Looking for Greater Works - John 14:8-14

It often feels like the work hours are something that must be endured so that we can rush back and do what we want to do like watch countless hours of Netflix, mindlessly scroll your phone, or maybe even read a book. We do these things because we find them relaxing and comforting.

There’s nothing quite like kicking your feet up at the end of the day.

But is the comfort actually in the thing that you like to do or is the comfort in the absence of responsibility and work?

Is it really about Netflix, social media, or a book, or is it that the pressure is off and no one is breathing down your neck at the moment? Where do you find comfort?

We’re still walking our way through John 14, and Jesus has expressed to his disciples that he’s going to leave them, which of course, was incredibly sad news for them.

But one of the primary things that Jesus is doing in the upper room is providing comfort to his disciples, which helps us understand why he said things like, “I go to prepare a room for you,” or even what we looked at last week where Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” There’s comfort in the clarity of Jesus’ words! There’s no ambiguity or second guessing what must be done in order for you and I to get to heaven. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

But Jesus not only comforts them by reminding them of who he is, he comforts them by reminding them what he’s doing.

And that’s what we see in this passage as well. Despite the nearly certain disappointment of Jesus’ in Philip, he still comforts his disciples by telling them that he’s going to work through them.

He tells them that they will do “even greater works.” But in order to do so, they must believe, rely, and trust in Jesus.

And there are three things that we see in this passage: First, self-reliance will distract you from Jesus Christ (v. 8). Second, reliance on Jesus Christ is reliance on God (vv. 9-11). And lastly, reliance on Jesus is the powersource of ministry (vv. 12-14).

Self-Reliance weakens your reliance on Jesus (v. 8)

The question reveals weaknesses in Philip’s faith in Christ.

We’re obviously beginning this evening in verse 8, and in verse 8 Philip pipes up and says, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Last week it was Thomas who piped up, and now it’s apparently Philip’s turn.

Philip makes that comment in light of what Jesus said in the previous verse, “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus was telling his disciples that the way to God had been revealed through him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. So, if Jesus’ disciples knew him then they knew God as well.

But it would seem that Philip got hung up on one of Jesus’ words: “seen.” From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip is sitting there going, “well I haven’t literally, physically seen God the Father. So Jesus, why don’t go ahead and bring him down so I can see him. We’d all really appreciate it if we could just see God, that would make things a lot easier on us.”

This is really par for the course for Philip. When they were about to feed the five thousand in John 6, Jesus asked Philip:

“Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 [Jesus] said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.”

What was Jesus looking for when he tested Philip before feeding the five thousand? He wasn’t looking for a rational answer. He didn’t want Philip to calculate how much money they needed and to draw up a plan. No, what Jesus was looking for from Philip when he was preparing to feed the five thousand was for him to say, “Lord, I have no idea how we’re going to feed all these people, but I know and believe that YOU can do it.”

That’s what Jesus was looking for. But apparently, again, this was something that Philip struggled with. Because later in John 12, Philip did something similar, he brought the Greeks to Jesus because they simply “wished to see him.” So Philip took the Greeks to Jesus so they could interview, verify, and check him out.

Philip understood where they were coming from because he too felt compelled to verify everything.

And so, here’s Philip again, telling Jesus he needs to see God. He wanted a physical manifestation of God himself.

We’ve all at various times probably thought - you know, if I could just see God, that would make this whole faith in him thing a lot easier. If I could only see God, if God would just reveal himself physically to me then, my faith would be rock solid. Who hasn’t had a thought like that?

But that reveals a significant deficiency in Philip and frankly, all of us who have had that exact same thought.

It reveals a serious streak of self-reliance. I personally need to see, taste, touch, hear, feel in order to believe. We typically think of Thomas in this way, but no doubt Philip struggled too. You’re essentially saying, “sure thing Jesus, I can believe you, but first I need to verify what you’re telling me.”

It’s like telling a teenager that you totally trust him or her, but they need to check in with you every fifteen minutes. Doesn't checking in every fifteen minutes reveal that you don’t really trust him or her? The constant checking in undermines the fact that you said you trust him or her.

The reality is our senses fail us regularly, how many times have we all thought we heard, saw, or felt something that wasn’t there. One time Lauren made a delicious dinner and I told her, “this chicken is amazing!” She looked at me and said, “you’re eating pork!”

