John 16:16-33: Birth Pains Until He Returns

(1) Sermon Script

Introduction: Riddles

I don’t like riddles. They require thinking. It is never clear what they mean, at least, not to me, anyway. They are troubling, and they make you feel dumb. They hurt your brain. And you feel completely out of the loop, on the outer. And you begin to hate those smug infuriating ones who understand the riddle, who just smile at you and leave you there, in your ignorance and stupidity, wondering what the riddle means. It is quite right, in my humble view, that the ‘Riddler’ is rightly portrayed as a dastardly fiend in the 60s comedy series, ‘Batman’. So I don’t like riddles. They are no fun. And I will very quickly ask someone to tell me what it means.

But then, when I find out what the riddle means, I don’t mind riddles all that much. In fact, I begin to like riddles. I can be in the inner circle, too! I can be ‘in the know’, one of the smug ones, who understands the riddle, and who is very clever.

Samson used a riddle, that frustrating man. However, I like this one, because as readers, we know the answer. So I like Samson, that delightful man. Because I got his riddle straight away (Judges 14:14). Here is his riddle that he plagued his Philistine wedding guests with: “And he said to them, ‘Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.’” Do you like that riddle? I know what it means! Anyone who reads the chapter will know the answer, because the narrator of Judges tells us. Do you want to know what it means? I’m sure you would like to know. It took Samson’s wedding guests three days to get the answer, and they could not solve the riddle by working it out, but only cracked it by threatening his bride for the answer. Of course, making Samson angry wasn’t a real good idea for them. I think riddles cause lots of trouble. I don’t know why anyone tells them.

God thinks differently. Sometimes he uses riddles. And so too does Jesus. So riddles must be OK, and I have the problem. Riddles serve Jesus’ teaching purposes. Many of the parables are very much like riddles. And Jesus used them for a good reason, to filter out the casual hearers from the diligent enquirers.

Ok, so you’ll listen to the rest of my talk, I’ll tell you what Samson’s riddle meant. Samson killed a lion. Then a little while later, some bees made honey in the carcass, and Samson came by and ate the honey. “Out of the strong came something sweet. Out of the eater came something to eat”. There you go, we are all in the know, now. We all are as smart as each other and know exactly what the riddle means.

Do you want to be on the inner circle again? Do you want to know more than the apostles knew on the night before he died? Well, we can be, because Jesus has used another riddle as he walks across to the garden where he will be arrested. And because you know the ending of John’s Gospel already, you will understand this riddle straight away.

The Riddle (v. 16)

Here’s the riddle in John chapter 16 verse 16:

16:16A little while and you are no longer going to see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.

It sounds a bit like ‘peek a boo’ or ‘hide and seek’. But that’s not what it means.

Do you know what Jesus means? I’m sure you do. I’m sure knowing what you know about the end of John’s Gospel, you can work it out. That’s the nature of John’s Gospel. He is a fantastic Gospel writer, but he wouldn’t have been such a good mystery writer. John gives away and spoils his own ending. He doesn’t care for plot twists. He wants us to know exactly who Jesus is and what he came to do.

Knowing the ending of John means we can be the smart ones, on the inner circle, in the know. This is what it means: “a little while and you are no longer going to see me”—that is a reference to Jesus’ death. For by sunfall the next day, Jesus will be dead and buried. The disciples won’t see him anymore. But then Jesus says, “and again a little while, and you will see me”. Jesus will be dead and buried by the end of Friday—cold and horizontal—but on Sunday morning, he will be up and about—warm and vertical—because he will have risen from the dead. And the newly risen Jesus will appear to Mary, and then to ten of the eleven on resurrection day. They will again see him after a little while.

Standing On The Inside Looking Out At The Confused Disciples (vv. 17-19)

Ok, now we can sit back and be the smug ones together. For the disciples did not understand this riddle when Jesus said it to them. Their immediate and confused response is recorded for us by John in verses 17 to 19:

16:17Therefore, some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this which he is saying to us, ‘a little while and you are not going to see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? and that ‘I am going away to the Father’?” 16:18So they were saying, “what is this ‘little while’ which he is talking about? We don’t know what he is saying.” 16:19Jesus, knowing that they wanted to ask him, also said to them, “Are you searching out about this with one another, because I said ‘a little while and you are not going to see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?”

Here again is one further indicator of the trustworthiness of John’s account. For he does not present the apostles as competent, together, wise, and understanding. They are dense, slow, obtuse, they don’t understand, they need to see it all happen before it sinks in. They do not understand everything that Jesus has said and done this night—or throughout his ministry, for that matter—about his death and resurrection. And undoubtedly, we wouldn’t have either. For they are us, and we are them. But at least this time, we can smugly look down on them now, for we know what Jesus is talking about.

