The scripture reading comes from Matthew chapter 4 and John 14.
Please follow along on the screen, the bulletin, or on your Bible.
In Matthew 4 verse 18 we read,
While walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother,
casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
And going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother.
And in the boat, with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.
Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in the synagogue and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various disease and pains,
those oppressed by demons, those having seizures and paralytics, and he held them.
And a great crowd followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
And in John 14, verse 8, we read,
Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.
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?
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, who does his work.
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or else believe on account on the works themselves.
Truly, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.
The greater works that this will be, will he, will I will do.
Then the Father may be glorified the Son.
If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
Amen.
This is the word of God.
Great.
Thank you, Jonas and Janet.
Good morning, Watermark family.
Great to be with you.
Once again, if you do not know me, my name is Kevin, and I can see a bunch of you on the screen.
Sybil and Joyce and Michael, Bernard and others, a warm welcome to you.
It is wonderful to be with you today.
We are looking at Jesus' words in Matthew chapter 4, where he comes to various people, and amazingly, in unbelievable grace, Jesus comes and says, follow me.
What is so amazing about it is, as we have been going through the series, we have learned that in the first century, for a teacher to allow some people to follow him, some disciples or apprentices, he would select the very best students.
Those who were the top of the class, those who came with a good reputation, those who had a well manicured resume, those whose lives were well ordered and put together.
And after a rigorous interview process, if he thought they were good enough, he might invite them or allow them to possibly follow him.
But Jesus comes to these fishermen, these working class people that didn't have much of a reputation or a CV or a resume.
Jesus comes later on to tax collectors, the very people that society didn't hold in much regard, and he says, I'm choosing you.
I want you to come and be part of my kingdom to come and follow me.
And so as we're working through Matthew 4, we're learning what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus, not just in first century Israel, but also in 21st century Hong Kong.
And one of the things we're learning is that when Jesus says, follow me, that's not just a once off decision.
He's not just saying convert to Christianity back in 1997, and then from now on out, just live your best life now.
Jesus calls us to live with him, to orientate our lives around him every day, to follow him from day to day for the rest of our lives.
And we're learning that that kind of involves three things, the three main ingredients.
When Jesus says, follow me, he says, come and be with me. Come and orientate your life around me.
And what that really means is that throughout our day, whether we're on the MTR, whether we're putting our children to bed at night,
whether you're in the boardroom negotiating a deal, when you're on your way to school, what that means is to live with an awareness that we are in the presence of King Jesus.
It doesn't mean that throughout the day we literally need to have our hands open and stop the traffic light and say, Father, do you want me to go forward or not?
We don't live like that. But we live as we go throughout our day, orientated around Jesus, aware that we're in the presence of the King.
Secondly, Jesus says, come and become like me. In other words, love what I love, hate what I hate, be like me in character, in nature, in heart,
but also be like me in my relationship with the Father, dependent upon me, intimate with me, reliant upon me.
And then the third thing we are learning about what Jesus says when he says, come and follow me, is let the pattern of your life look like the pattern of my life.
Let your lifestyle look like my lifestyle. And what that means is that we as followers of Jesus start to do the things that Jesus did.
In the first century, someone could look at a apprentice, a disciple and know whose teacher they belong to, whose rabbi they were, who they were following just by observing their life.
They could see someone down the street and say, oh, that must be an apprentice of that teacher or that rabbi.
Jesus says, come and follow me. Come and learn to let your life look like my life.
And so that's what we're going to look at today.
And so we're looking at this passage in John chapter 14. And if you have your Bible, I encourage you to turn there with me.
We're going to spend a little bit of time on it up front and then we're going to look at practically what does that look like in our lives.
And so the context is this in the later chapters of John's Gospel, Jesus engages in what's called his final discourse.
It's the night before he's about to be crucified. He's having his last supper with his disciples and he's giving them his final teaching before Judas leaves the meal to go and betray him.
Jesus is going to be arrested in a couple of hours and the next day he's going to be crucified.
