Turning Point

Announcer: The miracles performed by Jesus were truly astonishing. Yet He told His disciples that believers would do even greater works. What does this mean exactly? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah examines that promise and what it means for our generation as he continues his series, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know. Here is David to introduce his fascinating message, The Work of the Spirit.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Well, I have to tell you that what I am going to share with you today is going to be a shock to some of you because it almost sounds like I am being ungodly to say what I am about to say. I am only saying what the Scripture says, and the Scripture says, in the words of Jesus, that when the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the world, it enables us to do greater works than Jesus did when He walked on this earth.

I am going to share with you how that happened to be true and how it is true today with some personal illustrations along the way on these next two days of broadcasts. I hope you will stay with us each day. And do not forget, all of this material, including what we are going to talk about today, is in the book, *The Holy Spirit You May Not Know*.

I like to tell you about it every day because I do not want you to miss out on the opportunity to get your copy. It is a 250-page hardback book, the third book in the trilogy of the God books: *The God You May Not Know*, *The Jesus You May Not Know*, and this one, *The Holy Spirit You May Not Know*. This trilogy from Turning Point and this third book is available as a gift. It is yours for the asking for a gift of any size during the month of June. We wait for you to respond, and we are ready to send you this book right away.

When Walt Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim on July 17, 1955, it covered 160 acres of former orange groves. Opening day was chaotic. Rides broke down, paint was still wet, and the pavement was so soft, women's high heels sank into the asphalt. But Walt had built something no one had ever seen: a place where imagination came to life, and he called it the happiest place on earth.

Walt died in 1966, never seeing his next dream come true. But he did something very few people get to do. He built something that was greater after he was gone than it ever was when he was here. By his team, the Imagineers he had trained, they picked up the blueprint and built beyond what Walt ever imagined.

They opened Walt Disney World in Florida in 1971, a resort complex so large it could fit all of San Francisco inside its borders with room to spare. Today, the Disney empire spans six resorts, twelve theme parks, a cruise line, movie studios, television networks, and over 220,000 employees around the world.

And that story reminds me of something I read in the Bible. I have to tell you what I read in the Bible, the first time this really dawned on me, it was so amazing I had to go back and read it a couple of times to make sure I was reading it correctly. It is what Jesus said in John 14:12. Here is what He said, most assuredly, speaking to His disciples, "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 My Father."

When I first came across that verse, I remember stopping and asking myself, what in the world could this possibly mean? Maybe you have had the same question cross your mind. How could anyone, I mean, especially ordinary people like us, how could we ever do greater works than Jesus? What was He telling His disciples that day, and what is He saying to us right now? Could it really be true that we are meant to continue the work of Jesus and even see it multiplied in our time?

At first, it sounds impossible. It feels so bold to be true, but Jesus never exaggerated. He never spoke just to inspire people or impress them. He is truth itself, and every word He spoke was absolutely reality. When He said we would do greater works, He meant it.

The possibility of greater works takes us to the works that Jesus performed during His public ministry. They were mind-boggling. He banished diseases, He cast out demons, He raised corpses to life. He created wine and fish and bread with a word and a touch. He calmed mighty storms with just a word. How could it be said that in any stretch of imagination that the works of the disciples and our works, who belong to His church, are greater than Jesus' works?

Has this promise ever been fulfilled? Can we point to anything that would help us understand that in some way this is being fulfilled in our generation? And some have said, well, the key here is that you have to understand that the greater works are related to belief. In other words, the reason we do not do these greater works is because we do not believe enough. Is that true?

The problem with this is that if our ability to do such works depends on our faith, then we would have to have greater faith than Jesus. And Jesus did not say, he who believes in Me with sufficient faith, or he who believes in Me with all his heart, or he who believes in Me intensely with great sincerity shall do greater works. He just simply said, "He who believes in Me" will do greater works.

But that makes no sense. Greater works? Greater miracles than He performed? I mean, what could that mean? In John 2, at the wedding feast in Cana, Jesus converted the simple molecular structure of water into the far more complex molecular structure of wine. Can we do that? In John 4, by a word uttered over ten miles from the scene, Jesus instantly reversed the decay process and restored to full vigor and activity the cellular structure destroyed by a mortal illness. Can we do that?

