Jesus Died and We Are Better Off
Tom Shrader walks through John 16:1–22, explaining that Jesus prepared His disciples for His departure by promising the Holy Spirit, whose coming would make them better off than before. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, directs people to the righteousness found only in Christ, and warns of coming judgment — working through ordinary believers as His instruments. Drawing on Acts 2 and the illustration of childbirth, Shrader argues that the sorrow of the cross becomes the very source of Christian joy, because Christ's death and resurrection secured redemption and proved the victory of God.
“The cross is not a defeat, but a victory — the sorrow becomes the source of our joy.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2007)
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 53 min
Themes: holy spirit, grief turning to joy, conviction of sin, jesus death, resurrection, judgment, righteousness, christian hope, grieving a loss, struggling with doubt, new believer, feeling abandoned, questioning god's plan, young adult, walking through sorrow, seeking assurance
Scripture: John 16:1-22, John 16:7, John 14:1, John 14:16-18, John 15:26, John 14:17, Acts 2:14, Acts 2:22, Acts 2:36-37, Acts 2:41, Mark 8:33, Luke 24, Psalm 16, Galatians 6:14, Romans 1
Theological Themes: pneumatology, holy spirit conviction, atonement, redemption, eschatological judgment, justification, resurrection victory, paraclete
Full Transcript
Jesus Died and We Are Better Off
How are you this morning? We are really glad to see you. If you are with us for the very first time, a special welcome to you. We have provided a guest registry card. Rather than ask you to stand or single you out, we would simply ask that you complete the card, and we will communicate with you from there. As you leave the building, there should be a gentleman or lady by the door with information about East Valley Bible Church. A trip to the website, evvc.org, will also get you up to speed on the church very quickly.
A couple of other announcements. Swim night is Saturday, June 2nd from 6:30 to 9:30 at Hamilton Pool — you pay at the door and all the details are in the bulletin. It will be a great night to see some old friends and meet some new people, so please take advantage of that.
Regarding children's ministry, I met with Jim DeMarche this week. Jim heads our children's ministry, and he mentioned that summer is always a harder time to staff. If you are thinking that you cannot serve because you will be gone part of the summer, that is simply not the case — virtually everybody is gone sometime during the summer, and we will work with your schedule. Jim also made the point that many people look around, see how many people are here, and assume someone else will step up. You are that someone. If you have a child in children's ministry, serving there at some point through the year is our goal for you, and summer is a great time to do it.
Also in children's ministry, we have some really good news. We went through the town of Gilbert on our design review for the worship center, and we received our final design review approval on a consent agenda — which is an amazing thing. Part of that package includes the playground. Because of its location and the shade structure involved, it required town approval, so we included it with the worship center submission rather than submitting it as a separate item. That approval has now come through, and we will fast-track the final design, price it, and get it going.
Take a look at the insert for Institute classes. Both sessions for summer are listed there, along with fall classes as well. It is a very interesting group of classes being offered, and as some small groups slow down for the summer, it is a great way to stay connected.
One last thing from the bulletin: tomorrow night in the chapel, there is a parent summit for junior high and high school students and their parents. Justin, Matthew, and Tim will be here representing student ministries. There has probably been no ministry on campus with more changes than student ministries over the last three or four months, and we want to talk through those changes and look ahead to summer camp. That is in this room at seven o'clock tomorrow night — we would love to see you there.
Also, if you have a cell phone with you, please make sure to turn it off.
Context and Setting
Open your Bibles, if you would, to the Gospel of John, the 16th chapter. Today we are going to work through verses 1 through 22. It is important to remember the context here. John 14, 15, 16, and 17 constitute the upper room discourse, beginning with John 14:1: "Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me." There is a great deal of trouble in this moment. Jesus is speaking to His disciples at a time filled with confusion, uncertainty, and fear. They will be lonely. They will be persecuted. And in the midst of all of this, He is saying to them: there is some truth you need to get hold of. A key part of that truth is that He is going to prepare a place for them, that He will come and take them there, and that when He leaves, they are going to be better off. That is what we will look at today.
