Take your heart back, and be of good cheer...

“Overcoming”

(John 16:29-33, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, January 31, 2010)

John 16:29-33 His disciples said, "Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! ³⁰ 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." ³¹ Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? ³² 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. ³³ 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."

**Look at the use of this expression in Matthew 9:22 and Mark 6:50 and consider the meaning: take heart, take courage, be of good cheer… How does someone lose heart?

Q: What encouragement does Jesus give His disciples concerning the tribulation of the world?

A: "Take heart; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

– Is your true happiness in this life in the absence of tribulation, or in the overcoming of it?

Now we know… (29-30)

The first few verses of this passage may seem unnecessary. They make the disciples look over-confident. Maybe that’s why we need to hear them.

Jesus is going to the cross very shortly. The entire next chapter is Jesus’ prayer. After that comes the Lord’s arrest and death. So this is it for the disciples… These overconfident words, “Now we know,” and “We believe” are their last words recorded before the return of Judas as a traitor. Very soon they will look like people who do not know up from down, who do not believe in themselves or anyone else, and who could not overcome anything. They will all run away.

When they say, “Now we know,” and “We believe,” they seem to be responding to something Jesus said. He said, “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” Is this what they know and believe?

“I came from the Father.” No one else has ever done that. Every person after Adam and Eve had no beginning until one cell met another cell. Jesus became man, but somehow, He was who He was before that in heaven with the Father. “I have come into the world.” That is plain enough. They have been with Him in the world. They are witnesses of His life, His words, and His miracles. “Now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” This can’t be very clear to them. What could He mean?

Yet the disciples make it sound like suddenly everything is all clear for them for the first time. He has told them before this point about how he will leave the world and something about how he will go to the Father, but they have never really known how to deal with His statements. Taking in a fact in the deepest way can take some time. The way that Jesus is going to leave the world and go to the Father will be first through His death and then through His rising from the dead. There is nothing plain or easy to understand about death and resurrection.

They may finally accept in some way some of what He has said. They say they know that Jesus knows all things, and that they do not need to question Him. They say they know that Jesus came from God. But how well do any of us here today really know something like that? How much do we really trust God? When you face some difficult trouble, in your heart, are you aware that Jesus knows all things? Do you question God about what He is doing in your life? Do you trust Jesus with everything as the One who came from God and went back again?

Do you now believe? (31-32)

I suppose the disciples could be lying when they say, “Now we know,” and “We believe,” but I don’t think so. I think they really mean it, but I think that they don’t have an appropriate sense of their own weakness. Very soon their lives will not be a great display of their knowledge or their faith. They will be scattered. They will go home. They will not even be together. They will leave Him. He will be alone. Jesus knows that, and this is why He says, “Do you now believe?” He knows that they do not believe as much as they may think they believe.

His disciples will abandon Him, but Jesus says, “The Father is with me.” Who can really understand what it was like between the Father and the Son during that awful moment when Jesus took our sins and became the sacrifice for us, turning away the wrath of God? We do know what He said on the cross from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” But do you know all of what that means? Do you trust in it as you ought to?

Peace and victory in Jesus Christ (33)

Jesus does not seem overly impressed with the power of their “Now we know,” and “We believe.” He is deliberately telling them that their knowing and believing will be shown to be very weak. It will not be the source of the “overcoming” that they need. Sometimes we think that our knowing and believing is what carries us through life. But is it strong enough to do that?

There is a different answer that is much better than this, a far more powerful answer. Jesus says it in verse 33: “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.” The strength they need will be in Him and not in their own knowing and believing. In His Word and in Jesus Himself the disciples will have peace. In His Word and in Him they will overcome the world.

What is the world? Sometimes that word is used to talk about those who do not believe. Sometimes it is used to talk about this life (as opposed to the next) where we do not know and believe as well as might imagine. Sometimes it means both of these things together. In this passage Jesus is distinguishing the world from where He is going. He came from heaven into the world to do something. He is almost done. He is leaving the world and going back to the Father.

