Kenneth Copeland - Your Confession of Faith Is In Christ Jesus
Hello, everybody. I’m Kenneth Copeland, and this is the Believer’s Voice of Victory broadcast. Father, we thank You today. We come before You and in Your presence. We open our hearts and we open our minds to receive from You and put ourselves in a place where our lives are more productive in the kingdom of God and bring great glory to You and to the name of Jesus. Amen. Oh, that’s good. Now, remember, the confession of faith. Let’s turn to Matthew 12, which is our, as Brother Hagin used to say, our golden text. To me, they’re all pretty shiny, aren’t they? I love it. It’s all gold to me. But Matthew 12.
Now, Jesus, you remember in the fourth chapter? Let’s look over there. Matthew chapter four, before we read that. In the fourth verse, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Now, I want to share something with you. I was in my car and just driving along praising the Lord, and I was thinking about different scriptures and I said, «Lord, you spoke to Moses face to face. And he said, I want to see your glory. I’d like to speak to you face to face». And he said, «Kenneth, you have everything I said to Moses. What else do you want?»
It hit me with such a force that I pulled over to the side of the road and I thought, how little-minded I was that this is every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And for this earth adventure, this is what God has chosen by his Spirit to put into our hands and our mouths and our hearts and mouths with which to live in his presence. We have it. We don’t need more than this. This is what Jesus was referring to. And now there are things that the Lord will say concerning these words, but these are the words that proceed out of the mouth of God. Hallelujah.
Now let’s go back over to the 12th chapter, please. Oh, glory to God. Thank You, Lord Jesus. In this place right here where Jesus was talking about these things, if you start right here at this, in this area where we are now in the 12th chapter, but don’t stop reading there. You go on and take what he said there. In verse 46, you see a little paragraph change in your King James Bible. It changes the mood, but as you go ahead and read, he takes what he said here and goes over into the healing ministry. That if you’ll do these things with the word of the kingdom, then he said, I should or I will heal him. Amen. So, but all of that depends on what he said here. And then you can see that.
In Matthew 12:7. So we come down. Here we go. No, no, I’m sorry. Where am I here? Okay. Matthew 12, 20, 37. Well, let’s see what seven says. I said it two or three times, but I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if you had known that what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. You should not have condemned the guiltless, for the Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath day, I will have mercy. I’m glad we got that this morning. They were used to doing everything by sacrifice. And our mode of worship is totally different from that, but they depended on those sacrifices for everything. But look what he said. But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. If you had known what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless.
So mercy is precious thing. And sacrifices were good, but he wants to be merciful. Isn’t that good? So let’s go back over here and read this correctly. So let’s begin reading. Well, let’s start in here with the paragraph in 31. Therefore, I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven of men. But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. There was a man that said, I read this after a psychiatrist that worked with mentally challenged people. And he said, almost every one of them think they have committed the unpardonable sin. So the devil began, they get it on the mind and the devil began to work with them mentally until they think they’ve committed the unpardonable sin. But now Jesus is talking about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
That’s a serious thing. When you go over you’ll find that it’s called the sin unto death. And in order to commit that, baby Christians can’t even commit it. But if as the Lord leads, I’ll do some teaching on it. It is spelled out in the book of Hebrews in more than one place. All right, here we go. And whosoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it’ll be forgiven. But whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. That is the… Well, I sense I need to do this because this has come into the conversation.
First John five, verse 13. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. If you ask anything according to his Word, his Word is his will. He doesn’t will something, write something and will something else. If we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. If any man see his brother sin a sin, which is not unto death, he shall ask and he shall give him life for them that sin not.
Now there’s a ministry that not many people that I know of practice. In general, you see somebody missing it and you gossip about it rather than going to the Lord and asking in their behalf and just keep it to yourself. Keep your mouth shut about it. Now notice, if any man see his brother sin a sin, which is not unto death… Well, Brother Copeland, all sin is unto death. Not what this is talking about. And uh, we’ve opened that up. I expect the Lord is going to say some things about it this week, obviously.
Now let’s go back. Let’s go to the verse 33, Either make the tree good and his fruit good or else make the tree corrupt and the fruit corrupt. For the tree is known by the fruit. You generation of vipers, how can you being evil speak good things for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And you can just make a note here. He taught about this in the fourth chapter of Mark. A good man of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things. An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Here it is, For by your words, you are justified and by your words, you are condemned.
So without turning there Romans 10:17, faith comes by hearing. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So that’s what produces faith is the hearing of the Word. All right. The confession of faith, we talked about that in the 10th chapter of Romans. Let’s go over there and look at it. Verse six, The righteousness which is of faith speaks on this wise, say not, don’t be saying this, in your heart, who shall ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down from above. Oh, if you could just come down and touch my fevered brow. Well, what’s wrong with that? It says don’t, that doesn’t, that’s not an idle word, but it is an inoperative word. He’s already come down. This doesn’t work.
