Kenneth Copeland - Who Was Joseph of Nazareth?
— Well here we are between Christmas and New Year's. This fun time, but we're going to get into something today that I knew it in my heart all along, but couldn't prove it. But thank the Lord for Rick Renner and we're going to see it today. Let's open our Bibles to the book of Mark. Now you find this in Luke 4 and where Jesus went to Nazareth and preached and he laid out his calling. Now, that's the message that he preached everywhere. You can prove that from what Peter said to Cornelius' household, which began from the beginning how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power. So anyway, let's... Well, yeah, thank You Lord. Go to Luke 4, and then we'll go there to... I'm going to hold my place right there and pick it up in the fourth chapter of the book of Luke. And we have to remember now, this documentary included this because this, he took a text from the book of Isaiah, what he was called to do. We know it as the 61st chapter of the book of Isaiah. Now he's just come off six weeks of fasting. He ate nothing for six weeks. At the end of that, the devil said, "Turn these stones into bread," boy that's dirty, isn't it. And it said, "It came to that place where it said he hungered". That means that starvation had set in. Adam never had to pass a test like that, but he had to in order to put the devil in his place. And it said he left him for a season. Well, yeah, but anyway. "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee... He came to Nazareth, where he'd been brought up and as his custom..". Now, remember, there's about 120, 150 people there. So just about everybody's there, there at the synagogue. "He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind..". And so forth. And it closed the book, set down, and they got so mad. So now we set the stage here. Let's go to it in the book of Mark and see what Mark adds to that. In Mark six and we see something here. "And when the Sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon"? There's his brother James and Juda. The book of James and the book of Jude, right there. "and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. And he could there do no mighty work". Now, is not this the carpenter? Well, and I've heard this, well carpenters also made shoes and so forth. But now, wait a minute. Notice, Jesus is called the carpenter. The original text also shows the definite article that precedes the word carpenter, which means Jesus was not just another carpenter. He was known in his city as the carpenter. This also suggests Jesus skills as... And the Greek word is T E K T O N, "Tekton". We get our word technology from that. Whoa, this also suggests Jesus skills as a tekton were so well known that there was not more gifted tekton living in Nazareth than Jesus. A better translation of the word, "Tekton" in Mark 6:3 is that Jesus was an artisan and it suggests no other artisan in the village had skills better than those of Jesus. Glory to God. But he's the carpenter's son. So what does that say of Joseph? Now he's... Jesus was a young man, raised there as a boy. But Joseph... And you can push that because that city Sepphoris was only four miles away. Now, where does that put this carpenter? The architect? And people say, "Well, he's the son of a poor carpenter". No, he wasn't. He was a son of a technician. He was an artisan. He was good at what he did. And so he was not a poor man. He had to be a man of faith. He had to be the kind of man that was so developed in his life before God that all of his life he's been trained at this trade. And it's not an accident that his name is Joseph. Whoa... What about Joseph? What about him? He was whatever he needed to be. He was in the household of Potiphar. And he was so blessed that Potiphar came to the..., he didn't even know how much he owned. Well, who taught Joseph how to run a ranch and farm? The blessing of the Lord. Who taught him how to run a prison? The blessing of the Lord. Who brought him up to the place where they said they forgot about him... Well, he had to be forgotten about because he was 30 years old when they called him up to be number two in Egypt.
— Excellence Spirit was upon him. And same with Daniel. You'll see the same thing.
— He had excellent Spirit on him.
— When you were talking about him being a technician, think about one of the earliest people that the Holy Spirit ever came upon back building the Tabernacle. They called this guy, I can't recall his name right now. And the Holy Spirit came upon him to build that magnificent tabernacle and doing the things that the Holy Spirit is working on. Here's the thing, Jesus's house is a faith house.
— Yes, it is.
— I guarantee you it was.
— Well, it had to be.
— Well, because Mary and Joseph, it all started that way. And faith was their thing in their house. And it says, as is custom was on the Sabbath day, he showed up. I'm guarantee you, Mary, from the time he was a little boy, is taking him to the synagogue every Sabbath. They're not going to miss and his brothers are going with them. And because that is a house of faith that he grew up in, and this is why he marveled at their unbelief. They are a house of faith living in a town of unbelief.
— And it's amazing that all these people that knew this fine young man were mad enough to kill him. Now, you know who's behind that? The devil is trying to kill him every way he can because he'd been looking for him ever since the Garden of Eden. That's the reason he killed all the prophets thinking this must be the one...
— That's right. He heard Simeon and Anna. He saw the angels show up in Bethlehem. I mean, he's been witness to all of this and can't do a blessed thing about it. He can't stop it. And so that's what's happened in our world today. I believe in the spirit realm. The spirit realm, the evil forces are seeing something that's happening. They see the blessing. They see what's happening in the world and they're mad. They're doing everything they can to stop his second coming. But it's going to happen.
— And this is what happened.
— Joseph knew how to handle money.
— Yes he did.
— Then those riches of the Magi did not overwhelm him.
— What happened to all of that? Did he carry all of that to Egypt? No. It was in the bank in Sepphoris. He banked it in Sepphoris. Now, he was, you know, he's rather overwhelmed at all of this in his little house in Nazareth. And this huge caravan of people came out and parked in front of his house. Whoa, whoa. All the talk in Jerusalem is about this.
— One of those younger brothers. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, look who pulled up".
