WWUTT 946 Greater Works Will You Do?

John 14:12-14 and the Meaning of Greater Works

Jesus said, whoever believes in me does the works that I do, and greater things than these will he do. Some people think that this means that we're gonna do the miracles that Jesus did. That's not what he was talking about when we understand the text.

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Here's our host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

We come back again to our study of the gospel of John chapter 14. And a little smaller section today, just three verses, 12, 13, and 14. Jesus said to his disciples, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father.

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. Now, this section of scripture is beloved among those who would call themselves or would probably be categorized as what we call the word faith movement.

If you've ever spent any amount of time in charismaticism, and for me, it was about from age 18 to 22, maybe a little bit later than that, at least all four years of college, every church that I attended when I was in college was a charismatic church.

That's what my friends were doing. All of my friends were that way. And so I'd attend those kinds of churches. They believed the whole word faith. You could name it and claim it, say it will be yours, and God will give it to you.

You just need to believe hard enough. They were faith healers. They were prophets. They were miracle workers. And these were the people that I attended church with. And this was a very, very popular portion of scripture among that group of people, particularly greater than these things will you do because I am going to the Father.

So believing that we were gonna end up doing the same kinds of miracles that Jesus did and even greater things than that. Furthermore, Jesus goes on to say in verses 13 and 14, whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.

So in the context of all three of these verses together, at least when you limit the context to just these three verses, as though they're taken in a vacuum and we're ignoring what came before and after it.

So if you just look at these three verses as though they stand by themselves, as though they are a context in and of themselves, this is what the word of faith folks love, this particular section. Just say it and Jesus will give it to you and greater works than what he did is what you will do.

So what we wanna look at today as we come to this section is understanding it rightly. We wanna know exactly what Jesus meant. And it's really not that complicated. We don't really have to go far to understand what Jesus intended for his disciples to understand by saying you're gonna do greater works.

I'm gonna go back to the Father. Whatever you ask of me in my name, I will give it to you. So let's go back a little bit. We're gonna go to verse eight, where Philip says to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us.

Jesus is saying, you have seen the Father now because you have seen me. So Philip, as though he did not understand what Jesus just said, because that would really be the case, he didn't get it. Now says to Jesus, show us the Father, just show him to us.

We've seen you, we've seen the Father. Okay, well, show us the Father and then that would be enough for us. Then we can say, we've seen the Father. What else would we need if we could say that we have seen the Father in his glory right here in our presence?

And Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So it was almost as if Philip was saying that Jesus wasn't enough. It really was what Philip was insinuating, whether he intended that or not.

Jesus, the Son who was right there with them, was not enough. We haven't actually seen God because we haven't seen the Father. And Jesus rebukes him for that, even going on to say, how can you say, show us the Father?

You wouldn't be able to stand seeing the Father in his glory. And furthermore, you're suggesting that me being here is not enough, as though God is not here in your presence. Having the Son isn't enough, that you have to also therefore see the Father.

Well, no one can see the Father and live. So God has revealed himself through his Son. And as Paul describes in Colossians 1, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in the Son. Everything that we can know about God, we see through Jesus Christ.

And then John reiterates, 1 John 2, that whoever has the Son has the Father. If anyone denies the Father or the Son, he is an antichrist. He who denies the Father and the Son. So those who are truly in Christ have the Father.

And those who truly know the Father will worship his Son. Jesus reveals to us the Father. We know who the Father is. We can call upon him as Father, because we have been adopted into the family of God by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross for our sins.

So Jesus says again to Philip, verse 10, do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. Just look at the works that I have done. Can anyone else do the works that Jesus did if they had not come from the Father?

Nicodemus even recognized this when he said to Jesus, we know that you are a man who has come from God, for no one can do the works that you do unless you are somebody who has been sent from God. And then Jesus' response to Nicodemus was basically, I am God.

To respond to Nicodemus by saying, truly, truly, I say to you, amen, amen, in the Greek was him speaking from authority, saying that I am the originator of these words. What I am going to say to you, I can verify as truth because I was there when truth was established.

Jesus is the creator of all truth. This was the way Jesus responded to Nicodemus back in John three. And Jesus responds to his disciples the same way here. Now we get to verse 12. Truly, truly, I say to you.

Jesus, again, speaking from the authority of God as one who originates truth when he says to his disciples, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the father.

When Jesus ascended back to his father in heaven, he gave us the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit of God in them. So with that said, Jesus is at the right hand of God.

He is our advocate before the father and he has given us his Holy Spirit that dwells in us. So does that mean that we are even today still doing works that are greater than what Jesus did? Absolutely we are.

But in order to understand that, you have to know what Jesus meant when he said works. He was not exclusively talking about miracles or else he would have said miracles or used a word like signs. Believe on account of the signs themselves.

The works that Jesus did were more than miracles. It was also evangelism and preaching and teaching and even laying down his life. There were others who were going to lay down their lives for the cause of the gospel.

Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many. We can't do that. Jesus did that work and that is the greatest work that will ever be done. But many sacrifices would be made, not laying a life down for a ransom, but certainly giving life as a sacrifice for the cause of the gospel.

People giving up their lives so that the gospel would be preached and taught throughout the world. And many thousands and thousands of people more ever since the apostles have done this. So works have been done that are even greater as it has gone out into the world, it has spread further and wider.

Jesus in his earthly ministry was limited only to the Jews. Yes, there were some Gentiles that he witnessed to. In fact, we've even seen that in the gospel of John, those Greeks that came to Jesus during the festival, during Passover, they came to Philip and said, hey, we wanna see Jesus, can we talk to him?

So there were Gentiles absolutely that Jesus witnessed to, but at one point when he sends out the disciples, he said to them, don't go to the Gentiles, just stay within Israel. And it's not until after Jesus ascends back to the father that he says to them, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and now to the ends of the earth.

They would go even beyond Israel, taking the gospel to also the Gentiles so that the prophecies may be fulfilled, that there would be many nations who would come to be the people of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

So in this way, when Jesus says greater works than these will you do, because I am going back to the father, he's talking about more evangelism, even more missionary work than he did, reaching out further and wider on the globe, more acts of charity and service than Jesus even did, more people who are giving their lives for the cause of the gospel than just Christ and even just his disciples, but there would be many, many others.

Well, disciples, I mean, apostles, we're disciples. But many, many other disciples would give their lives for the sake of the gospel of Christ. And in this way, even greater works than these will he do because I am going back to the father.

Jesus' earthly ministry was also just about three years. And there are people who give even more years of their life to the cause of the gospel. We're talking about quantity here in that there's more and more of it going out into the world and happening every single day around the globe and just about every people group on the planet.

Now there are unreached people groups that still need to hear the gospel of Christ, but what we are witnessing even in our day, 2000 years later is that the nations, people from the nations are coming to Christ and becoming the people of God by faith in Jesus.

Billions of people over the course of the last 2000 years this heavenly chorus that we're gonna be a part of in eternity, when we leave this world and we go join our father in glory, the chorus that we will be a part of just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger when we go out with the gospel and there are people who repent of their sin and believe.

Those are numbers that are being added to that heavenly chorus, praising God for all eternity. The people of God, the bride of Christ being sanctified, purified, added to brothers and sisters in this growing family of faith, greater works are being done and being accomplished for the kingdom of God.

Miracles Are Not the Greater Works

Now the problem when a person reads this particular passage and they think of it as Jesus talking about miracles, the problem with that is they're actually thinking very small, they're not thinking large.

Look, miracles don't save anybody. Do you understand that? When Jesus performed a miracle of healing on a person, that did not save them, it just healed their body. It cured their leprosy, healed them of their blindness, gave hearing to the deaf.

These things Jesus did to show whom he came from. Once again, believe in what I say to you or else believe on account of the works themselves. That was verse 11. The works that Jesus did, the miraculous works in particular, even though Jesus is speaking more broadly there, but the miraculous works that he did affirmed that he had come from the father.

The writer of Hebrews talks about that in Hebrews 2, that through various signs and miracles, the message of the gospel is being confirmed. But now we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed as Peter said in 2 Peter 1.

So these miracles that had been done to verify that the gospel had truly come from God and was spoken by Jesus Christ and was the salvation for the sinner, all of that had already been verified. There wasn't a reason for those miracles anymore.

It was needed when Christ was here to show that he was from the father and he gave it to his apostles to show that they had been sent by Christ. But then as Peter said, once again, once the message had been, once the prophetic word had been more fully confirmed, there wasn't a need for the miracles anymore.

The miracles weren't saving people. The miracles are not salvation. The gospel is salvation. Hearing the gospel preached and believing in it, that's what leads a person to faith. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

So when a person thinks that what Jesus was talking about here in verse 12 was miraculous healing and prophetic works and things of that nature, when that's what it is they talk about, all of the sign gifts, they are limiting themselves to believing that Jesus was talking about something that actually can't save anybody because none of those things are salvific.

Only the gospel of Christ is our salvation. Romans 1, 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The gospel is the greatest work that we can do for the kingdom of God.

Going out with the gospel of Christ. No miracle will ever change a person. Now I've heard Justin Peters say and I've preached the same thing from my pulpit before that the greatest miracle that can be done in your life is that a person be raised from the dead to life.

You were a walking dead man, a dead man or woman. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. As Paul says in Ephesians 2, 1, and then through the hearing of the gospel, the dead person that you were born dead in sin because of our federal headship under Adam, we're under Adam as our federal head.

So since we have inherited Adam's sin nature, we're born physically alive, but we're spiritually dead. When you hear the gospel, your dead spirit has been raised to life and you're no longer walking in deadness, but you're walking in newness of life in Christ Jesus.

That is the most incredible miracle that can happen in your life. But we're still talking about something spiritual that the Holy Spirit does. You don't do that. The Holy Spirit is the one who regenerates the soul, regenerates the spirit to hear the gospel so that we can believe it, so that we understand it and believe it and therefore we are saved by faith.

