Kenneth Copeland - The Command and the Covenant
Kenneth: Hello everybody, we're Kenneth and Gloria Copeland. Welcome to the believer's voice of victory broadcast. You're going to enjoy this today. I can promise you that Jesus is going to do something that you're going to like.
Father, we give you praise and we thank you today we worship you and we praise you and we thank you as we move into this broadcast. I pray that you open the ears and eyes of all of us together and we by faith open our ears and eyes to hear your Word and faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We give you the praise and Thanksgiving for it, in Jesus name amen.
Kenneth: Woo Gloria, that's a pretty blouse.
Gloria: I'm bright.
Kenneth: Yeah, I like that.
Gloria: I like this too, I see that matches your shirt. You'd think we planned it.
Kenneth: Glory to God. Let's go back to the book of Romans, the 14th chapter and read our foundation scripture for this study. This has been good.
Gloria: It has, it's been very good. You've done a wonderful job.
Kenneth: Thank you. The Spirit of God has done a wonderful job. And I just followed along. The 23rd verse of the 14th chapter of the book of Romans, he, uh, let's back up. Let's read down into that. Verse 21, "It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor anything whereby thy brother stumbles or is offended or has made weak. Has thou faith had it to yourself before God. Happy is the man that condemn not himself in that thing which he allows and he that doubt is damned if he eat because he eateth not of faith, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin".
Now, we said the amplified translation says, "whatsoever does not originate or proceed from faith is sin". And the whole base of this whole study is if it doesn't originate in faith, it had to originate in fear. And we talked about the fact, the fact that fear connects fears a spiritual force. Faith is a spiritual force. The fear that we know in the earth today was originally Adam's faith. You remember what the first thing that happened after he sinned? He hid from God. For, he was afraid.
Gloria: He was condemned.
Kenneth: Now, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. But when he heard the Word of God, he ran from it. See fear runs from God. Fear runs from the Word of God. But faith runs to God and faith draws on the Word. And faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
Gloria: That is a danger, a danger of doing what you know is not right to do.
Kenneth: Yeah.
Gloria: Cause you're going to be under condemnation. And when you're under condemnation, your faith is not going to be working like it should.
Kenneth: It's contaminated with fear, or guilt. All guilt is fear based. All grief is fear based.
Gloria: And it's nonproductive. I mean, you, if you're feeling guilty, condemned, you're not going to be using your faith.
Kenneth: That's true.
Gloria: You don't have any confidence.
Kenneth: And Romans 8:1-2 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the Spirit, but after the flesh, but after the spirit". Now, let's in fact, let's talk about that just for a moment because the scripture says I even I am he, Isaiah 43:25 that blotteth out your sins for my own sake. And will remember them no more. Now, why would he do that and say it's for his sake? I thought it was for my sake. Well, it is for my sake in the end, but the reason, Gloria, he has entered into covenant to get back what Adam lost. He covenanted us to himself so that he could give to us everything that Adam lost.
Gloria: What did Adam do after he sinned? He hid himself.
Kenneth: Yeah.
Gloria: He ran from God, not to God.
Kenneth: He's in total fear. But now see everything that God had done for him in the garden of Eden and all that, it's totally lost. Now if God, God could have just stopped right there and it'd just all been over, but thank God he didn't do that. And, and the whole, the bottom line of this whole thing is the reason why by covenant, he took us back in. And you remember he said, he said to Abraham, he said, as for me, this is my covenant between me and thee. And he declared to him and then, and Abraham had sense enough to say, yes amen, I enter covenant with you. And after that, Abram became Abraham. Abraham because God placed his name in the middle of Abram's name and he became Abraham. Now in that condition, he became a covenant partner with God. So anything God commanded him to do, had a reason. And anytime he commanded him to do anything, it was because if you do this, then I can do this.
Gloria: You'll be blessed.
Kenneth: Yeah. And I, if you don't, if you won't do this, I can't get to you.
Gloria: Think about when we, I may have already said that this week, but think about when we found out we weren't supposed to borrow money. I mean, that looked like, Oh, how are we gonna have a house? How are we going to anything.