And so Jesus gives his final discourse to his disciples and he's been talking to him about the fact that he's about to be crucified and he's then going to ascend to the Father and leave them.
But that's okay because he's going to send the Holy Spirit.
Look at what the disciples say to this in verse 8.
Philip says, Lord, show us the Father. That's enough for us.
Jesus said, Philip, have I been with you so long and still you do not know me?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, show us the Father?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I say to you, I don't speak of my own authority.
No, but the Father who dwells in me, he does his works in me.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.
Or else, believe at least on account of the works themselves.
So here, this one disciple, Philip, is saying, look, Jesus, you've been talking about the Father.
We want to see the Father. Can't you just show us who is God?
What exactly is he like?
And Jesus says, how can you even ask me that?
I spent three years with you. Can't you see, Philip, that the Father and I are so unified, so united, so one, that if you've seen me, it's like you've seen the Father.
If you've experienced me, it's like you've experienced God the Father.
And Jesus gives two proofs for this.
He says, firstly, look at my words.
He says, the words that I say to you, I don't speak of my own authority.
In other words, you've been listening to what I've been saying.
This isn't just some new radical teaching.
The things that I've been saying to you are bear witness or testament to the fact that God and I are one.
What I've been saying, announcing the gospel of the kingdom, is the same thing that all the prophets have been saying throughout the scripture.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, my words are the fulfillment of this.
I'm only doing what the Father has told me to say.
But secondly, he says, if you don't believe on account of my words, well, at least consider my works.
Look at what he says here.
Believe me that I'm in the Father and the Father's in me.
Or else, if you can't believe my words, at least believe on account of the works themselves.
Jesus is saying that, if my verbal testimony leaves you with doubts in your mind about who I am, look to my works.
Let my works and my words join together and lead you to faith.
Okay, that's what verse 11 says.
And Jesus actually says the same thing throughout John's gospel.
He says in chapter 10, a little bit earlier.
The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me.
So, the goal of Jesus' lifestyle, his works, the way that he lived his life, was to bear witness to the reality of who God is and who Jesus is in relation to God the Father.
Jesus says, believe me, I'm in the Father, the Father's in me.
Or else, believe on account of the works themselves.
Now, look at the very next verse.
Verse 12.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me, followers of Jesus, will also do the works that I do.
Do you see what Jesus is saying?
In the same way that Jesus' life is a testimony to God the Father and to who Christ is in the Father.
In the same way, our lives, followers of Jesus, are meant to be a testimony to who Jesus is and who we are in Jesus.
Now, there's an obvious difference between our works and Jesus' works.
Jesus' works, his lifestyle, testifies to the fact that he is one with God, that he is divine, that he is the Son of God, that he is part of the Trinity.
Our works, I'm sorry to say, don't suggest in any way that we are somehow the fourth member of the Trinity, that we are somehow divine along with Jesus.
There's a distinction there.
That's obviously not what Jesus is saying.
But what he's saying is that the things that he did bore witness about him to lead people to see God and who God is.
And in a similar way, those who follow him, those who are learning to be with him and become like him, in the power of the Spirit will continue similar works so that our lives will also bear witness to who he is, who Christ is, and who he is in the Father.
So the lives of followers of Jesus are meant to, in some small way, look like Jesus' life and emulate his works.
Jesus says the same thing in Matthew chapter 5.
He says, remember he says, you are the salt of the earth, you are the city on a hill, let your light shine.
Then he says this, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works, that's the same word in Greek, and give glory to your Father in heaven.
The Apostle Paul writes similarly in Ephesians chapter 2.
This is amazing.
He says, by grace, we've been saved through faith.
This is not your own doing.
It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast.
Okay, so Paul says this, we were dead in our sins, in Christ we've been made alive in Jesus, reconciled to the Father, given a new name, a new status.
And that's not because of our good works, it's by sheer grace alone.
No one can come before the Father and say, Father, I'm a Christian because I've done so many good things.
