Kenneth Copeland - The Love of God Brings Covenant Power
— Hello, everybody. We're Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast, Arkansas. Glory to God. Here at our place in southwest Arkansas where we've been blessed for so many years. As I was telling you a couple of days ago, just right after we got married, Gloria's grandfather and grandmother gave us four acres here out of their part of their land, their farm. And, my, it has went over the years. We were able to go ahead and acquire the whole 180 acres. But I want to tell you about the main house. Now, this is not the main house here. This is a log house. This has got a story of its own, too. And I may tell you about that later. Yeah, I will tell you about that later. But the main house up there, we kept coming up here thinking, what are we going to do? We'd like to have a place here. And do we build us a house? We'd come up here and bring our camping tent and stuff and camp down in this area where we are right now. The log house wasn't here or anything. And anyway, there's this old, very, very dilapidated house.
— Maybe they'll show a picture of it.
— I expect they will. And it was over across the highway here. And Gloria remembered that house. Of course, when she remembered it, it didn't look like that because it had belonged to a part of the family way back. This thing, I mean, there's logs in the main house there that are so old. I mean, you could see the ax marks where they actually cut the timber with an ax. It wasn't sawed. They didn't use a saw to, anyway. And, oh, oh, you've probably seen a picture of it by now. The first man that came out and looked at it to move it across the highway and down the road a little bit, he said, "Copeland, you want me to tell you what I think"? I said, yeah. He said, "Let her sit" He said, "I don't want to move that". He's afraid it's going to fall apart, you know, and move it. So I called Mr. Wooten. And I said, "What do you think, Mr. Wooten? The other guy didn't want to move it". Oh, he said, "Kenneth, we'll move anything, brother. It'll be all right. It'll just work fine". And the picture you're seeing is where it sits right now before any of the landscape, before anything. And, of course, now you're seeing the house as it is now. And Gloria and her mother did a whole lot of that, of the work inside that house. And, of course, they had help.
— Thank you for mentioning that.
— But it was, yeah, man, I'm telling you that. But we'd come up here and spend the time worshiping, praising God, and working on the house. And they did. I just sat out on what became the porch.
— You did a great job of sitting on the porch.
— I do that, Gloria.
— You do it very well.
— You know, I can wear a porch completely out. I was born to sit on a porch.
— Sit there for hours, and it never bothers you.
— Yeah, days. Are you kidding? My grandfather said that one thing about that boy, he ain't scared of work. He'll lay down right beside it and go sound asleep. I ain't going to tell you what else he said. Okay, Lord, we thank You and we praise You. Thank You for these broadcasts. Father, thank You for this wonderful place. We found out You'd do it for anybody, anybody that'll believe. You're so good, and Your mercy endures forever. And we praise You and thank You for it. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, the first thing I'm going to do is straighten out the scripture that I messed up yesterday.
— Oh, no. What was it?
— Oh, yeah, I did, big time. And I think what I did, well, I know what I did. I got the two different scriptures mixed up, and my lightning fast mind couldn't unmix them. And I had some expert help tell me right where this is. In the 34th Psalm, and this is several verses here, we were talking about someone saying, well, I was referring to the scripture that the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, and he said, "Tell those that are rich in this world to not be high-minded, but ready to distribute. For he gives us richly all things to enjoy". And then someone come up. I've had people say this to me. One man just was so mad at me. I mean, he got in my face over this. And he said, "I'll tell you right now, God will meet our needs, but nowhere he said he'd meet your wants". And he just got all over me about that. Now, look at this. In Psalm 34, in the 7th verse, "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, or highly reverence God, and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusts in him. Oh, fear the Lord ye his saints, for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing". Amen.
— You know, a thing is in italics, so it could say, it does say in the original, they that seek the Lord shall not want. Period.
— Period. Well, we're living in the 23rd Psalm. We're living in the day of His love, in the day of His grace. And Jesus is the great shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
— Yes, amen.
— Why? Because He loves you.
— Any good. Any good.
— All right. Praise God. Let's go back over to 1 John.
— Would we testify to that? Have we wanted any good since we've been in the Lord?