The world is a place where we regularly overestimate how much we know and how well we believe, and where life has proven to us that our strength is not what we thought it once was. The world is a place where we disappoint ourselves. But be of good cheer, take courage, take back your heart, because Jesus has overcome all of that. He has overcome the world.

Jesus is no ordinary man who thinks He knows, but He doesn’t really know, who is sure He believes, but is later embarrassed by what He said and what He did. Jesus is God, and He is speaking to you in His powerful Word. You shall overcome in Him and in His Word.

There is a big difference between trusting in the strength of your own knowing and believing and trusting in Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God, has overcome the world. He has told you this so that you can have peace: All the overcoming you need in life is here for you in Him. Starting from the strength and security of the peace that is yours in Christ, now take heart, know, believe, and spread some cheer in a world that has tribulation. The opportunity is yours. Some examples…

1. What do the disciples seem to understand?

2. Why have they not understood these things already?

3. Do they understand even now? Do they believe now?

4. What does Jesus mean when He talks about the “world” in this passage?

A Journey of Prayer - In Jesus Name

“The Father Loves You”

(John 16:23-28, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, January 24, 2010)

John 16:23-28 ²³ 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. ²⁴ Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. ²⁵ I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. ²⁶ In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.

Q: What is the Lord’s encouragement to us concerning prayer? A: “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:24)

Ask the Father in My Name (23-24)

There is something about the resurrection of our Lord after only three days that can give us hope that things can change for the better in just a little while. This positive realism is a great gift to us from God, helpful in walking through the honest difficulties of any one day. The idea that we are allowed to borrow joy from eternity through the gift of hope, hope that makes today remarkably easier, is one of the tremendous blessings of God for His people. We have been granted, through the speedy resurrection of Christ, a true sense that our trouble may only be for a season. This may account for many passages in the New Testament that speak about all the goodness of eternity being very near. Listen to this one from Hebrews 10:37-39:

Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

What do we do with this faith that we have? One of the things that we are told to do during the little while of our own days of affliction is to pray. This is something that many of us find very challenging, especially when it seems like it is not working. Our frustration with prayer is not a surprise to God. He plainly knows that many people who believe in Him will find it hard to speak to Him. He also knows that when we do speak to Him, it may seem to us that we do not get what we have asked for. That’s why He says through the Holy Spirit in James 4:2-3, “You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” That’s worth thinking about. From John 16 we learn something else about prayer, that though we may find it difficult to talk to God, and though we may have not received something that we asked for, the Father loves us, and He will give us what we ask for if we ask Him in Jesus’ name.

This asking in Jesus’ name, what does it mean? It cannot be just a magic phrase that we add to the end of every request. Part of the answer is that Jesus is the one-and-only divine Son of God, now made man, and it is through Him that our safe and bold access to the Father has been granted. Through His life and death something has happened for us. Jesus takes our prayers, He perfects them, and He offers them up to the Father. But praying in the name of Jesus must also have something to do with the will of God. When Jesus prayed on one important occasion, you may remember that He said, “Not My will, but Yours, be done.” When He taught His disciples to pray, He taught them to seek the Father’s will before they asked for their daily bread. (See also 1 John 5:13-15)

Talking to someone is about relationship. When we talk to our Father in heaven we bring the speech of a very limited creature to the only wise, loving, and powerful Creator. We should expect that the pathway to receiving from God and experiencing the fullness of joy from Him must ultimately be more about His will than our will. Could the work of prayer be something of a struggle of love, where our will is conformed to His will, and we are increasingly happy to receive what God wants for us? This is a journey of relationship where we bring our words and our hearts to God, and He changes them, so that what started out as our request in our own name, becomes something that is truly in Jesus’ name, pleasing to the will of our heavenly Father.

This perspective of a relationship where our prayers are perfected can give us a new willingness to come to God again with the excitement that He will take what we think we want, and He will use that as a starting point to give us something He has for us, perhaps in just a little while. That should be our expectation. He will give us something better than what we know enough to ask for, but He will do it in such a way that we eventually yield our will to His, and we find ourselves asking Him for the things that we have found to be better requests. The groans that come out of our mouths eventually end up being an expression of God’s own deep desires for us. This is prayer.

