How Do Believers Exceed the Works of Jesus?
00:00:00.000 | We received an email from Scotty, he asks, "Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes we
00:00:10.940 | will do greater works than Jesus himself did. What does he mean, and how should
00:00:15.940 | these greater things be manifesting themselves in the lives of us as
00:00:20.020 | followers of Christ?" That is such a perennially good and important and hard
00:00:27.220 | question. Let me just read the verse because you left out part of it and it
00:00:33.280 | might be the hardest part. "Truly, truly," this is John 14 12, "truly, truly I say to
00:00:38.400 | you whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do," not just greater, but
00:00:48.520 | that I do, which is mind-blowing enough, "and greater works than these will he do
00:00:54.480 | because I am going to the Father." That's the verse. And so here's several
00:00:59.400 | things to observe. Number one, this is not a statement that certain
00:01:04.240 | charismatically gifted people would do greater works. This says every single
00:01:09.160 | believer, every single believer, whoever believes in me will do my works and
00:01:18.000 | greater ones, okay? Everybody. Nobody's off the hook here and we can't say, "Oh
00:01:23.480 | well there's a miracle happening over in China or something. Somebody got raised from the
00:01:26.720 | dead and maybe there's four of those and Jesus only did three." Baloney. That's just
00:01:31.480 | absolutely ridiculous. It's not what the verse is talking about. And so the first
00:01:35.800 | thing we have to do is realize it says every believer will do my work. So Jesus
00:01:40.960 | turned water into wine, he blew the mind and read the mind of the woman at Samaria,
00:01:47.160 | he healed the official son, he healed a man crippled for 38 years, he turned a
00:01:52.840 | little tiny group of loaves and fishes into enough to feed 5,000. He walked on
00:01:57.760 | water, he opened a blind man's eyes and he raised Lazarus from the dead. Every
00:02:02.760 | believer will do that, right? Well, no. We know that's not true and not just
00:02:10.360 | from experience. We know it from 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians 12 says, "Do
00:02:16.080 | all work miracles?" Answer, "No." Okay, so he clearly doesn't mean everybody will turn
00:02:26.440 | water into wine and everybody will heal the lame and everybody will feed 5,000.
00:02:32.640 | He just doesn't mean that. Because not only wasn't it true for his
00:02:37.920 | disciples and it isn't true for us and it isn't biblically true according to
00:02:42.760 | 1 Corinthians 12. Here's what I think he means in that first half of the verse.
00:02:47.240 | All of them will do the works of Jesus in the sense that all the works of Jesus
00:02:56.920 | testified to his truth and his deity. Every Christian will do these works.
00:03:04.920 | Every Christian will let his light so shine before men that they may see his
00:03:09.680 | good works and give glory to the Father and good glory to the Son and the risen
00:03:15.000 | Christ. We are the aroma of Christ. We are the light of the world. So the common
00:03:20.280 | denominator between Jesus' works and our works is that all of his works were
00:03:27.600 | works of love that pointed to his reality. All of our works should be works
00:03:31.680 | of love that point to his reality. And in fact, all of our works are more or less
00:03:37.360 | as born-again Christians pointing to the reality of Jesus. So we are, all of us,
00:03:42.480 | doing the works of Jesus. Not the precise ones like feeding the 5,000, but the kind
00:03:48.200 | of works that validate Jesus, point to Jesus, glorify Jesus. So that's
00:03:54.360 | the first half of the verse. There is another part to that verse, and that's
00:04:00.160 | the one that people really stumble over, even though I think they should stumble
00:04:02.880 | over the first one that we just talked about. It says, "And greater works than
00:04:07.680 | these will he do." So what can be greater than raising the dead, walking on water,
00:04:12.720 | feeding 5,000, turning water into wine? What in the world did Jesus mean? And we
00:04:20.440 | know that, according to 1 Corinthians 12, God doesn't intend for all of his people
00:04:26.560 | to work miracles. And so it can't be that every believer will do more stunning,
00:04:33.840 | supernatural miracles, because the verse does say every believer, and later in the
00:04:39.800 | New Testament, every believer is not promised to do that. So here's my best
00:04:47.520 | take. I've got a sermon on this, if you want to go and just find it in the sermon
00:04:51.720 | on John 14, but I think there are a couple of clues that point in the right
00:04:57.920 | direction. One clue is, at the end of the verse, it says, "When I go to be with the
00:05:05.960 | Father, then this will happen, when I ascend to the Father," because it has
00:05:11.320 | something to do with his death, his resurrection, his ascension, the pouring
00:05:14.200 | out of the Holy Spirit is what makes this possible. Second clue, in John 20, 21
00:05:19.460 | to 23, "As the Father has sent me," he says to them, "I'm sending you," and when he said
00:05:25.680 | this, he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," I think an
00:05:29.180 | acted-out parable of what the Holy Spirit's going to mean, when you get it,
00:05:32.320 | when I'm risen, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you withhold
00:05:38.720 | the sin of any, they are withheld." Now that's amazing. I'm going to give
00:05:44.440 | you the Holy Spirit, you disciples, you followers of me, every one of you, and the
00:05:49.320 | effect of this is going to be that you are going to witness to the crucified
00:05:55.040 | and risen Christ with such effectiveness that sins will be forgiven or withheld
00:06:02.400 | according to your message of the crucified and risen Christ in the power
00:06:06.120 | of the Holy Spirit. Now, that had never been done before in the history of the
00:06:09.880 | world. Jesus himself had never done that, because he hadn't been crucified yet, he
00:06:15.720 | hadn't been raised yet, he hadn't ascended yet, he hadn't poured out the
00:06:19.640 | Holy Spirit in fullness yet on these people as the Spirit of the risen Christ.
00:06:25.200 | And so my answer to the question, "What's new? What are the greater works?"
00:06:30.040 | The greater works are the normal living and speaking of the new people of God in
00:06:40.640 | the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the name of the crucified and risen Jesus in
00:06:47.040 | such a way that sins are forgiven in his name, the crucified and risen one. That
00:06:54.880 | shift in redemptive history, Jesus says, puts his people in a category of
00:07:01.440 | doing greater works in the sense of proclaiming a finished work of salvation
00:07:08.560 | that had not been finished even in his own life, and that in that sense is
00:07:13.600 | greater than even what he had done. Thank you, Pastor John. The sermon on John 14
00:07:19.320 | mentioned earlier is titled "Doing the Works of Jesus and Greater Works." You can
00:07:24.520 | find it at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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