Upper Room No.3 Turning sorrow into joy

In a little while you will see me no more. And then after a little while you will see 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'm going to the Father.

They kept asking, what does he mean by a little while? We don't understand what he's 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.

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 her 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.

Father, we don't believe that you're silent. Many of us here have proved the contrary to be the case. Generally speaking, our God is always generally speaking.

But very often we're not responsive to what you're trying to say. And some here, Father, it presses in on my spirit, have not listened to you for a long, long time and don't even really know what it is to believe that God can reveal his purpose and his interest in their lives. Now we're just praying that those doubts may dissipate and that during these next few moments, such a holiness may fill this place, a sense of God, that from your inspired, inerrant word, we may know the application of truth to our hearts that compels us to go out differently from the way that we came into this church.

For Jesus' sake, amen. Friends who are here for the first time, maybe on holiday, we have as our practice working our way through passages of Scripture and it so happens that I'm in the middle of our Lord's Paschal discourse and address that he gave to his disciples just before he was somewhat brutally taken from them. And perhaps in one sense it's the most significant thing that he had to say.

He was a dying man. Not that anyone had been successful in bringing about his death as though he himself was caught napping. He was fully aware that he was born to die and he just had these last few hours with his disciples.

Do you remember the last hour with your mother? Some of you, the last hour with your dad? The last hour with your loved ones? Of all the years that you knew them before, what they said then seemed to have a significance all on its own. Well, it seems to me that this is the case in these chapters, the 15th and 16th and going on to the 17th of John's Gospel. Here is our Lord with just moments to spend with the disciples and they're hanging on to what he has to say though not always understanding what he's about because they are at least getting more and more to the conclusion that this is finale, that the time will come when he will no longer be around as they have known him before.

If you appreciated, those of you who are well versed in the contents of John's Gospel, how in this particular account of the life of the Lord, he's always changing things, isn't he? I mean, you start off in the first chapter and you find him in the wedding of Cana of Galilee spilling over into the next chapter. You discover him engaged in another aspect of ministry and it's a question of transforming circumstances or things. Water transformed into wine.

Later on in the 8th chapter, there's a woman who's hopeless. She's taken in the act of adultery. Her accusers are with her and he sends the latter on their way and he transforms her circumstances from one of hopelessness and disgust to one of hopefulness and a sense of dignity restored.

He's always changing things is our Lord Jesus and here is his disciples and they need to be changed in their attitude for they're melancholy, they're sad, they're sorrowful and unless this is a very unusual congregation of people there are some in our ranks today who are in a similar condition, somewhat distressed, not fully understanding what's happening and wondering what's lurking just around the corner. Now, may it be within God's grace that as we look into these verses, he will speak to you for that's the purpose of our gathering around the word of God. Our Lord wants to change.

Change sorrow into joy. Now, he's known as the man of sorrows, isn't he? I mean, that's a verse in the Old Testament that predicts the character of our Lord Jesus. He's a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Man of sorrows truly but not man of sorrows only. You can emphasize and distort the former and thus fail to appreciate the latter and get an imbalance in your understanding of our Lord. He's going to speak about joy and his concern is that the disciples might have their joy complete, verse 23, and not have their joy taken away again from them.

He's a man who brings joy to the world as well as a man who endures sorrow. Someone has said that joy, and I've quoted this before, is the flag that flies from the citadel of the soul when the king is in residence. If you were in London yesterday and assuming the queen was in Buckingham Palace, you didn't tell me otherwise, then her standard, that was a joke, I don't speak to the queen normally, her standard would have been flying from one of the towers of the palace.

She is in residence where she is. There is a standard. Where God is present amongst His children, there is joy.

It's one of the abiding characteristics of our Lord Jesus. Now these disciples are anything but joyful, so He's got work to do in their experience. And I want to break open these verses from the 16th, 17th, through to the 22nd in this fashion.

Let me show you where we're going so that you'll have some idea as to how much longer you've got to survive here at the tabernacle as I go through my address. First of all, I want to talk to you about the confusion they knew. Verse 17, some of His disciples said to one another, what does He mean? What's He saying? We don't understand Him.

The confusion that they knew. And then our Lord Jesus from the 19th verse interjects with the light that He threw. Are you asking one another what I mean? Well, this is what I mean.

The confusion they knew. The light that He threw. And then verse 21, He goes into a maternity ward.

