Unspeakable Joy — John 16:16-33 (10.11.2026)

If you will remain standing for the reading of God's Word, we're reading from

John chapter 16, starting in verse 16, and I will skip around a little bit, but I'll let you know.

John 16 · chapter mention

Chapter 16. A little while, and you'll see me no longer.

And again, a little while, and you'll see me. Down to verse 20.

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.

When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come.

But when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for

joy that a human being has been born into the world.

So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will

rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

And 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. And then verse 26.

And that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask

the Father on your behalf.

For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me,

and have believed that I came from God.

I came from the Father, and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the

world and going to the Father.

His disciples said, Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech.

Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you.

This is why we believe that you came from God.

Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming. Indeed, it has come.

When you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.

Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you,

that in me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation,

but take heart, I have overcome the world.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

All right, go ahead and be turning your Bibles to John 16. If you don't have

it open there yet, and if you don't have a Bible with you, that's okay.

We'll have the scripture on the screen and also in the bulletin insert that

you received when you came in.

As you're finding your way to John 16, I'll pray for us one more time.

Father, we do give you thanks for your word.

And we do ask, Lord, that you would open our ears to hear what you have to say

in these incredible verses that we are looking at today.

What amazing promises are here. What amazing truths are here.

Lord, if we will just see them.

So help us by your Holy Spirit to see, to apply your word in Jesus' name, amen.

So let me just start out with an incredible story from church history.

This is a passage, maybe you caught it, about joy in the midst of hard things,

and it's a joy that the world cannot take from us.

One example of this from church history is a man named Polycarp of Smyrna,

who was one of the last surviving people, maybe the last surviving person to

have personally known one of the apostles.

He was a disciple of the apostle John who wrote the book that we're studying right now.

And in AD 155, he's brought by the Roman pro-counsel into an arena,

to face charges that he will not swear allegiance to Caesar,

and reproach Christ.

This is what the pro-counsel says to him.

Swear by Caesar and reproach Christ, and I will set you free.

And he's facing immediate death if he doesn't do this.

And here's what the witnesses wrote down was his reply.

Eighty and six years I have served him and he has done me no wrong.

How then can I blaspheme my king and savior?

You threaten me with fire, which burns for an hour and then is extinguished.

But you know nothing of the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment

reserved for the ungodly.

Why are you waiting? Bring on whatever you want.

They brought the mob, they brought wood and they piled it up and they lit a

fire and they tied him up and put him in the fire.

And witnesses recorded that he prayed with a peaceful joy as he burned,

thanking God for the privilege of being counted worthy to be numbered among the martyrs.

He looked beyond the fire to the one who'd conquered death.

He had a joy that could not be taken from him, even in death.

What an example from church history of the kind of joy that Jesus is talking

about in this very passage.

So we are nearing the end of the farewell discourse. course,

we have heard a lot about joy in this passage and in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Maybe you remember Jesus said in verse 11, these things have spoken to you that

my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

He's told them about this, but now he's talking to them about the persecution

that they're going to experience. In chapter 16, at the end of chapter 15,

he's talked about how the world has hated him and the world's going to hate his followers.

The world has persecuted him and the world's going to persecute his followers.

And so they need to be prepared for that. And he's telling them now very specifically

in this passage that he's going to go away. What's he talking about?

He's talking about his death.

And so he's going to die on the cross. And for three days, he is going to be

in a tomb and his disciples are going to go through their most difficult trial of their lives.

They're going to question their faith. They're going to question everything.

They're going to think that all that they have believed and all that they've

given their lives to was for nothing.

And Jesus is telling them, but you're going to see me again.

And then when you do, you're going to have a joy that no one can take from you.

That's the theme of this passage. That's what Jesus is talking about in this

passage, is a sustaining, unshakable joy that's available to every believer.

So this morning, we're going to look at that. We're going to learn a few things

from it. We don't have time to learn all that there is to learn from it.

