Father, as we come to the reading and to the proclamation of Your holy Word, we ask that You would do what the apostle John wrote and what he invites us to do – that we would behold the Lamb of God. Help us to see Jesus through the reading, the proclamation of Your holy Word. We ask in His name, amen.
Please be seated.
John chapter 13. We’re beginning a new series on what’s called the “Upper Room Discourse” or the “Farewell Discourse.” For our purposes this evening, we’re going to read the first twenty verses in John 13 which are written in your bulletin there for you:
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, 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 am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.’ Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘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 has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.’ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’
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? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also 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 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.’ I am 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.’”
This is God’s Word.
We have just finished our celebration of Christmas, our celebration of the New Year, and now begins that season of feeling like we’re very much in between. It’s dark, it’s cold, we’re looking forward to the resumption of warmer weather; we’re really looking forward to Easter which is thirteen weeks away from today. In thirteen weeks, we’re going to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. And so as we thought about what to do with opening God’s Word on Sunday evenings, it seemed fitting that we should take these thirteen weeks to prepare us for the remembering of the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and His resurrection. And to prepare us, we’re going to take these thirteen different weeks – and different assistant pastors will preach on different passages which they have been assigned – but we’re going to look at the farewell discourse of Jesus. In all, it’s just five chapters – John chapters 13 through 17. It covers the span of one evening. It’s Jesus’ final conversation with His disciples. It’s really rather short. Five chapters; a total of 155 verses. And on my clock as I read it out loud, it was somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes.
And I say that because in this new year as you’re wrestling with what resolutions you ought to adopt for yourself, I’d like to challenge you to take these five chapters and commit to reading them every day for the next thirteen weeks. What would happen in your life if you saturated yourself with the final words of Jesus to His followers on the night before He was crucified? What might He do? What might the Holy Spirit do in your life as you read His words to His disciples over and over again?
It’s important to recognize that as we come to chapter 13, everything in John’s gospel slows down; the pace has been moving rather quickly. In the first twelve chapters of John’s gospel, he covers 33 years of Jesus’ life. Going back to chapter 1 verse 14 where John talks about Jesus dwelling among us, becoming one of us. Really it goes all the way to His birth. Really if you go back to John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God; He was with God in the beginning” – you realize that John chapters 1 through 12 cover everything from eternity past right up until this one final meal; that final night. And the next five chapters cover one evening. So everything slows way down as we come to this farewell discourse.
Now throughout history there have been a lot of famous last words, farewell speeches, or conversations. One of the most famous is Moses’ farewell speech, which is the entire book of Deuteronomy. Those are his last words on the plains of Moab before the people of Israel, delivered from slavery in Egypt, having wandered for forty years through the wilderness, now come to the second time that they’re facing the Promised Land. Moses’ farewell speech is designed to embolden them to trust God to keep His promises as they enter the land. Moses. Socrates, 400 years before the birth of Christ – you can read his “apology.” These were his last words; his conversation with his followers before he drank the hemlock, having been convicted of a capital offense in Athens which led to his death. Famous last words.
Lou Gehrig in 1939. Yankee Stadium. As he retires from baseball, having been diagnosed with ALS, the disease that would later bear his name – Lou Gehrig’s Disease. A moving farewell speech as he calls himself, “the luckiest man in the world,” even though he knows he’s about to die from this disease. More recently, 2017, Barack Obama, a farewell speech that was moving; you can read it. But none, none compare to this farewell speech. It’s really more of a discussion because He’s interrupted and challenged throughout what He says and there’s movement in this discourse.
As I worked through these five chapters, I was led back to one of my favorite seminary professors, the father of Beverly Harmon, Knox Chamblin, who is now with the Lord. You can download his seminary lectures. I listened to his “Introductory Lecture on John chapter 13.” It brought tears to my eyes to hear his voice again. It was that good. But he talked about the discrepancy in the gospels between the synoptics – Matthew, Mark and Luke – and the way they talk about this Last Supper, and John, the way he talks about the Last Supper. Matthew, Mark and Luke are very clear in saying this was a Passover meal. The Passover meal goes all the way back to what Moses instituted in the book of Exodus to commemorate God rescuing His people out of slavery. And the centerpiece of that Passover meal was the sacrifice of the lamb and the taking the blood from the lamb and painting it above the doorposts so the angel of death would pass over the people who lived in that home. And they would eat that lamb that night, consuming it entirely. Matthew, Mark, Luke present this Last Supper as a Passover meal.
