This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Let's read the word of the Lord
together. Verse 11 verses. 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 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 am I
doing? What I am doing you do not understand
now, but afterward you will understand. And Peter said to him, you shall
never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, if I do not
wash you, you shall have no share with me. Simon Peter said to
him, Lord, not my feet alone, but also my hands and my head.
And 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, not every one of you. For he knew who was to
betray him. That's why he said, not all of
you are clean. Now we're going to be in this
text for a couple of weeks because there are certain things that
we have to deal with. And I'm, I'm, I'm happy and nervous
and everything. I'm really nervous about this
text because It's very easy, as I say a lot of times, for
us to say, OK, this happened and I'm moving right along. But
John doesn't write a historical chronology. He doesn't write. John's purpose in writing this
particular text is that you may know that Jesus is the Christ
and believe in his name and thus have life. Did you hear that? By believing in his name, you
have life. So he writes this so that you
may have life, that you may know that he is the Christ. And what
we've seen thus far up through chapter 12 is that Jesus would
teach something and then he would do something. Jesus would have
a Well, do a miracle, and then he would teach something. Do
a miracle and he would teach something. And so everything coincided. Jesus would
say that he was the resurrection of the life, so he'd teach, and
then he would prove it by raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus
would say that he's the better bridegroom, he's doing the will
of the Father, he's come for the occasion of the will of God,
and so on and so forth. But here, we're seeing Jesus
do things. Jesus' public ministry is completely
over aside the crucifixion. From now on, everything else
that takes place in the mouth of Jesus is with his disciples.
So for the rest of these years that we have together, we are
listening to Jesus teach his people and the narrative that
we see is coming directly from the apostles by the spirit of
God and things that have not been publicly said by Jesus who
are now, who we then as Christ's people are able to hear and to
see and to understand. Last week, we closed out chapter
12. And in verse 49 of 12, let's look again at what Jesus says,
this is important to get into where we're going. And then I
don't want to belabor controversial, syntactical, syntactical fodder,
but I do have to speak of it. 49, for I have not spoken on
my own authority, but the father who has sent me Has he himself
given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak? Verse
50. I know that this commandment
is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say,
as the father has told me. That's the last thing Jesus says
in a public way. The last thing he says in his
public teaching ministry. In this gospel. And he's already said, the light
is with you. Come to the light while there is time for the light
will disappear. He is leaving this world. He
is leaving this world. He is leaving the state in which
he is in his incarnated humanity to be glorified now as he stands
in his humanity. Never to be the same. And when God removes the light,
the light is gone. It's interesting that we sing
two Wesleyan hymns this morning. It's amazing the sovereign option
in which that last hymn was composed. It just it's a double tickle
to my soul to sing the truth of sovereignty about my soul
being found and rescued and snatched out of the dungeon of death and
the domain of darkness and then to see the author of that who
did not necessarily believe in what he wrote. It just. Yet some men can cry out in Christ
and not knowing. Some men can have the head knowledge
of doctrinal truth and fidelity in that truth and yet not be
born again. And it is just by the mercy of
God that we are alive today. Though our bodies fail, though
we are given over to death, though death is in the body because
of Christ, we live because of Christ, as Paul would say to
the Corinthian church. And in verse 50 of chapter 12,
I segue these two places because John wrote it this way. Those
of you who are scholars of the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
those of you who are Johannine scholars, those of you who like
to study differences, those of you who have studied Bibles with
a lot of footnotes, that's really where people start to find these
problems. They read somebody else's irritation and then it
becomes theirs. Sometimes I thought about creating the name of a
false prophet that never existed and putting up a webpage for
him just to see how many people can get riled up over this heretic.
And then go, psych, gotcha, it's me. And they go, I knew you were
a heretic. I mean, you know, it doesn't matter. But as the text stands, think
of this, we could tear the gospel of John. Now this is not how
God has preserved this word, but we could tear the gospel
of John or print the gospel of John only, and we could send
it to the far reaches of the earth. We could send it in places
that are so remote that we don't even know the language. And by
some sense, somebody could translate it or either by the gift of Galatia
tongues, teach it. And inside the Gospel of John
by itself is sufficient truth through which the power of God
can redeem the elect of God for the sake of the glory of God
without any other doctrinal truths being given to them. You don't need Romans to be saved. You don't need Galatians to be
saved. You don't need Ephesians to be saved. You need the gospel
to be saved. John's gospel is sufficient.
