Kenneth Copeland - The Goodness of God Is Powerful
— Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast, and yesterday I really stepped off into a place that I lost track of time and I really didn't. I said, "Let's get this on tape". I had forgotten that we had actually started the broadcast, and then I'd made light of it as I went through yesterday. But I...
— I know, Brother Copeland, when you did that, the anointing was so strong right here.
— Yes, it was.
— And I had the privilege of being around Brother Hagin sometimes and he would do that very thing right there, exactly. It was was kind of a flashback. I'm like, "He's about to prophesy. He's about to".
— Yeah, I began to see things and I really didn't know. In the broadcast, I really didn't know where I was. And somehow or another I got it in my mind that we hadn't started yet. And then everybody went like that. I was like, "You dummy". And then I made light of it. But I was just trying to cover my own dumb way of doing things.
— The anointing has been so strong in this room. Do you agree? As we talked about the goodness of God, his presence shows up.
— Let's open our Bibles to the...
— Exodus.
— Exodus 23. Now, this is a great healing scripture here, but it has been misquoted just because of not reading. Just taking scripture out of its context. That's not a good thing to do. Read around it. I have mentioned it before. In fact, I think I've said something about it last week. When you pull the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy out by itself without reading chapter 27, you don't get it. This was responsive reading. One would shout the curse and the other would shout the blessing. It wasn't all a blessing and then all the curse. It was going back and forth, and it looks as though God was smiting people.
— No. He said it correctly. "If you hearken not to my word," and so forth, "All these curses will come on you and overtake you". He didn't have to do it. The devil is there ready to do that. Anyway. But there's something like that with this. So let's go there. Verse 25. "You shall serve the Lord your God. He will bless your bread and water. I will take sickness from the midst of you". Now, it's not God blessing your bread and water. Back up, verse 23. "My angel shall go before you and bring you," and so forth and so on. There's an angel involved in this. Moses said, "Do we had to do this by ourselves"? He said, "No, I'm sending an angel, and you better be careful around him. Don't you provoke him," because, I mean, he doesn't have any pity. He just does what he's told.
— Exactly. He doesn't grade on the curve at all.
— No, he doesn't. So now you know. Look at it. "You shall serve the Lord your God. Your angel shall bless your bread and water, and I will take sickness from the midst of you". Ministering spirits sent forth. This is still true today. I was driving. As you know, my driveway is fairly long, and for those of you that don't know, our ministry is... Many years ago we bought an abandoned Naval air station operated by the Marine Corps. So actually you could call it a Marine air station. It was a refueling station and so forth and so on. And so finally, we finally got to build our house out on this property. Well, to go out of our property there toward the main road, it's a little ways. And this scripture rose up on the inside of me. I stopped my car and shouted, "I'll never be sick another day in my life. He has taken sickness from the midst of me. Glory to God, sickness done with me".
— Hallelujah.
— I haven't been sick since.
— Praise God.
— Now, the devil tried.
— Sure.
— Tried to put the...
— Well, he's going to test that word.
— Tried to put the flow on me a couple of years ago in the minister's conference. I was sitting on the front row there and just smiling and started chilling all over. And I said, "You can't put it on me. You know you can't put that". I don't know, 12, 15 minutes, it's gone.
— Praise the Lord. That's resisting the evil, resisting the devil and yielding yourself to good. That's exactly what you were doing. Can I show you something...
— Please do.
— ...in Exodus chapter three? Let's start. I want to show you where Moses encounters the goodness. We touched it briefly yesterday. First of all, reminder, Acts 10:38, talked about all last week, Jesus went about healing because God was with him. Let me show you where he introduces. All the way, verse one through verse 12, but, "And the angel of the Lord," verse two here in chapter three, "Appeared unto him in a flame of fire in the midst of a bush. And he looked and beheld the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed". That's an important point. Look at this. "Moses said, 'I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.' And when the Lord saw that he turned aside," see, he took a step. That was a faith step. He's guarding the sheep of his father's, just like David and in Midian. And he turns, he sees this thing over here, and he turns to go toward it. And then when he went toward it, then God spoke to him out of the midst, of course told him, take his shoes off. Then on down, he calls him. In verse 11, you brought this up yesterday. "And Moses said to God, 'Who am I, that I should go into Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?'" Verse 12. "And he said, 'Certainly I will with thee".
— He certainly will.
— I certainly believe this.
— I certainly will.
— He flat ignored the man's question...
— Yes, he did.
— ...about who am I? Well, who am I that I should do that? I hear more believers, Brother Copeland, say that very thing. "Well, who am I to just... And who am I to teach in a class? And who am I to be an usher"? Well, you're the one that the Lord's with. That's who you are. Let me tell you who I am. I'm the guy who Jesus goes to lunch with. That's who I am.