John, however, presents it somewhat differently. And you recognize it glaringly from the timestamps. Because right after this farewell discourse we come to the arrest and the torture, the trial of Jesus, and the religious leaders attempting to secure capital judgment from the governor, Pilate. And you know that the religious, the Jewish religious leaders wanted to kill Jesus but they could not execute Him without the official pronouncement from the Roman governor. So in John 18 – what verse is it? – right there, John 18:28, the religious leaders are unwilling to enter into Pilate’s headquarters, the palace, because doing so would render them ceremonially defiled and unable to eat the Passover lamb the following evening. And so it makes you scratch your head. If the religious leaders are unwilling to enter the capital, the palace, and Pilate actually has to come out of the palace to meet with these religious leaders, it makes you wonder, “What then was it that Jesus and His disciples ate together at the Last Supper?”
Knox Chamblin spends an hour talking about this and he does it brilliantly and magnificently summarizing it. He says one of two things. Either the religious leaders are using a different calendar than Jesus and His disciples are – that’s one possibility. Dr. Chamblin says it’s highly unlikely because even so, these leaders in the temple would be unwilling to sacrifice the lambs a day earlier to accommodate that being the Passover meal that Jesus and His disciples celebrated and remembered. In all likelihood, Chamblin says, this was an anticipatory meal. And you get that when you read carefully the accounts of that Last Supper in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The centerpiece is missing. There’s no lamb at any of those meals. As a matter of fact, when we come to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which we’ll do next Sunday morning, we’re not going to wave around a piece of roast lamb. There will be a cup and there will be bread, which is what Jesus used to institute the sacrament of the Last Supper. If it were a Passover meal, there would be lamb involved.
Why is this significant? Well it’s huge, really, because the religious law required the lambs to be sacrificed at a specific time in the temple. And for that Passover celebration – this is the high, holy day for the Jewish people – there would be upwards of 2 to 3 million people that would crowd into the city of Jerusalem and all their transportation animals. On top of that, there would be roughly a quarter million lambs that would be herded into the temple courts to be slaughtered, but they had to be slaughtered in the afternoon before sundown of Passover. And they had to be eaten before dawn the next morning. So watch this. And Knox brings this out with tears as he does this lecture. The very time that a quarter million lambs are being sacrificed in the temple courts – you know what’s happening? Jesus is hanging on a cross, shedding His blood for you and me. The writer of John’s gospel is making sure we understand the connection between the words of John the Baptist and this event. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” That’s what this has been all about.
The Follower of Jesus is Appointed to Bear Fruit
And so we come to the farewell discourse of Jesus and I would love to unpack all of this in great detail. We have time only for a brief introduction. Lord willing we’ll go a little bit deeper next Sunday evening where we’ll look at the second half of chapter 13. There’s two primary themes in the whole farewell discourse that we ought to pay attention to. Number one, the follower of Jesus is appointed to bear fruit. I just want to hang that in the air for a few moments because it’s easy to set that only into John chapter 15 where Jesus talks about abiding in Him – “I am the vine and you are the branches. Any man who abides in Me, he will bear much fruit.” But I want you to see that at the very center of the farewell discourse, if you look at the five chapters – the middle chapter is chapter 15 – at the middle of chapter 15 you come to verse 16 where it says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” That’s the center of this entire farewell discourse. As a matter of fact, seven times through this farewell discourse, all of which in that middle chapter Jesus speaks to bearing fruit. The follower of Jesus is appointed to bear fruit.
I use that because that’s what He says in verse 16 of chapter 15, but it’s also the title of a book, Appointed to Bear Fruit. This service is live streamed so I’m not going to mention the name of the author, but I should say he’s going to be one of our Mission Conference speakers. He’s a missionary for whom I have the highest respect. He’s of our roughly 100 missionaries, church planters, campus ministers – he’s the one I respect most; I’ve learned most from him. And he’s written a book on John chapters 13 through 17 on this farewell discourse of Jesus and he titles it, Appointed to Bear Fruit. In this book there are 100 devotions. It’s a devotional commentary. One hundred short, two-page readings, each of which going through a different verse throughout this farewell discourse showing that the entire farewell discourse is all about this theme. A follower of Jesus, you and I, are appointed to bear fruit. We are saved to serve. This is our purpose. And the rest of the farewell discourse is going to show us how we’re equipped, how we’re supported, how we’re enabled to serve and bear fruit. How union with Christ is what equips us and emboldens us for it. How we’re going to encounter the hatred of the world as we seek to bear fruit. We’re going to experience a new power, the power of the Holy Spirit, as we carry out this role. He’s going to assure us of the joy we’re going to find even as we experience grief and pain and loss. This is our calling. This is our purpose. And in this farewell discourse, He takes five chapters to explain what He’s going to summarize in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew 28. All this, because He’s appointed us to bear fruit.
