Bigger Joys and Bolder Prayers

I invite you to turn with me this evening to John chapter 16. I’ll begin reading with you at verse 16. The passage we’re reading tonight is the last sermon of Jesus summarized in the Bible and the last instruction of our Lord prior to His suffering and death.

So what is it that Jesus most needed to say to His disciples? What did they most need to learn? The answer is that Jesus wanted them to understand the times, to increase in joy, to be emboldened in their prayers, and to overcome the world.

These topics make John 16 a good passage for us this evening because we, too, need to understand our times, to see or to seek joy in the face of suffering, to be better able to pray, and to be kept from fearing the forces at work in our world.

So will you give God’s Word your most careful attention as we begin reading with Jesus’s words in verse 16 to the end of this dialogue. 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 don’t 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 I’ll 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.””

Let us pray. O Lord, we know of no book like this book, so we ask You, Father, that as You have given us Your Word by Your Holy Spirit that You would impress it upon each of our hearts tonight. We ask, Father, that we would be not only hearers of Your Word but believers in it. Not only believers, but also doers. Would You do this? Would You so work in us tonight that by Your Spirit You would show us Jesus, who would lead us to the Father. We ask that You would because we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Jesus ended His evening of teaching with a riddle – now you see Me, soon you won’t, and then you will again. The disciples were the first but certainly not the last to wonder what Jesus was saying. It’s worth wondering what Jesus is saying because it’s said four times in four verses. The most likely reason for Jesus giving a riddle is that He has not one but two different events in view.

His first disappearance refers to His death the following day, and the first return refers to His resurrection three days later. That makes sense in what Jesus says in verses 19 to 24 as you can see if you look down at your Bibles. Because in a little while He would die, and after His death they would not see Him. While His Spirit would be with His Father, as this passage says, His body would be in the grave. Then they would see Him again. Jesus Christ would rise from the dead with power and majesty.

This event also makes sense of verse 32, where Jesus warns His disciples that they will soon scatter, deserting their Lord in His hour of need. You see, Jesus was preparing His disciples for what was about to happen, but there have always been some holdouts in history who have argued that Jesus must also be meaning something more, He must also be referring to His second departure at His ascension and that little time when He would be away from His people, the time in which we now live. A little time, as God counts time.

Augustine of Hippo in the early Church and John Calvin at the Reformation both believed that Jesus, especially in verse 28, is speaking about our own time when we cannot see Him. As a Church historian, I guess I need to vote for Augustine and Calvin whenever they agree on something. And I do tonight because I’ve got good reason to do so.

On the one hand, Jesus often revealed only what His disciples next needed to know, while only later revealing more of what they needed to know. He spoke about events in their days that they would later come to see was a message for later days also. We heard something just like that in this morning’s sermon as Pastor Kevin was explaining passages in the gospels.

On the other hand, in this last lesson for His disciples, Jesus was also teaching them how to think and act during His days in the grave and then teaching us all how to think and act during these days when Jesus is in heaven. He was teaching those few to understand their times and He’s also teaching us and all His disciples through the ages to understand our times. In hindsight, we can see how wise our Lord is.

When we being to wrestle with the riddle that Jesus left His disciples, we begin to see these two different horizons, these two different situations that He’s talking about and how we need to live in each.

On the one hand His death and resurrection is a once for all event, never to be repeated in history. And yet on the other hand, as the Holy Spirit has taught the Church in His Word, and as He’s guided the Church through history, we have learned that in our times, too, in our times all of life and all of ministry is one of death and resurrection.

Jesus’ riddle helps us to reflect on our times but Jesus Himself focuses on our experience in these times to teach us two lessons. The first of these is that even through sorrow, God produces joy.

Anyone who’s been around even for a little while knows that between Christ’s ascension and Christ’s return during the days in which we live, we inhabit a world of suffering and of dying and of sorrows of so many kinds. Some of those sorrows are hard to understand. They linger as anxious thoughts just outside our understanding. They’re the dull, gray clouds that come on a day when there’s nothing really wrong. It’s the dull ache that somehow is present even on a bright day, like a graduation or a wedding, that doesn’t quite live up to our expectations for the day.

Some of the problems of this world are hard for us because we can’t quite put our finger on them. Some of these problems are hard for us because we find them bothering us more than they should. The sufferings are small and yet they get to us in a big way.

