Jesus' Final Conversation Before Going to the Cross

So what we will be doing this morning is going to be looking at the final discourse that Jesus had, the final conversation that Jesus had before going to the cross. In John 14 to 16, we find this last conversation with his disciples. And so as we prepare our hearts to relive this story of the passion next week, we're going to just reflect on some of the words that Jesus himself gave to his disciples before he went to the cross. And we're going to be looking particularly this morning at the last snippet of this great conversation, this great upper room discourse. And so if you have your bibles with you, we're going to look at John 16:16-33.

In this extended conversation, which starts in John chapter 14 and ends in this chapter, chapter 16, Jesus begins his conversation with these words. "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God.

Trust also in me." During the course of this conversation, Jesus expands on this theme of comfort by telling them that he is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the way that we get to the Father. He promises them in this conversation the Holy Spirit, the counselor, the adviser, the comforter that would be coming to them, consoling them, sustaining them. He promises them that they will have fruitful lives being in the vine, branches in the vine, and that their lives would please God and that God would sustain them forever even though the world would end up hating them.

And then we move into chapter 16 and we come to verse 16. And we see Jesus telling his disciples that in a little while, they will see him no more. But then after a little while, they will see him again. Now at first, these words don't look too cryptic, right?

They, you know, they say what they say. But as a disciple hearing it for the first time, you wouldn't have been entirely clear on what Jesus was saying. We see the disciples struggling with this whole idea. But instead of going to Jesus to ask, you know, what do you mean by this? They sort of try and pool together their collective IQ, which seems here wasn't very high.

And they tried to find out answers to this question. Jesus, however, sees, you know, these guys around the table whispering to one another, and he sees their confusion. And then he answers them, but he doesn't answer them directly with the words that he's talking about, you know, what "in a little while" means. He rather addresses the impact of the reality that they will be facing because of these words.

The impact of being away, going away for a little while. Because Jesus knew that it would all make sense after Easter. Jesus knew it was all going to make sense. The first thing that I want us to have a look at this morning, however, is just a few aspects of this last little snippet that he talks about. The first aspect is their grief turning into joy.

Jesus begins his conversation with the disciples by saying, "Don't let your hearts be troubled" in chapter 14. "Trust God, trust also in me." But now he ends this conversation by warning them that trouble will be coming very soon. He doesn't skirt around the issue. Trouble will be coming.

Their hearts will be broken. They will experience pain and grief like they have never experienced it before. In fact, it would be such a profound grief because they would be mourning while the world is rejoicing. That's what Jesus says. While they were mourning, everyone else around them would be rejoicing.

No one would be there to carry this burden of grief with them. But be encouraged, Jesus says, because your grief will be turned into joy. In a very short time, the disciples would plumb the very depths of grief in the loss of their master in the most hideous way possible. But their grief would go away and be replaced with joy because the Lord's resurrection would overcome that grief forever. As we know, the disciples didn't factor in the resurrection into their thinking.

The Messiah wasn't connected in their mind with a resurrection from the dead. But obviously neither was the cross. But as events unfolded, they struggled to cope with this death. They struggled to cope with the enormity of what had happened, and they were so surprised at this. They were so caught off guard by just this quick rapid unfolding.

I don't think we understand just how quickly this whole process moved. It was in the middle of the night. No one was fully aware what was going on. And before they knew, their master was hanging up on the cross, breathing his last. And so they were caught by surprise, but they were caught by even more surprise and joy at the resurrection.

Jesus is trying to prepare them for both the cross and the resurrection, and he stresses that it will only be a short while. In fact, Jesus says the words "a little while" seven times in four verses. Jesus is stressing that it's only going to be for a short amount, a determined amount. And Jesus wasn't exaggerating. In a very short while, their grief was indeed turned from the most bitter pain to the most delirious joy.

And we can of course understand why the disciples would be overjoyed to see their Lord again. For someone to come back from such a brutal and obvious death would have been the most astounding and joyful experience. But Jesus uses here a very interesting image to describe the coming events. He says it will be like a woman giving birth. A woman giving birth.

It's as if a woman holding her breath in pain, and only, I guess, women will know this, holding their breath in this absolute pain, but then that release, that release of exhaling with joy. Jesus uses a similar image of the Old Testament of God's judgment. In the Old Testament, Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah spoke about God's judgment on the earth and Israel's pain in waiting for this delivery as childbirth. The Israelites were in the pains of birth while they waited for God to save them in the Old Testament. And so Jesus is playing on that word again.

Jesus is saying that while there is death and pain, hold on. Just hold on because there's joy coming around the corner. A new birth, a new creation, a new life. Just hold on. For us as Christians, this promise is an important aspect of our lives because it gives us a certain hope of a new creation.

It vindicates not only Jesus as God, Jesus as the Son of God. It also puts God's stamp of approval on what He did on the cross. It shows that what He did on the cross worked. It was effective. The rescue mission was mission accomplished.