It's sufficient with all the doctrines of Christ, the reality
of his person, his divinity, the incarnation, the two natures
of Christ, his eternality. All of these things are here.
The work of his imputation, the work of his atonement, the work
of his substitution, propitiation, all of these terms are taught
here through the narrative of John's gospel. And so if we look
at the reason God calls John to write this gospel. In the
90s. Not the 60s. A later date of
John. It is so that we who are able
can see and believe that He is the Christ and have life in His
name. He is the one that come from
God, the Son, that we have seen the fullness of the glory of
God, fullness as the only Son from the Father, full of grace
and truth. This is the purpose of this writing. So within this
writing alone is sufficient data for God to bring you. to life. This commandment is eternal life.
This commandment is eternal life. God, the father, telling Christ
the son to teach these truths, to proclaim himself as the one
come from the father. And in him is all life. In him
is all truth. In him is the only way to the
father and all of the work of God and redemption is all of
the work of God, period, and only the work of God. And the only way that God's people
will be saved is through the proclamation of this truth. That
is the commandment of God, the father. And then now, all of a sudden,
we see this now before the Feast of the Passover. This is the
last week of Jesus' life. And there are some things written
here that a lot of people look at as a conclusion. A lot of
people say, well, this feast is different than the feast of
the synoptics. Is this the Pascha? Is this the Passover meal? Is
this the night of his arrest? What? John doesn't say. And you know what? It doesn't matter.
The point of this book is highly theological, not historical. The point of this gospel is to
show that Jesus is the living God, the Son come from heaven,
and also the living man. Moving into the latter part of
this gospel, you must keep in mind, verse 14 of chapter 1,
that the Word is God and was with God in the beginning, who
created all things and in Him was the light of the life of
men, became flesh and dwelt among
us. You have to keep that preciously and powerfully full in your soul
and in your mind as you continue through this reality, through
this gospel, through this teaching, because without that, you will
lose sight of what's truly being taught here. And you will lose
sight that the Father sent Jesus, and Jesus is doing exactly that
which was commanded of Him. And not one word, not one turn
of the head, not one point of the finger, not one breath in
or breath out was outside the will of God the Father. That
Jesus did all things according to the plan and the call of the
Father, but He did them all willfully by His own will and desire to
match the purposes of God the Father as God the Son. That what
He says, God is saying. What He does, God is doing. Where
He goes, God is. This is the imagery to show that
the essence of the exact imprint of God's nature is truly Jesus
Christ. Jesus is God, but He is not the
Father. He is the Son eternally. And every prerogative given to
God is Christ's because he is God, but he is also man. You haven't seen a lot of it
here, but you've seen Jesus thirsty. You've seen Jesus eat. You've
seen Jesus rest. You've seen Jesus escape harm,
physical harm. So there's a great emphasis on
the humanity of Jesus in this gospel. As the emphasis of Jesus
divinity. And now we're going to see that
we've already seen that Jesus was troubled, Jesus was angry,
Jesus was in despair. That may be the bad word there,
but I use synonyms. And now we're going to see Jesus
doing some other interesting human things. Friends, there's no way to get
away from Christ as fully human. and truly human. And we can't
separate that from Christ being fully God and truly God. At the
same time. Because it is what the scripture
teaches of Christ. It is what the scripture exposes
of God, the son. And it's not Jesus words who
say this. It is the father's word. Jesus
speaks and reveals himself as he reveals the father. He speaks
as God. So to say that what Jesus says
is wrong or not true is to deny the very essence of God's Word.
To deny that God even is. Because to deny Christ is to
deny God. Paul writing to the letter to
the church of Colossae, he talks about the preeminence of Christ.
He says he is the image of the invisible God. the firstborn
of all creation. Now, I don't want to get into
that, but it doesn't mean anything about Jesus being created. Because in verse 16 of that Colossians
1, he says, for, and for explains a little more about what's just
been said, for by Him, Christ, all things were created in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him
and for Him. And He is before all things.
