Psalm 41 and the Love of Christ

He Loved Them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 5: “A Love that Confronts and Defeats Evil”

(John 13:18-30, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 27, 2009)

¹⁸ I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, 'He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.' ¹⁹ I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. ²⁰ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." ²¹ After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." ²² The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. ²³ One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table close to Jesus, ²⁴ so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. ²⁵ So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, "Lord, who is it?" ²⁶ Jesus answered, "It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it." So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly." ²⁸ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. ²⁹ Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, "Buy what we need for the feast," or that he should give something to the poor. ³⁰ So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

What did Jesus quote from the Psalms to warn His disciples about His coming betrayal?

A: “'He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” (John 13:18)

He who ate my bread has lifted up his heel against Me (18)

We have been considering together the extravagant love of God for sinners as displayed by Jesus Christ when He washed His disciples’ feet. We have seen that the love of Jesus was a love that was well-informed, that He knew that His time had arrived, and that He would be returning home to heaven, to the Father. We have seen in His actions a love that was willing to take a very low position, in order that His disciples would be cleansed. We know that this great love was not easy for His disciples to receive, because they were uncomfortable with what it required of Jesus, that He take the part of their slave – they were uncomfortable about that, but they had to go along with it, because He insisted on it as their Master. And we have found that this way of love was to be a way of life for us, that as our King was willing to be low for our salvation, we needed to care for one another in a new way.

While some of this may have been difficult, we now enter upon verses that deal with true horror and the most wicked evil. Jesus will be betrayed by one of them. He had just been talking to them about the great blessings that will be theirs in the life to come as they live out this costly love. But now He says that those blessings will not be for all of them. One of them was chosen to be a disciple, but He was never chosen for eternal blessing. This is shocking news, but it is news that is testified to in the Old Testament Scriptures. The love of Jesus for sinners will be displayed through the horrendous evil of a friend’s betrayal.

There are several psalms that are about Judas and His betrayal of Jesus. Our Lord quotes from one of them here (Read Psalm 41.) Jesus does not quote Scripture out of context. We want to understand the psalm and see how this fits into the story of God’s love and the overturning of true evil with good. The first three verses of Psalm 41 speak of how the Lord blesses the man who is truly good in His sight, and specifically states that He “keeps him alive,” and that “he does not give him up to the will of his enemies.” The first shocking fact in Jesus quotation of this psalm is that Christ, who has been declared to be well-pleasing to the Father by a voice from heaven, will very soon be turned over to his enemies, and they will be allowed to kill Him. The facts of the psalm do not seem to match His situation. The second shocking fact in Jesus’ quotation of this psalm is that the psalmist identifies himself as a sinner, and the Bible is explicit that Jesus knew no sin. Once again, the facts seem wrong here.

The next section in the psalm (v. 5-9) describes the work of enemies against the psalmist, and in the midst of these enemies is a friend, one who shared bread with him, but who now is ready to kick him in the face. The psalm ends with the statement of great faith. The psalmist knows that he will be upheld by God, and the reason he gives is, “because of my integrity.” Because of this integrity, the suffering psalmist will sit in God’s presence forever, All of this sounds right. Jesus was betrayed by a close companion. Jesus was judged to be complete in His integrity, and He would sit with the Father forever in heaven. But note this one fact: Jesus will not be alone.

This is the key to understanding the shocking parts of the psalm that seem so wrong. The good man is not supposed to die, but He does. Jesus is not a sinner, but the person in the psalm is counted as a sinner, even though he is vindicated as a man of glorious integrity by the end of the psalm. How do we make sense of those two shocking facts that seem like errors? If the Psalm is about Jesus being betrayed by Judas, and we cannot doubt that, why does Jesus die instead of live, and why is Jesus crying out in the psalm, “I have sinned against You?”

The connection between the one Servant of God, and the many He represents before God, is the key for us in understanding Jesus, understanding the Bible, and understanding why you and I have hope of peace with God now and forever. The foot-washing, cross-bearing love of Jesus is not content simply in Him being at the right hand of the Father forever, otherwise He would not have bothered to be visit us at all. Jesus wants us to be with Him in heaven, not because He needs us, but because He has determined to love us; not because we are perfect, but because His love is. Therefore, He came as a sinless man, and He declared Himself a sinner because He had determined to be sin for us, and so to take our sin upon Himself, and to atone for that sin. To do this, He, the truly good Man, had to die rather than live. This was all part of the plan of God. It was part of the horror of that plan that He would be betrayed by His close companion. For Judas, this was evil. For God, this was deep love. There is a reason they are finding out about Psalm 41 now. It is being told to them as part of the great story of the love of God through Jesus.

