Greater Works Than These
by Ivan Maddox
Atlanta, GA


Numbers 11:29b
...Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, [and] that the Lord would put His spirit upon them!

This statement was made by Moses on the day that the Lord put holy spirit on seventy of the elders of Israel whom Moses had chosen, so that Moses would not have to bear the burden of the people alone. Sixty-eight of the elders had gathered together in front of the Tabernacle, to have holy spirit put upon them by God. (Doesn't this sound suspiciously like the Day of Pentecost in Acts?) The other two were still in the camp when all seventy of them received holy spirit and began to prophesy.
Someone heard the two men prophesying in the camp, and ran and told Moses. Joshua, apparently not realizing who the two were, cried out for Moses to command them to stop. That's when Moses uttered his heart-felt wish that all of God's people could be prophets, and that God would put his spirit upon all of them.
Moses' understanding of what it meant to have holy spirit differs sharply from our own. In Moses' day, holy spirit was a rare commodity. Most of God's people, no matter how obedient they were to God, would never have the spirit of God upon them. Those few who did were clearly chosen by God for a special work, and they received from God only enough holy spirit to carry out that work. There was no such thing as receiving holy spirit without receiving also a job assignment. Because only those with holy spirit could hear directly from God, they had a special responsibility to communicate the will of God to God's people. God's people were responsible to listen to them and obey them, for apart from them, and apart from God's written Word, they had no way of knowing God's will.
If only Moses could be alive today to see how thoroughly God has answered his prayer! Today, every Tom, Dick and Harry who confesses with his mouth the Lord Jesus, and believes in his heart that God has raised him from the dead, receives holy spirit; not in limited quantities, like the prophets of old, but in full measure, like Jesus Christ received.
To Moses, it would have seemed only logical that if we've been given a Jesus-sized portion of holy spirit, then we must have been given also a Jesus-sized job to do. Moses would not be far off the mark.

II Corinthians 5:17-20.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

It looks like we've been given a job, all right! While we don't have the responsibility of the redemption of the whole world resting on our shoulders, as Jesus did, we are responsible for continuing his work, for reconciling individual members of the world to God.

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