You would turn with me in your Bibles, please, to John chapter 16. We’ll begin at verse 16. Jesus tells the disciples, ‘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’m going to the father.’
So they were saying, ‘What does he mean by a little while? We do not know what he’s talking about.’ And 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. And 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 it. 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’ve asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full. I’ve 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 will tell you plainly about the Father.
In that day, you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that—or sorry 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, and 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’ve 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you speak to us. You speak to us truth. You speak to us plainly and you speak to us in parables and figures of speech. We thank you that when we hear you speak, we do not need to rest entirely and only upon our understanding, but that you have given us your spirit to comfort us, to guide us, to bring us and lead us into understanding, to help us to interpret you, to understand you, and to believe you as we believe in you. Build us up in our hope of faith through your word and your strength and your spirit. Pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So again, after asserting his equality with God the Father as God the Son and after prophesying his imminent death, Jesus next said something that confused everyone present. A little while and you will see me no longer. And again, a little while and you will see me. This was confusing because a little while is, well, it really is very vague and indeterminate as a period of time.
And we would expect that Jesus saying, ‘You will see me no longer by this,’ he’s referring to his prophesied death. But then he says, ‘And again, a little while and you will see me,’ which seems to be more suggestive that he’s getting ready to go on a trip of unknown duration, but one that is expected to be short. And we remember earlier that when Jesus was speaking to the Jews, similarly they thought that he was suggesting he was going to leave Judea to go and teach the Jews off in the diaspora living among the Greeks and the Romans.
But now Jesus has just been making it so very plainly clear to them that he was about to be killed, and his disciples were finally understanding and accepting that fact. Then he says this, and it just feels completely contradictory. So it’s no wonder that the disciples were saying 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. Clearly they were confused, and if we are honest, we would have been confused too. They said, ‘What does he mean by a little while? We do not know what he is talking about.’
And so it was no shame for them to admit this, and we should feel no shame to admit it either. And we should never feel ashamed to admit when we do not understand something that we’ve read or heard from scripture because we each are standing in a long line of people stretching out before us—people who misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied scripture. This is why we each need to continue to study scripture and theology ourselves, both on our own and together in groups.
And this is also a benefit that we receive in and from our time gathered together here for Sunday worship. The only time that we should feel ashamed is if we choose to stop learning and growing in our understanding of God’s truth or when we stubbornly refuse to admit our proven errors or acknowledge even the possibility that we could be wrong. This kind of hubris is shameful because it implies that we believe that we already know and understand everything that there is to know or understand about scripture.
Such hubris is shameful because it suggests that you have a functional belief in your own omniscience. Such hubris is shameful because it really is a public expression of your own idolatry of self, of unrepentant and prideful self-idolatry. This is part of what Solomon was warning against when he wrote the proverb, ‘Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,’ because such a haughty spirit really does seem to describe such hubris.
But on the other hand, a person who admits their ignorance and their lack of understanding is acting more righteous than those of us who just assume something which ends up being wrong. Meanwhile, Jesus, he knew the confusion that was running through their minds. He understood that they were afraid to ask him and so admit their ignorance in front of everybody else.
So he went ahead and addressed the elephant of the room for them, saying, ‘Is this what you’re 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?”
Doing this, Jesus was reminding them, and the evangelist is reminding us, of how well Jesus actually knows people, how well he understands what and how we think. So then he goes on to begin addressing their unspoken questions, answering them. 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.
And his answer should have put to rest any doubt about Jesus’s expectation that he was going to die soon. His answer should have put to rest any doubt about the love and the concern that Jesus was feeling from his disciples. His answer should have put to rest any doubt about Jesus’s awareness of just how out of step he was from the rest of the world. How his doctrine and his teaching was contrary and opposed to that of the Jews, meaning the religious establishment.
And his answer should have put to rest any doubt about Jesus knowing that despite the glorious welcome he had received just a few days before on what we celebrate today for Palm Sunday, the world and the worldly still hated and feared him so very much. But Jesus’s answer was not meant to leave them at the point of despair. He was also offering them a confident hope to believe in, telling them that your sorrow will turn into joy.
And yet, also until this moment in the conversation, this moment in his teaching, Jesus has been focusing on helping them to understand his impending death. He has not said very much to help prepare them for what comes after that, his resurrection. But looking back, using the hindsight that we have on this side of the empty tomb, we may or can identify some more subtle hints about the resurrection that they would have missed.
Because Jesus had just said during this conversation, ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.’
