John 14:12 (Believing Ones)

The Upper Room Discourse and the Root of Faith

We're in a section right now called the Upper Room Discourse. The Upper Room Discourse is where the disciples are in the Upper Room. They've just finished Passover, and the Upper Room Discourse really gets going in John 14.

They've had three years of ministry now that have finally come to a close. They've heard all of Jesus' parables, they've seen the miracles, they've listened to his teaching, they've walked from town to town, they've looked over to Jesus underneath the beautiful night sky for the final time and said, Good night, Jesus.

All that's coming to a close now as Judas has left. Judas has went to get the mobs who are going to come arrest Jesus, so Jesus has one final opportunity to encourage his disciples to teach them what it is that they need to know because he's leaving, he said.

He's going away to the Father. He's going to prepare a place for them, and while he's gone, he's going to expect them to build and to do things. So this is one final lesson that Jesus is going to share with them today.

The lesson is going to be focused on the relationship between faith and works. Last week we talked about that faith comes by God doing all of the work, that that's the root of our faith. We talked about the difference between root and fruit faith.

When we talk about the root of our faith, we talk about a God who from eternity passed before He even created the first Adam, foreknew us, Romans 8 .29. He elected us to be His, it means He chose us before He even created the world to be His, Ephesians 1, 4, and 5.

He predestined us, that means that He determined beforehand what our destination would be, that's Romans 8 .28. He promised Jesus' atonement 700 years before it happened, Isaiah 53. He paid for our atonement on the cross before you even had a name.

You were crucified with Jesus on the cross before you were ever a thought. You were buried with Jesus in His grave, raised with Him in His resurrection. You were dragged at some point in your life to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, John 6 .44.

You were called with the gospel, regenerated by the Spirit, convicted of your sin, given new birth, made into a new creation, you were justified, you were adopted, you were sanctified, all before you said Jesus as Lord.

When we sing the song, and we don't sing it here, but if you ever sing the song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, there is a mountain of decisions that God made before you sing that song. That's the root of our faith.

God has been so good and so kind and so gracious. From before time and space began, throughout all time and space, leading up to the moment of your conversion, God was at work in your life to save you and to bring you to faith.

That's the root. So when Ephesians says that salvation is by faith so that no one can boast, meaning you didn't do a work, you did not one single work that brought you to faith. It was all the working of God.

The Fruit of Faith and the Identity of the Believing One

But today we're going to talk about the fruit of our faith. For all of those who have been brought to God, who have been saved by God, now what does that knife look like? What are we supposed to do? For all of you who've been planted into the faith by God, grafted into Christ by the Holy Spirit of God, now how do you live?

How then shall we live? That is what we're going to be talking about today. And we're going to be looking at John 14, verse 12, to seeing what belief actually is. We're going to be looking at the nature of belief.

Is faith required in belief and what kind of faith is required in belief? Not the ongoing kind of faith that is sanctification, where every day I have to trust in the Lord and I have to actively pursue.

Today we're actually going to be looking at a faith that stems from the identity. It's not actually something that you do, but it's something that you are, which will be fascinating. So we're going to be looking at that kind of faith.

And then in the end, once we notice what faith is, then we're going to talk about what kind of actions flow out of that kind of faith. And then we're going to talk about how Christ has guaranteed it. It's kind of like what you'll see is that a basketball team goes to play in the championship and they're already guaranteed that they're going to win.

Maybe there's some corrupt things going on in the background with the basketball team, but they've been guaranteed they're going to win. Or a boxer who's in the final round, he knows that my opponent's going to fall in the final round in a similar way.

We know the end of the story. We know that Christ has won. And every action that is required of the believer who is rooted in Jesus Christ, those actions have been guaranteed on the cross. We will see that today.

So if you will, turn with me to John 14, verse 12. I was thinking about this today, yesterday. I often get to the text really quick. I say, turn with me and then we read it. For the astute observer, we'll be in John 14 a long time.

So when I start talking, just turn to John 14, you'll be there. All right, John 14, 12. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also. And greater works than these he will do, because I go to the Father.

The word of the Lord, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this single passage and all of the meaning that is contained therein. Lord, help us today to discover what is the nature of true faith.

Help us to understand what behaviors flow out of that faith. And Lord, help us to rest in the promise of your gospel rule and reign that you are guaranteeing those things by what you've done and by how you rule.

