THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: Navigating Grief and Sorrow
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve
Permanent Joy
When Hailey was much younger—maybe four years or three years, I can’t remember—now and again, we would take her to McDonald’s. I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in a long time. I discovered it’s not good for me. Hopefully nobody’s working at McDonald’s here this morning. Then she would beg us for that Happy Meal, right? So you pay 50 bucks for that happy meal, you get this little skinny burger, you know? But you’re after the toy. You could have paid $4 less and probably got a Big Mac. But now you get the skinny burger and a plastic toy. And so as parents, we want to please our kids, and so you get that Happy Meal, and the joy and the happiness that it brings as you see your kids, how they entertain themselves with a 50-cents toy, right? For Christmas, you buy them 100 bucks, Legos, and whatever, and then they, man, they’re just going wild with that 50-cents toy. And then there’s some joy and some happiness, and then that thing probably just lasts until they get into the car, right? And then there goes the joy. And now they’re ready for the next Happy Meal.
It’s got to be different for us as believers. We can’t live from Happy Meal to Happy Meal. There’s got to be such a permanent joy and peace in our lives that when you have the COVIDs, when you have the political stuff, when you have the Middle East, and whatever else the world might throw at us, that we say, “I’m not gonna lose my peace, I’m not gonna lose my joy, because my joy and my peace is not based on all of these externals,” and I’m getting way ahead of my sermon here.
But that’s just my word of encouragement for us this morning. I don’t know if that word is for somebody. You could maybe email me or just let me know afterwards.
Introduction
But as we’re looking at John chapter 16 this morning, I want to focus on these four major points. There’s more points, but we only have time for these. And I’ll just touch… it’s actually such a great passage. It is the same feel—if you do some theological studies, you’ll see that there’s a lot of conversation around chapter 14 and chapter 16 because they’re very, very similar. And so we will look at facing opposition, the work of the Holy Spirit, joy in Christ, and trust in God, and all of these topics we have looked at before, again, like I said, from chapter 14, but we will look at it again. And I wanna especially focus on the area of just grief, and again, just how do we allow the Holy Spirit to bring us joy and hope in all of this. So if you have your Bible with you, let’s turn to John 16, and then we will start in verse 1.
“All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what […] will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
Verse 16,
Jesus went on to say, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”
At this, 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 [he] said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? Very truly I tell you, 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. Very truly I tell you, 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.
“Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and […] believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”
Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figure of speech. Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”
Duh, it’s about time, right? Verse 31,
“Do you now believe?” Jesus replied. “A time is coming and in fact […] come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
May God continue to bless His word this morning.
Now we’ve seen John 14, the upper room conversation, Jesus and the disciples. It’s the end of His ministry, public ministry, and He’s spending time with His disciples and then they have moved on from the upper room. They’re now on their way to the garden. Last week we talked about, again, Jesus sharing with them, ministering to them, and He gave them this illustration about the vineyard.
Now again, the tone is changing a little bit, and this is really the last part of this conversation before other things will be taking place. And so again, all of the disciples you can just kind of read their confusion. They’re dealing with a lot. I mean a lot of things have happened in this last several hours from the upper room, and they’re still trying to put the pieces together. It’s easy for us; we have the Bible, we see the picture, and they just did not see the full picture, obviously, even as we read this, and there’s a lot of questions and some confusion that is happening.
Facing Opposition
So as we break down this conversation, a couple of highlights for us this morning. Even in verse 1, Jesus is reminding His disciples that they will face opposition. In the same way, just a reminder this morning for us as believers—and nobody wants to hear this—we will face opposition. So let’s just look here at verse 1, “All this I’ve told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.” Now just think about these words and then later on in the life of Saul, right? Because here he’s actually saying, “Hey in the religious realm people will be persecuting you and people will be kicking you out of the synagogues and they will kill you for the sake of religion.” And that has truly happened when we reflect on Saul’s life, and later on we obviously have seen the transformation that happened in his life. But we’ve got to think about Paul as he is sharing these words.
And so again, just when it comes to opposition and persecution… in our SAGE group, we’ve been talking about the beattitudes in Matthew chapter 5, and the last part of the beattitudes talks about this being persecuted. “Blessed are those that are being persecuted for my sake,” for righteousness. Now I believe over the years in our church realm we’ve done some damage kind of with the prosperity theology that’s out there. And we have missed out on the beauty of a theology of suffering. And this is what Jesus is really warning his disciples, and he says, “I want you to be aware so that you don’t fall away.” And in the Greek it also talks about so that you don’t get trapped in these last days as you go through persecution and hard things that you don’t give up on your faith.
And boy have we seen this in the church world the last several years of people just giving up, quitting. And I believe part of that reason is that we somehow in the western world believe that we’ve got to play it safe, that it’s always going to be a bed of roses, and we’re not going to deal with all of these hard things, that God will somehow protect us from all of the hardships. And we don’t see that in scripture. And so as a church it is truly important for us to maybe develop good theology around this area of suffering. Because it really isn’t always just sunshine and roses for us.