— That's who I am.
— I'm the one that he ministers through. And you've got to get that reality in you because that'll change everything. He had to introduce himself to Moses, to who he was, because he didn't know. He'd been in Egypt all those years and then he'd been in this desert for 40 years because he killed an Egyptian. He's doing what he was called to do, deliver Israel. He did it by the flesh.
— There's another good thing. Of course, God knew this beforehand, of course. So, he prepared Moses and put him out there where he knew that wilderness like the back of his hand.
— He's prepared. That's right.
— He knew where every rock was. He knew where everything was throughout. He knew it. He knew exactly where he was all the time.
— He's in the land of the Midianites is where he's at. Midian. I personally believe... Well, this is now Saudi Arabia today, where a lot of religious people will say the Mount of Sinai is. I don't believe it because of what the Bible says. Paul says, the Apostle Paul said, "Sinai of Arabia". Paul went there. I believe the Lord took Paul and put him on Mount Sinai for three years and taught him and showed him all the things about Moses and all of that. Anyway, that's a side thing. After he takes them out of Egypt, he didn't want to go. He makes more excuses. He's still making excuses even though God said, "I'll be with you". That's all you need to go on.
— That really is.
— It really is that the Lord is with me, is really all I need. What are your credentials? The Lord is with me.
— Here's my shepherd.
— And he leads me for his namesake, which is goodness. Amen? So go over here to Exodus 33. Exodus 33. Moses is going to ask a question of the Lord. Now, see, now he's different. Now that he's done all this stuff with Pharaoh, he's brought them out of the land, he's brought them to the mountain of God, he talks differently to God now. And he says in verse 18, and he said, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory".
— Oh, I love this.
— See, he's not questioning now.
— Oh, I love this.
— He's a covenant man now, see? He's talking differently. "And he said, 'I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.' And he said, 'Thou cannot see my face, for shall no man see me and live.'" Verse 21. "And the Lord said, 'Behold, there is a place by me that thou can stand upon a rock". Verse 22. "And it came to pass that while my glory passeth that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock and I will cover thee with my hand as I pass by". All right.
— Goodness is so powerful.
— That's how powerful goodness is.
— Goodness is so powerful.
— How vast it is. Moses asked for something. He had covenant boldness here. "I want to see your glory. I want to see you".
— I think he just burst that out.
— I think he did.
— God the Lord said unto Moses, "I will do this thing also that thou has spoken for, for thou has found gracious in my sight, and I know thee by name". And he said, "Show me your glory". He said, "I've got to see this thing".
— Well, look at verse 11. This is why he went ahead and did it. "And the Lord spake unto Moses face-to-face as a man speaketh unto his friend".
— Yes, his covenant friend.
— His covenant friend. He's now got him over to that place of Abraham, of covenant friendship.
— Face to face.
— Face to face. Think of what he asked, though. "Show me your glory". And the first thing God mentioned about his glory was goodness.
— Goodness, yes.
— And then he went to grace and then he went to mercy. And as you think about this, Moses asked for something that wasn't his time. No man can see my face and live. He was out of time. He has no right to ask for that. And yet, because all the promises of God are yes and amen, God found a way to make it happen. He said, "There is a place by me where you can stand". Well, I got to thinking about that, Brother Copeland. What is the place by him? Jesus.
— Yes, I was just thinking that same thing, and he is the rock.
— And he is the rock and he put him in the cleft of the rock.
— Yes, he did.
— For a moment in time... That's how good he is. For a moment in time he placed Moses in Jesus for it to happen. And you think he's not good to you? Or you want to impugn the goodness of God.
— Yeah, but before we take one more step, all of this is wrapped up. Everything good that he said... I said to the Lord, I said, "Moses spoke to you face-to-face. I want to speak to you face-to-face". He said, "You don't need to do that. You have everything I said to Moses. You have everything I said to Daniel. You have everything I said to all of the prophets". He said, "You have everything I said to Jesus, what more you want"? Okay. But in the spirit we're still face-to-face.
— That's right.
— Amen. Now, listen. All the good in this covenant, all the good in this covenant belong to us. All the good, none of the bad.
— That's right.
— Poverty doesn't belong to us. Sickness doesn't belong to us. Lack of any kind doesn't belong to us. Prosperity belongs to us. His goodness belongs to us. He is good to all. That means he's good to me. He's good to you. He's good to anybody that'll receive it, but you cannot walk in it without knowing what your covenant is and what it says. Not what you think it says.
— Oh, my.
— Read it for yourself.
— How many times did John or Peter or the apostles say, "To know him".
— To know him.
— Not just know about him.