— And all of this is in his house. And then his faith came to the surface, he left town to Egypt in the middle of the night. And so he had to be banking on, have ways of banking because you couldn't take all that money. Herod was looking for him and of course there were people in there that it would have been taken from him. They would have been robbed. So there was a divine connection there so that they could call on those funds and they had to go two different routes to get in and get out because Herod's spies were all over the place trying to kill him. Now we need to talk about the death of Herod. Look at 172, thank you. How and when did Herod die? Another way Herod was known for being great was his great sexual promiscuity. Early writers wrote that Herod slept with an unimaginable number of people. In the words of Josephus Herod was a slave to his passions. In fact, Josephus wrote that Herod died as a result of sexual diseases he had contracted from these multiple sexual escapades. When it was rumored that he was near death, a group of rabbis rallied their disciples to tear down the Imperial Roman Eagle that Herod had ordered to be hung at one of the entrances to the Temple. Herod heard of it. He was so enraged he ordered all the instigators to be executed. Shortly after that event, Herod died a miserable death at his palace in Jericho. Josephus, another historian writers recorded that Herod was consumed by worms, and I won't publicly read the rest of it. And that was the man that was trying to kill Jesus. So judgment came on him. He had no case that he could put before God. And he'd been in the presence of the rabbis and everybody... he knew. He knew who the Magi were. He knew all of this. And he had done all these marvelous things by building the temple and all that. But that didn't count. No... The purpose is this, here is a man of great faith and a man of means, a very educated man. He knew things. He's not just a simple carpenter, which a word also is used as carpenter. But he's more of an artisan than just a simple carpenter. That if he built furniture, it would be absolutely magnificent. But he was more in the line of an architect, a builder. So you would call him a builder as a carpenter. He's a builder. So he constructs things, he builds buildings and so forth. This brought this man way up in my thinking, man of great faith versus a king that had zero faith. A murderer, a demon possessed paranoid king. Well, we know where he is today.
— He wanted all of Israel to mourn when he died. It didn't happen. All of Israel cheered and celebrated when he died. So what I'm thinking about now, Jesus' training when growing up. So when he starts talking about the temple being destroyed in three days and they ask him, well, it took this long to build it and all. He knew a little bit about construction, he knew a little bit about architecture, he knew a little bit about what it would take to do these things. So he's not speaking just allegorically. He knows what he's talking about.
— And too... the people that were aware, Joseph... it shows us that he was on up in age because he disappears off the scene and in later years. So he was not all that young of a man to start with. And so by the time this whole family is growing up here, this man is well established. So I'm of the opinion that everybody knew who he was. They could point to things that he had constructed. And because of the Greek translation of that word of technology, artisan, he was trained. He didn't just build benches and furniture and shoes. He was an artisan.
— He's a businessman. He's a businessman.
— And profitable businessman.
— And well trained because when you go back behind these words and this brings me to this. This is the man that the Heavenly Father entrusted with his Son. He had to be a tender man. He had to be a man that taught love, had to be.
— Well he's merciful we know that.
— We know that.
— Because he marries Mary. They wed to cover her.
— And it shows he didn't want to put her away publicly. This is tender hearted man, and that shows that he was in love with her. He loved her. He didn't want to do that. God trusted him.
— And they had at least recorded the record here four other children, plus the sisters. So more than that. So they remained in love. They stayed in love. And whatever happened to him happened to him. We don't have him at the cross. We don't have him at other things. But we don't have Mary either destitute.
— No, not at all. Not even close.
— Not even close to it. And the brothers are traveling with her to watch the Ministry of Jesus happen. So when you look at all these things...
— Now we know he was there when he was 12.
— We do know that.
— Because they... now go do the timeline on that. It was a week, they looked for him because they had to walk back. Then they couldn't find him and they found him in the temple. Where is he spending his nights? Right there in the temple.
— Well, there's some historical thought that Mary's parents lived just right there.
— You know, I had forgotten about that.
— That they lived right there right outside of the pool of Bethesda, where the waters were troubled. So if that's true, then it's possible he went to his grandparents house. Stayed with them, which would have been not far. It's right by the temple.
— You know, now that you bring that up.
— I think Rick talks about that.
— Yeah, I heard that Rick talked about that, that it was just right there at the temple so he just went over there and stayed with his grandparents, went to church every day.
— Well he had had his bar mitzvah, during one of the feast. Parents are going back north to the Galilee and they lost track of him. And, well, he just stayed doing what he was doing. He's about his father's business now because he's a man of the Word now. He's an adult. And so I'm doing my calling now. Staying with his grandparents.
— Glory to God. Isn't all this marvelous and wonderful. Now his calling, let's talk about that.
— That's how we started with Isaiah... Spirit of the Lord is upon me, his calling.
— Okay, his calling. Now let's go to Galatians. He's the resurrected Christ now, the Messiah, seated at the right hand of Majesty on high. I want to do something here that will help us with current events. In the fourth chapter of Galatians. Let's go to 26 verse, no let's back up. "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you, now... For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman". And we're out of time. But you'd better be around tomorrow. "But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise". One of them was Ishmael, and the other one was Isaac. And the offspring of Ishmael attacked Israel not long ago. Now you know the rest of the story, and we'll take it up there tomorrow. Praise God. Hallelujah. Are you glad you came? Thank You, Jesus. We'll be back in just a moment.