That's what the resurrection shows. Why? Well, because we see that Jesus Himself was saved and restored by God from death to life. The resurrection energises our new life in Him. We often fail to grasp just the reality and the impact of the resurrection, but it's the bringing to birth of a whole new creation.

Paul says elsewhere in the Bible that Jesus is the firstborn of all those who will rise with Him at the end of time. Jesus is the forerunner. Jesus' resurrection shows that we will be resurrected from the dead, that death doesn't have the final say. Our life, our new creation is assured through faith in Jesus. And so Jesus says, when we come to grips with that, when we can understand just the significance of the resurrection, that truth becomes an unending source of joy.

An unending source of joy. A joy that is ours even in the midst of perplexing and grievous pain. We will never know the cost of our sin unless we experience and witness the cross. That's true. We will never understand the cost and the grievous nature of our sin if we don't witness the cross, and we will be experiencing that again this Sunday.

But we will never understand the victory of the cross unless we can bask in the glory of the resurrection. Jesus goes on and he talks about the further effect of his departure and what it means for him to be going away to the cross. In verses 23 to 28, he speaks of an intensified relationship with the Father, an intensified intimate relationship. It's something so new and so fresh that his disciples will be able to ask God directly in Jesus' name, and they will be rewarded with answered prayer. Here Jesus explains just another consequence of his death and his resurrection.

Because of the cross and the resurrection, Jesus will usher his disciples into the same kind of relationship that he has had with the Father. Jesus, through his death and resurrection, invites us into that relationship with God. It's a relationship of true intimacy. But they will do so in the name of Jesus, he says. It's on the basis of who he is and what he has done.

And so because they have loved him and believe that he came from God, the disciples will experience the fullness of God's love, he says. Now, we've misunderstood. People in general, Christians have misunderstood this passage to mean that we can ask for anything in Jesus' name and we will receive it. Just believe enough in this magical name of Jesus and you will receive that thing. But the truth is we know in reality that doesn't work.

Why? Well, if you're brutally honest, you may have tried it. You may have tried it. You may have experienced, you know, even really desperate times and have prayed that prayer, and you haven't received the answer that you would have liked. So what does Jesus mean here?

Because obviously in reality that's not the case. Well, D.A. Carson, who is an Australian scholar and theologian, writes about this passage in one of his commentaries and tells of his own prayer experience. He had begun praying with a minister friend of his and they would come together weekly and he would bring out his list of things and people to pray for. But after some time, this minister suggested that rather than going through this list, they instead pray for guidance on what God would want them to pray for. On this particular list was a nurse named Diane.

Diane had become a Christian two years before while in nursing school, but now she was diagnosed with advanced leukaemia. And she was corresponding with Doctor Carson. Her letters were filled with bitterness, anger, and frustration. And Carson was at a loss. What should he pray for her?

Miraculous healing? Inner peace? A painless death? Instead, he and his minister friend prayed for God's wisdom and then searched the scriptures and they found in God's word many promises that God would keep his people no matter what. Because they were quite sure that this young lady was a Christian, they prayed that God would honour his promises that he would keep her close to Him.

And they prayed that in Jesus' name. That was on a Monday night, he says. On Thursday, Carson received a letter from Diane that had been written on the Tuesday, the day after they had prayed. She woke that morning feeling refreshed and renewed like she had never felt before. She was singing hymns and she felt rested.

She indicated that if it were God's will, she was ready to die to go and be with Him. A few weeks later, she did die having left an incredible impression on those around her in the hospital. To have prayed in Jesus' name, to have prayed in someone else's name is actually to appeal to that person's character, to that person's personality, their attributes. In praying to Jesus, praying in his name, it means we cry out for Jesus to be who He is. It cries out for Jesus to act according to His nature.

And the more we get to know Jesus, the more intimate we are with Him, the more you can pray effectively in His name. Praying in Jesus' name effectively means we put aside our agendas, our motives, and we try to find what God's agenda is. Thus, the promise isn't so much a promise to fulfil our every whim. When Jesus says, "Pray in my name to the Father, he will give you what you desire," it isn't a promise so much to fulfil our every whim as it is a promise that Jesus will transform our hearts and transform our agendas.

The promise isn't if we pray according to Jesus' character, but that he will, that we will pray according to His character. He says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. The Holy Spirit works and talks on behalf of us. But our hearts, our motives will be changed so much that it will come in line with God's. Our agenda will come in line with God's agenda.

And therefore, we will receive what God, what we are asking for because what we ask for, God wants to give. Does that make sense? We will pray and God will give us what we desire because what we ask for is what God desires. And I'm sure if you were to reflect, and I'm not sure of your own personal journey, if you were to reflect how you prayed or how you interacted with the concept of God before you were a Christian, before you were reborn, and how you pray many years on after God has been cleaning you and making you, you know, maturing your faith, you will pray differently. You will notice that.

It will be far less self-centred. It will be far less motivated by selfishness and greed. The way we pray is changed radically by understanding God more intimately. Then Jesus moves on and in verse 29, the disciples come to a point where they realise that, well, now he's speaking clearly. Now there's no more figures of speech, no more metaphors, and we can believe what Jesus is saying.

