Sorrow Will Turn To Joy
Notes
Transcript
Welcome to Gospel Community Church. Today we will be continuing in Chapter 16 of The Gospel of John. We will start out by reading verses 16-24, Praying, then diving deeper into the text. Sound good? Great, let’s get into God’s word.
16 “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. 21 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.
22 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. 23 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. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
This is God’s word, let’s pray.
Six years ago Maria and I found ourselves in one of those moments where everything else in life suddenly became unimportant. Our son Oakley had just been born, and instead of simply getting to enjoy those first days with our newborn son, we were dealing with health problems.
There were doctors, questions, concerns, and eventually we heard words no parent wants to hear. The hospital couldn't give Oakley the level of care he needed. He needed to be Life Flighted to a bigger hospital, and he would spend the next few weeks in the NICU.
I can look back on that today with six years of perspective. But when you're standing there watching your newborn son being prepared to be flown somewhere else because something is wrong, you don't have six years of perspective.
You have that moment. You have the fear that comes with it. You have questions you don't know the answers to. When that doctor told us what needed to happen, those words felt like the end of the world.
But here's what is amazing about looking back on that moment today. It wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't even close to the end of the story. It was actually near the beginning of what has now been six wonderful years with our wild little boy.
We've watched him grow. We've watched his personality come out. We've laughed with him, played with him, watched him experience life, and made memories with him that we couldn't possibly see while we were standing there scared to death about what was happening to our baby.
Now, that doesn't mean the fear wasn't real. It doesn't mean those weeks weren't difficult. Looking back with joy doesn't erase the pain we experienced then. What it does is put that pain into a much bigger story. What felt enormous in that moment looks different when you can see what came afterward.
And church, that is where I want us to enter John 16 this morning, because Jesus is sitting with His disciples on the night before the cross, and these men are trying to understand words that sound devastating to them. Jesus knows exactly what is coming. He knows Judas has gone out to betray Him. He knows the soldiers are coming. He knows the trial, the mocking, the beating, the crown of thorns, the nails, and the cross are coming. He knows Friday is coming, but, He also knows Sunday is coming.
The disciples don't. But Jesus does.
See that's what we've got to remember when we read this passage. We have the entire canon of Scripture. We know about the crucifixion. We know about the empty tomb. We know Romans 8. We know 1 Corinthians 15. We know Revelation 21. We know that Jesus ascends to the Father and that He will come again.
These men don't know any of that yet.
They know something is happening because Jesus keeps telling them that He's leaving. He has warned them that the world will hate them. He has told them persecution is coming. He has told them they will be put out of the synagogues and that people will kill them while believing they are offering service to God.
Think about how heavy that conversation must have felt.
These men had built their lives around Jesus. Peter left his nets. Matthew left his tax booth. They have watched Jesus open blind eyes, cleanse lepers, command the wind and waves, feed thousands, and call Lazarus out of a tomb. They believe He is the Messiah, and now the Messiah keeps talking about leaving them.
So let’s pick up in verse 16 where Jesus says:
16 “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.”
We hear that and immediately think, "Cross and resurrection." But don't rush past the disciples' confusion. They don't know what we know.
Then we see verses 17 and 18 say:
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.”
I appreciate that John leaves that sentence exactly where it is. These are the apostles, the men Jesus is going to use to carry the gospel into the world, and right here they are basically looking at one another saying, "Does anybody know what He's talking about?"
No.
And there is actually something comforting about that because sometimes obedience to Jesus comes before understanding what Jesus is doing.
These men cannot see what Jesus sees. They're trying to interpret the future from inside Thursday night. Jesus is speaking from the knowledge of Friday, Sunday, and everything beyond it.
That's where this passage begins to reach into our lives.
We do the same thing. We try to understand the whole story from whatever chapter we're currently standing in. We see the diagnosis. We see the hospital room. We see the funeral. We see the unanswered prayer. We see the relationship that fell apart. We see the pain immediately in front of us, and because that's what we can see, it begins to feel like that's all there is.
But God sees the completed story.
When Oakley was being taken to another hospital, I saw the NICU. God saw the six-year-old running around.
That doesn't make the NICU unimportant. Christianity doesn't teach us to pretend suffering doesn't hurt. Jesus isn't about to tell these disciples, "Don't worry about it. It's really not that bad."
Actually, He tells them almost the exact opposite.
Look at verse 19:
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’?
What I want us to notice here is that Jesus already knows what's troubling these men. They haven't even worked up the courage to ask Him their question, but He knows their hearts. And rather than simply giving them an explanation of what He means by "a little while," Jesus addresses something much deeper.
He prepares them for what they're about to experience. They don't understand what's coming, but Jesus does. And because He loves them, He's not going to give them some false reassurance that everything is going to be easy. He's going to tell them the truth about the suffering ahead while also giving them a promise that will carry them through it.
