God’s Joy, Our Joy


Sermon by Cory Brock on March 14, 2021 John 16:16-33

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The passage that the teaching is based on tonight is from John 16, verses 16 to 33. We’ve been doing a series at night here on the farewell speech of Jesus. And it’s called the farewell speech because Jesus is saying farewell to the disciples; He’s leaving them and they are in a state of perplexity, and they have been for most of it, and they definitely are again tonight in this passage. There is so much here to talk about. It’s hard to preach on seventeen verses of the farewell speech. Jesus says so much in this passage. So I’m going to try to whittle it down to two big questions, I think, that Jesus answers here. And really He’s been answering these questions for the whole of the farewell discourse. But before we look at them, let’s pray together and then we’ll read the text. Let’s pray.

Lord, we come tonight and ask for help. We ask that You would open the eyes of our hearts that we would understand and receive Your holy Word. In Jesus’ name we pray this, amen.

John 16:16-33. This is God’s Word:

“‘A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.’ So some of his disciples said to one another, ‘What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?’ So they were saying, ‘What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.’ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, ‘Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.’

His disciples said, ‘Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.’”

This is God’s holy Word.

Well the two questions that Jesus is answering in the whole farewell discourse, and right here tonight as well, is one – “What is the meaning of the cross?” And He gets at that in different ways throughout the whole of it. And then on top of that, He’s answering, “What is the mission of the disciples in light of the fact of the cross?” So what are the disciples supposed to do and what are the disciples supposed to become because of the fact of the cross? And we’ve got both of these questions right here in our passage tonight. So we’re going to see two things, two lessons. The first is – how God tells time. And secondly – how to get God’s joy.

How God Tells Time

So first – how God tells time. Verse 16 and 17, I want to read it again. This is the riddle that they’re so confused by here. “‘A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.’ So some of his disciples said to one another, ‘What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?’” It’s a bit of a riddle, and the disciples here at the very beginning are perplexed. And later in verse 29 they essentially say to Him, “We like it when You speak not in figurative speech but in very literal, plain ways, because oftentimes we don’t understand.” And the first lesson tonight is, take comfort, reader of the Bible, because this group of guys traveled around with Jesus for three years and John tells us at the end of this book that “Jesus said and did more than can be contained in all the books of history.” And at the very end of the ministry they do not get it still; they do not understand what He is saying. And this is part of God’s kindness to us as Bible readers because, well, 2 Peter 3:16, Peter, in 2 Peter 3:16 says, “I admit that sometimes Paul is hard to understand.” And you say, “Amen, Peter!” And sometimes I don’t get all the nuances immediately in Jesus’ parables and His figurative language and some of Paul’s theology.

And the beautiful thing about the Bible and the beautiful thing about God’s revelation is that the Gospel, the Good News, the announcement that Jesus Christ has come into the world and He has lived and He has died and if you have faith in Him you can have eternal life in the kingdom of God with God – it’s so simple and it’s so easy and it’s so clear, and our forefathers said it has so much clarity to it. And yet at the very same time, when you believe the Gospel you immediately learn that the depths of the knowledge of God are infinite and you can never penetrate all the way down to the bottom. And that means that the Bible is so clear on the Gospel and gives us at the same time so much to dive into and to learn about God’s being. And that’s what we have right here in this passage. What is Jesus saying? The disciples cannot figure it out.

We’ve got hindsight and so it’s a little bit easier for us to look at these two verses and see exactly what Jesus is saying. “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” And it’s fairly clear that He is saying here, “When I go, when I’m arrested” – He’s talking about what we saw this morning in Gethsemane – “When I’m arrested and I go to the cross and I die and I’m buried, there will be a little while where you will not see Me. And then, I will” – He’s saying it without saying it – “I will be raised from the dead and you will see Me for a little while.” And that’s clear to us in hindsight, but it is true that He has already told them this several times, that “I’m going to die and in three days I’m going to be raised again.” And they still cannot comprehend it.

