Kenneth Copeland - Jesus, The Light to the Gentile World
Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland and this is Gloria Copeland, the love of my life. We are here today on the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Let's give the Lord a praise and an honor this morning before we begin.
— Thank You, Jesus. Hallelujah.
— This is an amazing part of the year, Christmas being last week. Remember, I think it was an Alka-Seltzer commercial where the guy was sitting on the side of the bed and he said, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing".
— Was that you?
— No, it wasn't me. Well, I'm not going to say anymore about that. Yeah, I may, before this is over with. It's an important thing how we live our lives, not just what we do in the spirit, but God is a triune being the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We're triune beings in that we are a spirit. We have a soul made up of our intellectual properties and we live in a body. All three parts need to be working properly for us to function at our highest abilities. We need to be strong in our spirit. We need to be strong in our minds and strong in our bodies. You can't just take off a few days and just tear body up and then say, "Well, I'm going to fix it next year". Well, that's what you said last year. I don't know. Going ahead on here. Let's go back.
— Get us out of this.
— I'm working on that right now. Well, I had to go through it all.
— Okay. We got it.
— And the Lord helped me.
— You can tell how bright these people are by looking at them. They got it.
— Let's go back to the book of Luke where we finished up last Friday in the second chapter of Luke. Remember now, Luke's gospel and he's also the author of the book of Acts, was writing this to a king and it's documentary style. He questioned a lot of people and being a physician himself, you find where one says, "Peter's wife's mother laid with a fever". Luke says, "A great fever". We know this was not the flu. This was probably something in the order of typhoid or is a killer fever. Matthew recorded it that he touched her hand. Well, Luke recorded that he rebuked that fever. Praise God. The big thing is you take all of these accounts and put them together and you get the full picture of the Spirit of God makes a full picture of all these things. Being people that live and operate and function by the laws of faith, then all of these details are important to us because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The more you analyze the details in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and I tell you, you've heard me say that Gloria and I were literally scripturally illiterates when we came into this. I remember going to Gloria and I say, "Gloria, did you notice that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John tell the same story"? She said, "Yes. Isn't that wonderful"? Now, you talk about starting at zero. We started at zero.
— Well, that's like our son. He said, "Matthew, Mark, look at John".
— Yes. We were about the same, but the beautiful part of it is we did not have any religious tradition behind us. We began to be really serious about the Word of God. When I became a student at ORU and I was traveling with Brother Roberts and being part of the flight crew. Then, we were introduced to Brother Kenneth Hagin. Oh, my. I was watching Brother Roberts do it on the road. I could see he used his faith on purpose. Well, I never heard of anything like that. Then, Brother Hagin began to teach us, and teach us all the things.
— That made all the difference in the world, teaching.
— Oh, it was just marvelous. It was spiritually delicious. Through these two great men of God, this composite picture of faith and how it works and the ins and the outs of it. Then, we began to realize that the written Word of God is God. It's God's will.
— Two covenants. Two blood covenants. It started out in the blood of animals, then the blood of a man through circumcision. Then, the second covenant, the blood of God, the precious blood of Jesus. All of these words are covenant words and they're all extremely important. We're going to pick up here. In the second chapter of the book of Luke, we find some marvelous details here. Let's go to verse 12 there and pick it up, "This shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. Suddenly, there was with the angel, a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.'" We talked about that last week. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. The clash between heaven and earth, where Satan had authority in this earth because Adam gave it over to him, but the sacrifice was in the earth with which God would deliver the earth from Satan's authority. The sacrifice is here, so the angels are calling things that be not as though they were. Peace has come. Amen. He's here.
— Praise God. Now, in verse 19, "Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart, and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things with they had heard and seen". Then, verse 21, "When eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, His name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before He was conceived in the womb". "When the days of her purification according to the law of Moses was accomplished, they brought Him to Jerusalem". Now, it was amazing to me to learn that it was 90 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem and she's about to have a baby. Well, everybody got there before they did. The reason he was born in a manger, one, it had been prophesied. We talked about that last week, but it wasn't that they didn't have money enough. It was because they were late. The Scripture says there was no room in the inn. All the hotels were full, but it's only eight miles or five and a half miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Obviously, they stayed there, so she recovered over that eight days and only had five and a half miles to go to present Him at the temple for circumcision.
— That's a long way when you just had a baby and you got no car.
— Yeah. That's right.
— Is that right, girls?
— But now, they're there. It's the eighth day. Jesus is eight days old now. Well, let's come down, "And when the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses was accomplished, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that opened the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice". Well, yeah. Thank You, Lord. I'll do that. "The law of Moses is the firstborn son". The firstborn son has an inheritance. He's the first born son. Now, we see in the New Testament, the new covenant, that Jesus is no longer the only begotten Son of God, but He has become the first born of many brethren. If you belong to Christ, then you're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So we have firstborn status just by having accepted Him as our Lord and Savior. Glory to God.
— You are an heir. You are an heir.
— Yes, we are. The scripture says we are joint heirs with Him.
— Yes. Glory to God.
— Praise God. That's shouting ground, isn't it?
— Praise the Lord.
