'Your sorrow shall be turned into joy,' not merely that the one emotion
is substituted for the other, but that the one emotion, as it were,
becomes the other. This can only mean that _that_, which was the cause
of the one, reverses its action and becomes the cause of the opposite.
Of course the historical and immediate fulfilment of these words lies
in the double result of Christ's Cross upon His servants. For part of
three dreary days it was the occasion of their sorrow, their panic,
their despair; and then, all at once, when with a bound the mighty fact
of the resurrection dawned upon them, that which had been the occasion
for their deep grief, for their apparently hopeless despair, suddenly
became the occasion for a rapture beyond their dreams, and a joy which
would never pass. The Cross of Christ, which for some few hours was
pain, and all but ruin, has ever since been the centre of the deepest
gladness and confidence of a thousand generations.
I do not need to remind you, I suppose, of the value, as a piece of
evidence of the historical veracity of the Gospel story, of this sudden
change and complete revolution in the sentiments and emotions of that
handful of disciples. What was it that lifted them out of the pit? What
was it that revolutionised in a moment their notions of the Cross and
of its bearing upon them? What was it that changed downhearted,
despondent, and all but apostate, disciples into heroes and martyrs? It
was the one fact which Christendom commemorates to-day: the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was the element, added to the dark
potion, which changed it all in a moment into golden flashing light.
The resurrection was what made the death of Christ no longer the
occasion for the dispersion of His disciples, but bound them to Him
with a closer bond. And I venture to say that, unless the first
disciples were lunatics, there is no explanation of the changes through
which they passed in some eight-and-forty hours, except the
supernatural and miraculous fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. That set a light to the thick column of smoke, and made
it blaze up a 'pillar of fire.' That changed sorrow into joy. The same
death which, before the resurrection, drew a pall of darkness over the
heavens, and draped the earth in mourning, by reason of that
resurrection which swept away the cloud and brought out the sunshine,
became the source of joy. A dead Christ was the Church's despair; a
dead and risen Christ is the Church's triumph, because He is 'the
Christ that died... and is alive for evermore.'
But, more generally, let me remind you how this very same principle,
which applies directly and historically to the resurrection of our
Lord, may be legitimately expanded so as to cover the whole ground of
devout men's sorrows and calamities. Sorrow is the first stage, of
which the second and completed stage is transformation into joy. Every
thundercloud has a rainbow lying in its depths when the sun smites upon
it. Our purest and noblest joys are transformed sorrows. The sorrow of
contrite hearts becomes the gladness of pardoned children; the sorrow
of bereaved, empty hearts may become the gladness of hearts filled with
God; and every grief that stoops upon our path may be, and will be, if
we keep near that dear Lord, changed into its own opposite, and become
the source of blessedness else unattainable. Every stroke of the
bright, sharp ploughshare that goes through the fallow ground, and
every dark winter's day of pulverising frost and lashing tempest and
howling wind, are represented in the broad acres, waving with the
golden grain. All your griefs and mine, brother, if we carry them to
the Master, will flash up into gladness and be "turned into joy."
II. Still further, another aspect here of the glad life of the true
Christian is, that it is a joy founded upon the consciousness that
Christ's eye is upon us.
'I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice.' In other parts of
these closing discourses the form of the promise is the converse of
this, as for instance--'Yet a little while, and ye shall see _Me_.'
Here Christ lays hold of the thought by the other handle, and says,
'_I_ will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice.' Now these two
forms of putting the same mutual relationship, of course, agree, in
that they both of them suggest, as the true foundation of the
blessedness which they promise, the fact of communion with a present
Lord. But they differ from one another in colouring, and in the
emphasis which they place upon the two parts of that communion. '_Ye_
shall see _Me_' fixes attention upon us and our perception of Him. '_I_
will see you' fixes attention rather upon Him and His beholding of us.
'Ye shall see Me' speaks of our going out after Him and being satisfied
in Him. 'I will see you' speaks of His perfect knowledge, of His loving
care, of His tender, compassionate, complacent, ever-watchful eye
resting upon us, in order that He may communicate to us all needful
good.