The apostolic church, the Son, and the Father (19-20)

God is a great expert in working the evil of men and angels into His good purpose. Naturally the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was to be one of the greatest shocks that the disciples would ever face. Not only that, Judas would seem for a moment to be the one who got his way. He was to be the agent of betrayal, and he succeeded in doing what he was to do. By quoting Psalm 41 at this key moment before Jesus sends Judas on his way to do what he will do quickly, the sovereign ruling Son of God is establishing the fact that He knows what is happening here, and He is helping His disciples to see three things rightly.

First, Jesus is the Messiah. He is the divine “I-Am” who alone could come as the sin-bearer for us. Second, these men who will be apostles are being sent out by Him as messengers of One who should have lived according to His own righteousness, but who died that we might be counted as righteous in Him. He would send them forth not with the embarrassment of the cross, as if something had gone wrong, but with the message of the cross that could never again be separated from the message of Him and the message of what would be the Christian faith. Third, anyone who would receive Jesus, His message of cross-love, and His messengers of the cross and resurrection, would be receiving the Father, and would have an end-of-Psalm 41 secure hope of dwelling forever in the presence of God.

And it was night (21-30)

The rest of the passage is the troubling story of what happened around that table before their companion Judas left to do his anti-Christ work. Jesus tells them the fact that one of them would betray Him. There was a lot of surprise as people looked around and said some things, and somehow Peter signaled John to ask Jesus for the identity of the betrayer. Jesus quietly told this gospel writer the truth that it would be Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, by giving him a piece of bread, again in fulfillment of Psalm 41. The disciples did not all know this at that moment, but John knew. And he wrote it down here for you to read. And I am sure that those men thought about Judas for the rest of their lives. There would have been plenty to say. John puts it this way: “And it was night.” It was an evil night.

There is something important going on here concerning love. Love does not exist in the denial of evil. Love confronts and defeats evil with good. Evil fits into the sovereign plan that God has for good, His sovereign plan for the love of the cross. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas is not a last minute addition to the sovereign purpose of God. It is clearly part of His plan, even recorded for us in the psalms. God has a powerful enough plan of love for us, that it includes a full awareness, not only of the evil around us, but much more significantly of the evil within us.

The call to turn to God goes out to all who hear the words of Jesus from the beginning of His ministry: “Follow me.” Some hear these words with a conscience that can no longer feel. They will not follow. They will not believe. They have been met by the Word of God, but they will not hear and receive Jesus.

But some have been created for a different purpose. Though they were fit objects of God’s wrath, just like Judas, and just like all of mankind, they have become the beloved of the Lord. They hear the warning of judgment and the call to repent and believe. Their consciences are awakened to the fear of God. They resolve by the power of Jesus’ love to turn away from sin and to trust in His perfect obedience as the Passover Lamb. The blood of that Lamb has been applied to their hearts, once as hard as granite, and now the Spirit has enabled them to breathe the air of heaven. Suddenly life has begun where there was only stone-cold spiritual death. This is what the blood of Christ has done for us, defeating our evil, paying our debt, and bringing us love in such a way that we could live.

Though there is much night all around us, and though we have had far too much night within us, a new light has dawned by the power of the One who washed His disciples’ feet. Evil has been defeated through the cross. Love has won our hearts and our lives. It is only a matter of time now till we inhabit a world of the fullest love. Be troubled with the great Son of God over the hardness of hearts that will not take heed to gospel warnings. But then rejoice with Jesus that your heart need not be in that number.

1. How do the Psalms help us to understand the betrayal of Jesus?

2. Why was it important for the future apostles to know this?

3. Why would the Son of God be troubled in His Spirit?

4. What is the spiritual usefulness of the account of the events and words surrounding the departure of Judas?

How Can We Love Like Jesus

He Loved Them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 4: “A Love that Claims Us”

(John 13:12-17, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 20, 2009)

¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, "Do you understand what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, 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. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

What did Jesus tell His disciples after washing their feet?