— Now, class, I really need you to see this. In verse 24, "Offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves, two young pigeons. Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel," waiting for the Messiah. "And the Holy Ghost was upon him. It was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord Christ. He came by the spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for Him after the custom of the law, then took he Him up in his arms, and blessed God and said, 'Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace according to thy Word for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou has prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of the people of Israel.'" Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him. Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary, his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against, 'Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. There was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age, and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years". This woman is up in years. "Which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day, and she, coming in at that instant, gave thanks". Now, here's what I want you to see out of this. The devoted man of prayer, the devoted woman of prayer, not only knew who he was, they knew where he was. The prayers knew. The prayers knew more than Mary did.
— Well, she'd been pretty busy.
— Well, still, she remembered the angel. She remembered all these things. Yeah. She was busy as a wife. She's busy. But those devoted prayers, they knew. People that pray a lot, know a lot. If you know how to pray in faith and particularly people that pray in other tongues.
— Walk in the spirit, you'll know.
— That's right. Actually, with all my heart, I believe this. You can pray in the spirit long enough. You can find out anything you need to know. You can get the wisdom of God that way. Gloria and I have done it many times and you receive the wisdom of God, what this is and what needs to happen. When you accept Jesus as Lord of your life, of course, you stepped through the door and into the kingdom of God. But when you accept Jesus as your baptizer in the Holy Spirit, then you step through the door of the supernatural.
— Amen.
— It's so amazing. I've noticed over the years, Gloria and I, of course, have been doing this a long time and seen a lot of people receive the Holy Spirit. It's amazing to me people come up to receive the Holy Spirit and they frown. I don't get that.
— And they're looking serious.
— "Oh, God. I want the Holy Ghost". He's a gift. He is a gift. Jesus is the gift of the whole world. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son. But then, the Holy Spirit is the gift to the church. He is a gift. Relax.
— Boy, is it a good gift?
— "Yes. But I want to speak in tongues," Well, it's the easiest thing you ever did in your life. Well, you have to think about that a moment. It's the yielding of the tongue that... Now, ever since you were a very small child, you were taught how to speak. Of course, you came up speaking like your parents. Well, it depends a whole lot on what kind of household you were raised in on how you speak. Anyway, it's very important, very important. If you are born again, you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, that is absolutely wonderful. I want you to realize, according to the letter the Apostle Paul wrote in the 2 Corinthians, very, very important that you go there and find these things out, that the moment you accepted Jesus, you became a new creature.
— Praise God.
— All things became new and all things were of God and old things have passed away. Well, what passed away? That old nature. That old argumentative nature that was there. Now, all things are of God. But now, you're a spiritual baby and you need to get into the meat of the Word of God that comes along about the book of Hebrews and so forth. Much to say about being baptized in the Holy Spirit. It's the only subject in the New Testament that has all its one whole chapter devoted to it, which is the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians. You go 12, 13 and 14. It's amazing. The Apostle Paul said, "Don't forbid it, I speak in tongues more than all of you". Well, some translations said, "I speak in tongues more than all of you put together". He was writing to Corinth. That's a lot of tongue talking because that's where these people got in trouble. Anyway, that's extremely important. Now, let's continue.
— Where are you now?
— We're still here in the book of Luke. I want to point out in the 32nd verse, "Which now has prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of the people, Israel". The light to lighten the Gentiles. Now, this was strange coming from an old man in the temple. He knew by the spirit that this baby would be the light to the Gentile world. Now, what does that mean? That means that this baby is going to take the light and the glory of Israel beyond the borders of Israel to the entire human race, not just the Israel covenant. Obviously, there's another covenant here coming. He didn't say that, but that's what this is all about because this being a Jewish baby and born of Jewish parents, then he saw that this was the Messiah. Simeon blessed them and said... I want to point out. This is the blessing book. It is the Holy Bible. Bible just simply means a collection of information about a certain subject. There's the Shooter's Bible. I used to have one, but it had so much detail in it. Oh, man. Everything you could think of about anything that had anything to do with any kind of shooting. I enjoy all that, but that's not the Bible. This is the Bible. I heard a man say, "The very first day that I went into training on the Lockheed JetStar, which was a four-engine jet," the man that opened up the class, and he held up the AFM, the manufacturers' book on that airplane. We were at FlightSafety International training on this airplane. This was initial. He held up the AFM. This thing is about that thick on that airplane and he said, "Now, anything that we teach you here on this airplane, all goes back to this. If we make a mistake, this is correct". I thought, "I wish preachers had that much sense to always go back to this". Because this doesn't make a mistake. This has been tried and tested. Well, that's the reason that that AFM on the Lockheed JetStar was correct. It had been tried and tested over and over and over again. There'd been some accidents and so forth that happened because the airplane wasn't perfected yet, but they finally figured out what was right, but it was constantly being upgraded. This one doesn't need to be upgraded. People have tried that.
— People need to be upgraded.
— People need to be upgraded. That's what needs to be upgraded. Now, verse 39, "And when they had performed all these things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth, and the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him". There's a lot of foolishness has been written because we're going to go from his circumcision to being 12 years old. We're out of time. We'll take it up here tomorrow. Come on, Jeremy.