Can we only believe what we experience with our senses?

I recently heard a Christian apologist who was debating an atheist, and the atheist said something like, “you know if God came down and showed himself to me right now,” and the Christian apologist cut him off and said, “are you sure you wouldn’t think your eyes were playing a trick on you?”

It’s the point that Jesus makes in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is in hell and asks Abraham who’s in heaven if he can go back and warn his family. Remember how Abraham responds in the parable? “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.” That’s a reference to the Scriptures. In other words, he tells the rich man that they do have something bearing witness to them: the word of God.

If your faith in Christ is completely dependent upon your ability to verify everything then who do you trust? Yourself or the Lord? “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Far too often, we believe that we’re in complete control and therefore, God must play by our rules, when in reality the exact opposite is true. God is in control and we must play by his rules.

Self-reliance is revealed when you say something like,“Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”

To rely on Jesus is to rely on God (vv. 9-11)

You can almost hear Jesus’ disappointment in verses 9-11.

“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. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 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. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

Jesus is essentially saying, “Philip, are you still struggling in this way? Are you still relying on yourself? After everything we’ve been through you still have to verify everything for yourself? You’re so self-reliant you forget about me. But nevertheless Philip, I am with you therefore, you’ve seen God. I am God in the flesh.” And on top of all of that Philip witnessed countless miracles.

Jesus is disappointed because Philip asks to see God but fails to recognize that God is right in front of him.

How often do you and I fall into that exact same trap?

Philip wanted something extraordinary! He wanted an extraordinary manifestation of God. He wanted God in all his holiness, glory, and beauty to descend from his heavenly throne just to appease him.

And in the richest irony possible, Jesus is standing right in front of him saying, “Philip, I’m right here! To see me is to see God and to see God is to see me.”

Philip was looking right past Jesus in order to see God. And we laugh and think he’s so ignorant.

Much like Philip, we fail to recognize what’s right in front of us. How easy is it to neglect the ordinary means of grace, the Word of God, the Sacraments, Prayer, and the very place where we receive all of it, the church, because we’re desperately looking for something extraordinary from God? We want to hear God speak audibly. We too want to see a physical manifestation of God.

It’s interesting to me, because I talk to people who readily admit they rarely read the Bible, they hardly spend time in prayer, and they’re schedules are too busy to attend church, but they still want to hear from God…

And that mentality is frankly encouraged by churches that put an incredible amount of emphasis on extraordinary encounters with God. And what they don’t realize is that an emphasis on extraordinary diminishes the ordinary.

Isn’t that just like Philip looking at Jesus and asking him to reveal God? The Lord still speaks to you.

Don’t overlook what we’re doing this morning, because the Lord is here in the American Legion right now, he’s speaking through the Word read, he’s speaking through the Word preached, He will speak to us through this table as well. Philip looked right at Jesus and said, I want to see God. Jesus looks back at him and says, I’m right here.

Don’t make the same mistake that Philip made. The Lord continues to meet with his people. He still speaks to you and to me. The more important question is, are you listening? Are you paying attention? Or are you ignoring the ordinary in your search for the extraordinary?

Reliance on Jesus is the powersource of ministry (vv. 12-14)

Jesus takes everything he said to Philip even further when he said in verses 12-14, “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. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Those are some big promises in verses 12-14 aren’t they?

“...whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do…” Or how about, “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Some of you are like when I prayed the knock on my door would Publisher’s Clearing House I said it in Jesus’ name!

I’m kidding, but the obvious question that naturally arises from what Jesus says in verses 12-14 is, are these blanket promises that we can whole apply to ourselves?

These verses are great proof texts for the prosperity gospel. If you just have enough faith you too can perform equal or greater healings than Jesus himself. Or you can have all the riches in the world, you just need to ask for it in faith, and if you’re still sick and poor then that just means you still don’t have enough faith.

This is the sort of stuff that you might hear from someone on TV and they may even point to what Jesus says right here in order to validate what they’re saying! See, Jesus said this! I’m not making it up!

