John 16:21 Commentary and Bible Study

And the illustration of the Lord in verse 21 – ‘A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.’ The incredible amazement of birth, of young life that parents sense and the mother particularly feels – a life, a new child, a new person – and the joy obliterates any pain that there had been.The Lord’s illustration is put here for a purpose, and it takes us all the way back to Isaiah 54, and they will come to see that this is what he is referring to. ‘Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent.’ This is a prophecy of the New Testament after Christ. ‘Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations.’ You will need a great house, a great tent, because God is going to bring many people to salvation. It began to happen on the Day of Pentecost: three thousand, followed by other thousands. And then the bringing in of the Gentiles, and in time the Christian church grew and became truly a thoroughly international church, and thousands upon thousands, millions from every land and nation, every day and age have been gathered in already. And who gave birth to this? Well, spiritually speaking of course, it was Christ, and it was the work of the Holy Spirit, but here in Isaiah 54 it is pictured as though it is the church. It is a prophecy saying, the Jewish church will be so diminished, then the Saviour will come and he will suffer and die (Isaiah 53), and what will be the immediate outcome of Isaiah 53? A little believing remnant. That is the disciples, and others with them. A little believing remnant will, to all appearances, give birth to a new age and a new church, and the Lord Jesus Christ is referring to that very clearly in John 16.21. In time they would say, ‘That’s us, that’s us. We knew this great distress, we thought everything had come to an end. The Messiah had suffered and died. Surely there would be no kingdom now, but he rose again from the dead, and we understood the atonement, and then we obeyed him and we preached the gospel to every creature as he commanded us. And look what we were enabled to do by the power of the Spirit. We are that woman of Isaiah 54 who gives birth to the new order’, the fledgling, remnant church.