In John 6:1-14, Jesus took five loaves and two fish and created out of them enough bread and meat to feed 5,000 hungry men and their families. Can I do that? Can you do that? In John 6, Jesus created an antigravitational force of unknown nature that enabled him to walk along the surface of the stormy sea. You ready for that one?

In John 11, Jesus stood at the mouth of an open grave and called through the veil of death to his friend Lazarus. Not only was Lazarus dead, his limbs, his eyes, his brain, and internal organs were already in a state of decay. The man had been dead for four days, and putrefaction was well underway. And yet, at the captive and creative word of Jesus, all the cells and functions of that body were instantly restructured, and the departed spirit was summoned again to the body. Lazarus lived and spoke and thought and remembered. Awesome.

What could possibly qualify as a greater work than that? Great works, marvelous miracles beyond all question. And think about it, every one of these acts was only superficial and temporary. I am not discounting what Jesus did, certainly would never do that, but I am simply making the point that no one was permanently helped by these miracles. None of men's deepest needs were met by these works of power.

He created food for a single meal, but the people got hungry the next day. He stilled the raging sea, but only until the next storm. He healed bodily ailments, but every person He healed eventually died anyway. I do not know what you think about Lazarus, but I really feel bad for him. He had to die twice. That is what happened to him.

He had already passed into glory. He was already walking the streets of heaven, talking to Abraham, Moses, and David, filling his eyes with heavenly splendor and gazing on the very throne of God. And what happened? Jesus brought him back. Years later, he had to repeat the whole process all over again. He had to die again. And the miracle of bringing Lazarus back was no favor to Lazarus. Jesus did it as a sign miracle for everybody who watched.

I remember a story by a teacher I had in seminary named John Mitchell. He used to come to the seminary and teach classes for three weeks, and I was in some of his classes. He was a teacher for many years at Multnomah Bible College, and he used to tell the story of sitting at the bedside of a dying friend. And the man seemed to be slipping out of his life. His breathing grew very, very shallow until finally, it seemed to stop.

And when this happened, Dr. Mitchell thought, he's gone now. Suddenly, the man's eyes popped open, and he looked into the craggy face of Dr. Mitchell. "Who's there?" the man said. "It's all right," Dr. Mitchell said, "it's just me." "Oh," the man groaned, "I'm so disappointed." You see, he thought he was going to look into the face of Jesus, or at least an angel. Instead, he saw the same old hospital room and the face of the old Scotsman Mitchell.

If he was disappointed, just imagine how Lazarus felt. What a letdown to find himself back in his grave clothes, lying in a slab in a dark tomb. Yet the author of life called him back, and he stepped once again into the lesser light of the sun. Now, I want to ask you a question. Can we do something greater than that? The possibility of greater works.

But the promise is that Jesus tied His promise of greater works to the coming of the Holy Spirit, and this is what we cannot miss. In John 14:12, Jesus said, "And greater works than these he will do." And what reason does He give? Here is the key, "because I go to My Father." This is a common phrase and a common teaching. John 7:39 says, "But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified."

John 16:7, Jesus said, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit, or the Helper, will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you." These greater works that Jesus promised us are dependent upon Jesus physically leaving this world and going back to heaven. Those things could not happen, He said, until He went to His Father and sent the Holy Spirit to take His place.

After Jesus had spoken these words to His disciples, He went to the garden that night where He was captured, taken to trial, brutally crucified. He rose from the grave on the first day of the week and appeared to the believers over a period of 40 days. He then ascended back to His Father, and ten days after He returned to heaven, the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, and the third person of the Trinity came upon everyone who believed.

And Peter and the other disciples stood in front of the very mob and the very rulers who had crucified Jesus and proclaimed the resurrection and the offer of salvation, and 3,000 people got saved in that service. And someone has said that more people believed on the day of Pentecost than had believed in the entire three and a half years Jesus walked on this earth. And I believe that is true.

Amazing as our Lord's words are in John 14:12, it is literally true that a believer today may accomplish greater works on earth than our Lord Himself accomplished. And I am going to suggest to you three ways that that is true. It is not in any way a disrespect to Jesus. It is the word of Jesus to us Himself.