And in Him, all things hold together. All things hold together. In
Hebrews 1, the same type of expression is given where God speaks many
times in many ways. God has spoken to our fathers
through the prophets. But in these last days, He has
spoken to us by His Son. whom He appointed the heir of
all things, through whom also He created the world. He, the
Son of God, Jesus the Christ, is the radiance of the glory
of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds
the universe by the word of His power. After making purifications for
sins, he, Jesus Christ, sat down at the right hand of the majesty
on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the
name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. And then
Paul, the writer of Hebrews, I say, goes on to quote Old Testament
narratives where God the Father calls God the Son, Yahweh. And
God the Father commands the angels of heaven to worship God the
Son as God. You can't get away from it. And here is God in the flesh
with His people. And the commandment that the
Father has given is eternal life. You see that? When Jesus says, I am the bread
that comes down from heaven, that is a commandment of God
the Father to eternal life. And in that very text in John six,
the people, the multitudes who he fed 5,000 men plus, they stayed
up all night looking. They want more of the miracle
man. They want more of the blessings of physical blessings from God,
the son. I think if this man can feed
us with nothing, what can he do against Rome? What can he
do against our captors? Oh, what a nation we shall be.
If we could just get this man on our side, We could just get
his politics in order. We could just get him in a place
where he would start to do the things that we need done around
here. Jesus, knowing that we're going
to make him king, he hid himself from them. That was not his purpose.
No one could make Jesus do anything. And Jesus says to them in Capernaum
the very next morning when they find him, Oh, teacher, when did
you come here? He says, why do you seek after
me? It's not because of me, my divine power. It's not because
of who I have revealed myself to be, but it's because you got
your stomachs full. And you want more, more bread
for your belly, more food for your flesh. Then he commands them, do not
labor for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread that
endures to eternal life. And they say, give us this bread
always. What must we be doing to do the will of God? What does God expect of us in
order to earn this bread? You see how that works? Work
produces a wage. When we do something, we earn
something. Anything we do, we earn. If we exhaust energy and
we work at all, we are by law, by the laws of nature, guaranteed
a wage. If I bang my head against a keyboard,
I'm guaranteed the wage of a headache, a broken keyboard, and a solemn,
whatever it might be that comes, I'm guaranteed the wage. Some
of you may think that's the best piano playing I've ever heard. If I eat Krispy Kreme donuts
every day, all day, every hour, I'm guaranteed the wage, or the weight, or the heart attack,
or whatever it might be, or the diabetes. If I think I can fly in my awesome,
wisdom and I jump off a ladder, I'm gonna fly about 12 feet. 9.82 meters per second squared, straight
down. That's the speed of gravity. It's the wage. So when they say,
what must we be doing to get this life giving bread? Jesus responds with these words,
this is the work of God. that you believe on His Son,
whom He has sent. If you remember, sometime last
year in that text, we see that Christ is speaking clearly of
the work of God in redemption as His work alone, and the fact
that there is no work that man can do to get it. The commandment is eternal life. And then this introduction to
the latter week of Jesus' work, which is the work of God the
Father for redemption, has incredible implication. Now, before the
Feast of the Passover, why does he tell us that? Because the
Passover is the time when Jesus will die. And some people talk
about, well, the lambs aren't here. John wasn't interested
in that narrative. God, the Holy Spirit, had him
write what he wrote. Jesus knew that His hour had
come. Now, how many times have you
heard that phrase or an iteration of that phrase since we've been
in John's Gospel? The first one that you hear is
in John 2. at the wedding of Cana, where his mother says,
do something about this lack of wine. We've run out of wine. This family is in a mess. What
can you do? And he says, what does this,
what does this problem, this wedding conundrum, what does
this lack of alcohol have to do with me? My time has not yet come. They're
speaking of the fact that Jesus does not operate based on the
circumstances of the world. He doesn't see sick people and
go, oh, I better go heal them. He doesn't see poor people and
go, I better go give them wealth. He doesn't see people who are
hungry and say, well, I better go feed them. Jesus doesn't work in response
to circumstances. Jesus is the author of circumstances
by which he is glorifying the Father and giving glory to God
in all of them as he works them out, whether we like it or not,
for his own namesake, for our good, Romans 8. Jesus did not join the world
and work out all these man-centered things and all this free will
of man to crucify Him and to be imprisoned. How did Israel
end up slaves to Rome? God put them there. And Jesus' hour comes at the
command of God the Father so that there is no circumstance
that is outside the purview of Christ's sovereignty. Now, see,
I see that going into this. You might think, well, this is
just a tall order. You're conflating different things. No, it says
it right here in just a minute. Watch. But I want you to see
this before we get there, because I want you to read the next few
sentences in light of sovereignty. Jesus knew that his hour now
had come. He submitted to the will of God
the Father. This was the appointed time before
the world began that Jesus Christ, our would come when he would
make his approach to Golgotha. The skull hill where they crucified. Where he would make his approach
to Gethsemane and pray. Where he would be arrested. And
the very every intimate detail of all of this was orchestrated
by the decree of God. And nothing can stop it. Imagine the turmoil. In Jesus. Knowing. What he was about to endure. Remember, we have fear of death.