No, no, we are saved by grace.
Remember in the gospel, we are given what we don't deserve, which is adoption, reconciliation, justification, redemption.
And we are also not given what we do deserve, which is judgment and hell for all eternity.
In the gospel, we are given these things by grace alone, through faith, not because of our good works.
But then, look at what Paul says.
Because we are saved, because we are accepted by God on the basis of grace, not good works, God then changes us so that we start to live the kind of lives that do good works, as a result of what Jesus has done in our lives.
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
John Piper summarizes it like this.
He says, Jesus means that all of his followers will be marked by this.
They'll be so united to Jesus that they'll carry on his work by his power, doing the kind of things that will bear witness about him.
They will point people to Jesus and through Jesus to God the Father.
Christians are defined by works or life which flow from faith in Jesus and point to the glory of Jesus.
Okay, so Christians are not saved by works, we're saved by grace alone.
But because we are in Christ, Jesus says, let your life, like my life, testify to who I am and who God the Father is.
Verse 12, truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.
Friends, maybe I can ask you, are you a follower of Jesus this morning?
Does this, could this be said of you?
Does your life in some small way look like the life of Jesus?
Well, Jesus goes on and he says something very interesting.
He says, not only will his followers do the same works that he does, he actually says this, we will do greater works in these because he is going to the Father.
Now, it's a very difficult passage, this, and what he doesn't mean is that we will do more spectacular works in Jesus.
Like, Jesus fed 5,000, we will feed 10,000, right?
Jesus walked on water, we will somehow just hover on water or fly across the water, okay?
It doesn't mean that the works we do will be more spectacular.
It also doesn't mean that we will do more in number.
You know, Jesus healed 1,000 people, we will heal 10,000 or a million.
Though that is true as well.
What it means is that Jesus' works that he did were anticipatory.
They anticipated the cross and his death and his resurrection.
But the works that his followers will do will not be in hope or anticipation signs of what's coming.
There will be a proof of what has already happened.
Maybe an example to think of it like this.
Imagine someone comes to you and says, I want to give you a million dollars.
That's a nice thing to happen.
And he says, here's a down payment.
Here is $10,000.
Here's a check for $10,000 as a down payment.
Imagine someone else comes to you and says, I want to give you a million dollars.
In fact, I've already done it.
Here is a statement from the bank, a proof of transfer.
The money is already in your bank.
Which one's better?
A check, which is a down payment of what's to come.
Or the proof of what's already in your account.
Jesus says that the works that his disciples will do will be greater because there will be a proof, almost a guarantee of what has already happened.
We don't do works that says, believe the works in our lives because one day Jesus is going to die on the cross and rise again.
And I'm just preparing you for that.
When people see our lives and when we pray for someone they heal in Jesus name, this should be a proof.
Say, the power is not in us.
This is because Jesus died and rose again.
He conquered sin.
He conquered the grave.
Jesus is alive.
This is a guarantee of what Christ has done.
Jesus says, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.
Now, what exactly are these works?
Well, in the immediate context, in John's Gospel, Jesus is talking about his miracles.
But when you read the rest of the New Testament, books like 1 Corinthians, it's obvious that not all Christians will abound in miraculous works and works of healing.
Some may, and that's wonderful.
Corinthians tells us that all Christians are given different gifts.
Some are given the gift of faith.
Some are given the gift of speaking in tongues or prophecy.
Some are given the gift of miracles and healing.
But Paul says not all Christians have all of these gifts.
So what that means is, Jesus is not saying that all Christians will necessarily do the miraculous works that he did.
Like raising Lazarus from the dead, turning water into wine, walking on the water, etc.
But what he is saying is that the supernatural life that he lived, in the power of God, for the glory of God,
that life is what all followers of Jesus should exhibit and walk in, so that all Christians live the supernatural life in the power of God, that point to the glory of God, and are a sign or evidence of the wonder and the reality of who God is.
Now, when we look at the New Testament, we see Jesus gave himself to many things.
