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“You have sorrow now, but I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

Alleluia! Jesus Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

᛭ INI ᛭

“Shout for joy” Sunday? Only God, only Jesus, only the Spirit can make such a thing happen. “Joy” is a fruit of the Spirit. He bears it out in your life. A lack of joy bespeaks a lack of the Spirit. The joy He bears is a joy that’s often inexpressible because it’s a joy that happens in spite of you. It’s a joy that happens in the midst of sorrow. It’s a joy that happens because of Jesus. He’s the source of joy ineffable, inexpressible, and unexpected because of His resurrection from the dead.

But this is Jesus joy isn’t just some idea. It’s a joy that happens only when Jesus sees you and you see Him. Or to put it another way: it’s a joy that only happens when you’re in Jesus’ presence. We heard the account of that joy a few weeks ago, when Jesus appeared in the locked upper room with them, said to them, “Peace be with you,” and showed them His hands and side. It was then, and only then, “they were glad that they saw the Lord.”

Their sorrow stopped and their joy began. They had joy in Jesus till they died and departed to be with Christ, now they experience eternal bliss and joy. The same goes for you. The experience of joy that the disciples had is only slightly different from our own. It’s just a matter of degree, but no less real. As it was for the Twelve, that who Jesus is talking to in John 16, so it is now for you:

SORROW TURNS INTO JOY WHEN YOU’RE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS!

(I. So it was for the Apostles.)

Jesus was right. The disciples would have weep and lament. They’d have sorrow, but the world would rejoice. He’d been betrayed by one of them. They’d all fled. Peter denied Him. Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. Their Teacher, their Friend, the one they’d thought was the Christ, the King, the Lord of His People Israel was dead. Such sorrow!

Then they didn’t! They saw Him risen from the dead! It was “only a little while.” Just three days! They saw Him, heard Him, touched Him, ate with Him! There was no more sorrow. How could they be sad? Jesus was alive again, never to die again. He forgave and restored Peter, hung out with them for 40 days, blessed them with more words and many gifts to give—Baptism, Preaching, Absolution, and Communion.

Their joy was unstoppable! They wouldn’t be hiding out anymore. No one could take their joy from them because no one could take their Jesus from them. No one could take them from their Jesus! He was alive again. They’d die and then they’d be with Him forever!

(Transition.)

It’s true for the disciples. They had sorrow, then they didn’t. The reason for it was Jesus’ resurrection! He was dead, then He wasn’t anymore. How could there be anymore sorrow?

SORROW TURNS INTO JOY WHEN YOU’RE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS!

And there’s no one, nothing that can take that joy away!

(II. So it is and shall be FOR YOU.)

The same thing goes for you, too. Christ died for your transgressions and was raised for your innocent verdict before God. Still, there are many things that give us sorrow. We don’t really want to admit it. We bottle all those things up. As if true Christians, real Christians, good Christians won’t experience such things, or at least we’ll be able to move past them. Like you’re some sort of bad Christian if you mess up or mourn or are sad or sin or have sorrow. To take this text to mean that you’ve got to reach that point apart from being face to face with Jesus is to create an unreachable expectation, it’s “a heavy burden, hard to bear, placed upon many a Christian shoulder…”

We should have a sorrow over our sins. Most people are ambivalent and apathetic about their sins. “Broad is the road that leads to destruction.” But for those who “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit,” we are rightly “horrified by our sins and regard them as very serious.” Our sins grieve us because they grieve God.

There’s the sorrow we experience over death and dying, either those we love or our own. There are those who are the living dead, lost to themselves and us through dementia and alzheimer’s. There are those who are in the process of dying. There are those who’ve died. There’s the sorrow we all experience for all of it.

There’s the sorrow of persecution, we’ll possibly get more on that next week, depending how the Spirit moves me in preaching, but this is nothing other than the sorrow of the devil. The devil who also causes us to despair over our sins. To despair over sin is to say they are unforgivable, that Christ did not die for such a sin as that, such a sinner as you.

The only solution to such sorrow is Jesus! He turns sorrow into Joy, His Spirit works joy into your heart. The Spirit will also cause joy to sprout and blossom in your daily life, too. If there’s a lack of it, there’s a lack of Him, or really a lack of Jesus. But not a Jesus far away, a Jesus close at hand, for SORROW TURNS INTO JOY WHEN YOU’RE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS!

And you are face to face with Jesus in this place. He’s that present! That’s His promise, “Wherever two or three are gathered in My name, there I am among them.” Our problem is we don’t believe it, or we only believe it when we feel something. We set up an expectation that Jesus doesn’t promise to meet. Asaph, when he was bothered by the sorrows of the LORD’s people, the many enemies who caused that sorrow, and the fact that God seemed to be far away and not care, sang in Psalm 73: “When I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.”

The world promises relief from sorrow in all the wrong places. The world and Satan wants to rot away not only our minds and bodies but our souls! From what we watch to what we eat, from how hard we work to how much we drink, and and the whole time Satan and society is searing our souls, cauterizing our consciences so that we ignore our sorrow, don’t feel our sin and don’t seek out Jesus.

Jesus takes that sorrow away. “Come to Me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” So, we come to Him, gather around Him here! He is here! He’s promised it! This is no ordinary place, this is Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, where Christ is, where angels gather with us, where the heavenly hosts join us, your loved ones who believed in Jesus, where the saints all over the world are united with us, as we gather round the throne of God and the Lamb, where and when He gives us His body and blood to eat and to drink. That drink truly ends sorrow, that food truly brings delight. The sights and sounds of the Sanctuary stops sorrow.

For here we are face to face with Jesus, we just can’t see Him. We hear Him. But just as real as face to face. His mouth to our ears. Just as close as face to face—closer!—“My body and blood for you for the forgiveness of sins.” We sinfully stray and stay in sorrow when we seek some other solution to sorrow than His.

(Conclusion.)

SORROW TURNS INTO JOY WHEN YOU’RE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS!

That’s why as much as I say the sorrow stops in this place it always returns. Yes, we’re so close to Jesus we could almost just touch Him. At Communion the veil between heaven and earth is thinner than [the painted angels || the stained glass windows.] Christ’s body and blood in your mouth close!

One day Christ will see you, and you’ll see Him. “Now we see in a mirror dimly, then face to face.” (1 Cor 13) “You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bones shall flourish like the grass.” (Is 66:14)“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2 Cor 4:17) For, “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Cor 2:9)

The promises Jesus makes and delivers in Baptism, in Preaching and His Word, in Absolution, and at Communion, in fact, those very things make you ready for that day. The day when you’ll be face to face with Jesus forever. On that Day that will never end “Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” Because all your sorrows of sin, sickness, Satan, and death will pass away. “The former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” (Is 65:17) “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Is 35:10) For,

SORROW TURNS INTO JOY WHEN YOU’RE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS!

Even so, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Alleluia! Jesus Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

᛭ INI ᛭