A few days ago Emily and I had a work trip to Florida and we looked at our weather apps and the weather was supposed to be wonderful. No rain was predicted, all sunshine for all our days there, but it did rain in our hotel room. Three times in one night the guy above us completely flooded his bathtub, for reasons I’ll never understand. Rain’s coming through the ceiling and through the lights. I was so irritated. All our stuff stayed dry. Our bed did not actually get wet. Eventually I remember I did have a rain app on my phone and I could just turn it up louder than the rain in the room and we could back to sleep.

These sorts of sufferings are, they’re there and they partly bother us just because they bother us so much and we feel kind of wimpy about it. But these are trivial matters. They’re made worse because we know that much suffering in this world is acutely painful, such as the kind we’ve sung about already in this service. But we could add to the distress of soul, the times when we lose our health at a young age or when we’re just about to retire. Or when we lose a child or a spouse of many years. You have sorrows now with many things that you thought would be your greatest joys.

Of course, some suffering and dying is for Christ, as we were reminded again today. As many of our brothers and sisters know, who are persecuted for their faith in many parts of the world, and to some degree sometimes in our own country, too. All of this suffering, all of this dying, is designed to make us more like Christ, to help us put to death our sins and sinful desires.

But Jesus is saying something more than that. That point is made so clearly in any number of points in the Bible but here Jesus is teaching us something else. He highlights, by the way, one more category of sorrow, maybe the worst of sorrows for godly people, when we see the world rejoicing for all the wrong reasons. Some rejoicing because of the misery of God’s people, some of which they have caused. Most unbelievers rejoicing, happy in this world, and we are sad for them because they are ignoring the Christian gospel that they so much need. We sorrow at their joy at times like that, when they’re oblivious to the Lord who made them and the only One who can save them.

It’s at times like this, as a wise Christian once said, that we long to be with Christ, which is far better, but we recognize that we need to be here, which is more needful.

But here’s what our Lord would have us to remember about all these sorrows, about all this suffering. First, death comes before resurrection. There can be no resurrection without suffering and death. As this was true in Christ’s life, as this is true in history, so true it is in our experience. It’s not merely by the way that the disciples sorrowed and then later would rejoice, it’s also the case that they could never have the very heights of joy that God had planned for them, has planned for us, if they do not experience, if we do not also experience, if we do not partake ourselves, of sorrow.

Secondly. What’s true of Christ’s death and resurrection is really true for the whole of our age, as I’ve already implied. Christ takes our losses, our griefs, our sufferings, in Him and for Him. Notice what verse 20 says. He not only follows our sorrows with joy, look at what He says, He turns our sorrows into joys.

We sometimes think about the resurrection of Christ or the return of Christ as something good that follows something bad and that’s certainly true. It’s like a good followup trip to Florida after a bad trip to Florida. But a much better illustration would be that of a birth, which of course is what Jesus gives us, drawing on that illustration already present in Isaiah chapter 26. It gives the illustration of a woman in labor.

Now as an outsider, I can say that having viewed a woman in labor five times, it looks very painful. It’s scary and it’s really, really hard. But when the baby arrives, as Jesus says in verse 21, she no longer remembers the anguish for the joy that a human being has been born into the world.

Nowadays I know it’s possible to diminish the pain of labor and I have heard mothers swapping war stories about births that suggest they did not forget all of the anguish of birth, but Jesus is teaching us about eschatology, not gynecology. He clarifies His point as He simplifies what happens. Labor not only precedes a baby, but the way in which the suffering is turned into joy is part of the astounding wonder of the event. It’s not just the baby, it’s the difference between a moment ago and a moment later.

Remember, we are awaiting not any ordinary human being, we are awaiting the God-man. We already know His name. It’s Jesus. The One who so loves His own that on the night that He was betrayed He spent hours preparing His friends for their sorrows instead of discussing His much greater sorrows because He, although entirely without any of the experience of or guilt of sin Himself, would nonetheless bear the sorrow and the shame and the pain of our sins so that we could have joy at His return.

So we will sorrow as Jesus says in verse 22 but we are already to find comfort. We are already to find joy in the fact that Jesus is returning. We’re to have a mother’s expectancy that we’re to trust in God’s sorrow transforming work so that we will be able to endure the labor pains of our age. That resurrection power is already at work in us and it will be all the more displayed, displayed at its fullest, when Jesus returns or when He takes us home.

Jesus gives us a riddle to understand our times. He gives us a kind of parable with the story of this birth to teach us about joy emerging from suffering. Then in verses 23 and 24, and again in 26 and 27, Jesus gives plain talk on prayer. Because our present joy not only rests in awaiting the Son, but in our prayers now to the Father. Ask and you will receive, Jesus says in verse 24, that your joy may be full.

