Grief Leads to Joy, Change Leads to Blessings.
John 16:16-22 and Acts 2:42-47
I would like to start today with a story you may be familiar with.
“I was out fishing one day with my brother and we had been talking recently about a buzz down the river about this guy who was baptizing people and telling them to repent. We were curious but too busy to head down there and see for ourselves. Anyway, shortly after we threw in our nets, a man called from the shore and told us to follow him, that he would make us fishers of men. It was like a spell had come over us, and without even thinking, we just left our boat, our livelihood, and followed him.
For almost three years I rarely left this man’s side and hung on every word he said. Many others joined us, but I don’t think anyone loved him as much as I did. He taught us so much and his energy was unlike anything I could describe, all I wanted to do was be near him. After seeing what he could do and the amazing truth he was speaking I started to believe I could do just about anything with him.
He sent us out in a boat one evening after he materialized enough food for 5000 people. He was going to meet us on the other side of the lake in the morning. It was the middle of the night and the water was a little rough, when we saw what we thought was a ghost coming toward us on the water. We were absolutely terrified, but a voice told us not to be afraid, it was this man walking on the water. I jumped up and said ‘Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water.’ As the adrenaline coursed through my body, He said come, and I stepped out of the boat. I was actually walking on the water when I thought to myself, what on earth am I doing! I was close to Him but as soon as I had this thought I started to sink. He helped me back on the boat and gently scolded me for my lack of faith. He didn’t need to though because I was already very disappointed with myself.
A few days later we were all hanging out near Caesaria Philippi when he asked who we thought he was, and it hit me like a brick – He was the Christ, the long awaited for Messiah! I blurted this out with such joy, and then Jesus called me a rock and that he would build his church upon me and give me the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. I had never felt so proud in my entire life.
I can’t describe to you how secure and loved we all felt during this time with him, …but then he started talking about leaving us and we just tried to keep denying it because we didn’t understand and couldn’t imagine life without him. Then as we were eating our Passover meal he said that one of us would betray him. I told everyone in the room ‘not on my watch’. I told Jesus I would die before I would betray or deny him, but to my dismay he knew better.
He brought us out to the garden and we were all exhausted and emotionally drained by Jesus’ words and all the food we ate. He took me and James and John off to pray as he often did and we just couldn’t stay awake. We finally were awoken by the sound of many people who were coming with Judas Iscariot. They were there to arrest Jesus so I took my sword and slashed at one them, just missing his head though I think I might have caught his ear. Jesus told me to put the sword down but I was furious.
They took him away and for the next couple of days I was so ashamed of my behavior and attitudes that confirmed what Jesus said about me. ….You know what happened next. After Jesus was buried we all gathered at a house, and to be honest I was numb, I felt like my life was over. ….Even though he prepared us for this, I had no idea what it would be like without him.
Could you imagine what the grief would have been like after spending three years with the Son of God and then boom He is gone. Can we think of anything that would be so sad and deflate your spirit so much? Maybe losing a child would be the closest thing. They lost their beloved shepherd and teacher and were ultimately called to kind of take His place - talk about a test of your confidence. How would you like to take over for God?
But this was not the end of the story. He did not abandon them or us, and we are all as believers, filled with the fullness of God through the Holy Spirit just as Jesus was when He began his formal ministry.
I have tried very inadequately I’m sure, to share a little about what I imagine Peter’s experience was like. Let’s hear what Jesus’ other beloved disciple says about how Jesus prepared them. Read John 16:16-22 …
We have an advantage over the disciples because we know what happened next. They didn’t understand what “Going to the Father” meant, and they were still having trouble with the fact that he was going to die fairly soon. There are a few ways to interpret this passage. Perhaps they will see him on his ascension to heaven, they did. Perhaps they would see him in the work he does through them after giving them his spirit, they did. It could even mean his coming to destroy the Jewish state and judge the world. Remember what it says in Psalm 90 verse 4, “for a thousand years are but as yesterday in your sight”. Again in 2 Peter 3 it says something similar. So it is very difficult for us to understand God’s perspective regarding time.
Throughout the few chapters in John around this passage, Jesus is alternating between comforting them and sharing the hard truth with them. This passage shows both, and I think throughout both Testaments God makes sure that we know His comfort, but always acknowledging the difficulty and sacrifices involved in following Him. Psalm 34:18 says “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” The assumption here is that God’s people will experience broken hearts at times, but that He is always near and maybe even more so when we are brokenhearted. This passage in John talks about experiencing joy out of grief. Some might even say that until you know grief, you cannot know the fullness of joy because you have nothing to compare it to.
John uses childbirth as an example that I am sure many mothers can relate to. I don’t know many mothers who wouldn’t say that childbirth was the most painful experience of their lives, but it was soon forgotten as they experienced their greatest joy (or at least relief) immediately after the delivery.
I know that you will be saying good-bye to a beloved pastor soon. You also were prepared for this as he came as an interim pastor in the first place. Regardless, many of you will also grieve when he goes. I want you to know that I am sensitive to that, but I also want to encourage you that sometimes our greatest joy can come in the midst of grief.
I think of Job. No human has ever experienced more grief than him, he lost everything, his children, all his wealth, and his health. But he would not walk away from God and in the end he had twice the joy he had before. Let’s quickly look at the end of the book of Job in Chapter 42 verses 10-17….
Now, John says, because of Jesus no one will ever take our joy away.
Change always accompanies grief and if grieving isn’t enough, few people really like change either. But just as grief can lead to joy, change can lead to blessings. I am not too sure the disciples were very excited about the fact that Jesus promised them the Holy Spirit after he left. I bet they were still moping around until The Holy Spirit actually came. But let’s read Acts 2:41-47 which is shortly after the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost, and see just a little of the blessing that this change had in their lives.