But this was probably understood by them in relation to the generally expected resurrection of the just on the day of judgment, whenever that would be. And he said, ‘I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live. You also will live.’
And he said this immediately after telling them that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth would come to dwell with and within them after having just identified himself with this same Spirit. So likely they were understanding this in the spiritual sense only. And he said, ‘Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’
It’s a strange word, manifest, even for us to use today. But the Greek term translated here is a term that means to make something visible or cause something to appear. So likely this also would have been understood by them in a spiritual sense, perhaps even in a ghostly sense.
So it is important to remind ourselves and remember that we do have a different perspective and a different understanding of Jesus’s words than the disciples did have when they first heard them. And we read and hear these passages; we can understand them more fully knowing that they do refer to Jesus’s time between the resurrection and his ascension into heaven. Knowing that they refer to the living, resurrected Jesus in the flesh. They didn’t know that.
And so now Jesus, he’s starting to prepare his disciples for his resurrection. That’s why he told them, ‘You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy,’ telling them that even though their hearts are filled with sorrow now, that they would become even more sorrowful in a little while and that their sorrow would not last long since it would be turned into joy a little while after that.
But why or how would their sorrow be turned to joy? Jesus explained, ‘Because a little while and you will see me no longer, and again a little while and you will see me.’ And then to explain this, he used an odd-seeming analogy, comparing their state, the state of their feelings, to a woman giving birth.
Jesus explained, ‘When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come. But when she’s delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being is 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.’
See, this really does feel like an unusual example to use, especially with a group of men, even if it’s something that may be considered as a universal truism, something that’s believed true, because otherwise it would be unlikely that many women would choose to give birth to a second child.
And the term Jesus uses here to describe the woman’s experience of giving birth, it’s something that’s ordinarily interpreted spiritually or mentally as being sorrow, grief, sadness, or anxiety. But it can also be interpreted physically to mean pain, suffering, and distress. Similarly, the term he uses to describe what she forgets is something that’s ordinarily interpreted as being an affliction or a time of tribulation, describing some kind of trauma that could be either physical, spiritual, or mental.
And meanwhile, the term he uses for joy is the familiar term used throughout scripture to describe a Christian sense of inner happiness, our gladness and delight that comes from God. And so these terms, they do seem reasonable to describe the different senses we can understand about childbirth.
And Jesus, he apparently thought that they were comparable enough to describe the emotional and spiritual roller coaster that the disciples were about to experience. Because first Jesus compares the pain of their grief to a woman’s pain in giving birth. Then he contrasts the suffering of their respective tribulations against the joy, the love, and wonder that is felt by a mother at the first sight of her newborn child, using that image to describe how the disciples would feel once they saw Jesus alive again.
Once they knew that he was resurrected, triumphant over the grave—once they saw and understood the truth, the reality of Jesus’s life. Once they earnestly and completely knew and believed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Logos, whose Theos and Andrew.
So, using this analogy, Jesus was warning them that they would grieve his loss. They would grieve for his suffering. They would grieve for this terrible cost, discovering the price he would pay for us. But then when they saw him alive again, they would rejoice. Then they would know that his death was worth it, that it was enough.
Then they would rejoice as they began to understand the truth about what Jesus’s death had purchased for them and for us. Then they would rejoice because they would know that even when Jesus would leave them again, it would not be forever because they would know that they would never lose him again.
That when the disciples saw the miraculous wonder of Jesus’s resurrection, they would truly know and believe that everything Jesus had said is true. Then they would know and truly believe that they belong to Christ and he belongs to them. Then they would know true joy and experience the confident knowledge that Jesus has prepared a place for them and that he would return to come gather them and bring them to himself, bringing them to where he is, to remain with him forever.
They would see the risen Christ and their hearts would rejoice because they would know that no one can take their joy away from him, from them. And like the disciples before us, this is what we feel and what we begin to experience when the Holy Spirit gives us our faith, saving faith in Jesus Christ.
And then Jesus continued to explain that in that day, you will ask nothing of me. But they would not be asking because they no longer had any need or want, nor because they would believe that Jesus could not provide for them, but because they would not need to go through Jesus anymore.
They would ask nothing from him because his work and role as mediator for their salvation will have been completed. They will have been declared to be righteous and just with Jesus’s righteousness. And they would be being made righteous and just through the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification. The veil that separates them from God the Father will have been removed and the cavernous gulf of our sin and wickedness would have been bridged so that they could go into the Lord’s presence themselves to boldly come before his throne of grace and ask for his mercy.
