Listening No.12 Complete & Utter Joy

Let's worship Him, our Lord Jesus, for we see Jesus enthroned on high, clothed in His righteousness. We worship Him. Glory and honour we give unto You.

We see You in Your holiness and bow before Your throne. Forty-two in the supplement. We see Jesus enthroned on high, clothed in His righteousness.

We worship Him. Glory and honour we give unto You. We see You in Your holiness and bow before Your throne.

We see You in Your holiness and bow before You. Jesus, the Name. Jesus, Name above all names.

Beautiful Saviour. Glorious Lord is with us. Blessed Redeemer.

Living Word. Glorious Lord is with us. Blessed Redeemer.

Let's retain an attitude of prayer, but do be seated. Loving God and Father, we come before Your presence to share Your Word with one another, as is to us delightful, far more so than sharing drinks in a public house, far more so than engaging in any other pursuit. To sing to one another and to remind one another in verses of Scripture and through ancient and modern hymns and songs of the greatness and the grandeur of Christ, that to us is fellowship at its best, that to us is the apex of all experience.

Hear us, beloved Lord, as individuals. We share the intercessory ministry of the church. Lord, hear us for our world.

Hear us for our nation. Hear us for our town. Hear us for this church.

Hear me for myself and the people of God's end. Amen. Great is Thy faithfulness.

Great is Thy faithfulness, dear. Oh, I have seen it, I have written, springtime and harvest. Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above.

Joy with all nature in her equal witness. To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. Great is Thy faithfulness.

Great is Thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Oh, sing of the peace that endureth. Pride of the oppressed, to cheer and to guide.

Strength for today, hope till morn, and peace for life. Great is Thy faithfulness. Great is Thy faithfulness.

Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. Great is Thy faithfulness.

Let's turn in the Word of God to John's Gospel in chapter 16. There we not only read the Word of God, but we hear God's Word for us right now. And that's very much a conviction of mine, that we are hearing God's Word to us at this point in time.

We make a lot of scripture here at the tab, there's no apology whatsoever, no man enters this pulpit, unless he is utterly convinced of the veracity, the truthfulness, and also the uniqueness of scripture. As for the latter, one aspect of that uniqueness is that it's contemporary. In other words, here is where you always find the voice of God speaking.

There are those who think, if only I'd lived in Abraham's day, if only I'd lived in the days of the apostles. My friends, in one sense we are in advance of Abraham and in advance of the apostles, inasmuch as they didn't have the Word of God inscripturated into a book, you and I do. And this is the reason why it's perhaps, well if not sinful, it certainly shows a degree of immaturity, to think in terms of men and women in yesteryear as being advantaged over ourselves.

That is not the case. We who have scripture are the most blessed of people. So let's read together from the words of scripture, John 16 verse 17 through to 24.

And if you have the NIV version of the Bible, you'd perhaps like the opportunity of reading it out with me. Some of his disciples said to one another, What does he mean by saying, in a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me, and because I am going to the Father? They kept asking, what does he mean by a little while? We don't understand what he is saying. Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, in a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me? I tell you the truth, that you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices.

You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you, now is your time of grief, but I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

In that day, you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name.

Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. Well, it's that last verse that gives the title to our meditation, our address this morning. Complete and utter joy.

We shall be hearing this evening from, amongst others, Dr. Doug and Jill Reitsma. They're with us this morning. They come from the Africa Inland Mission.

More particularly, they've been serving God in the Sudan. And many of you who've got any idea whatsoever about the political situation in the Sudan will know that that has been a cauldron of problem, collision between the forces of Islam and Christianity. Quite a number of people have been crucified.

I do mean that. A number of people have been killed as a result of the terrible racial, religious conflicts in that land. And you have seen many, many pictures on the television screens indicating the problems of youngsters and elderly people who do not have sufficient food.

Well, I ask you this question. How can you have complete and utter joy working in Juba and knowing this sort of problem? You'll get something of an answer to that question this morning and also by personal testimony this evening. How could Alan Adamson have utter and complete joy? And indeed he did, though he went through 25 operations following the savage wounds that he suffered in the so-called Battle of the Bulge during the last world war.

How can a person know joy when physically they're in difficulty? How can a lady in her late 80s know joy when her vision is terribly impaired? You say, why are you starting from this point in your address? We start with where we are and go to the word of God because what the word of God has to say speaks to where we are, if you see what I mean. Here is our beloved Lord and in front of him are the horrors of Gethsemane and Calvary. And yet the thought that he has uttermost in his mind is not what waits round the corner for him, but rather the well-being of his immediate friends and listeners as he's engaged in this remarkable of sermons.