Lord, help our lives to be consistent with the gospel. Help us to live in such a way that demonstrates your glorious gospel. Lord, help no one today to come out of this sermon to say, I just need to try harder, work harder, do more.

But instead, Lord, help all of us to see that the things that are contained in the text this morning are not actions that we need to do to make ourselves better, but they are actions that actually flow out of who we are, who we've been declared to be as a Christian.

Lord, help our obedience to be rooted down to the depths of our identity and not in performance. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. The passage begins, truly, truly, I say to you, whenever Jesus does that, it's important.

So to us as a church, we want to stop and pause when Jesus says, truly, truly, and we want to look and see what he's saying because truly, truly, he's saying it, it's very important. Now, Jesus is not talking about here faith as an action, you know, as a verb.

It's something that you need to do or something that you need to work hard at, something that you need to practice, something that you need to participate in. Actually, the word in this passage underneath in the Greek is not a verb at all.

And you're going to have to forgive me, I'm doing this early in the sermon while our attention spans are still great. You have to forgive me. I'm going to go in the grammar. I'm going to do what seminary professors told me not to do.

We're going to talk about grammar because if you don't see what is in this passage, you won't understand how revolutionary it is. This is not a verb in this passage. When we read it in English, truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me, believes is a verb in English, but it's not a verb in the Greek.

And that is really important. It is actually what's called a participle. We're treading out in the deep waters. Now participles are the bane of every seminarian's existence. Participles are the reason that people graduate less than honor grad.

Participles are why your average drops from an A to a A minus or a B. Participles are difficult in Greek to translate. They can do all kinds of strange things. For instance, a participle is kind of a verb, but it's also kind of an adjective.

It's like a verbal adjective. Then there's another kind of participle that's in this verse that's kind of a verb, but also has noun qualities, which is kind of like hot ice cubes. Right. It doesn't make sense to our English minds.

This is why it's difficult to translate. This is why translators just translate it as a simple verb because to do otherwise would make this very difficult to read. It would make it sort of awkward and wouldn't, but I actually think that we do ourselves a disservice on this passage when we don't look at how awkward the wording is because it's in that awkwardness, in that wouldness, in that literalness that actually the point comes and I think we do ourselves a disservice if we skip it.

Now this is what's called a substantival participle. Pastor Derek told me not to say that word because I would lose you. He didn't say that. Substantival participle means it's a verb that's functioning as the subject of the sentence, which is left and right at the same time in my mind.

It doesn't make sense. If I were to actually translate this passage in a way that I think really gets after what it means, I would translate it this way. The believing one in my works will do works also and even greater than these he will do.

It doesn't say he who believes in me will do works. That's verbal. It's the believing one. The believing person, the believer. That's what it's getting after. Now the reason that this is so important is because if you translate it as a verb, then you can actually have this sort of false sense of understanding of what this means.

He who believes in me will do works. It's a quid pro quo relationship. If I just believe, if I just give God my faith, then I will do good works. That is not what it means because that puts faith and works in the realm of performance.

It's a duty that we're required to do. It's an action that we're required to do. That's not what the text is saying. The text is saying that the believing one will do works. The one whose identity is a believer will naturally obey God.

There's a huge difference in that because many charlatans have used this passage to say that if I just have faith, then I can move mountains. No, you can't. Go to Mount Washington and faith it up. Try.

That's not what that verse is saying. It's saying that faith is our identity. Now there's implications to that because if faith is our identity, then it's who God made us to be, not who we have worked to become.

The Bible doesn't tell you to do faith. The Bible doesn't tell you to do belief. The Bible says that you have become faithful, that you are a believer. The Bible does not tell you to do belief. It says you've become a believer by the working of Almighty God.

It's down to your identity and not in the realm of your performance. And this makes sense of what we've learned. Everything that we've seen that God's doing in our life and working and drawing and electing and predestinating, all these things make sense and come together when we see that He has made us believer, which means that we just believe in the same way that no one...

I don't have to try to be a man. I am one. I don't have to try to be a husband. I am one. That's down to the identity level. If you're a believer, you don't have to try to be a believer. You are a believer.

The question is, is your life consistent with who you've actually been made to be? Is your identity match up with your behavior? That is the question. Now, the reason this is so important that we cannot perform the action of faith is in the same way that a broke man cannot pay his bills.

