Kenneth Copeland - What Is Unbelief?
And I'll take a moment and say a little bit more about unbelief. Unbelief is not non-belief there's no such thing as non-belief. You're believing something all the time. All the time. I mean, you have a conscious mind. You're believing something all the time. You had to believe that that seat would hold you up or you wouldn't have sat down on it. But that's just natural human faith that had to be trained into you as a child. You were taught by your parents, the things to be cautious for, because you and I and all the rest of us crawled around the room and just pick up anything we can find and stick it in our mouth. Some of that didn't need to go in your mouth, baby. And your mama said, "Put that down".
Well, it wasn't long till you didn't chew on that anymore. And you quit trying to stick bobby pins in an electrical outlet. Praise God. You had to learn. Then you had to begin to learn things spiritually. What is unbelief? I could hand you... Now, this is the Holy Bible. There are different kinds of Bibles. I'm familiar with the Shooter's Bible. That's what it's called, the Shooter's Bible. It is a gathering of facts concerning firearms and so forth. And it's been proven to be correct. So you can believe it. It is a Bible, but it is not a Holy Bible. And the only reason that's considered correct is because somebody said it is.
Now, as technology increases, that may turn out to be not quite right. But this one, as technology increases, it finds out that this was right all the time. Yep. It's simply not believing what God has already said. That is unbelief. What happened at Nazareth? Jesus used the Scripture, the covenant that they knew. The prophet, Isaiah, he preached from his text. He found the place where it was written in the prophet Isaiah. And read from that, what you and I know is the 61st chapter of the Book of Isaiah, were the same words that He said there in the fourth chapter of Luke, are right there in the 61st chapter of Isaiah. He quoted the scripture, He qualified it. He quoted it. And then He talked about Elijah and He talked about Elisha. He used Scripture and they didn't believe it. And that is unbelief. And in the environment of unbelief, there could do no mighty work. It wasn't that He wouldn't, He said He couldn't. And He marveled at their unbelief. Amen. That's what unbelief is.
The problem with church unbelief is wrapped up in what Jesus said to the most religious people of the day. He said this actually to the ministry. He never did berate the people. Never. He always went directly to the ministry and He said, your traditions make the Word of God of no effect. You've taken the Word and changed it to fit what you want to do, instead of what God said to do. Now, that's traditional disobedience, that's not what you would call unbelief. That's believing the wrong thing, reading the same book. I liken it unto this. I own a General Motors SUV. But in order to figure out how to change the tire on my Cadillac SUV, I go get a handbook out of a Ford Explorer. This is not going to work out good. Particularly I'm out in the rain, so I'm not trying to figure out how to get the jack to work.
That's not going to work. And you don't ever want to do what comes after that and get frustrated and get mad at the book. You're looking in the wrong place. You're looking at a book about a car, but it's the wrong car. And you get ahold of books at times of what people said the Bible said, and it didn't say that at all. That's a different kind of confusion and unbelief. Can you take just the closing part of it? Well, if you can't. Goodnight. I'm going to finish this. Faith's motive is always love. Jesus told him to go preach what God had had great compassion on him. Faith works by love. The rich young ruler, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Of course, He loves them all, but it made a point of saying, He looked at him with the look of love. Oh hallelujah. Thank You, Jesus. Isn't that amazing? I'm going to read this to you. Ephesians 5:1, in the Classic Amplified. "Therefore", King James says, "Be followers of God". Well, "Therefore be imitators of God. Copy him and follow his example as well beloved children imitate their father and walk in love".
When I first realized that, and I found out many years ago, the Greek word translated, followers of God, is mimetes. We get our word mimic from it. Imitate Him. He is in us. We can imitate Him. We can walk in love like God. And we have that kind of faith because we have the faith of God. It's in us to do this. It is in us to do it. That little woman in Jamaica, it was love that cut the devil off at the knees. Just the simple message, Jesus loves you. We went on that night to New Hope, got out there, and as I said, it was very, very dark. Man, I'm telling you, particularly in the mountains of the Caribbean, it's dark as inside of a barrel. I mean, you can't see. And they had a little makeshift podium that was a stump with a board stuck on up top, nailed on the top of it at an angle. And they had a kerosene lantern hanging right here, kind of in my eyes. And all the people are black. I can't see anybody. It looked like about a half a dozen people there. And I'm trying to preach to them. And I'm preaching on the power and the authority of Jesus' name.
