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Reading John 16:16-24 where Jesus tells His disciples that they will sorrow for a little while, but soon their sorrow will be turned to joy. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Jesus said to his disciples that you will be sorrowful for a little while, but your sorrow will turn to joy. And indeed, that is true for us. We struggle through this life, but we look forward to being with God in glory when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's word that we may be filled with the knowledge of his will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back again to our study of the gospel of John. And today we'll be looking at the section that goes from verses 16 to 24. Jesus still speaking with his disciples in this upper room discourse.
He says, 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. So Jesus, here in this part of the conversation that they're having in the upper room, he says a little while, and you will see me no longer.
Now there are a couple of different ways to interpret this. And I believe that the immediate context is him saying to his disciples that he's about to be taken away and put to death. In a little while, you will see me no longer.
He'll be laid in a tomb. They won't have him in their presence anymore, at least for the span of the weekend. Jesus crucified on Friday, in a tomb Friday evening through Saturday, and risen again from the grave on Sunday.
So for a little while, they won't see him, but then a little while longer, and you will see me. He was gonna come back from the grave. He was gonna show himself to them, and he would be with them for 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension into heaven, according to what we read at the start of the book of Acts.
And so he would be with them again, but then he would be taken from them again, as he would ascend to heaven to be with his father. And then a little while, you won't see me, but a little while, and you will see me again.
When the apostles were martyred, and then they will go to see him in glory. Or this could also be understood by the entire church as for now, we do not see him. We see with our mind's eye, we see by faith, but we cannot see with our own eyes the presence of God in our midst.
Yet a day is going to come when we will see him. So for a little while, we do not see Jesus, but a day is coming in which we will see our Christ with our own eyes. We will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him, as it says in 1 John 3, 2.
So there's kind of an immediate context here in which Jesus is talking with his disciples, and there's a greater context going on. There's a lot of passages that you can read that way, where there's going to be an immediate fulfillment, and then there's going to be a greater fulfillment.
Or what I have taught in my classes is a micro-fulfillment and a macro-fulfillment. For example, you go to the book of Obadiah, and there Obadiah is warning the Edomites that destruction is going to come upon the Edomites.
They should not say to themselves that they have safety because of where they're located or because of who their friends are, but because they have betrayed the Israelites, God is going to give the Edomites over to their enemies, and they were going to be destroyed and utterly wiped out from the face of the earth.
There's no Edomites on the earth today. And that kind of judgment upon the Edomites has indeed come. But that is also a picture of the judgment that is going to come against mankind, all those who do not believe in Christ.
So there's a micro-fulfillment, and then there's also a macro-fulfillment, talking about the judgment of God. We see a micro-fulfillment in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis.
And yet Jude refers to Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of the judgment, the fire of God that is going to come down upon all those who did not believe, but lived in their unrighteousness and their sexual perversion.
So you see even here, as Jesus is giving hope to his disciples, there's a micro-fulfillment to this, referring to his crucifixion, which was just going to happen hours from that conversation, and then his resurrection.
And then there was a macro-fulfillment regarding the faithfulness to Christ that they had in fulfilling the great commission that he was going to give them after his resurrection. And for the decades that they would continue to build Christ's church until they were martyred, and then they would see Christ again.
And then there's even a greater fulfillment beyond that as it applies to the entire church. Micro, macro, and then what, larger macro? I don't know, I ran out of descriptor words there. So anyway, Jesus again saying, a little while and you will see me no longer, and again a little while and you will see me.
And the disciples were perplexed about this. Some 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. And then verse 19, Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him. So he said to them, is this what you are asking yourselves?
Now, this kind of gives us a picture, I think, a little bit of how maybe this upper room discourse was going, like it's not just Jesus sitting there just telling his disciples stuff, and they're just sitting there attentive to what it is that he is saying.
But some of these things that he's talking about is happening over the course of conversation. Remember that John has been described as the one who is sitting at Jesus' bosom. So he's there reclining at table closest to Jesus.
As Jesus is talking to different disciples, John is hearing all the different parts of that conversation. So not all of this discourse that we're reading about here, which is, you know, this has gone from chapter 13 all the way through chapter 17.