Now I preached on John chapter 13 six years ago, almost exactly – January of 2015 – just before our Mission Conference of that year. And a lot of people had asked me, “So why do we do a Mission Conference every year?” And I chose this passage to explain the answer. We do a Mission Conference every year not just to raise pledges so that we can send out lots of missionaries and church planters and campus ministers, but so that we ourselves and be reminded of what we so easily forget – The Lamb of God was slain not just to save us, to rescue us, but to send us forth that we would bear fruit; that we would be instruments in the Redeemer’s hands to carry out the work that He began. We talked about the pattern that’s in John chapter 13, the principle, the problem, the power. You can go back and listen to that sermon.
We won’t go through all those details, but I do want to bring out one of the applications. One of the very practical applications in that study in this. As a follower of Jesus, you have been saved not to be a guest in the world, but to be a host. Your calling, as one who follows the Great Commission, is to be a host, not a guest, in the world. We need that repeated to us over and over again because everything in our culture treats us as if we’re the customer, we’re the guest; we expect to have people say, “How can I help you? What can I do for you? How can I serve you? It’s been my pleasure to serve you.” But that’s not the Christian’s role. The follower of Jesus is not a guest in this world; He’s called us, He’s saved us to be a host in the world.
What does that look like? Well I was really moved by David Felker’s pastoral prayer this morning, so much so I texted him and said, “Hey, would you mind sending me whatever notes you had in the pulpit with you because I want to connect that with this passage?” One paragraph out of his prayer. “And so, Father, what relationships would You have us more fully invest in this year? What missions, what neighbors, what prodigals would You have us give ourselves to? Who among the poor, who among the needy, who among the abandoned in our community – who would You have us love and be loved by in this year? How might You break through the coldness in our families, the apathy in our marriages, the backsliding in our relationship with You? We pray that You would bless the work of our hands, whatever that work may be – from teaching, to practicing law, to finishing math homework. We pray that You would help us to image You in all that we do and do our work with gratitude, with love, and with excellence.” Why do I quote that? Because this is what you pray when you recognize that you are not a guest in the world; you are a host. You’re always looking for, “Whom am I called to love today? Whom am I called to serve today? In whose life will the Holy Spirit lead me to bear fruit?”
It’s not just the Fruit of the Spirit in me. That’s something of a distraction from what Jesus is really teaching about. Some of us get ourselves off the hook by saying, “Well, the fruit Jesus really wants me to bear is to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, goodness, faithfulness – you know, the Fruit of the Spirit. That’s what He’s looking for.” Yes, of course, but that’s not an end in itself; that’s a means to an end. It’s so that we will bear fruit in seeing others who are strangers to Christ become followers of Jesus and family to us in Christ. That’s the calling. That’s the first theme you’re going to see over and over again in this farewell discourse and Jesus makes it unmistakably plain, especially in this first living illustration with which He begins this discourse. So the first theme is – the follower of Jesus is appointed to bear fruit.
The Follower of Jesus is Deeply Loved and Treasured
The second theme is – the follower of Jesus is deeply loved and treasured. And the second theme is the means, the power, behind the first. You’ll never get to the first theme, you’ll never be a fruit bearer until you understand how deeply loved and treasured by Him you already are. The idea of love, the word “love” is found thirty-four times in the farewell discourse. It’s where the discourse begins. Chapter 13 verse 1, “Jesus, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” He loved them to the furthest degree. Or, as the NIV translates it, “He now showed them the full extent of His love.” And then the farewell discourse ends with the high priestly prayer of Jesus, John 17, the last verse of which, verse 26, says, that “the love with which You have loved me may be in them and I in them.” He’s showing us the full extent of His love. He wants us to get how huge is this love with which He loves us.
So the question is, “What is the full extent of His love?” Now don’t make the mistake of assuming that the full extent of His love is the footwashing of His disciples. He begins there, but that’s just a living illustration of what He’s about to do in going to the cross because that’s where you see the full extent of His love. He makes that clear in verse 7 when He says, “What I’m doing now, you don’t understand. You’re not going to understand it now, but later, later you will understand.”
