Kenneth Copeland - Love Gives
Kenneth Copeland: Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland. And the reason I'm laughing here is because this bunch is funny. We have a good time on the podcast, don't we?
Greg Stephens: Yes, sir.
— This is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. And the believers have a voice.
— Yes.
— Our voice needs to be heard. It's the voice of victory.
— Yes.
— It's the voice of faith. But most of all, it's the voice of love.
— Because faith works by love. No love, no faith. No faith, no grace. No grace, ah, you don't ever want to be caught like that. And of course, I get a lot of my terminology from aviation; and there's on this particular airplane, without this, then you don't get this. And on most small airplanes are direct current, DC. On larger airplanes, you have DC and AC. And on this one particular airplane that I was learning, no DC, no AC; because it took converting the DC to the AC. And so, no love, no grace.
— Right. That's right.
— Faith works by love. No love, no faith. No faith, no grace. You just don't want to get caught like that. So, John 3:16 again, and today, let's look at this. Verse 14, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness: even so must the Son of Man be lifted up". See the English colon there? You have to remember now, in the Greek text, there's no capital letters, there's no punctuation marks, because that is a completely different alphabet. And so, the translators have this to deal with. So, you can use there the word so. "The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God, who is love"...
— Yes.
— "...so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved". Glory to God.
— Amen.
— And then, we'll go over it once again, to 1 John, the second chapter, and the 14th verse, "I've written unto you fathers, because you've known him, that is from the beginning. I have written unto you young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the wicked one. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. The world passes away and the lust thereof, but he that does the will of God abides forever". So our American slang use of the word love will actually draw you into a place where the word love doesn't mean anything.
— Right.
— I just love everything. I just love the trees. I just love my clothes, love pizza. I love cake. No...
— I love my car.
— Oh, oh yeah.
— That's a trap he wants to get you in right there.
— Yeah. Well. What is that? 1 Timothy 6:17, "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy".
— Yes, sir.
— Now that's the way love looks at things. He wants to give you richly things to enjoy. He'd like for you to enjoy a new car. And He'll bless you with one. But all you have now is an old car? Clean it up, and act like it's a new car.
— That's exactly right.
— Because if you're sloppy with the old one, guess what your new one's going to look like?
— Well, you're probably not going to get it. It'll overwhelm you. I had my car, Brother Copeland, there was no other car, and I'm kind of still a little this way, than a Corvette. There's just no other car but a Corvette. Now, if you're going to go offroad racing, you've got to know the car's purpose, but I fell in love with a Corvette when I was a kid, and that's what I always wanted. Every year I would go to the state fair and set in the new Corvette and take a photo and put it on my refrigerator. Finally, the guys got to knowing who I was: "Ah, he's not buying one, he's just taking a picture, puts it on his refrigerator". And then one day the Corvette came. Somebody said, "The Lord spoke to us about this and here it is". And it pulled up in my yard, a brand new commemorative edition Corvette, the LeMans edition.
— Ooh. Yes.
— 24 hour LeMans. There it was setting in my yard. So what did I do? Go crazy with it? Not really. It was kind of anticlimactic, because I'd been believing for it for so long and then there it was. It was kind of like, well of course there it is. But all of a sudden I started loving that car. I babied that car to the level that Michelle's car, I didn't care about anything else. I didn't let anybody park near it. And over a little period of time, it hadn't been very long, just a few months, the Lord said, "I want you to sow that Corvette". And my first thought was, "I rebuke you". I was thinking it was the devil. I finally got my dream. This was my dream. God's not going to require my dream of me. He's not that way. That's not who he is. I started telling him about who he is, his love scriptures and all, and it wouldn't go away, Brother Copeland, wouldn't go away. And so I did it. I sowed that Corvette and I realized, and I heard in my spirit: "Now I know that the Corvette didn't have you, you had the Corvette". It was a tool.
— Yes.
— It got me from church and back home. That's what it was used for. And now I'm happy about it. It doesn't bother me at all, but it was a test. It was a place I had to get passed. God does that with Abraham. Can I show it to you in Genesis 22?
— Yes, please.
— Genesis chapter 22, his dream. What's his dream? His son, to have an heir. And this is also the law of first reference. Here's the first time that love is used in the scripture. In Genesis 22 verse two, "God says to Abraham "... Now Isaac is his dream, right? That's what they've been believing for.
— Yes, yes, yes.
— "And he said, "Take now thy son, thy only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest.'" There's the first time love is used in scripture.