First of all, we have a greater message today. The great works Jesus did while on this earth dealt with the material. The greater works that He promised deal with the spiritual. In Luke 10:17, the disciples had returned from their first preaching mission, and the Bible says, "And the seventy returned with joy, saying, 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.'" And they were thrilled that they had been able to cast out demons.

But Jesus corrected them. He said, "Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." Did you hear what Jesus said? They had been cheering and laughing and high-fiving each other because they had been able to throw out some evil spirits.

And Jesus said, that is okay, but do not get all excited about that. What you really need to get excited about is that your names are written down in heaven. What was Jesus saying? The spiritual is far more important than the material. The eternal is infinitely more important than the temporal. We have difficulty understanding that. One of the reasons we do not have greater works going on in our lives is because we do not understand the priority of the spiritual over the material.

We have a much greater message because conversion is the greatest miracle we could ever be associated with. A friend of mine told me about a group of short-term missionaries who held evangelistic meetings in Africa. During these meetings, the believers reported a blind man miraculously received his sight. When the believers came back to report to the sending churches, that was just about all they could talk about. A man's sight restored. What a miracle.

Yet during those same meetings, many embraced Jesus as Savior and found eternal salvation. Many stepped out of spiritual blindness into the light of God's kingdom. But that news seemed to receive second billing to the miracle. If we could only view these things as God does. If we could just see them through God's eyes.

The message of reconciliation meets the basic needs of every man and woman, every boy and girl, and it meets those needs permanently and never has to be repeated. In miracles, only God's power and goodness are revealed, but in conversion, God's grace is revealed, something that causes even the angels to look over the bails of heaven and wonder.

The message of the saving grace of God in men and women is the greater message because it is the message that extended to the Gentiles and rolled outward across the world like a mighty tsunami wave. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ have given to us in this generation the greatest message that has ever been communicated to any people at any time in any place. There has never been anything like it, and there never will be.

At any time will there ever be anything like the gospel. It is called the eternal gospel. The good news. And you and I can show compassion and reach out to help people with their hurts. We can minister to them in their sorrow. We can assist them in dealing with terrible addictions and dysfunctional family situations. But if in the process we do not give them Jesus Christ and salvation, we have only postponed the inevitable.

We have not helped them. Our message is greater because it is for eternity. Over the years of ministry, God has given me some wonderful friends. Many of them here in this church and many of them here in the city, some of them spread across the nation. One of my best friends is a doctor who lives in Boone, North Carolina. He keeps in touch with me almost every other week, or so we talk on the phone.

He started a group called Medical Missions. This group brings doctors together and helps them go to the mission field for two weeks at a time every summer. And my friend, he goes to Africa. I think he is in Africa almost more than he is here. Every time I try to get a hold of him, he is in Africa. And they go there and they perform surgeries and they help people there that would never get help if they did not come, because there is just nothing like that for these people.

One day he told me something I have never forgotten. He said, "David, we used to go to Africa and do surgeries on the people that would come: broken limbs, dysfunctional faces." He said, "One day it dawned on us that all we were doing was fixing them up and we were making them healthier on their way to hell. If you don't give them the gospel, you're not helping them."

He said, "We made a commitment on that day that we would never do another surgery until we presented the gospel to the person who was getting the surgery if they were capable of hearing it and giving them an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ." What he was saying is the physical is important, and it is true, sometimes people do not care what we know unless they know how much we care.

But if you only help people physically and do not give them the gospel, you haven't really helped them. You have only made them okay until the inevitable when they won't be okay for a long time. So, I am telling you that Jesus tells us one of the greater things about what we do is we don't just help people physically and we do that as we can, but He's given to us the wonderful privilege of communicating the message of the gospel, which is life-changing.

And some of you here today, you know what I am talking about because you remember what you were before Jesus Christ entered into your life and what He's done to make you a new person. So listen to me, one of the reasons why we can do greater works is because our message is a greater message.

And then number two, we have a greater ministry. Think about this for a moment. The works Jesus did while He walked the dusty paths of Israel were localized in scope. If you were up in a space flight and could look down on the great curve of the earth, and if the shuttle was in the right orbital position and weather permitted, you would strain your eyes and see a little strip of land at the edge of a great continental shelf. That little strip of land is Israel.