An illustration He drew as He speaks about a woman's experience in giving birth to a child. And then finally, just to close down, some lessons for you. The confusion they knew.

The light that He threw. The illustration He drew. And some conclusions, some lessons for you.

Let's look at the idea of confusion. These disciples together with our Lord Jesus, He's been speaking to them about going away. Verse 16, in a little while you will see me no more.

But, they can grasp that, but it's the rider that follows that seems to cancel out what He's just said. And then after a little while, you will see me. Not always easy to understand God, is it? Not always easy to understand the Bible.

That's one of the reasons why we come together for Bible teaching. And this morning, there are those who need to submit to the Word of God as it is explained and applied to their circumstances. Why were the disciples so confused? And the reason is this, they were anxious.

There is nothing that is more designed to dull your spiritual perception than an undue anxiety. They were anxious. They didn't understand what He meant.

They hadn't got into perspective, this business about Him going to the Father and His being away from them being an advantage because in a very real sense He would come again into their experience in a way that they'd never known. Breaking it open a little more, there was a contrast between what they expected and what He projected. Now don't you find that in your life? You see, you come to the Lord in prayer and that's good.

But very often you've worked out the way He's going to move before you've actually asked Him. What you expect and what He projects can be completely diverse. What they expected.

Well, you see, earlier on in the 12th chapter, the 19th verse, is the expression of this opinion that when Messiah comes, He will endure forever. They believed that He was Messiah. And yet the popular opinion was not being accepted by Him.

He was flying in the face. I am going away. Then how can He be the Messiah if the Pharisees teach that when Messiah comes He will abide forever, yet He is going away? They didn't expect that, you see.

And now their nightmare is coming true and they're beginning to appreciate, well, this is it. He is going. That they can understand.

But you see, their expectations and His projections are in conflict. He's going away and yet He will come back again. And this is the great difficulty.

Their dull and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. Do you remember that comment in Luke's Gospel? Dealing with the experience of the two on the Emmaus road. You see, it's very difficult sometimes for you and for me, isn't it? Just to fully comprehend the Word of God and to accept it at its face value.

Let not your heart be troubled. Now that's what He says. And yet you've got a bore of a reason as to why not to agree with Him saying that your heart shouldn't be troubled because of all that has been happening in your life.

And yet He comes to deal with you, this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, this man of joy, in such a way that He wants your sorrows to be neutralized. He wants to treat the anxiety complex. What they expected was that Jesus would stay around.

What He projected was that He would go. And as a result of those tensions, there was great confusion and difficulty. The confusion they knew.

But then, the light that He threw. Jesus saw that they wanted to ask Him about this. You see, they weren't listening to Him as you're listening to me now.

He gave them some teaching, then they'd break up, and they digested. They talked about what He was saying. That was more of the way of the Orient and the East.

Not just listening to a monologue. This type of preaching, in one sense, is more Grecian than Hebrew. I mean by this that the Greek orator would come along and he'd dress his congregation or his audience at the amphitheater or wherever, at the Lyceum.

But not the Hebrews. The teacher would teach, and then he'd break, and they'd talk together. And here is one group of disciples, and they're chewing over what they've just received from the Lord.

They can't digest it. And they haven't got the courage to ask Him questions and to say what it is that is causing them confusion. Because on other occasions, they have felt that, well, when they've been confused, it was really their failure to grasp what He had clearly said.

And nobody in class wants to put his hand up and say, please, sir, will you explain that again? When he's already explained it, and there are the majority of the class who've actually gotten onto the lesson. Who wants to look a fool? In one sense, it's good to have the discipleship type of approach to teaching as we have here in the discipleship classes that we employ where someone can break in, in a group of 12, and say, hey, Ted, I didn't understand that. Will you stop and go through it again? You'd have to be very, very brave to stand in a congregation of 500 and say, excuse me, I didn't quite grasp what you meant.

Would you help me? Now, I'm not giving you that as an invitation at the moment. I'm just using it as an illustration. But the thing about the Lord Jesus is that He knew they were having difficulty in grasping what He had been clearly teaching them.

Those of you who are married, men, haven't you discovered that sometimes your wife knows uncannily more about you than you wanted to know? And after you've been married as long as we have, you don't always need words to read what one another are saying. Just have a look in the eyes or sense the intonation within the voice. Now, our Lord Jesus, in an absolute sense, has full perception as to the way that the disciples are reacting to His teaching.