A: “You also ought to wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14)

Your Lord and Teacher (12-13)

We have been spending some time considering what it might mean that Jesus, prior to His betrayal, washed the feet of the men who would be sent out as His apostles or messengers. There was something symbolic happening here which can be easily summarized in a few words. The One who was in every way conceivable the greatest among them, willingly took the spot that would have customarily gone to the lowest servant. This was a shocking thing for Him to do. It still speaks powerfully to us of the love of God even today.

Why did Jesus do such a thing? There are two important reasons for this symbolic action. There is the prophetic purpose, but there is also what I will call the imperative purpose. The prophetic purpose becomes obvious after Jesus goes to the cross. The foot-washing was an acted-out prophesy that Jesus, the Son of God would lower Himself in love in order to serve us. I am not referring to washing anyone’s feet now; I am speaking of the cross. The prophetic purpose of the foot-washing was to point to the imminence of His death, a death where the greatest of all men took the lowest spot for our cleansing. That is a beautiful fact.

But there is a second purpose, what I am calling the imperative purpose. The word imperative is a word that speaks of a command. Jesus is using the picture of foot-washing to give a command to His disciples. It is this imperative purpose that we need to explore today, and it is the subject of the six verses that are before us now. We want to understand what precisely Jesus is commanding the men who would be His apostles, but even beyond that, we would like to understand what Jesus is telling us as those who would call Him our Lord.

One thing that we notice immediately is that Jesus did not stay on His hands and feet all night. We are told that He resumed His place. What does this mean? He put on His outer garment again. He took His former place at the meal. He began to instruct His friends again as the One who was above them as their Teacher and their Lord. Jesus is not setting up a new social order of radical egalitarianism. His purpose in washing the feet of His disciples is not to abandon His leadership role or to deny that there will be leaders in the kingdom. He is not running away from being our Lord and King. He is defining what it will mean to be the King or to be a leader who follows Him.

When Jesus was finished with the foot-washing, He took His rightful place again. What is the right place of Jesus? Is it the place of the great Son of Man from Daniel 7:13-14, coming on the clouds of glory, or is it the place of the righteous suffering servant of Psalm 22:16, which reads, “They have pierced my hands and my feet.” We understand, in a way, the second of these references, the low one. Hundreds of years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, David wrote a song that was part of the Psalms, and that song told the story of the cross. It actually contained the words, “They have pierced my hands and my feet.” The place of Jesus was that low, in a sense. His place was as low as necessary to suffer the death that our sins against God demanded.

It is the reference to His high position that we have not considered enough. Consider these two verses from the prophet Daniel. When God’s people were under the control of a foreign power in Babylon, God gave the prophet Daniel a vision of the glory of the Messiah, again hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Daniel 7:13-14: “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

So what is the rightful place of Jesus? Is it the amazingly high place Of Daniel 7 or the amazingly low place of Psalm 22? The answer has to be that both the high and the low places are the right place for Him. That is the secret of Jesus, and if we can understand that, then we have begun to grasp the secret of the Christian Imperative. Jesus is our Lord. He is our Teacher. He is by His nature and His accomplishments the Lord Most High. Yet He is by His willing heart of love, the Servant most low. He has taken our eternal wound, so that we could be whole.

You also should do just as I have done to you. (14-15)

The Christian Imperative has come to us in the form of a powerful example, first in the towel and the basin, but finally in the cross. The point of the example is obvious. “You also ought to wash one another's feet…. You also should do just as I have done to you.”

The Christian Imperative is Christ-like love. But what is Christ-like love? The answer involves a double challenge. The first and most obvious requirement for us is to do – to do the activities of lowly service. The second and much more difficult challenge is to do those things with a willing heart. Washing one another’s feet, really doing as Jesus has done, actually following Him in this lowliness of love, involves something wonderful in the soul of the doer.

Jesus washed feet. Jesus died on the cross. Does anyone believe that we could have called it the truest and best love if He did this by a grudging compulsion, and not willingly. It is the fullness of the spiritual willingness of Jesus to love us through His death that makes His love so great. That’s why Psalm 110 talks about the true followers of Jesus in terms of their willingness: “A willing people in thy day of power shall come to thee.” But there is our problem. We need more than the self-discipline of doing acts of Christian service. To follow Christ’s example of love, we need the heart of Christ, a truly willing heart. This is not something that you can earn, like a merit badge. This is something that must be given to you. The way that it is given to you is by Jesus getting down on His own hands and feet, and washing your feet.