Figures of Speech and Plain Speaking (25)

What does God want for us? Jesus is speaking the words of John 16 at the turning of the ages. The Old Covenant life of living under all the Law of Moses is almost complete. Jesus has come as the Messiah. He is about to show the full extent of His own love for us and the Father’s love for us in His death on the cross. As the Old Covenant age is ending and the New Covenant age is about to begin, Jesus says that He has been speaking “in figures of speech, but that the hour is coming when I will tell you plainly about the Father.” Before He says these words, He is talking to His disciples about prayer, and after verse 25, He returns to that same topic of asking the Father in prayer. In between He mentions that His figures of speech will give way to plain speaking about the Father. Is there something to this plain speaking about the Father that may actually be a good prayer request for us?

It does seem that this is one important thing that God leads us to desire. It takes time for us to decide that knowing the Father is more important than anything else that we could ask for. Knowing the Father has something to do with seeing the Son, since Jesus is the visible representation of the Father. To strive to know Jesus, and through Him to be prepared for the future is a great thing to ask of God. Listen to the yearning of Paul for this great blessing.

Philippians 3:8-15 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord… ¹⁰ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. ¹² Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³ Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.

Remember it was this same Apostle who had to take a little while on one occasion to have his prayer for healing in His body changed to “Your grace is sufficient for me.… Make your power perfect in my weakness,” so that he eventually was able to say, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” He did not start by boasting gladly in his weakness, but that is where he eventually ended up, and that was apparently a prayer in Jesus’ Name. To know God more plainly is a wonderful thing for us to desire, even if we start by asking the Lord to take away the thorn in the flesh. And let’s remember that Paul does not have that thorn in His flesh today. That was just for a little while after all, and there was a purpose in it. God’s knows these things.

Because you have loved Me and believed… (26-28)

Now back to prayer again in the final verses of the passage. We have covered most of this already, today and in earlier passages in this gospel. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, came from the Father. He came into the world to do what only He could do. Now He is leaving the world and going to the Father. The New Covenant age is beginning. We will have Him as our Advocate at the right hand of the Father, and we are to make our requests known to the Father in Jesus’ name. But He seems to want us to have a new awareness of this point: The Father Himself loves us. Yes, Jesus turned the wrath of God away from us, but that wrath existed together with the love of the Father long before we were born. The solution of the cross flowed from the eternal love of the Father for His people, and it also satisfied the just demands of His holiness. The holiness and love of God embrace at the cross.

What you need to see at this moment is just how deep the love of the Father is for you. That can spur you on in all kinds of prayer, but just to know the love of God more deeply is an excellent prayer request. Jesus says here, “The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” We still wonder why it is that we don’t get everything that we ask, at least not right away. Of course, if our young children ever ask us why it is that they don’t get everything they want when they want it, we probably have an answer to that question, and it probably is not such a bad answer, yet we may decide that they are not ready to hear all of that answer at that moment, so we may say, “Because I said so.” That’s not all bad either, though it would not hurt to add, “and by the way, I do love you, even though I can’t give you what you want right now.”

I want to develop that thought of parent and child for a moment, since Jesus is telling us here about the Father’s love, and there must be something in this that we are supposed to understand. My guess is that childhood should be overwhelmingly positive, but I know that everyone has to experience some light affliction as you grow up in order to have a mature life as an adult, and God knows that. Discipline is a part of His fatherhood, and so we don’t get everything right away, and that’s His love for us too. Our affliction spurs us on in prayer, which when combined with the Scriptures enables us to know God. Ask and you will receive? Yes, but what will you receive? Will you always receive what you thought was best at first? If you do, it may take a little time depending on what you ask for. But while you wait, you can receive something even better if you are willing to keep coming to the Lord, something that may take a few years to appreciate. And with his gift of godly insight, you may also receive joy, and one day fullness of joy, and even pleasures forevermore in the eternal presence of God (Psalm 16).

