John 16:16-33
16 "A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father."
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'?
20 Most assuredly [Amen, amen], I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.
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.
23 "And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly [Amen, amen], 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.
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."
29His 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?
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."
You need not be reminded that the chapter divisions in your Bible are not inspired, although they are very helpful, and I would not want to do without them. So in Chapter 16, Jesus continues to comfort His disciples concerning His departure and death, which has caused them to be troubled.
His comforting words are that the Father’s house has many resting places and that there is a place in heaven made especially for you. And, perhaps best of all, Jesus is coming back and those who believe in Him will be with Him forever. Jesus is sending the Holy Spirit [Paraclete: one called alongside] by the Father when Jesus prays for another Comforter. [14:16]
The work of the Holy Spirit involves every aspect of conviction of sin.
While I do not agree that John 16:8 is about conviction unto salvation, since the context is the evil “world” system, the remarks below are still very helpful:
(J. C. Ryle, "The Holy Spirit")
The fruits and effects He produces
"When He comes, He will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment." (John 16:8)
Where the Holy Spirit is, there will always be deep conviction of sin--and true repentance for it. It is His special office to convince of sin.
He shows the exceeding holiness of God.
He teaches the exceeding corruption and infirmity of our nature.
He strips us of our blind self-righteousness.
He opens our eyes to our awful guilt, folly and danger.
He fills the heart with sorrow, contrition, and abhorrence for sin--as the abominable thing which God hates.
He who knows nothing of all this, and saunters carelessly through life, thoughtless about sin, and indifferent and unconcerned about his soul, is a dead man before God! He has not the Holy Spirit.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in a man's heart can only be known by the fruits and effects He produces. Mysterious and invisible to mortal eye as His operations are, they always lead to certain visible and tangible results.
Just as you know there is life in a tree by its sap, buds, leaves and fruits--just so you may know the Spirit to be in a man's heart by the influence He exercises over his thoughts, affections, opinions, habits, and life. I lay this down broadly and unhesitatingly. I see it clearly marked out in our Lord Jesus Christ's words, "Every tree is known by his own fruit." (Luke 6:44)
The work of the Holy Spirit, among the innumerable things that He does, is to convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. [16:8]
This conviction of the world is not for salvation but to present the evidence of the guilt of the unbelieving world.
But the primary work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Jesus Christ. [16:14]
Do not ever allow yourself to be caught up in some religious emotionalism that supposedly involves the Holy Spirit if whatever is being said or done does not glorify Jesus Christ and give Jesus Christ the preeminence.
If the Holy Spirit is emphasized over Christ it is simply misguided at best and demonic at the worst.
My object this morning is not to do a rigid verse-by-verse exposition of the text before us because the context has several overlapping themes. So what I will attempt to do is to deal with the various themes and bring in the supporting verses from the passage.
In this passage I see at least seven themes at work:
A little while;
Sorrow turned into joy;
Asking the Father in Jesus Name;
Figurative language;
The Sent One of God;
They will be scattered;
Peace while undergoing tribulation.
Jesus continues to comfort His disciples with the promise that He will return. Jesus says that He will return “in a little while.”
If you have had small children with you on a long trip they will ask, “When will we get there?” We will usually give them an indefinite answer, like, “in a little while.” Jesus knows what these troubled disciples are thinking and He wants them to have hope and so He says:
"A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father."
In these few verses the phrase “a little while” is used seven times.
The disciples do not understand what Jesus means by “a little while” because He is using figurative language. [16:25]
They are baffled by the words that Jesus carefully uses. The first word translated “see” can mean to see physically or to understand. But the second word translated “see” is almost always used is a spiritual sense.
So the disciples do not understand and Jesus knows that they do not understand because He is using “figurative language”. He has told them that when the Spirit of Truth has come He will guide them into all truth. But as of the moment, the Holy Spirit has not been sent to be “another comforter.”
This word translated, “figurative language” is not the same Greek word that is translated “parable”. Jesus spoke in parables so that His own sheep would understand the spiritual meaning of what He said and the unbelieving world would only understand Him on a different level and entirely miss the spiritual meaning. This is clear from what Jesus taught:
Matthew 13:10-15
10 And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?" 11 He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.
12 For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.
13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
14 And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:
'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should*heal them.'*
In our confused modern “evangelism” God is often presented as “trying” to save everyone but they say that He has subordinated and limited His own ability to man’s so-called “free-will.” There is nothing that is more clearly taught in the Bible than that man is helpless and “dead in trespasses and sins” unless and until God takes the initiative to quicken his sin-loving soul and bring the sinner to life in the new birth.