But here's a bunch of them categories, ways that we could think about it.
What did Jesus do?
And what should our lives look like as we follow him and become like him?
Well, one of the things that Jesus did very obviously was he announces the gospel.
What Matthew calls, he proclaimed the good news of the gospel.
Jesus goes throughout the cities of Galilee and Israel announcing this good news that the kingdom of heaven has come to earth.
And it's good news because we don't need to earn our way in.
We don't need to buy our way in.
We don't need to merit our way in.
We are received into this kingdom by faith through, by grace through faith alone.
And Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven has come.
Turn, repent from the kingdom of darkness.
Come and follow me and enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus announced the good news of the kingdom wherever he went.
Here's another thing Jesus did.
He also taught what life in his kingdom was like.
So Jesus doesn't say, I've got good news.
The kingdom of God is here.
Just pray this simple prayer.
Then go on with your life however you want.
And when you die one day, hey, I'll see you in glory.
We'll catch up then.
Jesus says, the kingdom of God is here.
And then he went around teaching what this life in the kingdom looked like.
And one of the most prominent places where he does that is the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount really is Jesus' manifesto of what life in the kingdom looks like.
But the Sermon on the Mount is not that super high level kingdom like for those that are extreme Christians,
like the amazing Christians.
Actually, the Sermon on the Mount is, this is what life in the kingdom looks like for all my followers.
It looks like people who pray for their enemies and forgive those that have hurt them.
Those who turn the other cheek.
It looks like those who don't just say, hey, I haven't committed adultery, but actually are pursuing a life of such purity that they don't even pursue a life of lust.
It looks like those that are always praying to their father, our father in heaven.
Hallowed be your name.
Jesus, let your kingdom come in Hong Kong as it is in heaven.
Jesus says a life in the kingdom is one where we follow the narrow road of suffering that leads to life rather than the wide road of populism that leads to death.
And so Jesus announces the arrival of his kingdom and then he taught his people what his life in the kingdom look like.
Here's another thing Jesus did.
Jesus went around doing good.
In Acts chapter 10, it says,
Jesus was anointed by God in the spirit and in power and went around doing good and healing various diseases.
I think Jonas read it to us earlier in Matthew chapter 4.
Matthew says again,
Jesus went throughout the cities proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, healing various diseases and those that were suffering and afflicted by evil works.
And so Jesus does good or what Josh Curry says, he pushes back darkness.
I love that description.
He does this on individuals by healing the sick, bringing shalom and peace to the brokenness of people's lives.
Jesus is forever helping those that are downtrodden and are suffering.
At one point, Jesus is going to Cornelius's house or sorry, going to a centurion's house to heal his servant.
And on the way, he's interrupted and he's interrupted by an old lady that spent all her money on doctors to be made well, but they haven't helped.
And Jesus is allows himself to be interrupted.
He stops from where he's going.
The crowds are hammering about him.
He stops.
He looks this lady in the eye and he gives individual attention and he makes sure that she's healed.
Jesus does this on an individual level, but he also does it on a corporate level.
Jesus stands up to the hypocrisy of society.
He stands up to the hypocrisy of religious leaders, to the corruption.
Jesus mediates between two brothers who are arguing and he brings peace.
He's a peacemaker.
Jesus does good and pushes back darkness in individuals' lives and in society's life.
Here's another thing that Jesus did.
Jesus spent almost his whole time eating and drinking with people who are far from God.
This is one of my favorite things about the gospel.
If Jesus is not on the mountain top or in a boat or in the synagogue, chances are you'll find him in somebody's house eating and drinking with people.
And chances are he's eating and drinking with the very people that society wanted to have nothing to do with.
With tax collectors, with prostitutes, with the very people that society looked down upon.
One scholar said it like this.
Jesus seemed to eat his way through the gospels.
And Jesus is always spending his time with these people.
In fact, at one point he's having a meal at Levi's house.
Levi, remember, becomes a disciple.