When all else fails, and you have a prayer meltdown, and you don’t know what to say to God, ask the petitions of the Lord's prayer, and keep loving Jesus, and keep trusting that He has come from the Father. Trust that He came into the world for a purpose and that His purpose has something very specifically to do with you. Trust that He is with the Father now, and that His going to the Father had a purpose, a purpose that, once again, has something very particularly and definitively to do with you. And through it all, know this, that the Father Himself loves you.

1. What does it really mean to ask for things in Jesus’ name?

2. Will we always receive exactly what we ask for in the way that we expect to receive it without any restriction?

3. What are our requests of God? Do we want to understand Him and know Him plainly?

4. Have we imagined that Jesus loves us, but that the Father does not love us?

Just for a season...

“A Little While”

(John 16:16-22, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, January 17, 2010)

John 16:16-22 ¹⁶ "A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me." ¹⁷ So some of his disciples said to one another, "What is this that he says to us, 'A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me'; and, 'because I am going to the Father'?" ¹⁸ So they were saying, "What does he mean by 'a little while'? We do not know what he is talking about." ¹⁹ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, "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'? 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. ²¹ 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. ²² 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.

Q: What does Jesus assure His disciples concerning His resurrection?

A: “Your hearts will rejoice.” (John 16:22)

We do not know what He is talking about (16-19)

Jesus has been warning His disciples that He is going to the Father, and that they will face persecution. Those two facts will shape the rest of their lives. Some of these men will live for many more years. During almost all the rest of their days, Jesus will be at the right hand of the Father in the highest heavens. Also, during almost all their remaining days, they will have people in their lives who will be deeply critical of them, of their Master, and of the message that He gave them to preach. This much the Lord has already revealed to His disciples, and though He has not told any of them how long they will live, or exactly when He will return, we understand that He is preparing them for the long haul, for the many years they may have remaining on this earth.

In the verses before us today, we have something different, something very imminent, something that will happen soon, something they will experience and even see with their own eyes in “a little while.” It makes a great deal of difference to us to know how long we will have to wait for something. Most people find it very hard to be patient. In these verses Jesus is speaking to his friends about something that will take place in a little while, followed by something else that will take place just a little while later. This is not the long haul. It is all happening very soon.

We know very clearly what Jesus is talking about here, but His disciples did not understand it at all. We understand that in a little while Jesus will be crucified, He will die, and He will be buried. We know that a little while after that Jesus will rise again. We understand because we live after all this has taken place, and it is obvious after it has happened. They don’t understand because they could not think about a man like Jesus, a great miracle worker, actually dying, and in the most disgraceful way, and then somehow coming back to life. Once this all happens, it will be very obvious to them as it is now to us. Until that time, even when they think that they understand, they really are not able to take it in. As they admit among themselves, “We do not know what he is talking about.”

This ignorance about the specifics of the future is a normal part of our existence. Even when we think that we know what is going to happen next in our lives, it’s just a little game that we play with ourselves. We don’t know what is ahead of us. We do have some information given to us in the Scriptures to help us to understand our destiny over the long haul, our life in heaven, and our eternal life in the resurrection at the return of Christ, but we find it very hard to say with true certainty what will happen to us or to anyone else in a little while.

Weeping and rejoicing (20)

Jesus is different on this point. He is not just guessing when He indicates that something very major is going to happen in a little while, and that a second major thing will take place a little while beyond the first event. We know that these events of not seeing Jesus and then seeing Him again are major because of the reaction that people will have to them. The Lord indicates that the response to the first event, his death, will be divided. The disciples will weep and lament in a little while when they do not see Jesus any more. A second group, called here the world, will have a very different reaction to the death of Jesus. He says here that the world will rejoice.

“The world” as Jesus uses these words here refers to those who do not believe in Him. We all live in this world, and all of us here under the sun have much in common. But there are some in this world that are somehow different. The Bible uses the word “saints” in certain places to refer to those who are in the world, but are not of the world. This word “saints” means “the ones who are set apart,” or “holy ones.” These saints who would be deeply saddened to be separated from Jesus are simply called here “you.” We know that Jesus is talking to the eleven disciples, but they stand for the larger group of those who love Jesus. They are like the world in very many ways, but at least in this one thing they are different than the world. They love Jesus and they will be very sad when He is gone.