But we are going to learn that in this world, yes, we will have trouble.

We will have tribulation, he says, at the end, but he says, take heart.

I've overcome the world.

In this world, there's going to be hardship. There's going to be pain.

It's not going to all be, you know, rainbows and butterflies.

But we can have a sustaining, abiding, lasting, unshakable joy, even in hardship.

So we're going to look at four things, the foundation of joy,

the forging of joy, the fulfillment of joy, and the fight for joy.

So number one, the foundation of joy is the resurrection.

The resurrection is the bedrock of Christian joy.

He tells them that once he's raised from the dead, once they see him again after

his death, burial, and resurrection, it's then that they are going to have a

joy that no one can take from them. Why is that?

How can Jesus make such a claim? And how do we also receive the same promise?

Well, he can say this because the resurrection changes everything.

The resurrection ushers in an entirely new world. And we don't often think about it this way.

Sometimes we simplify the gospel down, and this isn't wrong,

but we think mostly about the

fact that Jesus secured our justification on the cross. And yes, he did.

Amen. He died that we might be forgiven of our sins, that we might stand before

God and not be sinful and incur his wrath.

He died to justify us before him. But what else did he do?

He was raised to give us newness of life, to walk in newness of life.

He was raised and brought in and ushered in a new world. We have to connect

his resurrection to the whole story of scripture.

Those of us who've been in the deep discipleship class we're doing on Wednesday,

this has been so helpful, thinking about the entire story of scripture.

If you haven't come on a Wednesday night, we would love to have you.

At such a good time just studying deep the word of God.

But we've been talking about the whole of scripture, that we sometimes,

when we think about the story of the Bible, we think we start with the fall.

We think immediately about how Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and brought

about judgment and how that changed everything.

But we need to start before that. There are two chapters before that that talked

to us about what the world was like before sin entered into the world.

And Adam and Eve were made in a sinless state, in a sinless world.

They were walking in with God in a paradise.

God dwelt with them. They had a relationship with God.

It's hard for us to even fathomed walking with him in the garden?

And that is what we were made for.

We were made to live in God's presence.

And Psalm 16 tells us that in his presence, there is fullness of joy.

And at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore.

There was more joy in the garden than we could ever imagine.

And Adam was our representative. This is the part that sometimes as modern people,

we have a hard time wrapping our minds around. Like, why did Adam's sin have such an effect on us?

Adam was our covenant head, our representative.

He represented the entire human race in the covenant between God and humanity.

God had made a covenant. He'd given him parameters.

You can eat from the trees of all the fruit of the trees of the garden,

except for this one tree, you shall not eat of it. These are the parameters of the covenant.

And he breaks those parameters.

He transgresses. He steps over the boundary line, he and Eve both.

And they take the fruit and they eat of it.

And it breaks the perfect world that God created.

It breaks the perfect relationship. And Adam and Eve are forced out of the garden as a result.

They're driven out of the garden. They're driven out into exile because they

cannot in their sinful state dwell with God the way that they had.

And this is what we inherit. We're born into this world. The Bible says we're

born in sin. We're born in Adam.

We inherit that curse, that brokenness that Adam caused.

We are in his lineage. And so our only hope is a new representative before God

who doesn't break covenant with him.

And because we've already been born into the lineage of Adam,

we must die to that lineage and we must be born again.

That's why the Son of God came and became a man, so that he could be a second

Adam, a second representative for humanity.

Jesus lives a perfect life as our representative before God.

He never once sinned. He never broke covenant with God.

And on the cross, Jesus represents sinful humanity and pays for Adam's sin.

He takes the wrath of God upon himself. He dies the death that humanity,

that we sinful people deserve.

And because he's our representative in that, his death counts as our death too.

And so it's in this way that we can die to the lineage of Adam and be born again,

as Jesus talks about in John chapter three, into a new head,

a new representative, Jesus Christ,

our representative before God, our righteousness before God.

That's why Colossians 1 calls Jesus the firstborn from the dead.