Believe it or not, it is the size of New Jersey, the whole nation. During His lifetime, the Son of God was confined in His influence to a comparatively small section of that slice of Middle East. Do you know Jesus never left Israel? His whole ministry was in Israel. And if you have ever been to Israel, you know it is not a very big place. It is like a postage stamp.

I did an event there some years ago and we had so many people with us we couldn't have the opening service in the same hotel. We had to split it up, and one was in one place and one was about 25 miles away in another place. And they said, "Dr. Jeremiah, we're going to have you speak in this service and then we have a helicopter waiting for you and we're going to take you to the other one for the other one."

So I said, okay, I had no idea what I was getting into. The helicopter was located in the corner of a dark field with guards all around it so nobody could get to it. I said, "Where's the lights?" "Oh, we can't turn the lights on, they might shoot us." Oh, my goodness. Got in the helicopter and we flew, and in the dark, the pilot was saying, "Over there is Jordan, over there is..." and he talked about all the lands that were surrounding and you could see them all from Israel.

They are just surrounded by all these lands, and up until recently especially, lands filled with people who hated the Jewish people. That is where Jesus was. He spent His whole time in that little postage stamp nation. At that time, the whole world was Israel. And yet in just a little more than 300 years, Christianity closed all the temples in heathen Roman Empire and numbered its converts by the millions as the gospel spread beyond the borders of Israel and began to fill the world.

Today there are billions of people who claim Christ as their Savior, and the ministry isn't confined to Israel. It has exploded across the nation. I just spent three days with people who helped us take that message to these nations. And I told them, and I say this humbly, I believe I now speak 19 different languages. I only know English, but I speak 19 different languages.

Through AI, they take my voice, it is my voice, and they put it into the language of other nations. They coordinate my lips with the words, and I am telling you people, if you were to see it, you would think David Jeremiah is speaking in Chinese, and I'm not. But the message is being preached in all these places, and they are just getting started. I'm going to have more languages next time I talk to you about this because we're working on it really hard.

What I am saying is we carry the ministry of the gospel to the ends of the earth. Jesus did not do that. Jesus ministered in Israel. He never left Israel. But He empowered His disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel, and He has told us that is our responsibility. Each of us to find a way to leverage the gospel for the whole world.

And that is why we have radio and why we have television, and that is why we do social media and why we write books: it is because we are trying to reach as many people as we can with the gospel. That is what Jesus has empowered us to do. These are the greater works He's given us to do because He went to the Father.

And isn't it interesting, He went to the Father and put His DNA in every single Christian who is still on this earth? His DNA is the Holy Spirit. Isn't that something? While He was in Israel, He was confined in His own body. When He went to heaven, He said, "I'm going to give you all the Holy Spirit." And the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, and now every single person who believes in Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit living in them, and they can carry the message of Christ wherever they go.

I pray a prayer sometimes when I get up in the morning: Lord Jesus, help me to take the influence of Christ wherever I go today. And all of us can do that. And when we do that, we're doing the greater works that Jesus said we would do because we're going where He did not go, but He sent us as His representatives.

I hope you're getting a little bit of the picture of what Jesus meant when He said we could do greater works than He did. We'll have more of that tomorrow on the Thursday edition of Turning Point, and I hope you'll join us then. We still have several subjects to discuss under the topic of the Holy Spirit, and we will finish out the month of June talking about all of it. I hope that you will be able to be with us every single day.

I told you in another broadcast that my sister called me and told me she was reading this book and that it was helping her and encouraging her. I can't tell you what that meant to me when your own family reads something you wrote. I guess that's something special. My sister's name is Mary Alice, and she is a wonderful blessing in my life. And I hope that the book that she's reading you will read, and you can get your copy for a gift of any size during the month of June. We will see you right here tomorrow for the Thursday edition of Turning Point.

David Michael Jeremiah: Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's new book, *The Holy Spirit You May Not Know*, a valuable resource that's yours for a gift of any amount.

The prayerful support we receive from listeners like you makes this program possible. Thank you for partnering with us to deliver the unchanging word of God to an ever-changing world. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue The Holy Spirit You May Not Know on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.