This quality of a God-given love is especially important for the leaders in the church. The way that the new disciples receive the gift of love themselves is through the willing service of the leaders in the church who know what it feels like to receive God’s love from a willing God. This is what the Apostle Peter writes about:

1 Peter 5:1-4 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

The Master who sends us out (16-17)

There is a Master in the Christian church, and there are servants of the Master. The Master was willing to be a servant. There is a King who sends out His messengers of love, and there are messengers who are sent out. The King was willing to be sent out.

You know these things. Blessed are you if you do them! Blessed are you if you do them the way that Jesus did them. This is why Jesus spent three years with these men before He washed their feet and died on a cross for them. That must have been very powerful. They had been with Him. They knew He loved them. He had been sent by God. Now they would be the sent ones, which is what the word “apostle” means. They would spend time with others, and those others would receive the love of God, and then they would be sent out, and so on.

To those of you who truly feel that you have this gift of willing love for your Christian family here, I have only one instruction. Use the gift that you have. That is the way that others will see and receive that gift from God. They will begin to sense the truth that there is something from God that can be theirs, and that something is love.

To those of you who wonder whether you have the willingness of love that comes from God, I want to help you. You believe that Jesus loved you. You believe in the cross. You believe in the towel and the basin, and you are moved by it. How can I help you this morning to receive the gift of willing love that is such a great blessing of God? Try this: Treat someone in need as if you were there with Jesus. That will help you to be willing to love and serve that person.

What would it mean for you to love someone like you love Jesus? If Jesus came here today, and he was hungry, would you take him home and feed him? If Jesus was new here, and he wanted to learn, would you be willing to be his friend and to teach him? Does that sound like a strange way of thinking? I don’t think that it is. Let me close by reading to you from the end of Luke 2. (Read Luke 2:41-52) (1 John 4:7-21 for the Lord’s Supper)

Jesus washed your feet. Love Him. Love His beloved church. This is the Christian Imperative. This is the blessedness of those who know and do the love of God with a willing heart.

1. What is the meaning of Jesus resuming His place?

2. In what sense is Jesus our Lord and Teacher?

3. What are the implications of the example of Jesus for the life of His church?

4. In what sense will the apostles be sent out by the Master? What about us?

Completely Cleansed

He Loved them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 3: “An Uncomfortable Love”

(John 13:6-10, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 13, 2009)

⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" ⁷ Jesus answered him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand." ⁸ 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." ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, "The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet,¹ but is completely clean. And you² are clean, but not every one of you." ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, "Not all of you are clean."

Were the disciples comfortable with this display of suffering love?

A: “Peter said to Him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’” (John 13:8)

Do You wash my feet? (6-8a)

The Son of God, Jesus Christ, came from heaven to save us. He has power and authority far above every king ever known to man. But in John 13, this great Jesus has taken off His outer garment and is down on His hands and knees before a fisherman named Peter, and He is about to wash Peter’s feet as if Peter were the great man and Jesus was a lowly servant. And Peter is uncomfortable.

Peter’s reaction is understandable. Jesus is the Master. We should be the servants. How could it be right that the great Son of the living God should be doing this? Peter is unwilling to go along with this. That is understandable, but it is still wrong. If Jesus is so great, and He is, if He is the One through whom the world was made, if He is the One who holds everything together, if He is the One who is to be the eternal King over heaven and earth, than Peter needs to trust that He knows whether or not He should be doing what He is doing here. It is understandable that Peter feels uncomfortable when Jesus serves Him, but it is not alright to refuse Jesus.

Peter wants to insist that Jesus needs to be in the highest position of honor, but then He refuses to obey Him, imagining that he, Peter, can be the judge of the Lord’s intentions. As a matter of kingdom authority, Jesus needs to be the One who determines what will be done or not done to teach us about who He is and what He is doing. Again, it is alright for us to have trouble understanding this ceremony of lowliness, but it is not alright to refuse the love of the highest Leader when He comes to us as the lowest Servant. He must know what He is doing.

Jesus understands Peter’s confusion. He knows that this is more than Peter can understand at the moment. The answer is not to speak or to act against the Lord of glory as He makes His way to the cross. The solution here is for Peter to be patient, and to obey. "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand." The general rule for all those who would follow Jesus is very plain: Don’t be smarter than the Lord of glory.

If I do not wash you… (8b-9)

This is something of a pattern with Peter. He confessed in Matthew 16 that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. But then when Jesus tried to teach His disciples that He would soon have to die on a cross, Peter was quick to decide how inappropriate such an idea was. He contradicts the Son of God. He says, “May it never be!” Later when Jesus instructs His disciples that all of them will fall away from Him in fulfillment of Zechariah 13:7 “Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,” Peter contradicts the Master: “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” But then he denies His Lord more than once. They do all fall away.

