“Most assuredly, 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.

And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—

the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. (John 14:12–18)

South Africa suffers with a 20-40% unemployment rate, where one advertised position will receive thousands of applicants.

There is one workforce that never turns people away, that employs 100% of those who apply, and that is God’s workforce. The church of God has endless tasks, needs and work to do, and the problem is never that there are too many Christians and too little work. As Jesus said, the problem is that the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few.

Every Christian should be a volunteer worker for Christ and His church. Christians should be people with a mission, a calling, and a longing to serve. We were redeemed for a purpose, and not merely to escape Hell. We live in a world where we have been left to be like the Master all our days, to bring His truth, His message, His love, His holiness to others, actively, deliberately, and publicly. We are supposed to live lives of eternal significance, not lives of comfort and convenience, lives of faith-filled service, not lives of complacent safety.

Likely all your life you will be tempted to laziness and fear. You will be tempted do as little as possible, and we want to risk as little as possible. We want our Christianity to be very middle-class, suburban, controlled, and to fit into our family time, our finances, our security. We don’t like the idea of cost, difficulty, upheaval, loss, danger.

This passage is in God’s Word to teach Christians how to be active, useful servants of the Master. In this Upper Room Discourse, Jesus is explaining the Christian life when He is gone. He is providing both great truths about Himself, how He is the way, and the full exposition of the Father, and also great promises of His return, and His enablement. Here in John 14:12ff Jesus turns His attention to the continuation of His works. He has just told them that the great works He did verified and testified to the fact that He really is the Son who indwells the Father.

But that raises the question: what happens to these works of Jesus once He is gone? Can anyone do the works of Jesus when He is no longer with us? Jesus’ surprising answer is that not only will His followers continue to do His works, they will do greater works than His.

“Most assuredly, 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.

But how? How could our works be greater than His works? The greatness has to do with the quantity and the quality. In terms of quantity, Jesus’ works were restricted to the area of Israel, and lasted three-and-a-half years. But after Jesus ascends, goes to the Father, and sends the Spirit, the works of His followers now go global, and go over two thousand years. “On the day of Pentecost alone more believers were added to the little band of Jesus’ followers than throughout his entire earthly life.”

In quality, they will now be invested with the risen authority of Jesus, and His Sent Spirit. Jesus doesn’t mean we are going to raise more Lazaruses from the dead than He. He means that once He is ascended, all nations will come to Him. Remember,

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28:18)

The work of Christ is meant to grow and expand. We are privileged people, who get to be part of the Messianic mission, bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world, making, shaping and teaching disciples within our local church. There should be no such thing as an unemployed Christian as far as the work of the Lord goes.

Here in John 14, the Lord Jesus will give His disciples three keys to being useful in the world, three secrets to being as effective a worker as He was. He will show us how Christians can live lives that bear fruit.

If you are not serving, here are three things you are probably not doing, and can start doing. If you are serving, here are three things that can invest your service with growing, fruitful, powerful, ministry.

I. Loyal Supplication – Pray in the Name of Jesus

And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.

The first key that Jesus gives us is prayer in His name. Twice He makes the offer of an unlimited grant: whatever you ask (v13), ask anything (v14). And twice, He adds the proviso, the request must be made in the name of Jesus. If it is done in that way, twice Jesus says, I will do it, and then He adds, the Father is glorified in the answering of prayer in Jesus’s name.

He’s going to repeat this a few times in this Upper Room Discourse:

• If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. (John 15:7)
• You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. (John 15:16)
• “And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23–24)

You should feel the tone of positivity, of expectancy, of God’s delight to answer His children’s prayers. Nothing here is about overcoming God’s reluctance; it is about laying hold on God’s willingness.

Prayer is simply communication with God, from our spirit to His. And it can take the form of just enjoying and admiring God, thanking Him, confessing our sins, or it can take the form of request. Here the emphasis is on request, or what we call supplication, because to do the works of Christ, we will need all kinds of things. And Jesus says, if you ask it in My name, it is already a Yes.