— And the Apostle Paul, to know him and the power of his resurrection. Now Proverbs four, verse 20. "My son attend to my words. Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from your eyes". Memorizing scripture is a good thing. I never did sit down and memorize scripture, but, now, there's nothing wrong with that. Don't misunderstand me. But it comes up out of me because I've spent time with it. Now, Gloria has spent her time in the Amplified. I spent my time in the King James. I really enjoy the Classic Amplified Translation. And I use the King James, well, because that's where everybody is. And she's done this also, but she quotes it out of the Amplified. And she quotes that whole part of the love chapter, the 13th verse. You just quote that off like that. But know this. These are two covenants, both of them in blood. All the good in the first one belongs to us, every bit of it. Every word of it belongs to us. It's ours. It's mine, glory to God. And like Brother Hagin used to say, "The prayer of faith ends with a joyous confession". That's mine and I receive it now. Thank you. Amen.
— Amen.
— Because you base your prayer right here. I based my prayer on that again and again and again and again.
— Hallelujah.
— Put my eyes on it. I still have to be careful with that because I spend a lot of time in the Word preparing to preach and for when broadcasts like this, but I have to go back in there and just... I started reading through the New Testament again in the New King James and just take my time and just read whole books at a time. It's easy to do in the New Testament. The long ones are Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians. But the rest of them, you can read them in just a few minutes. You can read the book of Mark in just a few minutes. It's just marvelous. 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
— Fabulous.
— Particularly now that my granddaughter has an orphanage in Thessalonica, and as I've told you before, she married a young Greek man, and then the first two members of his family that I met, she introduced them as first and second Thessalonians, the two sisters. But to think that all of this is real. It's covenant. There's blood here. The blood of God was shed to buy this thing for us.
— Jesus or the Father's going to tell Moses after all that happened, here's how you're going to do it with animals' blood. Here's how this is going to work. It's a picture of what's in Heaven. But you and I, sometimes we don't realize, people don't realize we live in a better covenant established on better promises because I'm not in Christ in the rock for a moment in time. I'm in him for all time.
— Well, and here's the difference. That rock couldn't get in Moses.
— No.
— It just protected him.
— That's right.
— The rock is in us.
— That's good. That's good.
— And that rock, when Jesus changed Peter's name, he said, "Upon this rock I will build my church". Now, he wasn't talking about building the rock on Peter, the church on Peter. It was on the rock of revelation. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in Heaven. And that's when he changed his name to Peter. Rock, hard. But now...
— Oh, that makes so much sense.
— Now he's in here and that revelation will make us that strong. And there's nothing wrong with a stronghold, unless it's the wrong stronghold. I have a stronghold on the inside of me. I made up my heart and I made up my mind a long time ago. I'll have no other will, other than his. That his will and my will are one in the same. And to accomplish that, I'll just began to say, "I am yours to command, Sir. I'm yours to command. Your wish is my command. And whatever you say is right, whatever this book says is my will. If it's your will is my will". And I'll just do everything within me to keep that like that. Whatever his will is, that's my will.
— Amen. It makes sense now to me, of Moses, with the two rocks. The first time he was supposed to having been in the rock. The first time he was supposed to strike the rock. That's a picture of Jesus being struck. From now on, you'll speak to the rock and it'll give water. You don't need to strike again now.
— But he got mad.
— He got mad at the people.
— He lost his temper.
— Lost his temper and it got him in trouble. See, it wasn't God wasn't being good. Moses misrepresented the goodness...
— Yes, he did.
— ...of God to the people.
— And he was so mad at the people, he hit that rock like he was hitting them. He stepped out of love.
— Oh, my.
— You can't do that. No, not with this covenant, you can't do that. You step out of love, you're out of this covenant. And that's true with both of them. The love walk, that's the line. That's the narrow walk, and you walk that line, and you're walking in that line and walking on the Word and it's easy, because all you need to be doing is loving your neighbor as yourself. That, according to Jesus, according to the apostle Paul, that settles all the law and the prophets. So, in the book of Romans it says the same thing. So I'll stay on that, on that level. And the minute you lose your temper and step off of it, man, I'm telling you, the curse is waiting on you. The flu or something is just standing there, just waiting to attach itself to you. I mean, even as you do, I mean, repent now.
— Immediately.
— Don't wait until you feel better about it. I mean, do it right now. Just walk in an area of repentance all the time. And I have to do that continually. I'm just like anybody else. You get irritated with something and no, that won't work, brother. And the more of this you know, that tighter that walk is, because you know better than that and you know better than to follow your feelings. But it's doable because he is in here. If he's not in you right now, just say, "Jesus, come into my heart. I receive you now. You are so good, praise God. Take my life and do something with it". And we're out of time. Come on, Jeremy.