Prepared for Hardship
We actually studied the first four verses a couple of weeks ago, so let me remind you of them. "These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God." He is telling them these things in advance so they will not stumble. He wants them to understand that hardship and difficulty are coming, because when they arrive, He does not want them to be surprised.
Do you see how this applies to us as well? In your life and in mine, we are going to face hardship and difficulty. It is not unusual for people to respond by saying, "Where is God now? God, where are You? Here I am, in the midst of the struggle and the pain, and I have been doing everything right. I could understand if I were still an unbeliever, living the way I used to live — I could understand why You might allow this. But now, God, look at me. I am Your child. Where are You?" He is telling you ahead of time: you are going to have difficulties in life. Some of you will face economic problems. Some of you will face relational problems. Some of you will have children who die. I was talking to a man the other day whose wife had died after 64 years of marriage — that is going to have an enormous impact on a person.
Do not think you are bubble boy or bubble girl, that becoming a Christian means you get through life without any difficulty or hardship. And to these disciples He is saying, beyond all of that, and perhaps for some of you as well, beyond the difficulties that everyone experiences, you are going to face persecution too. We have been fairly isolated from it, I think. There may be persecution you experience at some level, but I believe that is going to intensify. I tell the younger men here that I can preach Romans chapter 1 pretty safely today, but by the time they are my age and they are the ones preaching, they may not have the same freedom to do so. It is getting increasingly difficult out there, and that persecution may be coming.
But Jesus says that is all right. He is telling them this is going to happen so they will not be surprised, so they will not stumble, as we see in verse 1. "These things they will do to you because they have not known the Father or Me. But I have spoken these things to you so that when the hour comes, you will remember that I told you them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning because I was with you."
Unmet Expectations
He was with them, and they did not need to hear it yet. Now He is going to be gone, and that is what He is preparing them for. He has been speaking in somewhat vague terms, but it grows increasingly clear that He must go to Jerusalem, that He will suffer, that He will die — and they are still trying to work through all of that. Many of them believed He was the Messiah, the Redeemer who would restore an earthly kingdom of Israel. They carried all sorts of different expectations, and those expectations did not line up with reality.
We do the same thing. So often in my life — and I would wager in yours as well — what produces disappointment is when my expectations are not matched by the reality of the experience. Think about a young couple who gets married. Four, five, six months in, you ask them how it is going and they say, "It's fine." Well, it is not supposed to be merely fine at six months — it is supposed to be wonderful. When you begin to unpack what is happening, what you often find is that she thought he would do one thing, and he thought she would do another, and those expectations simply do not line up. So He says to His disciples: I want you to understand that I am going to be gone, and so now you need to hear these things.
Verse 5: "Now I am going to Him who sent Me, and none of you ask Me, 'Where are You going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow..."
The Advantage of Jesus Going Away
There is a sorrow that is based really on uncertainty and fear. Chapter 16, verse 7 is a key verse — one you need to have. Here is what He says: "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you, but if I go, I will send Him to you." Who is the Helper? The Holy Spirit.
This should immediately connect us back to chapter 14, verse 16: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you." Then comes the verse that connects to chapter 16, verse 7: "I will not leave you as orphans."
It is to your advantage that Jesus goes away. Why? Because if He goes away, the Holy Spirit will come, and you will be better off — better off in at least two ways. First, what Jesus is going away to do is to die on the cross, be buried, rise, and ascend into heaven — to secure your salvation, your redemption. Second, you will be better off because the Holy Spirit will come and live in you.