So that has led some people to think that Jesus was giving us a kind of magic spell, a formula to say out loud. In occultic practices, that is how words work: they supposedly have a kind of independent power over creation, so to say the right words in the right order is to be able to manipulate reality. And some misguided souls have tried to marry magic with Christianity, thinking that they can say or demand anything and then add the words “in Jesus’ name”.

But in Scripture, someone’s name is not just a word. Someone’s name is their authority and their permission. A soldier who came in Caesar’s name was deputised and authorised to say those things which Caesar said. To speak in someone’s name is to claim to be their representative. Jesus speaks of those who will come in His name, and yet be false prophets.

So what then does it mean to pray in Jesus’s name? To pray in Jesus’ name is first of all, Christian prayer. To address the Father, in the name of the Son, by the Spirit, means you have embraced what Scripture says about God as three persons. It’s prayer rooted in the gospel, that one comes to the Father, by the Son, in the Spirit. Christian prayer is trinitarian and gospel-centred.

Second, praying in Jesus name means you are asking for those things to do the works of Jesus. You are asking to be supplied with what you need to do what He would do. You are extending His mission, so anything you need to be supplied with for that mission, will be given to you.

It is like having a credit card. Our church has a credit card with our church’s name on it. If I said to you, anything you need to get in the name of the church, this card will give it to you. Well, what sort of thing would you assume we want you to get, in the name of the church? A built in jacuzzi for your home? A roundtrip to Cape Town on the Blue Train? We’d assume you’re buying in the name of the church the things needful for the church. That’s why we’ve called this secret of ministry loyal supplication. You ask, you supplicate, but in loyalty to His will, His aims.

What will we need? We will need guidance and direction. We will need confidence and boldness. We will need physical strength and health. We will need opportunities to open up. We will need protection from attack, from satanic obstacles and opposition. We will need physical needs like money, food, shelter, transport, medical needs. Sometimes we’ll need training and instruction. We’ll need helpers and co-workers.

These are the things we ask for when we want to do the work of Christ.

When a believer keeps aligning his life with the will of Christ, then increasingly, what he or she wants and what Christ wants become more and more of the same thing. That’s why John puts it this way in his letter:

And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. (1 John 3:22)

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desire of your heart. Why? Because the desires of your heart are more and more rooted in delighting in the Lord. That’s when our faith grows, because we know the things we want are the things God wants. That’s the meaning of verses like

Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. (Mark 11:24) or “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7)

He does not mean try to eliminate all doubt from your heart, or have confidence in your confidence. He means as you live in my will, you will know what My name represents, and you’ll know what you are asking for is at least in My general will.

But why must we ask, if God knows what we need before we ask Him? “If He knows … what we need, why must we pray? Not to instruct Him, but to prevail with Him—to be made intimate with Him by continuance in supplication, to be humbled” – John Chrysostom

Because God desires communion with us, and we need the experience of dependence. A parent could put food in some kind of dog dishes and then the children would come and fill up when they needed and remain independent all day. Or a parent could say, when you’re tired and hungry, come and find me, and I’ll give you what you need. A parent who wants no interaction puts the food in dog dishes. A parent who wants the interaction makes the children come and ask.

If we pray in the name of Jesus, we will have all that we need for the work of Jesus. But then there is a second key that is essential to fruitful ministry.

II. Loving Submission – Obey the Commands of Jesus

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.

The second key to ministry is loving obedience. After we have asked the Lord for the resources we need, we must get on with the work. But everything hinges on what we do, and why we do it.

Jesus says that really loyal, abiding disciples only do those things which Jesus commanded them to do. This is both a conditional statement, and a statement of cause and effect. Condition; if you really love Jesus, then you must display it by keeping the commandments. It also reports a fact, a cause and effect situation: if you really do love the Lord, then keeping His commandments will be a way of life for you.