Next to what we call the Lord’s Prayer, this passage offers Jesus’ most important instruction on the subject. Underline it. Come back to it. Notice some of what’s packed into it.

First Jesus tells us that in this age, His disciples are not to make their requests of Him. They’re to pray instead to the Father in His name.

Verse 24 suggests, by the way, that that was not yet the pattern of Christ’s disciples. Those of you know your Bibles well will know that the martyr Stephen says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Paul says, “Lord, take this thorn from me.” It is not wrong to pray to Jesus, but verses 23 and 26 and the example of the epistles in the New Testament teach us that the normal pattern for Christians is to pray to the Father in the name of Christ.

Reflecting on this verse and using his sometimes very strong language, John Calvin says this teaches us that it’s a wicked profanation of the name of God when anyone leaving Christ out of You ventures to present himself before the judgment seat of God.

I think we can at least learn in this passage that it ought to be our pattern, to pray with words that one way or another leave Christ very much in view. We must not have a worship service, we must not have prayers, that are all about God the Father and not about Jesus, but we should also not have services that only talk about Jesus and don’t address the Father.

Second. We’re told in verses 26 and 27 that the Father is ready, He’s ready, to receive our requests. When we ask in Jesus’ name, it’s not that He’s asking for us because the Father’s not interested in us, it’s not that He’s persuading the Father to pay attention to us, to help the Father love us enough to answer our prayers. No, we do pray in Christ’s name as sinners who cannot approach a Holy God without a mediator, but as Jesus explained earlier in the gospel of John, it is this Father who sent His Son because He so loves us, and now the Father loves us because we love His Son and because we believe that His Son comes from Him.

Notice Jesus doesn’t say the Father loves us even more because of this. Jesus cannot say that. Our affection, our confessions, can’t make God love us more because the Father’s love for us is so great that He cannot love us more than He already does.

Jesus explains in verse 25 that He had more to talk about with respect to the Father. He had more to reveal about the Father. Soon we’ll see how much He would reveal about the Father just in His prayer to the Father, which for the first time He allowed His disciples to overhear, and which in God’s Word we, too, get to overhear whenever we read John 17.

The Holy Spirit would also tell more about the Father after Pentecost, much more, but this one thing could not wait. One thing about all else needed to be revealed to the disciples before Jesus went to His cross. It’s a truth that Christians cannot do without. We must know this, that the Father loves us. What would it be like to wake up every day with that thought – My Father loves me. What would it be like to begin every prayer with that thought? My Father loves me and He is more eager to answer my prayers than I am to go to Him in prayer.

Third. We’re told in verse 24, as Christ tells His disciples, to ask and pray so that our joy may be full. Based on everything that was just said, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Given what Jesus has just said about His Father, how could we expect to be joyful, how would we expect to reach the fullness of the joy He has planned for us, unless we are speaking to this Father? Unless we know the heart of this Father?

Jesus did not want to go to His cross without giving His disciples the secret of Christian happiness, knowing the Father, knowing the Father as He really is and communing with Him. In fellowship with the Father, in dependence on the Father, in prayer to the Father we discover how much He loves us, no matter how little we deserve it. This is where we find a joy that is full. Apart from the Father, we only find joys that are empty.

Jesus Himself certainly found His joy in the Father. He keeps talking about Him. Twice He mentions that He’s going to return to the Father. This must have been a special comfort to Him because He was about to experience untold sorrow. Because in the world He was about to have tribulation. So He set His mind on the joy that was before Him, not just the joy of the salvation of all who call upon Him, but the joy of full fellowship with His Father.

Now His disciples thought they got all this, and they get a bunch of things right, but if their words were supposed to be a summary of Jesus’ words, it’s not very encouraging. They seem to be missing the main point.

When we have family devotions, especially some years ago when we had multiple kids in the house, we’d sometimes just sort of check for comprehension. Did you get all that? And they would sort of say like one thing of ten things, or a half a thing, or they’d just repeat the last words that were said, like “that your joy may be full.” That was supposed to assure us that they had really kind of got the whole picture.

Jesus says, “No, you really haven’t got it.” But let’s us try to get it. Jesus says they haven’t got it and it’s almost a sad ending. Jesus has to tell them that not only have they not really got it, but their faith is so weak that they’re soon going to scatter, they’re going to leave Him alone.

