Preached Resurrection Sunday; April 24, 2011
from
John 16:16-24
Theme: The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the basis of a joy that cannot be taken away.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
This morning, I ask you to turn with me to John 16; and to the words that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke—just before going to the cross—concerning His own resurrection.
And as we turn there, let me begin by setting before you what I believe is the key theme of this passage. That theme is “joy”. And it’s not just a temporal kind of “joy”. It’s a joy that abides, and stands strong through the trials and tribulations of life, and that cannot be taken away. Jesus spoke to His disciples and said;
“A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father.” Then some of His disciples said among themselves, “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 go to the Father’?” They said therefore, “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is saying.” Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, “Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’? Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:16-24).
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“Joy” is one of those concepts that we speak about often, but rarely take the time to examine. Most of the time, when people speak of “joy”, they mean the kind of pleasure and emotional uplift that comes from being in external circumstances that they like. But that really doesn’t adequately describe the “joy” that the Lord Jesus spoke about in this morning’s passage. The joy He spoke of does depend on certain circumstances—but not circumstances that have their basis on anything in this world. In fact, the joy He spoke of is one that is strong and abiding, and that endures even when the circumstances of this world seem as bad as they could possibly be.
Nor is the “joy” that Jesus spoke of the kind that depends someone’s emotional or personal make-up. Some folks are just, by nature, happy and bubbly people. They’re the ‘Unsinkable Molly Browns’ of this world, who seem to be able to find a positive side to everything, and for whom nothing seems to get them down. I’m glad to be around those kinds of people. But that doesn’t adequately describe the kind of joy that Jesus was talking about either. The joy He was talking about does have something to do with our personal outlook in life—but not because of anything that is natural to our personality. In fact, the kind of joy He spoke of is one that is from a source outside ourselves, and that actually transforms who we are from the inside out.
The kind of “joy” that Jesus was talking about is a profound state of confident, peaceful, hope-filled well-being that is rooted in something transcendent. It’s a joy that stands strong even when the short-term circumstances of this world are difficult and painful—because it’s based on circumstances that are greater and higher than any on earth. It’s a joy that always rebounds and returns, even when we ourselves feel overwhelmed, and experience periods of frustration and sadness; because it’s based on Someone wise and sovereign and good—Someone who abides in us and is always with us—Someone who stands above the circumstances of this world, and yet who loves us personally.
Everyone in this room desperately needs that kind of joy. We were made for such joy. It’s a joy that is found only in the Person of Jesus Christ. And because He rose from the dead, it’s a joy that has now become available to each one of us here today who truly desires it from Him.
So; let’s look this morning at John 16:16-24; and discover what Jesus Himself said about His resurrection—and the unshakable joy that can now be ours because of it.
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Now; I need to tell you that, at the time Jesus told His disciples about this “joy”, the circumstances were far from joyful. They were, in fact, very, very sad indeed.
The scene was the upper room—when Jesus had His final dinner with His disciples just before He was betrayed into the hands of evil men, and was nailed to the cross. He had been telling them some things throughout the meal that were very upsetting to them. One of the most upsetting things of all was that He announced that He was leaving them.
At one point in the meal, He told them, “Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you” (John 13:33). This kind of talk disturbed them greatly. They had been with Jesus for three-and-a-half years. They had given up everything to follow Him. They had built all their expectations in life upon Him. They had become convinced that He was the Messiah who would mightily usher-in the glorious return of the kingdom of King David. And more than that, they truly loved Him. They turned to Him for everything; and He was everything to them. But there at that upper-room meal, He was saying that He was about to leave them. It’s hard to express how sad and distressed they must have been to hear Him talk that way.
But He told them some other things, in this amazing dinner-time conversation, that absolutely bewildered them. Among them, in our passage this morning, we find that He spoke these words to them:
“A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father” (John 16:16).
And it’s then that the confusion really went into high gear. They turned to one another and spoke among themselves; saying things like, “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 go to the Father’?” . . . “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is saying.”
Do you know how some people say that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God—that He was just a great “teacher”? Well; I have to say that, if that’s the best we can say of Him—that He was nothing more than a great teacher—then we’re not really saying much about teachers. At some of the key moments of His instruction to them, Jesus’ ‘students’ couldn’t figure out what in the world He was talking about! They even wanted to ask Him about it, but they weren’t entirely sure they should.