There's a great line in a movie, I probably shouldn't reference it, but there's this old lady and the guy asked her, why didn't you pay your taxes, grandma? She said, because I didn't have any money. That's a reasonable answer.

The reason we can't do faith is because we didn't have what it takes. For all of our life, we've been dead apart from Christ. We had no capacity for faith. We were faithless. Faith is a gift that was given to us to make us faithful.

Belief was a gift that was given to us to make us believer. Sight was given to us to make us see. Awakening by the Holy Spirit was given us to make us awake. You were not a person who needed to just try harder and have faith.

You were a person who was faithless in the fullest sense of the term. You were an unbelieving one, unfaithful one, but by the gift of God, you were changed. And now that belief trickles down into every single part of you.

You don't have to try to get belief to find its way into every nook and cranny of your life. God ensured that by making you brand new and it affects every aspect of you. Now, for a moment, I just want to talk about this in three different ways.

It's affected you in your head, it's affected you in your heart, and it's affected you down to your hands. Head, heart, and hands. Your identity as believer, it's trickled down into your head, into your heart, into your hands.

Now, I'm not saying your life matches this, but I'm saying this is who Christ has proclaimed you to be. Now, as far as the head, if you're a Christian, one of the greatest evidence of your faith is that you want to know God.

Now, you can say that you're a Christian, but if you have no desire to know God, you're not because you're still living in the, I have to do something in order to become something. I'm saying that you've become something, now you do something.

If you're a Christian and he has saved you and he has redeemed you, you want to know him. Even if it's a small spark that is down inside of your heart, you want to know him. You want to know the God with whom you love.

Now, there's ways to grow in that. The desire is put in there by God. The behavior that flows from that, sometimes we can grow in. For instance, how do you get to know God better? This is something you can do.

Read your Bible. Wake up in the morning and just spend time with him and get to know him. What kind of a relationship would you have with your mother, your father, your spouse, your children? If you didn't actually spend time getting to know them.

I've heard of people say that they feel like they're married to a roommate. That's because for years and years and years, you've not spent time cultivating the relationship. There's parents who feel isolated from their children because there's no relationship there.

You have to spend time to get to know the person that you're corresponding to in relationship. We spend time with God by just getting into the word. I know that it's easy in church for pastors to hammer this discipline, but if you only knew how important it is.

Not as a discipline that you have to put down on your calendar and be rigid about like a Pharisee, but it's so important because you're spending time with the almighty God. You're getting to know him.

Don't neglect the small things. We often think about, how do I have a better relationship with God? I need to do big things. I need to totally change my life. No, spend 15 minutes in the morning with him, pray, spend time in relationship with him.

Cultivate that. Not as a torrential downpour that I have to do everything today or else I'm not going to have a relationship. It's like a slow and steady rain that happens over decades and you'll see that you grow in your knowledge of God.

What are some other things that we can do? We can read commentaries. That's not dorky. There's different kinds of commentaries. There's dorky ones, but you can, you can look at a book of the Bible, like say you want to study Ephesians, study it, get a commentary where you can dive into it a little bit deeper and study it.

It'll teach you so much about the knowledge of God. We're so, I'm a little, I'm doing a little self-justification here, forgive me. We're so quick to speed through things in life that we don't slow down long enough to see things in their beauty.

Sometimes we just need to look at one verse. Sometimes we just need to meditate on one little clause, for God so loved the world. If we really meditated upon that, you know how revolutionary that would be in your life?

That he gave his only son so you will not perish but have eternal life. You don't have to, you don't have to read the Bible in six weeks from start to finish. Maybe, maybe you could do that. But I won't be joining you in that.

Maybe sometimes you need to read a paragraph. Maybe sometimes you need to read a phrase. Maybe sometimes read a chapter. The point is get the discipline of spending time with God to know him. If you're a Christian, the desire is already there.

Cultivate that desire by spending time with him and his word. Memorize the catechism. That's not nerdy either. I've noticed my children, when we talk about the catechisms, what is your only hope in life and in death, every one of my children can answer that question.

Now do they know the full depth of what the answer is to love God and enjoy him forever? No, they don't know the full depth of that yet. But what they do know is that to enjoy God is my purpose. Memorize the catechism.