Jesus had been with the disciples, and they had been together, but now the Holy Spirit will come and perform a very different task. He is going to indwell believers — something Jesus, in His earthly ministry, did not do. Oftentimes in the Christian life, we see that losses are really gains. Mark chapter 8, verse 33 says, "Whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." It sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. Jesus is going away — there is a loss — but the gain is that believers will receive the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit Convicts the World
When the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world concerning three things: sin, righteousness, and judgment. There is an interpretive question here about what "the world" means, since we have already heard that the world cannot receive Him. The reference is to those in the world whom God is going to pull out and redeem — His people in the world whom the Holy Spirit will come to and convict.
The word "convict" carries two possible meanings. One is to reprove or correct — to identify something wrong in behavior or doctrine and change it. The other meaning is to convince: literally to convince someone of a truth previously unknown or unrealized. That is probably the way it is used here. So the Holy Spirit comes into a life and convinces a person of three things. Jesus names all three in verse 8 and then devotes a little space to each one: sin, righteousness, and judgment.
Conviction Concerning Sin
Concerning sin — as you look at both verse 8 and verse 9, the emphasis is clearly on the word sin, but it is sin as a singular, not a plural. Does the Holy Spirit come and convict you of your sins? Yes, but that is not the primary issue. He does convict us of our sins, but our problem is not our sins — our problem is sin. Here is a simple way to put it: my sins, plural, point me to my sin.
The problem is not that someone lies, or steals, or cheats, or commits whatever individual sin it may be. Those are sins. We love to confess sins. We say, "God, I gossip — that is my problem, that is one of my sins, please take care of it." But the deeper problem is not the sins. The problem is sin — the sin that separated us from God, the sin that is a violation of God's instruction, the sin of living life without any concern or reference to what God says.
This can happen as an unbeliever, and it can happen as a believer as well. It is not unusual to sit in a marriage counseling situation where one of the partners says, "I know what is wrong. I understand it is going to hurt him or her. I understand it is going to hurt my kids, but I am going to do it anyway." The conviction comes — and it is more than just mouthing that something is wrong — there is a genuine sense of being disturbed by it. But even in that case, the underlying sin is not merely the act of adultery or whatever it may be. The sin the Holy Spirit convicts the world of is the sin of unbelief.
So the Holy Spirit comes and places in a person's life a sense of guilt, and they are disturbed by it. This is why, when asking for prayer for someone, the request is often: pray that God makes them miserable. After the first service, a young lady came up and was very complimentary of everything that had taken place. She said, "When you pray, I want you to pray" — and she gave a name — "I want you to pray"
things that happens is some folks come back year after year, and after a while they recognize you and they know you. But initially, nobody knows who I am when I walk in, and I can move around and do what I want and be myself, and nobody cares. I love that. Peter is just a guy. The moment that the Holy Spirit comes and indwells Peter, now Peter has a power source that he didn't have before. And that's the point. These heroes aren't heroes because of who they are. They're heroes because of who lives in them. And that's the point of the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit Convicts of Sin
Let me go back to John 16, and let's look at this idea of the Holy Spirit convicting the world of sin. Jesus says in verse 8, "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment." We've been unpacking these three things. We looked at sin and righteousness, and now we come to judgment. Verse 11, "concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged." This is a fascinating statement. The ruler of this world is Satan. And Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment because Satan has been judged. Now here's the thing. When the Holy Spirit brings that sense of conviction about judgment, He is pointing to the fact that there is a judgment that is coming. Satan has already been judged. The verdict is in. And if you are following Satan, if you are living in rebellion against God, you are following someone who has already been condemned. That's the point. The Holy Spirit comes and He convicts us of the reality of judgment, because judgment is real, and the ruler of this world has been judged, and those who follow him will share in that judgment unless they turn.
The Role of the Holy Spirit in Drawing People to Christ
Now let's come back to what Jesus is setting up here. Jesus has told His disciples that He is going to leave. He says in verse 7, "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you." This is the statement that frames everything. Jesus died, and we are better off. That's the title of this series. And the reason we are better off is because of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus had stayed, He would have been physically limited to one place at one time. But the Holy Spirit, once given, indwells every believer everywhere all the time. That is a better arrangement for us. Jesus is making that point. He's saying, trust Me on this. I know it doesn't feel like it right now. You're sitting here and you're troubled and you're grieving because I'm telling you I'm leaving. But trust Me. It is to your advantage.