They will have been adopted by God as his beloved children. And they will have been given such a high standing in his divine favor that then whatever they would ask of the Father in Jesus’s name, and so in accord with his divine will, would surely be given by the Father to them.
So Jesus again commanded them and us, ask and you will receive that your joy may be full. And Jesus continues on next, telling them, ‘I’ve 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 will tell you plainly about the Father.’
Similarly, Matthew records on another occasion how the disciples came and they said to Jesus, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ And he answered them, ‘To you have been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it’s not been given.’
So we know from the past and the other gospels that Jesus often spoke in a figurative way, a way that obscures the fullness of his meaning. But we also remember that whenever he did so, he would go on to explain his parables to the disciples afterwards so that they would understand his intended meaning rightly.
And like in the synoptics, then this moment here is just re-Jesus’s recorded acknowledgment of this same practice here in John’s gospel but different. It’s also Jesus’s promise that soon he would only speak to them plainly about the Father, implying that soon they would understand him more naturally through the help of the Holy Spirit.
And then Jesus explained more to them about what it will be like on that day, that day when they will truly pray in Jesus’s name. He told them, ‘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.’
He’s explaining that they will get to go and ask God themselves, telling them that he will not be needing to ask the Lord for them. They will not need Jesus to continue mediating for them before God. They will not need to go through Jesus to get to the Father anymore because Jesus will have already brought them into the Father’s presence.
But I must digress for a moment to make sure you don’t misunderstand me. I just said that Jesus’s role as our mediator will have been completed. And I need to clarify this because Jesus, he is the mediator of the new covenant, the covenant of grace, agreeing to it and receiving it from God the Father on our behalf.
And Jesus is our mediator in that he has redeemed us through his death on the cross, paying our penalty for sin with his righteous blood. And Jesus is our mediator in that he has assigned his righteousness to us for our justification before God, just as he’s claimed our sinfulness for himself so that he could suffer our just condemnation in our place.
But each of those acts are uniquely one and done because once Jesus did them, he never needs to repeat them. They have happened. Their effect is applied, and now we are able to move forward. So it is through Jesus’s past mediation that we have been brought into a loving and loved relationship with the Lord as his adopted children.
So now—and this is what I was meaning—we no longer need Jesus to mediate for us with the Father in our prayers because now we may go directly to the Father. We do not need to pray to Jesus to ask him to ask God the Father for us. Instead, we get to pray to our heavenly Father ourselves and ask him ourselves by telling him because Jesus said we could.
This wonderful privilege is another consequence of the joy that we have through our union in Christ. And so, yes, we still rightly pray to Jesus because he is God the Son, and we rightly pray to God the Holy Spirit, and we rightly pray to God the Father. But the point is that now we neither need nor have any mediator between us and God, Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
Christians do not need to pray to either dead saints or to Jesus’s mother, Mary. We do not ask them to pray and ask God for us because, even if they could hear us or understand us, they are surely busy worshiping before the Lord’s throne. And even if they are not, they have no greater weight of influence with the Almighty than we ourselves presently have.
Christians, those who believe in and trust in Jesus Christ alone—those of us who are grafted into the true vine of Christ—we enjoy this great privilege of being able to go directly to the Father in heaven without any interference, interruption, or obstacle between us. Thus and therefore, Christians, we may with confidence draw near to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
And after Jesus says all this, now his disciples said, ‘Now you’re 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 you came from God.’
But has Jesus really been speaking plainly and refraining from figurative speech over the course of this evening’s conversation? I mean, saying things like, ‘I am the true vine and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit.’ That certainly sounds figurative to me.
So I think that the disciples here, their newfound certainty and belief is not coming from a change in Jesus’s manner of speech, but rather from something that’s beginning to be changed within themselves. Things that are hidden from those on the outside were being revealed to them by the Spirit of Christ because they are on the inside.
I think that now they were really starting to understand what Jesus was saying about who he is and what he was preparing to do for them, even if they could not understand how he was going to do it. But then finally Jesus spoke to them in the plainest speech possible, telling them, ‘Behold, the hour is coming; indeed, it has come when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.’
And he’d already told them and he showed them that Judas was on his way right now to betray him. He had already told Peter that he was going to deny him three times. And now he tells them that they will all abandon him. That they will all flee from their association with him and that they will all leave him completely alone without a friend or companion, except for God the Father.
He told them, ‘Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.’ Because Jesus knew that the Father would not abandon. The Father would not leave him to go through everything that he would go through totally alone. Jesus was trusting that the Father would stand by and vindicate him in the final accounting.