We have fear of torture. We have fear of accident. We
have fear of fear. We're scared of fear. Jesus had nothing hidden from
him at this point. He is God, so he's omniscient,
but he's also man, so he had to learn to speak. He had to
learn to walk. He had to learn to use the bathroom.
He had to learn to wipe his own backside, or whatever they did
in that day. He had to learn to clean his
teeth and to brush his hair, keep food out of his beard. He had to learn the word, he
had to learn the law, he had to learn Moses. Couldn't he have
just gone and just had it all there? Yes, but his humanity
was not blended with his divinity. And the divine nature of Jesus. imparted wisdom to his humanity
as the will of God the Father permitted. And that's that's
enough. There's nothing else that we
can know there. We don't have the addendum of the hypostatic
union. We don't have the addendum of
the explanation of the incarnation. We don't have the scientific
journal. Of the sublime infusion into
the physical world. We don't have that because it's
not important. And we wouldn't understand it
anyway, because if it goes beyond all natural laws. But Jesus knew that his hour
had come, and what was this hour? This wasn't the hour of glorifying
the Father. This wasn't the hour of John
11, of being glorified in himself as the resurrection and the life.
This wasn't the hour of him showing something or teaching something.
But this was the hour. The point for which He was sent
into the world. The hour to substitute for His
people. The hour where He would be crushed
for our iniquities. The hour where He would bleed
out and finish the work of redemption. The hour where He would leave
this world and return to the Father. See, they thought it was crazy.
Remember a few chapters ago, and they're like, they're going
to try to arrest him and the guards won't arrest him. We're
not touching the guy. Look at him. Look what he's saying.
These people are hung on his words. I'm not putting my...
I mean, can you imagine? I mean, just think about the
heroes. And you remember my little treatise
against heroism a couple of months back. But remember heroes that
would stand there. Imagine what it would have been
like for a hero to be in the middle of a million people and
then somebody just decide, I'm going to go there and beat him
up. I'm going to go there and put
my hands on him. And there's five guards and a million people
who love him. No, it's not going to happen.
But that's not why they wouldn't arrest Him. Why wouldn't they
arrest Him? Because it was not His hour. God the Father forbid
it. He prohibited it. He stirred
in their hearts a fear and a caution. We're not doing what we're commanded
to do under death. Because it wasn't the hour of
God for the Son to be taken. And what do they say? Jesus says,
well, I can go someplace y'all aren't going. You can't follow.
And they mock him in two different ways. The first thing they say,
oh, you're going to be the Messiah to the Gentiles? You go right ahead. You're a
dog. Why don't you go be with the
dogs? And then they said, oh, maybe he's going to kill himself
and save us all the trouble. That's what they said. They couldn't
fathom. He'd already said, I'm going
to where I came from. Where? Nazareth? with your daddy, Joseph,
who we know, born out of wedlock. We know all about you, you sinner.