There's so much beautiful things in a catechism like the Westminster. Read a confession like the Belgic. Examine one of the ecumenical creeds like the Athanasian. The Athanasian, if you like sassy creeds, that's the sassiest.

It's really fun. Athanasius is almost angrily saying, no, the father is not the son. The son is not the father. The son is not the spirit. It's great. Read it. Read a systematic theology. If you need help on which ones are good ones, ask because there's a lot of bad ones out there.

Read a book on marriage. If you want to learn how to be a better husband, read a good book on that. Read the scriptures on that. My point is that if you're a Christian, you've been given the desire to know God, cultivate that desire by spending time learning.

There's such a vein of anti-intellectualism in the church today that it saddens me. That everything's about experiences. I go to church, I get my liver shivers, and then I've experienced God. We don't just experience God through goosebumps and feelings.

We experience God through the mind. The knowledge of God is the greatest knowledge of all, cultivate it. You will see that to the depth that you study and learn who God is, not as a dead discipline of just learning facts, but learning to know him in that intimate way, it'll astound you how much you will grow.

So that's the first thing. God has implanted in you as a part of your identity a desire to know him, cultivate it. The second thing is he's, as part of your identity, he's given you a heart, a new heart.

Cultivate it. You don't have the same heart of stone that you used to have. Ezekiel says that you had a heart of stone and God took it out and gave you a heart of flesh. He didn't say that by hard work and discipline and through a lot of religion, then you got a new heart.

He said, your identity as a Christian is that you've been given a new heart, it's yours. Cultivate it. Cultivate your love for Jesus. Cultivate your affections for Christ. Meditate upon the beauty of Christ.

Men, that's one of the most masculine things you can do, it doesn't seem intuitive, but dwell upon the beauty and the glory of Jesus Christ and it will make you a great man. It will make you a great woman.

Cultivate the affections that are centered upon him. Love him. Love the things that you once hated, like righteousness and holiness. Hate the things that you once loved, like sin and lust, and do so in a way that is robustly Christian.

Again, I can, let me give you an example of this. I can tell a, just because we just came off the back of SatanCon, I can tell a believer and a Satanist to go get in shape and both of them can do it if they really put forth the effort and they try.

They can go to the gym, they can lift weights, they can do everything that they need, they can lose weight, they can both do that work. I cannot tell both an unbeliever and a believer to go love God. It's impossible for the unbeliever to conjure up affections for Christ.

That is a great evidence that you're really in the faith. I don't care what you say with your lips, does your heart love Jesus? Does your heart beat for Christ? And if it does, cultivate that affection, cultivate that love, spend time with him.

Another one, your hands. What God has done for you and what Christ has done for you doesn't just apply to your head and to your heart, it also works itself out in your hands. And when I say hands, what I mean is your will and your behavior, the things that you do.

You don't run anymore to the old sins that you used to run to. You don't live in the way that you used to live. It affects every single part of you. And again, this is not a quid pro quo relationship like we talked about earlier.

If you believe really hard, then you will do epic works. I've seen this abused so many times, I hate to pick on Bethel, but they're so easy. If we believe really hard, then we can raise the dead. No, you can't.

I watched two years ago or three years ago as a little two-year-old girl died, sadly, in their congregation. It was one of the worship leaders. They spent 15 days singing songs instead of burying that poor child and celebrating the resurrection of Christ.

They held on thinking they were going to raise her from the dead, and so many people were left hurt by that because they thought, if I can just believe, then I can do awesome things. There's reports out of Reading that people have gotten into car accidents and Bethel showed up and said, don't call the ambulance, we'll save them, we'll heal them.

That's not what this is saying. It's not saying that if you just believe verbal action, then you'll do great things. It's saying you have become a believer, and because you've become a believer, you do consistent actions, actions that line up with Christ, not flamboyant actions that make you feel good about yourself.

We are people who are known as being conformed to Christ, not as people who are celebrating our own epicness. We are the ones who do the works that the Father prepared beforehand to do in Ephesians 2 .10.

What a glorious verse that is. Ephesians 2 .8, salvation's by God so that no one can boast, but salvation also is that you now step into the works that God prepared beforehand for you to do. They flow out of a different place now, not your effort, but your identity.

The Greater Works of Christ and the Expansiveness of the Kingdom

Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, the believing ones will do the works that I do and greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father. Now we need to talk about what kind of works Jesus does, especially, what does it mean that we do greater works than Jesus does?

