The Path to Joy: Love, Faith, Hope
John 16:24-33
Introduction: The passage
we’ll be looking at today is one I planned
to preach on last Sunday. It’s been
often said, “man plans, and God laughs!”
He clearly had another message He wanted us to hear last week and I’m
thankful that Jim Beliasov was ready to give it. Some folks had their plans
changed again this week while they waited for weather conditions to improve
enough to make travel safe. God has a
plan for us that we have seen alluded to in this gospel. Jesus wants His disciples to experience true joy – and as He is preparing them
for what will be a painful transition. He lays out in these verses some key
attitudes that will enable them (and us) to experience the joy that He wants
for us even when the path takes an unexpected turn. We sometimes can get the impression from
people that God must be a “cosmic killjoy” – we are always talking about the
things He doesn’t want us to do! God does
want to save us from destructive and harmful behaviors that will ruin our
relationships or destroy our bodies.
Psalm 1 begins with a statement that makes it clear that real happiness
is what God wants for us, and it is not found in going the way of the world:
“Blessed [happy] in the
man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way
of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the
Law of the Lord and in His Law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1,2).
Remember what Jesus said in John 10, “I am come that you might have life, and that
you might have it more abundantly…”
That’s his desire for us, joyful, purposeful, fullness of life: the
abundant life. Joy in the Lord is a part
of His plan for us, but what does that mean?
One preacher said “…joy is fun without the hangover…” Maybe, but that doesn’t go far enough. Consider the context! How can we experience
joyful living, when even this context makes it clear that we are going to
experience hatred from the world if we follow Jesus? How can we have joy if we are going to pass
through trials and tribulation? Paul said “…now
these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the
greatest of these is love” (I Cor 13:13). Jesus alludes to these same three
attitudes as He describes the path to joy that He will lay out for his
followers.
The Big Idea: True joy is found in loving God, taking Him at His
word, and trusting in His promises, both for today and for our tomorrow.
I. The Path
to Joy begins with the love of God (24-27a). “…the Father himself loves you because you
have loved me…” It’s hard to pick
out a single over-riding concept that John has chosen to emphasize, but one of
his “big ideas” is set forth repeatedly in the Gospel of John and emphasized
again in his first epistle: God loves us, and because He first loved us we
should love Him and love each other.
First,
let’s take a look at the context: Jesus sets forth a key to experiencing a
joyful, joy filled, life in a world full of suffering: prayer to the Father,
through the Son (24). “Until now you have
asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy will be full
(or complete).” In a world marked by hatred and trouble God’s
desire for us is that we experience fullness of joy. Prayer sets the stage for that experience.
Praying
in the name of Jesus is not about merely tacking the phrase “in Jesus’ name,
amen” on the end of our prayers. It is consciously recognizing that we are in
Christ, and on the basis of His righteousness we have been reconciled to God,
and so embracing the privilege of approaching the throne, knocking, seeking,
asking. As we do that we will have joy,
because our will and our asking will be conformed to His will. We will want more
and more what He wants. Because He has loved us, and we know He has
loved us, we love Him, and we come, seeking and asking in Jesus name.
The Love of God is the foundation for all of
this (v.27): “For the Father himself
loves you and you have loved me…”
This theme has been important in John’s Gospel, as it also is in his
first epistle. Almost sixty times some form of the English word “love” appears
in the gospel. The two different Greek
words that John uses don’t seem to be strictly differentiated. In general we
can say that agapao, speaks of love
that is based on choice, on commitment to a relationship, phileo has more of the idea of his familial affection for us. That’s the root that is used here in this
context. He not only has chosen us to be
His children (see I John 3:1), He has genuine fatherly affection for us. Not all of us experienced that from our human
fathers. But God’s love is true and eternal and it never fails.
Of course it’s not only John’s Gospel but the entire salvation story that
is based on God’s love: “For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” (John 3:16a). That love of God for us is so
transformational that John has said twice that "A new commandment I give to you, that you
love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 "By this all will know
that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35; cf. 15:17).
In his
first epistle in almost every chapter he touches on the subject of love. In 1
John 4:7-21 it is clear that the foundation is God’s love for us. Our response
is to love him, and to love one another.
1 John 4:10-11 “In this is love,
not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. 11
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
1 John 4:19-21 “We love Him
because He first loved us. 20
If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar;
for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom
he has not seen? 21 And this
commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
Friends, we can’t overemphasize the importance of
what Jesus is saying here. We choose to
love each other because God has loved us. But that’s not all. We are a family.
Which means we care for each other and watch out for each other, and bear one
another’s burdens. As we spend time together and invest in each other’s lives
we also grow in our fileo love, we
develop genuine, sincere affection for one another. We’re a family! And that is
part of the Father’s provision for us to experience real joy, a rejoicing in
the big picture that let’s us get past the burdens of the moment. True
joy is found in loving God and each other! It also means taking Him at His word, and trusting in
His promises, both for today and for our tomorrow.