Conviction, Disturbance, and the Search for Relief
Now the process that the Holy Spirit carries out in convicting the world is important to understand, because this is how people come to Christ. There is first a sense of guilt. The Holy Spirit brings the truth to bear on a person's life, and that person becomes aware that they are guilty before God. That awareness produces disturbance. They are troubled. Something is not right, and they know it. And then that disturbance produces a search for relief. What do I do with this? How do I deal with this? That is exactly the sequence we see in Acts chapter 2.
It is the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has come upon the disciples. Peter stands up with the eleven, raises his voice, and begins to preach. He reaches the heart of his sermon in verse 22, declaring, "Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs that God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know." Peter is saying to his audience, you know this already. You were there. You saw it. Jesus was different from everyone else. People said of Him that no one ever taught with such power and authority. And no one else had done what He did — the deaf hearing, the blind seeing, the lame walking. God did all of these things through Him so that you would understand that Jesus was God. That is the whole point.
Peter then presses the charge directly: "This man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to the cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death." Peter is making the point that God was in control all along. Jesus told His disciples ahead of time what was going to happen precisely so they would understand that when things looked like they were spinning out of control, they were not. Here is Peter, a month and a half later, standing up and calling the crucifixion the predetermined plan of God. He got it.
But Peter does not stop at the death. He continues: "But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power." He then goes to the Old Testament and quotes from David in Psalm 16, pointing to the Messiah — that the Messiah would come, that David died, but that Jesus was raised again. And then comes the declaration of verse 36: "Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified."
Peter does not mince words. He is direct. He identifies exactly who this Jesus is — not just another man who was killed, but the One delivered up by the predetermined plan of God, the One who is Lord, the One who is Messiah, the Deliverer, the Savior. This was God come in the flesh, who died and whom God raised from the dead. And this is the Jesus you killed.
Pierced to the Heart
Now look at the response in verse 37: "When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'What shall we do?'" That is exactly the process. Peter delivers the message at God's appointed time. He declares the truth. The people sense their guilt. They are disturbed by it. They are pierced to the heart. And they are looking for relief. What do we do?
Peter tells them to repent — to come to Christ in repentance and faith, to believe that Jesus is who He said He was, to confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead, and they will be saved. And that is exactly what they did. Verse 41 records the result: "So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls."
A Transformed Peter
Now consider who is preaching this sermon. This is Peter — the same Peter we will see, as we unpack the coming weeks, run and hide and deny. That same Peter, a month and a half later, is preaching a message and three thousand people are converted. What is the difference? This is a whole new Peter. He has been convicted of his sin. He understands righteousness and judgment. He has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
When we go to summer camp this year, the topic is heroes, and we will do it and it will be great. But sometimes I am afraid we look at these figures and they become our heroes, and we fail to understand that they were just ordinary people like you and me. There is nothing intrinsically special about these men. In fact, many of them were selected by God for exactly that reason — because the moment there is something intrinsically special about a person, you begin to be absorbed with that person rather than with God.
Susan and I are leaving Thursday for Cannon Beach, where I will be teaching at a Memorial Day conference. I checked the ten-day forecast today: drizzle and sixty-three degrees the entire time. I am all right with that. One of the things about that conference is that families come from all over, spending a good amount of money for four or five days, and they have no idea who I am when I walk in. The speaker is almost ancillary. They come for the experience. They come because they go every Memorial Day. And so I can walk around and just be myself and nobody cares, and I love that.
Peter is just a guy. The moment the Holy Spirit comes and indwells Peter, Peter has a power source he did not have before. That is the point. These heroes are not heroes because of who they are. They are heroes because of who lives in them. That is the point of the Spirit.