— Praise God, look at that.
— "'And get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.' Abraham rose early"... You know, the whole story of what he did. He offers Isaac, the boy's dead in his mind. He's ready to plunge the knife in him and an angel stopped him and there was a ram. Now see, this is after he's already made covenant with Abraham. And so this covenant, when Abraham offered his son, it committed the father to offer his son.
— Oh absolutely. That's a covenant thing.
— There's a covenant view of...
— The covenant connection there and in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews here in the hall of fame.
— Yes, sir.
— "By faith, by faith, by faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place he should after received an inheritance obeyed. And he went out not knowing whether he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise and in a strange country dwelling in the tabernacles of Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise". You could just keep on reading that, but when you come down here to the 19th verse, or 17, "By faith, Abraham, when he was tried, when he was tried, offered up Isaac and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead from whence also he received him in a figure".
— Yes, sir.
— He was going to kill him.
— Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely.
— He wanted... he loved God and God loved him and he knew it and he knew the promise. And he absolutely intended to kill him and see God raised him up out of those ashes. Because he'd already said, "The boy and I'll be back".
— That's right. And the answer he gave to Isaac was, "The Lord himself will provide a sacrifice".
— Yes he did.
— So he already knew this covenant. Jesus said, "Abraham saw my day and rejoiced". He had already seen that God was going to do this through his only begotten son like it says right here in Hebrews.
— Yes.
— Abraham's only begotten son. The covenant demand had been made.
— Now when Jesus said, "If there is any way, let this cup pass from me". God had to say no, no, I can't, my covenant partner...
— That's right. Glory to God.
— My covenant partner...
— Yes.
— And the son that he loved was willing. I had to stop him. I had to send my angel and stop him from killing him. Now I can't back out.
— Hmm.
— Whew.
— That's how determined he is with your partners.
— Yes.
— And that's how he is determined with you. Okay. Back to this word, that first time that love, loveth, with Isaac. We know agape. We know phileo love. We know all the Greek words. We know Zoe. We know all of those Greek words, but a lot of people don't know the Hebrew word. The first word for love that's used, and it's right there, the word is aleph hey and vet hey. It's ahava is the name of the word. Now it's a real interesting word because there's always for every Hebrew word, there's a root in that Hebrew word. So the root word, these three make these two words hav. The root word hav, so ahava is give or love. Hav is give. The root of love in Hebrew is give. There's no love without give. There's no give without love. You cannot say you love and not give.
— You can't separate them.
— You can't separate because it's the very center of the word. So now it makes John 3:16 come alive. "For God so ahava (loved) that he gave," because give is in the middle of the word love in Hebrew. It makes all kinds of scriptures come alive now when you realize that God cannot love without giving. He has to. Love compels you to give.
— Now you get a better understanding of hesed.
— Oh absolutely.
— Because David had a blood covenant with Jonathan and they loved one another. And once Jonathan was killed, then hesed, the giving part of love...
— Was a demand.
— ...was a demand on him. And he said, "is there no one left? No one left to whom I can give"? That covenant love drove him to give.
— That's right.
— Greg, that's amazing insight to this.
— Now go back to First John, "If you say you love and you don't give, the love of the Father's not in you".
— That's right.
— It will compel you to give. "For God so loved the world that he gave". Giving is fundamental to loving. When Jesus was moved with compassion, he saw something, he experienced something, he heard something that caused him to take action.
— Now say that again.
— "When Jesus," it says, "was moved with compassion".
— Yes. Love.
— When he was moved with compassion, there was something about the love of God in him that compelled him to do something. He then had to touch a leper. He had to heal somebody. He had to do something.
— Well, and the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
— Yes.
— The love of God.
— Yes. Which has giving in it. You can't separate give from love. Will cause you, I don't know why I did it, I just had to give them something.
— The greatest prayer ever prayed is in the 17th chapter of John. Let's turn over there for a sec.
— Yeah, okay.
— The greatest prayer ever prayed.
— Yes, last instructions... praying for us.
— And in the covenant meal...
— Oh this verse. The 20th verse, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them, which also which believe on me through their word". And then the 23rd verse, "I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one. And that the world may know that thou has sent me and has loved them as you love me".
— Yes.
— All right. Verse 26, "I have declared unto them thy name and will declare it that the love wherewith thou has loved me may be in them"...
— "...and I in them".
— "And I in them". Out of love.
— Yeah. Praise God.
— With which God loved Jesus is now in us.