Upon his resurrection, Jesus established the beginning of a new humanity, a new creation.

This new creation is Eden restored, and right now we have it in seed form.

He gives to us the Holy Spirit as a down payment, a deposit for the Eden,

the new creation, the paradise, his kingdom that is coming.

What incredible news this is. All of this is wrapped up in the fact that Jesus

has been raised from the dead.

And so no one can take our joy from us.

Not only have we been justified, but we have been given humanity restored, Eden restored.

The world is going to be made right.

And those who are in Jesus Christ will live in it, will reign with him one day.

This is good news, friends. This is the gospel.

Not only that you were forgiven, you were forgiven for what?

So that you can live with God.

So that you can dwell with him one day.

And he gives us his Holy Spirit now to be in us, to dwell with us while we await his return.

The new heavens and the new earth, the kingdom of God here now, full of joy forever.

So that's the first thing we need to see. If we've lost our joy,

we need to come back to this. This is our foundation. This is what we stand on.

This is where all of our joy rests is in what Christ has done for us and what

is coming to us because of what he's done.

That's the foundation of our joy. Secondly, we can learn from this passage that

trials are the forging of our joy.

That resilient joy isn't produced through having everything go perfectly in

life, having no hardship in this life, but a resilient, lasting joy.

The kind of joy that we all actually want, if we think about it,

The kind of joy we actually need in a broken world is forged through difficulty.

Look at how honest Jesus is about the difficulty that they're going to face.

He's telling, he says over and over, you will be sorrowful.

You're going to go through hard things. At the end of this, he's saying,

in this world, you will have tribulation.

And he's been talking about it. As we said, he's been talking about how the

world is going to hate them. The world is going to persecute them.

These very men that he's talking to are going to be martyred for their faith.

All but the apostle John. And they tried to kill him.

Church history tells us that they threw him into boiling oil and it did nothing to him.

So they exiled him to Patmos. We visited Patmos on our trip to Greece and saw

the cave where he prayed and received the revelation and wrote the revelation.

So he's talking to me. This is real stuff. Like he's telling them,

you're going to have a hard things happen, but I want you to know you're also

going to have a joy that the world can't touch.

And so how does that happen? Well, he says in verse 20, your sorrow will turn into joy,

not just like after the sorrow, then the joy, which wouldn't be wrong to say,

but he's actually saying something even deeper.

He's saying your sorrow is going to turn into, give birth to joy.

And how does it do that? Well, one way it does this, because when we go through

sorrow, when we go through hard things, it actually pushes us toward Jesus,

who is the only one who can actually satisfy us.

And if you've been around a little while, you know this, you know,

you put your hope in your career and then your career fails you.

You lose your job or whatever, you know, and in that you realize,

no, I have to go to Jesus or you put your joy in your family or you put your

joy in some other relationship or, you know, your wealth and you lose it.

Like we've all experienced this in some way, shape or form that when we go through

hard things, it drives us toward Christ, who is our only source of lasting and full joy.

The other way that sorrow turns into joy is that it forges into the kind of

people that aren't easily shaken by life's trials.

You know, even secular studies have recognized this.

I was just here, I was listening to a podcast and I forgot to write down the

details of it, but they were talking about the longest running study on human

happiness. It was by Harvard and it was started in the thirties.

I think it might've been 1938.

And they studied these, this group of men and their descendants.

So this is like multi-generational study on happiness.

And what they found was one, the people who had the greatest happiness,

this is just secular study, the people who had the greatest happiness in life,

one, they had the most deep connections and relationships with other people.

Secondly, they weren't the people who never went through anything hard.

Actually, the people who went through the hardest things were the people who had the most joy.

Now, isn't that interesting? And we can see the same principle long before these

sociologists discovered it at Harvard.

In James chapter 1, verses 2 through 3, James writes, count it all joy,

James 1:2–3

my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know the testing

of your faith produces steadfastness.