And so it requires a loving heart on our part, in order to find joy in
such a promise. 'His eyes are as a flame of fire,' and He sees all men;
but unless our hearts cleave to Him and we know ourselves to be knit to
Him by the tender bond of love from Him, accepted and treasured in our
souls, then 'I will see you again' is a threat and not a promise. It
depends upon the relation which we bear to Him, whether it is
blessedness or misery to think that He whose flaming eye reads all
men's sins and pierces through all hypocrisies and veils has it fixed
upon us. The sevenfold utterance of His words to the Asiatic
churches-the last recorded words of Jesus Christ-begins with 'I know
thy works.' It was no joy to the lukewarm professors at Laodicea, nor
to the church at Ephesus which had lost the freshness of its early
love, that the Master knew them; but to the faithful souls in
Philadelphia, and to the few in Sardis, who 'had not defiled their
garments,' it was blessedness and life to feel that they walked in the
sunshine of His face.
Is there any joy to us in the thought that the Lord Christ sees us? Oh!
if our hearts are really His, if our lives are as truly built on Him as
our profession of being Christians alleges that they are, then all that
we need for the satisfaction of our nature, for the supply of our
various necessities, or as an armour against temptation, and an amulet
against sorrow, will be given to us, in the belief that His eye is
fixed upon us. _There_ is the foundation of the truest joy for men.
'There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift Thou up
the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my
heart more than in the time when their corn and their wine abound.' One
look _towards_ Christ will more than repay and abolish earth's sorrow.
One look _from_ Christ will fill our hearts with sunshine. All tears
are dried on eyes that meet His. Loving hearts find their heaven in
looking into one another's faces, and if Christ be our love, our
deepest and purest joys will be found in His glance and our answering
gaze.
If one could anyhow take a bit of the Arctic world and float it down
into the tropics, the ice would all melt, and the white dreariness
would disappear, and a new splendour of colour and of light would
clothe the ground, and an unwonted vegetation would spring up where
barrenness had been. And if you and I will only float our lives
southward beneath the direct vertical rays of that great 'Sun of
Righteousness,' then all the dreary winter and ice of our sorrows will
melt, and joy will spring. Brother! the Christian life is a glad life,
because Christ, the infinite and incarnate Lover of our souls, looks
upon the heart that loves and trusts Him.
III. Still further, note how our Lord here sets forth His disciples'
joy as beyond the reach of violence and independent of externals.
'No man taketh it from you.' Of course, that refers primarily to the
opposition and actual hostility of the persecuting world, which that
handful of frightened men were very soon to face; and our Lord assures
them here that, whatsoever the power of the devil working through the
world may be able to filch away from them, it cannot filch away the joy
that He gives. But we may extend the meaning beyond that reference.
Much of our joy, of course, depends upon our fellows, and disappears
when they fade away from our sight and we struggle along in a solitude,
made the more dreary because of remembered companionship. And much of
our joy depends upon the goodwill and help of our fellows, and they can
snatch away all that so depends. They can hedge up our road and make it
uncomfortable and sad for us in many ways, but no man but myself can
put a roof over my head to shut me out from God and Christ; and as long
as I have a clear sky overhead, it matters very little how high may be
the walls that foes or hostile circumstances pile around me, and how
close they may press upon me. And much of our joy necessarily depends
upon and fluctuates with external circumstances of a hundred different
kinds, as we all only too well know. But we do not need to have all our
joy fed from these surface springs. We may dig deeper down if we like.
If we are Christians, we have, like some beleaguered garrison in a
fortress, a well in the courtyard that nobody can get at, and which
never can run dry. 'Your joy no man taketh from you.'
As long as we have Christ, we cannot be desolate. If He and I were
alone in the universe, or, paradoxical as it may sound, if He and I
were alone, and the universe were not, I should have all that I needed
and my joy would be full, if I loved Him as I ought to do.
So, my brother! let us see to it that we dig deep enough for the
foundation of our blessedness, and that it is on Christ and nothing
less infinite, less eternal, less unchangeable, that we repose for the
inward blessedness which nothing outside of us can touch. That is the
blessedness which we may all possess, 'For I am persuaded that neither
death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us' from the eye and the heart of
the risen Christ who lives for us. But remember, though externals have
no power to rob us of our joy, they have a very formidable power to
interfere with the cultivation of that faith, which is the essential
condition of our joy. They cannot force us away from Christ, but they
may tempt us away. The sunshine did for the traveller in the old fable
what the storm could not do; and the world may cause you to think so
much about it that you forget your Master. Its joys may compel Him to
hide His face, and may so fill your eyes that you do not care to look
at His face; and so the sweet bond may be broken, and the consciousness
of a living, loving Jesus may fade, and become filmy and unsubstantial,
and occasional and interrupted. Do you see to it that what the world
cannot do by violence and directly, it does not do by its harlot kisses
and its false promises, tempting you away from the paths where alone
you can meet your Master.