And the reason for their confusion is that even in this late hour of Jesus’ ministry, right before He’s about to go to the cross, they still have a confused conception of what Messiah means. And they are still looking here for a socio-political king that’s going to march to Rome and going to kick Caesar off of his throne and going to retake the land of Israel for Israel. D. A. Carson, he puts it this way – “The disciples still, at this late hour, have no category to allow them to make sense of a Messiah who would die, who would rise from the dead, and would abandon His people in favor of another Counselor.” And you see, they did not perceive His words to them here as words of redemption but as words of abandonment. And that’s why they’re so perplexed.

Now the very centerpiece of their confusion they make clear in verse 18. They say in verse 18, “What does He mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what He is talking about.” And so the very centerpiece of what they’re so confused about is why He keeps saying, “A little while and I’m going to do this,” and, “A little while and I’m going to do that.” You see, the key confusion is the issue of the time marker that He puts on it – “a little while.” And in English, in our English reading today, those three little words, “a little while,” but in the Greek text it’s just one word; it’s the word “micros,” where we get the word, “micro.” You know, He just says, “micron,” or “micros” – “a little.” And we mean the same thing by it in our own time today by the word, “micro.” And so most of the time in the Bible when you see the word, “micros,” “micro,” with reference to time, it’s referring to a short season, a short season of time like you would expect. So He’s saying here, “I’m leaving you for a season and I’m coming to you for a season,” which implies that when He comes back to them for a season that He is going to leave again, for a season. So most commentators will say that the third “micros” is implied here. So He’s saying, “I’m leaving you for a season. I’m coming back to you for a season. And I’m leaving you for a season again.”

And we could say in verse 27 and 28 that that becomes really clear because He says in verse 27 and 28, “That day is coming when you will ask for anything, anything you want to ask for to the Father, in My name, there will be power in that prayer. There will be power in that. Why? Because I will have gone to the Father. I will have ascended.” And so Jesus is talking about three movements here. “I’m leaving you to die for a little while. Then I’m coming back to you in resurrection life for a little while. And then I’m leaving again to be ascended for a little while.”

And so the question is, “How does God want His disciples and us to think about time?” And the answer is to think about it like this – that Jesus came into the world, condescended for a season, for a little season, and then the hour came for a season, the hour of His death. And for a season, He has gone back to be with the Father for a little while, for a little season. Acts 1 – He does the exact same thing at the beginning of the book of Acts. Right before He ascends into heaven He sends the disciples out to do ministry and He says in verse 7, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.” And what He’s saying there very precisely is it is not for us to know the time in its proportion. It’s not your job to know the details of God’s clock – exactly how long the seasons are going to be; exactly how long each era is going to be – but to know that the Christian has got to measure their life, their time, time in this world according to God’s clock, in a different way than the world measures time. The disciples – how do they measure time here? The disciples measure time by saying, “Is now not the time when You’re going to march to Rome and you’re going to seize the emperor’s throne room and take back the land of Israel for us?” In other words, the way the disciples think about all of history is through exile and return to the land. They’re wondering, “When will we get to go back to the land?” That is the way we perceive our time clock.

And today, we may measure time differently than that. We measure time as Tom Hanks put it – “We live and die by the clock.” And we live and die by the digital ticking clock. You know, the ancients lived and died by the solar clock and the Israelites lived and died by the clock of exile and return to the land. That’s their conception of history and time. And we, today, literally live and die by the digital clock. We, even today, we live and die by the digital clock. Right? We all lost an hour of sleep today because of the silly change of a digital clock. And that’s how we live. And God is coming in this passage and emphasizing this word, “micros.” They’re saying, “What do You mean, ‘a little while, a little while’? Why are You trying to reorient our conception of history and time?” Well what He’s saying is this – when Jesus comes into the world, for a Christian, if you believe in Him, you have got to measure your life differently than the way the world measures its time scale. We have got to measure the movement of history and even our own presence in this world according to God’s big picture of redemption through the works of Jesus Christ.

Peter gets at this in 1 Peter 3 when Peter asks, he asks the psalmist’s question, the question of the sufferer. And he says, “How long, O Lord?” And, “Will the sufferings of this present time ever cease?” The question of the miserable human in this life. And what does the Spirit say? The Spirit says – don’t forget this – “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as you may count slowness.” And just before that, He says, “Do not overlook the fact, beloved, brothers and sisters, Christians, that with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day.” Christianity measures time by epochs and by the movements of redemption; not in minutes, not in hours, not in individual human life spans but according to the mystery of God’s timing and God’s grand scale of redemption from beginning to end, from creation to recreation.