And so He comes to throw light. The confusion they knew is followed by the light that He threw. Look at verse 19, the heart of it.

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. You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve but your grief will turn to joy.

He speaks about the tears that would flow and then about the joy that would grow. The tears that would flow. Round the corner, have you remembered because this is cast in a historic narrative, the disciples are with our Lord, not just listening to what He has to say but they're moving in a journey.

It's just as though if I were taking you a walk this afternoon and speaking to you as we went along the downs or on the promenade, that was the context of this address. Our Lord is walking along with the disciples. And as He moves more to His destination which is the garden of Gethsemane, remember it's night, the only light is from the full moon that there would be at Passover time.

He is predicting that within hours, maybe just two hours, He will be removed from them. Gethsemane is down there, right in the heart of the Kidron Valley and down there there will be the Romans and the Jewish forces. Down there, He will be brutally treated.

Down there, He will be led away like some common criminal. Down there, the disciples will flee like frightened rabbits. Down there, there will be the parting of the waves.

Jesus that way, the disciples that way. In a little while, I will be taken from you and your tears, they'll flow. And they did, you know.

They were so emotionally moved when Jesus was taken away from them. If there was time, we check through Luke's Gospel, the 24th. There there are the 24th chapter.

There are the two men on the Emmaus Road. Unknown disciples of our Lord Jesus and they're speaking. Jesus has been taken from them.

The crucifixion has happened. They're speaking about their reactions. We had hoped that this would have been the man who would have restored Israel.

Past tense all the way through. Would have. We had.

The sadness, it eclipses them. It darkens their hope. You see, they've got this undue anxiety which always beclouds spiritual perception.

There were tears. Tears that came into the hearts of those disciples. Tears in the eyes of Mary.

The broken hearted Mary from Magdala for whom the Lord Jesus had done so much. A little while, I will no longer be with you and then you will cry. That's what Jesus said.

The tears will flow. But, he goes on to put in another rider. Verse 20, I tell you the truth verily verily as the authorized version puts it.

You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve but your grief will be turned to joy. Now wasn't that the case? In a spectacular fashion.

Mary of Magdala when she's in the resurrection garden and she perceives that the gardener is not just the gardener but is our Lord Jesus Christ. There's joy in her heart. Mary, he says.

And she responds, Rabboni. She goes back to the disciples and she tells them what's happened. Read it again in the end of Luke's gospel or Matthew's gospel.

And there you will come across the expression that the hearts of the disciples were filled with joy. When our Lord ascends to the Father read again the tale part of the story in Matthew's gospel writing at the end the disciples are filled with joy as they return to Jerusalem. I quoted Matthew actually there.

It's Luke. Now you see the point. The confusion of the disciples is addressed by the light that Jesus gives out.

He's always giving light. That's his function, his prerogative. See I really do mean this.

Some of you are not following the context because you don't know the context. Well that's fair enough. You can check it through later on if you're not used to reading the gospel.

But at least take it from the preacher that the ministry of the Lord Jesus is to shed light in circumstances which are gloomy and perplexing. I don't know what broke in on the shore of your life this week. Maybe some tidal wave that crashed down and you wonder what's happened to me? Well the confusion of the disciples is typical of the confusion that you knew or you know.

And here is our Lord and he wants to bring light. I am the light of the world. The problem is that the majority of people are not disposed to accept the illumination that he would bring.

Men love darkness rather than light. No we don't want you to speak into our life. Not when everything is going well.

But for some of you things are not going so well. So here is the point at which the Lord Jesus wants to break in and to address you as he addressed the disciples. He confirmed the tears that would flow.

But he also said that out of those tears joy would grow. And he took them in the 21st verse. He takes them to an illustration.

An illustration of this woman in labor. Now they tell me that to give birth to a child is a very painful experience. And having been so many, many times into Southland's maternity ward I can fully understand that that is in no sense an exaggeration.

The ground floor you've got the mothers to be. I think I've got the floors right. And on the floor one above you've got the mothers who are.

There's such a difference when you visit them. I have great problems sometimes in getting in because sometimes the nurses think that I'm I'm not actually a clergyman. I don't wear a clerical collar and they think I'm sort of some other enthusiastic father trying to get a few minutes on the side with my wife when it's not permitted for them to get in.

