Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2983
“Your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” John 16:20.
You all know that at that time, our Lord was speaking of His death which would cause the deepest grief to His own people, while the ungodly world would rejoice and laugh them to scorn. So He bade them look beyond the immediate present into the future and believe that, ultimately, the cause of their sorrow would become a fountain of perpetual joy to them. It is always well to look a little ahead. Instead of deploring the dark clouds, let us anticipate the fruits and the flowers that will follow the descent of the needed showers. We might be always wretched if we lived only in the present, for our brightest time is yet to come. We are now, as Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, only in the twilight of our day— the high noon shall come to us by-and-by.
But although our Savior’s words, just then, related immediately to His death, He was such a wonderful speaker that everything He said had a wider meaning in it than one might at first imagine. Even the leaves of the Tree of Life are for the healing of the nations—and even those words of Christ which have a direct application to a special occasion have a further wondrous power about them—and may be used on other occasions as well as upon the one when they were first uttered. I think I may fairly say that our Lord did not merely mean that just when He died, His children would have sorrow, but that we may take His words as a prophecy that all who truly follow Him will have their seasons of darkness and gloom. Our Lord Jesus Christ has nowhere promised to His people immunity from trial. On the contrary, He said to His disciples, “In the world you shall have tribulation.” I cannot imagine a better promise for the wheat than that it shall be threshed—and that is the promise that is made to us if we are the Lord’s wheat—and not the enemy’s tares, “You shall have the threshing which shall fit you for the heavenly garner.” You need not mourn, Beloved, that it is to be so. If you do, it will make no difference, for your Lord has declared that “in the world you shall have tribulation.” Rest quite sure of that. If you could ask those Believers who are now in Heaven, they would tell you that they came through great tribulation—many of them not only washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, but they sealed their faithfulness to Him with their own blood!
Our Lord meant His disciples to feel the sorrow that was to come upon them, for He said to them, “You shall weep and lament,” and He did not express any blame upon them for doing so. I would not have any of you imaging that there is any virtue in stoicism. I once heard a woman who wished to show the wonders worked in her by the Grace of God, say that when her baby was taken from her, she was so resigned to the Divine will that she did not even shed a tear! But I do not believe that it ever was the Divine will that mothers should lose their babies without shedding tears over them. I thank God that I did not have a mother who could have acted like that. And I believe that as Jesus, Himself, wept, there can be no virtue in our saying that we do not weep. God means you to feel the rod, my Brother, my Sister. He intends you to sometimes weep and lament, as Peter says, “if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” It is not merely the temptation or trial for which there is a necessity, but that we should be in heaviness is also a necessary part of our earthly discipline. Unfelt trial is no trial! Certainly it would be an unsanctified trial. Christ never meant Christians to be stoics. There is a wide and grave distinction between a gracious acquiescence in the Divine will and a callous steeling of your heart to bear anything that happens without any feeling whatever. “You shall be sorrowful,” says our Lord to His disciples, and “you shall weep and lament.” It is through the weeping and the lamenting, oftentimes, that the very kernel of the blessing comes to us!
Our Savior mentions one aggravation of our grief which some of us have often felt—“the world shall rejoice.” That is the old story. David found his own trials all the harder to bear when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. He had been plagued all the day long and chastened every morning—he could have endured that if he had not seen that the ungodly had more than heart could wish! He found himself, sometimes, even troubled with the fear of death, but as for the wicked, he said, “There are no bonds in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.” It makes our bitterness all the more bitter when the saints of God are afflicted and the enemies of God are made to dwell in ease. I daresay when you were a boy, you may have fallen and hurt yourself—and while you were smarting from your bruises, the other lads who were around you, were laughing at you! The pain was all the sharper because of their laughing. And the righteous are wounded to the quick when they see the ungodly prospering—prospering, apparently, by their ungodliness. And when these ungodly persons point the finger of scorn at them and ask, “Where is your God now? Is this the result of serving Him?” When this is your lot, remember that your Savior told His disciples that it would be so—and He has told you the same. While you are sorrowing, you shall hear their shouts of revelry. You shall be up in your own room weeping and you shall hear the sound of their merry feet in the dizzy dance. The very contrast between their circumstances and your own will make you feel your grief more. Well, if this is to be our lot, we must not count it a strange thing when it comes, but we may hear our Master say to us, “I told you that it would be so.” When it happens to any of you, Beloved, you must say, “This is even as Jesus Christ said it would be.”