Our Lord, you see, has been speaking as you've discovered as you've listened to Tim and myself expounding these passages over these past weeks. Our Lord has been speaking out the paschal discourse in which he compresses tremendous teaching that he's only touched on in his earlier discourses. And he packs into a relatively short space of time the concentrated doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

And he tells his disciples that there is such a relationship between him and the third person of the ever-blessed Trinity that when the Holy Spirit comes it is, if you like, a replacement for Jesus. What the Father is, the Son is. What the Son is, the Spirit is.

They are of the same essence and yet they have their individual ministries. Now here is our Lord, and he has on several occasions tried to prime the disciples that ere long and in the immediate future he is going to be taken from them. And yet, picking up on verse 18, they ask the question, what does he mean by a little while? We don't understand what he's saying.

Go back to the 17th verse and the puzzle becomes more easy for you to grasp in terms of the difficulties that the disciples were in. In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me. It almost seems like one of the clues of the time's crossword puzzle, isn't it? And you shake your head and you know there's something there, but you're blessed if you can see it at that point of reasoning.

And that's the dilemma in which the disciples were in at this moment. Let me ease some of you from a little bit of guilt that maybe you have. Some of you are new to the Christian faith.

Alan Adamson was one of our first attenders of what we then called the BBC Club, the Bible Beginners Club, which we had years ago here at the Tab. It was a precursor to our more sophisticated and perhaps better planned discipleship classes, but it served in effect the same function. And the reason for the discipleship classes and the reason for the BBC class was to help those who were just at the beginnings of the Christian faith to come to a knowledge of theology and doctrine.

You know, I don't think the people who listened to Peter on the day of Pentecost and were converted, had you done a theological test, would necessarily have got all the right answers to the questions that you might have felt you would pose. We grow in grace and we grow in knowledge. And the fact that you don't understand everything the first time you come to the tabernacle in no way indicates either poor quality in terms of the address that's been brought by the preacher or suggests your lack of mental ability.

We grow from the two times table to the three times, from the three times to the four times, from the four times to the five. Here are the disciples. They've been with our beloved Lord for quite some while and they don't fully comprehend, but they will.

Because our Lord who is a tutor also will send the Holy Spirit into the world who has the common task that the Lord shares of bringing truth into the minds of his disciples. Sometimes, you know, when you're at school or maybe when you're in a small pastoral group meeting in one of the homes of our members, you feel that you cannot ask a question because if you did, it would indicate to everyone else just how slow you are. And yet the fact of the matter is that that's probably the same question as everyone else is wanting to ask, but they're in the same predicament as you.

What fools we are that we sometimes will not say, this I don't understand. Will you explain it more clearly? Now the marvel of our beloved Lord is this. He not only reads our hearts and knows our circumstances, he reads our minds.

Here are the disciples and in a muffled way they're speaking to one another. Jesus saw, verse 19, that they wanted to ask him about this. So he springs the problem and shows the insight that he has into their puzzled minds.

Are you asking one another what I meant when I said in a little while you will see me no more? And then after a little while you will see me? The Lord goes on to tell the disciples that by little while he really literally does mean that. It's now just about two hours away from his arrest. He will be taken like a common criminal from Gethsemane.

He will be hoisted in front of Herod and Pilate and the rest of the mob. And with the exception of Peter and John, the disciples will not physically see the Lord again. And even as far as John and Peter are concerned, it will be temporally, it will be fleetingly, and they will show that they have utterly failed to comprehend some of the great teachings that our Lord has put in front of them.

I tell you the truth, says our Lord, you will weep and mourn. When I'm taken away from you, it will be a time of great distress. And that was the case for them.

It was not the case, however, look at the second half of verse 20. It was not the case of our Lord's adversaries. Here is a contrasting situation.

You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. And when Caiaphas and the religious leaders of Judaism had Jesus as a pawn in their hands, and when through the connivance of Pilate and Herod, he was hung on a cross, it looked as though it was the end of their problem. And they rejoiced.

The world rejoiced. The forces of evil rejoiced. The reason why Jesus has come into the world has now been completely snuffed out.

He cannot possibly achieve his purposes. The world will rejoice. And you will be sad.

And indeed they were. Peter so desperately sad. To the extent that he doesn't know what to do with himself.

John so full of doubt along with Thomas. The two unnamed disciples on the Emmaus Road, they give the insight to the psychology of the disciples at that time. We had hoped that this had been the man who would have redeemed Israel.

We had hoped, but we got it wrong. They're plunged into such sorrow, into such grief. And our Lord, with the insight that he has to playing full part in his critical faculties, he goes on to define the sort of anguish of the disciples in terms of a woman giving birth to a child.

You know about childbirth. You read of it in the third chapter of the book of Genesis. You read an account actually in the prophecy of Isaiah.

A woman in childbirth has great pain. The labor can vary depending on the woman and dependent on the birth. But there is great anguish.

Some infant's arrival into this world is as a result of the torment of the mother. And yet all that seems to be so unpleasant and unacceptable, suddenly, miraculously, almost inexplicably, fades. It doesn't matter anymore.