But the clergy so-called can. Well a woman in labor. A mother to be.

There's great pain. That's what our Lord Jesus says doesn't he? In that 21st verse a woman giving pain 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.

Isn't it interesting ladies how God's commentary on the cross is that of a maternity unit and a pregnant woman. There was pain at Calvary. Not so? Pain in the hearts of the disciples for reasons that we've just gone into.

But pain literally so in the experience of our Lord Jesus. Can you think of anything more terrible than ebbing out your life on a cross knowing all the excruciating pain of one muscle being dislodged from another muscle being ripped apart from the bones getting out of skew. The excruciating pain.

And yet when the pain has been gone through when Calvary is passed and the resurrection comes our Lord Jesus indicates that it was all worthwhile because of the salvation that had been wrought as a result of what he went through. Have you noticed this? And pardon me if this sounds critical on other denominations. It's not meant that way.

But have you noticed that Scripture never looks at Calvary retrospectively in terms of something that's funereal and mournful? You say, what do you mean? Well, it's the case with some churches, is it not? Come Easter Friday. The whole church is different. I mean the furnishings of the church.

There are no flowers. The altar is in mourning. The church is in great darkness.

And it's almost a celebration of, if that's the right word, it's the dirge of the funeral. And you go through the long service. There's not a flower in the church.

No, I understand the thinking behind it. But I think it has more to do with ecclesiastical superstition than what it has to do with biblical exegesis. You see, when the New Testament writers look back on the cross, they never look back at it in a mournful fashion.

But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world. There's something glorious about Calvary, you see. And we don't enact Calvary again, not at the communion, nor on a good Friday.

Before now, I've had to argue somewhat passionately for flowers in the tabernacle on a good Friday. The reason being, we do not, in any sense, reenact the death of our Lord Jesus when Calvary is reflected upon by the New Testament writers in the epistles, in the historical narratives after the gospel, it's reflected upon with a sense of great joy because of what had happened, you see, at the cross of Calvary. Certain benefits of eternal value have flowed from the death of our Lord Jesus.

And so, he uses the illustration in his own commentary on what is just round the corner. He uses the illustration of this pregnant woman. A woman giving birth to a child.

She's in great pain. But when that little baby has been born, the pain dissipates. It's hardly still lurking in her memory.

Why? Because the child is there. She will always recall that the child was born as any other child is born. But the pain, the anguish, that will be a fading thing in her mind.

Now, that is the case as far as these disciples are concerned. As far as the Lord is concerned. For a little while, yes, there will be grief, there will be mourning, there will be tears.

But in a little while, there will be great joy. When you realize what the pain of this separation was all about. What the pain of the anguish of Calvary has brought into the world.

When you appreciate this, then there will be great opportunity for rejoicing. Your tears are just for the evening. Your joy will last eternally in the morning.

Says the great Charles Spurgeon, Let us not mourn for Christ's agony. It is all over now. And He is none the worse for having endured it.

That's powerful. He is none the worse for having endured it. Why? Because in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ certain blessed consequences have elapsed, have developed, which will have eternal value.

Jesus died for our sins. That's great. Great sorrow in one sense that He died.

But the greatest benefit is this, that He died for our sins and the benefit of that death lives on with us. So the Apostle Paul says, He loved me and He gave Himself for me. Out of the pain came joy.

Out of the anguish came hope. Our Lord descended into death. But His descent was so that He might ascend into resurrection life.

Our Lord took upon Himself the sufferings of the world so that people like the disciples would no longer have to suffer. You see, it's most important that I spell these things out to you because our Lord Jesus does not say I will replace the pain and the tears with joy and with happiness as though the former was unnecessary. He said from the former will grow the latter.

Out of the wine, out of the water comes the wine. Out of the pain comes the peace. Out of the anguish comes the absolution.

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.

You see, my friends, what our Lord is dealing with, He's dealing with the sorrow in the hearts of the disciples. Sorrow that really has been caused by the confusion that they knew. And so into their sorrow He threw His light and He drew an illustration and He endeavored to show the disciples that round the corner was not only His death but His mighty resurrection.