But before that he's a tax collector.
And tax collectors were like the scum of Israelite society.
They were seen as those who joined the Romans against Israel.
They sided with the enemy.
They really just looked down upon.
Jesus is having a meal at Levi's house.
And the Pharisees are attacking the disciples, attacking Levi.
And Jesus takes their side.
He defends them.
At another point, Jesus is having a meal at a Pharisee's house.
And this prostitute lady comes in and is washing his feet.
And the religious leaders are having a go at her.
And Jesus joins her side and defends her against them.
You remember when Jesus is having a meal at Levi's house with all his tax collector buddies around there.
The Pharisees come to his disciples and say,
Why on earth is your teacher eating and drinking with sinners?
Why is Jesus spending so much time with tax collectors and sinners?
Do you know what the answer is?
Because he's perfect.
Because he's Jesus.
Because he's showing us what God is like.
Because Jesus is living out the gospel.
Friends, because you and I need him.
And so he's come to be with us.
Notice Jesus doesn't just give a Bible study.
He comes and he has a meal.
He opens.
He comes and he invites himself, like Claire spoke about earlier, into people's homes.
Because he knows that going to people's homes is a way of getting into their hearts.
You know, in biblical times, to have a meal with somebody was a way of saying,
I receive you.
I accept you.
Jesus is forever having meals with people who seem far away from God because he's receiving them.
He's pouring out his love on them.
Here's another thing that Jesus did was,
He would constantly, intentionally retreat from the demands of life to be with his Father in prayer.
And this is probably one of the most overlooked and yet one of the most important things for us in Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, we are not very good at observing the Sabbath.
We're not very good at retreating from the demands of life and spending time with our Father.
Jesus is forever retreating from even good things like ministry and healing the sick and teaching.
Retreating from good things in order to do the best thing,
which is to spend time in silence and solitude with his Father in prayer.
Look at these scriptures.
Mark chapter one says,
Rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark,
Jesus departed and he went out to a desolate place and there he prayed.
Luke five says,
And now even more, the report about Jesus went abroad and great crowds gathered to hear him,
to be healed of their infirmities.
That's a good thing.
But Jesus would withdraw from the crowds to a desolate place and pray.
Luke six says the same thing.
In those days, he went out to the mountainside and all night he continued in prayer to God.
Friends, we are not very good at this as a society.
This is one of the most important things that Jesus did.
John Ortberg says,
Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual formation.
We will never know God, never walk with him, never be with him, becoming like him and doing the things that Jesus did.
When our lives are packed eight to eight, rushing from one thing to the next.
As our mobile phones are banging with notifications, one thing after next.
Friends, to become like Jesus, we have to take time to disengage, to slow down, to retreat, to fill our soul as we engage with our Father in prayer.
Of course, there is one last thing that Jesus did, the greatest thing, and that was, he gave his life as a ransom for many.
Now, we can't do this in the same way that Jesus did.
None of us are divine.
None of us are the long awaited Messiah.
And yet in another way, Jesus does invite us to lay down our lives for others.
Do you remember in the book of Philippians that we looked at last year, in chapter two, the apostle Paul writes this.
He says,
Jesus, though he was God, did not grasp his equality with God, but he laid, he emptied himself.
That means he laid aside his glory, his majesty.
He took on the nature of a servant and he poured himself out for others.
And then Paul writes this and he says,
In the same way that Jesus poured out his life and to death, thereby buying or purchasing life for others, in the same way I, the apostle Paul, have done that.
He says,
Even I have poured out my life like a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, and I am glad and rejoice with you.
Paul says,
Just as Jesus poured out his life for others, so I too, the apostle, am pouring out my life for you, that your life, your faith may flourish and grow.
Friends, these are just a few things that Jesus did.
The works and the life that Jesus did.
The habits and the patterns of his life.
And then Jesus says,
Whoever believes in me will also do the works.
His life will look like my life, will do the works that I do.