Lastly, Jesus told them, ‘I’ve said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. Take heart. I have overcome the world.’ Now, this is the final element contributing to our joy. It is perhaps this aspect of our union in Christ that most distinguishes a Christian from the worldly wicked.
The peace we experience even in the midst of tribulation. Christians respond to the sufferings and troubles of the world and this present life in a way different from the worldly way, different from they who have no hope. Christians, we understand that peace is not the absence of conflict. It is not the absence of war. Peace, true peace is wholeness—something that is found only in our union to Christ.
Yet there is something that we often misunderstand about this peace. We have it, and we are only able to enjoy it because Jesus Christ has overcome the world. But we don’t really understand oftentimes what that means. I mean, yes, Jesus has overcome sin and death and the grave. Yes, Jesus has, and he shall overcome and triumph over Satan, the ruler of this world.
But Jesus has also overcome our own worldliness—our connections and ties that have kept us bound to this world. Jesus has overcome them and connected us to the world that is to come, his heavenly restored world, his eternal kingdom. And that fact is part of how he makes us whole and gives us his peace. We have peace because he has overcome us, conquered us, and taken us captive, claiming us for himself as his treasured possession.
Through the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ, we are made to become whole people. We become holy ourselves, becoming who we are created to be. We are brought into a personal life-giving relationship with God the Father through our relationship to Jesus. And we have confidence that sustains us through everything because we know what’s on the other side of whatever this is because we have read the end of the story.
We have God, the Holy Spirit, the comforter who dwells inside us to help us through any and every trial. We know and we believe that we may and must fully rely on God to get us through all of our troubles, both our big troubles and even our little ones. Having this peace of Christ means that even when the world is on fire and the house is collapsing around us, we are not fearful.
We are not worried or anxious because we are filled with this joy knowing that better things lie ahead of us. We know that the worst thing that the world can do to us is kill us. But after that, the only thing we will then know is the joy of being in the glorious presence of God.
So really the joy that we are understanding Jesus speaking about here is truly a great joy, a multi-layered joy. So as Christians, it is a joy for us knowing that our Savior and Redeemer lives. It is a joy for us knowing that because he lives, we also shall live. It is a joy for us knowing and understanding what the cost of his death and resurrection has purchased for us.
It is a joy for us knowing that we have been restored to fellowship with God, to a right relationship with the universal sovereign and the judge over all creation. It is a joy for us knowing that we have immediate access to the great provider to ask for whatever we need and the confidence to believe that he will give us everything that we truly do need.
It is a joy for us knowing that since God has chosen us for his own and that he has given us to Jesus Christ as his inheritance, that our salvation is secure, that no one can take it away from us because no one can take us away from Christ. Therefore, no one can take away this joy.
Jesus tells us, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Ask, and you will receive that your joy may be full.’
So, what should we be most wanting to ask for from the Father? More of Christ, more and stronger faith in Jesus, more Christlikeness. So ask for these things in faith, and you will surely receive them. Then your joy shall be made full through your union with Jesus, and no one will take your joy from you.
This joy is one of the benefits received because Jesus has sent us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us. This joy flows from our peace of conscience. This joy feeds our sense of God’s love. This joy helps us to grow in grace, the grace of God, in giving grace to others and even in giving grace to ourselves.
Ultimately, this joy comes from the knowledge of our adoption by God as his beloved children. The knowledge of our justification by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and his satisfaction for our sinfulness. The knowledge and experience of our being progressively sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
This joy is not just merely a matter of knowing these things but also about believing them to be true for ourselves and then through living accordingly. When we believe that we are a child of God, then we will work to live in ways that please him and makes him proud of us, just like we do our earthly parents.
We believe that Jesus has paid the penalty for our sin, that he’s not only wiped out our moral deficit but also increased our account significantly, infinitely, that we will not want to fall into such a debt ever again. So we work to avoid.
When we believe that we are being made holy, that we have been washed clean of our sin and are being purified, then we will want to avoid making ourselves dirty and sin-stained again. But then living in such a way, living obedient to God our Father and his revealed will, it will not and does not feel burdensome but will be done joyfully because we know and believe that such an excellent way has been given for our good benefit.
We will live as his obedient children. Because we’re living in such a joy that we will never want to leave it or lose it because we know that all other joys pale in comparison. For they are proven to be false pleasures in comparison to the truth of joy of the Lord.
So believe Christ, believe in Jesus Christ, trust his promises that are given for you. Rest in his peace and experience his joy, knowing that no one will ever take it away.