John 13:1-20 - The Love of Jesus for His own

We have been looking at the gospel of John the last number of times that we have been here. And this morning I want us to look at John chapter 13. We'll be reading the first 20 verses of John's gospel. Chapter 13, the next section in where I left off the last time I was here. So we are at John chapter 13. the account of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. Let's hear the word of God.

Now, before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand, that he had come from the Father and was going back to God, rose from supper. He lay aside his outer garments and, taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a vase and began to wash the disciples' feet, to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

It came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered him, what I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand. Peter said to him, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, I do not wash you, you have no share with me. Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus said to him, the one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you. For he knew who was to betray him. That is why he said, not all of you are clean.

When he had washed their feet and put on his honor garments and resumed his place, he said to them, do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you were right, for so I am. If I then, your teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example that you should do just as I have done.

Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. I'm not speaking of all of you. I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled.

Prayer for Illumination

You ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. telling you this now before it takes place that when it does take place you may believe that I am he truly truly I say to you whoever receives the one I send receives me whoever receives me receives the one who sent me let's pray gracious Lord we come to hear your word a passage that speaks of a an event that took place in the last week of the life of our Lord. We pray that we would learn from it, see the truth that's laid out in it, have attentive ears and hearts to respond appropriately, that you would give me clarity as I proclaim your word this morning. For in Christ's name we pray. This portion of the Gospel of John that we have arrived at is actually the beginning of a new section in the Gospel of John, sometimes called his farewell discourse, sometimes called his upper room discourse, but it's an extended section that's only found in the Gospel of John and is really an extended body of teaching just before he went to the cross.

Sermon

And it's a rich passage. Some have called it the inner sanctum. There have actually been little studies, devotional studies done on this and call it entering into the holy of holies and that kind of title. And they're the basis of much of the rest of the New Testament's teaching on a number of issues. And there's a change of direction in what our Lord is doing here, because he is moving from focusing on outwardly, the crowds. Think of earlier in the Gospels, the Sermon on the Mount, for example.

There he's preaching to a large crowd, or the feeding of the 5,000. where he's feeding a large group of people. They say 5,000, that was just the number of men the text reminds us and it hadn't counted how many women and children. Probably could be three or four times as many people there, big crowds. Here we have a small group of people, the 12 disciples. So it's a very different focused ministry. His vocabulary changes and there's a lot of emphasis on love. And we will see that in the passage, but a particular focus on love for his own. There had been an actual change in his situation.

The Pharisees had become really mad, and that's the only way you can describe it, after the raising of Lazarus, and they were out to get him. They'd had enough. They're already in cahoots with, we know, with Judas. We know that they're in cahoots with the Romans at this time, and they are going to get Jesus and get rid of this man that they can't stand. In this context, we begin this upper room discourse.

And Jesus is using, in this passage in particular, servant terminology. Now, you notice that we read, as our Old Testament passage, out of the servant songs. In the book of Isaiah and Jenny and I have just been reading together out of that portion of Isaiah and our Bible reading that we do every morning together. And that whole section between Isaiah 40 and Isaiah roughly 55, 56 is full of songs that the scholars call them the servant songs. And they're very interesting because they talk about an individual sometimes, and they talk about a corporate sometimes, and there's this sort of back and forth, oscillation almost between individual and corporate.

That's done purposely because Jesus is the servant, the ultimate servant, who is representing Israel, who was supposed to be the servant of God, and is the failed servant, and Jesus is the perfect servant. But Jesus is picking up this servant terminology. And Paul will develop this, for example, in Philippians 2. And Jesus will speak of himself regularly, alluding to Isaiah 53. I am the servant who comes to lay down my life. But in this passage, he's going to be speaking about servanthood in a slightly different key. And he's going to lay down five important truths about his role as a servant, but he's also going to then take what he does and apply it to us and say, if I'm a servant, use this as a model so you will know what it means for you to be a servant.