Part of the problem was that they were trying to figure it all out on their own and among themselves. Their discussion among themselves only led to more confusion; and I believe—as an aside—there’s an important spiritual lesson to be learned from that. The things that Jesus taught cannot be understood apart from a dependent relationship with Him by faith. So long as we treat the things that Jesus said as if they were the words of some great philosopher and moral teacher—things that stand independently from Him, and that can be examined by us in the way we examine the reasonings of any other great man—we’ll only end up confused.
The Bible tells us that “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Even the greatest human minds that the world can produce will exceed their limit when it comes to the things of God. “’For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9). In order to understand the things of God, we need God’s own gracious help.
Jesus had promised that help. Back in John 14:25-26—during this very same dinner-time conversation—Jesus told the disciples,
“These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:25-26).
In fact, just a few verses before our passage this morning, Jesus told His disciples,
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you” (John 16:12-15).
The disciples didn’t understand these things, because they were discussing them among themselves and could rise no higher in their limited human minds could take them. But when we today turn to the Lord Jesus in humble prayer and say, “Lord Jesus, these great truths are beyond me. Help me, by Your enabling Holy Spirit, to understand what You want me to know about Yourself”, then He does—and the confusion disappears!
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Now; if you look closely at what the apostles said, you see three things that really confused them. First, they were confused over what He meant by “a little while”. He had told them “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me”; and they said to one another, “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’?” Second, they were confused over what He said earlier during the dinner—that He was going to the Father. So, they said to one another, “What is this that He says to us, ‘. . . because I go to the Father’?”
And a third thing that seemed to confuse them very greatly was His words, “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me . . .”. It wasn’t just the fact that He told them that they wouldn’t see Him, and then would see Him. I believe it was also because of the unusual way in which He said it. You can’t tell this from looking strictly at the English translation of Jesus’ words. But in the original language, the Lord used two different words—both here translated “to see”. In the first case, He used a word that would mean, “A little while and you will not ‘be a spectator of’1 Me”. But in the second case, He used a different word that would mean, “And again a little while, and you will ‘perceive’2 Me. The difference is subtle. Some scholars have said that it’s a difference that makes no difference. But I believe the fact that He used these two different words—and that the disciples pondered the difference—seems to suggest that He was saying there was something very different about the way they saw Him right then (which was about to come to an end), and the way they would see Him when they saw Him again (which would be a little while afterwards).
Now; they didn’t understand all this at the time. But later on, they would. During the time of that meal—and for the three-and-a-half years prior—they were spectators of Jesus’ earthly life. They saw Him through the senses. He was the Word of life that the apostle John wrote of many years later and called “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled . . ” (1 John 1:1). They only knew Him by the senses, because He was bodily present with them; but as He told them, “A little while”—that is, in just a few hours; after He was betrayed, and arrested, taken to the cross, and put to death—and they would not see Him any longer in the way that they had seen Him.
But “again a little while”—that is, to be precise, three days later—they would see Him. But their way of seeing Him then would be different. He would be raised from the dead. His body would still be the very same body that ate dinner with then. It would still bear the marks of His crucifixion in His hands, and the wound of the spear in His side. But His body would be raised in glory. He would appear to them again and again for the next forty days in that glorified body, and would offer them “many infallible proofs” that it really was Him (Acts 1:3). And when those forty days were over, He would ascend to the Father before their very eyes; and just a few days later, would send the Holy Spirit upon them at Pentecost. And then, they would—from that time on—’perceive’ Him in a way that was far deeper than they ever could have known Him through their senses; because, as He said, the Holy Spirit, who would take up residence in them, would “take of what is Mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14).
What a wonderful depth of relationship we can enjoy with Jesus now! He has died on the cross to take away the guilt of our sin, has been raised from the dead, has ascended to the Father, and has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in those who trust Him—to testify to them of Him, to teach them about all that they have in Him, and to live His very life in and through them! That’s why Jesus could say earlier during that dinner,
“A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:19-21).
When they saw Him again, things would be immeasurably different. And the thing that I’m burdened to stress to you today is that those words of Jesus—”A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father”—give us the basis of a real, substantial, abiding joy that can never be taken away from us. Jesus Himself said so.