Now, in some cases, someone is a absolutely new Christian and really doesn’t know any better and just crying out to God, you’ll hear it. But as we mature, then we need to follow these directions. Say not, who shall ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down from above. Or who shall descend into the deep? That is to bring up Christ again from the dead. What saith it? The Word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart. That is the Word of faith which we preach. If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
Now, my testimony, most of you have heard, the second day of November, 1962, Gloria and I got married in April of 62, and I thought it was a day just like any other day. I flew an executive with the Arkansas-Louisiana Natural Gas Company, Shreveport back, Little Rock, Shreveport. Came in, and I put the airplane up with Mr. Weir and helped him. When I got back, Gloria was… She was preparing supper for me. She waited up. She knew I was going to be late. Well, I went in and took my suit off and just put on a pair of khakis and a sports shirt, and the Lord arrested me. Kenneth, if you don’t get right with me, you’re headed to a devil’s hell, son. I mean, I heard it right in here, just as plain. I said, I know it. What do I do now? I heard my Sunday school teacher’s voice from the University Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas. I was a little boy, probably 12 or so. Boys, you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart.
Now, when I was 12 years old, for some reason or another, that didn’t register with me. When I was nine years old, we were going home from church one night, and I said, «Mother, I’m going to go down front». Now, that’s what all of us Baptist children that age or so, that’s what we went down front. The Lord was pulling on me, pulling on my spirit. I went down front and I got a nice card and filled it out. First time salvation, yes. Nobody prayed with me. Let me say this. If they did, I was not aware of it. The only thing I can think of is I was pretty well convinced that that’s all I had to do, but nobody that I remember took me by the hand and had me confess anything. I just filled out that card, went back and sat down with my mother and dad. In that same timeframe, I mean, the same year at the same age, nine years old, I mean, the devil made a move on me, and it lasted until November of 1962.
Now, that was dangerous. I’d been in the Army. I’d had a lot of opportunities to die. I won’t go into all that, but a number of things happened to me. But at that moment, it became peaceful on the inside of me. Trying to explain it sometimes, I think if I was raised in some big boiler room or inside some big factory or something, and all of a sudden, somebody just shut all the power off and it went quiet. It’s the loudest thing I’d ever heard on the inside of me. There was peace in there. For about 30 seconds, I couldn’t close my mouth and profanity was gone from that day to this. I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t know it was a new creature. I’d never heard of that. I just knew something outstanding has happened to me.
All I wanted to do was go to church. Gloria shouted, hallelujah. Hallelujah, what? Well, she picked up a Bible that my mother sent me that I didn’t read. Ken precious, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you. Now, this will give you a picture of our early life. She said, I certainly do need things. Lord, take my life and do something with it. Well, he did. That began a journey for the two of us. Then in January of 63, both of us baptized in the Holy Ghost, speaking with other tongues in 1967.
Now, from 63 to 67, I call it the danger years. We didn’t know anything. I mean, it was just the devil just throwing everything he could at us to sidetrack us. But 1967, January the 24th, I enrolled in Oral Roberts University and this ministry began 58 years ago. My point is, the moment I believed it in my heart and said it with my mouth, Jesus, come into my heart. That’s all I said. I didn’t say anything. If someone had been leading me, I obviously could have prayed a better prayer than that, but it worked. It worked. All I said was, what do I do now? Well, I heard Mrs. Taggart’s voice. Amen. So it’s obvious I had heard it before. I did not act on it. If I did, but anyway, here I am adult and then of course it worked. The confession of faith must be in the life of an adult, mature believer or a lifestyle, a daily exercise in life.
First words, last words, and I’ve noticed this over the years and I gave you my routine. I have certain things I confess at night and confess in the morning, but if I don’t spend time in the Word, they become just words. It’s good. I’m not doing something wrong, but it’s not doing to my spirit what it should. The spirit man needs food. Amen. Needs exercise. Praying in the Spirit is spiritual exercise and not just a little dab here and a little dab there. In this case, a little dab won’t do you. That needs to be on an ongoing basis also.
Now then, 17th verse, so then faith comes. Now let’s think about that. Faith comes. Let that soak in. Faith comes. Well, it didn’t seem like it didn’t say faith seems. It comes. It cannot not come because this, the faith of God is right here. His faith is on these pages and it’ll generate it. When it says faith comes, my job is to believe faith has come, not how I feel. My feelings are not my base of reference. Say that. My feelings are not my base of reference. The Word of the living God is my reference. That’s the base of my reference.
So the book says it, then we believe it. So this constant confession of faith and what we’re talking about yesterday and today is confessing the scriptures in him, what we have in him, what we can do in him, and who he is in us. We are in him. Then scriptures in Christ. Well, what’s the difference? Well, there’s a big difference. When you read a scripture that’s referring to his anointing, then add the force of the anointing in there. The Lord told me years ago, every time you read the word «Christ», stop, meditate, and translate.
Is this referring to Jesus Himself personally, or is this referring to his anointing? You cannot separate the two, but Christ is not his last name. That may come as a surprise to somebody. Well, what is Jesus' last name? Well, if you follow tradition, it’s Jesus. Huh? Bargesi, or Joseph. Yeah. But not really, because he wasn’t his father, but that’s who they thought he was. But Jesus, the Anointed One, that anointing is where the release of the power is. So in him, in Christ, in the beloved, in whom, praise God. So let’s step over. Now, oh, we’re out of time. Where’d you get that sign, Tim? I’m just going good here, brother. We’ll be back in just a moment.