IV. Lastly, note that this life of joy, which our Lord here speaks of,
is made certain by the promise of a faithful Christ.
'Verily, verily, I say unto you,'--He was accustomed to use that
impressive and solemn formula, when He was about to speak words beyond
the reach of human wisdom to discover, or of prime importance for men
to accept and believe. He tells these men, who had nothing but His bare
word to rely upon, that the astonishing thing which He is going to
promise them will certainly come to pass. He would encourage them to
rest an unfaltering confidence, for the brief parenthesis of sorrow,
upon His faithful promise of joy. He puts His own character, so to
speak, in pawn. His words are precisely equivalent in meaning to the
solemn Old Testament words which are represented as being the oath of
God, 'As I live saith the Lord,' 'You may be as sure of this thing as
you are of My divine existence, for all My divine Being is pledged to
you to bring it about.' 'Verily, verily, I say unto you,' 'You may be
as sure of this thing as you are of Me, for all that I am is pledged to
fulfil the words of My lips.'
So Christ puts His whole truthfulness at stake, as it were; and if any
man who has ever loved Jesus Christ and trusted Him aright has not
found this 'joy unspeakable and full of glory,' then Jesus Christ has
said the thing that is not.
Then why is it that so many professing Christians have such joyless
lives as they have? Simply because they do not keep the conditions. If
we will love Him so as to set our hearts upon Him, if we will desire
Him as our chief good, if we will keep our eyes fixed upon Him, then,
as sure as He is living and is the Truth, He will flood our hearts with
blessedness, and His joy will pour into our souls as the flashing tide
rushes into some muddy and melancholy harbour, and sets everything
dancing that was lying stranded on the slime. If, my brother, you, a
professing Christian, know but little of this joy, why, then, it is
_your_ fault, and not _His_. The joyless lives of so many who say that
they are His disciples cast no shadow of suspicion upon His veracity,
but they do cast a very deep shadow of doubt upon their profession of
faith in Him.
Is your religion joyful? Is your joy religious? The two questions go
together. And if we cannot answer these questions in the light of God's
eye as we ought to do, let these great promises and my text prick us
into holier living, into more consistent Christian character, and a
closer walk with our Master and Lord.
The out-and-out Christian is a joyful Christian. The half-and-half
Christian is the kind of Christian that a great many of you are--little
acquainted with 'the joy of the Lord.' Why should we live half way up
the hill and swathed in mists, when we might have an unclouded sky and
a visible sun over our heads, if we would only climb higher and walk in
the light of His face?
'IN THAT DAY'
'And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it
you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall
receive, that your joy may be full.'--JOHN xvi. 23, 24.
Our Lord here sums up the prerogatives and privileges of His servants
in the day that was about to dawn and to last till He came again. There
is nothing absolutely new in the words; substantially the promises
contained in them have appeared in former parts of these discourses
under somewhat different aspects and connections. But our Lord brings
them together here, in this condensed repetition, in order that the
scattered rays, being thus focussed, may have more power to illuminate
with certitude, and to warm into hope. 'Ye shall ask Me nothing.... Ask
and ye shall receive.... Your joy shall be full.' These are the jewels
which He sets in a cluster, the juxtaposition making each brighter, and
gives to us for a parting keepsake.
Now it is to be noticed that the two askings which are spoken of here
are expressed by different words in the Greek. Our English word 'ask'
means two things, either to question or to request; to ask in the sense
of interrogating, in order to get information and teaching, or in the
sense of beseeching, in order to get gifts. In the former sense the
word is employed in the first clause of my text, with distinct
reference to the disciples' desire, a moment or two before, to ask Him
a very foolish question; and in the second sense it is employed in the
central portion of my text.
So, then, there are three things here as the marks of the Christian
life all through the ages: the cessation of the ignorant questions
addressed to a present Christ; the satisfaction of desires; and the
perfecting of joy. These are the characteristics of a true Christian
life. My brother, are they in any degree the characteristics of yours?