Kenneth Copeland - God's Great and Abundant Goodness
Open your Bibles. Now, remember what Jesus said when that young man said, "Rabbi, good rabbi". Jesus said, "Why you call me good? There's none good, but one and that's God". Now why would He say that? Because Jesus would never, ever take any praise that went to His Father. He said, "I can do nothing of myself". John 5:30. That's a good scripture to remember. "I can do nothing of myself. It's the Father within me. He does the works. I only say what I hear Him say. I only do what I see Him do". That was Jesus. God is a good God. He is all good. Now in Healing School this morning, I read from my favorite Psalm, the 145th Psalm. Now you can see why. Praise God.
In the 145th Psalm and I want to go back to that again from the Classic Amplified, "Men shall speak of the might of your tremendous and terrible acts or awesome acts and I will declare your greatness. They shall pour forth like a fountain the fame of your great and abundant goodness". You're abundant. You're great and abundant goodness. Verse eight. "The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and loving kindness. The Lord is good to all". He is a good God. My spiritual father Oral Roberts said it all the time. God is a good God and his theme song was a great Stuart Hamblen song. Stewart Hamblen is the one that wrote Until Then.
Now I messed around with the verses a bit, but he's the one that wrote then that he wrote "God is a good". Just an amazing songwriter, amazing man. And that was Oral Roberts' theme song. Every tent meeting, every big auditorium meeting that was the song that they sang "God is a good". And he would say, "Something good is going to happen to you today". A very good friend of mine. And you know, Brother Roberts went on television and so and he said that. He would say that right at the top of the broadcast. "Something good is going to happen to you today". And he said his 90-year-old mother was walking across the living room and he was on the television. Oral said, "Something good is going to happen to you today". And she said, "Well, let her happen, sonny".
Let her happen. Glory to God. People didn't like to hear him say that. So much back then was preached unadvisedly from the old covenant, from the first covenant particularly on the curse of the law, 28th chapter of Deuteronomy without reading the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy. That's bad. This was a people that had been in captivity for all of those years and they had almost zero knowledge of their covenant with God. They had customs, but it wasn't real and Moses needed to do something that would display. So he took them out to two mountains and they had of the 12 tribes and it list them in the 27th chapter. And there you have the blessing of Abraham and the curse of the law. It was responsive shouting to get across to these people what they had in their covenant with God.
And one group would shout, "All these blessings will come on you and overtake you". And all the others would say, "And if you don't have hearken to the voice of the Lord, all these curses will come on you and this blessing and this curse and this blessing and this curse," but nobody did that. They just read the 28th chapter and said, "God will smite you in the knees and hit you with the fever". So they preach that without ever talking about the whole issue here. Well, and this man came up to me. I found out later there was more than one said this to Brother Hagin, but this man came to me. He was a pastor. This was the days of Full Gospel Businessmen were really, really big. Now they're still going now. And I believe the needs to be a strong resurgence of that.
I really love to see the businessmen of this country just get on fire again for God. Hallelujah. I believe it will happen. Anyway, he come up to me, Spencer and he said, "I wish he wouldn't say that". I said, "What"? "God is a good God". I said, "Well, what's he going to say? God is a bad God"? "No, no, no, no, no, but he gives people the wrong idea. It may not be good all the time". Now I'm not talking about hearsay. I was in the audience. Man's a good preacher, good man. I'm not downing him, but I'm talking about the traditional ideas of that time. He said from the platform, "God will break your leg just to prove he can heal it".
Well, see, I didn't know any of that. I hadn't heard any of that preached. I was a scripturally illiterate when I got born again. I told you before, I went to Gloria. I said, "Do you know the Bible; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all tell the same story? Isn't that something"? Then I got over there to the 11th chapter Hebrews and read that I went in there to her. I said, "Gloria, this is what we got to have. This faith, this stuff. We got to have that. Look and listen to this. This is a hall of fame, sister. Listen to this. It's this faith thing. I don't know how I'm going to get it, but I'm going to find out how to get it. I got to learn this. I got to have this faith". I told the Lord, I said, "I have to know how to do this".
Now, you know this is Cowtown, right? And I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm. He was a farmer and rancher and my dad came from a little ole town in Texas called Coleman, Texas. And it was a farming community. And then all of his brothers and sisters moved out to California, but my dad stayed here. Did you ever notice you drive cattle? You lead sheep. You can't drive sheep. They'll just scatter all over the place. Oh, but they'll follow the shepherd. And God, Jesus is a shepherd. His blood was the blood of the lamb. Amen. And He won't drive you. He'll lead you. He'll love you. And put up with way more than he should. Ah, man. And finally there's like one day he said, "Don't try to hide stuff. Just don't even go there because all the praying you and I ever did, we didn't inform Him of anything". And one day He said, "What are you going to do about this"?