And church, that's exactly what we need to understand about our relationship with Christ. Following Jesus doesn't mean we're going to be spared from suffering, and having faith doesn't mean we're always going to understand what God is doing.
But it does mean we can trust the One who knows what's coming, even when we don't. And that's what makes His next words so important, because Jesus is about to acknowledge the depth of their coming sorrow while promising them something that sorrow will never be able to destroy.
Look at verse 20.
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.
Now look carefully to what Jesus said in verse 20 because He didn’t minimize what these disciples are about to experience. He says, “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.”
Jesus doesn't tell them that everything is going to be fine and that they have nothing to worry about. He actually tells them the opposite. He tells them plainly that sorrow is coming. They are going to weep. They are going to lament. And while they're grieving, the world around them is actually going to rejoice over the very thing that is breaking their hearts.
Think about what these men are about to experience. Within hours Jesus will be arrested, and when that happens the disciples are going to scatter.
Peter, the man who just insisted that he would lay down his life for Jesus, is going to deny three different times that he even knows Him. Jesus is going to be falsely accused, mocked, beaten, crowned with thorns, and eventually nailed to a Roman cross.
The disciples are going to watch everything they thought God was doing seemingly collapse right in front of them. They believed Jesus was the Messiah. They had left their former lives to follow Him. They had watched Him do things no ordinary man could do, and now the One they believed was going to establish God's kingdom is going to be hanging dead on a cross.
And while they're devastated, Jesus says, “the world will rejoice.” The religious leaders who wanted Jesus silenced are going to believe they finally succeeded.
Rome is going to treat Him like another criminal who has been dealt with. Satan himself must have viewed the cross as a victory. From almost every earthly perspective, Friday is going to look like the defeat of Jesus Christ.
But Jesus knows something these disciples don't yet understand. He says, “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” Notice that Jesus doesn't simply say, “You will have sorrow, and then later I'll give you something completely different that will make you happy.”
There is something much deeper happening. The very event producing their sorrow is going to become the foundation of their joy. They're going to weep because Jesus has been crucified, but after the resurrection, once their eyes are opened to what God accomplished through that cross, these same men are going to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming Christ crucified.
Think about how incredible that transformation is. Peter is going to run from the cross in fear, but later he will stand publicly and boldly preach words like...
23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
Paul will later write in Galatians 6:14
14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
What looked like the destruction of their hope was actually God accomplishing their salvation. What appeared to be defeat was Christ bearing sin, satisfying divine justice, defeating death, and purchasing a people for Himself.
And church, this is one of the reasons we have to be careful about judging what God is doing only by what we can see in the moment. The disciples are going to look at Friday and think everything has gone wrong, while heaven knows that God's eternal plan of redemption is being accomplished exactly as He intended.
Isaiah had written centuries earlier in Isaiah 53:10
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
The cross wasn't God's plan falling apart. The cross was God's plan being fulfilled.
There is a pattern throughout Scripture of God bringing His people through sorrow into joy.
Psalm 30:5 says...
5 For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
Psalm 126:5 says...
5 Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!
And Isaiah looks forward to the day of God's final salvation in Isaiah 35:10 and says...
10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
God never promises His people that there won't be a night of weeping. What He promises is that the night does not get the final word.
That's why the illustration Jesus chooses in verse 21 is so important. He says…
21 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.
Jesus chooses childbirth because childbirth allows Him to acknowledge the reality of pain without allowing pain to become the conclusion of the story. The woman isn't pretending the contractions don't hurt. Nobody standing beside her needs to tell her, “Just don't think about it.” The pain is real. But there is something unique about labor pain because the pain itself is moving toward something.
Every contraction hurts, but every contraction also means the birth is getting closer. The pain isn't meaningless. Something is happening through it, and what is coming on the other side changes the way the pain will eventually be remembered. Jesus isn't saying the mother literally forgets that childbirth hurt. He is saying that once she holds that child, the anguish that seemed so overwhelming during labor is now viewed through the joy of what came from it.
And Jesus didn't pull this picture out of nowhere. Childbirth imagery runs throughout the Old Testament, particularly when God's people are suffering while waiting for His salvation.
Isaiah 26:17 says...
17 Like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near to giving birth, so were we because of you, O Lord;
God's people are pictured groaning and waiting, and then just two verses later Isaiah gives this extraordinary promise in verse 19:
19 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.
There is anguish, there is waiting, and then there is resurrection. So when Jesus uses childbirth to describe what His disciples are about to experience, He is speaking in language already woven into God's promises of redemption.
Paul later takes that same imagery and applies it to the entire fallen creation. Romans 8:22 says...