If what I just said offends you and conflicts with your idea of how God saves sinners then I suggest that you keep reading the Matthew 13 passage until it overcomes your preconceived notion of who is in charge of anyone’s salvation.
But here in this passage Jesus is not speaking in parables. The Greek word “figurative” means obscure and enigmatic language that even the disciples would not grasp.
So we have the Lord deliberately using obscure language and yet His words are meant to comfort the eleven disciples.
Jesus had told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would come and guide them into all truth. So they do not now understand but in “a little while” they would understand what He means. This is “figurative” language.
Neither would we know what Jesus means by “a little while” unless we had the record of the events that occurred in the days and years that followed the utterance of these obscure words as well as the promise of a future return of Jesus Christ. And we also know that even with the record of history and the promises of the Bible that no one will understand unless the Holy Spirit gives them the correct understanding.
Not only would they understand His words, but “in a little while” their sorrow will be turned into joy.
This does not mean that they would simply “get over” their sadness but that the very thing that caused their grief and anxiety will be the cause of their joy. Think of that. The death of Jesus will be the source of their joy!
So if you can, imagine yourself standing with these disciples before Jesus went to the cross to die for sinners.
In the Gospel of John only, Jesus employs the “double amen.”
When Jesus says “Amen, amen” [Truly, truly; Verily, verily; Most assuredly] it means that Jesus is saying that He is the “Amen”! Jesus is going to explain something that is extremely important. “Amen, amen”, means, “this is God speaking!”
We need a mother to explain the illustration that Jesus gives of how their sorrow will be turned into joy. Jesus says that childbirth is an apt illustration of how the source of sorrow can become the source of joy.
We find the curse of pain and sorrow that accompanies childbirth in:
Genesis 3:16
16To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you."
Mr. Charles Alexander has taught me to be attentive to the OT prophets and to discern where “Jesus walks among the prophets.” And here Jesus is calling out from Isaiah 26, which in context, is about salvation, where He uses the prophets words:
Isaiah 26:16-17
16 LORD, in trouble they have visited You, They poured out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them.
17 As a woman with child Is in pain and cries out in her pangs, When she draws near the time of her delivery, So have we been in Your sight, O LORD.
But for myself, speaking as a man, without the faintest notion of what childbirth feels like, I will say that Jesus does and that you mothers will understand these words of comfort better than any man possibly could.
Someone once said that a root canal performed without anesthesia is pretty close to childbirth.
Verse 21 says that the woman no longer remembers the anguish and sorrow because “a man” has been born into the world.
Here is where the study of Colossians on Wednesday nights will help you. Colossians 1:18 says that Jesus is the “firstborn” from the dead. Jesus overcame death and is the first and only man to come forth from the dead in His own power! Just as Jesus is the “firstborn” or before creation, He is the “firstborn” from the grave.
But do not miss the point that there is to be an extreme swing of emotions from intense sorrow to joy that can never be taken away from you.
And so “in a little while” sorrow will be turned into joy. Sorrow over His death will turn to joy over His death.
“In a little while” has at least three intervals:
Jesus’ resurrection;
Pentecost;
Jesus Second Coming.
Jesus’ resurrection is the first interval of, “in a little while”.
One of my favorite passages is in Luke 24. I love it on several levels.
Of course it affirms the promise that Jesus made that He had the power to lay down His life and the power to take it again. [John 10:18]
It proves the continuity of the OT with the NT. The Gospel is not a NT innovation or God’s “Plan B” as taught by many preachers today. The Gospel is based on the “Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” concerning Jesus Christ.
And the Luke 24 passage illustrates what Jesus says that “sorrow will be turned into joy.”
The two on the road to Emmaus were sorrowful at the death of Jesus but after He opened the Scriptures to them they said, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us….”
Pentecost is the second interval of, “in a little while”.
“Pentecost” means “fiftieth” and is an OT feast of the harvest of grain.
Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, the true “Pentecost” was fully come. The fulfillment of the OT type of Pentecost is “fully come” in Acts 2.
The Holy Spirit uses Peter and the others to speak in languages that they had not learned and people from all over the known world heard the gospel in their own tongue. This was not some “gibberish” that passes for “speaking in tongues” but something that the hearers understood! The sorrow of the wickedness of men is turned into joy.
Jesus said in John 4:35 that the fields are “already white unto harvest.”
In John 4, Jesus means the good news of the Gospel is already having its harvest of souls. At Pentecost, “in a little while”, there will be a great ingathering of souls. The words of the prophet Joel are fulfilled and the Holy Spirit is poured out and the evangelists spoke in languages they had not learned and the people from all of the surrounding nations heard the Gospel in their own native tongue.
Those two meanings of “in a little while”, the resurrection and Pentecost, have occurred and “sorrow has been turned into joy.”