— Well, not one thing. And here's another thing, too, Gloria. In what we're talking about today, you have to learn to trust His love. And people don't. We read yesterday in the book of Numbers where they literally said, "He's brought us out here where they can rape our wives and kill our children". Now, they didn't believe the love. They didn't believe He loved them. I don't know why they thought He delivered them.
— They didn't know Him.
— But they didn't know Him. They didn't have any concept of the fact that He is love.
— They didn't have. I guess they didn't have any written Word either, except the Ten Commandments.
— Well, but they, and all of that, no, that hadn't even been written yet, because Moses wrote that. And anyway, it had to develop in them. But the point is, they didn't trust Him at all. Now, what we're doing, we're developing that trust. Trust, first of all, you trust Him. Next of all, you trust His Word. Then you trust His name. Then you have to learn to trust His blood. But you must trust His love. Trust His mercy more than sacrifice. Now, you said it yesterday. You said that the devil is able, if he can bring some failing, something that you did somewhere, and get you under condemnation about it, you get to feeling guilty before God. Just wipes your faith out in fear. There's an open door to fear. All right. Now, we'll get it. Well, Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am He that blotteth out your transgressions, and remember your sins no more".
— Isn't that awesome?
— "For my own sake".
— That's right. That's what it is.
— I thought, he did it for my sake. Well, yeah, he did, but he did it for his sake. Now, why? Two very important things. Do you desire to remember bad things about your children? No. Number two, this is the big one. If He remembers your sin, He can't bless you. And He is big on blessing.
— Yes. And the other thing is, it takes faith to please God. So let's settle that.
— And faith worketh by love. So here you are again. And two, you take one more step there in Romans 4:16. It is a faith so that it might be by grace.
— Undeserved favor. It is a faith so that you don't get what you deserve.
— Well, you don't want that.
— Undeserved favor. I like that.
— You could say it like this, unconditional undeserved love.
— Yes, amen.
— Grace is God's overwhelming desire to treat you and me like sin had never happened. Amen. That's His desire. That's what love will do for you. Love went to the cross. Love went to hell and suffered what you and I can never even imagine because He loves you.
— Now, think about it. From the beginning, in the garden, they didn't obey God, and they couldn't receive the love that He had for them. They had a perfect world, everything, lacking nothing. One thing they were told not to do, and they blew it. Well, that's the way we receive because we obey God, so we put ourselves. I'm not talking about you and me. I'm talking about you and me and everybody. We obey God, and that puts us in a position to receive the blessing. But in the Bible, nobody got the blessing if they were disobedient. The blessing was for the obedient.
— And then, because it's God's will has always been to bless. The very first thing in the garden, He blessed them.
— Nothing lacking in the garden.
— And it was because of His love. That's the way love is. That's what love wants to do. And then when Adam fouled up like he did... Now, I'm glad you brought this up, Gloria. This gives the Spirit of God a chance to bring this forth. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Now, wait a minute. We didn't study that God is love. Love is God. Let's read our scripture there in I John 4. Verse 8, He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. Okay. Think about this. In John Chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God, and the same was in the beginning with God. Nothing was created that wasn't created by Him. Now, Genesis 1, for in the beginning, love created the heaven and the earth. Love created it. That's the reason it looked like it did.
— And what words did He use? Let there be. Let there be.
— He spoke it. Love manifested. The heavens and the earth is love manifested. The garden of Eden is love manifested. So, in the beginning, love created it. Now, I'm going to ask you a question here. On what day did He create cancer?
— He did not create it.
— He didn't create cancer. Cancer was the result of man's sin and union with Satan and the result of Satan's absolute hatred for mankind.
— He didn't do any... He didn't create any sickness.
— Never, and He's never made anybody sick. He is the great deliverer. Now, here's the point. The moment man failed, love immediately went to the plan of redemption.
— That's true.
— Immediately. Isn't that wonderful? To realize, now, what am I talking about?
— What did God do? He gave His best.
— Absolutely.
— To get man back in the right place.
— He gave everything He had and went to hell to pay His price for him.
— Yes, yes, yes.