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:21)

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:10)

Keeping commandments. It has the sound of discipline, order, authority and rank, like the military. God’s work on earth is warfare. It is a battle against forces of spiritual darkness, who seek to usurp the glory of God, and drag souls down to destruction. And any army and any major military campaign is a highly disciplined, highly planned operation. Nothing is left to chance. And the success of the campaign depends on all units, be they fighter pilots, submarine commanders, tank operators, infantry, following their explicit orders. If any of those units begin coming up with their own plan, attacking, retreating, waiting when they are not supposed to, it can ruin and undo the entire strategy. The plan is too big for individual units to come up with their own strategies.

In God’s army, it is similar. We have our marching orders. They are found in God’s Word. These give us all we need for life and godliness. Second Timothy 3:16 tells us that all of Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, so that the Christian “may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” What if you were insistent that your whole life: your personal thought and inner life, your marriage, your family, your church life, your friendships, your work and career, your finances, your body, your hobbies and interests were going to be lived by His orders, what would change? Would it be a more disciplined life? Would your life be more efficient in time, money, and effort? Would some things drop out? Would there be some things you’re refusing to do now that you would start doing? In fact, it might be several small, repetitive changes that will add up to a huge difference when repeated day after day. Be in the Word and prayer. Connect with at least one Christian. Use Sunday for some ministry to others. Be in church when God’s people assemble. Speak to one unbeliever about Christ.

God’s work suffers firstly when God’s people simply don’t obey orders. They don’t show up for duty. They don’t do the basics. Too tired. Too much work. Too many other commitments.

God’s work also suffers when God’s people decide to do things God’s didn’t call for. How much that is done in churches today and in the name of Christianity was never called for in Scripture. Nothing in God’s Word told us to begin that kind of ministry, or start that kind of worship innovation, or try that kind of evangelistic technique. Creative, yes, innovative, yes, but biblical, no. So we have a massive diversion of time, resources, Christians doing things that might seem impressive, or culturally relevant, or noticeable. But is it in the Word? Did we get orders from High Command telling us to put this into practice? When it comes to worship, this is called the Regulative Principle, Baptists have also called it the Rule of Prescription. What it means is: we do those things which have been positively prescribed to us by command or necessary example in Scripture.

Paul tells us the two failings of soldiers is if they are soft, and if they are distracted.

You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. (2 Timothy 2:3–4)

But we should not miss the fact that Jesus connected this obedience to love. What we do is His explicit commands, but why we do it is a heart of love.

The Christian army is a not a slave-army of unwilling captives, chained to our oars, doing the work because we have no other choice. The Christian army is an army of people who were captured by love. We were drawn by beauty. We volunteered for His service once we saw His dying love on Calvary, once we saw His compassionate eyes longing for our good. When we saw that sin, death, and Hell itself would not withstand the force of His relentless love, we said, Here am I, send me!

The work of Christ conquers the world not through force of arms, not through mere argumentation, not through political power, not through better marketing. John tells us “And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” (1 John 5:4) And we know according to Galatians 5:6 that faith works through love. It is love for God, desire for His glory, thirst for His beauty, delight in His excellence, joy in His expansive kingdom, this is like the dripping or flowing soft water that eventually erodes mountains of granite. It is our love for God, and then for one another, that is like a spring sunshine that can melt whole glaciers. God’s way has always been to triumph with Gideon’s 300 men, the minority remnant, the poor and simple of the world, the weak and despised, who have no weapon except love. And with that little sling and stone, God bring down the Goliaths of satanic forces.

But it is not a small thing, whether or not you obey God’s commands out of love. 1 Corinthians 16:14 says, “Let all that you do be done in love.” Obedience without love becomes legalism, moralism, works-righteousness, pride, boasting, and pretty soon becomes weapons captured by the enemy. Loveless obedience becomes friendly fire. Loveless obedience will exhaust and deplete you and make the work of Christ seem burdensome. John wrote in 1 John 5:3:

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3)

To do the work of Christ we need both discipline and dependence. Discipline – do what He said, and only what He said, and nothing less than what He said. Devotion – do it to please Him, do it for the pleasure of pleasing Him.

Pray in the name of Jesus. That’s loyal supplication. Obey the commands of Jesus. That’s loving submission. Now comes the third key.