The believer in Jesus Christ has the sure hope that this sinful world has yet to see the final fulfillment of “in a little while”.
Jesus Second Coming is the third interval of, “in a little while”.
We live in a finite time as finite creatures and now over 2000 years may not seem like “in a little while”, but when compared to all eternity there is no valid comparison.
In Romans 8:18-30, Paul writes about the groaning of the entire creation as it waits for the revealing of the children of God at the end of the age. The children of God groan under tribulations as they wait for the redemption of their mortal bodies. Even the Holy Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.
So “in a little while” brothers and sisters, God will make all things right and Jesus Christ will be acknowledged as Lord by everyone.
And one glad day those who are “in Christ” will at last see how God can turn “sorrow into joy” and how “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” [Romans 8:28]
In vs. 23-24 Jesus is still using “figurative” language and says that the disciples have asked nothing in “My name.”
The disciples had been taught the manner of prayer. They were taught to magnify the name of God and to ask for their daily sustenance and to forgive one another and to beg not to be led into temptation. [Matthew 6:5-15]
But until they realized that Jesus is the Sent One of God, promised in the OT Scriptures, who would come as a suffering Servant and not as an earthly King, they could not ask the Father “in My Name.
To pray in the name of Jesus does not mean simply tagging “in Jesus’ name” on the end of a prayer. To pray in the name of Jesus means to have the Holy Spirit enlightenment that Jesus is very God. To pray in the name of Jesus means that you know that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God…”
Colossians 1:15-18
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
As Brother Walter has so ably pointed out in the study on Colossians 1:15, Jesus is not a reflection of God the Father because God is Spirit. But Jesus is the “God we can see.”
Jesus is fully God and until a person is given that revelation by the Holy Spirit they will not be able to truly “in Jesus’ name.”
The only prayers that God will answer are “in Jesus’ name.” A person can count their beads and spin their prayer wheels and chant endless vain repetitions and God will only be offended because they have not recognized that the Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hands and they do not pray “in Jesus’ name.”.
This chapter closes with another prophecy by Jesus. The disciples will become afraid for their safety and in their anxiety and disappointment they will be scattered. Only John the apostle is at the cross.
But Jesus is not alone because the Father is with Him [32]. In the face of nearly all of the commentaries, I became convinced by Mr. Charles D. Alexander, that the unity of the Godhead demands that even when Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me,” that Jesus was declaring that He was the Messiah of Psalm 22 and not declaring that He was actually forsaken by the Father.
I refer you to www.allbygrace.com for Mr. Alexander’s article on the so-called “Cry of Dereliction” [022] and to his answer to the criticism of that article [023].
To briefly summarize:
A little while at Jesus’ resurrection!
YES!
A little while at Pentecost!YES!
A little while at the “end of the age” when Jesus returns for us! YES!
And until then:
We have the invaluable and indispensable work of the Holy Spirit Who glorifies Christ.
We have the promise that we may ask the Father in Jesus’ name. And most important is the knowledge that we do not ask an unwilling Father, for the Father loves you, because you love His only begotten Son, and believe that Jesus was sent from God.
We are told by the One who loves us that faith must be tried. You will have tribulation but you know that Jesus has overcome the evil world system of Satan.
And finally, there is peace only in Jesus.
As Brother Gables preached last week from Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus told the woman to, “go into peace,” Jesus has spoken these words to His disciples that they may have peace in the world. They will have tribulation and you and I will have tribulation. But because we know Jesus correctly, or better stated, because He knows us as His sheep, we will understand “in a little while,” and your “sorrow will be turned into joy,” and you will have peace even as you have tribulation.
My instruction and encouragement to you this day, if you do not have the peace that Jesus promises, is that you may be looking in the wrong places. If you look inward for some subjective “feeling” you will always be disappointed or misled.
Peace will come from a sure understanding that Jesus is everything that He claimed to be. Jesus does not offer what the “health and wealth” and the “prosperity gospel” false teachers offer.
Jesus says that you will indeed have tribulation but that He has overcome the world and you will have peace.
Is that not enough for you? If that is not enough to satisfy you then you will never have the peace of God.
We preach the Gospel and we call on sinners to trust Jesus Christ. We do not know nor do we need to know how the Holy Spirit uses the word of the Gospel to convict of sin and brings sinners to repentance and commitment to Jesus Christ. But this I do know, that you are called on to confess Jesus Christ in a public manner and to follow Him in believer’s baptism.
The method that this local body of Christ believes to be closest to the order of the Bible is that a person should meet with the elders of the church. This meeting is not an infallible way to determine the genuineness of a person’s confession but it is surely better than what is done today in most Baptist churches in America.
The message is the invitation. The invitation is to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Savior of sinners.
Amen