The Ordinary Vessel
The first night of a conference, when I get up, you can see on many of the faces a certain level of disappointment. They thought I would be taller, thinner, something. And then I speak, and the disappointment sinks into reality. I did a men's conference, and the man who picked me up at the airport was acting strangely on the drive out. I asked if he was all right, and he said, "I thought you'd be different." I said, "Well, sorry, but this is all I have. I can't bring you anything else."
Larry used to say something similar, and I didn't fully get it when he said it — I had to experience it myself. Larry had an extraordinary talent in terms of his voice and his thought, but he was a very ordinary man and a very sickly man, very unimpressive physically. If Larry were coming today to teach, because of his arthritis he'd carry his Bible like this, saunter a little, trip over things, and when he got to the front the Bible would go on his hip and he'd have to work to get it up there.
I went with Larry to an NFL conference one time. It was the first night, and these football players did not know Larry. Larry had a powder blue crushed velvet workout suit that he wore — crushed powder blue velvet — and he really thought he was cool in it. He loved it and was always wearing it. The players were introduced to him, and when he got up you could just see these big men thinking, "This is it?"
And he said, "Don't you love it when all those jocks can get together like this?" God uses people, especially broken people, especially people who come out of failure, because at that point nobody is saying, "Isn't he great?" They are saying, "Isn't God good? Isn't God incredible?"
Peter: An Ordinary Man Infused with the Spirit
Think about Peter. It would be so easy, seeing three thousand people responding, to say this man must be incredible — write a book, get him on television, put him on the circuit. But they knew this was the same man who, just a month and a half earlier, had been intimidated by a little servant girl. What was the difference? He was infused with the Holy Spirit. He was an ordinary man like you and me, but he was a superhero now in that God was working in his life. That is the sense of it.
Conviction, Righteousness, and the Interruption of Grace
Now look at verse 10, where Jesus speaks concerning righteousness. One author, quoting extensively from Charles Spurgeon, writes this: Spurgeon has pointed out that in human affairs, if a man is convicted of wrongdoing, the next step is judgment. If the jury renders a verdict of guilty, the next words are those of the judge — the defendant is remanded to the keeping of the sheriff, and the court will reconvene next Tuesday for sentencing. But notice God's procedure. It is true that the conviction of sin is followed by judgment — verse 11 follows verse 9 — but tucked in between is verse 10. God interrupts this flow. It is a provision of righteousness in Christ, so that the one who believes on Christ may be saved from judgment.
Spurgeon writes: "The Lord takes a man even when he is sinful and conscious of that sin and makes him righteous on the spot by putting away his sin and justifying him by the righteousness of faith, a righteousness which comes to him by the worthiness of another who has wrought out righteousness in him."
Here is the great promise: not only will the Holy Spirit convict the world of sin — neither you nor I can do that — but He will also direct them to Christ, Christ alone the source of righteousness. It is not just enough to feel guilty. It is not just enough to want to do something about it. The gospel comes and says there is nothing you can do. The bad news is that you are lost; the good news is that there is nothing you can do, because Christ did it.
Holiness as Wholeness
Ray Stedman writes on what Jesus means when He speaks of this gift of righteousness. He says righteousness is a term for what the Old Testament calls holiness. Stedman confesses he never liked the word holiness when he was growing up. He likened holiness to grimness — holy people never smiled or enjoyed anything, and in fact if they did enjoy something they felt guilty about it. He never liked the word until he learned to substitute another word that captures exactly what holiness is, and that word is wholeness — W-H-O-L-E-N-E-S-S.
That is what I was trying to say a few months ago with Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. You are like Humpty Dumpty in that you have had a great fall, and you cannot put yourself back together, and nothing from the world can put you back together. You try — that is religion, or self-moral realignment, something like that. You try to put yourself back together, or you think, if I just did that I would be whole again, or if I just had that.