I've tried to show us this morning that when Jesus says,
Come and follow me,
He's calling for the pattern of our lives to look like the pattern of Jesus' life.
That we will do the things that Jesus did.
But there's one problem.
There is a problem.
The problem is that if we just left it there, that doesn't really help us much.
And my sense is that there's probably three responses that we feel when we hear this teaching or we see those six things on the screen.
The first response is maybe some of us feel like,
You've got to be kidding me.
My life is stretched to the max.
Everything I'm doing.
I'm trying to work.
Trying to look after kids.
I'm trying to look after my parents.
I'm serving in church.
I'm leading a CG.
I'm trying to provide for my family.
After everything else I've got to do,
You're now telling me there are six more things to do.
And as you hear this, you can feel like you're weighed down by the reality of life.
And now I've just put six more tons in your backpack of things for you to do.
And it can just feel like an added burden.
As if you're not doing enough, Jesus is asking you to do a whole lot more.
And so one of the dangers is that we can hear this and we can feel like God is saying,
You're not doing enough.
And Jesus cracking the whip over us, asking us to do more.
That could be one response.
Another response is we might feel like we hear those things and say,
I can't do any more, but it's okay.
Christianity is all about grace, isn't it?
Jesus came to live the life that I couldn't live so that I don't have to.
It's wonderful.
That's the good news of Jesus.
That I can just do whatever I want and I'm saved by grace.
But the problem with that is then our lives don't look anything like Jesus.
And then we've got to tear out a whole bunch of our Bibles.
Because Jesus said, when you follow me, your life will look like me.
So if we just write it off and say, hey, we saved by grace.
It doesn't matter whether we do those things or not.
Who cares?
Jesus loves us anyway.
Then we're not following Jesus.
There's a third response.
And that is that maybe some of us feel like we read those things and we say, sure, no problem.
Is that all you want me to do?
I think Christians should do even more than that.
What about mission trips and serving in the worship team and Bible translation?
And political advocacy and social justice and getting involved in all sorts of other things.
And more Bible studies.
Is that all?
And then what happens is that we become like the Pharisees.
We start looking at our religious resume and all the things we do.
And we start to feel like, yeah, I'm pretty good.
I've got this thing waxed.
And we look at other Christians or other churches down the road.
We think, man, those guys are lame.
If only they were doing more things like I am.
And that doesn't help.
So how do we obey Jesus?
How do we become like the followers of Jesus, but neither feel overwhelmed and burdened,
neither just ignore it in the name of grace,
but also don't become self-righteous and conceited and arrogant like the Pharisees?
Well, the answer is actually found in the final verse that we didn't read.
Look at verses 13 and 14 with me.
Jesus says this.
He says, verse 12,
Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.
Greater works than these will he do, because I'm going to the Father.
Then he says,
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
What Jesus is saying is this.
I'm calling you to do the works that I do.
I'm calling your life to look like my life.
But I want you to do it not in your own strength, not in self-sufficiency.
I want you to do it by drawing close to me, relying on me, remaining in me, dwelling in me.
And as you do so, I will empower you to do the works that I've called you to.
The secret is not to try and do it yourself, but to draw near to me and let me work in you.
And there's two clues in this passage.
Look at the first one.
The first one is he says, Whatever you do, whatever you ask actually, do it in my name.
When we pray in Jesus' name, what Jesus means by that is don't just pray and then at the end of your prayer,
just tag on in Jesus Christ's name I pray.
That's not what he means.
What he means is when we come before God in prayer, when we live our lives, we do it not in self-confidence.
We don't do it in our own name.
We don't do it in our own self-sufficiency.
We do it desperately dependent on who he is.
We do it in his strength, in his name.
Our confidence is in him.
We do it with open hands, actively dependent on the one who went to the cross for us, who rose again, who defeated the grave, the one who is our righteousness.
And so we come to God and say, God, I can't do it.
But I come in Jesus' name, the one who can do it.
And we ask you, God, come and do your work through us.
Here's the second clue.
Look at what Jesus says.
