Kenneth Copeland - The Natural Spirit Needs an Outward Sign
— Welcome, everyone to the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. And, of course, I'm Kenneth Copeland, Professor Greg Stephens. And we're still studying the blood covenant of God and the difference between the first covenant and the second. And the last covenant. The first one in the blood of animals, then through circumcision. Why was that? To get a special child. That special child was Isaac. It's supernatural. Because here's the covenant and the contradiction. God entered Covenant with Abraham. Abraham did not enter Covenant with God. God chose him. And he said, "As for me, my covenant is between the two of us". So I have made you the father of many nations. And before that chapter is over with in the 17th chapter of Genesis, he introduced circumcision. When he did that, there was a blood covenant between Abram, who became Abraham, the father of many nations. And he said he was fully persuaded. The man was 100 years old. That's the contradiction. A hundred-year-old men and 90-year-old women do not have babies. And she had been barren all of her life. It took a blood covenant of God. And the hesed of God toward those two, because he had chosen this man, because he would teach his children. That was his qualification. So, you know, I try to put myself in God's mind, God saying if he'll teach his children, I can handle the rest of it. And if he'll walk before me blameless in this covenant, I'll take care of everything.
— And that's what this circumcision was about, to teach his children because all the men of the Israelites from that moment forward are taught, you're part of what God did with Abraham. It's a sign for you. It's an outward witness. So Paul will explain it to us. Circumcised in the flesh. Now, God, though, because he operates by the Spirit will circumcise our spirit. Or circumcise our heart. It's not just flesh now. It's a Spirit matter now.
— And I, from the things that the Lord and I have discussed over the last 56 years, since it is in the Spirit now, I asked the Lord one time I said, "Why did you demand that the circumcision of a man..." How could anybody know he's in covenant? Now, when tribes go into covenant, they mingle blood in a way that it can be seen so that the weaker tribe wants you to see this because you don't know my covenant. You don't know who is my covenant partner. And you better let me alone. And I inquired of the Lord about that, and he kept referring scriptures to me. And then he came forth. He said, "I made him wealthy. He followed my leading and I made him wealthy". And he said at the Valley of the Kings while he was Abram... And they said, you know, they tried to make a deal with him. No. He said, "You take the spoil and everything else. I don't want any of it". He said, "I have lifted my hand to the Most High God lest thou shouldest say, 'I have made Abraham rich, but Almighty God.'" He knew it. He wouldn't take it. Praise God, because he depended on that covenant. Gloria and I learned to depend on that covenant early on. And believe this book for everything and things... Supernaturally things began to happen. She or I, neither one ever... Not ever. Because of what the Apostle Paul told Timothy. We never did ever, set out to be wealthy. Never. Certain things happened. And I like to say it like this. We just wound up that way. But it was just the moving of God. The first thing that happened, we pointed out Romans 13:8 to stay out of debt. Oh, my, my. And like John Osteen said about that kind of thing. Gloria and I missed a lot of inflation problems because we had no debt. We don't have a mortgage on anything. Listen, class. I'm not bragging on us. I wasn't smart enough to figure that out in the first place. My dad borrowed money and he got irritated at me cause I wouldn't over a house. The first little house in Fort Worth. He said, "I found this little place out there," and he went through the whole thing. The man said, "You tell that young preacher he can set his payment". And my dad was real thrilled about that. I said, "Dad, I can't do that". He said, "Why not"? I said, "Well, you know, Gloria and I both right here in your house when I was preaching at Grace Temple and I promised God, and so did Gloria, we'd never borrow again". So he said, "Well, I'll buy the house and rent it to the ministry, and then I'll sell it, make money". And he did, but I could not do that. Now, I didn't say it's a sin for you to do borrow money, but it would be for me.
— Well, your dad worked in finance and insurance, so that was a natural...