In this world we will deal with many, many hard things and persecution, and is our faith strong enough that we can stay the course? And not just stay the course, but that we can actually shine our light in the midst of all of that trouble.
Now I’m gonna… I’m not poking, I’m not trying to stir up trouble, okay? This is just from a pastor’s perspective, from my perspective. I might be totally wrong and I know that there’s so many different angles to this. And so when I’m talking, I’m talking universal church, but I’ll say this: the universal church I believe missed it during COVID. We were so scared, and we were hiding, that we weren’t concerned about really being the light and the hope and the joy in all of that. Just my perspective, all right? I’m sorry if I offend, I don’t want to offend anybody.
And I’m saying these words, I’m saying that to you this morning because I want you to know if you are following the Spirit, and if you are following the calling of God on your life, you will deal with persecution and hard things. And it’s about how to stay strong in those things, and if we truly believe in end times and if we truly believe in Revelation and all of those pieces that we read with eschatology, then you got to know—I mean, depending again if where we believe in the rapture, and like I said, there’s so many different views, we all have different views on the end times—but I believe that we will deal with some things as a church in the coming future, and some of it might be really, really hard. And then how are we going to respond as a church?
So there’s seasons and things to be wise, but I just I want us to come up and think about when COVID number 99 hits us. How are we going to do things different? And what if suddenly something brand new hits us? How will we show no fear? How will we show the light of Christ, and will we even be willing to give our lives up, because there’s a bit of a requirement for that in the Christian life. It is staying the course, not to give in, even when it’s hard.
You know, when I think about the life of Paul after his transformation and all the trials, you know, he kind of had this rhythm of preaching: going into a town, then he would preach in the synagogues, and then he would get kicked out, then he would preach to the Gentiles, and then probably end up in jail and flogging and different things, all the things that he experienced in life.
Pastor Skip, I had to enjoy his comment, he said in his mind he thinks that Paul probably, as he was going into a new town, asked some of the locals say, “Can you just show me your local jail because I’ll probably spend the night there. So I just want to check that out before I go there.”
So how do we have that perspective? Not that we’re looking to spend time in jail—I really enjoy my wife’s meals, right? But are we okay? Is the gospel still that important in our lives that we say, “I am willing to go to prison for it, for trials, and I’m willing to go through trials and persecution.”
Some of the best advice—I’m totally off my sermon here by now. It’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m not sticking to my notes. Some of the best things we can do is to teach our kids to persevere and to teach them a little bit more about trials and hardship. It’s not the stuff that they always hear, but I think this is important for them so that they can stay the course. Just look at John 16, verse 1 and 2, “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue[s]; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.” Believers may encounter opposition from various family, cultural, or spiritual sources. Can we identify with that today? Absolutely. For some of us, it’s from all of these areas, and even more, right?
2 Timothy chapter 3:12, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Let’s take that one out of the Bible. I don’t like that. But this is the reality for us as believers.
1 Peter 4:12, “Dear friends, do not be surprised…”—as believers, recently it seems like we have been surprised—“at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.” Now and again we have a 9/11 and different things that happen and it’s like, “Whew, okay, that got me.” But this passage is reminding us we should not be surprised. There should be almost an awareness like, “Man, I might be dealing with something today. Somewhere today Satan might try to take me off course. Somewhere today Satan might try to use a family, a friend, a co-worker to distract me, to discourage me, to distract me from my faith, to trip me up.” And we shouldn’t be surprised by that, but we should be ready for that. Amen?
So this is important for me: standing, we have to learn a couple of things to stand firm. Number one, resilience. Resilience in spiritual context, perseverance, and an unwavering commitment to the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ. We can’t be wishy-washy on these things. We in a sense have to be like Marines.
I heard an interesting—I think it was a podcast or a survey—about recruitment in our armies. All of the numbers are down except—I want to say it’s with the Marines. Does that sound right, Jesse? I think it was with the Marines, but they were saying, because there was still this philosophy of, “Man, we’re doing this together, and we’re gonna act tough.” I don’t know if you have seen some of the training videos and stuff with Navy SEALs and stuff. It’s like when you’re swimming, and all of the hard stuff that they… that’s resilience, right? I’ve watched some of those things, like I would have bailed out. I know for some of them there’s a little bell that you have to ring. It’s like, “Man, I quit. This is way too hard, I’m out of here.” I would have done that day one. It’s like, “Man, I don’t need all of this.”
But we have to have a little bit of that mentality as believers to be resilient and to be able to persevere and a commitment to the principles and teachings of Jesus. We can’t just believe and live out certain teachings, and then when persecution and hard things come, then we say, “Okay, now I’m not going to believe these things anymore.” It’s all of it or nothing. Amen?
The Work of the Holy Spirit
All right, number two. My time’s up. It’s all right. The work of the Holy Spirit. Let’s read through John 16.
