“A Serving Church”
(John 13:1-17)
Series: It’s Your Serve! (4/4)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD and Rev. Rich Stratton
First Baptist Church Henderson, KY
(5-6-07) (AM)
Words in Black: Rev. Todd A. Linn
Words in Red: Rev. Rich Stratton
- Please open your Bibles to John, chapter 13.
This morning is our final message in the series, “It’s Your Serve!” If you’re visiting with us, we’ve been looking at what the Gospels teach us about serving others. Three weeks ago we learned about glorifying God in Henderson by being salt and light; seasoning, shining, and serving our community. Then we looked at how Jesus defined “greatness.” Greatness is found in the heart of a servant. Then last week we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan and we learned about serving others in our community by being “mighty neighborly.” And each of us was challenged to do an act of neighborly kindness this past week.
It’s been a joy to see so many members sign-up for different ways to serve the community and we’ve celebrated that each week by watching a video clip of what has happened the previous week. Yesterday many of you gathered together to clean up the city parks and cemeteries. Let’s take a look at this video.
[Video Clip; 90 minutes]
Thank you for serving! For our final message in our series, Brother Rich and I are once again going to do some team preaching and we’ve decided to preach “in stereo” again. So Rich is going to come up and join me. We’ve really enjoyed doing this for these four weeks and we look forward to doing it again occasionally as the Lord leads.
- Please stand in honor of the reading of the word; just the first few verses to get us started.
1 Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
2 And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him,
3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God,
4 rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself.
5 After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
- Pray.
Introduction:
One of our members called me last Monday morning and said, “Hey, I’ve got to tell you something I saw on a church marquis. He said the sign read, ‘The Christian life is like tennis: you can’t play unless you serve.’” How many tennis players are here this morning? That’s true, isn’t it? A tennis player isn’t playing tennis until he gets into the game and he’s not going to have much of a game if he doesn’t know how to serve well. Our emphasis this past month has demonstrated that the Christian life is just like that. Jesus has been teaching us that Christianity is all about serving well. We’re not really living the Christian life if we’re not “in the game,” and we’re not going to “play well” if we don’t know how to “serve well.” Christianity is all about serving, and serving well.
Now our passage this morning is going to help us “improve our serve.” So we’re going to take some lessons together. Let’s learn some lessons this morning about serving, lessons that will help us improve our serve. Number one:
I. Serving is a Matter of Love (1)
We’ve seen the theme of love occur each week that we’ve talked about serving. It is love that motivates us to be salt and light in our community. It is love that propels us to greatness when we have a servant’s heart. It is love that causes us to look for ways we can serve our neighbor. Serving is a matter of love. Verse one introduces the story where Jesus serves His disciples in a practical way by washing, cleaning, and drying their feet. I really like the way verse one sets up this act of service. I mean, John could have begun the chapter by just getting right to the action, describing what Jesus did. But he sets it all up by reminding us that serving is a matter of love.
1 Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
Two times we read the word “love” there. The Bible says, “Jesus loved His own (that is, His disciples) who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” The faithful love of Jesus Christ for His own, for His children, for believers and followers of Christ. You know, it’s true that “God so loved the world.” He loves in a general way, but He also loves in a particular way. I do, too. I can say, “I love all children,” but I have a particular love for my own two children. God loves His own in a special, particular way. If you are His child you can thank your Heavenly Father that He loves you in a special, particular way, loving you as His very own.
And note that Jesus’ love is not hindered in any way by the horrible circumstances that would soon befall Him. Verse one says, “Jesus knew that His hour had come (and) that He should depart from this world to the Father.” Think of it! Jesus knew what He would soon face in just a few short hours. He knew Judas would betray Him. He knew that Peter would deny Him. He knew that the rest of the disciples would abandon Him. And He knew that He would die a horrible death of crucifixion. And yet, we read that “He loved His own who were in the world (and) loved them to the end.”
Some translations (NIV, NLT) have the last part of verse one reading, “He now showed them the full extent of His love.” And that is what Jesus will do next. He will show His disciples the full extent of His love by serving them in a very practical way.
Serving is a matter of love. Remember the “Great Commandment?” Jesus says in Mark 12:30-31, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
We serve well only when our acts of service are motivated by love, love for God and love for others. If we’re just serving because we feel we “have to,” we’re not going to have much of a serve, kind of like a tennis player just hitting the ball because someone else forced him into the game. How different that is from a tennis player who loves the game! He gets into that game because his love for the game compels him to play and be his best. Similarly if we, as Christians, are just going around doing acts of service because we feel we “have to,” we’re not going to have much fun and we’re not going “to play” very well, either. What a drudgery! But our acts of service become joyful and worshipful when we are motivated by the love that God has shown us. It’s really simple: just remember how God has loved you, and continues to love you, and that should fill you with so much happiness and joy that you will just naturally want to show that same love to others.
If we’re going to improve our serve then we need to remember that serving is a matter of love. That’s lesson number one. Lesson number two:
II. Serving is a Matter of Lowliness (2-11)
We’ve seen this principle before, too, especially a couple of weeks ago when we read Jesus’ teaching about “Greatness and the servant’s heart.” Jesus says in Mark 10:43-44, “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.”
The disciples were tempted to think of power and greatness the same way you and are I tempted to think of power and greatness. The worldly way of calculating greatness is to ask how many servants a man has under him. The Christian way of calculating greatness is the other way around: “Given that you are merely a humble servant, how may people do you serve?” That’s the spirit of lowliness. Lowliness is not thinking less of yourself, lowliness is just not thinking about yourself. Lowliness is the spirit of serving others.
Lowliness is what Paul has in mind in Philippians 2:3-4, where he says, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”
Jesus models this lowliness here in a very practical way. Let’s look more closely at the story.
2 And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him,
3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God,
4 rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself.
5 After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
Before we read on, look again at verse 3. The Bible says that Jesus knew that “the Father had given all things into His hands.” So while Jesus has authority and power over all things, He still serves others! He’s still willing to get down on His hands and knees and perform a menial slave task for others. And it’s not just any slave task but the task of washing someone else’s feet and I don’t know about you but I’m not even really thrilled about washing my own feet. I just have a thing about feet and my foot aversion comes from when I was in school at Campbellsville College. There was a guy who lived in our dorm named Jason Green and he lived up to his name. His feet stank so bad that when he came back to his room after a day of classes and kicked off his shoes I could smell “the Green fog” within minutes and I lived the next floor up. I could not imagine ever getting close enough to those feet to wash them. But Jesus demonstrating His love for his disciples and teaching them what it means to love others washed there feet and would have done so even if they had been “foggy feet”. Serving is a matter of lowliness. Now Peter doesn’t get this at all:
6 Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, “Lord, are You washing my feet?”
Let’s face it: Peter just said what the others were thinking. Peter is big-time uncomfortable with Jesus’ washing his feet. Who wouldn’t be? I mean, Jesus is—Jesus! Peter’s shocked, and so are the others. And the reason they’re shocked is because the structure of our world system suggests a hierarchy of authority. Great, powerful people are at the top and everyone else is below. Peter is influenced by that world system. In essence, he is saying, “Jesus, everyone knows that honorable people don’t perform the menial tasks of slaves!” After all that is why Peter and none of the other disciples had gotten up to do the job themselves, they were still thinking in worldly terms of greatness and each of them thought that this job was beneath him. They were all still seeking a position of superiority in comparison to on another. But, of course, Jesus continues to teach that “His kingdom is not of this world.” Christianity does not operate the way the world operates. Peter interrupts Jesus’ object lesson. Now look at verse 7:
7 Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.”
I really think what Jesus is saying here is, “Just stay with Me on this, Peter. You don’t understand what I’m doing now, but you will when I am finished. I’m teaching you all something and if you’ll just be patient, I’ll explain it later.” And He will. Jesus will later tell all the disciples in verses 12 and following exactly why He has washed their feet. But Peter just can’t handle the thought of Jesus’ washing his feet right now.
8 Peter said to Him, “You shall never wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.”
That phrase there means that Peter will have no fellowship with Christ. Jesus is saying, “Peter, if you don’t allow me to wash your feet, you’ll be out of fellowship with Me. Your refusal will be taken as an act of disobedience and you will lose the joyful peace of walking in fellowship with Me, enjoying My presence. Hang with Me on this, Peter.”
9 Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!”
This is so Peter! In his characteristic manner, Peter goes from one extreme to the other, like a pendulum swinging from left to right. He goes from “You shall never wash my feet” to “Wash my entire body.” Peter goes from telling Jesus that He’s doing too much to telling Jesus that He’s doing too little. “I don’t want to be out of fellowship with You, Lord, so wash not only my feet, but wash my entire body! I’m with you!”
Now it’s purely speculative, but I think that reaction may have evoked a loving smile on the face of Jesus. I can hear Jesus responding in the first part of verse 10 with a smile in His voice:
10 Jesus said to him, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.”—
—And if there was a smile on Jesus’ face at the beginning of verse 10 it quickly faded at the end of verse 10 with that last phrase, “but not all of you.”
Jesus is giving two meanings of the word “clean” here. He means both physically clean and spiritually clean. The physical meaning occurs first: Jesus says to Peter, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet” because he is already “completely clean” and you all (plural) are “clean.”
That’s Jesus’ way of saying, “Look, everyone takes a bath before going over to another person’s home for a meal. (By the way, that’s still a good practice today!) So they bathe the whole body. But on the way to the person’s home, their feet get awfully dirty. Dirt and sand from the journey necessitate their feet being washed just before entering the house. So, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet” because “he is already “completely clean” and you all are “clean.” So Jesus might say to Peter, “It isn’t necessary for me to wash your hands and head. You are already clean.” That’s physical cleaning.
But then Jesus adds the phrase, “but not all of you,” and it is at this point we understand that He is also speaking of being clean in the spiritual sense, spiritually clean by salvation. We know that because of what He says in the next verse:
11 For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, “You are not all clean.”
So Jesus says, “You all are spiritually clean, but not all of you.” It may be more helpful here to use the Southern vernacular I remember from Georgia: “Ya’ll are clean, but not all ya’ll are clean.” That’s pretty much the way Jesus is saying it—without the accent. Without the accent—“You all are clean, but not every single one of you is clean.” He said this because “He knew who would betray Him.” Judas was the one who would betray Him. Judas was not clean, not spiritually clean, not a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus had spoken this way before about Judas, referring to him earlier in John 6:70 as, “a devil.” It’s remarkable that one can be so close to Jesus and still not be a true believer.
I was reading J.C. Rlye in my studies this week. I highly commend this great puritan to you for your study. We’ve ordered his four-volume Expository Thoughts on the Gospels for the church library. J. C. Ryle mentions this incredible irony that Judas was one of the 12, but not a true believer. Ryle’s words are worth some solemn reflection. Listen to what he says we can learn from Judas. He says:
“On all the coasts of England there is not such a beacon to warn sailors of danger as Judas Iscariot is to warn Christians. He shows us what length a man may go in religious profession, and yet turn out a rotten hypocrite at last, and prove never to have been converted. He shows us the uselessness of the highest privileges, unless we have a heart to value them and turn them to good account. Privileges alone without grace save nobody, and will only make hell deeper. He shows us the uselessness of mere head-knowledge. To know things with our brains, and be able to talk and preach and speak to others, is no proof that our own feet are in the way of peace. These are terrible lessons: but they are true.”
Terrible lessons but true, indeed. Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’” Public worship services like these grant us the opportunity to look within and consider whether we are truly Christians, whether we have really been saved. Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
Serving is a matter of lowliness. While the worldly way of calculating greatness is to ask how many servants a man has under him, the Christian way of calculating greatness is the other way around: “Given that you yourselves are merely humble servants, how may people do you serve?”
If we’re going to improve our serve, we’re going to have to learn these lessons. Serving is a matter of love and serving is a matter of lowliness. For this reason, the third lesson is inevitable:
III. Serving is a Matter of Lordship (12-17)
And here we see the main point behind Jesus’ practical object lesson. Here is the understanding Jesus promised Peter would receive later.
12 So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?
Well, they likely haven’t understood just yet, but they will when Jesus says what’s next:
13 “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.
14 “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
Serving is a matter of Lordship. Jesus says, “If you’re going to call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ then you’d better be acting like My students and disciples. If I’m your Teacher and your Lord, then be My students and be My disciples. Serving is a matter of Lordship.”
Jesus may as well have said, “Don’t even think of calling Me ‘Lord’ if you’re not going to do for others as I have done for you.” It’s like Jesus says in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” Serving is a matter of Lordship. We have no right saying, “Jesus is my Lord” if we do not serve others.
15 “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.
Jesus is certainly not instituting “foot-washing” as an ordinance like the Lord’s Supper or Baptism. While some churches today have “foot-washing services,” there is no evidence in the Bible that this was ever practiced by the early church. In fact, it would likely result in just missing the point entirely. Jesus is using a practical action in His day to illustrate just one of many ways to serve others. So if I learn this lesson correctly I’ll understand that my wife will not be nearly as impressed with my washing her feet as she would be in my washing the dishes! So rather than instituting an ordinance Jesus is setting an example and washing feet in a public worship service is not following that example but serving others by pumping free gasoline, cleaning their apartment building, washing their car is, bagging their groceries and letting them know how much you love and appreciate them is.
Jesus is making the point that just as He has served us, so we will serve others if we’re calling Him our Lord and Master. Serving is a matter of Lordship.
16 “Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.
17 “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
And so the story ends with a promise of blessing to the one who keeps Jesus’ words. If you and I serve others we will be blessed. It truly is “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Many of you have experienced the blessing of serving in recent days and weeks. As we continue to serve we will continue to be blessed. While the campaign is over, the Christian life continues. So keep improving your serve, keep serving others in you daily life, as an individual, as a Sunday School class, as a church and as followers and imitators of Christ. Remember that serving others is a matter of love. Serving others is a matter of lowliness. And serving others is a matter of Lordship.
Conclusion:
As we prepare to pray, we want to go back to a passage mentioned earlier and read it a little further; Philippians, chapter 2. Remember the first part?
Philippians 2:3-4, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”
Then Paul goes on to illustrate what that kind of lowliness, that kind of “putting the interests of others before your own interests” looks like. He says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (v.5) who, “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” So Jesus demonstrates the most supreme act of serving others by dying for their sins.
Maybe sometime after the death and resurrection of Christ the disciples would look back and remember that evening when Jesus’ washed their feet. Maybe they looked back upon that action with a greater and deeper appreciation for the fact that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
- Stand for prayer.
The greatest act of serving others occurred when the Son of God came to earth, stooping low to conquer our sins by dying on the cross for our salvation. Turn to Him this morning. Trust in Him as your Lord and Savior today.
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