The Endless Pursuit
Life becomes an endless pursuit of thing after thing after thing — girl after girl after girl, guy after guy after guy, money, house, whatever it is — thinking that will make you whole. The only thing that will put you back together again is a personal relationship with Christ. The difference is enormous: I don't have to get my act together. Christ puts me back together. He does it.
When we discover that, it seems contrary to the world, because the world instinctively says, "If I get this, I'll be satisfied." That is really what all marketing is. If I have that car, if I drink that beer, if I go to that place — everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I want to give you a tip: that is not true. If you are sneaking away to Vegas to do things you don't want to come back with, I guarantee they are going to come back with you — on your soul, on your mind.
The Holy Spirit Convicts of Judgment
Jesus says He will convict the world of judgment. When He speaks of judgment here, the ruler has come, but there is also a coming judgment. God is saying He will postpone the final judgment until an appointed time — and He even uses the idea that it will come "in a little while." God will judge the world. That is what the Holy Spirit is going to do.
So in your life — many of you, if you took communion, are genuinely converted. The Holy Spirit has come and convicted you of sin, convicted you concerning righteousness, shown you what righteousness is, and brought you face to face with the reality of judgment.
The Holy Spirit Works in You to Work Through You
I want to make one point, and this is really important to me: the Holy Spirit is working in you so that He can work through you. This is a huge deal. James Boyce writes, "Every conversion recorded in the book of Acts was through the agency of someone who was already saved. Jesus bore witness to the Twelve, they bore witness on Pentecost, and the days following. Even Paul, that great witness who had an unusual conversion while on the way to Damascus to persecute Christians, was converted through others. First, in advance of his experience, he had a witness of the stoning of Stephen and had heard a great sermon recorded in Acts chapter 7. Even after his experience, while he was in Damascus, Ananias was sent to him as a human instrument through whom the Holy Spirit then did His work."
The Holy Spirit comes and convicts you of sin and righteousness — and the reason is so that you can go and live this life before others. You are one of God's missionaries to His world. He has called you to live this transformed life, to go and to preach.
Freedom in Evangelism
There is great freedom in evangelism when you understand this truth, because it does not depend upon you. I am not trying to argue. I am not trying to debate. I have observed over the years that people can get a little frustrated by that approach, but I learned a long time ago that I cannot argue anyone into the kingdom.
Here is our story. When God created the world, He put two people here — Adam and Eve — and told them not to eat one particular fruit. They did it. Adam sinned, and when he sinned, he plunged all of us into ruin. You came into the world a sinner based on Adam's sin. God had a plan of redemption that spread out over a couple of thousand years, and ultimately Christ, two thousand years ago, died. He took your place, was buried, and rose again, and if you believe that is true, you will be redeemed.
Now, logically, that story has some work to it. I cannot sit down and empirically prove that Jesus rose from the dead — you can look at the data, but here is what I have discovered: people will not believe because people will not believe.
I Sold My Soul on eBay
Maria finished a really interesting book called *I Sold My Soul on eBay*. It is about a man who is an atheist and auctions off a portion of his life. A churchgoing man buys it for $504 and sends him around to different churches to evaluate them. This is not fiction — he actually visits these churches. He visits Joel Osteen's church, then Second Baptist, then Willow Creek, and then some smaller churches, and some very small churches.
He writes all the way through this experience, and there is a fascinating section at the end where he says, "I don't believe any of this stuff, but let me tell you what you could do that would make it a better place." He then offers some observations. One of the most striking is this: he said he does not understand why people are late for church. He said he goes to these churches and people arrive late, and he cannot understand it. He said he does not believe in God at all, but he loves going to a movie or a show, and it would never occur to him to be late for one. Yet here are people going to worship the One they declare to be the Creator God of the universe and their Savior, and they cannot get there on time. He found that very odd. I am not making a point from that — I simply found it a very interesting observation.
Then, at the end, he addresses what it would take for him to believe. His answer: it would take a miracle. He is not going to believe — he is not going to believe until he sees a miracle, and then he will say he cannot really replicate it.