— And that's the way he had done things. Greg, he had a working relationship with the bank and he would buy something. He'd find something. He'd go to the bank and tell him he wanted the money. He didn't have to have any collateral. He'd say because I want to pay cash for that. I'm going to get the best deal I can get. They'd say, "Sure, write him a check, and then he'd double up and triple up on the payments and pay it off way ahead of time". So it was no interest involved in it. But I didn't have that privilege. But today... And now the ministry is in no debt. The church is in no debt. Oh, glory to God. It is so blessed not to have people hounding us. And, you know, when are you going to pay us? Finally I had to learn to tell the truth. I'm not. Why? I don't have the money. I don't have it. When are you ever going to get it? I have no idea. And they just write me off. That had happened over a period of time there, long period of time. And it turned out to be $24,000 in the end. There were two large one and then a lot of little small, but before we left Tulsa at ORU... Now, these were not faith checks. We didn't date these things. And I had a little desk about this big and wrote checks to everyone and made the whole list here and wrote to everyone. And didn't date. And when we had the money, I'd take the check, send it off, take the checks and send them off. And there was one for 4000 and 2000. They were the largest a lot were smaller but in 11 months we had no debt. Now, that old ragged car we had, Brother Hagin didn't want to sit... we had to do something about that. And so I called Mr. McCandless and I told him what what the whole thing was all about, that I had found a Buick. He said, "Go write him a check for it. I'll cover it". The last $50... Listen to me, people. You can do the same thing. The last $50 was to Mr. Ben McCandless. We never owed anybody since. I took it to him personally. It was on that little Buick Wildcat. He had a large desk and he was about, oh, I'd say, four... He's probably five six, five seven something child of a man, spiritually. And I leaned over there and handed him that check, grabbed him by the hand and pulled him up out of his chair. I said, "Sir, this is the last debt". He said, "Kenneth, put me down". And he sat there and he smiled. And he said, "I'm going to give you some advice". I said, "Good". He said, "Don't be too hard on Thomas".
— Oh, that's good. He said, "He's not a doubter anymore". You ever had a banker tell you that? You probably won't. Now it's all in the covenants. So turn with me to the book of Romans. This is in the second, the last covenant in the eighth chapter. And I want to read this 11th verse. "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you". Make alive your mortal body
— dwells in you. Key phrase.
— "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father". That's Greek for Daddy. Jenny started an orphanage in Greece, and it's Abba House, it's Father's house. And all these little guys, they found some you know... foraging for food and they just... And they all knew it. I have a Father. Amen.
— Same word in Hebrew for daddy or for father. That was the name of our church in San Diego. Father's House.
— I didn't know that, Greg.
— From that.
— Look at 16 keeping with that, "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit". That's how he talks to you.
— Now that look like, let's dwell on that. It's the inward witness. The inward witness. Gideon did not have that.
— No, he did not.
— And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, and so forth and so on. Gideon didn't have that.
— No,
— There are different stages of it in this first covenant, what makes the difference? Abraham's qualification was he'll teach his children. Let's go to Judges six. In the 34th verse. "But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon". It came upon him. Nobody over here is born again.
— No, they're spiritually dead. Now that shocks people when you tell them that. But all the people over here, they're spiritually dead. Their spirits have not been recreated.
— The only person in Jesus' ministry that was not spiritually dead was him.
— That's right.
— Cause they were not new creatures yet.
— That's correct.
— That's what he was all about. That's why he was here.
— That's right. Reconciling the world to himself. Not imputing their trespasses to them. Corinthians says that. They're not like you. If you're born again, and if you're in Christ, your spirit has been quickened. A new creation that never existed before. They didn't have that. Now the Spirit would come upon them. There were three anointings where you would see the Spirit. The Spirit came upon the king, the priest and the prophet. And they were anointed for that office that they stood in. And then there were other people. Gideon's neither one of those. He's not a king, he's not a priest, he's not a prophet. But the Spirit came upon him to do a specific thing.
— This is the reason in Nazareth, they could not understand what Jesus was saying. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach". Well, I could go along with that because they knew about the prophets and so forth. But then he took these different items to preach the gospel to the poor, sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and set at liberty them that are bruised. And to preach the great Jubilee. And this day the Scripture's fulfilled in your ears. What? It can't be. We've known him since he's a little fella.
— Well, only the Messiah can make this fulfilled.
— Yes. The 61st chapter of Isaiah.
— That's right.
— That's what... Whoa. Right now... No, no, no, no, no. Is this not Joseph's boy? No, it wasn't Joseph's boy. Don't we have his sisters and so forth? Yeah. How'd you like to be Jesus' sister? That is a hard life, don't you know? But can't you boys be like Jesus? He never does anything wrong.
