Jesus displayed the full extent of His love through servanthood when He washed His disciples’ feet. This act depicted His supreme sacrifice of becoming a servant who would die for us. Like a bath that cleanses us completely at salvation, Christ offers ongoing washing for our fellowship with Him. His love on the stretch calls us to serve others in the same way, laying down our pride and embracing the menial tasks that demonstrate genuine love. When we follow Christ’s example, church conflict would vanish as we put others before ourselves in genuine servanthood.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] It is a real honour and a privilege for me to be sharing with you. I have just four short weeks to talk with you. I’m surprised to see Jim here. He’s supposed to be on holidays but it’s good that he’s taking the Sabbath off from writing his book, I think. I drove in this morning, I came early, I heard there was a prayer meeting, so I came early and the car park was nearly empty and I drove in and there I came to the first park. I thought, well, I’m not disabled enough for that one. I came to the second car park and it was disabled as well, I thought, well, I’m not disabled. Then the third one, it says, reserved Pastor and I thought, yes, I’m reserved enough, so I pulled in there. I did have a fight with my wife this morning about what I should wear. She is interstate and we honestly have been involved with this church for so long that it’s too long and our memories have all blurred

[00:01:09] into one. Many of you are here with families. In my mind you should be teenagers and so I’m feeling quite weird. But one of the things that’s absent in our memory of the church is how conservative you are in the mornings. I know what’s happening at night. I have good memories of that and what I would have selected to have worn I think would have been acceptable at the night. That’s what I was planning for. And I just thought to myself oh I’m not so sure. So I took a photo of myself in the mirror and I sent it to my wife this morning. She is by the way in another state and she said oh Reg, she calls me Reg, Reg not sure that that’s okay for the morning. And I thought oh yeah I’ve forgotten what the morning’s like and so I quickly got changed and so I don’t feel bad. Actually I reckon I would have fitted in. Yeah I’m feeling right. You’re less conservative or can I say

[00:02:23] you’re less reserved than me. I’ve got the reserved car park. I use the Bible app and you might, if you don’t, cool. But if you’re looking for an excuse to use your phone during the sermon this might help you. I put up there this service as an event within the Bible app and there’s a link in there to get the PowerPoint so you can look at it on your phone. I know what it’s like to be unable to read the screen. So you can find it. If you don’t use the Bible app you can go to that link and you can see it in there. Okay everyone going? Alright we have in the mornings I’m going to talk about love on the stretch or the love of God at its limits and in the evening I’m going to be talking about the sayings of Christ on the cross. And the reason why I’m doing it is because of what happened recently when I was in Victoria. I’d like to pray and then I’ll explain what that was

[00:03:41] and why I’m going to talk about what I’m going to talk about. But let’s all pray. Father we thank you for this great opportunity. What a privilege it is to gather together and to worship you. Lord you are here and we ask that you would reveal yourself in a very real and special way. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen. Yep I was down for Christmas staying at my son’s house in sail just a few hours east of Melbourne. I didn’t know that there was an east of Melbourne but there is and it’s a couple of hours two and a half hours drive to get down there and I was there for Christmas. What a joy it was. Now when Christmas was over there’s Boxing Day and then everyone panics we need to go to the shops. So the day after Boxing Day we turn up to the shops and what did I see there? I couldn’t believe it. It blew my mind right at the very front of the store was Hot Cross Buns. Hot Cross Buns. I’m not sure if they

[00:04:55] were that bad up here. Somehow after Christmas all of a sudden the next day we got to get ready for Easter and Hot Cross Buns came out. Now I am a bit partial to Hot Cross Buns especially hot and especially with real butter. Margarine is a no-go but real butter they’re just fantastic. So I’m not complaining about it. It just seems a little bit you know you when you’re talking Easter you’re talking holy ground and the shops seem to be treading over it a little bit too much but at least they’re getting ready for it and so I thought to myself we’ve got four weeks together just me and you for four weeks and so I’m going to prepare you hopefully you will be the best prepared congregation for Easter ever in history. We are going to spend four weeks talking about the first Easter and I think it’s a special thing to be talking about. These events the death of Jesus his resurrection, they are the very essential ingredients of the

[00:06:10] Gospel. They are the very things that form the basis of our faith. They are the very things that have achieved our very salvation and so for us to understand them and be ready for Easter When Easter happens, our minds will be full of the wonder of God’s love and what Jesus has done for us. And so I’m going to talk about in the mornings love on the stretch. You will learn that my graphic art skills are exceptional. Yes, it’s hard to imagine. It’s almost indescribable how good my graphic art skills are. And there’s a guy, two guys, he’s actually the same guy inverted, you know, I’ve learned stuff, and they’re pulling, stretching love out. And that comes from the first verse of John chapter one. It goes like this. Let me skip through. I was going to do the Bible reading, but I’m not going to. Again, you’d be tortured.