You have to love Peter, but he is ignorant and obstinate. He is ignorant of the plans of God concerning what the Messiah will do for us, and he is stubborn enough in his ignorance to insist many times that he is right, trying to defend the greatness of Jesus every time, and yet disagreeing with the One he insists is so great. He is still seeing things through the eyes of what makes sense to Peter. Do you still prefer your own understanding of the way things ought to be above the plain instruction of the Bible? Are you ignorant of the ways of God, and obstinate about it?

This great apostle would change, and would write two inspired letters in the New Testament that have much to say about the benefit of godly suffering. He was changed by the work of the Holy Spirit, and we too can be changed by that same Spirit. Even before the great gift of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the church after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter seems to have a strange change of heart within moments of his protest. Soon he is insisting that Jesus wash him from head to toe. What brought about this great change? After Peter had objected to Jesus saying, “You shall never wash my feet,” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” At least at this moment, Peter knows that he wants to be closely associated with Christ and His followers. This warning by Jesus was enough for him. Peter wants to have a part in whoever Jesus is and in whatever Jesus is doing.

Still, in his new insistence that Jesus wash him from head to toe, Peter continues to instruct Jesus. Peter still thinks that he knows of a better way to honor Jesus, something better than hearing His Word and obeying. Why is Jesus right about foot-washing? It is the symbol that He has chosen to give testimony to his suffering love for his disciples before He goes to the cross for their sins. It is a cultural appropriate action, but only for a lowly servant.

The love of Christ for us is a necessary love. We could not have safe fellowship and communion with God without the singular ransom for our lives that comes to us in the death of Jesus. This is God’s decision, and it is not subject to our assessment. The cross is necessary, and therefore this foot-washing symbol of the cross s necessary.

This shocking display of love in Jesus taking the place of a household slave was still only a small symbol. He only cleaned their feet. What was the fullness of cleaning represented in that symbol? It meant more than the cleaning of their bodies from head to toe. It was the complete cleansing of their entire selves, their entire beings. If we are to live with God in the new life that will come at the return of the Lord, then we must be judged to be clean in body and in soul, in everything that we are. This can only happen through the record of Christ’s righteousness being credited to us. That is how you and I, who have sinned against God, can be found to be completely cleansed.

You are clean… (10-11)

This was what we needed, to be completely cleansed. And if God tells us that we are completely cleansed through the blood of His Son, we best not argue with Him like Peter did about the foot-washing. We have full pardon for all of our sins. We have the full gift of a fresh new life today through faith in Jesus Christ.

There was a biblical rite that the Jews used that had to do with the ceremonial cleansing of someone who was healed from leprosy. The leper was considered unclean. When a leper had been cleansed through healing, he still needed to go to the Old Testament priest for this special cleansing ritual involving the use of two birds. (Read Leviticus 14:2-7.) One bird had to die. The second bird lived, but only after being dipped in the blood of the bird that died. The live bird was blood-bought. But there was someone else who was sprinkled with blood, the man who was cleansed from the leprosy. That man was like a dead man in his disease, but now because of the sprinkling of blood, he was free to live, free to fly away from all the ugliness of what used to be. He was a blood-bought man.

This ritual is not ultimately about skin diseases. It is a symbol. The leprosy stands for our deep disease of sin. The blood is the blood of Christ. We are blood-bought people. But now through the blood of Jesus, we are free. We are clean. But not everyone is clean. Peter is clean, though what he did here was wrong. He is clean despite the evidence of his stubborn ignorance, despite his repeated contradiction of the Son of God. Despite the fact that he is strangely suggesting that he is smarter than Jesus about heavenly matters, he is totally clean by the blood of Jesus. But Judas… he is not clean, and there is not a lot for us to say about that.

Let’s not talk anymore about Peter, or about Judas. What about you? Do you want to be clean? Do you want forgiveness for all your sins and a new life by the power of the Holy Spirit? Perhaps the idea of the particular love of Jesus for an individual person like you is new to your heart. I remember when it was new to me. Do you want to be loved by God? Do you want to be alive? Do you want to have joy? Are you willing to do it all God’s way? Are you willing to do everything that Jesus commands, as long as you can know that He will be with you always? Are you willing to receive the goodness, the service, the love of God in a way that might make you feel uncomfortable?