Now, I just came out of that spooky house and I just witnessed the power of that name. And I started preaching the name, just talking... I really wasn't preaching much. Just... Just talking about the name. And all of a sudden, there's a man walked right up in front of that podium. I mean, he just walked right up there in my face. I didn't see him till he was about three or four, five feet away because it was so dingy in there. He just walked up right in front of me. "Lay your hands on me, I will be healed". So I just stepped out from behind that little podium and I just put my hands on him in the name of Jesus. He turned around and walked off. More of them started lining up. And so I started laying hands on them in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. And I got out to where I could see a little bit and then my eyes adjusted. And I've always had really, really good vision and particularly night vision. But anyway, then I could see.
There were people, I mean, there was a rock wall right there in the edge of that banana grove. And people were all over it. I'm guessing somewhere around five, 600 people sitting out there that I didn't even know that they were there. I couldn't see. And I laid hands on a lot of them that night. Finally, went over in the pastor's car and sat down and he came. He was walking around. He got into it too, then. I mean, we laid hands on people. And it was a woman, just walked up to me and she said, "Brother Copeland, thank you very much. I was blind, now I see. Thank you very much". I said, "Do you know her"? "Oh yeah". Honestly. Well, I mean, what's she talking about she sees? By spiritually? "No, no, no. Blind. She's a blind woman". I said, I don't understand this. You're going to have to help me, man. It seems to me like that she would be a little bit more excited about it than that. "Oh, she's excited". He said, "Brother Copeland, you have to understand we were taught by the British. We don't get excited till we get home". He said, when she gets home, you wait and see. I was blind, now I see. Thank you very much. Praise God. Walking in love. John 13, the Gospel of John. Praise You, Jesus.
You have to understand, John, starting right at chapter 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 is all in that last covenant meal. And it's very intimate. And it's in the middle of the night. And Jesus is speaking words to them that right now they don't even understand. They had no way of knowing when He said, "In that day", what day was He talking about? Just a few days from now, you're going to be filled with the Holy Spirit. "In that day you'll ask me nothing. But whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, He'll give it to you. And the works that I do shay ye do also". But He had just said, right there in the 14th chapter, He had just said, "The words that I speak are not mine. For it is the Father that dwells within me, He does the works. And He that loves me and keeps my commandments, my Father will love him". John 14:21. "I will love him. And I will manifest myself to him". All of this is covenant speech as He took the cup and the bread of the new covenant in my body and in my blood. Marvelous, marvelous. But look at this, verse 33, "Little children, yet a little while I'm with you. You will seek me and as I said unto the Jews, where I go, you can't come.
Now I say unto you a new commandment, I give unto you that you love one another"... See that little semi-colon right there? Put the word "just" in there. "That you love one another, just as I have loved you". "That you also love one another by this shall all men know that you're my disciple. If you love one another". He went to that cross, went to hell and paid an awesome, terrible price for it. In it. You have to let Jesus actually die in your own heart and mind before you can ever actually live. He died... What is spiritual death? Spiritual death is being separated from God. The Bible said, Jesus said it. You're dead while you still live. Well, that just means you're separated from God. You need to get born again. And what then? Then you live. Well He was manifested in the flesh, but He was made alive in the spirit. Let Him die. He died the real death, went into hell and suffered there, like no man has ever suffered before or ever will again. And in the midst of that pit, the Spirit of God and His magnificent voice, you can see it in the first chapter of the book of Hebrews.
"Again, I'll be a Father to Him. Again, He'll be a Son to me". And He said, that's enough. That's enough. And He became the first-born from the dead. Whoa, the first-born. The first-born, the first-born. We can't realize that we are born from the dead, glory to God. We've been raised up with Him. We've been made to sit with Him in heavenly places. And when we walk in love the way He walks in love, there's nothing in this whole earth that can stop us or pull us down. That's why we were born again to begin with. My Lord, my God. Hallelujah, dear Lord. And it's all wrapped up in the love of God and loving people and meeting the needs of people. And I'll surprise you with this. He does not supply our needs... He doesn't supply us with things that meet our needs. No, the apostle Paul wrote to pastor Timothy and said, "Tell the people, remember He's a good God. And He gives us all things richly to enjoy and it meets your needs. To enjoy. But He didn't give you your car to love. He gave it to you to enjoy. I don't love my new car, but I do enjoy it because Jesus is the source of it".