— To give the blessing back on His people, on His man, so He could really... You can trust Him, believe me.
— Trust the Lord.
— He's proved it.
— He's proved it. Now, for instance, I had a wonderful mother and dad. I mean, they would have done anything in the world for me. I was the only child. My mother just didn't dare have any more children because of something happened to her in her young life. They told her not to have any. She liked to die when I was born. Anyway, mother was a great prayer warrior and she prayed, and she prayed, For somebody to come up and tell me, I think you better start checking your food here. I think maybe your mama's planning to poison you. Before he got the word poison out... She may have wanted to whoop you, but she wasn't going to poison you.
— She wasn't going to do me any harm. Not her love.
— No, no.
— Well, I'm not going to listen to it, and somebody tries to tell me, Jesus put that on me to teach me something.
— No, no. Uh-uh. He loves you.
— I may be sanctified, but I believe you better duck when you tell me that, because I trust His love. I love Him, and He loves me, and He loves us. I mean, that's the way this is. But people do not believe the love. Oh, yeah, brother. No, no, wait a minute. What has happened, there is a difference between mental assent and faith. Mentally agreeing that something is true is mental assent to it, and it masquerades as faith a lot of times.
— It has no result.
— But faith is not of the mind. Faith is of the Spirit, and we'll talk about that. But now, God, don't you care?
— What?
— You let this come on me, don't you care?
— Uh-uh. Does God love you?
— Yeah, but I don't know why. See, that's mental assent to the fact that the Bible tells us so, that God loves us. But there's no faith developed in that love. And that's what we're talking about here, is renewing our minds to the fact that God is love, and love is God. And you can't do anything, any way, any time, of any power, no sin big enough to cause Him not to love you. There is no way. He can't turn His love off. He'd have to turn Himself off because He is love. And everything He does is love. Everything He says is love. The only time He'll step in and do anybody any harm is people that are harming His covenant people. Now, He has covenant with people. You don't cross that line, even though He loves you. Now, let me make an illustration of that. I won't spend much time on this, but I do want to make it clear. Now, Gloria and I have a covenant of marriage. We've been married 55 years yesterday. That's the time we're doing this, April the 13th.
— I'm going to stay with you.
— Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we are, we entered into a covenant.
— A marriage covenant.
— A marriage covenant. And we learned later, we got married six months later, we both got born again. And then we began to learn over the years. And I learned later that that covenant in the name of Jesus, and this marriage covenant, this is a serious thing with me. And the covenant of blood in the blood of Jesus. Now, I swore in front of Joe Stewart in Little Rock, Arkansas, Friday the 13th of April, 1962, that I would love her and care for her. Now, over the years, that's grown stronger and stronger and stronger. Now, I love you. I don't care who you are. I love you because that's a commandment from heaven. And love is not a feeling. Love is a person. And when God says, love your neighbor as yourself and love the brethren even as I have loved the brethren, I don't have any option, but I have to do that. I don't care how I feel about you. I love you.
— That's a commandment.
— I love you on purpose. Agape, the Greek word for the love of God, does not mean feeling. Filio means feeling, however you pronounce that in Greek. But agape is an act of the will. I will love you regardless of what you do or say or who you are. Now, I love you. You come up trying to hurt her. I'm going to tell you something, Hoss. I may be 80 years old, but you're going to get the worst day you ever had in your life because somehow or another, I'm going to whip you. And if I have to, I'll kill your graveyard dead. Did you hear what I said? And I'll pray for you while you lay there and bleed. I have a covenant with that woman.
— Amen.
— Now that's God position. You still love me? Yeah, you're supposed to. Anyway, I want you to grasp the seriousness of a covenant made in love. Now, God is that way over his covenant. And when it comes to his covenant people, that's the way he is. And if you want to see God do harm, then covenant people that cry out to him and know what the laws of God are and the rights of God and so forth, and you get one of them big angels on the scene, and we're out of time. And so we'll talk about these things.
— Don't let a little thing like that bother you. Go ahead.
— We'll talk about some more of these things tomorrow as the Lord leads us. Praise God. Gloria and I'll be back just a moment.