There are two people in the New Testament who said, "Follow me." No Old Testament prophet could ever say follow me. Their life was not an example to be followed. Not Isaiah or Moses; there was nobody. They could only proclaim, "Hear what God says through me. These are God's words." But not one of them could say "Follow my example." Moses quarrelled with his wife and disobeyed God in not circumcising his son. They were not all good examples in their life, but they could proclaim God's Word accurately and say, "Thus said the Lord." But in the new covenant, we do not just say, "Thus said the Lord." We do not just say, "Come and hear what God is saying."

In the new covenant, we say, "Come and see what God has done," which is different from the Old Testament prophets saying, "Come and hear what God is saying." The New Testament prophet says, "Come and see what God has done in my life. Come and see what God has done in my family. Come and see what God has done in me. Now I want to teach you to obey what Jesus has commanded so that He can do the same thing in your life. Follow me."

Jesus was the first Person in the Bible to say, "Follow Me." Then we read Paul saying, "Follow me as I follow Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). He goes on to say in Philippians 3:17, "Brothers, follow my example. And not only my example, but observe others who are walking like me. You can follow their example too, because I'm following Christ. "Christ is like the person who has climbed to the top of a 10,000 meter high mountain. He has reached the top, and we're following. Paul is probably ahead of us. Maybe he has gone up 3,000-4,000 meters. He says to those behind him, "Follow me." Maybe I have gone only up to 500 meters. I can say to people who are still further lower down on the mountain, "Follow me." I can follow the example of others who are ahead of me, who are following Christ to the peak. The peak is total likeness to Christ. That is the goal. The goal is not to heal all the sick people in the world, but to become totally like Jesus Christ in our life, and from that life will be an overflow of ministry.

We need to understand this. Jesus did not command us to go and tell people to do the same ministry He did. We could not follow Paul when he said, "Follow me" if he was speaking of ministry. He was not telling us to become apostles. How can everybody be an apostle? How can everybody be a prophet or an evangelist like Paul was? He was saying, "Follow me in my life. Imitate me in the way I imitate Christ." Even the Apostle Paul could not imitate Christ's ministry of healing all the sick, walking on water, or feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread. There were times when Paul said he himself was hungry (2 Corinthians 11:27). When he was in need, he shivered in the cold and asked Timothy to bring a blanket for him (2 Timothy 4:13). The early Christians suffered in many ways. They were not protected when they were thrown to the lions, but they followed Jesus, who refused protection when He was being crucified. It is His life that we have to follow. We cannot follow Jesus in His ministry.

The clearest example of this is that His ministry included dying for the sins of the world. How in the world can we follow that ministry? We cannot. So, it is in His life that we follow. We need to distinguish between Jesus' life and His ministry. In one sentence Jesus could say He did the will of His Father - both in His life and in His ministry. We can do the will of God for us in our lives and in our ministry as well. In our life, it is to follow the example of Jesus exactly. That is what Paul did. In our ministry, it is to fulfill that particular function in the body of Christ that is given to us. If we understand this distinction between the life of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus, we will find that we are protected from deception and save ourselves from a lot of unreality and hypocrisy. A lot of hypocrisy is in Christians who pretend that they are doing the same things that Jesus did.

People sometimes ask, "What does it mean when Jesus said after the Last Supper, 'Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these shall he do because I go to the Father. I am going to ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit' (John 14:12,16)?" What He was saying is when the Holy Spirit was going to come, you're going to be able to do the works that He did and greater works than those. We need to understand that.

If you were to ask somebody what are the works that Jesus did, they will immediately talk about healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, feeding the 5000 with five loaves of bread. But you would only be talking about the last 10% of Jesus' life! This is what He did in the last three and a half years of His life. Is that all He did? What about the other 90% of His life? What did He do in that 90% of His life? What did He do throughout all of His life? In one sentence: He did the will of His Father. Jesus Himself said in John 6:38, "I came from heaven not to raise the dead, heal the sick, and walk on water. I came from heaven to deny My Own will and to do the will of My Father."

That in a nutshell is "the works of Jesus." He came to say "No" to His Own will and to do the will of His Father. The will of His Father included preaching the Sermon on the Mount, healing all who were sick, sometimes healing only one person like in the pool of Bethesda, walking on water, making Peter walk on water, and feeding the 5,000 with five loaves. The will of the Father for Paul did not include walking on water or feeding 5,000 with 5 loaves or raising someone who had been dead for four days like Lazarus, but it included fulfilling the will of the Father.

That is the point. The works that Jesus did were, in one sentence, the will of God. Paul did that as well. For him, the will of God was to travel around, plant churches, and write Scripture. Jesus never wrote any Scripture, but Paul did. We are not called to write Scripture. But we are called to do the will of our Father. Those are the works of Jesus. This included His obedience to Joseph and Mary at home. If Mary asked Him to bring a bucket of water from the well, Jesus would bring a full bucket of water. Those are the works of Jesus: obedience to the Father in the little things and the big things. All of us can do that.