Scott
Jonas
Series: John Title:
John 16- Sorrow to Joy Text: John 16:16-24
Exegetical
statement: Jesus predicted his disciples
sorrow so that they would believe.
Goal: That the hearers would trust that Jesus turns
their sorrow into Joy.
Welcome back to the Gospel of
John. Last week, in John 15, I preached
on Christ’s words, “I am the True Vine.”
This week we journey on to John chapter 16, focusing on Christ’s words,
“In a little while” and “Your sorrow will turn to Joy.” If you’ve been joining us Wednesdays for our
lenten series on the 6 Days of Creation, I think you will see that preaching on
Genesis merge with this preaching on John.
On day 3 God formed all of the land and
vegetation including fruit. Then in John
15, Jesus teaches his disciples, “I am the true vine and my father is the vine
dresser…Abide in me and I in you.” These
Jewish men must have had their heads spinning.
They knew the genesis story completely from a young age. Yahweh creates land and everything that
grows. Now Jesus this man who sleeps
under the same roof with them. Who eats
from the same pot as they do. He claims
that he is the true vine that comes from Yahweh. Jesus is the perfect extension of the
Father. Through Jesus comes the creation
of life. Good things like berries, and
wine. But also other intangible good
things like love. All it came through
Jesus at creation. All of it comes
through Jesus as he speaks.
Learning from Jesus is like drinking
from a fire hose. Jesus is not holding back.
The teachings started in Chapter 13, when Jesus gathers his disciples
together for the passover meal. The
clock is ticking and he is going to tell them as much as he can in one
night. There is so much wisdom coming at
you at once that a mortal can’t take it all in. Important teachings are going to miss their
target. But Jesus keeps going. He says that the world will hate his
followers because of him. He talks about
the Helper coming soon. He teaches on
the work of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus even offers a reason for his
urgency. He says in 16:1, “I have said
these things to keep you from falling away.”
That is a key verse that we are going to return to later.
There is another connection in these
verses to Genesis. First is the God as
creator of fruit and Jesus as the creator of fruit. The second we explored last Wednesday, God as the creator of time. On Day 4, God spoke and made the Sun,Moon and
the stars which form our measurements of time.
The sun and the moon enable us to follow days, months, seasons and years. God is the Lord of time. Jesus has a mastery of it as well. He could predict the days ahead. He knew that a season was passing and a new
season was arriving soon.
So the disciples are having such a hard
time keeping up with JEsus’ teachings. There
is the “I and the True Vine.” Is that
figurative or literal? There is the “The
world will hate you. They will put you
out of the synagogue.” But that’s our
whole world. The community we grew up
in. What do we do when everyone we know
hates us? There is the “I am telling you
these things so you do not fall away.”
How are these teachings going to keep me close to my rabbi, Jesus? Jesus even says “I still have many things to
tell you but you can not bear them now.”
There is stuff he is holding back?
It doesn’t feel like he is holding back.
I’m not absorbing the basic stuff how can I possibly graduate to tougher
teachings? The disciples are confused,
worried and eagerly trying to follow Jesus.
Which
brings us to our text for today. Jesus
John 16:16-20
6
“A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and
you will see me.” 17 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’?” 18 So they were saying, “What
does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” 19
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’? 20 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.
Anybody else think this text is
funny? He said in “a little while.” Do you know what he means by a little
while? I don’t know what he means by a
little while? Are we supposed to know
that phrase? Has he said it before? Is it in the Old Testament? It’s almost like they can’t take it
anymore. It reminds me of when you are
studying for finals and your brain gets full.
It’s late at night. You’ve been
cramming information intensely for hours and you mind goes bye bye. You go to write a simple word and you can’t
remember how to spell. A word like
“while”. It just doesn’t look
right. Why is there an e at the end? what is that h doing? You don’t need it? Or maybe you start to forget very basic
teachings, things you went over way back at the beginning of the semester. The disciples sound panicked. They are trying really hard to follow JEsus
in real time.
Here’s another way of looking at
it. Having a conversation with Jesus, as
the disciples were, was like having the most mind blowing, urgent, sweat
inducing Bible study of all time.
Usually we don’t think of Bible study that way. In our PJs at night we casually open the
Bible to John chapter 16. We read at a
leisurely pace. “A little while and you
will see me no longer and again a little while you will see me.” Hmm. I
wonder what that means? Before I read
further, let me look at my concordia self study Bible notes, “16:16 Christ describes his burial and
resurrection. Makes sense. Let’s look at the cross references in the
middle column. See John 13:33. A few pages back, “Little children, yet a
little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews,
so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’” Let’s look at that note. 13:33 Little
Children “term of endearment.” Should I
go online and look at the Greek?