His way really is the best way, and the only way. If you want to be a part of what Jesus is all about, you must allow him to serve you. If he cannot be the One that cleanses you through his blood, than, like Judas, you are not cleansed, and you have no part in him.

This is how the Christian life begins, with Jesus as our Servant, and this is how it must continue. We will not be able to grow in our service of Christ and others unless we are willing to continue to receive the embarrassing love of Jesus. I am not asking you today to embarrass yourself by proclaiming your love for Jesus to others. We’ll save that idea for another day. There is something more fundamental here. Are will you willing to receive His love for you, though it seems like too much? Are you willing to put aside your objections to a love that is somewhat uncomfortable because it is more love than you deserve.

Here is something for us: You and I need stop thinking about the love that Jesus has for you as embarrassing. He is not embarrassed. He is not embarrassed to love you.

1. Why was Peter uncomfortable with what was happening?

2. Why did Jesus insist that this was necessary?

3. What does it mean to be clean?

4. What does it mean to be not clean?

How do I know that God loves me?

He Loved them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 2: “A love that is willing to be low…”

(John 13:2-5, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 6, 2009)

2 During supper, when the devil had 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 back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 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.

What sign did Jesus give His disciples of His suffering love?

A: “He began to wash the disciples’ feet.” (John 13:5)

The devil, Judas, and the love of God (2)

The plan of God for His glory and our salvation is great; maybe even incomprehensible. Part of the glory of that plan is the way that God has woven into the fabric of it the suffering of our lives, and especially the suffering of His Son, Jesus Christ. That makes the story of our rescue a more complex story to consider, but also a far richer story than would be the case if there were no suffering in it at all. It also means that there are certain aspects of the story that puzzle us; great things that God is doing that people cannot comprehend (Job 37:5).

There are so many questions that we may think of for which our only answer must be the glory of the Almighty God? Why did God plan to save, rather than merely plan to prevent the fall and usher man into a state of immediate perpetual blessedness? Why did God choose to bring life through the death of His most beloved Son? If that was somehow necessary for His glory, was it also necessary that the death of His Son would come through the betrayal of one of His close friends? Why did Judas have to be susceptible to the suggestions of Satan? Why, in God’s providence, did there have to be an angel that fell? Why didn’t God restrain every one of His mighty angels so that it was impossible for any of them to have a rebellious impulse toward the Almighty? Why did God create the devil?

The answer, if you can receive it, is this: “God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend.” Or as Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that pleases Him.” We need to accept some difficult facts without demanding that we understand them. There was a Judas who betrayed the Son of God. This Judas was subject to the suggestions of an evil, but very powerful, fallen angelic being called Satan, or the devil. This being put it into the heart of Judas to betray the Savior of the world. There is no need to speculate too much on what the motives of either Judas or Satan happened to be. They did what they did. These are facts that somehow fit into a larger tapestry of God’s work of redemption. They are facts, but they are not the only facts.

Another very important fact is the love of God. It is a fact that there was a Jesus of Nazareth who could be betrayed. He was in Jerusalem for the final Passover because God loved the world and gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever would believe in Him would not perish. It is a fact that God was not content to leave all mankind in a state of condemnation. Therefore, out of the great love with which He loved us, God sent His Son to tabernacle with us, so that He might die in His mortal flesh, and live again in His resurrection life.

Jesus and the knowledge of God (3)

I am willing to acknowledge the existence of Judas. I must also admit the truth of the being called the devil. But I must absolutely insist on the reality of Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God made flesh to die for sinners. And I must insist on what the Bible says about the relative position of God and the devil, and the relative position of the Almighty and any creature, angelic, human, or otherwise; as Moses said to Pharaoh during their great contest, “There is no one like the LORD our God.”

To admit to the difficult facts of our lives is a very important thing for our own emotional and spiritual health. It would not have served the Israelites, when they were in bitter bondage in Egypt, to pretend that they were actually vacationing in Bermuda. But if we must admit the awful facts of misery, sin, and decay under the sun, are we not allowed to celebrate the better facts that are also true? Is the lash of the oppressor on Hebrew flesh the only real fact, or is it not also true that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent Moses to rescue His people out of Egypt? It is true that the enemies of God were very strong, but is it not a fact that the Word of God through His appointed deliverer was stronger when He said, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me?”