But before we look at our truths that we want to focus on this morning, we need some background, because the background of this helps us understand what's going on, and why Peter was so upset, and why it was really considered strange for Jesus to be doing this. By the way, we're not sure if this is the last supper meal or a fellowship meal the night before. It depends on how you reconstruct the chronology of what we call Holy Week. Because if you try to sometimes put them together, the various gospel accounts together, you can tie yourself up in knots if you don't understand that what's probably going on, this is the most likely thing, is that there are a couple of different calendars that they were working with. I remember in seminary we talked about this and one of my professors said, unless you understand that there were a couple of different Jewish calendars and John is probably using a different calendar as he's reckoning than say, for example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are, you'll get yourself in knots trying to make them fit together. And you get people that will talk about some very strange things sometimes when they try to do that. And we don't have time to go into all of that, but just let you know that that's what's probably going on here. Now, but more importantly for us today is the social context in which this is happening. Because there's no servant in this meal. Why is that important? Because servants got the job of washing the dirty feet.

Because what you did in that culture is you didn't have your own bath in most houses. There was a public bathhouse. Rich people had a bathhouse. I don't know if you knew this, but in the early church, some of the rich people would have big rooms and they would hold their services there. And some of the early church baptisms actually took place in the bathroom in some of those rich houses because rich people had a bathroom.

And that's where you're going to pour water all over the place and where's it going to go? Well, if you're standing in the bathtub, you can get rid of it more easily. But most people did not have a bathroom, didn't have a place you could wash. So you took your bath at the public bathhouse and then you came to somebody's house. Well, when you came to somebody's house, your feet got dirty.

You're wearing sandals, or as a friend of mine used to joke that he said, when we were in college, he loved sandals. He said he wore rabbi runabouts or something. That's what he named his sandals. But you know, you wear sandals. And if any of you go outside, even in our culture today, wearing sandals, your feet can get dirty.

Well, think how much more it was during that time. because they did not, to speak delicately, have street sanitation such as we have. And the dogs and the pigs, not pigs, wouldn't be pigs, but donkeys and any other animals ran loose in the streets. People had chamber pots and they would toss them out the window. And the streets were not exactly hygienic.

Your feet got dirty. We had a friend in one of my churches who had spent some time in the Middle East, I believe it was Jordan that Jeremy had spent time in, and he talked about how when he spent time there, how it's a hot, dry climate, and how cracked his feet got. He talked about that, how his feet got all cracked, and they weren't very, he said they were pretty ugly to look at when you would take your sandals off. So that's the context, and a servant's job was to take a towel and a basin and clean feet. Everybody who invited people for a dinner party had somebody who was supposed to clean the feet.

And I think we can reconstruct this pretty nicely here, that all of these disciples are standing around looking at each other and thinking, hmm, we all got dirty feet. Who's going to do that job? And I think it was a classic, not I said the little red hen, sort of a position. Because they're all looking at each other and saying, that's the slave's job. That's the servant's job. That's a nasty, dirty job. Wash those feet. Who knows what they've been coming and stepping in. Well, they all looked at each other and said in their minds, not I said the little red hen, and nobody's doing it.

Well, in that context, Jesus steps up and does that. We'll speak more about that later. But that's what's going on here. Now, since we can't exactly pinpoint the day, we can't speak with absolute divinity on this, but we do know that Luke's account of the Last Supper shows that they had been arguing with each other over who got the best place in the kingdom. Even if that was a different night, which is a possibility, it was clearly on their minds.

So to understand the setting, you have to understand, here's Jesus going to wash their feet, take the servant's job. What the disciples have on their mind, which one of us is going to get the best spot? I mean, you have James and John even has their mother. She's coming to Jesus at one point, like all mothers do, looking out for the boys. And she says, Hey, Jesus, when you come into your kingdom, how about my boys? How about my boys? Can you get them the best spot? So you got mothers looking out for their boys. You've got all the disciples thinking about who's gonna get the best spot. In that context, Jesus steps forward and washes their feet.

Makes it even more ironic, but also more amazing. One other comment before we look more specifically at the points we want to see today, you notice that it says, during supper, in verse 2, and that's what the ESV that I have is saying, and the translation that some of you may have, the King James or the New King James says, after supper had ended, that's because we have a textual variant, and what phrase is being used here. Some manuscripts show one, some another, and you're going to find translations. Some are going to say after supper had ended, some will say during supper, or one interesting translation tried to punt, drop that 10 yards and punt and say I'm going to translate it by the time supper took place by saying I'm not going to make a decision on how you translate that. Ultimately it doesn't make a lot of difference other than I think if you look at chapter 26 in the context it looks like supper was already done. So if you had to pick which tense of the verb, that seems a little more likely to me. But really what we need to understand here is this is an acted parable.

Jesus is showing us by action what he will do in the teaching. The first thing we want to see in this passage is that Jesus' ultimate servanthood, as he says, flows from his magnificent, wonderful love for his disciples, because that's what the text says.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. In other words, the passage is saying this event of the washing of the feet needs to be seen in the context of the love that our Lord Jesus Christ is showing to his people. There's a couple of ways, by the way, of translating this. the ESV that I just read, or the New King James that many of you have, says he loved them to the end. Could be translated as the NIV does, he showed them the full extent of his love. There's a number of versions that have picked up on that, like he gave them a proof of his love beyond which love could not go. He showed him how perfect his love was, he loved them to the uttermost, to the outer limit. He saw it through or to the highest degree.

In other words, this word that's used here can mean both the length to the end. When we say end, we usually are speaking in length, but it could also mean the magnitude, the volume, shall we say, of his love, because it's a Greek word telos, which has the idea of end, completion, or perfection. When we say to the nth degree, that's what we're talking about. And I don't think it's accidental that just six chapters later, when Jesus is dying on the cross, John records that Jesus, when he says, it is finished, which was a commercial term, but the Greek word was teleste, which comes as a noun, a verbal form of the same noun. When Jesus says it's finished, it was also a commercial term that meant paid in full.

In other words, Jesus is saying, the love that I'm showing here, you can't get any better. It's the highest form of love. And I think it's no accident that John used this phrase here, referring to Jesus, both in his death on the cross, paid in full, the extent of his love, as high as it can go.

Because cleansing is through the death of Christ. That's the basis for the cleansing. But John is talking here through what Jesus is doing. One of the things he does talk about here is the daily cleansing that our Lord will give us. The whole focus though is, speaking of love, is on a great love, but also a love which is particular. Do you notice what it says? Having loved his own were in the world, he loved them too. Now, John's gospel can speak of a universal love. John 3 16, God so loved the world. There's a universal aspect of that. But there's also in John's gospel a particular aspect to his love. John 10 11, I lay down my life for my sheep. That's particular. In this context, It's clearly focusing on the particular. Having loved his own, he loved them to the end.

The word world is used 40 times in this farewell discourse, and it's almost always focused on what is opposed to God. It's like he does in 1 John, where he talks about the world is passing away. Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. The focus here is those he's redeemed out of the world. Yes, there's a universal love of God for the world, but here it's focusing on how Christ will redeem those of us who are his, his chosen ones. It's focused on that here, out of the world.

The foot washing then is an acted parable, which is intended to point beyond the act. Jesus, as the servant, picks up the towel and basin and deliberately acts as the servant to show to these mystified disciples He tells them, you'll understand it later. You're mystified. I understand you're confused and mystified. He tells them that.

But you'll understand more later what genuine sacrificial love would be like. Because in John 15, just a couple of chapters later, he will say, greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. I'm gonna act this out in a parable. I'm gonna do the servant's job, that nasty job that all of you are thinking in your minds, who's gonna do that? Not I, I'm gonna do that. And this is gonna be an acted out parable of what even in a much greater degree I'm going to do by laying down my life for you.

Well, the love of God in Christ is certainly the foundation of the Christian message. And this gets trivialized, unfortunately, But it should upset conventional understandings, and that's what the passage is saying, because Jesus loves to the nth degree, to the uttermost. The only reason why sometimes this doesn't grab us is we've allowed it to become too commonplace. we've forgotten either our desperate need for the love of God, or we have trivialized it by turning God into some sort of cosmic grandfather.

Now, I'm a grandfather, and I know, and married to a grandmother, and I know how easy it is for us to think, you know, oh, the wonderful grandchildren, you can do anything you want at grandma's house, and mommy says, two cookies, how about 10? Don't you, sure you don't want 10, you know? Not exactly, but you know, we all, all of us who are grandparents understand how that goes. And some people have turned God into a cosmic grandfather.

He has, there's no judgment, there's no need for repentance, no trust in him. And, you know, God forgives because it's his job to forgive and everything will just be wonderful. That's not the kind of love he's talking about here. He's talking about a love for sinners, a love for people who don't deserve any of that love, who deserve nothing but wrath and judgment. But he loved them to the uttermost, to the nth degree. Part of it, our misunderstanding is we have forgotten how undeserving we are of the love of God. Jesus loves us to the nth degree.

First Point

And that's the first foundational point that this passage should teach us. But it also reminds us in this passage that His ultimate servanthood is sovereignly planned. Two factors that are highlighted. Jesus was quite aware of the satanically inspired plotting of his traitor Judas, and that's woven throughout this passage, the emphasis on Judas, and Judas is going to betray him.

Yet Jesus is making it very clear, he's totally aware of it and totally in control of it. The great theologian from the early church, Augustine, said, remember, Judas was totally in Christ's hands. He is not caught off guard here. In a very real sense, Judas is the one being manipulated by the devil, not Jesus. This is a turnabout.

Instead of calling for help in such a situation and saying to his disciples, you know, you got a traitor in the midst, let's root him out, let's take care of this. No. Jesus proceeds in what is clearly a terminally, and that's the only way we can look at it, dangerous situation. He even warns the disciples in verse 19, so they won't be overwhelmed.

He says, I'm telling you this before it takes place, that when it does, you may believe that I am He. Jesus is saying, this is not catching me off guard. Judas, he doesn't mention it at this point, who he is, but he says, we got a traitor in the midst, and I'm well aware of it. It's not going to catch me off guard.

It's a betrayal, that's an ultimate betrayal, because it's a betrayal of someone who has been a close friend. And he quotes the Psalm text here. Look at verse 18 here. So that the scriptures may be fulfilled, he who ate my bread has lifted up his heel against me. It's someone who was in the inner circle, Jesus is saying, who has betrayed me. It's a betrayal of the most heinous type. because one who had shared table fellowship and perhaps given a place of honor. The reason why Jesus, of course, has this. power to sovereignly plan His final act of love is because the text reminds us He is God incarnate.

Look at verse 3, He came from the Father and is returning to the Father. Or in verse 19, it says, believe I am He. Every English translation translates that. But you have to understand that the word He is not in the original text. That's just trying to make sense of an English sentence that would otherwise seem weird to us. Because what Jesus in the Greek literally says, so that you will believe that I am. So that you would believe that I am.

If you know your scriptures, that should ring true to you. Because I am is God's holy name. The name that Yahweh is based on in the Old Testament. When Jesus says, I am, He makes it very clear earlier in the gospel. This is a claim to be the sovereign covenant-keeping God.

And that's what we are seeing here. This reminds us that Jesus does not lay, when he laid down his life, he laid it down. It was not taken from him. He was in total control of this situation. Now, there's a great comfort that should come from God's sovereignty.

Romans 8.29 reminds us that God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. The great Heidelberg catechism, question one, picking up on the scriptural phrase, reminds us not a hair of our head can fall without the will of our Father in heaven. Some of us my age have a few less that God has to count on top of our heads now, but still, even when one of those falls out, not apart from the will of our Father who is in heaven. And Jesus is in control of this situation.

There could be no more wicked thing to do than to betray the Lord of glory, as Acts 23. You with wicked evil hands slayed him, but he was planned, the text says, before the foundation of the world. Evil is still going to be a mystery to us. It always will be.

But God's triumph in Christ is assured. I can't think of a greater comfort in the kind of times we are living than that comfort. All things will work together for our salvation. Not a hair can fall from our head without His will. Even Jesus' betrayal here, done at the work of wicked men, but sovereignly planned and sovereignly controlled. by our Heavenly Father. We look around in a world in which there's chaos, and racial turmoil, and pandemics, and political turmoil, and you name it. I mean, economic turmoil. 2020 has not been a good year to live. We have to say that.

I mean, it really is the case. God's in control. Jesus reminds us, I've got everything under control. And the old spiritual said, he's got the whole world in his hands. Well, that's true. Absolutely. Jesus is reminding us that here, and we need to take comfort of that. Jesus wasn't caught off guard.

He says, I got a traitor in the midst, and this is part of God's sovereign plan. And I'm telling you beforehand, so you will understand. The text goes on to remind us that Jesus' ultimate servanthood brings us salvation. And there's this one interesting exchange between Jesus and Peter. Jesus says, I'm gonna wash your feet. And Peter has an interesting response. He answers in amazement, ask in amazement, answers in a most emphatic way, saying, nope, you are not going to wash my feet. Now, you can just kind of see the wheels turning in Peter's head here.

He's saying, yeah, I know, there's no servant here, but you're the master, and I'm not gonna let you do that. You can almost paraphrase this, what Peter says to Jesus is, not in a million years am I gonna let you do that. This is not going to happen.

And Jesus says to Peter, no. He says, if I do not wash you, you have no share with me. Can you imagine Peter, who probably said this with all the right intentions, at least he thought he had all the right intentions. He thought he was saying something that, why aren't these other guys standing up and saying, no way, no way, we're not letting you do this to us, Jesus. Peter, who bursts out and says, not doing this, not in a million years, Jesus, am I gonna let you wash my feet? And Jesus says, I don't wash you. You have no part in me." Now, Jesus is obviously speaking on a symbolic level here. He's pointing ahead to the fact that his death is going to come, which is the foundation for their cleansing, their spiritual cleansing.

Some have pointed out that there was a lot of pride in what Peter's doing. Calvin says, for example, pride will always be lurking under the semblance of humility. Some have said he was humble enough to see the incongruity of what he was doing, but proud enough to try to dictate to Jesus.

If you think about this, here's this Peter, I'm being humble. I'm not going to let you do that, but it's really pride on Peter's part. Like, I'm, you know, I'm going to tell you what to do here. You know, you, you can't do that. But the main thrust, what Jesus is telling us here is I am the source of cleansing. And if you refuse to receive this washing from me, which is this acted out parable of my cleansing, you're cutting yourself off from the only source. Many translations, you have no part in me. The ESV translates it, you have no share in me.

What's interesting is this was a word that was used for inheritance. And some of us, Jenny and I, just in the last couple of years, we've lost our last remaining parents and we've had inheritances. And I had two siblings and we had shares in that inheritance and we had to make sure this was all divided out and all that. Some of you have been through that very same sort of thing. But it's a word that was used for inheritance.

And Jesus is saying, you don't have any part in my inheritance. You aren't taking part in what I give you. if you don't allow me to wash your feet." Only in Jesus, he's telling us here, can you find forgiveness and cleansing. To seek it in any other means or on any other terms is to court spiritual disaster. If you don't let me wash you, you have no part in me.

Before service, For Christ, we need to regularly come to him for cleansing. I think this is an acted out parable that reminding us, he says, you are clean, but you need daily washing. But one of you is not clean. This, I believe, is a way Jesus is saying there's a basic cleansing that we get from Christ because of his death.

But just the Lord's prayer reminds us we daily come to him and say, forgive us our sins. That's constant. Why? Because we sin and thought, word, and deed. And the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer and their daily confessional thing used to say, we've left undone the things we have done and we've done the things we ought not to have done. There is no health in us. And that's a daily thing that we come to Christ. Then we say, we're told, pray, forgive us our sins and receive that daily cleansing, regular forgiveness.

What is in view here are not, I don't believe, are rituals. I mean, there have been some, and churches have tried to say, well, this is a rite of baptism, or maybe some sort of ritual of penance. You know, some churches have a ritual of penance, but it's interesting, even one scholar who came from the Roman Catholic Church, which has a regular ritual of penance, said, that's not what Jesus is talking about here.

He was a good enough New Testament scholar to say, that's not what Jesus is talking about here. He's talking about the daily cleansing. because he mentions that one of them who received the ritual never receives the cleansing. He did not have faith and trust in Jesus as the source of cleansing. Matter of fact, he was plotting to betray Jesus.

We must never allow anything to stand in our way of coming to Christ and coming on his terms, not on ours. Too much of our Christian living is proud and self-confident. We too easily can be like Peter here and say, Lord, I can do this. But Jesus says, no, you come to me for cleansing. Our culture doesn't like this, that Jesus is the one who must give us the basic cleansing and the daily cleansing. and in our world that wants to see human beings as basically nice people. You run into people like that. Yeah, there are people outwardly that are nice, but we need to understand deep down in all of us, there's that sin and depravity that needs regular cleansing.

