Kenneth Copeland - Expect the Goodness of God
Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland and once again this is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. And this is students in class, Kenneth Copeland Bible College. Praise the Lord. Yeah. Glory to God. Well, people say I'm old school. That's right. I'm old and I went to school, but the very idea of having my name on any kind of school except hard knocks. I mean, that would be my own way of thinking. And Gloria said this to me. She must have said it three times at least this morning. So I want to share it with you. She said, "Kenneth, this is the most important thing we've ever done". And I said, "I believe it". I believe that with all my heart.
She said, "Think about this. People going on all over the world that know the Word of faith". We're just a small, a very small minority of Christians that know the Word of Faith. What does that mean? Well, number one, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. But of course, faith is a key issue here. The key issue is love because faith works by love. Amen. So love is the key issue and God is a good God, but to know what faith is, it is a spiritual force to know how it works. It is the connector between God and His blessing. It's impossible to please Him about faith because without faith, He can't bless you. It's that simple. It's very simple, but very profound. And to know how it works, to know what it is, to know where it comes from. It doesn't come out of the mind. It comes out of the born again human spirit to know what feeds it. It's fed by the Word of God, the anointed Word of the Living God. Jesus, everywhere He went.
Now, you know this and I know this, that traditionally people thought this and a lot of them still do around the world that Jesus just went about healing everybody to prove that He was divine. No, He never did call Himself the Son of God. He called Himself the Son of Man. He's the Son of Man. Amen. Glory to God. But what did He do? He went everywhere... What? Teaching was first. Preaching and healing. I asked, well, just a few days ago what's the difference between teaching and preaching and Terry, bless his heart. said it's about an hour and a half. "Was he talking about me"? Yes. You preach, you get through in a hurry, but you teach it takes a long time. What's the difference? One is proclaiming and the other is detailing. But anointed teaching is what stirs the faith of people because of revealed knowledge.
When someone is preaching or exhorting, you get excited and that's good. Hey, hey, come on. That's wonderful. That's the beginning, but then under teaching and little small things and for me like knowing Cornelius is the centurion, which blesses me through and through and things like that. But that's not the big thing. The big thing is that, oh yeah, oh yeah. And if someone next to you say, "Did you see that"? And he says, "No, I didn't see nothing". Well, both heard the same thing, but suddenly revelation of that scripture insight, ideas come from it in the kingdom of God. And especially when you begin to realize not just saying yeah just because you're supposed to. You begin to realize that God is so good. And people get really jealous of us because we start with nothing and in a little while we started having and having and having and having and having and then having and having and having and having and having, and they say, "He must be doing something wrong".
Well, did it ever occur to you that we might be doing something right? Come on. Amen. Glory to God. And your ministry just takes off. It should, it should. Well, praise God. So now then, let's read our scripture from the Gospel of Luke, the good news of Luke in the 18th chapter. 18th verse, "A certain ruler asked him saying, 'Good master, good teacher, good rabbi. What shall I do to inherit eternal life"? That's a good question, isn't it? "But Jesus stopped him immediately before He would even answer him. Then He went ahead and answered him, but He wanted to make sure he understood. Jesus said unto him. 'Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, and that is God".
God is a good God. And we went back all the way to the beginning of this creation. God saw that it was good and He saw that it was good, and He saw all that He created that it was very good. Then He said, "Uh oh, something's not good here. This man is alone. He needs a helper. He needs someone to love him. He needs someone to walk with him and talk with him. He needs a companion. I can't be a companion to him. I don't have a body yet". But see, we know. We look back there and we know Jesus is a manifestation of God and His goodness. And we read Acts 10:38, how God who is so good, anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power, healing power who went about doing good. Doing good and healing... all that were oppressed to the devil.
Now, who is the all? All of those that would believe what He said. They didn't all get it, but all that did He healed. And to show you how important that laying on of hands is, which is a fundamental principle of the doctrines of Christ, the laying on of hands, Hebrews 6. But show you how important laying on of hands was to Jesus, that's what He went to when they wouldn't listen to Him. They wouldn't believe Him. They wouldn't listen to Him. So what did He do? Well, I'll do this. And in my heart and mind, He was raised there. He knew everybody there that day or most everybody. So there were those that had been good to Him, so He laid hands on some of them anyway and He healed a few. Does that prove His will or what? That healing is for us? Yes. Why? Because God is just as good as He ever was and so is Jesus, and He's still the healer. "God is a good God".
