“Can we really do greater things than Jesus?”

Steve Brown:
Can we really do greater things than Jesus? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us, but there’s a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author, Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man, how you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good.

Pete Alwinson:
I mean you’re

Steve Brown:
I’m old, I could die during this broadcast.

Pete Alwinson:
No, I mean you’re healthy as an ox. Come on.

Steve Brown:
No, I really am and I don’t understand that. That’s just not good. But, and it’s a gift, and I realize it can be taken at any moment.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, you are sinning less, these days.

Steve Brown:
Well, it’s cause you’re old. It’s not as easy to sin when you have to move slow.

Pete Alwinson:
Ha ha ha!

Steve Brown:
You know, one of my really good friends died this week, and I’m going to miss him a lot. He used to be on the staff here at Key Life, and he’s a little bit younger than I am, Dave Sansbury, and while we record this at a different time, so the time when Dave went home to be with the Lord is different than what you’re hearing right now, but I’m going to be at his service, on Saturday, and I’m going to miss him a lot. But the Bible says.

That we should pray, Lord, teach me to number my days.

And that’s a good thing to pray. All right. You want to talk about war and taxes next?

Pete Alwinson:
Next.

Steve Brown:
That’s Pete Alwinson. If you haven’t read Like Father Like Son, that is a life changing book. And you ought to get it. It’ll make a difference in your life. And go to ForgeTruth.com trust me on this. We love to get your questions and we look forward to these Fridays. You can ask a question anytime you want by picking up the phone and dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE and just follow the instructions. And we sometimes put you on the air on our phone lines, or you can send your question to

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in Canada, it’s

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And you can e-mail your questions to [email protected] and you knew I was going to say this all of those places are touch points, so if the Spirit should move you and you should want because you want to be obedient to help us out financially, you now know where you can go to do that. And we will be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. We also recognize that some of you can’t or don’t feel called, and we understand that. Say a prayer for the ministry. We would appreciate that, too. Pete, why don’t you pray, and then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. You got it. Father, we do come to you, again thankful for the fact that you are our God. We honor you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the triune God. There’s only one. We worship you. We praise you. You are the God who created us. You’re the God who sustains us, but you’re also the God of power and mercy and grace and kindness. You’re the God who plans everything out. All things work together after the counsel of your will. And yet you include us in your great plan. You bring us into your family and you bring us into the plan to restore the heavens and the earth. And we honor you. We thank you for the great privilege of being your children. And the great call to be involved with the God of the universe. What a joy it is to be your children. Lord, you know us, you know our needs. And we know that we need you even more than we can recognize. And so meet us at the very point of our needs right now and to meet us this week-end as we worship. Lord be with our leaders who will bring us into your presence and cause us to worship and then to be transformed by your word to go out and live in your world. So now, we just ask that you would commit this time of Q&A, take it, use it, and speak to us through it. We pray in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I had a question about John 14:12, when Jesus said.

That we can do greater things than He.

I’m not quite understanding how we could do greater things than Him.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Well, that’s a good question. I get that a lot. I, you know, and I think we’ve all asked that on occasion, really? But Jesus said it, and if you said it, it’s true. He had three years of ministry in the flesh. And most of us have a lot more years than that. So, maybe in that sense we can do more. I personally think that Jesus is talking about the church. And he’s talking about the hospitals that have been built, the people who’ve been healed, the lives that have been changed. Still through him, through the church, but in that sense, it would fulfill what he said in that particular statement. You’ll do greater works than I do. And I think sometimes, and then I want you to comment on this, I think sometimes we underestimate the power of God’s Spirit in us. John said.

Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.

And he was talking about Satan, but he was talking about everything else too. I think if we realize the awesome power that God has given us, we would be a lot braver, a lot stronger, and accomplish more, but most of us don’t.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man. I think, I think you hit it. I think that’s exactly right. And I think in America, if you want to take the last, say the last 50 to 75 years there have been some theological strains that have been out there among evangelicals that have said, Jesus is coming, you can’t do anything to fix this, only he can, so just wait. Let’s just talk about future events, let’s just talk about what he’s going do.

