Well, at Harborlight, we have been going through the Gospel of John on Sunday mornings, and our scripture today in John 13 is actually the beginning of our Lord's upper room discourse found in John chapters 13 through 17. But before we actually get into that, I kind of want to set the stage a little bit more and point out the timeline leading up to the crucifixion and the resurrection. The occasion of this entire discourse is the Passover supper on Thursday evening. Now when I say that, you might think, well, isn't the actual Passover on Friday? But remember that for the Jews, the day doesn't start at midnight, but rather it starts at sundown. So the Passover actually begins on what we would consider a Thursday evening. And if you have your Bibles open, you can look over in verse 29 and you see some evidence there that this meal was actually eaten on Thursday night rather than Friday night, because on Friday night there would have been no occasion to buy more food, because that would have been the beginning of the Sabbath when the markets would be closed. And so the Passover with Jesus and His disciples would have been on a Thursday evening and then later that evening Jesus would be arrested on that same evening running into the early hours of Friday morning. Jesus would have been tried first by the father-in-law of the high priest, then the high priest, then married, then pilot, and then he would have been crucified and buried on Friday before the Sabbath, which would have begun Friday at sundown, and then in the grave on Saturday and raised on Sunday. But here in our text, everything that happens occurs before they actually begin eating the Passover meal. And so Jesus and His disciples have just sat down to celebrate this Last Supper. They've been out walking on the dusty streets, and the custom as you came into a house for a visit or a meal is that the host would send his servant with a basin of water and a towel to wash and dry your feet, and then you would be ready to eat. So let's open our Bibles, and it's also there on the back of your bulletin, and read about what happens when none of the disciples take it upon themselves to wash the other's feet. John 13, verses 1 through 20, and I'm reading from the English Standard Version this morning. 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. In Supper, when 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 hands and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from Supper. He laid aside His outer garments and, taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him. He came to Simon Peter who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered him, what I'm doing you do not understand now, but afterwards you will understand. Peter said to him, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, if 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's bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but it's completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you. For he knew who was to betray Him. That was why he said, not all of you are clean. When he'd washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, do you understand what I've done to you? You call me teacher, Lord, and you're right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you are also to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example that you should do just as I have done to 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. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. I'm not speaking of all you, I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture must be fulfilled. He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. And I'm 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, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Amen. May God add his blessing to the reading and to the study of his holy word. As we look at this very unusual act of washing the disciples' feet, we're led to ask really what is the significance of this? And the first thing we could say is that it is an expression of love, someone that's quipped that there are a lot of people who conduct their lives cafeteria style, self-service only. Of course, that's not true of our Lord Jesus. What we discover in the upper room discourse, chapters 13 through 17, is that the Greek word for love, agape, occurs 31 times. And the word agape means more than just having warm feelings or good feelings towards someone. Rather it means a commitment to serving the other person. It refers to acts done for the good of the other person. And so in verse one, we're told that the ministry of our Lord Jesus was characterized by that one word love. Jesus loved his disciples. He loved them all along, even when they acted foolish and petty. In verse 16, Jesus says, 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. Do you understand the context of that statement? Actually, to really understand what's going on here, you have to go to another gospel, to Luke's gospel, Luke 22. During the supper, there was a debate going on. The disciples began to argue with one another about which one of them was the greatest. I mean, here is Jesus going to his imminent death, his crucifixion. It's the greatest event in the history of the world. It is his passion. It is what God has invested everything in. And the disciples are having a petty spat about which one of them is the best disciple. They're kind of like the little boy and his sister who were riding a hobby horse together. Little boy said, if one of us would get off this hobby horse, there would be a lot more room for me. But that's the way the disciples were. They were being selfish and petty. You know what? Jesus loved them anyway. And verse one says that he loved them to the end. Some translations say to the uttermost. He loved them so much that he was about to make the ultimate sacrifice for them. But it is in the context of this great love that the Lord Jesus removed his robe, knelt down as if he were a servant wearing nothing but a loincloth. And he answered the question that was uppermost in his disciples' minds, who among us is the greatest? And he answered that question not so much by words, but by his actions. Truly, in the kingdom of God, the greatest is characterized by the one who loves the most. So God looks at you and he sizes you up, if you will, not so much by how many great works you've done, but how you've loved one another, how you've loved him. The greatest is love. But listen, this is not only an expression of love, but it's also an extension of our Lord's humility. Flowing out of this love is Jesus' humility. And look again at verse 16. What exactly does he mean that a servant is not greater than his master or that a messenger is not greater than the one who sent him? Who is the master? Who is the one that's sending the disciples out into the world? Well, of course, it's Jesus. He is very God of very God. He is the immortal, all-wise God who dwelt in splendor and majesty. He's the one who was worshiped by angels. As their master, he should not have had to take on the role of a slave. Here is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and he's getting on his knees. He's untying the thongs of his disciples' sandals. He's humbling himself before the ones that he created. Our Lord should not have had to do that for these sinful, unworthy disciples. But in fact, he not only did it for the disciples who followed him, but he even got down on his knees and washed the feet of Judas the hypocrite, who was only pretending to be his friend. Look at how Jesus describes Judas in verse 18. He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me. When you have a meal with someone, when you share your food with them, that's a sign of relationship. It designates someone that you like to be with, that you want to be friends with. And you're enjoying fellowship. There's trust. There's intimacy there. But, of course, what has Judas done? He's lifted up his heel. He's like a horse who kicks his master who's riding him. And so Jesus has humbled himself before one who would repay kindness with evil, who would betray a trust with treachery. What humility. But you see, all of our Lord's life was lived in subjection to sinful man, born in a stable surrounded by animals. As a child, he had to flee with his parents to Egypt to escape the murderous hand of Herod. Then when he was 12, he traveled with his parents to Jerusalem where he subjected himself to the religious leaders at the temple, some of whom may have even later turned against him. Jesus lived his life under the human authority of his parents and the religious leaders and the Roman government. And all the time he was their master, their sovereign, their king. And so this act of washing the disciples' feet is just an extension of an entire life lived in humility and service. And so we should not think it strange that as he prepares for his ultimate humiliation, his betrayal and execution, that he would shy away from washing his disciples' feet. That was his character. And it is in sharp contrast with how most of humanity lives. William Gurnell in his work, The Christian in Complete Armor wrote, how unseemly it is that there should be a humble savior and a proud sinner. To know Christ, we must humble ourselves as Jesus did at the feet of his disciples, as he did on the cross for us. And so this act is an expression of love. It's an extension of his humility. But it's more than that. It is an expiation for sin. An article in Table Talk Magazine explains that expiation refers to the cleansing of sin and the removing of sin's guilt. Notice in our story that Peter didn't want to be washed. Peter understood who Jesus was. And in fact, he realized the humiliation it would be for his master to stoop down and clean the dirt and grime from his feet. He realized, and it was true, he wasn't worthy of it. The Messiah should not have had to perform such a demeaning act for him. But think about it this way. Say I'm a lowly private on the field of battle. I have no education, no money, no possessions. I joined the army because there was absolutely no other options to make a living. I have the very lowest rank that the army can confer, that of a buck private. They don't even give a chevron for that. But I'm sent into battle and I'm wounded. I'm carried from the field of battle to an army hospital to receive life-saving surgery. That is it that I need more than anything else. I need somebody that has a lot more on the ball than I do to help me. I need someone with skill, with education, with expertise, with caring to come to my aid, to clean my wound, to take out the shell fragments, to sterilize it, to sew it up, and then to continually watch over me and change the dressing and clean the wound. The person that does that is usually an officer. It may be a colonel, someone who has a greater, higher rank than I do. He's a colonel. I'm just a private. And so I let him clean the wound and do everything that I need done to save my life and to help me to heal. And even after the surgery, he makes sure the bandages are changed, the wound is clean, and I don't have an infection. Without his care, without his expertise, without his knowledge, I would die. So what soldier on the field of battle would deny the surgeon's hand to get messy with blood in order to heal him? You see, that is the relationship we have with Jesus. He's the great physician who washes us from our sins and heals us from all our uncleanness of our souls. And he does it because he loves us. That's why Jesus answers Peter in verse 8, unless I wash you, you have no part of me with me. And then what happens is it's pretty interesting because Peter gets it. He thinks about all the Old Testament temple worship that whoever approaches the holy place must first be washed in the labor that stands at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And that's what we discover in Exodus 30 verses 19 through 20. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it. Whenever they enter the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Now, washing is crucial if we're going to serve God. And perhaps Peter thought about the labor that was made for Solomon's temple in 1 Corinthians 7, 23, which was much larger than the portable labor of the tabernacle that had to be packed up and carried around. But the one in Solomon's temple was 15 feet across. It was 47 feet around, 7 and a half feet deep. I mean, you could go swimming in that. But one scholar has noted that the depth of the water in the bronze altar seemed to indicate that the priests completely immersed themselves in it rather than just washing their hands and feet. And so maybe that's why Peter says to Jesus in verse 9, not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well. What Peter desires here is the whole salvation experience. He wants a total cleansing. And of course, so should we. But Jesus says, wait, there is only one total cleansing. It's the one-time experience of putting our trust for salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is what Paul wrote in Titus 3, 5 and 6. He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we've done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. So we all need this one-time cleansing, this regeneration or born-again experience that places us in Christ. All of the disciples had experienced this cleansing except for Judas, whom the Lord spoke about in verses 10 and 11. But for Peter and the other disciples, Jesus is referring to another washing, a subsequent cleansing from sins that is after the initial born-again experience. And of course, we just did that in our service here as we went through this prayer of repentance. We all need this washing. We all need it frequently. In fact, we see this portrayed time and time again in the Old Testament. Every time the priests entered the house of the Lord, they were required to wash before presenting themselves to God. According to Leviticus 15, every Israelite who became ceremonially unclean by either touching something unclean or through an omission or through sexual relations was required to wash in order to be clean. And of course, we know that we all become clean on an unclean and a daily basis in our thoughts, our words, our actions. And we need to have the Lord Jesus wash our feet. Now it's not that the saved person becomes unsaved when they sin. And I've actually had a debate with someone recently about this, but that's impossible. If you have eternal life, it's not temporary life. It is eternal life. It's forever life. You're saved for eternity. And in fact, I think John explains this when he writes in 1 John 5, 17, there is a sin that does not lead to death. It's the sins that can be confessed and cleansed and forgiven. But like Peter and the disciples, we still need to go to the Lord to be cleansed for a number of reasons. First of all, it frees us from personal guilt that builds up inside us, this guilt that we have before the Lord that keeps us from having the intimacy and that personal relationship with Christ. When we sin and we fail to repent of that sin, that guilt just builds up in our soul. It affects our relationship to God. It hinders our worship. It hinders our prayers. It causes our service to be ineffective. We fail to bear good fruit in our lives. We still may be saved, but we become the most miserable of creatures, confused, despondent. We think, why doesn't the Christian life work? I think this is what happened to King David after his great sin. He says in Psalm 32, 3 and 4, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through all my groanings all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was sapped. But when he confessed his sins, that heavy burden, that terrible guilt was washed away as you receive God's forgiveness afresh. So when we sin, we don't need to wallow in our sins. We need to run to Christ. We need to seek repentance immediately as soon as we realize what we've done. And then when we confess our sins, secondly, it impresses upon us the great, merciful, unboundless love of God for sinners. David wrote a psalm about this in Psalm 118, verse 18. He writes, the Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death. And you remember what David had done, his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, his leading Uriah, taking the troops away so that Uriah would be killed in battle. And that displeased God very much, and there were bitter consequences to that sin. However, God did not kill David, but I'm sure there were times after that when David wished he were dead. But this psalm that he wrote out of that experience expresses a most profound truth that we all must know deep inside our bones. For David repeats this truth in that psalm in verses one, two, three, four, and then he closes the psalm with it in verse 29. For his loving kindness is everlasting. David came to understand the kind of love that God had for sinners to forgive them and restore them and draw them near to him when he repented of his sin. You know, that's been my experience also. John Newton, I can say, I'm a great sinner, but Christ is a great savior. He's slow to anger, filled with compassion, loving kindness. So many people wallow with their sins. They think their sins cannot be forgiven. They think that they've done it, that God is through with them. But if they would only repent from their heart and seek God afresh, they would fire the Lord to find that his mercies never fail. And then thirdly, when we confess our sins, it assures us of our salvation. Let me qualify that statement a little bit. It assures us of our salvation if in fact we are actually saved. See what happens when we begin to