The Greater Works Of Those Who Believe

Early church… At the beginning when 1 Corinthians was written… "Hey look, some of these things are going on. You're not all supposed to do them." He even comes back later and says at some point they will cease, if you're talking about the kinds of signs John holds up as evidence Jesus is who he says he was. But he says there's going to be an enduring sign that goes forward, and that's the one you and I are supposed to always be a part of.

Is God capable of doing whatever he wants? Yes, whenever he wants. My theology and doctrine would never tell him what he can or can't do. But you need to know something. There are all kinds of people who misunderstand this text and hold up false evidences for God and maybe have even created excuses for how this is an expression of that thing. It's not even the thing the Bible was originally talking about when it described it. What I do want to talk about this morning is…Are you involved in the thing God says you will be involved in if you are his believer? I'll say it to you this way.

Miracles are like the thrusts of a rocket. Whenever a satellite is put in orbit, or the space shuttle was shot in orbit, or if you're a little older like me… I can remember we had school assemblies, and we watched the Apollo rockets go off. Our teachers would have us watch on TV the initial thrust, this spectacular display of power that got the rocket up in the air and into orbit. We never stood at a screen and watched some image on a radar of a little blip, blip that went around and orbited around the earth, but it wasn't the thrust, the explosion, that really, ultimately, aided us in our movement toward space.

In other words, anybody can go make a big explosion in the backyard, but very few people can get a satellite up in space and have it orbit and do things you just expect to be done. Miracles are like that. It's the thrust of a rocket launch that says, "Look, this is something going on," but it's the ongoing work of the authenticated messenger of God that really makes a difference. But we love to go watch the launch, don't we? Launches don't change the world; enduring truth changes the world.

Let me just show you a few things. This is the purpose of Jesus' works: that you can believe him. The purpose of our works is that we would be authenticated as believers and that people can therefore believe in the One we say has sent us. The ongoing miraculous work of a New Testament believer is ultimately love. It is the way we relate to one another.

If our marriages are failing, if our marriages that are not publicly filing for divorce are not places of intimacy and a pursuit of oneness, people have a right to go, "I don't know who you think your God is, but he must not be who you think he is, or your relationships would look different. Everything he says says he will reconcile you one to another, that you will relate differently to one another.

Frankly, I don't see you relating differently to one another. I see you walking in insecurity and pettiness and selfishness and gossip and slandering and sexually abusing each other, just like the rest of us. The only difference between us and you is you do it behind closed doors." And we just celebrate it and invite others in. You know what? I had a guy ask me this in a radio interview last week.