Posts Tagged ‘sacrifice’
Gloria Copeland — Lessons in Obedience – Abraham Part 3
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Just as Abraham raised the knife to slay Isaac, the angel of the Lord called out to him and said, “Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me” (Genesis 22:12).
Then Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket. He took the ram and offered it as a sacrifice to the Lord in place of his son. God found in Abraham a man who would obey Him to the degree of giving up his son.
Through Abraham’s life we see a picture of God’s love for you and me. Just as Abraham didn’t withhold his son from God, neither did God withhold His only begotten Son, Jesus, from us. He sent Jesus into the world and allowed Him to die on the cross so the world could be redeemed. And just as Abraham received back his son from the dead, God received back His only begotten Son when Jesus was raised from the dead.
Just as Abraham demonstrated faith as a father, so Isaac demonstrated faith as a son—willing to be offered as a sacrifice without a struggle. He was not a small child, he could have protested. But he had been trained in the way he should go—to obey his father in all things.
During his life, the Lord spoke to him as He had to his father Abraham. The Lord appeared to Isaac when he was grown, years after he was spared his life: Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws (Genesis 26:2-5).
God performed His oath to Isaac because Abraham had obeyed His voice and kept His commandments. Obedience was the condition of the oath. Had Abraham not obeyed God, He would not have fulfilled His promise. Had Isaac not obeyed God, disobedience would have stopped the promise in his life.
Isaac and his seed were Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. If we are in Christ, we are also heirs according to the promise. The Apostle Paul wrote to the churches of Galatia:
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith….For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female:for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:13-14, 26-29).
Jesus came to redeem Abraham’s seed. God sees the Church, as well as Abraham’s natural descendants, as that seed. We have been grafted in through faith in Jesus Christ, the Anointed. It is our blood-bought right through Him.
However, our obedience determines how much of Abraham’s blessing is manifested in our lives. That is a choice we must make. Am I going to be faithful to God and obey Him? Yes! At all costs!
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Lessons in Obedience – Adam Part 3
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Something had to be done. God had given Adam dominion over the earth and Adam, by disobedience, had made himself subject to and less powerful than God’s enemy, Satan. It would take time for God to provide the way back for man to come into union and agreement with Him again. But He would do it!
Even in the Garden of Eden, God knew what price He must pay, but He was willing to pay it to get His family back. He said to Satan: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). He was willing to sacrifice His only Son to bring man back into fellowship with Himself: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
Adam met disaster because of disobedience. He was separated from the life of God and exiled from the perfect environment God had created for him.
And to Adam, God said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit when I told you not to, I have placed a curse upon the soil. All your life you will struggle to extract a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat its grasses. All your life you will sweat to master it, until your dying day. Then you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from the ground, and to the ground you will return.” …Then the Lord said, “Now that the man has become as we are, knowing good from bad, what if he eats the fruit of the Tree of Life and lives forever?” So the Lord God banished him forever from the Garden of Eden, and sent him out to farm the ground from which he had been taken. Thus God expelled him, and placed mighty angels at the east of the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:17-19, 22-24, The Living Bible).
Moreover, because of Adam’s disobedience, sin and death passed to all of Adam’s offspring, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners…” (Romans 5:19).
What a price Adam and his family paid because of disobedience!
Gloria Copeland
Gloria Copeland — Possessing The Mercy Of God Part 3
Posted by admin | Filed under Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland Ministries
I know people who come to meetings where I preach
and spend their entire time criticizing what I have on and
miss what I say. I am not saying you should not dress well.
I think you should represent Jesus Christ in a right way by
looking your best with what you have. If you are faithful
over little, He will make you master over much. However,
we need to put our emphasis in the right places. Many
times we have done just the opposite.
Another minor that we have majored in is sacrifice. It
seems like everyone has wanted to give up something for
God. God desires mercy rather than sacrifice. Mercy is the
major. Mercy is when you give to people out of your heart
because you love them and want to see them prosper.
Please do not misunderstand me. Sacrifice is necessary
in an obedient Christian’s life and needs to be studied. If you
will learn mercy while you are learning how to sacrifice,
then your sacrifice will count. The Apostle Paul said that
even if he gave his body to be burned and gave everything
he had to the poor and did not have love, he would gain
nothing. So, if you major in the sacrifice without the mercy,
it doesn’t do any good. You do not impress God.
When you give from a mercy motive, it starts flowing
toward you. As I begin to give, it is given to me again.
The more I give, the more I receive and vice versa.
It then becomes a continuous cycle of reaching out to
others. This is the way mercy works.
Gloria Copeland
