Christ Great Love--Demonstrated, Perfected . . . Proven Series

Main Idea: Show Christ’s great love by humbly serving each other

This past month our little Wallace family of 5 had one of the most joyful and yet challenging experiences we have ever had. We had son and grandson, a precious little baby boy, about as cute as they come, and we gave him up for adoption. Thank God, we had the best family we could ever hope for within our extended family to give little Colton James up to, and we will see him again, but nevertheless, it was a very challenging experience.

And I expected it to be difficult for Annie, and for Jeanie, and much more for the girls than it would be for me, because if you know anything about Jim Wallace, when it comes to Jim Wallace and babies, well, we don’t always mix real well. There have been a number of times in my life when I’ve stood next to my wife or some other lady with a wonderful mother’s instinct as we got a glimpse of an infant for the first time, and the lady turned to me beaming, and gushed and said, “Isn’t he a beautiful baby?” And on the inside I was telling myself, “Well, not really. But you need to go along with this!”

Yep, I’m bad, I’m real bad when it comes to babies. But Tuesday was the day of departure, the day baby Colton James would go with Chris and Michelle back to Nebraska and we wouldn’t see him for a long time. And something strange happened to Jim Wallace that morning. Jeanie got up early to go to work, I got up early to start working on something, and just before Jeanie left she stole little Colton out of the bedroom where he and adoptive Mother Michelle were sleeping and instructed Amanda to take a few last pictures of him with her. And she was all smiles, and I got included in the picture, and somehow, as Jeanie raced off to work, the baby ended up in my arms for 15 or 20 minutes. Now it was the first time baby Colton and I had had alone time together, without others watching. And so for the first time I really ended up paying attention to Colton, rather than the girls around me who were paying attention to him. And I began to hear all those cute little baby sounds as Colton stretched and breathed and yawned. I saw him raising his little arms and watched him even bat himself in the face with the back of his arm. And I saw what a precious little baby He was, and the next thing I knew is that he had stolen my heart. I fell in love with him. And so when an expected long-distance call came from a friend, and I had to give him up, I was all choked up. And when I explained what was going on my friend decided it wasn’t such a good time to talk after all. And I agreed, and then I hid in my bathroom as I began to sob over the departure within the next couple hours of the precious baby boy, a grandson, like the son I had never had.

I didn’t want anybody to see the pain or the grief I saw in my eyes as I looked at them in the bathroom mirror. After all, this wasn’t supposed to be happening to me—this was a girl thing, this was mother and grandmother thing. This wasn’t a Jim Wallace thing—of all people!

And then I had to drive birth mother and adopted child to the RV Park. And then we all gathered in the RV to pray at this most poignant and meaningful and difficult point, and, of course, being the pastor, I got to close in prayer. And I didn’t disguise my grief very well, I held it together long enough to pray, and I saw Annie stroking her little boys head gently those moments before she would turn him over to Michelle & Chris, and I just had to get out of there, or I knew I would be contagious and the whole family would be wailing along with me.

And I saw Annie courageously and gently do her duty from the insulation of my Suburban, and it was she who came to comfort me rather than the other way around, and then I began driving home, and the sobbing returned and my face and my head began to tingle, and I had trouble catching my breath and for a moment I thought I might faint. And that continued all the way home, complicated by the fact, I got lost driving to my house, because I was grieving so greatly.

And so undoubtedly some of you are wondering why I’m telling this story this morning. And it’s because this is precisely that situation that Jesus and the disciples found themselves in as we come to John 13. Jesus’ departure from this world was only hours away. And those 11 disciples were his babies, his children. He was their spiritual father; they had come to depend on Him for their very lives for everything, for the past 3 ½ years. And they had one last evening together, one last very meaningful, intimate, poignant moment together before life would drastically change. Jesus had warned them that his death at the hands of evil men was imminent. Now it was as though they would be orphaned and sent out into a largely hostile world with a message the world desperately needed to hear. And it was Jesus’ heart to prepare his babies for what would come without his physical presence. It was incumbent on Jesus as a loving spiritual father to attempt to protect them in any and every way from what was about to befall them, for the success of his entire mission of saving those who would believe depended on the welfare and success of these 11 men. And the very first danger, the most imminent danger, regarding their spiritual welfare, of all things, was the evil that lurked within them themselves. Yes, I’m speaking of their own sinful nature, the selfishness and the pride that afflicted them, that could destroy their unity and their mission, if somehow they would not be broken of it.