Kenneth Copeland - Following God's Commands Will Free You from Fear
Let's go back and look at the book of Joshua chapter 1. I want us to read verse 9 there. Joshua chapter 1, verse 9. "God is speaking to Joshua after the death of Moses, a servant of the Lord came to pass. The Lord spoke unto Joshua, the son of Nun. Moses' ministered, saying, Moses, my servant is dead," and so forth and so on. And then he told him in the eighth verse, "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate therein day and night that you may observe to do all according to that's written there in. And then you shall make your way prosperous. And then you shall have good success. Have I not commanded thee"?
Underline that. "Have I not commanded thee be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed". Now, here's the key issue. "For the Lord thy God is with thee, wheresoever you go". Hallelujah. The Lord thy God is with thee. That's where all the difference is made. See, God is saying, "I commanded you to be strong. I've commanded you to be not afraid. I have commanded you". But now He said two things. He said, I'm going with you wherever you go. But now just a minute. Wait a minute. How's God going to go with him? You ever think about that?
John chapter one, verse one, "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God and not anything that was made was made without Him, God, the Word. Meditate in my Word day and night". Isaiah put it this way. Whoever keeps his mind stayed on God. Hallelujah. You can't do that without the Word. That's the way you do it. You could get you a little cross and set it up on the mountain and just stare at the thing. But now you know what will happen if you do that? It'll put you over into a natural state that will eventually bring you directly into witchcraft. Trying to contact God in this natural flesh, does it all the time.
My brethren, American, the American Indian, Native Americans, there are people with a heart for God. Sitting Bull called God the Forever Spirit. Glory to God. Amen. And a people with a heart for God, but had no idea how to contact him, but they're learning now. There's a mighty move of God sweeping the reservations of this nation. Praise God. And in Canada, praise the Lord all over the place because of the book. Say it out loud, the book. Now this is just as much a manifestation of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. God said, "You meditate in my Word and I'm there and I'll never leave you and I'll never forsake you".
If you're looking for him out here, what happens when you get messed up a little? And well, let me just explain to you what happens. You'd be the one that comes out. Oh, Brother Copeland, I just don't, I just don't feel God. I just don't feel his presence. Something must have happened between God and me. I just don't feel like he's here. I just say... There are church, there are church congregations. When you walk in the door and everybody starts singing, they say, "Oh, don't we feel God? What difference does it make? How would you like it every time you walked in the church, everybody in there tried to feel you. Wouldn't that get old"?
This is a crude illustration, but absolutely, it absolutely spells out plainly what I'm talking about. What if you went into a congregation of people that had no eyesight? They could not physically see you. That's not out of reason, is it? We have a church for the blind. Maybe it'd be a chapel at a school for the blind. That's reasonable. But now you walk in there and they won't know who came in. That's not the way to find out. The way is to talk to the man. You hear people that say, "Oh, I had a vision and I saw Jesus".
You know what, eight out of 10 of them will say, "What does he look like"? But there will be one or two of them that say, "What did he say to you"? That's what it's all about. What did he say? Because his truth will make you free. You know the truth and it'll make you free. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Now he said, "You meditate in my Word day and night. Don't let it depart from your mouth. Keep, keep the Word in your mouth. As you keep the Word in your mouth, the Word of God's coming out of your mouth, it's going into your ears, back into your spirit, and then back out your mouth again". Now that is simple, but that's the process. That's the way it works.
Now then let's go to Deuteronomy 31. That's just next door to the left. Deuteronomy 31. Now remember this was God ministering to Joshua just before they went over the Jordan. Now this is coming from the ministry of Moses who knows he's not going over the Jordan and he is talking to those that are about to go over the Jordan. He is training them and teaching them because they're leaving a land of barely enough to go into the land of way more than enough. And they've never seen anything like that. They've never known anything like that. They don't, they have no concept of it. They've been out there in the desert for all these years. God took care of them. Yeah.
And it's a wonderful thing that even their shoes didn't wear out, but who wants to wear the same pair of shoes for 40 years? Dear Lord. And here they are about to going over into a land that the power of God, the anointing of God, and the blessing of God is going to be so strong on them that they're going to have all the shoes they want, all the house they want, all the land they want. I mean, this is a totally different concept to them and Moses is preparing them for it.
Now look in the 31st chapter and let's read with the 6th verse, "Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them". Why? "For the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee". See, these are covenant words. These words are based in blood agreement between man and God. Are you listening to me? I wanted to get over to you this, this whole sense of, of God commanding them. God has never made commandments like that. That's the way the Gentile world accepted them. That's also the way religious minded, Pharisaical minded Jews accepted it, but that's not in the light of the way God made his commandments. Never.
And in the teaching of Moses, particularly back in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th chapters, he used the word commandment and covenant interchangeably. And he did it once in one verse. I said, "Lord, how can the command, how can a commandment be a covenant"? Thou shalt do or thou shalt not do. How could that be a covenant? The Lord said, "Kenneth, I made the covenant 400 years before with Abraham". He said, "Now I'm advising these people to live in this covenant". He said this to me, just it revolutionized my whole life. I mean, it changed me forever. He said, "My attitude in the 10 commandments, you don't understand it at all. You think my attitude is thou shalt not do this. And if you do, I'll kill you".
Well, that's the way the Gentile world always read that, had that idea. He said, "That's not it at all". He said, "Look at the first commandment. Don't have any other God. See, I'm in covenant with you". And the Lord said this to me then, and then, oh my, what a change it made in me. He said, "The God most people have trouble with is trying to be their own God and it's born out of fear". How am I going to get out of this? What am I going to do? How am I ever going to raise the money to get this? How dear Lord, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I'm so afraid. I'm so tired. I'm so, oh, I'm unworthy. All that's based in fear, but you're still trying to figure out how you're going to do it.