It probably took somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes to wash the feet of His disciples – twenty-four feet. It just doesn’t take that long. From the time He got up to the time He got back down was a very short window of time, but that short window was a living picture of the entire life and ministry of the Lord Jesus. Think about how it works. In verse 4, Jesus gets up from His rightful place at the supper table where He sat or reclined as the honored guest, even as, thirty-three years earlier, He had gotten up from His rightful place on the throne of heaven. And then in verse 4, He laid aside His clothes, His clothes that marked Him out as the Rabbi, the Master, the Teacher. He laid that aside, even as thirty-three years earlier He had laid aside the glory of His exalted heavenly position. And then He wraps Himself in a towel, the humble, vulnerable garb of a servant. You know, the only time I wrap myself in a towel is when I’m walking from the bedroom to the shower! I would not want to go meet someone at the front door wrapped in a towel! It’s too exposed; it’s too vulnerable. But this is what Jesus does, even as thirty-three years earlier He wrapped Himself in the vulnerable, exposed form, the reality of a baby born in Bethlehem.
And then in verse 5 He pours out water to cleanse dust-encrusted feet, just as in a few hours He will pour out His own blood to cleanse sin-stained hearts. And then when that’s all done, He will rise to His feet, He puts on His clothes again and returns to His rightful place at the table, even as in three days He would rise from the grave and be exalted to the highest place of heaven’s glory. It’s a living parable about what He’s going to do on the cross. It’s a picture of His entire life and ministry in the washing of the disciples’ feet. But it wasn’t understood as such. And He tells them plainly, “You’re not going to understand what I’m doing now, but later, much later,” after the resurrection, after Jesus meets the disciples again on the beach at breakfast and reinstates Peter and commissions them, “then you’ll understand.” I love Donald Carson’s book on the farewell discourse. I want to read to you just one page of how he describes this scene that was so, so misunderstood by the disciples. And it’s in his prologue. Listen to what Carson writes:
“The atmosphere in the large upstairs room was tense, unhappy, uncertain. The evening had gone badly from the start. The disciples had gathered with Jesus as arranged and had climbed to the upstairs room where the food was already prepared. They looked around for the traditional servant to wash their feet, but seeing no one and being too polite to mention it, they stretched out on their palates around the low eating table without saying a word. Jesus offered the traditional prayer of thanksgiving, and then they noticed that Jesus was pushing Himself off His palate. The talk instantly stilled. The Master quietly took off His cloak. To their utter consternation He went over to the washstand, wrapped the towel around His waist, picked up the large basin of water, and headed for the nearest disciple. Teachers shouldn’t do things like that. Not even equals would wash one another’s feet. It’s a job for servants, and the servants with the least seniority at that. The first disciple, too surprised to move, too embarrassed to protest, felt his sandals being slipped off and then the cool water and the dry towel. The Master proceeded to the second disciple and to the third, all the while the silence was deafening.
Typically it was Simon Peter who broke the silence. And as Jesus approached to wash his feet, Peter curled up his legs and pointed out the inappropriateness of the Master’s action with what he had thought was a tactful question – ‘Lord, are You going to wash my feet?’ Jesus straightened His back, looked him straight in the eye, and replied quietly, ‘You do not now realize what I am doing, but later you’ll understand.’ Peter’s voice hardened. Someone had to speak out. If the Master couldn’t see that He was demeaning Himself, Peter would have to tell Him. ‘No!’ he said, ‘You will never wash my feet!’ Still, Jesus looked at him with that unwavering gaze. ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me.’
It was open confrontation. For a moment, the still air was charged with suspense. Did Jesus not recognize that Peter was speaking out of love? But faced with a response like that, Peter was now slow in rising to the occasion. He decided to take advantage of the situation and declare his love in a different way. ‘Then Lord,’ he replied, ‘not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well!’ That might have relieved the tension, but then Jesus added something more, something that at the time was highly enigmatic and restored the gloomy foreboding in the room. He said, ‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet. His whole body is clean. And,’ He added, looking around the room, ‘you are clean, though not every one of you.’ And in the utter silence that followed, He finished washing their feet.”
