Hashem it's the "H" in Yod Hey Vav Hey which is the unspeakable name of God. But now you can speak it when you call this man by his name. Now he is obligated in front of everybody else at 100 years old to start telling people, "I'm the father of many nations". Yeah you and your old lady you... What? How could this possibly be? That's the key. How could this possibly be?
— That's the contradiction.
— Yeah, it could not possibly be because they're too old. That's the contradiction. And Abraham never tried to reconcile it. He just took it. And we'll see that in just a moment. "And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after you..." That's where we come in at Galatians 3:29. "And your seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee," Elohim, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. All three of us are here for you. Now he introduced himself over here as El Shaddai. But here he introduced himself as Elohim. And I'm thinking that Abram went, "What? Elohim? Where's the rest of them"? Anyway.
— It's a plural word, that's why he's saying that.
— "And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you". Blood shed. Now let's go back a little. And the 15th chapter of Genesis, animals were killed.
— That's right.
— They shed... their blood was innocent. They didn't do anything. They paid the price for Adam's sin. So what happened in that Garden? This man had dominion.
— That's right.
— Over everything. Everything that flew, the whole planet. He committed high treason, threw it away, and an animal shed its blood to provide clothes for them. And his sin was he chose his wife over God. So now how are you going to get that back? It has to be something. It's life and we have to go somewhere with this. I created them and their life is in their blood. So there you have it. And when Greg and I were proofing the manuscript for this and Michael was there and I had to keep inserting the word blood. Our covenant just becomes some kind of agreement. There are covenants, but they're not in blood.
— That's correct.
— Red ink is not good enough. The words of the Master in red. Why they didn't do it in blue? That's what stood out. Can't do it in blue. You have to do it in red. Now I wanted to get down to this. Go to 21st verse. "My covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year". I mean, he put a day on it. This is important. "And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day," That's why I chose him. He would teach his children and he'd do it now. He didn't wait and think about and think how this is going to hurt. Now let's go over there to Romans 4, verse one. "What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found"? Oh, here we are. And this whole chapter is teaching of that, 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: The blood oath was made of none of that". You have to make notes in your Bible and just put the blood promise. We go over there when Peter said, "exceeding precious promises". They're all in the blood of Jesus. "Himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sin shall live under righteousness. And by his stripes, we were healed". Okay. As you keep on reading verse 16, "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the 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," where we just read it, "before him or like him, whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations," Well, that was the first day, because he went and did it, nothing is happening yet. "According to that which was spoken, 'So shall thy seed be'. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness". How do you know he believed it? Because he had corresponding action the very same day. When he shed his blood, now the covenant was active. In Genesis 15, he didn't do anything except provide the animal.
— No. That's all he did...
— ...and God took him out of the equation, pinned him to the ground. Paul is explaining in this chapter in Romans what was happening in faith in Genesis 17. He's explaining because if you look at this, let's see, "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed;" but if you go back here up, he talks about... "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". You go back and you look at Genesis 17, verse 11, "And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant..." It wasn't the covenant. The covenant was faith.
— That's right.
— The circumcision is a token. Abraham cannot offer himself to fulfill the covenant, nor can he offer Isaac. It's a token of the promised one that will come through the seed of Abraham. So that covenant becomes... where it was placed on his body, becomes a covenant mark, for us it'd be water baptism. I was crucified with him. I was buried with him. I rose with him. It was a covenant marked in blood, Brother Copeland, that the seed of Abraham passed through the bloodline into Sarah.
— That's right. And of course, God's pressing for something. He's pressing for the fullness of time. And so obedience to that covenant... And today it is not the state of Jacob. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, here's another name change: Israel, all of these things.
— When you face a situation like he did where God spoke to him, you have to make a choice. You're either going to do it God's way or you're going to do it man's way. And that's where faith comes in. Are you going to do your thinking or covenant thinking? Abraham switched to covenant thinking immediately. And he went... Even Ishmael was circumcised that day. Every single one of them. Because we're going to do what God said. I'm going to do his way. I'm going to think covenant way.
— Now, the moment the blood was shed, now faith to do it... It was by faith so that it might be by grace, and it was imputed unto him as righteousness. Righteousness then came through the blood of Jesus. Because he's righteous. But faith is the connector.
— Abraham got his faith in that future hope of that seed.
— Yes, he does.
— Faith in Jesus,
— The moment blood was shed. Now we have a blood union between God and a man and a woman in order to produce an impossible child, a very special child, in order to produce a very special child who is circumcised on the eighth day.
— That's right. God will get mad at Moses because he wasn't willing to circumcise his one son. He said, "No, no, no, no".
— On account of his wife.
— On account his wife, same thing.
— Oh, she got furious at him.
— What happened where they got off in the time of Jesus and the time of Paul is they were looking as circumcision, as the act of the covenant, as that's what made you righteous. Now it's faith that made you righteous. The circumcision is only an outward sign.
— It was accounted to him as righteousness because of his faith. Now, listen to this. "For the promise to Abraham or his posterity, that he should inherit the world, did not come through [observing the commands of] the Law but through the righteousness of faith". That's it right there. "If it is the adherents of the Law who are to be the heirs, then faith is made futile and empty of all meaning and the promise [of God] is made void (is annulled and has no power). For the Law results in [divine] wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression [of it either]". That's the reason murder was not against the law.
— That's right.
— So it called for exile, and that's what happened to him. What happened to Cain. But then there had to be a law. That's the reason the first five books of the Bible of the law. Now, murder's against the law. So then that had to happen, had to take place.
— That law was inserted so that we would know that we needed to use our faith for righteousness, that we would never be worthy by trying to keep laws and regulations as it was to drive us to faith in that seed, that promise seed.
— And this may sound funny and it is funny. My uncle, my mother's youngest sister, I was named after her, Her name is Maxine, and I'm kind of Max. And she was my hero, my mother or dad... But she came and lived with us... went to Drone business college. And my mother would start to spank me. She'd grab hold me and run away and said, "No..." Anyway. Her husband, Lawrence Powell, knew exactly what he's going to be. He wanted to be a detective, but he wanted to do it on a federal level. So he started out in the post office carrying a leather sack on his back, and he works his way up in the post office all the way to become an inspector. And you remember the Brinks bank robbery? They called him in on that because he was so good at what he did. And anyway, he said, "Would you like to get on a lie detector"?
— Yeah. And the guy that, he said, "You mind if I ask you some personal question"? He said no. He said, "Son, you just lied. I knew that when I did it, I didn't want him asking me any personal question". That thing went like, Oh, God has one of those, amen. And we need to understand. I remember that, we need to understand that since they're not allowed to ask anything but yes or no questions, I should have been so brutally honest with him because he can't ask me any more than that. But God can. Now, my point is this. We are in a blood relationship with God. We need to be so brutally honest with him cause his machine won't do that, like that time down there in Florida. And he asked me, "Didn't you confess that sin"? I said, "Yes, I did". He said, "Kenneth, when you confessed it, it was not when I found out about it. When you confessed it, it is when you got rid of it". So we have a covenant with God. One of the articles is laid out in First John. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness And we're out of time. Not eternally.
— Just for Monday.
— Monday, we will be back in just a moment.