Kenneth Copeland - The Christian Chain of Command Serves Others
Welcome everybody, I’m Kenneth Copeland. For those of you that haven’t been with us all this week, you really need to go back and watch all of these broadcasts to come up to speed. We’re talking about the Christian chain of command and obeying it guarantees good results.
So, Father, we thank You again today and we thank You and praise You for insights and ideas and concepts of Your thoughts and ideas and concepts of life and godliness. And we thank You that this book covers all of those things. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.
Now then, let’s go back now to the 4th chapter of the Book of Ephesians once more. 28th verse. «Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth». Now you! You… «Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, or building up that it may minister grace unto the hearers». What a commandment. You may, I may, you may spend a lot of time with nothing to say for a while. I was that way when I first found out that I have what I say from Brother Hagin. I didn’t know that. And then I realized that I’ve been cursing myself for years, scared me to death. Thrilled me to death. I’m dying to go. You’re lying. Why use death to express yourself?
I’m telling you, the Lord jerked me up over that. Don’t you ever do it. And don’t you ever jump out from behind a door and frighten your children ever again. Not for fun or anything else. Fear is not on me. Don’t use it. Don’t use the works of my enemy to express yourself. Are you going? No, I’m afraid not. You’re afraid not… Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. You sorry thing. Well, that’s what you called yourself, anyway. «Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemption». Listen. «Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice».
Listen, the head of the church wrote this in a letter to us. «And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore…» Now let’s move over. «Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us». Now go over here in this 5th chapter. Chain of command 17th verse. «Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;» Well, there’s a chain of command right there.
«Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear or the reverence of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, your own husband as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the Saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify or separate it and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Children…»
I wrote up here, the body of Christ chain of command. I wrote that in my Bible right there. And it goes back to Genesis 2:18. Oh, well, all right some of you look at what… «And the Lord said,» who said? Elohim… The Lord. «It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof». He called an elephant an elephant. That’s why he’s an elephant today. I’m totally convinced that they acquired their color when he called them, because he was in God’s class.
«And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh». Don’t you know she was beautiful, hand made, glory to God. But they had commandments. One. Well, okay, now we come back to the Book of Ephesians. «Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;» It may be well with you you live long on the earth. He did not say… the Lord… The Spirit of God did not say, as long as they’re really nice people.
Now, I was blessed with honorable parents. There are those that were not. But that’s a commandment. And you don’t just keep it to yourself. Amen. And you don’t get hurt when you don’t get a right response. There’s a woman asked me to witness to her dad. She didn’t know whether he was saved or not. She told me at about the living facility where he lived and he had a problem with one of his arms and he carried it. I never did know whether because he had a stroke, why he walked like this. So I went in and he was upstairs. He came downstairs and I was sitting there and I had my Bible and so he came down, I introduce myself to him. «And yeah», he said, «My daughter told me».
And so I turned over there to Romans 10, and I just read there, you know, «Any man that believes that God raised Jesus from the dead and confesses him as Lord will be saved for with the heart man believes under righteousness and confession to be made unto salvation». He said, «Thank you, Mr. Copeland» and just left. Well, I saw he had something wrong with his arm, but I’m not paying attention to that, that wasn’t why I was there. So I got in the car. I said, «Well, Lord, he heard it». So I’m asking you to see to it that that just gets in his heart and mind to where he can’t turn that loose. I’m telling you, I just had a dream about or whatever else I said, because I was a laborer sent across his path to the request of his daughter. So and I got in my car and prayed that. And I said, «Well, Lord, I just cast the whole of the care over on you cause you’re the only one who knows his heart».
Well, some time went by. Well, his daughter contacted me again. She said, «Oh, Brother Copeland, thank you for talking to my dad». I said, «Well, I didn’t get very far with him». Well, she said, «He called me and he said that he was afraid you were going to pray for his arm and he didn’t want you to pray for him down there where everybody could watch. But when he got upstairs, he said, I thought, 'I don’t know whether I’ve ever done that or not.' So he said, 'I just got down on my knees because I believe he’s been raised from the dead.' And he told his daughter, 'Something happened to me, girl.'» Hallelujah. I’m so glad I’m not the judge. I couldn’t judge that. But it didn’t offend me that he got up. A very nice man. Praise God.