[00:07:35] At the beginning of John chapter 13, here we are, we’re about to start the upper room. This is the night before the crucifixion. And here John is making a bit of a narrative comment here in verse one. What’s about to happen is in the upper room, Jesus is about to wash the disciples’ feet. They’re about to share the Passover together. Then there’s going to be a betrayal. Jesus is going to be put on trial. I think illegally he’s going to be found guilty and he’s going to be crucified. He will then three days later rise from the dead. We all know what’s coming. There’s this big thing all happening. And John tries to capture that in this little narrative sentence. And it says, 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. He loved them to the end. Or he showed them the full extent of his love.

[00:08:59] Now you could understand this in a temporal way. He loved them right up until the very last. His hour to depart out of the world had come. Jesus would show his love right up until his his ascension to the Father. But I think better, it’s better to understand it as a descriptive statement in like he showed them just how big his love is. It’s no surprise that the bigness of Jesus’ love happens to be just at the end of his life. He gave his life for us. So here in chapter 13 in the Passover, the washing of the feet, the teaching in the upper room in chapters 14 to 17, then there is the Passion itself where Jesus dies, the events that are all happening in the next few days. What we’re seeing is Jesus showing the full extent of his love. You could describe it as love at its divine limits. Loves pedal to the metal. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, I’m imagining that younger people haven’t seen this but older people may. Years ago

[00:10:32] it became trendy to show off your strength by being able to blow up until it exploded a hot water bottle. Has anybody ever seen that? Some have. I don’t know why I have. It’s a huge thing for me maybe because of the absolute terror that it creates. I think to maintain the pressure the so-called person and you have to be a bit of a he-man to be able to do it. You know what a hot water bottle is right? Imagine being able to blow that up until it explodes. Some of us can’t even do it to a balloon but this is a hot water bottle and so they have to put their nose in it as well. For me it’s impossible but they get their big nose, well they get their nose in it, they put it out of there and they just, they’re he-men right, just to have the pressure. They’ve got pecs like houses and they just go whoosh. They hold it, get it close, got their teeth and they blow up a hot water bottle.

[00:11:54] And you’d be surprised, you’d be surprised at how big they can get but they have to keep going until it pops. And I’m standing there, I’m looking at the TV and I’m going, it’s gonna go, it’s gonna the gates and the thing gets huge and huge and then eventually if they can hold it eventually kaboom they explode and I’m tough that’s a picture that I have of love stretched like a hot water balloon till it’s very limit. When Jesus died on the cross in the events that we’ll be talking about in the next few weeks what we’re seeing is his love at the extreme edges and I want you to understand it isn’t just a simple thing for us to see it. You know the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian church and he expressed a desire that they in prayer that they may know the love of Christ and his description of it is incredible.

[00:13:21] We know about this don’t we? Look what we know verses like this greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his love for his friends Jesus laid down his life for us but look what Paul says he says I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. Now what do you need that much power for? It’s so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with the fullness

[00:14:34] of God. Now I don’t know about you but I see a phrase like the fullness of God and I go well that’s something that I want. I don’t want to miss out on anything I want to know his fullness but here’s the Apostle Paul praying that believers the Ephesians and us that we might have the inner strength by the work of God’s Spirit to even make sense of to have in our experience to know how huge the love of Christ is and here we are looking at the Gospel of John and there we’re seeing this love at its divine limits. What a privilege it is to understand and it is my prayer that as we go through these things that you will indeed have God by his Spirit give you the strength to face the realities of Christ’s love and in so doing in coming to know that in your life you will