II. The Path
to Joy is grounded in faith, taking God at His Word (27b-32). “…we believe that You came forth from
God…” Faith is another key idea that John writes about. It includes affirming the true doctrines that
God has revealed (that might be called intellectual faith). That is important
and necessary. There are absolutes
and God’s word is true. It also means
trusting him, and submitting to his Lordship in our lives. James drove this
idea home when he said “You believe that
God is one, you do well. The demons also believe, and tremble.” This summer we hope to have a Sunday School
class on “What we believe.” Each week we’ll take a different statement from our
church’s doctrinal statement and analyze it in the light of Scripture, and then
ask “What difference does this make in my life?”
Faith is one of the key
interests of John in writing his account of the life of Jesus. We’ve referred many times to the statement he
makes at the end of chapter 20, “Many
other signs did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in
this book. These have been written that you might believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in
His name.” It’s the same word that was used in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life.”
The NIV starts v.31 with an exclamation
from Jesus, “You believe at last!” Since there were no punctuation marks in the
ancient Greek manuscripts, it could be possible in this context to read a
question, “Do you finally believe?” After all they had seen and heard the disciples
finally have come to believe a fundamental truth: Jesus is who He claimed to
be: “…you have believed that I
came forth from the Father…” Here the language is in the Greek tense that
indicates a past action with continuing results. Jesus came from the Father and
was now with them. In the context of John’s gospel this is saying not only that
they affirm his pre-existence, but also have come to recognize his deity. He is
the Son of God. They have come to a
correct, albeit partial understanding, an accurate (but still incomplete) faith
in who Jesus is. But part of what He had
been teaching was yet to “sink in.”
The
disciples still don’t understand all that Jesus is saying. They repeat: in John
16:30 “…By this we believe that You came forth from God.” That is correct, but notice that Jesus is consistently referring
to “the Father” while the disciples simply say he came from “God.” Jesus has
been revealing the Trinity to the disciples, but that are not quite ready to
receive that truth. He taught them about the coming Comforter, the Father, and
also revealed His own deity clearly and repeatedly. That is something they
would be able to put together only later.
But what about the second thing Jesus said, “Again, I leave the world and go to the Father"
(John 16:28). They don’t even mention that, it’s as if they didn’t hear it –
certainly they didn’t yet understand and believe it. After the resurrection
their eyes, ears, and minds would be opened and Jesus’ teaching “pre-cross”
would strengthen their faith (and ours!) in that day!
One point here for us is that Jesus’
word is absolutely reliable. The Word of God is true, we can take God at His
Word! To believe the Word we have to hear the Word: Faith comes from hearing,
and hearing by the Word of Christ. That means reading the Bible consistently
and persistently. It means taking in its teaching and engaging our minds and
hearts in what it says. We should “long for the pure milk of the Word that we
might grow thereby…” (I Peter 2:2). True
joy is found in loving God, taking Him at His word, and trusting in His
promises, both for today and for our tomorrow. Because we love God and believe
Him, we look ahead confidently, expectantly. That is hope.
III. The
Path to Joy means abiding in Hope, confidently expecting victory in
Jesus (33). “…in me
you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble…” The word “hope”
does not appear in these verses, but the concept permeates it. In fact it
permeates this entire context. “Hope” in the biblical sense is not wishing for
something that you know probably won’t happen.
On the contrary, hope is a confident expectation about the future based
on God’s revealed truth. One of the key purposes of this entire discourse is
that Jesus wants his disciples to have hope, even when it seems that the world
is falling apart around them. Have you ever experienced a season in your life
when you were overwhelmed with hopelessness and despair? I have been there: desperate,
near the point of giving up, unable to see the truth. Jesus was right there, waiting for me to open
my eyes and to take His hand.
Although
we live in a world in rebellion against God, we can have peace, what Paul would
call “a peace that passes understanding,” a peace that goes beyond
circumstances, because we are “in Christ.”
“In the world you will have trouble
(tribulation)…” Jesus did not hide the truth from his disciples – he did
everything possible to prepare them for what they would encounter. Trouble
would come, but have peace, be of good cheer, because He, Jesus, has overcome
the world. Jesus wins! If God is for us, who can stand against us! Paul knew
this truth when he said “Rejoice in the
Lord always, again I say, rejoice!”
What is God
saying to me in this passage? True joy is found in loving God, taking Him at His
word, and trusting in His promises, both for today and for our tomorrow.
What would God have me to do in response to this passage? The truth of this passage is not a easy one that you
simply affirm and do. It’s a path we walk, a way life that we grow into. We all
want to be happy, we look in the wrong places, God promises us JOY if we’ll
love Him, believe His Word, and confidently hope in His promises. AMEN
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