Our tests, our trials, our hardships are forging us into the kind of people

who can have a resilient joy.

And if we never go through anything hard, then we will have a fickle,

thin, fleeting, shallow joy that cannot stand up against the tests that we face.

Jesus says in verse 22 that the sorrow that his disciples are about to experience.

He compares it to the experience of a mother in labor.

And of course, Jesus is talking about this in a time before epidurals, before hospitals.

I have been alongside my wife for all five of my kids' births.

And as much as my wife suffered in those hours, I never thought once about looking

at her and saying, you know what? Why don't we, this looks hard.

Let's go home. Forget all of this.

Forget all of this. let's quit, right? That's ridiculous.

That's ridiculous. The point is that, you know, yes, this is absolute.

Yes. She's saying she's going to die, but you know, this is going somewhere.

This is going somewhere. And, and, and the, and the result is going to be worth the pain.

That's what Jesus is saying. He says, when that mother holds her little baby,

she forgets about all the pain that she just endured.

It swallows up the suffering. The joy swallows up and overwhelms the suffering.

And friends, for believers, even if we die in the midst of our suffering,

there is coming a day when the joy that we receive will swallow up and make

us forget all of the sorrow that we have experienced in this life.

Because there's purpose in our pain. The, the, the.

Suffering that we go through now is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, Paul says.

Beyond all comparison, the suffering doesn't compare to the joy that's coming.

The hardships we go through in this life are always going somewhere.

We only go through difficulty when our good, loving, and sovereign Father deems it necessary.

Listen to this in 1 Peter 1.6 and look at it on the screen.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary,

those are important words, you have been grieved by various trials.

Never, ever, ever give in to the temptation to think that the suffering that

you are going through is pointless.

It is never pointless.

It is always and only if it is necessary for the joy that God wants to bring

to you through it and the glory that he wants to bring to himself.

We know, and maybe you've heard this verse so many times that you are too familiar

with it, but I hope you'll hear it with fresh ears.

Romans 8, 28, that God uses the difficulties in our lives for our good.

We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good,

for those who are called according to his purpose.

Everything is being used for our good in the end by our good and loving and sovereign God.

So we can trust him to work in our lives through every circumstances.

So the resurrection conviction is the foundation of our joy.

And hardship is the forging of our joy.

And now I want us to see that prayer is the fulfillment of our joy.

Look at verses 23 and 24. 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've asked nothing in my name, asking you will receive that what your joy may be full.

Here, Jesus connects asking in prayer and receiving answers to prayer with full joy.

And here's what I want us to see.

Jesus says in, in verse 27, for the father himself loves you because you have

loved me and have believed that I came from God.

The father loves everyone who trusts in his son, Jesus Christ.

And, and so we have a relationship with him.

But what I want us to understand is that sometimes we miss the way that relationship

works, the way that that friendship works.

Some of you, maybe you are bored with prayer.

Maybe some of you are asking for things and you're not seeing answers.

I think one reason could be that you're using prayer all wrong.

If you're bored with prayer, if you're asking for things and you're not seeing

God answer, it could be that you're using prayer all wrong. Back in the 80s

and 90s, if you lived in a really nice house, you might have an intercom.

Okay and a handful of you in this room know what I'm talking about so the purpose

of an intercom would be for you kids.

That you let's say you're down in the basement and you're playing your Atari,

okay and you need mom and you want mom to bring you a snack,

so you just walk over to the intercom and you just boop and you press that button

hey mom I could use some cheese balls down here and some gushers, if you got some gushers.

Healthy snack. That's what you use an intercom for.

And John Piper has said that we often treat prayer like a peacetime intercom,

but it was meant to be a wartime walkie-talkie.

We treat prayer like that intercom system. Hey, God could use a little snack

here. Got a little, you know, need a little help with this.

And it's really meant to be a wartime walkie-talkie. When I was a firefighter.

You would never go into a house fire without your radio, without your walkie-talkie.