By the grace of God, we have been saved through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This is still the work of God that is done in our life. So yes, when you're talking about the greatest miracle that can be done in a person's life, that's the greatest miracle.

Though when we use that term miracle, often what we're talking about are the sign gifts, the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the giving sight to the blind, healing the lame, even announcing prophecy.

None of those things are being done in any charismatic church in America today. None of those things. No one is getting healed of serious terminal diseases. Like a person has cancer, lay hands on them, boom, their cancer's gone.

They go to the doctor the next day, the doctor's like, oh, it's amazing. There's absolutely zero cancer in your body anymore. Those things are not happening. People walking into hospitals, into cancer wards where the doctor has given them no chance to live and they're laying in the bed and they're just waiting until their last breath is gone, until they pass on.

And here comes a miracle worker to lay hands on them and suddenly their hair grows back and their skin becomes flush again and their body becomes full and they sit up in bed and they say, I'm healed. That's not happening.

That's the kind of miracles that Jesus and his apostles were doing. No one is doing that today. That is not being done. You can't show me one case of that being done. If it were done, it would be broadcast on the news all over the place.

But these kinds of miracles are not being performed. So it is not the kind of miracles that Jesus is talking about when he says, greater works will you do because I am going to the Father. And yet you have these faith healers and those who are more on the Pentecostal vein of things who will say that this passage is talking about how we're gonna do greater miracles than Jesus did.

All right, let me go see you walk on the water. Let me see you do that. Because I know you aren't raising the dead and that's even more incredible than walking on water. So at least let me see you walk on the water or point to a storm and say stop and the storm just dissipates right there in front of you and the boat is just automatically transported to the other side as we saw happen here in the gospel of John.

Show me any one of those miracles. Those persons can't do that either. So this is not what Jesus was talking about. He's not talking about the miracles that he did because none of these charismatic guys who claim that they're performing these kinds of miracles are doing those kinds of miracles.

What they're doing are shams. You've got a Bethel church who's dropping glitter onto the congregation and saying, the Holy Spirit just manifested himself in a cloud of gold dust above you or dropping feathers and saying that they're actual angel feathers.

That's blasphemy by the way. Absolutely horrible, horrible stuff that they're doing to manipulate and con people. Those are cons. They're not miracles. They're not at all the works that Jesus was doing.

In fact, they're just straight up lies. I don't know how they can say that they have the Holy Spirit in themselves when Jesus had said that he is the way, the truth and the life and they think that they can con a person into heaven.

That's not how it works. We're not saved by miracles. We're saved by faith in the gospel and that is the miraculous work of God. This is the kind of work that Jesus said that we would go out being a part of.

We would be preaching the gospel so that other people could hear it and repent turning from their sin and believing. This is what Jesus meant when he said, greater works will you do because I am going to the father.

You just think about Pentecost. When Peter was preaching at Pentecost in Jerusalem in Acts chapter two, at the end of his sermon, it says that 3 ,000 souls were added to the church that day. That's the largest the church had ever been.

More followers for Jesus in the first sermon of the gospel than Jesus ever had during his earthly ministry. Feeding the 5 ,000, those weren't 5 ,000 followers. They weren't people who were there because they believe that Jesus was the son of God.

They were there because they wanted to see a miracle but you had the people at Pentecost in Acts chapter two who came to faith because they heard the gospel and believed it and believe that Jesus was the son of God and only by faith in him could they be saved.

That's what it was that they believed. And so the church was larger that day than it had ever been. Greater works will you do, Jesus said, because I am going to the father. Verses 13 and 14, whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that the father may be glorified in the son.

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. In my name does not mean that you ask for something and you say in Jesus' name and therefore you have it. In my name means you do the will of the father.

And if you do the will of the father according to what you have seen in the son, then you will have what you ask for in the son because you are asking for the will of the father and it will be given to you.

Not your will be done, God's will be done. And if you're asking for God's will to be done in your life to the glory of God the father through our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus has said, I will give it to you.

That's what that means. Doesn't mean that you're gonna get a Ferrari, big house, wonderful career, a great storybook family fairytale ending. That's not what that means. As long as you name it and claim it and you say it in Jesus' name, then you will have it.

That's not what these two verses are talking about. It means that you must be in submission to the will of the father. And if you desire the father's will be done in your life and you ask for it, it will be done in Jesus' name because you are in the father through your Lord Jesus Christ who has brought you into the family, purchased you for the family of God by his blood, which you have received by faith.

Makes sense? All the glory to the father, none of it to us. The kingdom of God has been promised and that is greater than anything we could ever receive on this earth. Our heavenly father, we thank you for the calling that you have given to us in the gospel, that we might become part of this mighty work that you are doing in the name of Christ.

Give us boldness so that we might go out with the gospel and see other souls come to Christ and be part of that greater work that Jesus said would be done when he ascended back to his father. Keep us faithful to this and give us a desire for this, that we might live our whole lives to the glory of God.

Amen.

Closing Announcements

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.