I don’t know about you, but I’m still waiting on my lottery winnings, I still haven’t raised anyone from the dead, and no one has been miraculously healed because they touched the fringe of my t-shirts. Honestly, I have several workout shirts that are so gross I would strongly advise you not to touch.

One of the keys to Biblical interpretation is context. And the context is critically important here, because Jesus isn’t teaching a large crowd of people like he did in the Sermon on the Mount or when he fed the five thousand or the four thousand. No, he’s speaking to his eleven remaining disciples who he will personally send out as apostles in the upper room.

For the record, you can’t just appoint yourself as an Apostle because an Apostle is by definition, someone who received their marching orders directly from Jesus himself. The men who are apostles are the men Jesus was literally speaking to in Matthew 28, when he said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” Those men are Apostles because Jesus told them to go and make disciples and to teach.

Or consider the Apostle Paul, it was Jesus who sent him out on the road to Damascus. That’s why he’s the Apostle Paul.

But I digress, my point is, what Jesus says in verses 12-14 are specific to his apostles. And so, what he says here, is not directly applicable to us. Now of course, all of Scripture is applicable and these verses are applicable, but not in a one-to-one sort of way. We must resist the natural temptation to insert ourselves into every text and directly apply whatever is said to ourselves. All of Scripture is applicable, it’s all relevant, but we must seek to understand the passage and its context in order to understand the best application of it.

Because again, Jesus is speaking with his apostles in the upper room and everything that he says here takes place in the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, the gospel of Jesus Christ spreads like wildfire, 3,000 people are saved in a day, and the apostles performed all sorts of incredible miracles.

Jesus never saw in the course of his earthly ministry 3,000 people saved all at once. And so, what the Apostles experienced in the book of Acts are the “greater works” Jesus is referring to in verse 12.

So what Jesus said in verses 12-14 are prophetic promises to the Apostles. But what was the powersource of all the “great works” and “miraculous signs and wonders” that the Apostles accomplished throughout the book of Acts?

The Apostles certainly weren’t relying on their own strength. They weren’t relying on their own abilities. Remember what Peter says in Acts 3? “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And of course, the man rose up and walked.

That’s the fulfillment of what Jesus promised in verse 14, “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

So you may be wondering, thanks Jake for the lesson on Biblical interpretation and all of that, but to bring things back to where we started: how do we apply this particular passage? You just gave us a wonderful speech about how verses 12-14 are specific to the Apostles, so what’s its relevance for me as I sit here today?

I think the answer to that is very simple. Jesus is telling his apostles and by extension you and me that he is the powersource of ministry. Any spiritual fruit that we witness or experience, whether it’s in the church, or among our family and friends, we must understand it as coming directly from the hand of God. The Lord was and continues to be the fuel for ministry.

And this is critical for the church to understand because sometimes we’re either encouraged to believe or tempted to believe that any “success” that we see in ministry is the result of our church growth strategies, or a charismatic leader.

But that’s simply not true. It’s what the Apostle Paul said 1 Corinthians 3, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

It’s the Lord who does it. It was the Lord fueling all the amazing things that we read about in the book of Acts. It wasn't due to the charisma of the Apostles, but rather it was because God was working in, through, and in spite of them.

But never forget why Jesus said this to begin with: to comfort his disciples.

And of course the comfort in this passage is that despite the reality that Jesus is going to die, despite the fact that he will physically separated from them when ascended to the right hand of God the Father, despite the fact that he’s going to be making preparations for them in heaven, he hasn’t quit or finished his work here on earth. And the Apostles are all going to have a front row seat to it all, and in fact, they’re going to see greater things.

There’s tremendous comfort in seeing someone repent of their sins and turn to Christ by faith, there’s tremendous comfort in knowing that the man or woman you are today is, by God’s grace growing in sanctification and desires righteousness. And we take comfort in all of these wonderful things because they serve as a regular reminder that the Lord is still at work.

The Lord is at work even in spite of everything that we see going on around us - that of course includes everything from the craziness that we see on the TV down to the pain, disappointment, and anxiety that we experience personally. God isn’t finished yet.

We may not physically see the Lord until we’re in heaven, but there should be no doubt in your mind that he is present with us and is still accomplishing his purpose.

You see, until he returns again, he’s still at work and that is something that we can all take comfort in. Amen.