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
And that helps us understand the world we're living in right now. When we look around, we see plenty of groaning. Bodies get sick. People we love die. Families hurt. Relationships break. Christians suffer. We battle our own sin. We pray prayers where we don't understand God's answer, and sometimes we find ourselves asking God why something has to hurt as badly as it does.
But notice that Paul doesn't say creation is groaning in the pains of death. He says creation is groaning in the pains of childbirth. Those are two very different pictures. Death pain says something is ending. Labor pain says something is coming. And the Christian understanding of history is that this fallen world isn't simply breaking down until eventually nothing is left. God is moving history toward the return of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of His people, the judgment of evil, and the restoration of all things.
That's why we can look honestly at the brokenness of this world without becoming hopeless. Our hope isn't built upon the idea that tomorrow will necessarily be easier than today. Jesus never promised us that. Our hope is built upon the fact that the risen Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father and that history is moving toward the day when He returns.
That's also why Paul says in Romans 8:18, just a few verses before describing creation's labor pains
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
We need to hear that carefully because Paul isn't minimizing suffering. This is a man who knew what it meant to be beaten, imprisoned, rejected, persecuted, shipwrecked, hungry, exhausted, and eventually martyred for Christ.
So when Paul says our present suffering isn't worth comparing with future glory, he isn't speaking as somebody who lived an easy life and doesn't understand pain. He is saying that when you place the suffering of this life beside the glory of eternity, eventually the comparison completely breaks down.
That's hard for us because this life is all we've experienced. Seventy or eighty years feels like a long time because that's the scale we know. But place eighty years beside eternity with Christ. Place every hospital room, every funeral, every disappointment, every unanswered question, and every painful season beside ten thousand years in the presence of God, and then another ten thousand, and then another million, knowing that eternity has still not moved one inch closer to ending. Suddenly Paul's words begin to make sense.
That's what he means in 2 Corinthians 4:17 when he writes...
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
Paul doesn't call suffering light because suffering doesn't hurt. He calls it light because he's weighing it against something infinitely heavier. There is an eternal weight of glory coming for the people of God that is so great that even the deepest suffering of this life will eventually be seen from the perspective of eternity.
This is why the Christian can grieve deeply without grieving hopelessly. We don't have to pretend cancer doesn't hurt. We don't have to pretend losing somebody we love doesn't tear something out of us. We don't have to walk into a hospital room with a fake smile and pretend that faith means nothing scares us. Jesus Himself wept at Lazarus's tomb. Christianity doesn't teach us to deny sorrow; Christianity gives sorrow a horizon. We know there is something beyond it.
And Revelation 21:4 shows us exactly what is beyond it.
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
One day everything represented by the contractions ends. Not because suffering finally defeats us, but because Christ finally and completely removes everything that causes suffering.
Now with all of that in mind, listen again to what Jesus says in verse 22:
22 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.
There is something incredibly personal about that promise. Jesus doesn't merely tell them that eventually their circumstances will improve. He doesn't say, “You're going to have a terrible weekend, but things will get better.” Their joy is tied directly to Him. He says, “I will see you again.”
In the immediate context, Jesus is pointing them toward His resurrection. They are going to watch Him die, and for a little while they will not see Him. But the grave cannot hold the Son of God. On the third day He is going to rise bodily from the dead, and these same disciples who scattered in fear are going to see Him alive. Their sorrow will turn to joy because the Christ they thought they had lost will stand in front of them victorious over death.
But the resurrection doesn't end our hope; it guarantees everything else Jesus has promised. The One who walked out of the tomb later ascended to the Father, and Acts 1:10-11 records the angels telling the disciples...
10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
So the Christian life is lived between two great appearances of Christ. We look backward to the risen Jesus who conquered the grave, and we look forward to the returning Jesus who will complete what He began.
And I think that's where this becomes deeply practical for us. Jesus tells His disciples that they will have sorrow now, but He also gives them something beyond the now. That's exactly what we need when we're hurting, because suffering has a way of shrinking our vision until the pain directly in front of us becomes the only thing we can see. When that happens, Scripture repeatedly calls us to lift our eyes beyond the immediate moment and fix them upon Christ.
Hebrews 12:2 tells us to live...
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Even Christ's endurance of the cross is described with the joy beyond the suffering in view. He knew what the cross would accomplish. He knew redemption was on the other side of suffering. He knew that through His death He would bring many sons and daughters to glory.
So when you're walking through the contractions of this life, fixing your eyes on Jesus doesn't mean pretending the contraction doesn't hurt. It means refusing to believe that the contraction is the whole story.
When the diagnosis comes, we look to Christ.
When somebody we love dies, we look to Christ.
When we're exhausted from fighting the same sin, we look to Christ.
When our prayers seem unanswered and we can't understand what God is doing, we look to Christ, because the One we're looking to has already walked through death and come out the other side.