And the purpose of that radio was to inform command out in the road what you

need and what's going on inside the fire.

Because in a house fire, it's dark, it's hot, it's dangerous.

Things can happen unexpectedly. You might need another line,

another hose line to be brought in. you might need somebody to come in and from

a different direction. You might need somebody to break windows to relieve the house of smoke.

And you need to be able to, in one split second, connect with command outside.

Now, imagine the absurdity if command was standing out there and they heard

a, hey, I could use a cheeseburger in here, right? A lunch order come through.

If that happens, either that guy is hilarious or he's forgotten what he's doing.

He's forgotten his purpose. He's forgotten what he's in there for.

And I think, I just feel like the Lord was convicting me of this this week,

that there are many times when that's what my prayer life is like.

I forget that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and

principalities and real forces of evil in this present darkness.

Sometimes I forget that there are people literally dangling over hell and that

I might be the only one that's going to speak up and warn them of the judgment to come.

Sometimes I forget that I am a soldier of Jesus Christ and my purpose in this

world is to make disciples who make disciples.

And when that happens, I am tempted to use prayer like an intercom instead of a walkie-talkie in war.

This relationship with God, yes, he loves us more than we can wrap our minds

around. But friends, the relationship with God all through scripture is a partnership.

When he invites you into relationship, he invites you into a partnership.

This goes all the way back to Eden, what we were talking about earlier.

He makes Adam and Eve and he doesn't say, y'all just splash and play in the water, have fun.

He says, I'm giving you a mandate.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth with the image of God.

He is always, when he has a relationship with human beings, it is a missional partnership,

a working partnership, not because God needs servants to carry out his desires,

but because he knows that our greatest joy is found when we have purpose.

We see that with Jesus. Jesus is the, make whatever, if you have a picture of

Jesus in your head, of him walking around gloomy and boring,

get that out of your head. That's not Jesus.

Hebrews 1 says that he was filled with oil. He was anointed with an oil of gladness

beyond all his companions. There was no one who had a gladness or a joy that could touch his.

That's why when he says to his disciples, I'm telling you these things so that

you can have my joy, so that my joy can be in you.

None of them went, what's he talking about?

Why does he want us to have his joy?

No, they all went, what? We can have his joy?

They wanted what he had.

Jesus had a joy that no one could touch. And what was his life about?

It was a partnership with his

father. He was carrying out the mission that his father gave him to do.

If you're bored with prayer, if you struggle to pray, it could be that you've

forgotten what it's for.

Use prayer as a partnership.

Remember what we prayed in the Lord's Prayer today?

How does the Lord's Prayer begin? How did Jesus teach us to pray?

Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. May your name be hallowed.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So the first thing we pray before we get to, you know, give us this day our

daily bread and, you know, before any of our needs is, Father,

your kingdom, your name, your will, and bring it here and use me to do it.

Use me to bring heaven to earth today in my home.

Use me to bring heaven to earth in my workplace, heaven to earth in my neighborhood.

When we use prayer that way, we will experience the kind of joy that Jesus is

promising, full joy, knowing that we are being used by him in the partnership

that he intended to bring his kingdom to earth.

So we've seen that the resurrection is the foundation of Christian joy,

that hardship forges our joy, and that partnering with God through prayer fulfills our joy.

Now, lastly, we need to fight for joy because here's what in verse 22, he says.

So also you will have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will

rejoice and no one will take your joy from you.

So first of all, if you are a believer, this is an encouraging promise.

Sorrows will certainly come and they may temporarily dampen your sense of joy

for a time, but your joy can never fully be taken from you.

It may be overshadowed for a brief time, but it can never be taken, even in sorrow.

There is always, for believers, that glowing ember of joy that never extinguishes. That's the promise.

Because the resurrection is final, it is accomplished, and that is the foundation

of our joy, then no one nor any circumstance can take our joy.

This is the promise that we need. And And secondly, this statement,

no one will take your joy is there's, there's an element of instruction embedded in this as well.