It did an hour ago. It did two hours ago. But now here's that little bundle of life in mother's arms.

This washed little baby clinging to her breasts. And there is something about a woman giving birth to a child and a child feeding from the woman that elates her to such a degree that all that has gone before sinks into, well if not oblivion. It's not worth comparing with the joy that there now is.

And our beloved Lord said to the disciples, well in one sense it will be like that. You will know great grief. You will know great sorrow.

But remember the story of the woman with child. When the child is born, then the joy returns. So verse 22, with you, now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice.

And no one will take away your joy. There is a sense in which our beloved Lord, when he was narrating this particular teaching, had I think in mind not just those two or three days, or those three days when he would be physically removed from his disciples. I think there is a sense in which you can read more out of it than just the immediate experience of the disciples.

Because in our world there is always hostility to the cause of Christ. To preach Jesus in the Sudan is to risk your life. To go to the northern part of Sudan, to go to Saudi Arabia and to tell the Muslims there about Jesus Christ might well mean your death.

And if you are, by God's grace, used to convert someone from Islam to Christianity, you bring them into such a dilemma that they in effect are ostracized from their family. And if you are a sensitive evangelist or missionary, you sometimes ask yourself, have I the right to cause such problems for these people? You see, the whole business of conversion and remaining faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ can encompass great pain for the individual and indeed for a society. So what I am suggesting here is this, that not only is our Lord speaking of the pain that the disciples will feel when he is three days removed from them, he's also spelling out that antagonism that there will be to the cause of Christ in the years that are to come before our beloved Lord returns.

You see, now you should be, if the little cogs are working at the back of your brain, you should be getting something towards an answer to the dilemma of the disciples. When I, Lord, use these puzzling words, in a little while I'm going away, yet in a little while I'm coming back. When did Jesus come back? And you say, well, the answer is obvious.

He came back on the day of his resurrection. In one sense, yes, that is so. But that's not the complete answer, is it? He came back in the power of his spirit on the day of Pentecost.

He comes in all the might and in all the splendor of the power of the spirit, enthusing and stimulating and granting the dynamic that the Christian church will need in order to preach and to proclaim the gospel. So, there is a sense in which our Lord comes back, obviously on his resurrection appearances. Our Lord returns on the day of Pentecost.

But then, there is also another wonderful thing that our Lord teaches his disciples here by implication and by extension in the rest of the New Testament. It speaks of the return of Jesus Christ in great power and glory. You see, Calvary and Pentecost and the second coming are all interlinked.

Our Lord comes when the grave can hold him no longer. And he reveals himself to a woman who has gone through great pain and anguish. Mary from Magdala, who then rushes to the disciples and there's great joy in her heart as she tells the disbelieving disciples of the return of the resurrection of Jesus.

And then, the convinced disciples with a greater number of men and women on the day of Pentecost, they too know of the coming of Jesus. I am away from you for a while, but I will return. And they have fellowship with Jesus from the day of Pentecost right through to the end of the church age.

You see, again it gives you more understanding of our Lord's teaching in not only this immediate passage but the passage that preceded it. When he says, it's to your advantage that I go away. Why? Well, you see, when our Lord was with his disciples, he's there corporeally.

That means he's there in bodily form. He cannot be in Galilee and in Jerusalem at the same time. But when he's removed from the disciples, when he comes back in the power of the Spirit, then the church in the Soviet Union and the church in China and the church in the United States and the church in Bolivia, we just heard from Anne Christian this last week.

That's why Bolivia is in my mind at this moment. They too can know the presence of our Lord. And this is why I started my remarks this morning by saying that we are not impoverished by not living in the days of the patriarchs or the prophets or the apostles.

We too should know, not just intellectually, not just because a man is preaching the word of God to us at a mental level, but in our hearts, in our emotions. We should know that Jesus is our Savior, our friend, alongside us, having come back in one sense through the infilling of his Spirit as we were converted, knew his fullness and his baptism. So with you, says our Lord, verse 22, now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice.

And our Lord continues in his teaching by saying that in that day there will be a different attitude, a different comprehension on your part in regard to me and Father. It won't be so much that you're putting your questions to me, but rather you will find that in the fullness of what my Father gives in terms of the descent of the Spirit, whatever you ask in my name, Father will grant. The questions that you have now been putting to me will no longer need to be answered.

You see, in the whole of this paschal discourse, questions have been put. Lord, show us the Father. Lord, what do you mean by you're going away and yet you'll still be with us? Three or four questions are illustrated here in these three or four chapters which indicate the inquiring minds of the disciples, but move into the acts of the apostles, move into the epistles, they're not asking questions anymore.

The only questions you find in the epistles are rhetorical questions, are the questions that a preacher will use in order that he can answer the questions. You see, our Lord has come back. This is what he's envisaging.