— That's the original. What would Jesus do? Mama, please don't bring it up. Please don't do that.
— How would you like to be a boyfriend of Jesus' sister? Oh, no, no, no. I don't know. It might have been a good job. But we see there. "Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel". That's when the Spirit of the Lord came on him...
— ...for that moment, yeah. So. Then in the sixth chapter, "And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds". Man, they ran from them. They hid out for days...
— They lived in the caves
— ...and all that. They encamped against them, so forth. Now, point out who his father was.
— Well, now his father is a worshiper of Baal. And he's Jewish, of his tribe. So they're living in their promised land, but they're not living in their promised land. They're running to the caves every time the Mennonites come in, every time they would get a crop grown.
— They'd come get it.
— They'd come take it, they'd come destroy everything they raid and take everything from them. And Gideon will become one of the judges of Israel. Let me give you the primary characteristics. This is after... I set the conditions. This is after Joshua. Joshua has died. We're talking about a 200 year period where all the judges were. Here's what we know, because I can prove this to you from the 17th chapter of the book of Judges. After the death of Joshua, there's no king or central government Israel. Joshua. That's judges 17:6 will tell you that. It's in your notes, guys, that you have. Every one, Brother Copeland did what was right in their sight. They had no central government. I could be describing the United States. There was a neglect for the Word of God in that time period. And they were always in bondage to their enemies. That's what happens. And there's no king. There's no Joshua. And so these judges arise. Now judges in the Bible are not what we think of as judges today. They're not judges in a court with a black robe. You can't think of... I'm trying to think of one of the TV judges. I can't think of the name. It's probably a good thing, you can't think of one of those. Think of Rambo. You ever see those movies? Think of it. Think of a warrior. That's what the judges were, Deborah is one of those judges. Now, not all of the judges are very spiritual. We wouldn't look at the judges and say, "Man, I want that guy in my church". No, Samson's one of them. I mean, a lot of them are not very moral at all. You know what, Brother Copeland? When I first saw Donald Trump, I thought he's the judge of Israel.
— Interesting. It reminded me of that.
— Here's what they got to do. Their primary thing is to make Israel great and to protect the walls, to protect the nation. from these invaders coming in all the time, build a wall and make Israel great.
— I heard a pastor say, "I'm not looking to Donald Trump, to pastor the nation". He's a pastor. He said, "I'm not looking to him to pastor the nation. I'm looking to him to fix it".
— And that's the judges of Israel.
— Now, all the people that really don't realize, you know, the countries... what's called the Johnson Amendment, that we as preachers could not stand in the pulpit and endorse a candidate at the threat of taking our tax exempt status away from us. It never did happen. But the threat was there.
— Intimidation.
— He had never heard of that. He said, "Where's freedom of speech"? So he just stopped it. So you may not like his style, but...
— Their language was coarse. Many of them, their morals were not what we would think of. I mean, you see. Samson... You know what his name means? Little sunshine. That's what his name means. He had to be tough named a little sunshine.
— Was it that Johnny Cash song? Yeah. "A boy named Sue".
— Yeah, that's right. That's right.
— But think what he did in the end. They punched his eyes out trying to thinking that they would stop him. He was on a Nazirite vow and his hair began to grow. And he said, "Position me between the two pillars of this building". And they put him in there and they were mocking him and laughing at him. And he summoned God for one more time. And he just pulled the whole building down on them.
— You know what he's doing? He's draining the swamp.
— Yeah. And he judged that place and they found out right then there's a God in Israel. This great and mighty thing they had built. He just pulled it down around him.
— The last time I was in Washington, I looked at those great pillars and I thought of Samson. I thought that would be draining the swamp one last time. Just to pull that down. So there's a lot of stuff. Gideon is the fifth judge of Israel. He's raised by a Baal worshiper.
— That's right here in 6:28, "And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove was cut down that was by it, and the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was built". So that altar to Baal was right there.
— He'll pulled it down after his meeting with the angel. We'll get in that
— and we're out of time.
— We'll get into it tomorrow.
— Okay. We just got this pulled down. And we'll get into it tomorrow.