Not all of this is just like a constant flow of dialogue. It's various things that Jesus is saying to his disciples over the course of dinner. If you've got a red letter Bible, then you're seeing pretty substantial chunks of red letters with no interruption, the disciples not breaking in and saying things.
But we know that they have been doing that because of what we read, like, for example, in chapters 13 and 14. Chapter 15 is gonna be all the words of Christ there. And then we get to chapter 16, this portion of chapter 16, where finally there's kind of a break in what it is that Jesus has said.
But I believe that this entire conversation has been things that have been said to various disciples and then things that have been said to the whole group of the disciples. And this is one of those things where Jesus had said something to them, and then maybe he's having another conversation, maybe got up and went to the bathroom.
I don't know, where did Jesus go in the midst of this that now the disciples are saying, what is it he's talking about when he says, a little while I'll be with you, and then I'm not gonna be with you.
You'll see me and then you won't see me. And Jesus, who searches mind and heart, knows what it is that they're talking about. And he says, 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.
I recently spoke to a group of men, and we had the sessions where I would stand in front of the group of men and teach them straight from the word. And then we would break for the session and I would talk with a couple of guys who were asking questions about one thing.
And I remember after one session in particular, I was talking with a couple of men, then they started talking to one another. And my ears kind of picked up another group off to the side that were talking about what I had just said, but they were misunderstanding what I said in the lesson.
So I walked over to the group of them and I said, hey, were you guys asking about this thing that I said? And they were like, yeah, that was a little confusing to me. So I took them back to the scriptures again and showed them what it was that was said in the particular book that I was teaching from for that weekend.
And that's not quite what Jesus was doing here because I don't think they were really getting up around the room and kind of milling around. And Jesus is not merely eavesdropping on what the disciples are talking about, but he knows.
He knows what's in their hearts and what they are asking questions regarding what he had said. He says, 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. Now we see the micro fulfillment of this exactly where you will weep and lament.
They'll weep and lament over the fact that their Lord and savior has been taken from them and has been crucified. He's being put to death on a cross and they won't understand that this is for their salvation.
They won't understand it at that moment but their eyes will be open to see it. In the meantime, as Christ has been taken away and he's been arrested, flogged, tried, put to death, they're gonna weep and lament.
The world will rejoice, which is exactly what happened. Pharisees and the Jews, they rejoiced over Christ's crucifixion. The Romans, they mocked him and they even gambled over his garments beneath him while he hung there on the cross.
So the world will rejoice, you will be sorrowful. But unlike the world's joy, the way the world will rejoice over the crucifixion, the death of the son of God, eventually that joy is gonna be fleeting and they will even be judged by it, those who did not repent.
Whereas your sorrow will turn into joy. You will realize that the reason why I did this, the reason why I was taken from you and was crucified was because you needed atonement for your sins, that you could be justified before God by faith, by faith in me and what I had accomplished for you.
So your sorrow will turn into joy because you will understand this. The rest of them will not understand and their joy will ultimately amount to nothing because Jesus is gonna rise from the dead. So what were they rejoicing over exactly?
Except in glorifying in themselves. But your sorrow, Jesus says to his disciples, will turn into joy. Don't forget Psalm 30 verse five. Good verse to write in your margin there if you're following along in John chapter 16.
Psalm 30 verse five, for his anger is but a moment and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. So for those who are in sorrow over the crucifixion of Christ, their sorrow will be turned into joy for they will realize that this had been done for their benefit.
Second Corinthians chapter five verse 21, for our sake he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Your sorrow will be turned into joy. Even when a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, there is a sense of sorrow, a mourning over our own sin.
Some people probably aren't even brokenhearted enough and yet God is gonna receive us anyway, though we were not as brokenhearted as we should have been. And by the time you die and go to be with the Lord in glory, you still won't be as brokenhearted as you should have been.
No one will repent perfectly and yet God will receive us into heaven anyway because he is gracious and merciful, not because we did anything good. We did nothing to merit our salvation, but God is the one who is gracious.
So even though we're not as brokenhearted as we should be, yet God shows us grace and mercy in those moments. But when we come to an understanding and a realization of our sin and that what we deserve for our sin is death and judgment, there is a sorrow that comes into our hearts over that.
