Kenneth Copeland - Identify With Jesus
Kenneth Copeland: Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland. And today on the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast, we make history. We started the daily broadcast right at the close of 1989 and had gotten full gear in 1990. Now there's been times that we did more than, you understand, our normal procedure is to do a week's broadcast in one day. And then you do the second week broadcast the next day. Since 1989, we have done multiple broadcast because we had to have them. Greg Stephens, this is the first time we ever did it because the material was so powerful and we couldn't get it all done. So, praise God, today we set a ministry record today. Glory be to God.
Father, we thank you for it. Oh, we are so grateful to you for opening the eyes of our understanding and flooding our hearts with the light of the word. And we praise you for it. They entrance of your word, floods light into our being for our spirit man is the flood light of the Lord into our beings. And we're so grateful. Thank you. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Glory to God.
Kenneth Copeland: Professor Greg Stephens.
Greg Stephens: Yes, sir.
Kenneth Copeland: Thank you, man.
Greg Stephens: Thank you, sir.
Kenneth Copeland: I'll tell you. I'll never get over this. Now, I'm going to do a better job of introducing you today. International, listen to this, international Alliance of messianic congregations and synagogues, April 11th, 2020, to whom it may concern this letter will serve as a reference for pastor Dr. Greg Stephens. The international Alliance of messianic congregations and synagogues is the largest umbrella of affiliated messianic Jewish congregations in the world. The IAMSC is Rabbinic pastoral arm of the messianic Jewish Alliance of America. The largest national organization of messianic Jews in the world formed in 1915.
Greg Stephens: Before Israel was.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah. Oh yeah. A long time for it. I met. And he goes in and talk about this. Frankly, I cannot recall any non-Jewish believer in all of my dealings that has grasped the overall sweep of God's plan for Israel, the Jewish people, the role of the non-Jew to provoke Israel, the Jewish people to jealousy, Roman 11:11, and mind the deep truths of scripture, especially from the Tanach and has been able to so effectively teach those truths both to Jews, non-believers, and believers, and non Jews alike as pastor Stephens. Although pastor Stephens has not needed a credential to minister to Jewish people in the collegial context, he finds himself in. If he ever did desire or require one with his current background cited above, I believe there would be little doubt that he would be fast tracked by our steering committee to the licensure program leading to full pronounce it.
Greg Stephens: Um, uh it's uh, it's ordination. It's ordination.
Kenneth Copeland: Semikhah.
Greg Stephens: Yeah. It's ordination.
Kenneth Copeland: I should have just kept reading. Ordination with the IAMCS as a messianic pastor or teacher. Messianic rabbi Joel Lieberman.
Greg Stephens: He's the head of the, he's president head of the entire congregation.
Kenneth Copeland: Why didn't you bring this? I'm just glad to get it, Glory to God.
Greg Stephens: I had the honor and privilege of setting on the board, only Gentile that I'm aware of that ever sat on their board. And rabbi Joel, he is a Jonathon to me. He is a blood brother to me. Now, I would go talk to the other rabbis that were Orthodox and converse with them. And there's been many times I'd go to Joel and say, Joel, you got to help me with, and I won't call their names for their sake. You gotta help me with what he just said, teach me something, because this is a believer, you know, just like Jonathan Kahn is, grew up Orthodox Jew, but eyes were opened and had become a believer in Jesus is the Messiah and has confessed him just like the disciples did. And I've learned through Joel that I am a messianic, because I believe in the Messiah and use his name. As we talked about last week. So, what an honor he wrote that for me. That was somebody had asked me, you know, when the Bible school we're getting all of our paperwork together at KCBC and they wanted to know my background and training, and I said, Joel, he wrote that. Dear friend love him dearly.
Kenneth Copeland: Praise God.
Greg Stephens: Amen.
Kenneth Copeland: That's why he is professor Greg Stephens in Kenneth Copeland Bible college. Amen. Now, Whoa man. Glory to God. Let's go to our golden text once again. In second Peter chapter 1. Oh my, Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our savior Jesus Christ the Messiah, the anointed one. Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. According as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and Godliness, everything that pertains to life, everything that pertains to godliness. Through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and excellence whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious...
Greg Stephens: Promises, promises.
Kenneth Copeland: Parentheses covenant promises.
Greg Stephens: Yes, sir.
Kenneth Copeland: That's God's Word. Now wait a minute, what does that mean? His Word. His promise. God's Word is his bond. It's impossible for him to lie. It would have been possible for Jesus to lie but he didn't lie.
Greg Stephens: That's right.
Kenneth Copeland: Amen. Hallelujah. His word is good. Amen.