The Holy Spirit's Work in Conviction and Truth
The Holy Spirit has to open a person's eyes. You are not going to argue anyone into the kingdom. Should we make a defense? Yes. Should we proclaim the gospel? Absolutely. Should we know it and understand it? Without question. But it is not your job to convict anyone, convince anyone, cajole anyone, or out-debate anyone. That is what the Holy Spirit does, and it never happens any other way.
The Holy Spirit also takes your words and your actions and marries them together so they become an extraordinary testimony. He takes your life so that He can work through you in other people's lives.
The Spirit of Truth Guides into All Truth
"I have many more things," Jesus says in verse 12, "to say to you, but you cannot bear them right now." There is more He wants to discuss, but the time is not yet right. The right time comes when the Holy Spirit arrives. Jesus calls Him the Spirit of truth — the same phrase He uses in chapter 15, verse 26, and in chapter 14, verse 17.
"When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth" — all the truth, not all truth in every domain. The direct application to the disciples is that He will guide them in the truth as they record it, as they write the Scripture themselves. For us, the application is understanding — the Holy Spirit guides believers into understanding that truth.
"The Holy Spirit won't speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you the things to come." He discloses what is happening in the future, the world and its demise, all as part of God's plan working through those events. As for the end times themselves, the last days are the period from when Jesus left to when He returns, so we have been in them for nearly 2,000 years. Is Jesus coming again? Yes. Are we in the last days? Yes. Then live like it — it could be today. That is the whole point.
The Holy Spirit Glorifies the Son
Verse 14: "He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All the things the Father has are Mine, therefore I say that He takes of Mine and He discloses it to you."
Grief Turned to Joy
Verse 16: "A little while and you will see Me no longer, and again a little while and you will see Me." Read on the surface, that sounds puzzling — and the disciples did not get it either. In verse 17 they are asking one another, "What is this He is saying? A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, because I go to the Father." They could not make sense of the phrase "a little while."
Jesus knew they wished to question Him, so in verse 19 He does a preemptive strike and addresses it directly: "Are you deliberating together about this, that I said a little while and you will not see Me, and again a little while and you will see Me?" He then gives them the principle plainly: "Truly I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy."
To illustrate, He says: "Whenever a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come. But when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and no one will take your joy away from you."
Three Layers of Meaning in "A Little While"
Most scholars offer three options for what Jesus means, and all three may be true — a progression layered on top of one another. The first and most immediate is that He is going to be crucified and buried, they will not see Him, and then He will rise from the dead and they will see Him again. The second is that He is going to go away, but the Holy Spirit is going to come in His place. The third is that He will return at some point in the future. What He is primarily speaking to here, however, is His departure.
The Sorrow That Becomes Joy
He said, "I'm going to go away for a while. I'm going to be dead, and then in a little while you will see Me." True, there will be that point in time when the Holy Spirit will come, and true there will be that time when He comes again, and there may be that progression. Ultimately there is a joy that nobody can take away, and that is our union in heaven. That certainly could be what He has in mind.
Whatever He is saying here, He is saying the departure produces sorrow, grief, lamentation. But coupled right with those is the idea of joy. He is saying there is some sorrow that is going to come, there is going to be a loss, He is going to leave. There is a sorrow that may come as a result of the fear subsequent to that, or certainly the uncertainty, or maybe the disappointment.
In Luke chapter 24, there are two men on the road to Emmaus. They are talking to each other about the things that had taken place, and Jesus is there with them. They do not recognize Him. He said to them, "What are these words that you're exchanging with one another as you're walking?" And they stood still, and they looked sad. One of them said, "Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem unaware of the things that have happened here in these days?" He said to them, "What things?" And they said to Him, "The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all people, and how the chief priests and the other rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death and crucified Him. We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel." There is all of that — the disappointment, the sorrow.