If no one has the power, no one has the ability to take a Christian's joy from

them, then we must be careful that we do not give it away.

The Bible is clear that we are commanded to be joyful in God.

Over and over in the scriptures, here are just a few. Look at these on the screen.

Psalm 100 verses 1 through 2.

Psalms 100:1–2

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness.

Psalm 37, 4, delight yourself in the Lord. Psalm 32, 11, be glad in the Lord

and rejoice, O righteous. Shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

In Philippians 4, 4, Paul writes, rejoice in the Lord always.

And again, I will say rejoice.

He doesn't say rejoice in the Lord when everything's going well.

He says always, and don't forget, he is writing this letter to the Philippians

from prison. No one suffered.

The suffering that Paul endured was hardly, it's hardly thinkable for us.

Beating, stoning, shipwreck, abandonment, imprisonment over and over and over.

And yet you read the book of Philippians. this man is bursting with joy.

He says, rejoice in the Lord always. So here's how I want to close this morning.

Your joy cannot be taken from you. No person can take it. No circumstance can take it.

Your joy might be overshadowed for a season and you may have to fight harder

than you've ever fought before, but you can have joy even in the midst of trial.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6.10 that he is sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

Even in sorrowful times, he has rejoicing underneath it.

The Lord intends for us to be a people who have unshakable joy in the face of a watching world.

You and I were saved to be brought into a missional partnership with God to

bring heaven down to earth, to partner with God, to help seek and to save the lost.

And here is what your lost co-workers need and your lost friends need and your

lost family members and your lost neighbors. Here is what they need.

They need to see a person whose joy is rooted in something bigger than this world.

Your friends, your lost friends, your lost coworkers, the people that are watching

your life, they need to see a joy that cannot be shaken.

They need to see you be able to say, yes, this is hard.

Yes, sad. Yes, this is, yes, I have sorrow, but even in this sorrow, I am still rejoicing.

They need to see, in other words, faith in action. This is what it looks like.

To cling to him, to trust him.

They need to see your faith in action. How are they gonna see that Jesus has

overcome the world but by his followers living like it?

That his followers would have peace and joy no matter what comes,

that cannot be taken from us.

So as we close, how's this going for you? This is just a chance for you to reflect. How's this going?

Can those around you see a joy that isn't shaken by a hard day or a hard trial?

Can they see something different? Here's the good news, believer.

If this joy that we're talking about is founded on the resurrection of Christ,

and it is, and if it isn't dependent on circumstances, and it isn't,

and if it can't be taken from you, and it can't, then deep abiding joy is always

just one repentance away from us.

One surrender.

It's always within grasp from us.

What do we do if we've lost our joy? We fix our attention on the death and resurrection

of Jesus Christ as our foundation of joy.

We turn back to our relationship with Jesus as the only thing that can truly satisfy our souls.

We turn back to prayer as a missional partnership, and we reclaim the joy that

has been given to us that we gave away.

So take heart, believer, as you fight for joy. Jesus has overcome the world. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for these promises. We thank you for a joy that cannot be taken.

I pray you would help us fight for it. I pray you would help us not lose heart.

Lord, I pray that as we go through hard things, we would keep our eyes fixed

on you, that we would worship you,

that we would sing your praises, that we would give thanks to you,

that we would stand on the bedrock of your resurrection, of the coming kingdom of which we are heirs.

Lord, I pray that you would make us a people who do not fear bad news, as your word says, but,

that are not easily shaken, but that use our hardships as an opportunity to

be a witness to the watching world.

I pray you would make us a people who pray like missional partners.

God, that if we've been using prayer as a peacetime intercom,

we would stop. We would begin using it as a wartime walkie-talkie that we would

cry out to you in the name of Jesus and pray for the things that you would pray for, Lord.

And I pray you would use us and that we would experience a fullness of joy because of it.

Pray this all in Jesus' name, amen.