Greg Stephens: Word is.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah. His Word is.
Greg Stephens: Just as much as he is.
Kenneth Copeland: Now, then we spent two weeks comparing diligently first covenant truths. And the professor here through his years of study. I just, I just sat here stunned at things that I read, man. And read, read, read, read, and read. Yesterday I learned it. Yeah. Glory to God, man. I'll forever, just for ever being indebted to you for what you put into me yesterday and the day before, but now we're going over into the second covenant. Oh. And I also received this from Greg a long time ago. First and second covenant, you go, surely you know this, you start with one and go to two, but you have to understand the second one to understand the first one. But then you have to understand the first one to glean everything there is to know in the second one.
Greg Stephens: What's available to you.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was a promise in the first and we own it now.
Greg Stephens: Right. That's correct.
Kenneth Copeland: So let's go to the book of Romans and the greatest teaching rabbi in the history of the earth second only to Jesus, Saul of Tarsus who became Paul.
Greg Stephens: Absolute true.
Kenneth Copeland: Oh man.
Greg Stephens: Best of the best, trained by the best.
Kenneth Copeland: I love him so. And Romans chapter 4. Well, you know, then you want to go back to Roman. The book of Romans is a classic. It is a lawyer's dream of arguing the case of the first covenant and having become what was accounted righteousness and moved over into becoming righteous. Just simply meaning right standing with God.
Greg Stephens: Romans is about righteousness.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah, it is a righteousness book.
Greg Stephens: Let me, let me try to break it down this way. And then I want you to get in it. It's this, Paul makes a case, a legal case that the Jew has a covenant and is still subject to sin. The Gentile had no covenant, was a stranger and alien to the covenant of promise.
Kenneth Copeland: That's right.
Greg Stephens: And still is subject is sin. So both of us are in the same boat, even though they have a covenant, they're not walking in the fullness of it because the fullness of it will be ratified in Christ Jesus. And so he brings the power for both of us, which goes right to what Paul wrote in our other golden texts is in Ephesians chapter 2. We are now part of this. So he's making this point that we have a covenant now with the two, the two groups have come together and Romans 4 really points that out. That we have come together as one new man.
Kenneth Copeland: Now here's another thing Greg, that you and I were discussing before he came in the studio. Let me ask you this question. Why covenant? Why do you have to have one in first place, man? You just have a promise. I mean, I can just promise you the truth. You have to go back to the beginning. God and Adam, his son were exactly alike.
Greg Stephens: Yes. Yeah.
Kenneth Copeland: And is just as much alike as Jesus and God. Jesus is called the second and last Adam, they're just exactly alike until Adam broke. He broke the understood living covenant he had with his father, the one who created him, God gave him dominion over all the work of his hands, including the stars, the universe and the whole business. He owned it all. God created it and gave it to him as his son. I remember when I was in high school, man. It was Christmas, and I was 17, well, I had just turned 18. He bought me a brand new motorcycle. I really didn't realize they made new ones. I mean, a new one are you kidding me? And of course they hid it from, and my dad worked, he stayed out in the field extra to have money enough to buy that motorcycle. And of course mother didn't want me to have it, but my daddy said, he's gonna have it. She said, okay. Oh man.
Greg Stephens: I understand.
Kenneth Copeland: And now my father gave me that because he loved me. But it was mine. And when everybody comes, particularly my motorcycle buddies in high school came running up, man, you got a new trial for Christmas? I said, yeah! Greg, I, you know, it's not really mine. It's my father. My father gave this to me. Are you kidding? It's mine, man. This is mine, this belongs to me, the earth and all of its fullness belong to Adam. It belonged to him, it was his. But he broke that relationship. Now God can't get back in there. The picture of it is right before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God entered a blood agreement and changed his name from Abram to Abraham.
Greg Stephens: Right, put his name in there.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah. Heshem.
Greg Stephens: Heshem, Yahawah, with the ha in there.
Kenneth Copeland: Right in the center of his name. Now that's lost on Gentile people until you learn. But God is in the middle of everything now through covenant and with God being in the middle of his covenant friend, Abraham. Now he has entrance into the earth. He can come in here, but he cannot come in without talking with Abraham first.
Greg Stephens: It'd be illegal.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah. He couldn't do it. Now, Jesus said in the 18th chapter of Matthew, it'd be interesting to look that up because this goes to the very heart of what we're talking about here. Verse 18. Now this was taught, this was not out in the field Jesus is at home. He taught this whole chapter in Capernaum in the house. So the place, it was a big place and full family and the disciples, and he had a little child and they took somebody's child and brought them in. And so listen to what he says, whatsoever you bind on earth. On earth, professor. Whatsoever you bind on earth then shall be bound in heaven. And whatsoever you loose on earth then shall be loosed in heaven. And until you do that, the agreement is no good.