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Verse 19 tells us, “Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, ‘Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’?” (v. 19). Isn’t it wonderful that our Lord knows the questions that burden us—even if we don’t turn to Him and ask Him as we should?
And so, He went on to explain these things to them. He said;
“Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament . . .” (v. 20a).
And in the hours that followed, they most certainly did. They stood helplessly and watched as their precious Lord—the One in whom they had placed all their hopes, the One on whom they depended for everything—was taken away, mocked, beaten, crucified and laid in a tomb before their very eyes. They themselves even failed Him. They all fled from Him at His arrest. Even Peter—who boasted that he would die for his Lord—denied that he knew who He was.
And what’s more, Jesus also said,
“. . . but the world will rejoice . . .” (v. 20b).
And it surely did. The people passing by ridiculed Him as He hung on the cross, wagging their heads at Him and saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” The chief priests and the elders of the people also mocked Him and said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God'” (Matthew 27:39-43). Unbelieving scholars are often fond of saying that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. But those who mocked Him at the cross clearly testified that He did. And they rejoiced over His death and—as it were—said, “Good riddance to this One who said He was the Son of God!”
Now; why did the world rejoice? Because He died on a shameful cross. And why did the disciples weep and lament? For the very same reason. But notice what Jesus said next. He told the disciples,
“. . . and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy” (v. 20c).
And do you notice that Jesus didn’t say, “Your sorrow will be taken away and replaced by another completely different thing called joy”? Instead, He says something truly remarkable—that their sorrow will be “turned into” joy. Literally, He says that their sorrow will “become” joy. The very same One whose death caused them sorrow would become the cause of their joy because of His resurrection! He is the resurrected Savior who took all the punishment for our sins upon Himself and died on a cross in our place—but who bodily rose from the tomb and lives again!
It’s a remarkable thing about this “joy” that Jesus spoke about. It’s not at all like the joy that this world seeks. The joy Jesus spoke of starts off as sorrow. Jesus went on to give an example of this wonderful, transcendent joy when He said;
“A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (v. 21).
Now, of course, I’ve never experienced this myself. But I’ll certainly the Lord’s word on it—and I’m betting that many here today can say ‘amen’ to it! The same baby that causes the new mother great “joy” at birth first caused her “sorrow” during labor. But it wasn’t that her sorrow was completely disconnected from her joy. Her sorrow was “turned into” joy. Her sorrow “became” joy.
And so, Jesus—who was telling the disciples that He was about to leave them—said;
Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you (v. 22).
Transcendent joy! A joy that cannot be taken away by the circumstances of this world! That’s what the resurrection of Jesus has brought about for those of us who have placed our trust in Him; because our joy is in and through Him!
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And even though our joy in our resurrected Lord transcends this world, what a difference His resurrection makes to the circumstances of this world! Do you realize that because Jesus died and rose again, and because we have been united to Him by faith, we can now enjoy all the access that He Himself enjoys to the very throne of His Father—the sovereign God of the universe?
Jesus went on to speak further of the day when the disciples would see Him again, and when their sorrow would be turned to joy; and He said,
“And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you” (v. 23).
The Bible tells us that, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two—from top to bottom. The division that God had established in the temple between Himself and sinful humanity was taken away by the death of His Son on the cross; and His resurrection from the dead assures us that God His Father now accepts us through Him. Jesus told them that, at that time, they would be free to come themselves to the Father as if under His authority; because the Father Himself loved them in Him. And so He said,
“Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (v. 24).
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What a joy! The joy that Jesus spoke of isn’t the joy of this world. The temporal ‘joy’ of this world depends upon the unreliable circumstances of this world. But the joy that the resurrected Jesus Christ makes available to us is a joy that the world cannot take away because it’s found in a relationship with Himself. The joy He offers us is a confident, assured sense of well-being that we are right with God our Creator through faith in His cross; that we are accepted and loved by God the Father as His own precious children through a relationship with Jesus; that we now have absolute freedom to come to the sovereign God of the universe at any time and ask anything of Him we need in the name and authority of His Son; and that the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus now abides in us and lives the life of Jesus through us.
All of this is ours through faith in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ! Praise God the Father for the resurrection of His Son! Because of it, sorrow truly is turned into joy!
2nd person plural present active indicative, “to be a spectator; to notice or observe”.
2nd person plural future middle deponent indicative, “to perceive by the eye, to notice”.