And that is what Jesus is saying to us. He’s saying to us we’ve got to picture our lives in the midst of this grand clock. One of the great examples of this is in John’s gospel. If you look across the whole of John’s gospel, John has been trying to reorient our vision of time the entirety of the text. And one thing that the commentators will often point out is that the number seven is so significant throughout John’s gospel. And in some sense, as John measures the whole of the three-year ministry of Jesus according to only seven days, as if it’s only seven days. And you can think of the seven “I AM” statements that structure that time scale. But more significantly, there are seven signs in the book of John that correspond to a day of Jesus’ ministry each time. The first is changing the water to wine in Cana, and then the seventh is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. And the commentators will say that at the close of the seventh day of Jesus’ ministry, the final day of creation, we’re waiting, because Jesus goes to death. He raises up Lazarus on a Saturday, but then the seven days isn’t complete and it’s time for a new week. The eighth day of creation. The day of Jesus’ resurrection. See, John wants us to see all of time as a recapitulation of the creation days where Jesus Christ’s resurrection is the eighth day; it’s the new day, it’s the day of new creation. The Bible thinks about time so differently than we do in our modern era.

And that means that when we think about our lives within God’s grand plans for all of history, the plan of redemption that Jesus was about to undergo was not the disciples’ plan for Jesus. It was not what they wanted redemption to look like and it was not the plan of time they wanted for redemption. They were being told that the Messianic hope of the full coming of the kingdom is not yet. “I am going to ascend to My Father for a season and you will have to wait and you will say, ‘How long, O Lord?’ in that season.” And that means that our plan, our plan for God’s timely plan for our own lives is probably not identical to God’s timely plan for our own lives! And we’ve got to conform, in other words, to the way that God counts the days of history. God’s pattern is not economic efficiency of the modern clock but the redemptive effectiveness of history and a grand mystery.

Now in order to understand that a little bit more and how it applies to our lives a little bit more, Jesus goes deeper here to show how God’s big redemptive clock matters for us by looking at a metaphor here in verse 21. In verse 21, He talks about the metaphor of a woman giving birth. He says that when a woman is giving birth there is sorrow in the pain of labor, but that after the baby comes, that sorrow is relieved because the baby, the new creation, has come into the world. And there’s a double entendre here in what Jesus says that gets at His grand point, maybe even a triple entendre. What is He saying here? What is He trying to tell us with this metaphor?

I have no firsthand account of the pains of childbirth, but I do have observable accounts of those pains, four times in fact! Which means, I get this metaphor, but not as much as some of you do! Right? He tells us exactly what He means by this. He says, “Disciples, when I go to the cross, you are going to feel sorrow like a mother in childbirth, pain, deep pain when I leave you. But when I come back to you in resurrection life, it’s going to be like the baby has come and there’s going to be so much joy that you forget the pain.” That’s the obvious first meaning. But there is also a second layer to this. If you jump down, for example, to verse 32, Jesus – and John does here what John has been doing throughout the whole of his gospel – Jesus says, “The hour is coming and it has come,” meaning Jesus knew that He was not but a few minutes away from going to Gethsemane and being arrested. “The hour” in the gospel of John is always referencing the hour of His death, the hour of His agony, the hour of His cross. And you see, when He uses the metaphor of the mother He says, “When her hour comes.” And later He will say, “And now the hour has come.” And you see, it’s a double entendre because you see He’s also saying, “When I go to the cross, I am entering like a mother into the deepest pain of labor. I am going to labor for you. But when I enter into resurrection life, the new creation will have been born and there will be so much joy that we will forget the pain of the labor.” In other words, He’s saying that the cross – what is the meaning of the cross? That’s what He’s been trying to get at. The cross is the labor, but the resurrection is new creation. It’s like the newborn baby coming into the world.

One of the great things about this metaphor is that Jesus has given us permission to look at every single newborn baby that comes into the world and say, “That looks like resurrection to me. That looks like new creation.” The meaning, in other words, the meaning of the cross is the resurrection. The cross is fulfilled in the resurrection. The cross is Christ’s labor for us, taking our sin upon Himself, but the point of the cross is resurrection. In other words, there is no redemption and there is no joy and there is no real history for us and there is no hope in a cross where Christ stays dead. The point of the cross is resurrection. Paul even takes this so far down into our theology. In Romans 4:29 he says that “Jesus Christ was raised for our justification.” And you know when we walk about justification, God’s pronouncement over us in Jesus that we are forgiven of our sins, we often think merely about the cross – that, “at the cross, Jesus bore my sin so that I could be justified and forgiven.”

But Paul says Jesus Christ was also raised for our justification. And what does he mean by that? It means that when Jesus went to the cross, He who knew no sin, bearing our sin, becoming our sin for us, He stood condemned for us in His death. But when He was raised from the dead, it was God’s pronouncement that He is actually justified; He is actually righteous. Death could not hold Him down. If He stayed dead, we could never be justified because it’s in His resurrection that God says Jesus Christ was justified so you can be too by an alien righteousness. And so the resurrection, Paul says, is our justification. The resurrection is the point of the cross.

And so in verse 33 – to close this long point and do a short point – in verse 33 when Jesus says, “I have overcome the world,” at the very end of this passage, that is what we call in New Testament studies a “proleptic statement.” It’s where Jesus says something in the past tense but He’s actually referring to the future. And so when He says, “I have overcome the world,” He’s saying, “The resurrection is the moment where I will overcome the weight of the world, the curse of the world.” That means for us today, that means for us today, we have to ask ourselves, “Do you measure your life, do you see the scope and the work of your life as that time period standing between the resurrection of Jesus and your own resurrection?” Is that how you think of your existence? Do you, as one theologian puts it, “Do you have daily hope in the eternal spring that comes through the labor of winter?” The spring – it’s being resurrected with Jesus Christ. Resurrection is the fulfillment of the cross. It is our hope, He’s saying here in this very difficult riddle.

How to Get God’s Joy

Now secondly, and finally and briefly – how do we get God’s joy, then? And the reason for asking that question is because of the double entendre. He says, first off, that the disciples are like a mother in that when Jesus goes to the cross they will undergo the pains of childbirth. But when Jesus brings to them resurrection life, they will have real joy. And they are like a mother experiencing that labor. And how does He describe that joy? He says in verse 24, “I am doing all of this – I am going to the cross, I am going to be raised again – so that your joy may be full.” And so if the first question is, “What is the meaning of the cross?” and the meaning of the cross in this instance, He’s saying, is the resurrection, what does it mean for you? What does it mean for the disciples? What are you to become? He’s saying, “I’m going this so that you joy may be full and final.” And He says it again in verse 33. “In Me, because of what I’m about to do – I’m about to overcome the world in resurrection – in Me you can have real peace.” And so He says in some sense that the application of the resurrection is for your joy and for your peace.

And you know joy and peace are two sides of the same coin here. Joy is that abiding happiness that stands, that keeps your heart equal, no matter what happens on the outside. No matter what kind of sorrows may come your way in life. And peace is the flipside of that coin. Peace is the settled heart that has an unyielding hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we can’t miss the fact here that He says, “I am doing all this so that your joy may be full, that you would have the fullness of joy.” And this is a massive claim here. He’s saying that by the power of His resurrection, Jesus is made able to communicate to Christians the riches of His own emotional life. That by the power of His resurrection, He can communicate to us the peace and joy that He has, that you can actually put on the happiness of God; that He can deliver that to you. That it is a spiritual gift for you who believe and hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

David mentioned this morning that Christ had that resolute equilibrium in the Garden of Gethsemane, that even when the soldiers came for Him, He thought about the sheep. And that was Christ’s joy and His peace and His equilibrium no matter what He faced. And you can think of Hebrews 12 when it says that, “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, for our joy.” You see the joy that was set before Him when He was enduring the cross was He wanted you to be able to have joy, the fullness of joy, the fullness of His emotional life.