Question – “Why did Peter object? What was it about what Jesus was doing that was so objectionable to him?” Well think about it this way. Imagine that you’re still back at Christmastime, it’s Christmas Eve, and someone comes to visit you at your home. You didn’t expect this person; it’s someone you know and like. And they have come to your home bearing a gift and it’s a really, really thoughtful gift. Actually, a necessary gift. And it’s costly. You can tell this was a sacrifice for them to give you this gift. And to your horror, you realize, “I don’t have a gift! Not even a bar of soap! Not even a card to give them in return!” And there’s this internal kind of consternation that, “How do I say thank you and not give them a gift!” You feel awful, right? That’s something of what’s going on in Peter. “This is so highly inappropriate because this doesn’t fit in my categories. There ought to be a reciprocity here. You do for us; we do for You. And the right person does the right thing at the right time. You are not to do this for me. This is not right! It doesn’t fit in any category that I hold! I can’t pay it back. I can’t earn it.”
That’s the way it is for most of us. It’s hard to let Jesus love us, to simply believe that He delights in us, that He accepts us, that He loves us that deeply. It’s why John chapter 6 verse 29 says, “The work of God is this – to believe in the one whom He has sent.” And 1 John 4:16, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.” One of the hardest things is to really believe Jesus loves you.
When I was in college, I did some youth ministry for the church that I attended and one of my mentors was Mike Yaconelli, who worked for Youth Specialties. He was interviewed by Mars Hill some years ago and this is what he said during that interview. He said, “Some lessons you can’t learn until you’re fifty. Life has its lessons to teach us and there are certain lessons that I can’t get in six weeks or six months. For me, it took fifty years to suddenly discover that I didn’t really believe that God loved me. I was frenzied. The only way I knew that God loved me was by my continually doing things. I had to finally come to the end of that dreary road. I had to finally exhaust myself to the point that I realized that I could never do enough and the more I did the more I had to do. I realized that Jesus had been running after me all along, trying to get my attention, whispering in my ear, ‘Mike, I love you. I’ll always love you. Won’t you just let Me love you?’ It took me fifty years to learn that.”
I wonder if Covid has been quietly whispering that lesson to you as it’s been kind of hammering in my head. In a season of social distancing when we can’t gather the way we want, we can’t host people in our homes the way we used to, we can’t do things for people, we can’t really be hosts the way we want, the way we’re accustomed. And there’s this grinding internal sense of, “How do I expect God to love me if I’m not doing stuff for Him? I mean, I feel like a sloth! I should be doing so much more!” Does that resonate with anybody but me? What if Jesus really does love us the way He talks about in this farewell discourse? And what if really buying into how deeply He loves us is the means – the sine qua non, the “without which, nothing” – the means by which we’ll finally bear the fruit that He called us to bear? What if this is what’s missing in your life and in mine, that down deep, we’re not really convinced that He really, really does love us?
I shared this story with you not long ago when, after Eugene Peterson died, he wrote thirty books. He died just over two years ago. His son spoke at his memorial service and he said, “In all that my dad ever spoke, in all that he ever wrote, he really only had one sermon. Here are the points: God loves you. He is for you. He is on your side. He is coming after you and He is relentless. Everything my father ever wrote, ever preached, it came down to that message. He really does love you. He is for you. He is on your side. He is coming after you and He is relentless.”
Do you believe that? Quoting Princess Bride, “It will take a miracle.” It will take a miracle for you to really believe that. It will take a miracle for me to really believe that. This is why the apostle Paul prays – and we’re coming to the end here – Ephesians 3 verse 16, “I pray that you may be strengthened with power through the Spirit in your inner being.” Why? You need the Holy Spirit work, a strengthening, powerful work, so that you can get how deeply Christ loves you – how wide and long and deep is this love of Christ. And to know this love experientially so that you will truly believe it. It will take a miracle. One theologian puts it this way. “On Judgment Day, the Lord Jesus will ask you one question. ‘Did you really believe that I love you? Did you really believe that I desired you, that I took delight in you day after day? Did you really believe I love you?” That’s the question. And it’s going to take a miracle of the Holy Spirit working by His power in our hearts for us to truly buy into that.
It’s a final conversation with Jesus. This is what’s most on His heart as He prepares to die. He wants to work that miracle in your heart and my heart that we would truly believe how much He loves us, to show us the full extent of His love, so that, believing that to the core, we will bear the fruit for which He saved us. Let’s pray together.
Lord Jesus, thank You for loving us. Thank You for making us Your own. We look to You and pray for that miracle to be wrought in each of our hearts for the sake of Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen.