Foot Washing Forgiveness - Part One Series

Foot Washing Forgiveness –Part One (John Part 41)

Text: John 13:1-17

Just a quick announcement before we begin this morning. There’s been some questions about whether or not we’re going to continue with the livestream after the Coronavirus pandemic ends, and the answer to that is – I don’t know. And I’ll tell you why that is… Each week, we post this on our Facebook page, and then many of you share it, and I guess you all get notifications about how many shares the video gets… and each week, we’re getting between 800 and 1000 shares. That’s potentially over 1,000 people each week who are hearing the Word of God being proclaimed… Which is mind boggling to me because there are so many great preachers out there that someone could be watching on a video… men like John MacArthur or Alistair Begg, Voddie Baucham, or videos from Ligonier or G3 Conferences… all of those dudes and those ministries are fantastic. But still, potentially a 1,000 people (maybe more), are hearing God’s Word… so that’s a reason we might keep it going.

But on the flip side… The Bible is very clear that the local Church is to gather together in one place in order to worship the Lord corporately as one unified Body of believers, we see that in Acts 2 where believers are meeting in homes, but then coming together as one Body in one place, and also in Acts 6 and in other places… We do that for corporate worship, for disciple making, we do that to keep watch over one another, over our lives, our doctrine, and our practices, we do that for the mutual edification and benefit of one another, and because we are a unified, local body, not a disconnected organism. So the one thing we don’t want to happen is for folks to say, “Oh I can just watch on Facebook and I’m good.” No… no, no! We are commanded to gather together to be this visible representation of the Body and Bride of Christ. There may come a time when we have to gather in smaller groups in homes, but thank God we haven’t reached that level of tyranny in Oklahoma yet.

So I ask you all to be praying about what we should do concerning our livestream going forward after the Covid-19 thing calms down, and continue to pray that God would bring revival and repentance from all of this as well… because as you all know, we’re going to see things like this happen from time to time, throughout our lifetimes, until Jesus comes. It may be 5 months down the road before the next crisis, it may be 5 years, but we’re going to see things like this happen again.

Ok… so that’s my announcement… let’s pray and go to God’s Word (Open with Prayer)

Well, we’re back in John’s Gospel this morning. And we’ve been in John for some time now, we paused to celebrate the Resurrection, but we’re back to it today, and we’ve come to chapter 13. And just an FYI – chapters 13 – 17 are what we call the Upper Room Discourse. In other words, this all takes place in the Upper Room between Jesus and His disciples. Jesus is going to spend a whole lot of time, giving His disciples some final instructions, because He’s about to be arrested, and crucified. So He wants them to really understand some things, and get a good grasp of what it means to be a Christian, how God is working in their lives, and what it’s going to mean to follow Him and serve Him. So let’s look at it, John chapter 13 verses 1 – 17 (READ John 13:1-17).

So the text begins by saying that Jesus knew His hour had come… In other words, Jesus knows that His earthly ministry is about to come to an end. He knows what lies ahead. He knows that He’s going to be betrayed by Judas, and that He’s going to go to the cross. John wants to make sure that as we read this, we understand that none of this took Jesus by surprise. This was His plan and purpose from the beginning… and when I say, “from the beginning”, I’m not only talking about the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, but I’m talking about the beginning of time. The Bible tells us in Revelation 13:8 that Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world. Ephesians 1:3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world…”

So before God created the heavens and the earth, before God made angels, or animals, or man; He had a plan to lay down His life for the elect. To give Himself for His people. And Jesus knew this… He knew it was drawing near that time… but there, also in verse 1, John writes that Jesus loved His own who were in the world, and He loved them till the end. What John is saying here in verse one of our text is that all of the things we’re about to read… all of the things that Jesus is going to say and do in the Upper Room before He gets arrested, are coming from a place of love. It’s almost like a parent instructing their kids.