But as you know it’s not quite a sad ending, is it? It’s not a sad ending because Jesus is still patient with them. In fact, He goes to the garden and to the cross and to the grave for them in the midst of their greatest failure. It’s not a sad ending because Jesus returns to the thought of His Father once again and remembers that His Father will not leave Him alone. The Father doesn’t desert the Son. He doesn’t desert anyone who clings to the Son, either.

It’s not a sad ending because Jesus promises in His final words that He has overcome the world.

The riddle of Jesus helps us to understand our times, the parable of Jesus summons us to seek joy from suffering. The plain speaking of Jesus about His Father emboldens our prayers to a loving Father.

In a final promise from Jesus, He announces that He’s won. The way this is written in Greek puts all of the emphasis here on Jesus. It’s as though bold print is added where there was already italic and underlining. Jesus says, “I’ve said these things to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you’ll have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”

From this we can figure out an important truth. All those who were in Christ as their Savior and in the world as their temporary home, will find a peace that exceeds all the world’s expectations, even in the midst of tribulation. We can figure that out from what Jesus says. And in this we also hear an explicit announcement. It’s made explicit because there are seasons when appearances don’t reflect realities. It looks like everything is evil, while God’s working it all out for good. So we’re to take heart because in spite of appearances, Jesus has overcome the world.

It didn’t look like that, that Jesus had overcome. Within hours His prayers would be interrupted. He’d be arrested by a band of thugs. Within a day He’d be dying, and then dead. But His disciples would soon understand much more. They could understand, with the Holy Spirit’s help, that Jesus was, in fact, creating peace between God and man. Jesus was securing a peace of conscience for repentant sinners. He was offering a peace of mind even available to those in the midst of their troubles. What looked like a loss was Jesus overcoming all.

This peace of mind rests in part in our understanding of our times, in seeking the right joys, in praying to the Father. But it also rests in knowing how the story ends, in knowing that Jesus overcomes. The promise of God overcoming is a grand story. It’s one of the epic themes of the Bible. It begins in the Old Testament. Just think of Jeremiah 20 where we hear the suffering prophet declaring that with God on His side his enemies won’t overcome him. We hear it in the New Testament, too. Paul tells us that we will overcome when we are judged.

But the promise that evil will not overcome, that Christ does overcome, that we overcome in Him, that is the clear theme especially in the inspired writings of John.

At the beginning of this gospel we’re told that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. In the book of Revelation we’re assured that those who overcome partake of the tree of life first planted in the garden of Eden. We receive manna from heaven. With Christ we rule the nations. We’re clothed in white. We’re pillars in the heavenly temple. We sit with God on His throne. Overcoming is a sure thing in the book of Revelation.

But how is that possible? How is that possible when we know ourselves? How does this work that we, too, overcome the world and are granted these blessings? After all, sometimes we misunderstand our times and we even panic. How is it possible that we will overcome when we’re so far from persecution to the point of death that something as simple as a poor night’s sleep or a disappointment, or the whole of allergy season, is enough to take away our joys? How is this possible for us whose prayers are sometimes so weak, whose petitions are sometimes so vague, that it’s not clear that we’re asking the Father much at all. Knowing who we are, how can it be true as John later writes in his first epistle, that everyone who’s been born of God overcomes the world?

Well, it’s all possible because all of the emphasis is on Jesus. Because the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, overcomes. He opens the seals, He rides the white horse. We overcome by the blood of the Lamb.

Little children, you are from God, John writes, and have overcome them, for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. This is Christ’s closing promise to His disciples, and it’s His closing word to us tonight. In the world, in Charlotte, in the world around you, we’ll have tribulation, but take heart, Jesus says, I have overcome the world.

Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, You who love us beyond all deserving, we thank You for the One who overcomes all. Teach us by Your Spirit to live wisely in our times, between Christ’s Ascension and His sure return. Increase our joys as we wait for Him and make us bold as we come to You in prayer, knowing Your love and trusting in Your Son who has overcome all. Help us by Your all-seeing Spirit to see You and Your Son as You really are. Help us to see Your love in sending us Jesus, the One whose strength is greater than our weakness, whose wisdom shines even through our foolishness, whose righteousness far exceeds our sin. We praise You that His protection is secure in the face of the world’s tribulation, that His advocacy is more effective than our adversaries’ accusations, and that His sanctifying grace will be at work in us until the end. Will You hear these prayers, O Father? We know that You will because You love us and because we come to You in Jesus’ name. Amen.