They're starting to add things up, and they're beginning to grasp what Jesus is saying. And so they affirm in verse 30, "This makes us believe that you came from God." Jesus' reply, however, is interesting. The NRV translates it as, "You believe at last? You believe at last."

Sorry. An exclamation mark. But the Greek actually indicates that this may have been a question. Instead, Jesus may have said, "Do you really believe?" The translation of this question, according to scholars, is probably a better option.

But in whatever case, Jesus is raising an important point here. He's raising the stakes. And he says, well, okay, you might believe but it's one thing to believe now when I'm speaking all these, you know, great words, but a time is fast approaching when you will scatter and you will abandon me. The shadow of the cross, remember, is steadily creeping upon Jesus. It's only around the corner.

And it's one thing for the disciples to say they believe in the need for Jesus to go away to usher in this new world order. They're starting to catch on that he needs to leave them for some reason. But it's a very different thing that they can believe in the face of the cross, in the face of Jesus' brutal death. And not only his death, but the threat of violence on their lives.

It's a big big difference there. They think they understand what Jesus is speaking about, but he always had the cross in view. And in face of the cross, they will all fail. They will all be scattered. D.A. Carson perceptively points out that no misunderstanding, this is a quote, "no misunderstanding is more pathetic than that which thinks it no longer exists."

In other words, the misunderstanding that they didn't misunderstand Jesus was incredibly ironic. It revealed that their current basis for this new expressed faith in Jesus is actually very shallow. They misunderstood Jesus. But we also struggle with misunderstanding Jesus, don't we? How much better would it be for all of us to say rather than, you know, "I know what he's doing," saying with Paul, "I do not consider myself yet to have taken a proper understanding of grace."

The cross-shaped nature of the Christian life in which we're all called to share in the sufferings of Jesus demands a certain amount of humility. Our faith needs to be deeply rooted in the trustworthiness of God and the rock-solid reality of His grace. That is it. The trustworthiness of God and the rock-solid reality of His grace.

It doesn't depend on our grasp of truth. We can so easily become proud in the face of our neighbours who don't know God or hold different theologies, you know, to those who hold different theologies than us. We have the right theology. We have the good life. We have the good moral choices.

Meanwhile, we constantly find that we trip up on our own understanding of the truth. We think our way of thinking is the be all and the end all of living. Yet it is so proud and so disastrously misguided. Because the reality is if we truly understood grace, we'd know that we can only truly depend on God's grip of us, not our grip of Him. If we truly understood grace, grace challenges us how we understand God's actions.

Grace challenges us in how we judge other people's actions. It challenges us how we treat others. How can I treat my coworker with respect and love in the face of manipulation, in the face of distrust against me, by understanding that I don't know everything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified? That forms the basis of such an intense humility. Such an intense humility.

Everything else is stripped away. And from that, we can say, "Lord, I don't understand this person's heart. I don't understand why this person is treating me in such a way, but help me overcome my attitude towards them. Save them, Lord, because You have saved me." Do you understand?

That's a totally different way of thinking. That challenges us right to the core of our motives of why we do things if we understand grace. We can't hold onto the pride. We can't hold onto the self-righteousness. So these poor disciples thought they knew it, but they didn't.

But Jesus died for that as well. Jesus died for that as well. And Jesus finishes off his last concluding remarks to them. He concludes by saying, "I've told you these things so that you may have peace. All of what I've said from verses 14 to 16, I've given you so that you may have peace.

You will have trouble in this world. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Take heart, I have overcome the world." The reality is we will have trouble. We will have pain.

There's no two ways about it. Every disciple will prove this in their experience. Every disciple who's worth their weight in salt. Every church, including Naren, experiences this. But in that knowing, we are also to know this, that Jesus has overcome the world.

What lies ahead of him, the cross, the ridicule, the pain. Jesus would conquer. He would conquer the world in its absolute violent defiance and stubborn resistance against God. He overcame it. And knowing that, Jesus says, we are to take heart and not despair.

Yes. We do feel the pain of this world. Yes. We do feel the pain of our brokenness, of our sin. We do sometimes feel that the world rejoices in the absence even of Jesus.

Where is He? They asked. Still today, where is Jesus? Why not just come down and speak to us and make us understand who He is? If He truly is the Son of God, why not reveal Himself to us right now?

We may doubt sometimes and we may fall, but Jesus assures us that such pain and failure of courage is not absolute. And though they are serious and though they are real, the reality is that Jesus has overcome the world. He has conquered even the rebellion that is ingrained into us that we cannot even wash out with the hottest, best soap. But soon we will see exactly how Jesus conquered even our rebellion. And so Jesus leaves this trailer, this movie trailer of the great story that would unfold.

But despite the overwhelming descent into this chasm of despair, His words echo out, "I have overcome the world." And so as His cross rises up in the horizon for us this week, He is reminding us again of the purpose this morning of the cross. "I have overcome the world." Let's pray.