It is a genuine repentance or a genuine, a godly grief that leads to repentance. That's what it is. 2 Corinthians 7, where Paul talks about that, a godly grief that produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, 2 Corinthians 7 .10.
So there is a sorrow that we have when we come to faith, a mourning over our sin, but it turns to joy, rejoicing to hear the gospel that God sent his son to die for our sins as an atoning sacrifice, and all who believe in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
So even in that moment of coming from our lost, fallen, sinful state into pursuing righteousness and holiness and being justified before God, there's a transition that happens where we're sorrowful over our sin, but our sorrow turns to joy, for we realize that through the death of the son of God, our sins have been forgiven.
Verse 21, Jesus gives this illustration. 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.
And so Jesus would give this great, painful sacrifice on our behalf, not simply the pain of crucifixion, which was definitely a very painful way to die. He was flogged before that. He was beaten before the Sanhedrin, had chunks of his beard pulled out.
He was crowned with a crown of thorns, and that crown was struck with a reed so that those thorns embedded in his head had to carry his own cross to the place where he was gonna be crucified, was so weak from all the torture that he had endured that he couldn't carry the cross any further.
It was Simon of Cyrene that carried it the rest of the way. They got to Golgotha. He's nailed through his hands and his feet. He's hoisted up in the air, and there he suffered for three hours. But though that was a very painful thing in his body, the most gruesome thing about that entire ordeal was not simply having nails piercing his hands and his feet and being raised up into the air naked and bleeding and put to shame in front of all of these people and asphyxiating even while he is there hanging on the cross.
The most horrible thing about that is that he suffered under the wrath of God, that the wrath of God was poured out upon his son, that the wrath of God was appeased by this sacrifice that was given for us.
That was the worst thing about what Jesus endured on the cross, that he drank down to the dregs the cup of God's wrath for us. That was the worst of sorrows that anyone could ever experience, and yet Christ took that for us so that we would not have to experience that when we die.
But by faith in Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven, and our sorrows turn to joy, and that lament, that pain, that suffering that he endured even becomes our joy. Hebrews 12, beginning in verse one, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, 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.
Christ's joy is our joy. His comfort is our comfort. What he accomplished with his death on the cross is our hope and our peace, that we are not under the judgment of God anymore, but we are recipients of his grace and under his love and his mercy, and when we die and go and be with him in glory forever, we are received as fellow heirs, sons and daughters and recipients of the kingdom of God.
And though we will anguish and we will be full of sorrow while we are in this world and going through this life, yet there is a joy that is set before us in Christ Jesus, and then on that day, all of this sorrow that we went through will be nothing to us anymore.
Paul even talks about that in the book of Romans. The sufferings that we endure do not even compare to the joy that awaits us in Christ Jesus in his kingdom forever. So in verse 22, you also 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 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.
While Jesus was with them, while he was on earth in his earthly ministry, the disciples had not prayed to the father in the name of Jesus, but now they needed to because Jesus was gonna go away from them.
So they needed to pray in Jesus name and whatever they ask God for, according to his will in the name of Christ, they will receive. Meaning they will see how God is working in the world, in their lives to answer their prayers to the praise of his glorious grace.
To those who ask of God, he gives. He will open your eyes to see and understand the will of God as revealed in his word and working in your life. What you ask of God, you will get. If you ask for his will to be done, he will show it to you because he has promised that he will.
And you will see how God is working in even the worst of circumstances for our good and for his glory. R .C. Sproul once said, for the Christian, every tragedy is ultimately a blessing or God is a liar.
God is using even the worst of our circumstances to accomplish something great. Do you believe Romans 8, 28, that God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose?
Do you believe that? Do you believe that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us? Do you believe that we share in the sufferings of Christ so that we will also share in his glory if we endure to the end?
These are the promises that we have been given in scripture. And for the Christian, every tragedy is ultimately a blessing or God is a liar. We know that God is not a liar. He is faithful to his promises, faithful and true, which he has accomplished through his son for our good.
Believe in him. Rejoice today that God loves you. Amen.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.