[00:15:59] experience the fullness of God. Are you with me? That’s what’s going to happen over the next four weeks. In the mornings we’re going to talk about love on the stretch and what’s happening in Jesus’ teaching in the upper room. In the evenings I’m going to put a spotlight on to Jesus’ death on the cross and talk about the seven things that he said when he died. So if you don’t normally come at night I reckon you should want to come. You going good? Alright I have just a couple of things to illustrate God’s love this morning and they are these. Number one the love of servanthood. I don’t know if you know about biblical love. When we say Jesus loves you we don’t mean that Jesus has a positive emotional response to you. We don’t mean that. What we mean is is that

[00:17:18] he has made a decision, he has chosen you and he is committed to you. He is committed to the objects of his love. In the biblical languages that’s what love is all about. A choice and a commitment to that choice. So when you read of God loving the nation of Israel he’s made a choice, he chose Abraham, he made a great nation and he’s committed to them. That’s his love. When we say that Jesus loves you we’re saying he’s made a choice and he’s committed to you. Okay very good. He rose from supper. Laid aside his outer garments, taking a towel, he tied it around his waist, then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe with the towel that was wrapped around him. Now the roads in the Middle East they didn’t have bitumen they were just dust

[00:18:35] and dirt and as a consequence travelers would get dirty feet even if you were traveling from just downtown and coming to a new place you would have dirty feet along the way. Most didn’t have covered shoes but sandals are the go. The custom was for a slave or the host of a house to wash the feet of any visitors who were coming. There was no host or slave here and it’s a big surprise who it is who gets up to wash the feet of the people attending the first Passover. Well Christian Passover. Jesus dressed as a slave would have been dressed washed the disciples feet. It’s a supreme act of love and it represents doesn’t it what Jesus is about to do for the disciples and for us all in the bigger picture. This idea of him being a servant is a big one. Jesus who though he was in the

[00:19:57] form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross and so I see in Jesus’s act of washing the disciples feet it’s him showing the depth of his love. It’s if you like a picture of his greatest step of servanthood in coming to save us all. He’s giving up heaven he’s becoming a slave who would obey to the point of death. He came not to be served but to serve to give his life as a ransom for many. He is our Savior he is committing himself completely to us he is a servant. His washing of the feet is just if you like a basic expression of that. If we’re

[00:21:23] going to be in receipt of his servanthood we should likewise be servants too. When he washed his feet put on his outer garments he resumed his place he said to them look do you understand what I’ve just done to you what do you mean you’ve just washed our feet? But 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, and I know some people who do feet washing as a thing and it’s like the snake holding churches, who having one verse that says you’ll be able to hold stakes and you’ll be safe, they give out snakes at the door at church. There are some people who take

[00:22:19] these verses and have bowls to wash feet at church every week. Well, there’s a verse but I think they’re missing the bigger picture. Jesus isn’t saying here, hey you should be washing each other’s feet. You people need to be being each other’s servants just as I am your servant and washing the feet is just an example of the servanthood. He wants us to lay down our lives for each other. At the end of the chapter it says, this, and you come and when I give you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also have to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are My disciples. If you have loved one for another, he’s not thinking that you’re going to go and wash each other’s feet, and that’s the end of it. Just as he loved us. We are to love each other. Those of us who’ve experienced being cleansed through his supreme act of servanthood, we are to likewise be the

[00:23:27] servants of others. The argument, you can’t argue with it. No slave is greater than his master. That’s us. He’s our master. If he can stoop to these levels, he did so, we should be doing the same thing for others. I love to talk about the menial tasks at church. I think it’s a point of interest the pastor should be best friends with the maintenance man. The pastor should be best friends with the people who move the chairs in the hall. These are the servants, the people who do the menial tasks at church. God sees, but this is so much bigger than this. Putting others before ourselves, loving our brothers and sisters in Christ and committing ourselves to them. You know, if we took all of these verses deadly serious, there would be no such thing as church conflict. And you can

[00:24:46] point out and see people and demanding their rights, demanding their ways in church life. And you go, where are all the servants? Where is the love for the brothers and sisters in Christ? One huge example of God’s love is Jesus’ servanthood. The washing of feet is just an acted parable of this servanthood in giving his life for us. I want you to understand it is love on the stretch. His choice to save us through becoming a servant. It is love at its limit. You going okay? Good, because I got heaps of these points. We might have to stop early. Do you have time limits here? No, you don’t. Even if you did. A bath and a wash. I love this section. I think it’s because aren’t we all drawn a bit to Peter and his feistiness and his boldness in the way that he talks to Jesus? I just love it.