That is really important when it comes to this passage. Jesus said that whatever he did was from the Father, so therefore, everything Jesus did was explicitly biblical. Nothing self-seeking about Jesus, no chest bumping about Jesus.

Jesus always was deflecting glory away from himself and giving glory to God so that if what you're doing, what you're posting on social media, whatever it is that you're doing is trying to get others to look at you instead of God, you are not living like Jesus.

You're living like Satan who always wants the glory put onto him, the spotlight onto him. That's the first thing. We have to live like Christ and Christ gave glory to God. Bible says that whether you eat or whether you drink, do everything to the glory of God.

Graham and I were having this discussion this morning. Fold the bulletins to the glory of God, Graham. Everything you do is to an audience of one. The way that you fold it, that beautiful sharp edge that you put that could cut through warm butter on that bulletin glorifies your God.

Let everything you do be done to the glory of God. It's not about you. It's about who God's made you to be so that you can give him glory in all things. Now what does it mean that Jesus said we're going to do greater works than him?

Many people have abused this passage. What does that mean? Does that mean that we're going to be doing more powerful things than Jesus? There was a rumor that one church installed a swimming pool so they could practice walking on water.

Is that what that means? Is Jesus promising to do greater miracles? We will do greater miracles than him. Is he promising that we'll raise more people from the dead? We have to for a moment stop thinking like an American here.

Like Tim, the tool man, Taylor's, he might remember that show. More power, more horsepower. So much so that he blows up things all the time. That's not what this is about. It's not about more power. It's about the expanse, the extent is going to be greater.

Greater cannot mean magnitude because you are not God. You cannot raise yourself from the dead. Therefore, because you can't raise yourself from the dead, you're not doing greater and more powerful works than him.

That's not what that means. We need to think like a Hebrew. Here's an example of how a Hebrew thinks about greater, okay? Hebrews 11 .24. If you're new today, there's only one supporting verse. That's not normal.

Today, it's Hebrews 11 .24. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. That word grown up that we have in English means greater. By faith, when Moses had become greater, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

He's not talking about when Moses had an epiphany in his older age and he had greater wisdom. It means greater years. In the Hebrew way of talking, when you get older, you're great with years. Now, imagine if we called our elderly people that, man, you're really great with years.

You really piled them up. That's the way they thought about it. When you have great character, it's because you have amassed an amount of character that makes you wise. It's not about one thing being massive, it's about accumulation of many things piled together being great.

Multiplication is sort of the idea. In the Old Testament, it talks about the great, terrible waters. It means that it has thousands upon thousands of small little waves that will wreck your boat. It's not one tsunami, it's an entire ocean that's great and multiplied together.

It's this expansiveness. It's this extent. So when we think about it in a Hebrew way, you are not going to be greater than Christ. Together, the church, we will do more expansive works than what Jesus did.

Now let me explain what that means. Jesus lived 33 years. The church has lived 2 ,000. We have more years piled up in a pile than Jesus by himself did. Greater works are going to be done by the church over 2 ,000 years.

That's one thing, numerically. Jesus also did unlimited number of works. He lived 33 years, which means that he lived about 12 ,000 days, a little more than that. If you could add up all the works of Jesus, it's a finite number.

Well, the finite number of the things that the church has done over the last 2 ,000 years is bigger. I'm not saying bigger in quality, I'm talking about bigger in quantity. That's another thing. One more aspect of this, Jesus limited himself to one nation.

I think this actually is the more important, the most important point about this. He was born in Judah, and if just for a tiny moment went to Egypt and then came back, he spent the majority of his life no more than 70 miles away from the place that he was born.

He spent all of it focused on one nation. So when Jesus says you're going to do greater works than these, he's talking about you're going to go beyond Judah. And we know that this is what Jesus meant because when he talks to the Syro-Phoenician woman, he says, I'm here for the lost sheep of Israel, and then she shows this great faith and he says, all right, I'll heal your daughter.

But he announces, I came for the lost sheep of Judah. When he prepares his disciples and he sends them out to go on mission, he says, do not go to the Samaritans, do not go to the Gentiles, I've sent you to the lost sheep of Judah.