Kenneth: Cause that's all we'd ever known.
Gloria: But we didn't know what we know now.
Kenneth: There was a whole other kingdom over there. We didn't know anything about in that kingdom we have a covenant with God. In that covenant, listen to me carefully, when you read lets turn over there. I want to use this right now to express the spiritual, in Matthew six, the spiritual law of covenant. Now Jesus is standing here saying, in verse 31, "Therefore take no thought saying". Now what he said there Gloria is stop worrying about what shall we eat or what shall we drink or where with all shall be clothed for after all these things do the Gentiles seek. Now what does she mean by Gentile? Those people without a covenant. You listen to this now?
Gloria: That's the difference.
Kenneth: Yeah. People without a covenant. But now you see he's talking to you here. He's talking to you and he's talking to me when he said you. Because we're covenant people. Now listen to this, for your heavenly father knows that you have need of all these thing. Now listen, here's the command seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness or his way of doing things. What does that mean? Live by love. Walk by love, live by faith. Walk by faith. Do what he says to do. There's the command. And here's the covenant. All these things shall be added to you. Yeah, but I didn't know if he could get to me. That's not even your business. That's his business. That's on his side, on the covenant.
Now what you and I must see how to do is to seek first the kingdom and his way of doing things. Our part is not the adding to get it off of your mind. It doesn't have anything to do with you. That is not your part. You roll all that care over on him. Like he said to me years ago, quit worrying about that. Kenneth, I'll come by it honestly you don't need to be concerned where I'm on getting.
Gloria: And we can personally testify that this works.
Kenneth: Oh yeah, it won't when you're worrying about it. No. But here's the whole, this is the whole covenant process and this, this is the thing that God laid on my heart and this whole two week study it get down to this where we can see, and understand, and begin to walk and live in this and take therefore no thought. Quit worrying about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of the things of itself. Sufficient is the day the evil there of. Don't be worrying about tomorrow. Roll the care of it over on the Lord. You just don't know what I got to worry about. I don't care what you got to worry about it's not as big as God, but if you're going to worry about it, you're walking in fear and not in faith and you're sinning. We just got through reading it. Why?
Well, because you refused to do what God said and you release yourself in fear to the devil and he has counsel he can get in cause you're thinking his thoughts after him. And as long as you're doing that, well you know you don't know what they then say about me. Well you don't know what, Oh Brother Copeland. Oh Brother Copeland. Now I'm telling you that da da da da. And you talk about, you talk about your past and you talk about your skin color and you talk about the, the economy's no good where you live and all of that. And I don't have anything to do with anything. Nothing.
Gloria: People just say I just think, it seems like everything works against me. And it does when you say that.
Kenneth: Sure. But see you're not following the covenant if you do what he says do. Remember we talked about Joshua, he told Joshua to be strong, be of good courage, and he said, I've commanded you. All right? There's the command. And you will be able to observe and know what to do and you'll be, you will prosper and all that you do. And, and you will deal wisely in all the affairs. He had to first agree to what God said and say, yes sir, I'll do it. The power is in the command to bring it to pass. You don't have to make it work yourself.
That that's where the religious rub is. But God wants me to build a new church building. I can't build a new church. But don't you think God knows that? Don't you think he understands that if you did build a church building to be a flop, he that builds the house without God builds at night. But if you'll roll the care of it over on him, say sir, I'm yours to command you tell me what to do and we'll get it done. Glory to God. But now you're going to have to do your part. You're going to have to walk in faith. You're going to have to meditate the word every day. You're going to have to continue to build your faith stronger and stronger by by listening to the Words. You're going to have to get on BVOVN and listen.
You can't spend all your time watching junk out of the world and build your faith. You're gonna start building your fear. You feed on that. You feed it into your eyes. You feed it into your ears and you're watching TV series just full of murder and mayhem and all of it based on strife. All of it's strifeful. The whole thing is strifeful. All the news is full of strife. And they're all talking about what they're calling one another and yeah but you did that. Yeah. And I know your husband did this and you're getting that all in. Feeding that in there all the time. Your spirit is starved, but your fear is rising. It's getting stronger all the time. And you find yourself thinking about that junk.
