Kenneth Copeland - Staying Connected to God's Love Casts Out All Fear
Turn over to the book of Hebrew chapter 2 and we'll read that. Verse 14, "For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he, Jesus, also himself likewise took part of the same". Now let's begin tonight with our exercise, our learning exercise. God is love. Say it. God is love. John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the same was in the beginning with God". Amen.
Now, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with love, the Word was love, the same in the beginning with love. You could come down to the 14th verse and should. Love took upon itself flesh and dwelled among men. Hallelujah. Now look at this right here then, in total agreement with that. "For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, love also himself likewise took part of the same. So that through death, love might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage".
Now, subject to bondage is worded here like being subject to a king. Whatever the king says, you're subject to do it. Wherever the king wants you, you're subject to go. You're subjected to that dominating person, dictator or force. In this case, the fear of death is dominating and its subjects are all their lifetime because of the fear of death in bondage, just about all bondage, whichever bondage king bondage wants to put on you. And like I said yesterday evening, the world out there lives day by day with this mindset and this thought process. Well, I hope nothing happens to me today that's bigger than what I can handle. I mean, that's their whole deal. What a hopeless outlook.
Well, all it takes is a broken refrigerator and a broken washing machine both at once and there they've had it. Why? Because they'll have to use the credit card to get it fixed and it's already over max so now they're in bondage. I mean, just like that, just subject to bondage. Anything any worse than hay fever, anything that there's not a drug for, anything. I mean, they're just subject to everything that comes down the road. In fact, they expect it. They're looking for it. Why?
Now, here's the place that I wanted this to come to. Why are they looking for it? Why are they looking for that bondage? Why do they expect to be sick? Why do they expect things to go wrong? I don't care if, I don't care how much money they have. They are continually expecting to lose it. And the thought of that is the engine that drives them day and night. They're subject to that bondage. They're just poor people with money. They're not wealthy people. They're poor people with enough money to frighten them.
Now, why? The question here is why are they subject to that all the time? Faith in death. They believe in it. They believe in the curse. They believe in that danger. If someone says something about sickness or disease, some new strain of flu, they don't immediately think, we'll not get that at our house. They immediately think, oh no, I always get all that stuff. Well, every time we start to go anywhere, one of the kids gets sick, I know I'll get laid off. They're going to laid off 20% of the workforce. Well, you know who always gets it first? Old number one. I mean, it's faith in death.
Now, let's analyze from a spiritual standpoint what faith in death is. There are two spiritual laws. Well, actually there's only one. One of them is running one way and the other is running opposite to it. It's like the directions of a compass. In one way, they're all the same because they are all directions of the compass. So north is exactly the same as south when it comes to being a compass direction. But on the other hand, north is exactly opposite from south. Now the same way, faith and fear, the law of the Spirit of life, the law of sin and death, they're both spiritual laws, aren't they? Sin is not a flesh problem. Sin is a problem of the spirit.
See, sin came into the world and death by sin. Death didn't come into the world and then sin by death. And it was a spiritual thing. Now, the results of it is manifest in the flesh, in the soul, in the spirit. It's manifest in all those areas. But now I want you to see the opposites of these things. Here is the law of the Spirit of life going in one direction in Christ Jesus. Here is the law of sin and death going in the opposite direction. Or if you quoted those two exactly mirror image of one another, you would say the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and the law of sin and death in Satan.
Now, the law of life, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus or in the anointing of the anointed one in the area that we're studying right now and looking into the heart of this, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the law of faith. The law of sin and death is the law of fear. Now, there's not two laws. There's only one. One of them is going that way and the other one is going that way. Because Satan did not create anything, not one thing, and he never will. All of the laws introduced into this universal envelope are here by God, from God, through God, in God. There are no other laws except the laws of God.
Now, what Satan has done, consequently, what men do is twist that law and cause it to work against you instead of for you. Now, let's go back to the introduction of this thing in the Garden of Eden. No human being is sovereign. He is not a spirit unto himself. He has to be spiritually connected. Here is Adam connected to God. Now, God is love. So, here is Adam connected to love. Love created him. Love, joy, peace, goodness, meekness, kindness, longsuffering, gentleness, temperance created him. Isn't that wonderful when you think about that like that? And he's connected to him.