So now notice this. I’m coming now to one of my most favorite promises and blood covenant words in this Book. «Children, obey your parents… Honour thy father and mother; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. You fathers, provoke not your children to wrath». Don’t teach them wrong things. Don’t teach them how to manipulate your mother and of course I’ve never heard anything about that until I heard it from other people. But that goes on. «Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men». Are you ready? Are you ready?
Well good, I’m glad you finally answered me. Knowing, «Ginosko», «Knowing whatsoever good thing any man or any person doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free». Years ago, I’m talking about back in the beginning days of this ministry to prosper other people. You’ve heard me talk about this, to have a prosperous soul, that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. Any good thing I can do. When I go in the men’s room. I didn’t have to pay for those towels in that men’s room. It’s part of the service. But the Lord said to me, «You use only the amount of towels that you require, and then clean off that counter because somebody has to do it and somebody will prosper you».
So we begin to look for ways to prosper people, ways to help and then Jesse and Cathy and Jerry and Carolyn, Happy and Jeanne Caldwell in what we called the Glory Riders, we’d take off on our bikes. Well, that was our purpose was to prosper people and to pray for people, even though we had on our leathers. And sometime people didn’t recognize us, but we didn’t take a vacation from faith when we didn’t look like preachers anymore. No, no. We preached to one another. Some of the greatest revelation would come on those trips because we’re prospering people and you’ve probably heard me tell this before, one of them, there’s several of them, but one of them stands out in my mind. We came into a restaurant, the restaurant was full for noon, we’re of course, we were all in our leathers and all that. And the waitress came over there. They had to put another table on the end for all of us to be seated there. And the waitress came in there.
«What are you wanting to drink»? Well, iced tea. In fact, everybody ordered iced tea. «Straight or not»? And so she came back, set that iced tea down on there, and one or two of them said, «Could we have some water»? Oh, she wants water. Well, to most people in this kind of a shape, any tip would have been an offering. No. Something’s wrong here. Nobody could keep that job for three days if they were that way all the time. That part of it didn’t occur to any of us. I heard the Word of the Lord, pray for her.
So we put in an order and all that. And then when she came back over there and I had shared this with everybody, how we were going to take care of this with her, according to that scripture, that scripture, that’s not script. It has T-U-R-E on the end of it, you could have a movie script. But U-R-E makes it holy. She came up there and so we all stood up. I took my chair and turned it around here and I said, «Come on, she didn’t want to do it». But I said, «Come on, baby, sit down right here. We’re going to pray for you».
I didn’t know anything about her. So we just all began to pray quietly. And in the name of the Lord Jesus, whatever her problem… «You don’t know what my sister did to me, she just left me all in that wedding…» So we were able to minister to her and told her, «Look, let the Lord Jesus take care of this». Then we didn’t ask, I mean, we just went ahead and led her in the prayer, «Let him take care of it. Everything will be all right. Don’t let it get in here with your job». «Really»? «Yeah». So she brought the food out there and she said, «Oh, is this okay? Is this all right? Is it okay? Everything all right»? «Everything is fine, yeah, yeah». «You want some dessert»?
It changed that woman completely because of Ephesians 6:8. «Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free» changed her. She followed us to the door all the way out to the parking lot. «Beautiful bikes, bye». Now she loves her sister because of the Christian chain of command. That is not just a promise, it’s to be watched for. Take care of other people’s property and I’ll close coming down to this. «Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore», on what? The Word.
«Having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts or the arrows of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God: Praying…» It’s prayer armor. It’s prayer armor, «Praying always with all prayers, and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; And for me…» So you got to pray for the pastor too, glory to God. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that. Did we get there? It’s been a week. The chain of command, I believe is in place. Praise God. We’ll be back in just a moment.