Kaleo San Diego Church

INTRODUCTION

Last week we looked at 9 truths about the Holy Spirit in this Gospel starting with chapter 1 and working through chapter 20. The eighth time a truth was stated about the Holy Spirit was in chapter 16, which we will continue through today.

This eighth occurrence of the Spirit’s work in this Gospel taught us that the Spirit convicts us of Sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Verse 13 and 14 taught us that the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and that it will lead each of God’s children into truth and will do what is perhaps the most important function of Spirit’s activities, He will glorify Jesus and declare Jesus to us!

This week we continue in verse 17 of chapter 16 in John’s Gospel to see what Christ we teach us this morning.

CONTEXT

Again, as I have repeated for you each study, this is the night before Christ is to be handed over to be given a mock trial and crucified for all to see and shame Him.

Jesus knew that all of this was taking place, yet He decided to love His friends and teach them these truths so that they will find their way 2000 years later to us.

No doubt, His disciples must have been feeling a tremendous amount of grief as Jesus tells them in verse 16 that in just a little while, they will not see Him, in other words He is telling them He was going away, but then they will see Him again.

The context is not teaching the disciples about Jesus second coming, though we know that is true, Jesus is thinking of His defeat of death as He rises from the dead and leaves the grave behind for Him, and for us.

STUDY

Verses 17-20a

17 Then some of His disciples said among themselves, "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 go to the Father'?"

18 They said therefore, "What is this that He says, 'A little while'? We do not know what He is saying."19 Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, "Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, 'A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me'? 20a "Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful,

Jesus knowing that He was going to die, also knew that the Greeks, Romans, and Jews all came together, though enemies in every other respect, on this issue they ban together and unite to kill Jesus.

One thing they could finally agree on was their hatred for Jesus. They wanted Him dead, and they celebrated His death.

Jesus knew His disciples would be gripped in sorrow and pain as they lost their Lord and Master to death.

This sense of sorrow for God’s children should be felt by each of us today. We should have a sense of profound grief, because we know that as we see Christ’s death, and we consider His torture and murder, we begin to ask questions that lead to an answer that most of us have a hard time readily admitting.

The first question we should ask ourselves is: Why did Christ die? Why did He come down from His throne, leave the loving relationship He had with His Father, leave His position of receiving praise and honor from the angels, to come to a world that He created, only to be hated and mocked, and ridiculed, and eventually murdered on a Roman cross? Why would He do that?

The answer is our sin.

Isaiah 53:3-10 tells us- 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked-But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

Many have a difficulty believing that God would do such a thing. So instead of God being the one who comes in the flesh, they tell us that Jesus was only a man and not God.

Yet Zechariah 12:10, where the LORD, all capitals, meaning the One, True, God, is speaking and says-10 "And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.

This is God speaking, and telling us that they have pierced Him.

He is the one that has taken the sin upon Himself. He is the one that Has come to us in humility and in meekness. He is the one that stood in our place and suffered the punishment that our sins deserved.

He is the great King that left His palace and went into the city to pursue a bride who was not seeking Him, a bride that didn’t desire Him, and bride, that didn’t deserve Him, a bride that was totally opposed to all that the He stood for and loved. She had lived her life disobeying His decrees.

Yet out of this Kings heart of love and grace, He pursued this woman and was determined to make her His bride.

The problem was that the bride could not marry royalty because her bloodline was tainted and polluted with generations of thieves, murderers, and liars. Her name was a disgrace to the kingdom. And the laws that she broke demanded her death.

But this King was determined to marry this woman and make her His glorious and beautiful bride, a queen that would be honored and revered. A bride that would be dressed in the finest of linen, and would dine with the King and dwell in His mansion forever.

This King could not, and would not transgress the Laws that He had written. This King could not make Himself unjust, and defile His kingdom.

So He chose, out of the fullness of His heart, and out of the love for His kingdom, to take off His crown, to take off His clothes, and to stand in her place. To take upon Himself, her filth, to be charged guilty for her crimes, and to suffer the punishment she deserved.

It was the just for the unjust, the righteous for the unrighteous, the King for the criminal.

Every time we sin, we should understand that our King came to die for the sins we commit. Every time we consider His cross, and His way, we should remember it was our sin that placed Him upon that cross. It was our sin that murdered Jesus.

Many of you have a hard time considering this. You think it gives you a low self-esteem and makes you feel bad about yourself.