He is limiting the ministry to Judah. Now, the reason that's so important is because the pages of the Old Testament were closing, a new covenant is being opened up, and the first people that he offered it to was the Jews.

And when they rejected it, he rejected them. And when he rejected them, he rejected their temple, he closed it down in AD 70. He rejected the old covenant sacrifices, not that they weren't good for what they were, but they were, like we talked about last week, they were a placeholder for Christ.

He's the greater sacrifice. When I hear people talking about one day Jesus is going to build a third temple in Israel and there's going to be sacrifices again, why would Jesus do that? That would nullify his death on the cross, that would nullify his sacrifice, that would say that Israel had it right all along and Jesus just came for a temporary fix.

No, he came to Judah to tell them that the old covenant was coming to a close, that he is the true temple, he is the true sacrifice, he is the true priest, he is the true and better of all these things.

And now he is the way, the truth, and the life so that you can't come to the Father through a temple anymore or through sacrifices anymore, you have to come to God through him. And when the Jews said, we have no king but Caesar, we'll go to Caesar instead of God, they lost the path to him.

Now it doesn't mean that they can't be saved, but they can only be saved through Jesus. It doesn't mean that they can't be forgiven, they can only be forgiven through Jesus. There is no future temple, there is no future lamb sacrifice in Jerusalem, it is through Jesus Christ and Christ alone that they will come to the Father just like us, either Jew or Greek, male or female, all of us come through Christ.

Now when that happened, that event, when the temple was burned down and destroyed, what naturally happened is the same thing that happened when God confused the languages in Babel, they scattered. In Jerusalem, they scattered and they took their faith with them and they took it to Samaria and they took it to the outer parts of Judea.

They took it to Turkey and Spain and Rome and they took it down to North Africa. And what we see is that in the first 200 years, greater works were done because different countries are now hearing the gospel.

It's a multiplied effect where now many people are getting to hear the gospel and over the last 2 ,000 years, that gospel has continued every single century to grow and to expand to where now there's not a single time zone that doesn't have a church, there's not a single latitude or longitude or whatever, latitude is this way, right?

It's been so long since I was in the fourth grade. There's churches in every hemisphere, in every latitude and longitudinal line because of the greatness of the kingdom, the expansiveness of the kingdom, the multiplicative nature of the kingdom.

Jesus said greater works will you do. The fact that we're meeting here today means that we're doing the greater works that Jesus was talking about on a continent that he didn't visit. Joseph Smith was wrong, if you know your Mormon mythology.

Today we're a part of that great mission that Christ gave us to see the entire world filled with the glory of God, covered with the gospel. When Abraham received the promise that every family on earth was gonna be blessed, God wasn't lying, but it wasn't gonna come through Abraham, it was gonna come through the seed of Abraham through the church so that the whole world is going to see the glory of God at some point.

Now we're, as a nation, experiencing some pretty tumultuous times. Our country is schizophrenic, to say the least. God did not promise that America would prevail. God promised that he would prevail, that his kingdom would prevail, that the gates of hell would not stand against him.

In our lifetime, we may experience the downfall of America. In our kids' lifetime, maybe. We're not promised that. We're promised that the kingdom of God will go to every tribe and every tongue and every nation, that every creature under heaven will hear it, that all the families of the world will be blessed by it, that Jesus will put every single one of his enemies under his feet.

Do we really believe that Jesus is gonna return back to the world without having put all of his enemies under his feet? Can you imagine Jesus coming back and saying, there's a lot of nations that haven't heard the gospel?

Yeah, well, it doesn't matter what Psalm 110 says or 1 Corinthians 15. It's not like I'm holy. Jesus wouldn't say that. It says that he is reigning, that he is going to ensure that his word is completed.

And it even says in 1 Corinthians 15 that he won't return until every enemy is put under his feet so that he can hand that completed kingdom over to his father. He's not gonna return until that day. So the fact, when we were outside of Satan Con and I saw all this madness, I'm like, the church has got a long way to go before Jesus returns.

When Jesus prayed for unity in John 17, I'm like, wow, we've got a long way to go before that prayer is answered. Now there's so many different ways we can describe this work that we get to be a part of, the greater works that we get to be a part of.

I was thinking about it this week as far as like us men, how do we get involved in the kingdom of God? How do we do the things, the greater works that Christ has told us that we get to be a part of? Well, do your vocation to the glory of God.