And church, ultimately our hope isn't simply that heaven will be a better place than earth. Our hope is that Jesus is there. The greatest promise of eternity isn't streets of gold, gates of pearl, or even the absence of sickness and death. Those things are glorious, but they're glorious because we will be with Him. Revelation 22:4 says of God's people, “They will see his face.” That's where all of this is going. The Christian hope is not merely escaping a painful world; it is being forever in the presence of the Savior who redeemed us.
Then Jesus brings His disciples to prayer in verses 23 and 24:
23 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. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Jesus is teaching these disciples that His departure isn't going to leave them abandoned or separated from God. In fact, through what Jesus is about to accomplish at the cross, they are going to have an access to the Father that rests completely upon the finished work of the Son.
This is why praying “in Jesus' name” is so much more than adding a phrase to the end of our prayers. We can sometimes treat those words almost like the Christian version of signing our name at the bottom of a letter, as though once we've said “in Jesus' name” God is obligated to give us whatever came before it. But praying in the name of Jesus means approaching the Father on the basis of who Jesus is, what Jesus has accomplished, and in submission to His character and His will.
That means I don't come into the presence of God because I've had a good week. I don't come because I've pastored well enough, prayed long enough, studied enough Scripture, resisted enough temptation, or somehow earned an audience with the Creator.
And on the weeks when I've failed miserably, I don't suddenly lose access because my access was never built upon my performance in the first place. I come before the Father because Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, has opened the way.
That's why Hebrews 4:16 says...
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Our confidence isn't confidence in ourselves. Our confidence is in Christ. And that means when the contractions of life are at their worst, we aren't pushed away from God; those are often the moments when we need to draw nearest to Him.
We can bring Him the fear, the confusion, the grief, and even the questions we don't know how to answer, knowing that we come through a Savior who has already secured our place before the Father.
And then look at how Jesus finishes verse 24: “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Joy has been running underneath this entire passage.
The disciples' sorrow will become joy. They will see Jesus again and their hearts will rejoice. No one will take their joy from them. And now Jesus tells them to pray so that their joy may be full.
This isn't shallow happiness based upon everything going our way. This is a deep, settled joy rooted in the reality that we belong to Christ, we have access to the Father through Christ, and our future with Christ has already been secured.
CLOSING
CLOSING
And church, I think this brings us all the way back to where we started. When that doctor told Maria and me that Oakley needed to be Life Flighted to another hospital, I couldn't see six years into the future. I couldn't see all the birthdays, all the laughs, all the golf, all the craziness, and all the ordinary moments that would make us thankful God gave us this little boy. All I could see was my newborn son being taken somewhere else because he needed help we couldn't give him.
That moment was real. The fear was real. The pain was real. But six years later, I can see that moment differently because I know more of the story than I knew then.
And if six years can change our perspective that much, imagine what eternity is going to do to our perspective on this life.
There are things happening in some of our lives right now that we simply don't understand. Some of you may be sitting in what feels like the NICU portion of your story, where all you can see are questions and fear and uncertainty.
Some of you are grieving.
Some are waiting for an answer from God.
Some are fighting battles nobody else in this room even knows about.
And Jesus doesn't ask you to pretend those things don't hurt. He doesn't tell His disciples that sorrow isn't real, and He doesn't tell us that either.
What He does is give us something greater than the sorrow to fix our eyes upon.
He gives us Himself.
So don't confuse the contraction with the conclusion. Don't interpret the entire story of God's faithfulness through the most painful chapter you're currently living in.
The disciples could not see beyond Friday, but Jesus knew Sunday was coming. And we have something those confused disciples sitting around that table didn't yet have: we have the cross behind us, the empty tomb behind us, the completed Word of God in our hands, and the promise of the returning Christ before us.
We know how this story ends.
The same Jesus who told those frightened disciples, “I will see you again,” rose from the dead.
The same Jesus who rose from the dead ascended to the Father. And the same Jesus who ascended has promised to return.
Until that day, there will be contractions. There will be sorrow. There will be seasons when we don't understand what God is doing. But none of those things gets the final word over the Christian.
Jesus does.
So when life hurts, fix your gaze upon Him. When you can't understand what God is doing, fix your gaze upon Him. When the present moment feels so overwhelming that you can't imagine anything beyond it, remember that you are trying to judge an eternal story from inside a temporary moment.
Lift your eyes to Christ and remember His promise:
“You have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.”
One day faith will become sight. One day the labor will be finished. One day everything that sin has broken will be made new, and the people of God will stand in the presence of Christ with a joy that Jesus says “no one will take” from us.
And on that day, church, I believe we'll finally understand just how short the contractions really were compared with the joy of what God was bringing us into.
Amen? Amen!
Let’s Pray.