Round the corner was not only weeping but also rejoicing that will be theirs so to speak in the morning. Well then let's conclude the lessons or some lessons for you. The sorrows that we have as Christians, the sorrows there be, they only last for a little while Isn't it interesting that seven times references made to that phrase in a little while, in a little while, in a little while.

Now some of you may be going through great difficulty but over against the time spectrum of your whole life it's relatively small and over against eternity it's utterly minuscule. And out of that pain and that sorrow whether it's caused by bereavement or sickness or just a change in your circumstances I don't know but out of that can grow great joy and peace and a sense that God is in it all. You say, Mr. Preacher, I find that so hard to believe.

Well, so did the disciples when the Lord put down the principle but they came to the position ultimately when they realized that what He had to say was indeed correct that out of the weeping would come rejoicing out of the pain would come a sense of peace. The brevity of our sorrows that's some lesson for you to take home and to chew on. The value of our sorrows that they can indeed be utterly for our benefit.

And ultimately I think wrapped up into all these teachings of our Lord Jesus is the idea that in a little while He shall return not only in terms of the descent of the Holy Spirit but in a little while He will return to the planet Earth and take up the government here visibly for this world belongs to Him given to Him by His Father. Now let's just take one or two last sentences and apply them to friends who are in the congregation right now. This man of sorrows this Lord Jesus Christ do you know Him? Do you know Him as your own personal Saviour? You see one thing was true of the disciples they knew Him and they loved Him and they hated the thought of Him ever being taken away from them.

I ask you do you love Him? Do you appreciate the pain that He went through to give you salvation? As a woman goes through pain to bring a new child into the world. Have you accepted the forgiveness that comes to you through the death of our Lord Jesus? Has that light dawned in your soul? And having done that can you not now see that any difficulty that comes into your life from this moment on is a difficulty that He is fully aware of as He had cognizance, understanding of what was just round the corner for the disciples. Listen to this.

All of your tomorrows are inspected by God before they reach you. Did you hear? Some of you are 80 years of age and you need to hear that. Some of you are 18 and you need to hear it.

All your tomorrows are inspected by God before He passes them on to you. The tomorrow for the disciples was clearly unacceptable at the level of their human reasoning until Jesus stepped in and said hold it fellows! I have light to shine in upon your problem. You receive this light and you'll be able to take all the difficulties of these next two or three days.

In one sense they muffed the lesson. We don't say that critically. We join them.

We too have muffed the lessons. But here is the preacher learning from the mistakes of his predecessors and from his own mistake and applying this principle that all our tomorrows are inspected by the Lord Jesus before they come to us and when the tomorrow becomes the today He promises His Spirit so that we can go through life's experience in the knowledge that He is with us and His power will support us and take us through the most difficult of trials and challenges. And all those trials and challenges are just for a little while until He completely changes our circumstances in this world or ultimately when He returns and commences His visible reign in the universe He will see that equity and justice is done and He will apply His love and His grace to us in the age that is yet to be.

Remember the old coloured woman of whom I've told you sometimes before whose favourite verse of scripture was and it came to pass I tells myself when difficulty comes it comes to pass well may the Missy from the Caribbean in her understanding misunderstanding of scriptures nonetheless may the principle that she rightly gathered from the whole breadth of scripture be applied to you as our Lord Jesus deals with your sorrow and transforms it into joy. Let's sing 411 in hymns of faith The Lord's my shepherd I'll not want He makes me down to lie Sing this feelingfully some of us who knew Doris Athill and John Parsons might like to sing it with the memory of these folk in our minds and as we sing it let's be praying for those who have been so suddenly in the part of John bereaved that they might know God's grace that their sorrows may be transmuted may be changed into a sense of peace and ultimately joy. 411 Stand and sing 411 The Lord's my shepherd I'll not want He makes me down to lie Sing this feelingfully some of us who knew Doris Athill and John Parsons might like to sing it in our minds and as we sing it let's be praying for those who have been so suddenly in the part of John that their sorrows may be transmuted joy.

The table of our blessed Lord Jesus in a moment or so help us to appreciate even further that the greatest possible benefits have accrued from the vilest possible death. We praise you for all that you changed the death of our Lord Jesus Christ into. Not a tragedy but a great triumph.

You took the constituents of the water and you transformed it into the wine as you take the sorrow of the hearts of the disciples and transform it into joy. May you keep on changing us and may we hold fast to you in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ and as we pray for his sake. Amen.

Thank you.