3. Serve Like Me (John 13:1-15) Series

Serve Like Me (John 13:1-15)

Good morning! Please turn in your copy of God’s Word to John 13.

As you are finding the passage, I want to ask you—have you ever been asked to do something you really didn’t want to do? Maybe you had other things you felt were more important, or maybe you felt like doing this thing would be really invonvenient, or maybe you just felt like the thing was gross and kind of beneath you. But for whatever reason, you were just looking for an excuse NOT to do it.

The other day, I was scrolling through Facebook, and I came across an ad for a new productivity app. Now, I realized eventually that the ad was a joke, But as I watched it, there was still a part of me that was thinking, you know, I really could use something like that. Watch this with me, and see if you don’t agree:

[Got this thing] commercial.

Be honest: How many of you would at least consider downloading this app if Got This Thing was an actual thing?

Well, as we continue our series on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, we get to the story of Jesus washing His disciples’ feet. And yeah—that job was probably just as gross as it sounds. Why did Jesus do it? And what does it have to do with discipleship? We talked the first week about the call to follow Jesus. Then last week, we talked about what it means to learn from Jesus, to put His yoke on our shoulders, knowing that He is gentle and lowly in heart.

So the story in John 13 of Jesus washing His disciples feet is one that, if you were looking for one story out of the gospels that would exemplify what Jesus meant when he said he was gentle and lowly in heart, it would be this one.

I want to start by giving you all the blanks to fill in. It’s a decent outline for how to serve like Jesus, but I don’t want you to be distracted from hearing what the Lord might be saying to you because you’re waiting for me to fill in the next blank, so I figured I would give them to you on the front end.

• Demonstrate Ordinary Kindness (v. 1-5)

• Overcome Human Pride (v. 6-9)

• Demonstrate Superhuman Humility (v. 12-13)

• Follow an Extraordinary Example (v. 14-15)

Let me pray, and then we will get in to the passage.

[PRAY]

This morning I’m reading from the Christian Standard Bible. [Read John 13:1-4]

Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

2 Now when it was time for supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son,[a] to betray him. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God, and that he was going back to God. 4 So he…

Stop right there. Imagine you knew nothing about this story, and someone was telling it to you instead you reding it. It’s the last night Jesus is with His disciples. He knows He is about to be crucified. And He knows Judas, who is SITTING RIGHT THERE, is about to betray Him.

What would you expect to come next in the story?

• So he explained to them all the confusing parts from the book of Revelation about what the end of the world would be like. (No…)

• So He pointed to Judas and said, Get Him, guys, before he has a chance to escape! (no…)

[Read 4-5]

4 So he got up from supper, laid aside his outer clothing, took a towel, and tied it around himself. 5 Next, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around him.

Let’s talk for a minute about foot washing. Like every other middle eastern people, the Jews wore sandals. And just like every other middle eastern street, the roads and paths in Israel were dusty. So it was expected that a host would offer his guests water to wash their feet, similar to similar to us offering to take someone’s coat if they were a guest in our house today

But in the ancient Middle East, it was just common courtesy. In fact, it was considered rude if you didn’t provide water for guests to wash their feet. When Jesus was in the home of Simon the Pharisee, Jesus rebuked his host for ignoring this common courtesy (Luke 7:44).

Today in Alabama, we would call it Southern hospitality. So that is our first challenge. If we want to serve like Jesus, it starts by simply demonstrating ordinary, everyday kindness.