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.
If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
The work that Jesus asks us to do is not self-generated.
The work that he does in us as we come to him in heartfelt prayer, intimacy, dependence, reliance.
As we come to him, Jesus says, look, I'm calling you to do the same things that I did.
I'm calling you for your life to look like me.
But actually, as you come to me in my name, I will do these things in you and through you.
So, for instance, Watermark, Jesus comes to us and he says, Watermark, I see that you've got a heart for the vulnerable children in your city and for single moms.
You want to take care of them, but you feel like how can this is such a big thing in our city.
We're such a small church.
How can we as a church make any difference in this area of the city?
Jesus says, whatever you ask in my name, dependent upon me, reliant on me, not in your own strength, I will do it through you.
Jesus comes and he says, you want to love and serve some of the foreign domestic helpers in our city?
And it feels like we don't even know where to start.
There's 150 of us, there's 400,000 helpers.
How on earth can we bless and love and serve the helpers in our city?
Jesus says, as you come in my name, not self-reliant, dependent on me, I will do it through you.
Jesus comes to us and he says, you want to reach out to your neighbors, those who seem far from God, but they seem so clever,
they've got such good arguments, they've read all these books, you feel intimidated, you feel like, how on earth can I tell anyone about Jesus?
How can I proclaim the gospel to anyone?
Jesus says, as you ask in my name, not self-sufficient, not relying on your own clever arguments, as you come to me, I will do it through you.
Friends, some of us feel exhausted, burnt out, and we don't even know how we're ever going to rest, how we're going to retreat or withdraw from the demands of life to spend time with our Father.
It feels like there's so much going on, how on earth can I carve out 20 minutes a day to spend time with God?
Jesus says, come to me, come rest in me, come ask me, don't do it in your own strength, I will do it in you, I'll do it through you.
The very next chapter of John's gospel, chapter 15, Jesus is still in this final body.
He's about to be betrayed by Judas Iscariot, and he's giving his disciples his final teaching.
And this is what he says, we read this two weeks ago, he says, next slide.
Okay, sorry it's not up there, let me read it to you.
Jesus says this, remain in me, even as I remain in you.
I am like a vine, and you are like branches.
Whoever remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit.
But apart from me, you can do nothing.
If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Friends, as we draw near to Christ, as we come to him, in prayer, in confession, in surrender, in humility, in desperation, in dependence upon him.
For God to work in us and through us, for God to do what we cannot do on our own.
God promises that he will do miraculous things in us and through us.
Just like the gospel, not in our own strength, but by grace alone.
God will do amazing things in us and through us that will point people to the beauty of Jesus and the wonder of the Father, that he might be glorified in our lives.
This is what it means when Jesus says, come and follow me.
Let's pray together.
Oh gracious Father, wonderful Son, beautiful Spirit, we come before you this morning God.
We come before you in dependence and desperation God, because we need you.
God, we don't have what it takes to live this kind of life on our own.
God, we so want that our life will look like your life.
For us to do the works that you did.
For us, Jesus, to be proclaimers of the gospel.
For us, God, to do good works and push back darkness in our city.
God, we long for it to be in Hong Kong as it is in heaven.
For there to be justice and shalom and peace and wholeness and relationships.
God, for people to be reconciled, for healing to take place.
God, we long for the streets of Hong Kong to look like the streets of heaven, Jesus.
God, come and do it in us and through us.
God, we long to see people that are far from you to be reconciled to you.
Jesus, we long for these things to happen in our day.
But Christ, we don't have what it takes.
We are broken.
We are sinful.
We are fallible.
God, we are confused.
We are full of doubts.
Spirit of God, we ask, won't you come and do in us what you did through Jesus?
Come and transform our hearts and our lives.
Come and so orientate our lives around you that the pattern of our lives will look like the pattern of Jesus' life.
Jesus, we pray these things in your name.
Not relying on ourselves.
Dependent on you.
In your name, we ask God, come and do it, we pray.
Amen.