When you're doing something else, you see this stuff running over and over in your mind. You start these little self conversations, and Satan has access to it. He'll feed stuff into you and you'll get to thinking about what they said about me. I'll tell you, that heifer said that about me. Um, me and I'll give her a piece of my mind. No, don't do that, you ain't got much start with. Not when you got it fixed on the devil. Not when you got it fixed on doubt and fear and unbelief. Now let, let's, let's pull again closer into this. Now remember, whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Why? Because it's not a faith, it's a fear.
Remember what Jesus told Jairus, fear not, and there was a command, fear not, and here's the covenant, she shall be made whole. Glory to God. Now you have to remember this darling. Every word Jesus said when he was on the earth is now backed in his blood. This is a blood covenant. This one was in the blood of animals. This one is in the blood of Jesus. Praise God and God is not willing to ever change it. And we are covenant people. Now we saw that in the gospel of Luke. Let, let's go over now. We read that in the 14th chapter of Romans. Let's go over now to first Peter five and we will begin.
Let me get my phone out here cause I want to read this in the Amplified also Hallelujah. Uh, thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Now in the amplified translation, let's read it first in the King James. First Peter chapter five, the fifth verse. Likewise you younger, submit yourselves under the elder. Yay, all of you. Now listen, he's beginning to command. When you, look for look for verses like this. They are full of power because the command comes and then the covenant. Now what? Be clothed with humility. Okay. That's not a suggestion. Why? Because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. So there's a promise.
Gloria: Your faith is not gonna work in a heart like that.
Kenneth: No, it can't.
Gloria: If you don't humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and believe what he says. Say it. Do it. Follow it. You're going to be on your own, so to speak.
Kenneth: Well, yeah. And notice here, you know people have a wrong idea of humility. Religion has, has presented the picture that to be humble, you have to debase yourself. That's not right at all. The scripture never tells you to, to, to debase yourself. No, it does not. It says to exalt the other higher than you. It didn't say debase yourself and said exalt them. Now, you know the Word of God just very simply says, think soberly. As God has given us the measure of faith. That's the way you're supposed to think. I've got faith here. And I'm not a weakling that the weak say I am strong, but I exalt you. I'm, I'm doing my best to to build you up and to encourage you and, and I humble myself before God.
Now go before God. I'm just so unworthy. I'm just so no good. No, that's not humility. That that's ignorance of the Word of God. Because when you got born again, you were made the righteousness of God in him. You were brought up to sit with him in heavenly places. He made you worthy. Not anything you did except the fact that you did receive him as Lord and savior. But we don't need to have a sin consciousness. We need to have a righteousness of God in him consciousness. So now listen to what he said and notice what true humility is. Now notice this. God resists the proud, gives grace. He gives grace.
Gloria: Favor.
Kenneth: To the humble. Now remember what it said in Hebrews 4:16? Whole for come boldly to the throne of grace, obtain mercy and find grace to help in a time of need. Holding fast to your confession. Amen. So here we go. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. Okay, this is a commandment. I'm ready, sir. I'll do whatever you say do. Casting all your care upon him for he cares for you. All right?
Now listen to this. In the amplified translation, casting the whole of your anxiety or care, all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all, once and for all, once and for all. This is a command. This is not optional. Once and for all on him, for he cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully. And he will exalt you. He will. He will. He will builds you up. He'll make you perfect, established, and settle you. Praise God, he will do it. But the first is the command; casting all your worry. Don't you ever worry another day your entire life. Brother Copeland, I can't do that. I know you can't, the power to do it is in the command.
Gloria: Read verse eight nine.
Kenneth: Oh yeah, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil as a roaring lion walking around seeking who he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. You come against him every time he tries to make you worry. You just say, shut up, I don't think that thought life anymore. We're out of time and we will get right in it tomorrow here, and we're going to flow with this.
Gloria: That went fast.
Kenneth: Oh, glory to God. Gloria and I will be back in just a moment.