The disciples wish they had it that
easy. The Bible is the word of God,
written down for us to know him and the way of salvation. Jesus is also the word of God. Everything he says is the words of God. So when the disciples have a conversation
with him it is unlike any other Bible study.
The words aren’t written down yet.
You can’t turn back the page and cross reference. Jesus is talking not to the church in general
but to you specifically. He is looking
in your eyes. He is trying to help you
personally. You’r responsibility is to
try to take everything you’ve been taught in the past and apply it to this
conversation.
But if they can’t understand a simple
phrase like “In a little while”, Then they are in trouble. Is “a little while”, a few minutes, a
day? The Psalmist says a thousand years
is like a day to the Lord. Is Jesus
going to leave them in a thousand years?
They don’t understand Jesus’ timeline.
It’s hard to trust your teachings when you don’t know something as basic
as “In a little while.”
The timeline is obvious to us modern
day Bible readers. We know exactly what
it means. “In a little while” means that
tomorrow Jesus will be buried. Joseph of
arimathea and Nicodemus, who Jesus met at night in Chapter 3, will be the last
to see him. They will take his body to a
new grave. Those on the earth will not
see him for parts of three days. The
Heavenly father will see him. Then after that “little while” the women and men will see him and their
sorrow will turn to Joy.
The men and women who followed Jesus
did not experience it that way. During
the three days, they were not treasuring Jesus’ words. They weren’t going door to door saying, “Just
you wait”. Jesus said he will be right
back. They were holed up in a windowless
room, wondering what went wrong. They
trusted JEsus’ teachings but now he’s dead.
Dead doesn’t change in “a little while.”
It’s so easy to feel superior to the
disciples. When we look back, we see all
of the ways Jesus told them exactly what was going to happen. John 2 Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up.” John 12, Jesus said to Phillip,
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” John 14
You heard me say to you, 'I go away, and I will come to you.' If you
loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father
is greater than I.” "When they came
together in Galilee, he said to them, 'The Son of Man is going to be betrayed
into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be
raised to life.'
Let’s give the disciples a break. JEsus did not predict his death and
resurrection so that they would understand as it was happening. HE predicted his death because in his words
“I have said these things to keep you from falling away.” Jesus knows that his predictions will not
take effect until after he rises from the dead.
That is crucial. During the three
days, the men and women were basket cases.
They were in a fog. They were in
pain. Nothing made sense. Their lives seemed rudderless. It was only after Jesus’ words came true that
their sorrow turned to Joy.
The same is true for us. When we are suffering we don’t know why. We get consumed by our misfortunes, wondering
if all this anguish is for nothing. God
never promises us to eliminate our pain on earth. Pain is part of the equation as long as sin
is part of the equation. But he does
promise that one day our sorrows will turn to Joy.
Let’s do an exercise. Everyone think of the biggest sorrow you’ve
experienced so far. No one goes through
life unmaimed. It can be any loss. Death, disease, estrangement, loss of a job,
the loss that comes with age. Pick the
one that was the most painful. What if
Jesus told you about that suffering ahead of time? What if for three years he warned you about
it, predicting exactly what would happen?
He told you face to face that this was going to happen. Maybe not all the details but enough to get
the picture. Would knowing that it was
coming make it any less painful?
I doubt it. In some ways it’s worse. When we know something terrible is going to
happen we live with the dread, the anticipation. Some people have experienced this. They have been given a prediction from a
doctor who said “In a little while” you will experience this disease. Even if Jesus told us about the specific
losses in our lives it would not stop the pain.
We also would be trying to figure out, what does Jesus mean by that word
and this word. WE would be parsing words
just like the disciples.
Does knowing that there is going to be
pain in childbirth make the pain easier?
I will not be answering that because eI do not have standing. JEsus says that only after the baby is born
does the pain subside.
Jesus says “In this world you will have
trouble.” You and I know those words to
be true. But he also says that your
sorrow will turn to Joy. That was true
for the 3 days of sorrow that the disciples experienced and it is true for the
troubles that you experience right now.
Ultimately it isn’t about trusting
Jesus’ predictions. It’s about trusting
Jesus the person. You might be
confused. You might not understand
theology. But trust Jesus. Jesus is with us, along with the Holy
Spirit. The comfort comes not in the
absence of pain and not in the prediction of specific suffering. Comfort comes knowing that Jesus, the creator
of the unverse, cares about you. He is
next to you every step of the way. The
creator of time says that your pain has an expiration date. In a little while your pain will end and an
eternity of Joy begins.