The Greater Work of Letting Go
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedToday's Gospel lesson ends with
a mysterious promise from Jesus.
You shall do greater works
than I do
if I go to my Father.
The Season of Easter is structured
so that we celebrate the resurrection
for three weeks.
And then we get a Sunday
that focuses on Jesus the Good Shepherd.
and after that we have readings that
emphasize New Covenant ministry,
and the look toward Pentecost.
We have what is, essentially, a happy Lent.
Instead of fasting
we have seven weeks of feasting.
Instead of self-denial
we have celebration.
Instead of a journey to the cross,
We move toward anticipation.
We are looking forward to Pentecost.
The end of the celebration of the Resurrection
culminates in the celebration of the Holy Spirit
undoing the chaos of Babel
and the release of a new Kingdom.
This is foreshadowed in the Old Testament feast
where the people were instructed
from the day of Passover
to measure out an omer of grain
for fifty days,
and count the omer.
What happened
was a growing container of wheat
that would then be presented at the temple
and it was a sign of abundant harvest.
This offering was a sign of
the reality of God's call on Israel
to be a Kingdom of Priests to feed the whole world.
We have been talking about unreality and reality.
Today I want to talk about the reality of ministry in the Kingdom.
We have all of these themes in our readings today.
And we have the origins of the historic ministry of the church.
From the beginning the church had three orders of ministry:
episcipous,
presbyterous,
and diakanous.
In modern language,
bishops,
priests,
and deacons.
The first word
is related to the word shepherd,
and was a term used for administrative officials
in the Roman empire.
The second word is more accurately translated
“elder” and it is where we get the tradition of calling
the priest of a parish “Father.”
This person is the dad of a congregation.
And the finally,
deacon, which literally means servant.
These roles of leadership in the church are different
from the five fold ministry.
Chaos arises when the Five-fold ministry gifts
are confused with the leadership roles from the early church.
I have taught at length about the five fold ministry.
Those teachings are on Youtube, and I believe they have their own playlist.
If you are curious, I encourage you to go there.
From today’s readings
we are shown three things.
First, Saint Peter teaches
all of us are called, through our rebirth in the Holy Spirit,
to be part of a new nation.
This nation is called out.
This nation is unusual, or different from all the others.
And this nation
is going to fulfill the original calling of the nation of Israel.
This nation is a Kingdom of Priests.
That means,
we serve God and we serve others
and most importantly,
we offer prayer and sacrifice on behalf of the whole world.
Periodically I get challenged about the Baptist concept
of the priesthood of all believers.
This idea is a corruption of what Peter is saying here,
and is the belief that everyone has the “power” in the church
to be the priest and especially, to interpret scripture.
This error has a terrible by-product.
Baptists are the most likely churches to split, and they do.
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of order.
And as we see in Acts,
right from the very beginning,
there are men who are set apart,
the Twelve,
that Jesus made apostles.
These leaders were overwhelmed by a church
and a community that went from 120 to about five thousand
in a few days.
Scholars believe that very quickly
Christian believers
became the majority in the Jewish community.
And the apostles had problems.
Lots of them.
People always say they want to go back to the early church.
What they mean are Acts 2:42-27.
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
This “kum ba yah” moment lasted about a week.
Then the church started to have persecution on the outside
and trouble on the inside.
Peter confronted two people who lied, and the Holy Spirit killed them.
Then the Apostles, in the process of healing people
get thrown into prison,
an angel frees them
they are forced to go before the council.
They are set free,
but they are flogged.
When they get home,
after the flogging,
they have to do deal with another problem.
Jewish believers are discriminating against Greek widows,
and not giving them food.
Yes, they were withholding food from widows.
And poor Peter and the apostles
had to answer a bunch of texts and emails
from angry Greeks
and they couldn’t teach of preach.
Let’s all go back to the early church.
They solved this problem
by looking for the seven most spirit filled men
and making them deacons.
As Nancy pointed out to me,
they were table waiters,
and the first martyr was one of these.
Stephen.
Jesus gives us a vision for the ministry of the church
in John 14.
Jesus is in the Father.
As he tells us many times
judge a tree by it’s fruit.
Judge him not just by his words,
but also by his works.
It is okay to judge things by the fruit.
These works are what we call ministry.
And then Jesus tells the disciples
that they are going to do the same works he did,
and because he is going to go to the Father
they will do greater works.
This word here in Greek
is like our English
Big, bigger, and biggest.
Jesus is saying I have done the big works
but if I go to the Father
you will do the bigger works.
More,
longer,
and substantially greater.
If we believe
we will do greater works,
and we can ask anything in Jesus name
and he will do it.
This is the first of the six times Jesus says this.
The ministry of Jesus begins
with one person.
It then increases to three,
and eventually, 12.
Then it increases to 70.
And then to 120.
And then,
after the Resurrection,
we are back down to 11.
And then
after Pentecost,
we are into the thousands.
And these thousands
are marked by signs, wonders, and miracles.
A lot of people think the greater works are about more outrageous signs.
Jesus is talking about more and greater.
If a seed falls to the ground and dies
it will yield more fruit.
It will yield a hundred fold increase.
This only happens
when we are in Jesus, and in the Father
through the Holy Spirit.
And it only happens when we let go.
In being in the Holy Spirit,
and letting go,
we discover God will answer our prayers
in ways we cannot imagine.
The apostles discovered,
just like how cells divide and differentiate in a body,
that they had to let go of all the work
and release it to others.
The Holy Spirit anointed them to pray and preach the word,
and the Holy Spirit anointed others to serve the widows.
There isn’t a hierarchy here,
just like a foot is not better than an ear.
This is a body.
When I was in London,
the Lord began speaking to me about administration.
He told me my job is to preach, teach, pray, and write.
I was trained in ministry during a low point in church history
where leaders were taught that ministry is
being a religious CEO.
I have to be good at business,
corporate leadership,
time management,
fitness,
and have a wife named Hannah
who has a side hustle as a Christian
YouTube influencer
and four sons
named
Oak,
Timber,
River,
and Stone.
It seems like I have spent twenty years
unlearning all the ministry stuff,
and the past six or so
learning my Bible all over again.
The demands of our community
are growing,
and the days of me doing most of it are over.
And as I sit with God
the Lord says,
I am calling you to preach, teach, pray, and write.
This week,
as I sat with these readings,
the Lord started to show me
that these greater works were not possible
unless Jesus went to the Father.
And many of the words on our house
cannot happen
unless I let go.
A few months ago
Zuzana prayed that God would send us another priest.
Since that prayer,
several guys have come to me
like Nicodemus at night
and shared with me about the call on their lives.
We are in the process of figuring out
the right way to path for us.
We have been praying for business and web support,
and it is becoming clear
we need to pray for Spirit filled “deacons of web and finance.”
Honestly,
we need people who won’t try to fit us
into the world systems we left.
Very few people
understand the call
to live totally by faith,
not carry debt,
not do ministry building,
and listen to God about everything.
Everything,
even accounting and social media.
Jesus said
that if he went to the Father
we would do the greater works.
Yesterday during our Fire Team training,
the Lord showed me how
we are at a place of natural expansion,
and he will bring the increase,
and although the changes will be different
they will not be hard.
Anytime you do things
in the Holy Spirit,
there is always a grace
that doesn’t happen
when you do it in the flesh.
Something shifted in the church
when they ordained the deacons.
The disciples increased greatly,
and a number of priests became obedient to the faith.
And Stephen
began to move in grace and power.
The first one to give his life for Jesus
was this deacon.
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