You didn't know yesterday. You don't know today and you won't know any more about it tomorrow. You're not qualified to be God. You're not qualified to meet your own needs. You're not qualified to add to yourself. Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew, the sixth chapter, he said, "Don't even think about clothing yourself, feeding yourself. Your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things. Take no thought for what you're going to wear". And he said that five times in 10 verses. Don't even think about it. Why? You're not your God. Your heavenly Father is your covenant God. So now that's the first commandment. Don't try to be your own God. Don't make the banker your God. Don't make any other your God.
Then he said, and this is what the Lord said to me. He said, "You know where I said, thou shalt not covet, particularly your neighbor's wife". I said, yes, Sir. He said, "The way I said that was, what do you want? What do you want to go after her for? I'm your Lord. I'm your covenant partner. I'll get you one better looking than she is. Come to me, boy. Don't go running after anybody. Come to me". He said, for sure. Don't go stealing. I'll meet your needs according to my riches and glory. Don't go out there stealing. You're trying to be your own God if you're going to go stealing. You're trying to add to yourself through theft. You're trying to add to yourself by borrowing and their people add to themselves by working hard and saving.
Well, there's nothing particularly wrong with that. But if you have, if you're not doing it in line with the covenant of God, you can't get enough jobs. There ain't enough hours in the day. You can't work enough jobs at once, bless yourself the way God wants to bless you. I'm telling you, I want to tell you right now, if you think Elvis Presley was blessed financially, that's chump change compared to what God wants to do for his people. I mean that all of the whole world's level is still pitifully poor in the eyes of God. Particularly if you get ahold of a little money and then it ruins your life and your family.
The Bible said, "God, the blessing of God maketh rich and he addeth no sorrow to it". Amen. Hallelujah. That's when God, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Seek first the kingdom of God. Let him be God. Do what the man said. Jesus said, "Why you call me Lord, Lord, boy, you don't do what I tell you. Is that too much to ask"? Not at all. When you understand he's not only boss, but he's not trying to be boss. He's trying to be your God, trying to be your Father. And he's provided everything for you.
And he said, "Now here's some things that if you do them, it's going to get you out there in Satan's territory and he's going to tear you apart. In fact, if you cross these commandments, he'll kill you. It'll make you subject to death". You'd go down to him and look at him. The only thing that would keep you from keeping those commandments is fear. Well, you don't know what they did to me. Turn it over to God. Don't try to take care of it yourself. Particularly don't go killing somebody, dear Lord. Well, I know Brother Copeland, but see, you don't want to turn that over to God. You want some flesh out of this. And most of you know him well enough to know you turn it over to him and he ain't not going to hurt him. And you want him hurt. I'm telling you the truth.
So when we begin to walk on the love of God, begin to walk in the life of God, Jesus said the love commandment will cover the whole thing. And you start walking in that, start walking in the covenant of God, it casts out fear. The point, let me show you something now. I'm walking by faith. Everything's going fine, but I come up to a place where I've come onto something that I'm not sure of and I've come to fear. That's my point of failure. I wasn't afraid back here. I was walking by faith. Glory to God. He meets my needs according to his riches in glory. I'm a giver. I'm a forgiver. And I'm not a condemner. I give and it's given unto me again, pressed down, shaken together, running over, God and me.
Oh, where did that come from? Oh, and then the devil start working on you. Well, you know how you are. Well, you did this and you did that, or you didn't do this and you didn't do that... gna gna gna... I know how you love God. Oh yes, I love God. But now you just haven't been doing enough fasting. I know it dear Lord. Yeah. And you're not very worthy either. Oh, you know, I'm just so unworthy. I'm just not worthy. Shut up. Get back on the blood. Fear is your point of failure. And when you run into something like that, instead of beginning to exercise fear, just stop and say, no, I'm just going to be still and know he's God in the name of Jesus. I received the wisdom of God. Amen.
So what are you going to do Brother Copeland? What are you going to do? Nothing. What are you going to do about this? Nothing. I don't know yet what to do. So why should I do anything? Oh, Brother Copeland, if you don't do something, then do it quick. Hey, I'm not God. Do you understand? And when I don't know what to do, that's the time just to be still and know that he's God. He can take care of me while I'm standing here just as well as he could meet me or better than he couldn't be running around like a chicken with my head chopped off. Amen. Because of the peace, without faith, there is no peace. And without peace, there's no faith. You better write that down. You might miss that.
Now then he said again, right here in 31st verse or chapter sixth verse, be strong of good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them. The Lord thy God is with thee. He doth go with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Now then let's go to the book of Isaiah chapter 41. I'm just skipping over some verses here to mark your consciousness with these words from God. Isaiah 41 verse 10 through 13, "Fear thou not". Does it seem like to you he's trying to get something over to us? He'll find a pattern with God all the way through the Word, 110 times.
And this, this is just a very loose accounting. I haven't had time to do anything other than just go through the Concordance and count the times that it's listed, fear not. And there's 110 times with just the first counting where he either said fear not, or be thou not afraid. Now, 110 times there, there's a pattern here. Every time God began to do something, he be started it with fear not. Stop the fear. The angel at the birth of Jesus out of the shepherds came and said, "Fear not". It was born unto you a Savior. Glory to God. That ought to get rid of the fear. God has sent a Savior. Hallelujah.
Well, I'm afraid though he won't want me. What made you so special? Oh, I'm just so unworthy. Oh, there you go again. Dear Lord, I'm unworthy. I'm no good. I know that God knows that the devil knows that. Now what else he knew? But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son for who? Whosoever. That's who? Hallelujah. You missed a chance to shout cause you're a whosoever too. Amen. Glory to God. We have a Savior. What is he Savior from? Anything you need saving from.