That is the point. You should. Don’t try to ignore that feeling of grief and sorrow. It is well deserved.

As soon as you become discouraged and grieved by all of this, you are just starting to reach a place of honesty. Believe me, you are much worse than you think you are.

You are so depraved that you think you are good, and that only proves how depraved you are.

Total depravity is for optimists. We believe in more than total depravity at Kaleo. We understand how deep and dark our sinful wicked hearts before the light of God’s word.

We have no interest in making you feel better because you are sick, we want you to die! We want you to come to a place of utter helplessness and dependence upon God.

We want you to come to a place of humility and grief over your sin. Because we realize that what comes after is more glorious and more precious than any amount of self-esteem we can muster. We want God-esteem! Not self-esteem. And God-esteem comes from you dying to yourself, so that Christ can live in you.

Some of us never want to experience that grief and so we do things in our lives to hide from it. We either tell ourselves everything is really o.k. Or we are left to seek distractions from our despair.

Whether it is sex, or getting hammered, or work, or some hobby that consumes our time, we do everything we can to hide from our conscience. We want to take out the batteries of our smoke detector, which is our conscience, so that we don’t hear it going off every time we start to feel this truth.

Others never get out of that place of despair. You have become so comfortable in being sorrowful and grieved, it has become your tranquilizer.

You have become so good and feeling bad, that feeling good would seem bad to you.

We get stuck in the obsession of our sin. We sit around staring at our belly buttons moping about how bad we are.

All of it is pride. Pride is not how bad you think about yourself, or how good you think about yourself, it’s how much you think about yourself.

If all you do is think of how bad you are, and how sorrowful you should be, you will never experience the freedom that Christ offers.

You have forgotten that Christ has come to forgive you of your sin, to wrap you in His royal garments, to make you royalty in His mansion.

You forget that He has cancelled the debt that you owed Him, so that you are now no longer in slavery to try to repay a debt that you could never pay-off.

How many of you have any credit card debt? You know what I’m talking about don’t you?

You can pay the minimum balance for eternity and never hit the principle. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

Yet our King has cancelled our debt and forgave us of our sin, and has freed us from our past.

I don’t care what it is! I don’t care how disgusting and filthy your sin was. If you believe in the Kings royalty, in His righteousness, and you believe that He is the only one that can make you right by His death in your place, you are free!!!! And if the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.

The conviction and despair you feel should be a starting point, not the finish. It should lead you to Christ who will then wash you and send you off in His name, as a new creation.

Verse 20b

(You will weep and lament, you will be sorrowful) 20b but your sorrow will be turned into joy.

Our grief, and our sorrow when we consider Jesus resurrection, should be turned to Joy.

When Jesus rose from the dead He defeated death, and He defeated our enemies. Our sorrow should be replaced with joy when we consider what Christ has done in raising from death.

We should never worry again, or fear over death, because it has been defeated. We should never worry again over our bad record before God, because it has been wiped clean. We should never worry again over what Satan might do to us because he no longer owns us, we are now owned by another.

We are owned by our King.

Jesus uses a woman in labor as an example of how we should act because of His work.

Verse 21-22

21 "A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 "Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

You will begin in grief, convicted of your sin as a murder of Christ, and that will be turned into a joy that no one will ever take from you.

Now I am a father, so I understand this concept. Though I must confess my part in the birth was much more enjoyable than my wife’s.

Childbirth will make a Christian woman say things she might have never said! It looks painful. Something like pulling a 9 pound turkey out of your ear.

I assure you, after watching my wife give birth, I no longer consider myself tough.

My idea of tough is breaking down a cardboard box to put in our recycling bin. Not passing a bowling ball.

I remember when Grace was having contractions, I had been holding her hand for about 3 hours already and had lost all feeling in my fingers, or so I thought, when grace slowly brought my hand to her mouth and began to play Hannibal Lechter on my digits.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her how much it hurt. I guess I figured in comparison, I got off pretty easy.

But what happened after the biting incident was so beautiful. A child was born.

What was just tremendous pain, and tremendous suffering had become something that we rejoiced and celebrated.

Yet even in that description it doesn’t do justice to what Christ has done in giving us joy.

My son or my daughter may one day be taken from me, and I have no guarantees that they will live long and happy lives.