Now that came out of my father in the faith ministry, Oral Roberts, who said it all the time, "Something good is going to happen to you today". Why? Because God is a good God and the devil is a bad devil. And he stirred up everybody with that. Amen. This still just thrills me. One of his, I don't remember whether it's a board member or not, but anyway. He would come on television to say, "Something good is going to happen to you today". And this man said his mother who was 90-years-old was walking across the room and the television was on. And he said she didn't even look at the television. And Oral said, "Something good is going to happen to you today". And she said, "Well, let her happen, sonny". Let her happen. Just let her happen. Glory to God. so say it. "Something good is going to happen to you today". Something good is happening right now. Something good.
Now you can use this as a weapon. "Well, now how Brother Copeland"? Well, I personally don't agree with the politics that are in Washington, D.C. right now, but that's no strange thing to God. He's been dealing with politicians a long, long time. He said to me one time, he said, "You understand I'm the same God that dealt with Pharaoh. And it's the same devil I was dealing with then". And He said, "These politicians now are... in them compared to those people". And so you can just say, "Something good's going to happen to the United States today. Something good is going to happen in Canada today. Something good is going to happen in the nations today" because God is on His throne and Jesus is seated at His right hand and His people should know how good He really is. Amen.
So now then, let's go back to Ezekiel 28. "Well, what about the devil, Brother Copeland"? And like I said yesterday, "Well, what about him"? Ezekiel 28. Now we read that first 10 verses. It was talking to the prince, the Prince of Tyrus and then God spoke to the King of Tyrus and in the 15th verse, "Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created until iniquity was found in thee". Verse 17, "Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. Thou hast corrupted that wisdom by reason of your brightness, I will cast thee forced to the ground. I will lay thee before kings that they may behold thee. Thou has defiled thou sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, multitude of your iniquities by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore I will bring forth a fire in the midst of thee that shall devour thee. I bring the ashes upon the Earth in the sight of all of them that behold thee. And all the people that know thee among the people shalt be astonished at thee. Thou shalt be a terror and never shalt you be anymore". Never. No redemption for him. He had no tempter. He created the lie. Amen.
Now from the 14th chapter of Isaiah and... I'm going to be reading from the New King James, but let's go there first in the King James and start reading with the ninth verse. "Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming. It stirreth up the dead for thee". Now remember, the King of Tyrus was in the Garden of Eden. Now you're going to find out things this morning that the body of Christ knows absolutely nothing about. I'm talking about absolutely nothing. 99% of them never heard of it. What few have heard of it don't believe it. Well, it's all in the Word. It's all in this book. And the book of Isaiah is a mini Bible. There's 66 chapters in it. There's 66 books in the Bible. That's not an accident either. There are no accidents in this book on either side of it. Thank You, Lord.
"They shall speak and to say under thee, 'Art thou also become weak as we or thy become like unto us. Thy pomp is brought down to the grave and the noise of thy viols". That's where you get the word violin. "The worm is spread unto thee, and the worms over thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer..." Your cross-reference will say, "O Day Star or Morning Star" and some translations don't even bother to put the name Lucifer in there, but that's wrong. That's his name. That is his name. So, "How art thou cut down to the ground"? That's not just a way of saying something. Ground is correct here. Dirt, ground. "Thou art cast down to the ground, which did weaken the nations. For thou has said in thine heart, 'I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also in the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north'", that is extremely valuable information, "'I will ascend above the heights of the cloud. I will be like the Most High'".
He was right here on Earth. "Yet, you shall be brought down to hell". Hell was created for the devil and his angels, a long time before this race of mankind was even here. Now this answers are a lot of friendly fusses about the creation. "I will be like the Most High". Now watch this. "Yet, you shall be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit that they that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider these saying, 'Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms"? Listen. "That made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof, that open not the house of his prisoners? All the kings of the nations, even all of them lie in glory, everyone in his own house, but thou are cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch".
Now, you just listen. New King James. "Hell from beneath is excited about you, to meet you at your coming. It stirs up the dead for you. All the chief ones of the Earth, it has raised up from their thrones on the kings of the nations. They shall speak and say it to you. Have you also become as weak as we are? Have you become like us? Your pomp is brought down to Sheol"? That really is translated hell, but it just simply means the place of the dead. "And the sound of your stringed instruments, the maggot is spread under you and worms cover you. How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer son of the morning? How you are cut down to the ground, you who weaken the nations for you have said in your heart, you said it in your heart, 'I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will also sit on the mountain of congregation on the farthest sides of the north. I will ascend above the clouds, the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High, yet you shall be brought down to Sheol to the lowest depths of the pit". It will be that way.
Now turn to Genesis chapter one. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep". Between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 are eons of time. "And darkness was upon the face of the earth". Why? Because water covered it. God didn't create the Earth out of water. He flooded it. And when He said replenish the Earth, He meant just that. I've got 15 seconds. I'm going to tell you there was a race of people here before that and we'll talk about it tomorrow.