[00:26:20] He came to wash Peter’s feet and he said to him, I ain’t letting you wash my feet. Jesus said to him, look what I’m doing you don’t understand now but afterwards you will understand. And Peter said to him, you’re never gonna wash my feet. Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you’ve got no share with me. Yikes. You know, he said some heavy things to Peter. One of them was if you remember, get behind me Satan. You think Peter would learn but now here he is and here’s another one. If I don’t wash you, you have no share with me. Simon Peter said to him, well if that’s the case Lord, not just my feet but also my hands and my head. I wanna be in with you. And Jesus said to him, well the one who’s bathed does not need to wash except for his feet. But he 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

[00:27:37] are clean. There’s two things on the go here. There’s this idea of a bath, an all-in, an overall cleaning and then there is the washing of the feet. The dirty feet you get on the way to the house. So there’s a bath and a wash and I want you to understand that Jesus offers both a bath and a wash. It’s quite disconcerting that he says to Peter, verse 8, if I do not wash you, you have no share with me. Is he talking about the bath or is he talking about the wash? We all know don’t we? That there’s a once and for all coming to Christ. There is this great cleansing that happens. We understand from the Old Testament sacrificial system that there’s a washing away of our sins by his blood and there is this once and for all cleansing of our sins and we would call that a bath. You’re clean and you’re in and we would understand that sentence if I do not wash you, you have no share with me. This is how you become a Christian by having a bath and having your sins

[00:29:20] washed away. Happy with that. But Jesus is also talking about the washing of the feet. That’s what he’s offering to do to Peter, to wash his feet. And does this phrase apply there? Is it true that even though there are some of us who have had a bath, that when there is sin in our lives, that there’s such a break in our fellowship that Jesus might describe that as having no part of him. Is that how it is? I think it might be. It’s both. But the Bible is very clear. When we come to Christ and we get converted, we are made clean. We are having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. Our bodies are washed with pure water. Peter says whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he’s blind having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of our God and he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according

[00:30:48] to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Spirit. Let me tell you Jesus offers sinners, Jesus offers you and me a complete bath, the cleansing of our sins, the washing clean from all of the dirt that’s in our lives. And you need to understand he doesn’t want to hide the dirt, he doesn’t want to cover it up, he doesn’t want you to wear dark blue so that you can’t see the dirt, he wants to wash you clean. Deal with your past and have the sin that so took your life and controlled you, he wants that finished with. You understand that right? But he also wants those of us who have been so washed to walk in the light as he is in the light and to have him highlight those sins in us. He wants us to have fellowship one with another and have his blood cleanse us in an ongoing way from sin. If we say we’ve got none we’re liars but if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins

[00:32:24] and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. John 13 8 suggests that there is a catastrophic break in fellowship with Christ. He says you can have no part with me. I think the truth that becomes clear in John 13 is that even though our sins offend Christ he is prepared to wash us of them. This is love on the stretch. The person who taught me to preach taught me to never assume that everyone in the room is converted. Never make that assumption but as I look around I see that most of you probably are. I’ve seen you here before. You know you’ve experienced the washing with the bath, the cleansing. You were out of the family of God and now you’re in. But I wonder what’s happening now that you’re in there. How is your fellowship with Christ? How is your servanthood going?

[00:33:57] Have you got dirt on your feet? You know Jesus’s love not only calls all who are dirty sinners to come and have a bath. He calls even us his own children who have lived in this sinful world and we’ve got dirty feet. He calls us to come and be washed. It’s love on the stretch. You know aren’t we different? When people rebel, when people are disrespectful, when people just repeatedly do the wrong thing, will they ever learn? I still have a teenager at home and I just can’t believe how absent-minded he is sometimes. The same mistakes. In our house it’s cold water bottles out of the fridge. Almost every time I need a cold drink I open the fridge and there’s none. And I look down and I see at his gaming zone a stack of not empty ones, half full ones,