In fact, I was holding back on prophetic word. And this was back before I had been separated to the office of the prophet. In fact, I'm still in ORU, but he was wanting me to speak out and I didn't want to do that. And finally, he just went along there for a while, but I kept knowing it, I kept knowing it and He said and he finally stopped me one day, just stop. He said, "What are you going to do about this"? I said, "What? He said, speaking out the words that I speak to you to tell you to say". I said, "I hadn't planned on doing anything about it". "Well, why not"? I said, "You know why not"? "No, you tell me why not". I said, "Lord, I don't want to make a mistake, stick up my big bony finger and say, 'Thus sayeth the Lord and this all in that and make some kind of mistake, and get somebody into trouble.'" He said, "Kenneth, you're making the big mistake now by not doing what I tell you to do". He said, "You step out in faith and I'll fix it". Amen.
And of course there's been times I've missed it and I'd come back out of that service and I said, "Lord, I missed it tonight, didn't I"? He'll say, "Yeah, you did". "Well, what am I going to do? Am I going to go back and tell those people I missed it"? "No". He said, "What you said wasn't wrong, it just wasn't what I said". He said, "You better listen better". Amen. And I've had numerous experiences like that, but the mistake is not trusting Him, not stepping up because He's a good God. He's a good God. Genesis 1. That's not hard to find. Are you there? "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep". Between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, there is an untold amount of time. God did not create this planet flooded. Noah's flood wasn't first, this flood was. "The spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good".
Verse six, "God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, let it divide the waters from the waters.' God made the firmament, divided the waters and so forth. And it was so. God called the firmament heaven and so for the second day. God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place, let the dry land appear' and it was so". Verse 10. "And God saw that it was good". Amen. Verse 12. "And God saw that it was good". And then he kept speaking and he kept and then he said, "And God saw," in the 18th verse, "That it was good". And the 21st verse. "And God saw that it was good". Well, how could it be anything else? He's a good God. And He's creating things that are good. Glory to God. And verse 25. "And God saw that it was good and so forth and so on". And then you come down to that 31st verse. "God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good".
But now wait a minute. There's something not good. Let's go to the second chapter, the 18th verse. "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate out of the ground.' The Lord God formed every beast and so forth. And to see what Adam would call them". He had the same. He was exactly like God. Now he was calling those, but God was transferring thought to him. He was exactly like God. He was as smart as God. God breathed His life into him. Everything that was in God came over into him. He was in God's image. That was before he fell. And so He named them all. How long do you suppose that took? There's 500,000 bugs. I mean, he named in them all. He named every living thing. Glory to God.
"And I will make a helpmate for him. And Adam gave names to all the cattle, the fowl of the air, every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helpmate for him. The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept and He took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh instead thereof and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her to the man. And Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out a man.' And Adam said, 'This is good'". Don't you know, I mean, do you have any idea? No. There's no way to know how absolutely gorgeous she was. She's handmade. There's no way to know how fine looking this man was. But they had never seen their physical beings. They were crowned with His glory. And we see in the Word that He is a fire from his loins upward from the appearance of his loins downward with that glory. Amen. Hallelujah. Isn't that wonderful?
And I know, I know his love for her. This is the love of God that was working in him. His love for her and her gorgeous beauty. He couldn't turn her loose. He couldn't turn her loose. And I dare say he worshiped her and he chose her instead of God. Amen. And we of course we know the rest. And the light went out and they saw their bodies. Well, they'd never seen a bad looking body or a good looking body. It just looked so dumb after being able to see the glory of God and have the glory coming out from the inside of them. Do you ever stop and think all the other animals are clothed from the inside out? Well, man was too and so was the wife by the glory of God. When that light went out, then they had to have protection. So God, the first covenant with God, the first animal shed his blood to provide covering skin for their bodies. Don't you know those were some good looking suit of clothes? But they came out in their little fig suits, fig leaf suits.
And you know the Lord said, "Oh no, now. This will never do. This will never do". Well, what was this? This was the first example of man trying to meet his own needs without God and it didn't work. It was terrible. But he was trying to cover himself up. He was trying to provide his own clothing. And it said they sewed fig leaves. How'd they know what sew was? And the first thing that came, their faith in God turned into fear. And when He spoke, they ran from Him because they were afraid. So what had been faith and trust in God became fear. And that's what you and I know today. That's where it came from. That first covenant was God providing clothes for His family. Praise God. He's a good God. Now then, God has never created anything that's bad. Well, what about the devil? Well, what about him? Let's check it out. Let's go to Ezekiel chapter 28. No, wait a minute, hold it. Before you go there I want to show you something else. And in the 33rd chapter of Exodus, Moses is speaking with God face-to-face. Verse 11, "The Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks unto his friend and he turned again into the camp, but His servant, Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle".
Now come on down to the 18th or 17th verse. "The Lord said unto Moses, 'I will do this thing also that thou has spoken for thou has found grace in my sight. I know thee by name.'" I believe Moses just blurted this out. "I want to see your glory". He wasn't even talking about glory. I want to see it, but they're talking face to face as friends. That's huge. I wish I had time to get over into that. And He said, "Listen, 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". He said, "I want to see your glory". He said, "Then God said, I will". Huh? "I will make all". He said, "Glory". He said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you". His goodness is His glory and His glory is His goodness. Hallelujah. He is all good. He is absolute goodness. There's no badness in Him, none.