Now, he's not almost like God. He's not a little copy of him. He is exactly like him. When God created the birds, the animals, and all of that, he created those from an image within himself. Before the foundation of the world, he had all these things all planned out, all imaged out, everything from the bugs to the elephants. Now, he created all those things from an image that he created in himself, and then he produced them. But when he created Adam, he did not create from an inner image. He reproduced himself.
Now, because of fear, human beings have never allowed that to become a revelation in their thinking. Open your Bible to the book of Genesis. Are you fearless? Well, some of you are. Now, you're familiar with the Scripture, so we won't go through it right now, where God created Adam's body from the dust of the earth. But then by the words of his mouth, words of dominion, he spoke and man became.
Now, everybody should have a chumash. You ought to get one of those, and it's been done now in English, from Hebrew into English. It's the Torah and the commentaries of the sages, the old rabbis. And when they commented on man became what the King James says, became a living soul, a living being, their take on that is this. And man, see, this is when God spoke the spirit of man, spoke himself into this physical body. They said, God, I mean, man became a speaking Spirit like God. You ready for this? Some of you are.
Genesis 2, verse 15, "And the Lord love took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. And the Lord love commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the Lord love said, It's not good that this man be alone. I'll make him a helpmate for him". I'm glad he did that. "And out of the ground, the Lord love formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them".
Now we have always milked that down to the place where we said, well, you know, that's when the elephant became the elephant. And that's when Adam called the tiger, the tiger, and then God created the little deer and he took the little deer and he walked the little deer over to Adam and said, "Adam, what would you call this"? And he said, "Oh, that's the deer".
And so the little deer went... God created the body of the deer. That deer didn't have any more life in it than Adam's body did. And then he took it. He didn't walk it. He took it to Adam and Adam called life forth in that animal because Adam was responsible for the life of all life on this planet. Well, I don't know whether I believe that or not. I don't care. The only reason you don't know is because you afraid, your religious fear reached up and grabbed ahold of your mind and said, I mean, you think God is going to kill you if you believe that?
Oh yeah. But you know, wow, that might be wildfire. Some of you need some wild something or other. No, he spoke dominion and authority over everything that flies, everything that swims, everything that walks, everything that crawls and everything that creeps. And then through Adam, see he's connected. He's the express image of God and he's connected. There's not God in Adam. There's the two of them. And then there's her. And now the three of them are connected. I mean, there's nothing between that. They are connected. When this man spoke, it came right out of God, right through him, right into those animals. Are you listening to me now?
Now, when they separated, now remember the man, the man can't exist sovereignty. He can't be. And when he separated from God, he was going this way. He separated and in the twinkling of an eye went that way and was connected with Satan. What was love is now hate. What was faith is now fear. And when he heard the voice of God, instead of faith coming by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, fear fled by the Word of God. Now, why did Adam run? Who was that that called him? Who'd he run from? Huh? He ran from love, didn't he? Well, doesn't perfected love cast out fear? You can't get no more perfect than that. It is love himself that called him and it cast fear out. Fear ran, hid behind the bushes. You following me now? It was just moments ago that that same spiritual force connected to God was faith.
Now, that same spiritual driving powerful force is now connected to Satan. So now it's fear. You got it now? Now fear comes by hearing and hearing by the words of death. It's exactly the way faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of love. Now, we've done all that to bring ourself to a knowledgeable working definition of fear. Fear is faith in reverse. Faith, actually, faith in God... Mark 11:22. Have faith in God. But God is love. Faith worketh by love. You remember the book of Galatians saying that? Faith worketh by love.
So listen to what Jesus said. See, in English, we wrote the Word "God" in there without having any concept, without having any insight, without having any idea of who G-O-D is. It's a supreme being. Well, it's the Father. Well, it's God. Well, it's the Creator. God is love. Have faith in love. So our definition of fear is faith in death, faith in the law of sin and death. You can talk to people day in and day out and gradually build up their faith in healing and deliverance.
Well, if they could just see a miracle and they see a miracle and they think, I wonder if they were really sick. Maybe the cancer just went into remission. Why? Seeing stuff doesn't bring faith, but you inject love into that equation. And now faith begins to come quickly because we understand love just because we're creatures of love, desiring love, looking for love, instinctively know what love is.