feel guilty about sins we've never felt guilty about before is that we start to look at God in a whole new way. And when we go to him and we begin to confess these and ask God to cleanse us, it may be that we actually become saved for the very first time. Now, we thought we were saved, but we really weren't because we had never truly dealt with our sin. And this is exactly what happened to me. I prayed the sinner's prayer as a child. My dad was a pastor. He held a series of revival meetings. And I can remember one night he gave a call to come forward for anyone that wanted to be saved. And I walked the aisle and he took me after the service and he prayed with me and talked to me a little bit about. I was really young and I think I prayed, but I'm not really sure if I did or not. But anyway, I joined the church and I considered myself a Christian. However, my life didn't reflect that. I really wasn't living like it. A number of years later, my sins began to bother me. I felt a burden, a heavy guilt. And then finally, one evening, I was in the military at the time. I was driving back to my barracks. I'd spent some time with my brother's brother and he was a Christian. And I just felt this heavy, heavy burden on me. And I decided I'd had enough. I'd been fighting against God for too long. And I repented of my sin and my failure and I asked God to cleanse me by the blood of Christ. And when I finished, I knew that I was a new creature in Christ. And so when we confess our sins, it assures us of our salvation if we are saved and if it doesn't, it may lead us to salvation. That leads us to the fourth significance of Jesus washing His disciples' feet. It is an example for us to do the same for others. In verse 15, Jesus encourages us to do for others what He has done for us. For I've given you an example that you should do just as I have done for you. See, when I came to Christ, I didn't come by myself. Others were involved in washing my feet even though I don't even think they realized it. Group of young men that my brother lived with who truly loved God, they loved me. They demonstrated a joyful walk with Christ. They washed my feet even though they didn't realize what they were doing. Their love for the Savior encouraged and convicted me of my own sins. And then my brother was getting married and his friend was also getting married. They married two sisters. And so I was staying with his friend in his apartment before they got married, his girlfriend. And I was in my room one night ready to go to bed and I heard a knock on the door and he said, I just feel like we need to pray together. Would you come on out? And I was blown away by that. No one other than my parents had really ever asked me to pray with them before. And that brought further conviction of sin and convinced me that I needed God in my life. And then even after I was in ministry, people who were concerned about me inquired about what was going on in my life and they prayed for me. They also washed my feet. I was in Grace Fellowship in Sydney Mines, pastor there for 26 years before I retired. But there was a godly lady in that congregation and she told me that the Lord woke her up every morning at 5 a.m. to get up and pray for me. And you know what? She washed my feet too. I clipped an article from Decision Magazine that was written by a man named Clark Cothern. I'd like to share it with you as we close. He writes, when I was a college freshman serving as a part-time music director in a church near Phoenix, Arizona, I invited a friend, Gavin Henderson, to help my pastor and me guide 30 lively junior high school kids through an all-night lock-in at the church. Early in the evening, Gavin challenged me to a game of table tennis in the fellowship hall. Our game quickly grew into a heated competition. A small crowd gathered and soon Gavin and I were battling it out. With the score tied and only three points to go before the end of the game, Tracy, an eighth grader, grabbed the ball and tried to play keep away. My first impulse was to become irritated but then a scripture passage that the group had read that afternoon came streaking across my mind. Love is patient. Love is kind. It's not jealous. Love does not brag and it's not arrogant. Does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. It's not provoked. I politely asked Tracy to return the ball and then Gavin and I joked with her until she finally tossed the ball back onto the table. We thanked her and finished the game. Years later we watched an evangelistic film. The pastor explained what it means to receive Christ as Savior and Lord. He quoted a Bible verse, God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The pastor then asked if any of the young people wanted to ask Christ to forgive their sins and be their Savior and Lord. We were pleasantly shocked as we watched Tracy lead a group of six kids down the aisle. Later that night Tracy told her story. She said, I grew up in a family where nobody goes to church. I've learned to get attention by making people mad at me. But earlier this evening I saw something different. When I stole the ball from these guys, they didn't get mad at me. They didn't fight back. That's never happened to me before. I saw something different in these guys. And I decided right then that I wanted whatever it was they have. When I watched the film and saw how Jesus can change us and even make it possible for us to love our enemies, I figured out that I needed Jesus and now I have him. I invited Jesus into my heart. Folks, that's how we wash one another's feet. Not with boiling water because we're angry and upset. Nobody wants their feet washed with boiling water. Not with ice water because we're cold and righteous and holier than thou. But we're to wash one another's feet with humility and with love as Jesus did. Because the greatest really and truly is love. Would you bow in prayer with me?