Jesus is saying, in verse 20, "Your grief will turn into joy." He is not delivering this even in a sequential way. He is not saying you will have grief and sorrow for a season and then you will have joy. He is saying in essence that your sorrow will be the source of your joy. His departure becomes the reason for their joy. He is going away because He is going to die, pay the price for sin, and redeem them. While that is a scary, sorrowful, grief-filled moment, it is going to morph into joy. The sorrow becomes the source of the joy.
The Illustration of Childbirth
He then uses a perfect physical illustration: a woman giving birth, with pain, anguish, and suffering. He was in the room for two of his children's births, and with his daughters Sarah and Haley, though he was not present for the delivery itself, he was there shortly after, and in both cases, within minutes, you could see the joy in their faces. When it is your own child going through it, it strikes differently. And that is what Jesus is saying — here is a grief that comes into your life, and at the core of that sorrow it produces joy.
He says it will produce sorrow for them, but the world will rejoice. The world is excited when Christ is killed, but there is sorrow for the disciples. James Boyce writes this: "Did you ever notice as you read the New Testament that the cross of Christ is never referred to in the tone of sorrow? It's true that when the disciples talk about their feeling during the three days between crucifixion and resurrection, as they do in the Gospels, they reflect in a historical way that they were sorrowed then. But afterwards, whenever they wrote about the cross, they spoke of it not as a cause of sorrow, but as a cause of joy. Paul even speaks of the cross as his glory." That is Galatians 6:14.
If there were nothing but the crucifixion, glorious as that might be, we would not understand it, and it would be a cause of sorrow. But having had the resurrection, having known that the One who was crucified and buried rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, we rejoice in it. The cross is now seen as a victory. He says, "I'm going to go away for a while and suffer and die, and there will be sorrow, and there will be pain," and that sorrow and pain becomes the source of their joy.
Seeing God Work in Suffering
There are illustrations of this same reality in every believer's life. Rarely a week goes by without a conversation with someone in the midst of something — cancer, the loss of a loved one — where they will say, "I would have never chosen this. This would not be my desire. I would not want to go through it again, but I would not trade the experience for the world." Why? Because in that moment, they got to see God work.
As long as a person is moving the pieces around, calling the shots, planning everything, writing a strategic plan, as long as things are working according to their own design, they do not need God. Even if the heart is right — and this is not meant as a criticism — even if a person genuinely acknowledges that God gave them the gift, the talent, the energy, and the resources, still in the midst of that, all they have seen is their own strategic plan work. But when things go south, when everything falls apart, that is when God becomes visible in a way He simply was not before.
Jesus Prepares Us for Life Without His Physical Presence
When plan A doesn't work, and plan B is worse, and plan C is worse yet, all of a sudden we get to see Him work. When something comes into our lives that is so far beyond our control — not just beyond our image, but beyond our control — now we see God work. That is what He is saying. And out of that pain comes great joy, because we are reminded that we have a great God. That is why I have to preach the gospel to myself every day, to be reminded that I am a sinner and He is a great God.
So let's say tomorrow you are playing golf, and at one o'clock somebody says to you, "I didn't get to church yesterday. What did Tom say?" Here is what Tom said: Jesus prepared the disciples — and us too — for the fact that He is gone. With His departure we have the Holy Spirit in us, who convicts us of sin and righteousness and judgment, and He will not leave us alone. In this life there is going to be sorrow, and that sorrow becomes the source of our joy. And the cross is not a defeat, but a victory. Isn't that a great, great message?
Closing Prayer
Father, take that truth and apply it to our hearts as these doors kick open and we walk out of here. God, don't let it just be words — drive it home. Convict us, and continue to convict us of our sin, and of the sins we see in our lives. Remind us that we are whole in You, and You alone, nowhere else. God, thank You that we will never be condemned, but we have been saved.
God, how great is this? Nail it in our hearts that our grief will turn into joy. God, You have gotten us ready to live, and nobody can take the joy away. Father, drill that in our minds. In Christ's name, amen. Have a great week.