Moses was a great deliverer. Jesus was a better one. Moses needed a Savior from God. Jesus was and is that Savior. Jesus knew about Judas, and He knew that the devil had whispered betrayal into the heart of the Lord’s companion. But Jesus also knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, that He had come from God, and that He was going back to God. It is because the Father has all things in His hands that He can give any of them to anyone. By all things, we mean all things. Back in the days of the old Passover deliverance, God had Moses and the Israelites in His hands, but He also had Pharaoh, the magicians of Egypt, the slave taskmasters, and all the rivers, land, and livestock of Egypt in His hands. In the days when BC was becoming AD, God had all the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, confused disciples, angry priests, brutal soldiers, betraying Judas, and a lying murderous devil in His hand. If God does not have such things in His hand, you and I are in trouble. But He does have these things in His sovereign control, and He has given all things into the appointed hands of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus knows this. He knows what it is to be equal with the Father as the eternal Son. He also knows what it is to have left behind heaven to come to this lowly spot of service, and He knows that He is going back to the place where every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus, the lowest servant (4-5)

So what does He do? Does He turn toward His angelic and human enemies, and place the force of His divine foot on their necks until they break under the weight of His holiness? Does He turn in disgust to His disciples and admit what is the obvious elephant in the room, that though He has been with them these three years they are still pursuing their own agendas as if there were no real Kingdom of God? Does He call down a legion of angels against every enemy, seen and unseen, who have done what they could to annoy Him from the moment that His birth was announced to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night some 33 years ago? He does none of those things.

He rises from supper. He takes off any honorable outer garment that He would have been wearing at that time, so that He is left with only the humble clothes that protect the poorest man’s modesty. He gets down on His hands and His knees with a towel and a bowl of water, and he begins to do something that no respectable man would do who was leading a great religious movement. He acts like the lowest one in the room rather than the highest; like the slave, rather than the Master. He washes the feet of men and dries them with the towel wrapped around Him.

This was a great symbolic picture of the humiliation of God. We may think it commendable for a man to be humble, but it is never a happy sensation for someone to be humiliated. How much more does it seem completely out of place for God to be brought low. This humiliation of God did not start that day; nor was it finished that day. God’s love is especially in this; that He is willing to be very low, that we might be brought to the heights of heaven. This is the love of Jesus, the love of a God who washed feet like a slave, and then died for us.

The humiliation of God the Son began when His Word was ignored in the Garden of Eden and the lie of Satan was believed. It continued when His people preferred the idols of the nations to the worship He established in His Word. He was humiliated by the hard-heartedness of His people who refused to hear His warnings and were carried off by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But His humiliation especially came when His Son took up residence in the womb of a poor unmarried Hebrew maiden in a town that was the subject of jokes. That humiliation of God in Christ continued through His public ministry, when people opposed Him for no good reason, and wanted to see Him murdered. This humiliation would go far beyond this washing of feet; on to the whip of oppressors, the taunts of a foolish mob, and far more than anything else, the full pouring out of all the righteous anger of God upon His Son.

While this humiliation of God in Christ was not the end of the story, it was a very necessary and important part of the wondrous plan of God. Do you love the cross of Christ? The Apostle Paul did. He wrote to the churches in the region of Galatia about how He boasted in this cross. He said, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” What was He saying? I don’t care what anyone else may think about my love for Christ, and my bragging about His cross. There will always be people who think that the theology of God being made low in love is shameful and embarrassing. There will always be people who claim to have rejected Christ and the Scriptures for this reason. Very few have read the Scriptures. Fewer still have understood what they read, for they have been devoid of the Spirit of God. It is by the Holy Spirit that we have been enabled to look at the towel and the basin, to look at His hands and His feet, to hear the crowd yelling for His death, to see the profound disrespect with which He was rejected, and to say, “I love that Man. I love His cross. I have been healed by His wounds. I don’t care what anyone else says. I want Him; I receive His love.”

This love of God is on display for you in John 13. Yes I see Judas, and I hear about Satan, and I know he is real, but I believe in Jesus, and I see Him washing those feet, and I know what He was saying through what He did there. He was saying that He was willing to be low, that we might be high. Here is a special kind of love. Now hear this: “There is nothing that can separate us from this love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. Who is the devil, and what was his role in the betrayal of Christ?

2. Who is God the Father, and what was His role in these events?

3. Who is Jesus, and what was His role in these same events?

4. What is the meaning of the foot-washing that Jesus does here?