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?