In contrast, Jesus says that the joy that He gives to us will never be taken away by anyone. No one can ever come and rob you of the joy that God has given us in Christ, no one.

Verses 23-24

23 "And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 "Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

Christ says that a day is coming that they will no longer need to ask Him the kind of questions they have been asking. Where are you going, why are you leaving, what are we going to do?

When Christ ascends to the Father, they will be given the answers to their questions, and they will be given the Spirit of truth to lead them into truth, and to lead them into a relationship with the Father, so they will know the Fathers will.

Jesus then tells them that whatever they ask for they will be given. The Father is going to give to the disciples and to us whatever we ask for.

If I were to stop with only have the verse, you could begin to understand why some ridiculous teachings about Jesus have surfaced. How we can name it and claim it, how we can blab it and grab it.

But we need to read the rest of the verse to understand what this promise to each of us means.

Jesus says that we will be given all of these things we ask the Father under one condition, that we ask in His name.

What does asking in His name mean? Does it mean to drop a quarter in the vending machine of heaven, pull a lever and get a blessing?

No, Jesus name is not a stick that smacks the piñata of heaven so blessings fall out.

Jesus is saying that what we ask the Father should be in His will. When He says “My name” it means according to who I am, and My will.

In praying according to Jesus will, we receive the requests of our prayers, and it gives us joy that makes us full.

How many want our joy to be full? If you didn’t raise your hand I’m praying for you!

Jonathan Edwards says that man most happy when God is most glorified.

To pray, and do God’s will is to live according to the purpose for which we were each created.

When you and pray for God’s will, when you and I live for God’s supreme glory, we find a rest, a peace, and a joy deep within the center of our heart because we are then living as we had been created to live.

This means that we should be diligently praying for God’s will, which was demonstrated to us in Christ. In doing so, we are promised full joy!

Verses 25-28

25 "These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. 26 "In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; 27 "for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God. 28 "I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father."

Jesus is speaking about His ascension. He is saying I’m going to die, and cause you grief, I am going to resurrect and give you joy, then I am going to return to the Father, having finished the work I came to complete, and because I’m going back to where I came from, and because I did exactly what I had come to do, the Father will love you because you loved me.

From grief to joy because of love. The cause of joy is love for Jesus.

If you don’t have this love that I am speaking about, if you only have grief, with no joy, it very well may be because you don’t love Jesus.

You may like Him, you may respect Him, you may even say good things about Him to others. But you don’t love Him.

The key in this text, is loving Jesus. This is why He says that He is the only way to the Father. He is the only way of salvation. He is the only way to truth. He is the only way to life here and in heaven.

What is a mark of someone who loves Jesus? We just read four weeks ago in chapter 14, verse 21.

John 14:21 21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."

As much as you may believe everything is ok without Christ, the word of God teaches us something totally different. You can not live with joy and with love, without Jesus. Not the kind of joy and love that is full and eternal. It only comes through Him.

Verses 29-31

29 His disciples said to Him, "See, now You are speaking plainly, and using no figure of speech! 30 "Now we are sure that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should question You. By this we believe that You came forth from God." 31 Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe?

The disciples get pretty excited about this teaching and tell Jesus that now they believe. Now they know Jesus came from God.

It’s interesting what happens when you believe in Christ’s words. You find yourself asking less questions and proclaiming His truth more and more. You move from skeptic to advocate.

I’m going away, your sorrow will be great, but when I rise from the dead and go back to the Father, you are going to have joy and love.

From grief over my death because of your sin to joy because I will rise and forgive you to love because I go to My Father.

This is our peace. For a Christian, this is our testimony.

For the non-Christian, all they are left with is grief, and sorrow with no hope, to eternal joy, and no true love.

Verses 32-33

32 "Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. 33 "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Jesus finishes this thought by warning them. He tells them that they are going to leave Him.

But in Him they will have peace. Even through the trial they are about to face, they will have a peace that transcends and passes logic, and human understanding.

This peace comes from dwelling in Christ. When all of life’s greatest storms come to threaten us. When everything around us seems to be falling apart and the more we try to hang on, the worse it gets, Jesus by His owns words calms the storm and says “peace, be still.”

He then promises that these storms will be coming. He says that as long as we live in this word, wrapped in this flesh, we will have tribulation. But we can have peace, we can have love, we can have joy. Why?

He has overcome the world!!!!

From grief to joy to love.

Let’s pray.

Communion and tithe.

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