But Jesus then does not explain to them what’s going to happen to him. What Jesus explains is what is going to happen to them. Jesus forgets about what he is going to go through—humiliated, beaten, and tortured to death—and explains the gamut of emotions that the disciples will experience. He will step them through the roller coaster ride of emotions—from despair to elation—that the events of the next three days will bring to them. Verse 2o:

16:20“Truly truly I say to you, that you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will turn into joy.

It is interesting from a pastoral perspective that Jesus does not speak about what is going to cause these emotions—his betrayal, crucifixion, death, and resurrection—but the emotions and experiences themselves that the disciples will undergo—grief, distress, weeping, mourning, and then joy and rejoicing of heart. From their despair to their exhilaration, Jesus is truly empathetic, describing the experience that his disciples will endure before they go through it themselves. Emotions are such powerful things, aren’t they? On top of the thing that causes the emotion, there are the emotions and experiences themselves that need to be dealt with. And Jesus recognizes this.

Sometimes joy should be turned into mourning (e.g. James 4:9). But here, the arc of emotion will be the opposite—from grief and distress to joy and rejoicing of heart. We see the pattern in Psalm 30 verse 5, with the great ‘about face’ of emotions, from weeping to Joy: “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Or consider Psalm 126:5, where we read “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” (cf. also Jer 31:13).

This is the hope of everyone enduring mourning and grief, but who find the joy for which they long frustratingly evasive. The person in grief wonders, “Will I ever be happy again? Is my misery the new normal?

Jesus responds to his disciples that there will be a resolution to their grief. There will be a happy ending. The proper paradigm for this distress is the labour of childbirth. Verse 21:

16:21The woman, when she gives birth, is grieved because her hour has come. But when she gives birth to the child, she doesn’t remember her distress any longer because of her joy that she has borne a human into the world.

Jesus prepares them for their grief, distress, mourning, and tears by saying they are only temporary, and will issue is joy. They should think of themselves as a woman going through labour. Yes, the distress and grief is real. But there is a child at the end of it, a little bundle of joy, an incarnation of hope, a token of a future for humanity in its own skin. How many women agree that, yes, the pain of childbirth is horrible, but they wouldn’t change it for the world? They rejoice in the result of their labour, the new little humans that they brought into the world. The entire population of our earth is brought to be through the labour of women! And each one of us humans represents the distress yet joy of the mother that bore us.

This is the way that the disciples must think of their grief over Jesus’ coming death and resurrection. Yes, they will be devastated and horrified by what they will see. But the stone cold tomb will not be the end for the Lord Jesus Christ. He will rise from the grave, to live forever, and these eleven men will see him with their own eyes, and touch him, and eat with him.

And we too should be prepared for our own grief and then joy. Christian faith tells us that we ourselves will experience the same emotional arc, the same emotional roller coaster. It will be a little time, in the great scheme of things, though not compared to our brief lives. But our emotional parabola won’t be occasioned by seeing Jesus’ death and resurrection for us. Our emotional low and then high will, however, be occasioned by death and resurrection, no less. For we too will see death, working both in those we love, and if Christ doesn’t come back soon, in ourselves as well. But we too will also see resurrection. For Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and the one who believes in him, though dying yet will live (John 11:25-26). Jesus claims the prerogatives of resurrection and life over us. So in John 5:24, Jesus said:

“Truly, truly I say to you, that the one hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and is not going to come into judgement, but has crossed over from death to life.

So we must not give way to our grief over death, though it is tempting to do so. Yes, we and those we love will probably die, like almost every human before us. It’s not a certainty, because Jesus might come back first. But yes, we and those who have faith in Christ have crossed over from death to life, and we will see our redeemer Jesus Christ—we, in our flesh, and not someone else. And while the weeping is for a short time, the joy will be forever. And heaven is forever, and there is there no more death or mourning or crying or pain there. Then the world will be fixed up properly and put to rights. And Father and Son are there, in the unity of the Spirit, and we will see God face to face, and he will wipe every tear from their eye.

But I’ve jumped ahead. Jesus isn’t here thinking about the eternal joy of the new heaven and the new earth. Jesus is thinking about the joy the disciples will experience when they see Jesus alive again. And of course it will issue in the new heaven and earth. But as we have discovered in John 13-17, heaven will have to what for the disciples for they will have work to do here on earth in testifying to Christ. Yet, it will then be empowered by the joy and confidence of having seen Jesus. Verse 22:

16:22So therefore you now have grief, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one is going to take your joy away from you.

“His anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime” (Ps 30:5). Actually, it is for an eternity. “Weeping may tarry for the night”—good Friday when they laid Jesus in the tomb—“but joy comes with the morning”—Easter morning, when Jesus rises from the dead, never to die again.

No Need To Ask Then (This Way), But You Will Ask Then (Another Way) (vv. 23-24)

The disciples are still confused, and Jesus recognizes their confusion. They simply don’t get it. They don’t have the categories yet to understand what Jesus is talking about. They don’t have the pegs, or pidgeon holes, in their brains, to store the information, and think about it. And sometimes, when that’s the case, it is worth just telling people that they will understand it later. “When you are older, you will understand it! When you’re married, and you’ve had your own children, you will know what I mean. You don’t understand it unless you’ve been through it yourself.” And Jesus does something similar in verse 23:

16:23And on that day, you will not ask me anything.

The disciples have been asking Jesus questions because they don’t understand his words. But they will understand Jesus when they say him risen from the dead. The penny will drop when Jesus materializes in the room on resurrection day through the locked doors. They will get it when they poke and prod and touch him. They will have all the categories and the pegs and pigeon holes they need when they see Jesus, warm, vertical, above ground, with a pulse, and heart beat, and breathing, and yet with unreplaced divets in his hands and feet, very much alive, and never to die again. Now, words are useless for them. Then, words won’t be necessary. No more questions will need to be asked or answered. The eleven (well ten, because one will be away, and have a delayed response) will then have their ‘aha’ moment: “Oh, that’s what you meant! Now I understand what you were talking about!”

But there will be another sort of asking that the disciples will do when Jesus rose again. It won’t be the continual asking of questions because they don’t understand what he is talking about. It will be the asking for strengthening and empowerment for their mission conducted in his name. Verses 23:

Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in my name, he will give it to you.

Jesus has already made a very similar promise, in chapter 14. There, in verses 13 and 14, Jesus said to the disciples, “whatever you ask for in my name, I will do, so that the Father might be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” We saw there that the promise was to the eleven, the authorized representatives in a relationship with Jesus and owned by him. Their prayer must be for the advance and progress of the reputation of Jesus’ name. The request must be consistent with the identity, character, and mission of Jesus. When those things are in place, then Jesus is always able and willing to answer that prayer of the eleven by granting it.

The difference here is that Jesus is saying that the Father will give it to the disciples. Previously, Jesus said he would do it. Now he is saying the Father will give it. The difference doesn’t really matter that much, given that Father and Son are one.

But there is something new about prayer now, that wasn’t the case previously. Look with me at the first part of verse 24:

16:24Up until now, you haven’t asked for anything in my name.

The reason that the disciples haven’t asked for anything in Jesus’ name is because Jesus has still been with them in a physical and bodily way. Actions done on behalf of a “king” or great personage are done “in his name” because the king is not physically present, but is represented by an emissary. If the king is present, the act doesn’t need to be in his name—the king himself just does it! In a similar way, the use of “the name” of Jesus occurs when Jesus is physically away and absent—and that is obviously not the case thus far in John’s Gospel—but it soon will be. So the use of ‘the name’ of Jesus replaces the physical presence of Jesus. But even though Jesus is away, the prayer in Jesus’ name is just as effective. The last part of verse 24 again:

Ask and you will receive, so that your joy might be full.

Here is another reason why the joy of the disciples will continue and never fade away. Not only will they have seen Jesus risen from the dead, but even after he returns to the Father bodily, he will still be providing for them. They ask in his name, and his Father will give.

The Time For No More Riddles (vv. 25-30)

Now we have observed Jesus has spoken in what I have called a riddle. And we have seen that the disciples have found his riddle hard to understand. It is not really that hard to understand. We understand it. We understand it because we know the end of the story. But the disciples can’t understand it at the moment because they just don’t have the categories to process it. And Jesus will agree that there is something unclear about what he has said. Look with me at verse 25:

I have spoken these things to you with figures of speech. An hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but I will declare to you openly about the Father.

Jesus acknowledges that he has spoken in figures of speech. Presumably Jesus does not just mean this saying, or the saying about the woman in labour, but indeed throughout his teaching ministry. And it is undeniable that Jesus has spoken in figures of speech. Consider all the “I am” statements—light of the world, the good shepherd, the bread of life, the gate for the sheep, the way, the truth, the life, the vine. Consider the command to ‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’ or the necessity to ‘be born from above’, or to drink the living water that he will give. All these are figures of speech. All of them will only become clear with the accomplishment of Christ’s earthly mission of dying and rising again. All of them require the Spirit’s ministry to explain them.

Indeed, Jesus goes on to describe that day of open and plain speaking, in verses 26 and 27:

16:26On that day, you will ask in my name, and I am not saying to you that I will ask the Father about you. 16:27For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and believed that I came from God.

Jesus is looking forward to a day when it is not necessary for him to ask the Father on behalf of the disciples. It is not because Jesus doesn’t love the disciples, but it is because the Father himself loves them. This is probably because Jesus’ work as mediator has been accomplished and accepted by the Father.

Verse 28 tells us about the movement of the Son prior to the incarnation and after his resurrection.

I came from the Father and I have come into the world, yet I am again leaving the world and going to the Father.

The Son is returning to his sender, the Father, from whence he came. The mission is complete, but for its climax, the glorification of the Son.

And the disciples, it seems, breathe a sigh of relief when they actually understand something. Verses 29 and 30:

16:29The disciples said to him, “See, you are now speaking openly and no longer speaking in figures of speech. 16:30Now we know that you know everything, and you do not need anyone to question you. Because of this, we believe that you have come from God.”

This response is a bit like Peter at the transfiguration—for the disciples don’t really know what they are saying. They hear that Jesus is talking about a time when he will speak openly, and they think they have finally understood something that he has said, that Jesus has been speaking in figures. So because they understand something, they misunderstand what Jesus is saying. They think that the time for Jesus’ clear speech is immediately upon them, now, because they have understood something. But they don’t really understand anything. It is very difficult to see how what they say in verse 30 is related to anything in verse 29. That is, they appear to be so overawed and disturbed, that they just reaffirm that Jesus is from God. And their failure to understand will not have escaped Jesus in verse 31:

16:31Jesus answered them, “Now you believe?

Jesus’ question is most probably skeptical. “Do you really believe what I’m saying?” It’s as if Jesus is saying, “I don’t even think you understand what I’m saying, let alone believe!” So little do they understand or believe in him, that in a few moments, after pledging their faith, they are going to run away and abandon him. For in verse 32, Jesus says:

16:32See that an hour is coming and has come, when each of you will be scattered to his own home and leave me alone.

After Jesus prays, the next event in this drama is his arrest. And at that point, Jesus will go out of the garden, to protect the disciples, and all the disciples will run away. Yes, they have believe in him. They truly do. But they believe in the midst of their unbelief. And so they will run away. But Jesus wants them to run away, because the Father has given him a task for him alone to complete.

But Jesus’ disappointment with the disciples is short lived. For he is doing all of this for the disciples. His objective is not to crush them, but encourage them. Verse 33:

16:33I have spoken these things to you so that you might have peace in me. In this world you have trouble. But take heart! I have had victory over the world.

Jesus wants the disciples to have peace and victory. That is why he is speaking to them. He will have victory on the cross, and this victory will bring peace for us. We will share in his victory.

Conclusion

The victory Jesus brings doesn’t look like victory while he is winning it. It looks like defeat. The disciples are right to run away, from a human point of view, and from God’s point of view. They are humanly outnumbered. They should run. And from God’s point of view, this fight is for Jesus alone. Jesus will not lose any of those whom the Father has given me.

But there is no more riddle for us. For we know what Jesus meant. “Weeping may tarry for the night”—good Friday when they laid Jesus in the tomb—“but joy comes with the morning”—Easter morning, when Jesus rises from the dead, never to die again. That’s what Jesus is going to do.

Let’s pray.

(2) English Translation

My Translation

16:16A little while and you are no longer going to see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.

16:17Therefore, some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this which he is saying to us, ‘a little while and you are not going to see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? and that ‘I am going away to the Father’?” 16:18So they were saying, “what is this ‘little while’ which he is talking about? We don’t know what he is saying.”

16:19Jesus, knowing that they wanted to ask him, also said to them, “Are you searching out about this with one another, because I said ‘a little while and you are not going to see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?”

16:20“Truly truly I say to you, that you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will turn into joy. 16:21The woman, when she gives birth, is grieved because her hour has come. But when she gives birth to the child, she doesn’t remember her distress any longer because of her joy that she has borne a human into the world. 16:22So therefore you now have grief, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one is going to take your joy away from you.

16:23And on that day, you will not ask me anything. Truly truly I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in my name, he will give it to you. 16:24Up until now, you haven’t asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy might be full.

16:25”I have spoken these things to you with figures of speech. An hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but I will openly announce to you openly about the Father. 16:26On that day, you will ask in my name, and I am not saying to you that I will ask the Father about you. 16:27For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and believed that I came from God. 16:28I came from the Father and I have come into the world, yet I am again leaving the world and going to the Father.

16:29The disciples said to him, “See, you are now speaking openly and no longer speaking in figures of speech. 16:30Now we know that you know everything, and you do not need anyone to question you. Because of this, we believe that you have come from God.”

16:31Jesus answered them, “Now you believe? 16:32See that an hour is coming and has come, when each of you will be scattered to his own home and leave me alone. 16:33I have spoken these things to you so that you might have peace in me. In this world you have trouble. But take heart! I have had victory over the world.