And that means – and we have to close – I just want to give two applications here, and there could be many more about Jesus’ joy and our joy. But one based on this passage is this. Because of the fact that we live in the season of, “How long, O Lord?” between the resurrection and the resurrection – Jesus’ resurrection and our resurrection – you know Christians, our calling this very week is to be the happiest and the saddest people in the whole world. Because when your heart of stone – if you believe on Jesus and your heart of stone has become a heart of flesh – hearts of flesh start to care so much about all the sorrows going on in the world. And soft hearts start to care so much about the troubles of their friends in the church and the troubles of their neighbors; and hard hearts don’t do that. When you have a hard heart you remain self-absorbed and you say, “Nothing can get to me. I’m going to get everything roll off my shoulders. I can’t go through the world worrying about other people’s problems.” But Jesus says when the Gospel comes into your life and He breaks your hard heart that you start, you start to weep with those who are weeping and have joy with those who have joy. And that means Christians are carrying the burdens of others. We’ve got to be the saddest people in the whole world. But at the very same time, we’re not called to be dour and prudish and downcast and despairing because He has come to give us the fullness of joy. And joy is that ability to have God’s happiness in your heart in the midst of every single sorrow. And so you can be the happiest and the saddest at the very same time.

The second thing and final thing would be this. There is a deep connection in this passage, John 16 – and we haven’t gotten to explore all the ways that it connects, but to Romans chapter 8, Paul’s great chapter in the middle of the book of Romans. And one is that it is not just a double entendre about the woman giving birth, but a triple, because Paul picks up on this metaphor in Romans 8 to say, “Look, it’s not just us that are groaning, awaiting like a woman in labor the new creation, but it’s all of creation.” Remember Paul uses the metaphor for everything – the rocks and the trees and the land and the animals and anything as far as the curse is found is groaning in the pains of labor awaiting the birth of the new creation. It’s a triple entendre. And there’s a deep connection here.

But also because when He says, “I have come to make your joy so full,” that sounds a whole lot like Romans 8:28 which goes right in line with the metaphor of the creation. This is Paul’s most famous verse, right, in all of the Bible that is printed on everybody’s coffee cup and it says, “All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” But in both John 16 and Romans 8, we have got to be wide awake to the context of what it means to have joy and peace in this life or what it means to have the good of God where all things are working together for our good. In other words, there is a temptation when you read a passage like this or a passage like Romans 8 to say stuff like, “You know, I was in a relationship and it went poorly and we broke up, but now God has brought this amazing spouse into my life and all things work together for the good of those who believe in Jesus.” Or a temptation to say something like this. “I was in a job and I got fired, a lost my job and I was unemployed, but this new job fell into my lap out of nowhere and all things work together for the good of those who believe in Jesus.”

And it is absolutely the case that we have to say God is working in those moments. And at the same time, we can’t tell stories like that based on Romans 8:28 because some Christians stand up at the same time and they say, “I was in a bad relationship and the right relationship never came.” And some Christians say, “I was in a job and I got fired and another job never came.” And some Christians go and say, “I’m going to the mission field and I’m going to do great things for Jesus,” and they die on day one. In other words, both here, the “joy” and the “good,” which is a singular word in Greek in Romans 8:28 – what’s it saying? The “good” of Romans 8:28 is not anything good that happens to us. It is, Paul says, the resurrection in Romans 8. What all creation longs for. The birth pains to be relieved in the coming, “the redemption of our bodies” as he puts it. And in John 16, the basis of all of our joy and the basis of all our hope and peace no matter the circumstance, even when they never get better in this life, is the resurrection. Hope, joy, the good, peace in the midst of jobs and relationships that never come and health that never gets better is this – that no matter how good things go in life or how bad things go in life, the good which grounds our joy is the hope of the resurrection with Jesus Christ when we shall see Him as He is.

We have to pray, like He calls us to in John 16, we have to pray and say, “God, give me hope in You in the resurrection of Jesus to long, to long for resurrection life where I will see the face of Jesus more than the things of this temporal world.” That’s the prayer that He calls us to. Let’s pray it now.

Father, we do pray that prayer, Lord. We pray now that You would shake up our desires. That we would hope in Your resurrection life, Jesus, more than all the best outcomes that this temporary life has to offer. That we would long for the second Advent, Your coming again, more than the hope of good circumstances, Lord. And we do rejoice when You give us good circumstances, and at the same time we ask for protection that our hearts would not be hardened by them but that we would be people who long more than anything to see Your face in the kingdom. And we ask for this tonight in Jesus’ name, amen.

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