Kenneth Copeland - How to Release Your Covenant Authority
The second chapter of Ephesians, let's begin with the fourth verse. "But God who is rich in mercy," He's rich in 'Chesed'. "For His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sin, has quickened us together with Christ, by grace are you saved, and has raised us up together, made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, He might show thee exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness, in his 'Chesed' toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works lest any man should boast, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Wherefore, remember! At that time, remember, you being in time past," now, we're His workmanship, but before that, before you got born again, "At that time, you were without Christ, being aliens from the common wealth of Israel and strangers, strangers from the covenants of promise. Without hope and without God in the world".
This is two blood sworn oaths. One in the blood of animals, then in the blood of men through circumcision and then through the blood of God at the cross. It's His Word, it's His bond. He said it, and it's forever true. To us it's not the Bible, it is His Word. It's His Word. Get that sown into your being, to the point where you are so like Jesus, in the fact that this Word cannot pass away, because a person who cannot lie and a person who refused to lie got together in a new covenant. You can't break the new covenant. You can't. It's between God and an immortal man. Uh, oh.
All you and I can do is get out of fellowship with it. But there's an article in this covenant, in that second one, that says, when you sin, repent. And He is faithful and He is just. He's just, and righteous, both same word in the Greek. He is just and He is righteous, First John 1:9. He is faithful and He is righteous to forgive you your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. That's a covenant brother. Hallelujah! Glory to God! That's our covenant. We got grafted in. Yeah! Can you see that though? See, our covenant is an everlasting covenant. It cannot be broken. It's between an almighty God and an immortal man.
Now, get this into your consciousness. Jesus is no less man that He was when He was on this earth. He said, after He's raised from the dead, he said, "Handle Me". Handle me! I, a spirit has not flesh and bone as you see Me have. All of His blood, all of it. Every drop of it, not a little container. Every drop of His blood is on the heavenly mercy seat in heaven itself. His blood is still alive and it is still there, and it's still representing you in me! Sometimes I just can't stand it. That blood man, that blood is still alive. Hallelujah! Awe, glory to God, hallelujah! And that covenant is alive forever. And we're in it, and He's in the us.
We've not been circumcised in the flesh, but the scripture says, "We've been circumcised of the heart, of the Spirit". That cut in the spirit. Your spirit being was cut the moment you got born again. You entered into the grandest covenant of the ages. The new birth, my God, man. I am totally, absolutely, irrevocably convinced. Particularly after what the Father said to me about it, that in the Spirit the devil can see that circumcision. He can see that cut in your spirit being. It is there representing the most dangerous thing to him that walks the face of this earth, a born again human being, with kind of authority of Jesus over all things, both in heaven and earth. We've been raised up to sit with Him in the heavenly places. He's on the right hand of the Father and we're on the right hand of Jesus. On the throne of grace.
While I was lying on the floor one day and oh God, oh God, and I heard it. Now there wasn't anything wrong with it. He said, "Kenneth, get up". I was on my face. He said, "What are you doing"? I said, "What do You mean, what am I doing? I've come boldly to the throne of grace". Well, that means, I have a right to come there. I can come boldly there. I belong there, I'm family, I'm in covenant. He's in covenant with me. But I just always saw it like that. He said, "Get up". "Okay". Now, every time I prayed there, in my minds eye, that's where I was. And this particular time, I was actually on my face.
Now, don't misunderstand, there's not a thing in the world wrong with that. I'm talking about concept, you understand? Concept of covenant authority means everything. He said, "Get up here and sit with Me. You have been made a king and a priest of My Father. Get up here boy. Come on, sit down here with Me". And in those days there was so much, particularly, I'm talking about, oh, you know, I'm talking about, 40 years ago, maybe a little more than that. There was so much, I'm so unworthy. I'm so unworthy. This was just running wild through, particularly among Pentecostal people. 'Cause that's what, it had just come up generation after generation after generation. And He reminded me that He did not make any unworthy new creatures. We're not worthy, but He made us worthy with His worthiness and we don't need to be going on about that anymore.
Now in myself, I'm worthless as two left shoes. Now, I have no worthiness of my own, but in Him, oh, man, I've been made the righteousness of God in Him. I'm strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. And how did I get there? He covenanted me in therewith His blood. Now, and back in that era. Jim, I could just see this. Okay, if you went away and said I was mocking somebody, you're wrong. I'm mocking the kind of thing that I thought. Back in the days when I was born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit and dumb as a rock. When it came to, I was scripturally illiterate. I didn't know. You mean Matthew, Mark, Luke and John told the same story. I said, "Gloria, have you ever noticed it"? Boy, I mean, that's Ned in the first primmer, itn't it? What's Ned in the first primmer? That's when school books taught little children to be nice Christian children.
Yeah, and you read about Ned and Jane, and Dick and Jane. And right up on the mantle in our bedroom, there's this little, two little bookends and two little small books in there. 'Cause this was just a couple of weeks ago. And I'm walking by there and looked at that and I thought, "What is that"? I thought maybe they were, you know, just fake books. Two little bitty book ends and these two little books in them. Kenneth Copeland, March, 1941. Huh? I believe it was March. Anyway, I wasn't very big. It was my reader. It was my reader. And it was about these little kids and it read, it said in there, the pictures are real and the stories are real. I've read the whole book. Amen!