“But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I’m going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I’m going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
A couple of things just as we think about the work of the Holy Spirit—we’ve talked a lot about this in the last several weeks—one is we see that the Holy Spirit will convict people of their sin and of righteousness. We don’t have to do all of the work to try and convict people of their sins. The best thing that you and I can do is to just pray that the Holy Spirit will get hold of their hearts. Amen? The Holy Spirit can do it. The Holy Spirit wants to do it. We have much help from the Holy Spirit. We got to just learn how to tap into it.
And again, in this passage we see that there is so much going on that the Holy Spirit is helping us. He’s teaching us. And he’s guiding us into the truth. Boy, do we need that today. The Holy Spirit will teach us about God’s truth and not just all this wishy-washy “our” truth, right? We kind of live in this society about “my truth” and “your truth,” you know. And we obviously see where we’re ending up. We’re in trouble. But if we tap into the Holy Spirit, when we listen, He will guide us and He will point us towards Jesus.
Joy in Christ
Alright. Joy in Christ. I’ve talked a little bit about that. John 16:22, “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.” No one will take away your joy. Unless you allow them to take away your joy. Then they will do that gladly.
Our source of joy: The joy Jesus speaks of is not dependent on external circumstances. It is rooted in the relationship with Christ and the salvation He offers. Our joy comes from knowing and abiding in Him. That’s the way. That’s the way you’re gonna learn and grow in your joy is to abide in Him and allowing the Holy Spirit to grow that fruit in your life. There’s no other way. Otherwise, everything else is just going to be that Happy Meal. It’s got to be abiding in Him, not focusing on circumstances, but focusing on what Jesus has done for us on the cross and the resurrection.
Trust in God
And then lastly, trust in God. John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
What does that mean for us? Through Christ’s redemptive work, Jesus provides a way for believers to be liberated from sin’s power and have the hope of eternal life. Jesus died for us and obviously was resurrected as we celebrate Easter. That will be around the corner, hopefully, as we get through this wonderful winter so far. And then we’ll be celebrating the Resurrection Sunday again and the victory that we have in eternal life. Amen? That’s the stuff that should encourage and motivate our joy, that we have a victory in Christ. He made a way for us.
Mother Teresa, just kind of a great quote from her. “Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen.”
Maybe for some of you that are dealing with grief… over the years in ministry I have discovered that we really struggle with dealing with grief. And sometimes these things can really impact us deeply and because we don’t deal with it. So just practical things again as we think about God making us whole and restoring us and restoring our joy.
Dealing with Grief
So a couple points in this area of grief:
Embrace the process of grieving. Finding joy does not mean denying the pain. I don’t know about you—and maybe this has been your observation in church culture—sometimes we can be really good liars with our emotions. Sometimes we really struggle to even be honest with our emotions.
Over the years, especially with my dad’s funeral and with his death, the Lord really worked in my life on this area about embracing the process of grieving. And I really have learned, and it was like, the words that kept speaking into my life—I believe from the Holy Spirit—was this: “Grieve well.” And as believers a lot of times it’s so easy for us because we don’t want to deal with that pain and with grief. And that might be different things. That might be like even grieving lost relationships, a marriage. But sometimes we still want to rush to get to the happy place that we’re not honest with the emotions and with the process, and to say, “I gotta deal with this because there’s something sweet in that moment where God can come and minister to me and restore me.” If we rush that process, and when we’re not honest and open with what’s really going on inside of us, then we’re just lying to ourselves and we’re not giving that opportunity for the Holy Spirit to minister to us.
And so what if we’re a church and we’re actually honest with the different process? And to say, “I’m gonna embrace. I’m not just gonna take half a day, funeral, and then jump into, ‘Oh, I’m all happy. Let’s bring the Happy Meal out.’” But to say, “I’m gonna allow… to sit in this and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to me.” I believe we will be much healthier when we do this. And so it’s not about denying the pain.
Gratitude for shared memories. We’re so good in grieving or lamenting on all the stuff that we miss out. Sometimes we get angry when we lose stuff in our lives, maybe relationships or whatever it might be. Sometimes we can be so angry and bitter that we forget to look at the blessings and to have a gratitude for the shared memories.
It was so amazing when I got to go home—again with my dad’s funeral and stuff—to have some time with my brother. And at night we were just telling stories and watching photos and sitting with family. And it was such healing in a sense to be able to be on that place to say, “Man, what a gift.” Was some things messy and ugly? Absolutely. But how do I, instead of being mad at all the stuff that I’m missing out on, also to be on the place to say, “God, thank you for every moment that I have had with my dad,” or “with these different relationships,” or “marriage,” or whatever it might be, right? But it is dealing with the anger and bitterness and to maybe have a bit of a different perspective to say, “How do I celebrate and how do I give thanks?”
Alright, last one. Promise.
Some of us just might be stuck in our grief and in our anger and in our bitterness. And you’re dealing with that year in and year out. And guess what? There’s a good place for us to seek professional help. At least in our South African culture, there was such a bad and negative stigma about seeing professional help like a Christian counselor. And a lot of times God can really use that. But don’t suffer through some things year in and year out and not seek professional help. It can really be helpful in our lives.