I think they got over their moping, and the church exploded. I was astonished to learn that at the time just after Jesus death it is estimated that only about 1 out of every 3,000 people in Jerusalem was a believer. Many Jews believed Jesus may be the Messiah before he was crucified, but after his death they couldn’t believe that the Messiah could die that way, or that he was really raised from the dead.
The permanent population of Jerusalem was anywhere between 30 and 80 thousand people, however, the temporary population in Jerusalem at Passover increased remarkably to anywhere from about 100,000 to 300,000 people, which leaves at the most about 100 people being Christians at this time in Jerusalem, so when 3,000 came to believe in one day, that was extremely significant, and an extreme threat to the Jewish leaders.
This section of scripture in Acts is very dear to me. I am going to just take a brief detour here and share a little about myself. Shortly after I was saved it was like the blinders came off my spiritual eyes and in a day scripture came alive to me after struggling with it for twenty years. I had just started to familiarize myself with the Bible again when one night I was woken from my sleep. I had the most warm, tingly, weightless feeling in my body, and I couldn’t move any of my body parts, but I wasn’t the least bit concerned. I heard in my head “look at the alarm clock” so I did and saw the digital clock read 2:42. I eventually fell back asleep knowing this number was significant for some reason. In the morning I woke up feeling normal, but I hurried to the computer and punched the numbers into Google. What came up was nothing but web pages about Acts 2:42. As I read this portion of scripture with my new understanding, I knew that God was confirming my decision to join and minister in the church. The fire has not died down even a flicker since that time.
About a year and a half ago God called me to another even more dramatic life change. He called me from a really nice government funded, union counseling job where I had been for fifteen years. I left a week later. I had a wife, daughter and the adoption of our second daughter in the works. I asked God how am I going to be able to do this? A legitimate question even to God I thought at the time. He said “sell your house”. Amazingly, to my surprise, my wife immediately agreed to everything (though I am not sure she knew exactly what she was in for). So four days after we put our house on the market by ourselves, it sold for twice what we paid for it four years earlier. God gave us that money and some other financial blessings so that I could work on my seminary degree and minister in my church full-time. We have been blessed in our change and our obedience to the Lord, and can only imagine what is ahead of us. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been all easy, but we have sensed the Lord in our lives like never before. Is there a greater blessing than that?
Enough about us for now.
Clearly change was a good thing for the disciples, and without Jesus leaving who knows where they and the church would have ended up. We can look at Abraham’s life, or Ruth’s life, or David’s life, and many others in the Bible to see that obedience to change led to unimaginable blessings.
Let me read from a devotional that I received by Os Hillman:
When we first begin our spiritual journey we often make decisions from convenience. Often, we decide what the outcome is that we want and then make decisions based on the perceived outcome. If it is a positive outcome, then we will make an obedient decision. I call this outcome-based obedience.
However, God desires that each of us live an Obedience-based life. In order to transition us from an outcome-based process to an obedience-based process, he will allow a crisis to come into our lives. This crisis is designed to create pain, which motivates us to seek Him to alleviate the pain. Many have heard of "fox-hole" Christianity. There is a place of painful obedience for everyone! However, this is not where God desires us to remain.
Ultimately, God desires us to live a life of obedience and intimacy rooted in conviction. We obey His commands from a heart of love and devotion. During the crisis phase we discover the personal love of God in our lives, which we had never experienced before. Most of us will get to this phase of our walk with God by first living a life of convenience, then we will go through the crisis that will then lead us into an intimate love relationship with God.
The Christian life can be summed up in one word - love. God’s desire for each of us is to know Him intimately and to love Him with all of our heart.
During these past 18 months I have experienced this beyond just a concept. In order to survive both materially and emotionally I have had to completely depend on Him and learn to understand what it means to abide in Him always. We cannot but love Him when we are forced to depend on him completely. The blessing is the love relationship with Jesus, the other blessings are just stuff, we are grateful for them, but they come nowhere near the intimate relationship with our Lord. And I am convinced that this is what many Christians (maybe especially men) are missing in this day and age because we are so blessed and we don’t like getting “mushy”. In any church that I pastor, I want the relationship with Jesus to be the goal for everyone, because everything good comes out of that relationship.
How can a new pastor help those who are going through grief and change? 1 Timothy 6:11 says he should pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.
Colossians 1:9 tells us to pray for them. Philippians 1:8 says have affection for them. And John 14 and 2 John say we show love by obeying God’s commands and being a servant.
Clearly, a pastor should do these things all the time, but especially when there is change and grieving going on. He must be a shepherd, preach the healing word, and represent Christ. He must always be interceding and asking the Holy Spirit whom Jesus gave us as a counselor, to be present. Most of all though, we must do the only thing that Jesus really asked us to do, Love them. Of course this is a call to all of us, not just the pastor. And notice how God tells us that we help others primarily through focusing on our own spiritual growth and disciplines so that we are capable of the kind of love Jesus commands.
Let me finish again with a short story that I think exemplifies this kind of love. It’s from the book, “God is Closer than You Think” by John Ortberg:
Let’s pray. …Precious Lord, we are so grateful that you are in charge. The disciples could not understand your plan and neither can we, but we know we can depend on you and trust you. Father I lift this church up to you. Bring them close to you as they go through change and perhaps some broken hearts. Guide them with wisdom and discernment as they look for another shepherd, and bring them a pastor who will love them so that they can also feel joy after their grief. Most of all Lord I pray that we all will ultimately grow in our love relationship with you where individual churches and pastors are insignificant. You are still our pastor and always will be, and the church is yours not ours. So Lord do your thing and help us obey. In Jesus name, Amen