— Yes. Glory to God.
— Man.
— I'm telling you.
— Woo. And that's what compels us to do what we do. I mean, when you learn to tap into that...
— Yes.
— You're successful.
— Oh yes, absolutely.
— And everything you put your hand to will prosper as it did with Abraham. All right. I told you about hav (give) in the middle of ahava (love). In ancient Hebrew it was pictures. You remember the...
— Oh yeah.
— Behold the hand, behold the man, well it's pictures. And so in ancient Hebrew, the first letter aleph is a bull. It's the head of a bull. If I were going to draw it, it would look like that. The horns and the... and so you have the bull or meaning a strong leader, the strongest leader. Hey is a man. It's in Yod Hey Vav Hey, is a man lifting his hands and beholding or revealing. Something is revealed. He's looking at something. And then bayit or vet is a house. But it's a house that's open and it's empty. And then you have it being revealed. So if you spell ahava with ancient Hebrew, it tells a story. The Father revealed from his house, a son, his son for us to behold.
— Whoa.
— It tells the story of John 3:16.
— Glory to God. It does.
— In ancient Hebrew. When you see the picture gram of all of this. So Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father". He is the revealed person of love.
— He is love in action. My. He is the will of God in action.
— Well, it has to be action because of the definition of that word.
— That's right.
— So everything he did, even when he rebuked the Pharisees, was love. Every single thing he did...
— Absolutely.
— ...was love. And so, as he's doing these things, love is being seen, love is being heard, love is being told. The disciples said, "to know him". See, that's our goal. When you read that a while ago about "I write to you, fathers and to you, sons".
— Yes.
— It's different stages of growth in a believer. We know him, we know his love. See, he wasn't hurting me, Brother Copeland, when he had me give away that Corvette.
— No.
— He was not hurting me. He was helping me because, see, that put a covenant demand on him.
— You can own things, inanimate things, like that car. You can put that car, you can put a house, you can put things in such an important place that it's not good.
— No, it was beginning to hinder...
— Yes.
— ...the relationship. I know some people that believe God for... I knew this one guy in our church, he's believing God for a motor home. He got it. I never saw him at church anymore. He was always out in the motor home every weekend. And then one day he came back and said, "This motor home has taken me away from God". I said, "Well, you figured that out". But all the promises of God are yes and amen.
— That's right.
— That he'll give you. So once you get an understanding of this love...
— There's always a better car. There's always a better house. There's always a better place.
— Abraham did not look to the things of this earth.
— That's right.
— Moving... only keeping his eyes... Hebrews said it on that.
— Praise God.
— Nothing... when I get to this level, when you can start understanding this Romans chapter eight, Paul will write, "Nothing can separate me from God's love".
— Oh, that is so good.
— Ever. Nothing will separate me from it.
— How much time we got Carol? We're down to three minutes? I can tell this, I believe, in three minutes.
— Yes, sir.
— What I was talking about yesterday.
— Yeah.
— The whole group of us, there was Gloria and me and Dennis and Vicky Burke and Jesse and Kathy and we were in Colorado and went into a restaurant, and I think Happy and Jeanie were there with us. Anyway, it was a whole table full of us. And the waitress came over there and she wanted the order and... and she just kind of hustling around and the place was full. And then, "Well, all of you are together"? And so she had to jerk some tables around there. And so she, "What do you want to drink"? Well, "We all want iced tea, iced tea, iced tea, iced tea". So she brought the iced tea. "Well, could we have some water, too"? So she brought... and all of us we got on our leathers. It's cold up there so we had our leathers and stuff on, and we all looked at one another and said, "yeah". So I said, "Listen, let's do this". We got a chair and pulled it up there. And so she came back over there and brought the water.
— Mm.
— And so I just said, "Now, wait a minute". I said, "Come on, baby, just sit down right here". I said, "Now we're going to pray with you and pray for you". I laid my hands on her and Gloria was right here and the whole group of us just laid... And she said, "Oh my sister does this," and she just dumped the whole thing. And we prayed with her and I told her, "Now, just wait a minute, everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to work out with your sister," something about the wedding and it didn't work and the sister's mad at her and she's mad at the sister. So, "Hey, everything going to be all right". And we prayed over her and like Ely said, she got the tip of her life and she followed us all the way out and out the front door. "Y'all be sure and come back".
— Yeah.
— And we're out of time.
— Love touched her though.
— Love touched her. Come on, Jeremy, help us here, boy.