We have to be like in John Bunyan's Pilgrim in Pilgrim Progress when he was hearing people giving truth that he knew was gonna take him astray and said he put his hands over his ears and ran away yelling, life, life, eternal life, like I gotta block this out. Jesus is saying to Peter, block out all those other thoughts. Come to me. He has the words of eternal life. What more could we ask for?

His death on the cross, he says just a couple of chapters later, I'm going to show you by laying down my life for my friends. But Jesus wants to apply this to our daily lives in another way. That's what we see in our next truth, and he calls it to us as a model.

He tells us we should do what he has done here. He says, he said, you should do, I've given you this, look at verse 15, as an example that you should also do just as I have done for you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. So he's telling us, put this acted parable that I have done into practice in your life. He has reminded us, for example, in Matthew 10, eight, you have received without being paid, so give. Freely you have received, so freely give.

Now, you have to be very careful here, because Jesus was going to the cross, and while he does speak about taking up his cross, our cross daily, and following him, here he's talking about this particular action as a model. We cannot lay down our lives for other sinners. Only Jesus could lay down his life for sinners. But this particular ritual that Jesus did here can serve as a model.

It's a model of self-denial. He says, if we refuse to do such tasks, we are claiming to be greater than he is. And he rightly points out that that is impossible. He says, mere knowledge doesn't cut it. In verse 17, he says, blessedness comes with action. He says, blessed are those who do these things. So Jesus is clearly pointing to an action. Now, a couple of things we need to clarify here.

Jesus is not talking, I don't believe, about a ritual for the church, because there have been some who have tried to make it a church ritual. some kind of ordinance or sacrament in the church. I never forget when I'm a student of church history, as many of you know, and I was reading about Baptists in the early 19th century. And in this Appalachian region, they had a big split in the Baptist churches. And one of the reasons is some of them said, Jesus doesn't do this. to do this in the church." And others said, no, this is not an ordinance we should do, and they ended up at a split over whether they should wash feet or not.

I remember years ago, before I even went to seminary, I knew a friend who grew up in a church that practiced ritual foot washing regularly. And he used to laugh about it because he said the ladies would all get pedicures the week before they were doing the foot washing. And he said it always seemed to him like it kind of beat the whole, just misunderstood the whole thing because Jesus was talking about washing dirty feet. And these ladies were going down to the toenail shop and getting their pedicures so nobody could see their dirty feet.

But regardless of all that, I don't believe Jesus is talking about a ritual at all. What he's talking about, because there's also no record in the early church of them practicing a ritual like this. What he's talking about is a model of servanthood attitude.

By the way, my ancestry came from the Netherlands, and there was an old Dutch theologian named Gomarus, and you'd have to understand the Netherlands to really understand this, with their clump and walking, the wooden shoes walking through the muddy fields, and they always take them off. You can always tell somebody comes from a Dutch-American home because they've got this tradition of shoes get put on the stoop. Stocking feet are in the house, shoes get off, because when you walked around in those dirty clump and you never want to bring them in. He made the comment, he said, well, in the culture we live, he said they would probably, Jesus would probably be talking about cleaning shoes, not cleaning feet.

And I think there's some real truth to that. Because Jesus is talking about cleaning things that are really dirty here, because he's talking about a servant's attitude. He doesn't say, do this in remembrance of me. He's saying, have this attitude. 1 Peter 5, 4 says we are to clothe ourselves with humility. And I believe Peter may have been reflecting on this very action when he wrote that, clothe yourself with humility. He's saying, Jesus put me in my place. He helped me to understand I needed a servant's attitude. And the question that always comes back for all of us is, Jesus applied this to his disciples, and do we? Do we look for servant attitudes?

Apostle Paul in Philippians 2, that very passage where he says, have this mind in you which is in Christ Jesus, of being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be in equality with God, but made himself the form of a servant, is in a very context where he also talks about Yodi and Tzintiki, those two women who were arguing with each other.