III. Listening Surrender – Learn from the Spirit of Jesus

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—

the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

Here for the first of five times in the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus introduces the truth that there is a Third Person who also indwells the Father and the Son. Here He is called the Helper, and the Spirit of Truth. The word Helper means the “called alongside to assist.”

The word for another in the original language is important. Greek has one word for another, which means another of a different kind. It has another word which means another of the same kind. It’s that second word used here, which means Jesus is saying that the Helper is a Helper like Jesus has been. Jesus has been the Comforter, the Strengthener, the Defender, the Advocate who works for His people. But this third Person is just like Jesus. Indeed, He is the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, who will stand in the stead of Jesus.

That’s why Jesus says in verse 18, I will not leave you orphans – I will come to you. I think the emphasis there is not on the Second Coming, but on the coming of the Spirit. As the Spirit will come to indwell all believers on the day of Pentecost, it will, in effect, be Jesus coming to them as well. This is why we sometimes loosely speak of asking Jesus to come in to your life, because we understand that He comes in through the Person of the Spirit.

Up to this point, the disciples had only experienced the alongside-dwelling of the Spirit, according to verse 17. But shortly in the future, the Spirit would come, and dwell in believers, and abide with them forever. That promise was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God came to indwell the church of God.

Now what difference would, and does the indwelling Spirit make on the Christian life? Just this: the Spirit of God takes the Word of God, and writes it on our hearts. The Spirit of the Living Word, indwells us and brings to our minds and hearts the written Word, so that God’s law, God’s will, God’s promises are on the inside, being fleshed out, not on the outside trying to be forced in.

The Spirit’s primary work is exalting Jesus the Living Word, by the illumination of the written Word. All the actions that Jesus ascribes to the Holy Spirit in this discourse are teaching actions:

• “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:26)
• “He will testify of Me”. (John 15:26)
• “He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: (John 16:7–8)
• “He will guide you into all truth;” (John 16:13)
• “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:14)

This is the threefold Word of God. Jesus is the Incarnate Word, who expounds the invisible God to us. The Bible is the inspired Word, that expounds Christ to us from Genesis to Revelation. And when you are born again, believe savingly on Christ, you now have the indwelling Word by the Spirit, who will teach, explain and remind you of the Word as you read it, hear it, and meditate on it.

Without the Spirit of God, our prayers would be empty, and we would not be able to obey Christ’s commands. But with the Spirit, our prayers are directed, our obedience is loving and gracious, and the Word of God dwells richly in us. These hang together. Supplicate, Submit, and Surrender to the Spirit.

The Word comes in to stay – the Spirit, and then you pray the Word, and you obey the Word. God’s church should have no unemployed. The work is too vast, the promises are too great, the rewards are too rich for believers to refuse the privilege of working for Him.

A pastor-friend of mine once made a remark that stuck with me. He said, you know David, most church members are nice people, but the real difference between the ones that become useful and the ones that don’t, is that the ones that become useful know there is a cost to being useful, and they accept it. The others quietly refuse it. They don’t often openly admit they are refusing it, they just silently turn back to their children, their Instagram feeds, their health and fitness, their bodies. The cost in time, in regular spiritual discipline, in prayer, in finances, in hospitality, in fatigue, they decide they do not want to pay.

But we sang this morning this exhortation:

If you cannot cross the ocean,
And the distant lands explore,
You can find the lost around you,
You can help them at your door;
If you cannot give your thousands,
You can give the widow’s mite;
What you truly give for Jesus,
Will be precious in His sight.

If you cannot speak like angels,
If you cannot preach like Paul,
You can tell the love of Jesus,
You can say He died for all.

If you cannot rouse the wicked,
With the judgment’s dread alarms,
You can lead the little children
To the Saviour’s waiting arms.

If you cannot be the watchman,
Standing high on Zion’s wall,
Pointing out the path to Heaven,
Offering life and peace to all,
With your prayers and with your bounties
You can do what Heaven demands;
You can be like faithful Aaron,
Holding up the prophet’s hands.

No believer ever volunteered for the Master and was turned away. Come, and experience the joy of working the works of Jesus.