That's about how much people know about covenant. His blood made me worthy. Brother Hagin said in that first vision, in 1950 in Rockwall, Texas. And it was the very first one he had like this. And Jesus said, he kept hearing Him say, "Come up hither, come up to the throne of God". Well, they'd had rain and they were in a tent and it backed up against this kind of a high wall and he thought somebody was up there, you know, hollering down, making fun of the Pentecostals. Come up hither, come up to the throne of God.
Well, it had been raining. They'd been having the tent full, but this night they only had about 40 people in there and they were just all praying. And he's praying in the Spirit, had his head down, his eyes closed, and he thought, "Well, the pastor 'll take care of that, whoever it is". "Come up hither, come up to the throne of God". He said, "Why doesn't somebody take care of that? I don't like to be bothered when I'm praying". And he heard it a third time loud, "Come up hither, come up to the throne of God".
And he thought, well, and he looked up and there was Jesus right there. Just right there. And He took him up to the throne of God. He actually had the sense of flying through the clouds, going through to the throne of God. And they went and he glanced over towards the throne and he saw some kind of a form and he wouldn't look at it, because he knew what the scripture said. He wouldn't look there. And then Jesus turned and looked at him and he said, "I just melted". He said that "His eyes," he said, "I can't, the only way I've ever been able to describe His eyes. They're like pools of living love. And His eyes," he said, "I melted and fell at his feet and put my hands on his feet and said, 'I'm so unworthy.'" And He very sternly said, "Stand upright on your feet".
There are no unworthy new creatures. Hallelujah! It's still, I listen. Gloria and I listen to him all the time. He's been in heaven's since 2003, but he's still in our bedroom. I gotta tell you this. One night that he preached at Rhema Church during a meeting that was especially, and I'd heard that he talked about something in that service that I'd never heard him say, and I really wanted to hear it. And so, it was video instead of just audio. And I had our little thing, we sit the iPad in. So, we're watching this, watched that entire service, and I really got what I was after. Ah, man. But when he started giving the invitation, since she and I are saved, we decided, well, you know, but he was still talking on there.
I leaned over to kiss her and she put her hands on that iPad, and she said, "Not in front of Brother Hagin". Not in front of Brother Hagin. You said that Gloria, now, you know, you said that. No unworthy new creatures. That's enough right there to send you a home with a glory in your heart and mind. He bled and died and went to hell and suffered more than any man before or any man since, because He suffered the depth of the pit. You know, He did that. The scripture is so plain about it. You know, He did that. Doc, I'm gonna tell you something that shook me to my core. I've been asking God to let me say it publicly, and He wouldn't do it. And I just was released, because this is a group that's been taught. And we know, we know He went to hell for three days and three nights. He said He would, as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth.
He got there and there was Judas. There was Judas saying, "My God". You talk about bad choices. "Well, Brother Copeland, I think it was saved". You just don't know what you're coming from. Jesus said it, "It'd be better for him if he was thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck". And he committed double suicide, he hung himself out over evidently, the side of a cliff and then the limb broke and he fell down into the rocks and he burst open. All of it answering the scripture that says it in the first covenant. Professor Stephens, we went through that. We went through that together. He showed me his name in the first covenant. His name was not Judas, it was Judah. His name was Judah. And he's in there? Of course it's in there. And there he was. And he's thinking about that tonight, because in the Spirit a day is a thousand years and a thousand years, is as a day.
Judas lives a thousand years every day thinking of what did I do? What did I do? I'm here forever and ever. And he hears every word Jesus said, and he hears every word of the Bible. He knows he's headed for the lake of fire and he can't get out and he can't do anything about it. And he's in hell and it's hell and it's hell and it's hell and it's hell and it's hell. Somebody said, "Well, I've been to hell, I've seen hell on earth". No, you haven't. You don't know what hell is. The same God that created heaven, and as magnificent as it is, created hell, not for men, but for the devil and his angels. It's hell! Gehenna! It's putrid. And it's night and day forever and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and he can't get it back.
And if you don't know Jesus as your Lord, you need to just do it, do it right now, don't wait 'til later. I mean, while you're breathing right there, you do it now! It's the easiest thing you ever did in your life, "Lord, what do You want me to do"? That's what the apostle Paul, when he was Saul of Tarsus, that's what he prayed. Lord! When he called Him Lord. And he was seeing Him, He knew he had been raised from the dead. No wonder he said in the 10th chapter of Romans, "Whosoever believes in his heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and calls him, Lord, shall be saved". Shall be "Sozoed". In Greek, it means healed, saved, delivered, made sound, made strong. When the Greek read that, they thought they were supposed to be healed the same as they were to be saved, the same thing. Hey, y'all, I'm supposed to be healed at the same time. Look at the Word, it just said that!