Steve Brown:
And ignore the pain and the darkness and the need.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And I think what grace does and what you’ve taught is that what happens is that no, we actually as repentant people, we can run back to him when we sin, but he wants to use us to transform so many areas of life until he comes back and does the final cleanup.

Steve Brown:
So true. You know, we were talking, I think, on a previous broadcast about your son’s book Relentless, Jon Alwinson. And it’s a book on sales, actually. It’s one of the best books ever written on sales, but it’s written on life too. And the thing that I loved about Jon, when he was talking, he was talking about when he hires people in his sales force. And if they’re not passionate, if they don’t want to get out there and do it, then he doesn’t want them on his staff. And as he talked, he related that to being a Christian. You know, we owe the world, the relationship that we have with him. And that means we can be fearsome, we don’t have to be fearful, we don’t have to, well, we can do greater works than Jesus did.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s powerful. It’s still Jesus working through us to accomplish great things and we ought to be motivated to let him do great things.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Start Christian schools, start new businesses, start new ministries, to help people and advance his kingdom.

Steve Brown:
Right on. Why, this is an interesting question. Why was Jonah so stubborn and disobeyed God? Was it because he had no righteous fear of God? Did God then drown the protective wall and stir up a storm to weaken his servant? Could this happen to me or the church body? Will our nation have to enter the belly of the whale, so to speak, to wake up and obey God?

Pete Alwinson:
That’s good stuff. That’s good stuff. And you know, Jonah is a conundrum. He’s a difficult guy to figure out.

Steve Brown:
He really is.

Pete Alwinson:
He was a racist. I mean, he was a Jew who hated Ninevites and all pagans. He was disappointed because God saved him. He wanted them to go to hell. That’s exactly right. He had faith, he had belief that God could do exactly what he said he was going to. It wasn’t a lack of faith, he just hated those suckers.

Steve Brown:
Fred Smith used to say, when he was young, he was the son of a Baptist pastor in small Baptist churches. And he said, I almost gave up my faith, but it would have required that I give up my belief in hell. And there were some deacons I wanted to go there. So, Jonah would have understood that. You know, I think you have to be careful. You know, I heard Billy Graham say, and I think it was true, that if God doesn’t judge America, he’s going to have to apologize for Sodom and Gomorrah. And I thought that was a powerful statement, and true. But you have to be careful about what you’re sure God’s going to do. We don’t believe absolutely in divine, earthly retribution. And the Psalmist asked questions, why do the wicked prosper? So, sometimes you know, a nation will prosper, when they’re really doing bad things. And sometimes a nation doing good things, and I think immediately of Israel and the war that’s going on, you know, they’re really a democracy, they care about people, their medical system reaches outside of the Jewish community and touches everybody. And I could go on and on and on. And yet, look what happened. And so, you have to be careful about saying what God will or won’t do in that situation. But we need to be careful.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, we do believe in a future ultimate judgment. But there’s judgments that take place in space and time during human history. Israel was a theocracy that had a particular calling and Jonah had a particular calling. They had to prepare people for the Messiah. And that’s why in one sense, it was egregious, Jonah’s attitude, because God’s covenant with Abraham set them up for this, that all the nations of the world would be blessed through the Jews. That’s why the Jews had such a great failure in people like Jonah when that happened. And so, the church needs to continue that to take the gospel to the rest of the world.

Steve Brown:
Do you know the old story of the little girl who was approached by the skeptic, she’s a Christian. He really believed that Jonah was swallowed by that big fish, and she said, I don’t know, but I’ll ask him when I get to heaven. And he said, well, what if he’s answered different than yours? He said, well, you ask him. That’s awful. We’ve got to go. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate you being a part of this Friday broadcast. And one other thing before we go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.