And he's saying, this is the attitude that you need to have. Paul talks about in the famous body images in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. And he says, remember the most important parts in a body are the kind, sometimes the parts you don't, we don't see. We clothe them so nobody else can see them. Jesus is talking about that here. He's calling us to do service that's sometimes nasty, demeaning, and certainly carries no glory with it. This was the slave, the servant's job to clean nasty feet. I've done this, now Jesus says, you take this as a model.

I'm reminded of a biography that I just finished not too long ago, Eric Metaxas's biography of Luther. And he talks about Luther, when the plague hit Wittenberg, his wife Katie said, Martin, it's time for us to get out of here. You're an important figure. in the Reformation, you gotta get out of here, Martin. No, don't stay around in the plague. And you know what he said? No, there are people dying here.

There are people here as a minister of the word, a minister of the gospel, I need to be here to minister to. That sobered me. Or we think of, we have friends who ministered in East Africa and she did an AIDS ministry. And he was our first pastor when we were in seminary, and then later went to the mission field. And she worked with AIDS patients, putting herself at great risk.

I'm thinking about the situation we're in right now. And I have to ask myself, just as we all have to ask ourselves in this pandemic, have we been mostly concerned, many of us, with how safe we can be? Or we always ask the question, how can I minister? Are there people that, even if I have to put myself in a little bit of a risk, that need my ministry? That's not an easy question. Because the immediate thing that comes to our minds is always, how can I keep myself safe? Rather than saying, are there people that need my ministry? I have to ask myself that same question as well.

Calvin said it this way, there is no love where there's no willing slavery in assisting a neighbor. So Jesus calls us for a self-sacrificial love that is willing to take real risks. And lastly, his ultimate servanthood implies missionary activity on our part, because he says that very clearly here.

And he says, whoever receives the one I send receives me, whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Jesus regularly referred to his own mission throughout the gospel, but he alludes here to a mission that he's going to send out his people to do. He will later tell them that he will pour out the Holy Spirit on his church to do that mission as he promised. But here he reminds them of the authority with which the church goes out in the mission.

We go out in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if they receive us, they receive Him. Jesus is the one who has all authority. Verse three reminds us of that, of this passage. He reminds His church in Matthew 28, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all the nations.

When we go out in the name of Christ, which is what we do when we give cups of cold water in his name, and we give the good news of the gospel to our friends and neighbors. That's all done in the name of Jesus Christ. We are proudly proclaiming the grace of God in Christ, and he is the authority behind that. When we recognize that unless Christ washes us, we have no part in Him, we should then have the gratitude and the desire to bear that message to others who need that same cleansing.

Our servanthood needs to extend beyond the immediate boundaries of the Christian community. As important as that is, we are called to be servants to a hurting and broken world. And I think this world of 2020, the last six months that we've been living through, ought to remind us this is a hurt and broken world. We go out as God's servants into that world. He sends us out and we go out in his name. day in, day out, going out in the name of Christ, bringing the good news of the gospel, bringing cups of cold water in his name, acting as his servants in a world that he has laid down his life for his people. And we are out there to find them, to bring the good news of the gospel. Jesus calls us to a life of servanthood.

It flies against that which comes naturally. It's not natural. That's not natural to have this attitude. It's natural to look out for number one. It's natural to only think about power and prestige and safety. None of these things are spoken in this passage. Matter of fact, Jesus is saying the opposite of all of them. It's the opposite of what our culture is telling us.

Without his servanthood, of course, our servanthood is meaningless. But because he is the ultimate servant, he calls us to be servants in his name. Our call to servanthood is because His servanthood has done so much for us. His love motivated Him to be the ultimate servant and His sovereign power carried it out. We are called to be servants to each other and to the world around us. It's a privilege to be a servant of Christ. Paul could think of no greater identity. Do you ever notice the way Paul begins all of his epistles? Paul, a servant or a slave of Jesus Christ. That was his identity.

Closing Prayer

And that should be our identity as well. As Jesus says, I call you to be servants, just as I showed you my servanthood in this passage. Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. It's a challenging passage because we don't like being servants. We don't like doing things that call upon us to leave our comfort and our safety, which are always foremost on our minds. our prestige, but you call us to be servants, just as our Lord Jesus Christ took the form of a servant, even though he had every right to full recognition of his equality with God. We thank you for this truth today, Lord, in Jesus' name.