[00:35:35] some even less than half full. He’s had a couple of mouthfuls. Oh that’s refreshing. Kept gaming. Forgot about it. Oh it’s not cold enough. I’ll go and get another and off he goes. And it happens. I don’t know how many times I’ve said it and I don’t know how many times he’s ignored it. I don’t know how many times it’s actually sunk in. I understand he is in complete hormonal hyperspace at the time. I don’t think he understands much of what’s coming past his ears any time. That’s just how it is. But I do feel within myself and I’m sure you’re understanding it, this absolute frustration and this absolute anger at what he is not doing. Well imagine, imagine when Jesus has someone who has already come to him for a bath and knows the wonder of complete forgiveness and acceptance into his family and finds them on their knees saying, oh Jesus I’ve

[00:36:56] done it again. When will I learn to have more patience? When will I learn to have as much love as you? When will I stop causing offense to people that I love? Imagine his frustration. But he says, come, confess your sins and you’ll be clean. That’s love on the stretch. You going good? You got time for more? I’ve got one more. Loving the unlovely. Look I could have spent the whole time talking about this because we’re uncovering the person of Judas and you could spend I reckon a couple of weeks explaining Judas and all that was going on with him. Judas the Betrayer. You know what astounds me about this and I’ll just pull it in all in quickly for you. What astounds me is that here in the upper room Judas already has 30 pieces of silver in his pocket. He’s already decided he’s gonna hand Jesus over but he thinks that Jesus doesn’t know. He

[00:38:45] has so misread Jesus and who he is despite the fact that he was one of the boys. He’s so misread who Jesus is why he even thinks that Jesus is someone that he can handle. You imagine you’ve seen him walk on water. You’ve seen him calm a storm and you think you can hand him over for 30 pieces of silver. You’ve got the 30 pieces of silver in your pocket and here he is washing your feet. There he is. Has he got a smirk on his face? If only he knew. Trying to keep the silver still from tingling in his pocket. Jesus did know. Jesus knew exactly what was going on in Judas’s heart and he still washed his feet. And lo and behold there they are having that first Christian Passover feast together and Jesus is there and he basically tells them that he’s going to be betrayed. Everyone goes

[00:40:12] well who would do that and imagine Judas there. We happen to work it out. We understand it. There’s John on one side of Jesus. He’s the disciple in Jesus’ love. The fact that Jesus can dip his bread and give it to Judas shows that Judas must have been right on the very other side. And when you read in the gospels about how this incident is carried out it has to be that Jesus can talk and only Judas and only John can hear what he’s saying. The others don’t hear and so we know that John and Judas are right there adjacent to Jesus. John asks Jesus who’s going to betray you. He says the guy I give my bread to gives it to him to Judas and everyone’s just gone who is it and eventually Judas says who’s going to do it and Jesus says you. That money’s jingling in his pocket. Jesus knew what was in Judas’s heart.

[00:41:20] Jesus knows what’s in your heart and mind. He knows the motives. He knows the secret stuff. He knows what’s happening behind closed doors. He knows what comes out of you when you’re in traffic and people are cutting you off. He knows the words that are there. He knows all of that and let’s be honest with each other. So bad is what is there inside of us that we should be a little bit afraid and just like Adam and Eve we’d like to run and hide but no Jesus’s love his commitment to us is so great. He still washes our feet. It is true I believe that Judas ended up in hell. There’s a strange phrase at the end of chapter 13. Let me find it here.

[00:43:00] After receiving the morsel of bread he that’s Judas immediately went out and it was night. It was night. That’s John saying the sun’s gone down but he’s also saying there’s a darkness that’s overcome Judas and he will never see the light again. The next day we know what happened. After he finds what’s happened to Jesus, Judas commits suicide and ends his life and all through this Jesus washed his feet. Jesus shared the Passover with him. His commitment to Judas went right to the end and understand that Jesus’s love for you drives his calling on your life right to the very end and he wants us to surrender to him. That’s Jesus’s love on the stretch. Let’s pray. Thank you Lord Jesus that you do love us. Thank you for the Apostle John

[00:44:59] who in his descriptions has captured the full extent of your love and I pray that as we examine these great things and as we learn of what happened in that upper room that Jesus’s love will touch our hearts afresh that you by your spirit would so strengthen us that we might in a fresh way experience the height, the depth, the width and breadth of Jesus’s great love for us. Lord we’re excited for what will happen. We pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.