Invincible Joy

Amen.

Well, hey, good morning, Sacred Mission.

Hey, my name is Justin.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm one of the pastors here, and it is my joy to be able to bring God's word to you this morning.

We are jumping back into the Gospel of John after finishing up our series on hospitality.

And by the start of Advent, we will have finished a two-year movement through the Gospel of John.

And so I'm excited about wrapping this up at the start of Advent, and we're coming in to the vast majority of John having already been preached.

And this morning, where we find ourselves in the Gospel of John is in the last hours of Jesus' life, before he's dragged before an unjust trial, before he is condemned, crucified, and buried.

And Jesus is spending these costly moments instructing and comforting his disciples as they celebrate this Passover meal together.

And so when we come into this passage this morning, where we find ourselves, right?

Jesus has been teaching his disciples, he's been instructing them, he's been comforting them, but here in this moment, we're entering into a lot of confusion.

There's confusion in the upper room, there's confusion in the hearts and minds of the disciples as Jesus is trying to help them understand what's getting ready to happen.

Jesus has told them that he's actually going away.

We see this just earlier in the passage in John 16, 4 through 7, Jesus is saying this to his disciples.

So their confusion is leading to sorrow.

We need to understand that is a key theme in today's passage.

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper, the Spirit, will not come to you.

But if I go, I will send him to you.

So the disciples are confused as to what Jesus is actually telling them.

And they're probably confused because they're trying to understand what he's saying and see how it fits in parallels to their own understanding of who the Christ was supposed to be, what his kingdom was supposed to look like, and the dots just aren't connecting for them, right?

And Jesus, just before he continues in his discourse here in our text this morning, he proclaims this to his disciples, John 16, 15.

He says this all that the Father has is mine.

Therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

This is critical for us this morning to observe this, remember this, because we're going to come back around to what is Jesus really talking about here, right?

All that the Father has in his possession is the Son's, and he's going to take what is mine and he's going to speak it, declare it, reveal it to you.

You see, Jesus is promising his disciples that though they're confused now, though they sit in the midst of misunderstanding, clarity is going to come.

As all that is revealed will be declared to them.

They're going to have clarity in the midst of their confusion.

Jesus then says, a little while, this is 16, right?

A little while and you will see me no longer.

And again, a little while and you will see me.

He's speaking about his crucifixion and his resurrection.

This is exactly what he's pointing to here as he's speaking to his disciples.

In a little while you're not going to see me, right?

Because I'll be taken away and crucified, for my hour has come.

This language of his hour is all throughout the public ministry of Jesus.

John shows us this, that it actually shapes and informs the decisions that Jesus makes, how he lives his life.

And now we've come to that hour, the hour of his crucifixion.

But then he says, in just a little while, three days later, to be exact, you will see me when I have resurrected from the dead.

And here we see the disciples' confusion become observable frustration.

They start fretting about what in the world is Jesus saying?

He's leaving us, he's going to the Father.

Just a little while.

We have no clue what this guy is talking about anymore.

The disciples are in a place of complete confusion.

And so Jesus tries to start bringing clarity to the situation through these words.

Is this what you are asking yourselves?

What I meant by saying, a little while and you will not see me, and again, a little while and you will see me.

Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.

You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.

Jesus is working to help them understand his hour has come.

His crucifixion is imminent.

And in the face of his crucifixion, the world is going to rejoice.

Right?

The world is going to believe that they have trampled underfoot, that they have crushed and gained victory over this perceived false prophet, this instigator, this blaspheming vagabond.

Darkness will have appeared to extinguish the light.

And his disciples will be filled with sorrow at the sight of that.

They're going to feel like all hope has been lost.

That the one who they thought was the Messiah, the one who was going to save them and redeem them, now just hangs there lifeless.

And their very lives are going to be threatened as well.

As we see the disciples run into the covering of night and hide from those who they fear will take their life like they did his.

But Jesus does something for his disciples.

As he's helping them understand, you're going to be filled with sorrow.

You're going to weep as you see what's going on to take here.

But I'm telling you, your sorrow will turn into joy.

It's the gift of a promise that Jesus gives his apostles in that room.

That this sorrow that they experience is going to be momentary.

And there's going to be a joy that it turns into.

And you have to ask yourself, right, if you can put yourself in the place of the disciples, sitting in that upper room with Jesus, trying to bring any sense of understanding to this very confusing situation.

How in the world could your sorrow be turned into joy?

And Jesus helps him understand through this illustration of childbirth, right?

He talks about how there's often no joy without sorrow first.

And that the joy that comes from sorrow can be so great that you actually forget the anguish that caused the birth of the joy you now experience.

There's probably many women in this room that's had children.

If we look at how many kids we have in our kids' ministry, there's a ton of women who have had multiple children in this room, right?

And you know that anguish, that pain of childbirth.

But you remember more that first time you held that baby in your hands.

When you heard its cry, when you pressed it against your chest, when you realized what you were holding in your hands.

And it's almost as like the hours of anguish that you just went through faded into the background as you saw the beauty of life before you.

Jesus is saying, that's what's going to happen.

You're going to experience a sorrow that is devastating in the moment, but there's going to be a point in time when what you behold, what is before you, is going to be so full of joy that it will be as if you forgot all that had just happened.

And Jesus leads them to the source of that joy.

Where is that coming from?

Right?

The source of that joy that's promised to them.

And he says it here in the text, but I will see you again.

I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.

And here's the greatest promise you and I can cling on to this morning.

No one will take that joy from you.

No one's going to be able to take that joy from you.

When I see you again, there's going to be something deposited in your chest, a joy that can't be taken from you.

You see, their joy is established in his resurrection, in beholding him, not as the suffering servant, that that's the sorrow that they experience.

But when they behold him as the conquering king who has triumphed over death, hell, and the grave, that's where joy will fill them.

Their confusion is going to pass away to clarity.

And they'll be able to see all that Jesus was speaking to them about when they behold him.

In that way, there will be a joy given to them that can never be taken from them.

And just like the disciples, you and I lived in confusion.

But the Spirit opened our eyes and hearts to be able to see and to behold Christ, the risen, resurrected King.

And when we have beheld Him, God gives us a joy that's invincible.

God gives us invincible joy.

Think about that promised gift for a moment.

That there's nothing within this world that is able to take from you what God has given to you when He's enabled you to behold His risen Son.

You see, this invincible joy is everlasting because it is founded upon the resurrected life of our everlasting Lord.

It's a gift given to us.

And it's a gift given to us that's been birthed out of inconceivable sorrow for our sin and embraced in the presence, though, of the new life that He's given to us in Himself.

You see, we were once blind men who were entrapped in a darkened mind in the confusion of this world.

But Christ made us alive.

The Spirit has opened our eyes, giving us sight to behold him, to have clarity, to understand that he is the king and his is the kingdom.

And you and I are like the blind man that Jesus healed, who was blind from birth, and as Jesus touched his eyes, he opens him and beholds Christ, and he declares this Lord, I believe.

And he worshipped him.

You see, our invincible joy is given to us as we are brought out of the darkness of confusion and are enabled to see him in the light of clarity.

And that joy can never be taken from us.

It's a gift from God given to us by his mercy and grace.

Jesus continues teaching his disciples in this passage.

He says this, in that day you will ask nothing of me.

Truly, truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

Until now you have asked nothing in my name.

Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full.

So I want to take a moment and acknowledge the reality that in isolation this passage can be very confusing, right?

Ask the Father in my name whatever.

And he's gonna give it to you so that your joy can be full.

And if we take that passage out of its context and we just pull it out in isolation, we can build all kinds of wonky theology around it that's going to do destruction to our souls because it's gonna point to Jesus as not the end of all joy, but the means to have and obtain these lesser joys that can never satisfy.

Christ isn't a means to an end, he is the end for us.

And so I want to help us work through this that we can see this passage not in isolation, but in the context of the glory of the gospel, that we can behold him more clearly.

Let's begin with Jesus saying this in that day you will ask nothing of me.

Truly, truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name.

Jesus has been working throughout this whole passage to communicate to his disciples that he's leaving them.

He's going back to the Father who sent him, he's going to be sending the Spirit for His disciples.

And so when we see in that day, Jesus is speaking about when He's no longer present with them.

They will not be able to say, Hey, hey, Jesus, can you help me understand?

Can you bring clarity to my confusion?

They're not gonna be able to do that.

He's ascended to the right hand of the Father, he's not with them any longer.

He says, But you can ask the Father in my name.

Why is that?

We we saw this in John 16, 15.

Because all that the Father has is mine.

And so if you want to understand, if you want him to declare it to you, you ask him in my name, because all that he has is mine, he's gonna give it to you, so your joy will be full.

So we ask this, what is the whatever, right?

But whatever you ask in my name, he will give it to you.

Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

In this passage, the disciples are asking for clarity in the midst of confusion.

Their confusion gets observably frustrating.

We don't understand what he's talking about.

What does he mean he's going away?

What does he mean he's sending the spirit?

What does he mean we're gonna be filled with sorrow?

There's this confusion riddling their hearts.

And the outflow of Jesus' statement, all that the Father has is mine in verse 15 is this He will take what is mine and He will declare it to you.

He's gonna bring clarity to confusion, He's gonna bring revelation to ignorance, He's going to bring light to darkness.

Let's look at John 14, 26.

This is the work of the Spirit sent to us for our good.

Jesus says this, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

So the Spirit's work in the church is to bring clarity to confusion, is to bring order to disorder, is to bring godly contentment to chaos.

That's what the Spirit does as he comes in and he invades the presence of his people to declare, to make known the mystery of the gospel so that our confusion gives way to clarity.

If we ask to see clearly, to have understanding, he will declare the mystery of the gospel to us.

He will give to us the knowledge of his son, that in beholding him more clearly, that invincible joy of which he's given us would be made full.

You see, this is the real prosperity gospel.

This is the real prosperity gospel.

Not that we seek after Jesus as a means to some physical, lesser end, but that we seek to behold him in such a way that he is the end, and that our joy is full because we see him more clearly.

This is the prosperity gospel that we would be filled up with overflowing, invincible joy because whatever we have asked for from the Father to see Jesus more clearly, he has been freely given to us.

You see, we shall prosper with abundant, invincible joy.

Because the fullness of our joy is not in holding things with our earthly hands, but the fullness of our joy is in beholding the rising of the sun with the fullness of our hearts.

You see, but many of us we seem to go through life with what seems to be an empty joy rather than a full one.

Right?

If we're honest with ourselves, it doesn't seem like we're living a life where we're continually being filled up.

It seems like we're living a life where we're just drained empty.

Many of us, we live with empty joy.

I think there's something to observe in the text here.

There's two realities to this joy given to us by beholding Christ.

The first reality is this is that that joy is a gift from God that cannot be taken from us.

And that joy can be made full.

That joy can be filled up, that joy can be overflowing within our life.

I think it's the same way that we receive the gift of the Spirit.

We see throughout the text and in the New Testament that we are given the gift of the Spirit that in Christ can never be taken from us.

It's not something we've earned, it is definitely not something we lose.

It is a gift given to us by God that we might have it and not be taken from us.

But yet we see throughout the scriptures that we're continually called to be filled with the Spirit.

Filled with the Spirit in such a way that it's like a living water flowing from us and healing and ministering and working in the lives of the people around us, right?

But many of us we don't seek the filling of the Spirit, and so we live a Christian life that seems very empty of the Spirit.

And the same thing with joy it's a gift given to you that cannot be taken away, but it seems like it's just running on empty all the time.

And so for us in Christ, we have received a joy that cannot be taken.

But if we just sit and ponder, if we're honest with ourselves for a moment, it seems that that joy is continually running on empty.

Some of us, we seek to be filled with joyless things.

We seek to be filled with joyless things.

Think for a moment the amount of time and energy you spend seeking.

I don't know about you, I love seeking the next cool food place to go eat, right?

So me and my wife, we love to go to these new restaurants and we like to see what's on the menu, and we seek after this joyful experience, right?

And a lot of times it's not very joyful, right?

My my stomach doesn't like what I shoved down into it.

And so I'm sitting here longing for this moment where I have this bliss and joy, and then no.

But we seek.

We seek after prosperity, we seek after wealth, we seek after relationships, status, comfort, pleasure, all believing that these things are going to fill up our joy.

And here's the most accepting thing about it all they give us a small sense of joy when we obtain them.

They give us just enough to make us want to keep seeking after them.

You see, here's the challenge that you and I wrestle with.

God gives us good gifts.

Our children, our marriages, our covenantal sex life, our dwellings, our careers.

These are good gifts from God.

We pervert them.

And we try to find our joy in the good gifts rather than the giver of the gift himself.

And when they give us that little hit of joy, man, we often discover that it's a joy that's taken from us way too easily.

You see, it's unable to sustain the momentary effect.

And many times we feel emptier on the other side of obtaining it than we did before we began seeking it.

Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

Maybe you've had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol in your past, and you thought, man, if I go to this, I'm gonna get joy, and it momentarily gave it to you, and then you felt worse on the other side of it when you were sobering up.

Maybe you've had this with pornography.

You thought that gave you that hit of joy, and then it just left you emptier on the other side of it.

Maybe you've had this with your career.

Maybe you've had this with relationships.

Maybe you've had it in a shopping spree at TJ Maxx.

Hit a little too close to home for some of you.

We're like the people in Jeremiah chapter 2.

Jeremiah 2 · chapter mention

Verse 5 and 13, God speaks to his people.

Thus says the Lord, what wrong did your fathers find in me?

That they went far from me, and they went after worthlessness, and in that pursuit they became worthless.

For my people have committed two evils.

They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, the source of all joy, and hewned out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

You see, you and I, we've sought to drink from these broken cisterns that we've made with our own hands.

And we've sought to drink from them that we might be filled with the joy, but we discover it cannot satisfy, it cannot sustain, because it's a joy that pours out onto the ground and is just wasted.

We wonder why our joy seems so empty.

But we fail to take responsibility or an assessment of our life to recognize that we've been seeking to have it filled by things that will fail to.

That the joy we have been given would be made full.

Others of us, though, we wallow in sorrow.

We wallow in sorrow.

Some of us only see Jesus on the cross, the source of agony, sorrow for his disciples.

We stay there at the foot of the cross and we fail to behold him as the risen king.

We center ourselves around the presence of continual sin in our life, the ways that we fall short, the ways that we don't measure up, rather than on the reality that he has conquered our sin and he's given us his spirit to walk in his righteousness.

We dwell upon the former death of which we once walked in, rather than delighting in the new life that we now have in him.

Some of us were still standing at the foot of the cross on the Mount of Golgotha rather than walking through the garden with our risen, resurrected Lord.

And we wonder why we seem to have such an empty joy.

Perhaps it's because we're wallowing in the things that fill us with sorrow rather than seeking and delighting in the things that fill up that joy that's been given to us.

We often wallow in guilt, self-condemnation, shame that is so unhealthy for our souls, rather than walking in the new life and righteousness that Jesus has given us.

You see, this isn't a call to move beyond the cross.

This isn't a call to move beyond the crucifixion of Jesus.

Never would that be.

This is a call to see the whole gospel.

You see, many of us we just have a partial gospel that ends with Jesus lifeless on a tree.

We don't incorporate into our everyday life the reality that the tomb is empty.

It's a call to see in full the picture and beauty of the whole gospel of Jesus.

It's a call to be filled with all joy and knowing that the tomb is empty.

And because of that, I'm forgiven.

Because of that, I'm made alive.

Because of that, I'm seated with Christ.

I'm a part of a royal priesthood.

I'm beloved, I'm a saint, I'm justified, I'm more than a conqueror in him, I'm eternally secure, adopted into his family, a cherished child of the King who has given me life everlasting and an invincible joy.

You see, to see the cross of Jesus alone and not behold the crown he now adorns, because he has risen and overcome the world.

I want to submit to us this morning is to have a joy that feels incomplete and empty.

Church, truly there is no crown without a cross.

But truly he wears a crown.

You see, God desires for his people to be filled up and overflowing with this invincible joy.

A joy that is a gift given to us when we behold the risen Son.

But let us remember the whole gospel.

Let us remember Jesus' illustration to his disciples that there is no joy without it being birthed out of suffering.

You see, this joy, this gift is made possible because it was birthed out of inconceivable sorrow.

Jesus suffered inconceivable sorrow to give us invincible joy.

We can't fathom the suffering of Christ.

Even if we tried to set aside and tried to understand the physical reality of his crucifixion, his being beaten, spit upon, crown of thorns, stripes on his back, nailed to a cross, you and I could never search the depths or exhaust the edges of understanding the fullness of his father's wrath poured out upon him because of our sin crushing him.

We can't understand that.

Truly, there is no crown without a cross.

Truly there is no joy without sorrow.

And let us remember that the crown Jesus first adorned was not a diadem, but it was one of thorns, filled with sorrow and shame.

One of my favorite old hymns is called Man of Sorrows, what a name.

This is just a little excerpt from that hymn.

It says, bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place, condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood.

Hallelujah.

What a savior.

You see, church, we can't fathom the agony of sorrow that gave birth to our joy.

That delivered to us what could never be taken away from us.

His body on that cross became the broken cisterns that we've drank from, as his blood poured out onto the ground.

And he was emptied so we could be made full.

He was emptied by the pains of sorrow so that we could be filled with an invincible joy.

And now in him, in Christ Jesus, we fix our eyes upon a day that is coming when we will fully see him with the clarity of the light of his glory in full splendor and majesty.

And it will be as if we are unable to even remember the sorrow of our sin and the suffering that it afflicted upon him, because our invincible joy will have finally been made complete, and we will behold him forever, the risen Son, and with all joy declare holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory.

Christ died and rose again so that your joy would be made full.

And let's seek to have it made full in him.

So seek for your joy to be full.

I want us to be a people who seek, who are persistent in prayer, who relentlessly knock on the door of heaven to request of the Father, show me Jesus more.

Make him more clear to me.

Let me behold him with clarity.

Let me see the radiance of his glory.

And our promise is that he's freely going to give that to us.

But we got to be a people who seek.

We got to be people who chase down to behold the beauty of the gospel of his son.

Because the fullness of our joy is in beholding the rising of the sun.

It's like this.

This is the endeavor of Christian life.

It would be as if we were sitting on a hilltop just before dawn.

And as the sun comes up over the horizon, we take in every awestruck moment that it starts to illuminate the beauty of the creation around us until finally it reaches its climax and it hangs in the sky, and we see the fullness of all its glory.

That's what we should be like.

Revelation 21, 23 says this.

And that city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it.

For the glory of God gives it light.

And its lamp is the Lamb.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.