Greg Stephens: Wow.
Kenneth Copeland: He hadn't done anything but agree, but you'll have to bind the devil because God not going to bind him there's nowhere in the Bible that that God ever bound the devil for anybody.
Greg Stephens: It reminds me of a story Brother Hagin, you've heard him teach this. He was there, Jesus is standing in front of him. And there was this, a little demon.
Kenneth Copeland: Yack yack yack.
Greg Stephens: He's trying to hear Brother Hagin, can't hear him for that little demon. And finally Brother Hagin had enough of it and said, get out of here, something to that.
Kenneth Copeland: In the name of Jesus.
Greg Stephens: In the name of Jesus, and it ran away. And he could hear Jesus, and I've tried to remember how the story went exactly. Jesus basically told him I couldn't do anything about it.
Kenneth Copeland: He said, if you hadn't done that, I couldn't.
Greg Stephens: Yeah.
Kenneth Copeland: Brother Hagin said, no, I'm not hearing you right. You said, if I hadn't done that, you wouldn't. No no, he said, if you hadn't done that, I couldn't, I don't have the authority. You do because you have been given my name and there lies the authority.
Greg Stephens: And that's walking it out, binding it and loosening it.
Kenneth Copeland: Now it's your turn.
Greg Stephens: So when you look at this, Jesus accomplished all of this for us on the cross. I'll ask you this in the short time that we have remaining, Paul tries to get it across to us to understand something. It's the hardest thing for me to understand. It was, I don't know if it was religion or what, yeah that's what it was. In me of the way I was raised. But you know, we identify ourselves with the Passover Seder, that meal as if we were there. Well, did you do the same thing with the cross when crucifixion time comes every year and Easter, and we start picturing ourselves, you know, well if I would have been there, you know all that.
Kenneth Copeland: Particularly back in the very, very beginning.
Greg Stephens: So, who were you? Were you a disciple that was there? Or were you a Roman soldier that was there? Or were you one of the crowd that was give us Barabbas or?
Kenneth Copeland: Well never.
Greg Stephens: Which one? Who do you identify yourself with? Was I with John and Mary standing there at the foot of the cross? Let me tell you who you were. You were Jesus.
Kenneth Copeland: Well, that's good.
Greg Stephens: You weren't any of that crowd because of covenant you were Jesus.
Kenneth Copeland: I got, I got this Greg and I, I took a lot of heat for saying it there for a little while, but you know, heat didn't bother me. So I saw something, I always, every time he would teach on the woman that was healed from the issue of blood, I was in that with her. Because I was constantly in the frame of mind, you know, Sergio, receiving from him.
Sergio: Yes, sir.
Kenneth Copeland: But now Cynthia, one day I'm doing that and I could see myself as that woman. And the Lord said, get up from there. What? He said, I said, get up from there. Marcos, he said, you're the one with the hymn of the garment because I have sent you into my healing.
Greg Stephens: That's it. That's it. And what he's done, this is what I'm trying to get across to you. What he's done is he's placed you in identification. You're you have a new identity. You're in the witness protection program. You have a new identity.
Kenneth Copeland: You're not Adam anymore. No, no. You don't identify with him anymore.
Greg Stephens: So you know this because you're recording artists, there's a microphone, I won't do it. If I were to hit this microphone right here on my shirt, there'll be a pop, the audio guy would jump back there. And every duplication you make after this, at that exact point, there'll be that pop.
Kenneth Copeland: That pop is in there.
Greg Stephens: And when Adam fell, all of us born in Adam had that same flaw, but Jesus came now what would I have to do to fix that? They'll have to go into the editing sweetening room and they'll have to remaster that master.
Kenneth Copeland: That's right.
Greg Stephens: And so that's what happened.
Kenneth Copeland: You've been remastered.
Greg Stephens: I've been remastered.
Kenneth Copeland: In more ways than one.
Greg Stephens: In more was than one.
Kenneth Copeland: I've been remastered.
Greg Stephens: Right. And all the scratches and pops and all of those things are gone in my life now because I'm identified with him now, that's covenant.
Kenneth Copeland: Yes it is.
Greg Stephens: And it's a legal thing. And Satan or anybody can't do anything about it.
Kenneth Copeland: It's called substitution and identification. He became our substitute, went to the cross so we can change our identification. And we're out of time.
Greg Stephens: And we're out of time.