He's come back in the power of the Spirit and the things that he's already taught, the Spirit will take them and bring them to the minds of the disciples and enlarge their understanding. And they will know that when they approach the God of Israel, they will do so in a fashion that they've never done before. They will approach him as Father.

They will approach him in the name of the Son. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Yet they have been witness to the Son asking the Father time and time again.

They know of the intercourse that there is between Son and Father. They know at the crack of dawn the beloved Lord has been out in some private place bringing before Father the curriculum of the day, the burdens of the world. And our Lord is here saying to his disciples, I'm going away and I'm coming back.

You'll see me and then you'll understand the questions that you're asking. They no longer will need to be asked. You'll understand I'm back in my resurrected form.

But then I'll be back in my Spirit and you will experience something of the power of the Spirit that I know in your life. And the relationship with Father which I will enjoy will be the relationship that you enjoy so that Christian mature people in the years to come will always appreciate the theology of prayer that it is in the name of the Son directed to the Father and in the empowering of the Holy Spirit. And as Father never turned down the request of the Son, neither will Father turn down the request that you offer within the will of the Son because to Father you are an extension of the family.

Jesus is your friend. Jesus is your brother. Not are you to think of yourself in terms of just slaves.

A master does not tell his slaves what he's doing. But Jesus has disabused the disciples of this notion. You're no longer slaves.

You're no longer servants. You are my friends. I tell you you're part of the family circle.

Don't you see? And then implicit in all this is the fact that our Lord will come. If you can put history on a large scale from the beginning of time and if you have the ability to put it to the end of time, I speak almost as a fool, how can you comprehend these things? You would appreciate that 2,000 years which have elapsed since the advent of our Lord, since the return of our Lord to glory, and the moment that we're now living is very small in terms of the total time spectrum. And at the end, what is going to happen? Will this Jesus who was resurrected on the third day, this Lord Jesus who sends the power of his Spirit on the day of Pentecost, he shall return? And what will happen when he returns? Well, the world which the Apostle Paul describes almost in the conditions, in the terminology of a pregnant woman, Romans chapter 8, the world which groans for its redemption, the world which knows so much pain shall discover that its Lord and Creator has returned to take the sin and the muck and the pollution of mankind away, to remake the heavens and the earth.

You see this Lord Jesus who's speaking to just a handful of men has a mind-blowing concept, not only of the immediate future, what's around the corner, not just in terms of three days after that, his resurrection, not just in terms of a few weeks after that, the day of Pentecost, but he has this concept that at the end of time he will be back and he will restore the world to its pristine glory. Now, a man who knows this, don't you understand? He can cope. He can lie in a bloody condition in the trenches in the Second World War.

He can go through twenty-odd operations and you can't find any bitterness in him. And the reason being he knows that ultimately his destiny is safe and secure in Jesus Christ. This is why missionaries can go to the frontiers and cope with incredible pressure and difficulty and hang in, because they know that this Lord Jesus will be back in a while and until that time they can know his presence.

This is why my good brother Richard Wurmbrand can dance for joy in the rat-infested jail in the Romanian prison. This is why a little communist girl, at least a little Christian girl I heard of in communist China, can cause such exasperation to the guards when they say, what are you laughing at as she is being interrogated for her faith? And when she goes back to the cell she says to one of her Christian colleagues, why were they so annoyed? I wasn't laughing. And the colleague says, don't you know that there's always joy and a smile on your face? You see the point? Here is our Lord with this practical teaching, concentrating it, giving it to the disciples in small capsules and as they digest it, it works its way into their system.

They don't fully comprehend at that point as you don't fully benefit from medicine immediately, but when it sinks into the system after the day of the resurrection of Christ, after the day of Pentecost, then they understand, yes, they can know joy. During that small scale of time, relatively speaking, twixt the removal of Christ from this earth and the return of Jesus Christ in great power and glory. My time is through, but you know something? I think I'd quit preaching and maybe Tim would join me.

If we have not been able to convince you during these last few weeks that this teaching of our beloved Lord and listening to Jesus is the most important thing for you and for me to latch onto to take us through our earthly life and pilgrimage. He does speak today. He is our friend.

And he does disclose through the empowering of his spirit, his presence and causes however difficult your circumstances may be to know a joy in the middle of them. Did you mean it? I mean what you just sung. You see, the danger of my address is that you might go away feeling that relationship with Jesus is something that you can just tip your cap to and that somehow or other, because you're English, you're a Christian.

You're not. But Father, we thank you for the way that the Father and the Son and the Spirit cooperate in achieving the redemption of mankind. Help us to think of this as being the most important and the most precious thing in the world.

May we live our lives under its shadow. Lord, continue to help and to bless us. Help us to see you more clearly, love you more dearly, follow you more nearly all our lives.