This sadness will be temporary. Their sorrow will turn into joy, not because they will have more time to think about the death of Jesus, and to decide that it is a good thing that He died. That will happen, but it is not what Jesus is talking about here. Their sorrow will turn into joy because in a little while they will see Him again. As Jesus speaks these words they are moving toward the end of one week, but by the first day of the very next week, he will have risen from the dead, and they will see him again, and that’s why they will be so happy.

Why can’t everyone be happy about seeing Jesus again? Paul says that in one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances more than 500 people saw Him. The apostles who gave their lives to bring the message of that resurrection to the world were convinced that it had happened. Why is it that the world would rejoice when Jesus died, and that His disciples would rejoice when He had risen? We are not given an answer to that question here. We just listen to what Jesus says, and we notice that there will be a difference between the world and the disciples, and that the weeping of the disciples will turn to joy in just a little while, since they will see the Lord again.

The trial and joy of new life (21-22)

If the weeping of the disciples will turn to joy in such a short time, is there any point to the weeping? Can they just skip it? There is a purpose in the three days of weeping, though I won’t presume to tell you what it is. Some things have to be experienced rather than talked about. Joy will come in the morning. God has made life that way. There is a future joy that somehow touches our present distress if we are ready to receive it. That joy may even come whether we think we are ready for it or not. “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.”

Too often we find ourselves coming back to the same disturbing thoughts, the same struggle between two good goals that don't seem to fit together, the same problems that we cannot seem to fix. It can be maddening. Could it be that we need to entertain the thought that the difficulty we face today is only for a season? Is there some lesson in the death and resurrection of Jesus that God has written into our lives, some pattern reinforcing this truth into the details that we care about the most, that in a little while, we'll see Jesus, and then no one will take our joy away?

Naomi and her two sons went to live in Moab, because there was a famine in Bethlehem. It must have seemed that the famine would last forever. However long it did last, it is not the big story now. While their family was away from home, her husband and two sons died. She came back to Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law Ruth as an empty woman. She thought that nothing good could ever come of her life, but that is not the way her story ended. It was not long after she and Ruth had returned before hunger and wisdom brought the young Moabite woman to the property of a man named Boaz. Before much time had passed Naomi actually had a plan. When Ruth came home from seeing Boaz one night, do you remember what Naomi said to her about how long it would take Boaz to be their kinsman-redeemer? “Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest but will settle the matter today.” In a little while Boaz married Ruth, and God had soon provided a new generation. He does that sort of thing. So Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. Life went on. Compared to the vastness of eternity it was just a little while until another descendant of Ruth, Mary, gave birth to the One who was the called by the apostle Paul, the image of the invisible God, the icon of God, Jesus the real “Son of David.”

There was a man called Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. Maybe he thought that nothing dramatically good could happen to his eyes. As Jesus was leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus heard about it. His eyes did not yet see, but his ears heard.

When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart. Get up; he is calling you." Throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" And the blind man said to him, "Rabbi, let me recover my sight." Jesus said to him, "Go your way; your faith has made you well." And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.

That's from Mark 10. Mark loves the word "immediately." You can be locked in some trouble that seems like it will never end, but it will. Many things can change for the better in a moment. It may not be today, but can you entertain the thought that winter will only last for a season? Maybe you have to wait your whole life as a blind man because the Son of David does not seem to pass by your house, yet because of the death and resurrection of the Messiah, we can say this with confidence: "In a little while you will see Jesus.” (Consider Colossians 1:15-23.) Borrow joy from the future today because of the Jesus who the disciples would see again after he died and rose again, and don’t be surprised if impossible problems that seem to last forever will soon be over because of Him.

1. What is Jesus talking about when He speaks to His disciples about “a little while” and why are they confused by His words?

2. What explains the different response of the world and the disciples to the events that will soon take place?

3. Is there some purpose to the anguish and sorrow that the disciples will face? Is there some purpose in waiting?

4. If you are in the midst of some present sorrow, could it be that you will be rejoicing in a little while, even in this life?