This is what they did. But Jesus is. Jesus knows now this
is the hour. He was going out of the word
world to be with the father. He's going to the father. And
nothing could stop it. Caiaphas says he spoke at the
end of John 12, the middle of John 12. It is better for one
man to perish than for the nation. And then the gospel writer writing
this prophetically, he spoke without his own understanding. But the problem is, is when we
decide to figure out how we know who is the nation of God and
who is not, those who are in Christ alone are the nation of
God. So Jesus knows that the time
has come. He is preparing his approach
of the cross to finish his earthly work, which is the pinnacle of
the absolute creation of the world. Why do you think that
all the gospels and all the epistles that point to Jesus divine person,
why do you think that they point to him as creator so often? Because there's two things at
work. One is they want us to see truly that Jesus is God. He's not a helper of God. He's
not a God. He is the God who created all
things. And secondly, these writers want
those of us who have an understanding of Genesis 1 and 2 and 3 to grasp
that, as John says in our K, in the beginning, We're to think,
wait a minute, I've heard that before. Moses wrote those words
by the Holy Spirit. And then what does Jesus say
in John 5? Moses wrote of him. What does it teach us later?
Moses wrote of the prophet who is Jesus. And it's to push us to creation,
to show us that Jesus is walking in the flesh, in the Garden of
Eden with the first couple, and that at their fall, He proclaims
the purpose of the entirety of creation to the praise of the
glorious grace of God. This is the pinnacle of all history. And it happens with 12 people,
one of them an enemy and Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, the
son of God. In the midst of all this, Jesus
knows it is time for him to depart this world, he is departing by
death. And we see that participle there,
we see having loved He is loving His own. Having loved His own who were
in the world, He loved them to the end. Having loved them, He loved them
to the end. To the end of what? To the end
of His mortal? We will see in many places John
writes this in his first epistle that God is love and we love
him because he has first loved us. We see Jesus speaking that
God's love for. The world. Is seen in the giving
of his son. Now, Jesus is leaving the world,
having loved his own who were what in the world. He loved them to the end who
are his own. You, beloved. Those 11. Who were his and the
one who was not, as he would say in the words that he spoke
to the Pharisees of the Sanhedrin, you are not of my sheep, John
10. Because you do not hear my voice. For if you were my sheep,
you would hear my voice because my sheep know my voice and I
know them. I love them with an everlasting
love as the fathers love me. I love the father and I love
my sheep whom the father have given me. John six, he would
tell the Jews who were disturbed by his teaching of his body and
his blood being their hope. The hour. at which he would leave
the world. He spoke of this and they hated
what he was saying. He says, the reason that you
cannot hear, you cannot believe, is that you are not mine. You
have not been given to me. This is a judicial reality. It's a judicial reality that
Jesus is now going to fulfill that those who hate Christ. Those who reject Christ in this
narrative here have been turned over to death. Without a possibility
of hope. Verse two, look at this during
supper. They're eating this meal together.
when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot
Simon's son to betray Jesus. Stop there. It's in the middle
of a sentence, but I'm going to stop there. You see what's happening
here. Who commands the enemy? God does. What can the enemy do? Whatever
God sends him to do. What else can he do? Nothing.
He doesn't have a carte blanche. He doesn't have free reign. He
does that which God sends him to do. We see that in the oldest
text of the Bible, Job. Wait a minute, Job was before
the creation? In its writing, yes. Moses wrote Genesis. And he wrote what had been given
him by God and had been oral tradition for a long, long time. since the days of Seth, really. And so in Job, we see the enemy
of God, the non-elect angels, as we call them, coming to and
fro into the presence of God, and God asks, where are you going? You know where I'm going. It's
like Jesus, do you want to be healed? I mean, you know. I'm
going to and fro, seeking someone to devour. Have you considered
my servant Job? God asks of the enemy. No, because you won't let me,
you keep him, you protect him, you touch him constantly with
your provision, with your providence, with your hand. And God sends
the enemy to destroy the life of Job, but God will never let
Job go, so Job does not. quit trusting God. And who got the glory for it?
God did. People say, well, that's just
not right. It is. It's righteous. It's just not
fair, thank the Lord. If it were fair, he would let
Job be destroyed unto utter eternal death. What is it better to be
disciplined by our Father here or condemned by Him later. If the scariest thing I have
to look forward to is my death, I'm in pretty good shape. Bring
it, Lord Jesus. Your will be done. So in that same way that God
sent Job, the same way that Jesus teaches in the synoptics of the
parable of the seed, that God sends the enemy, the devil, the
adversary, to take away the word of God that some people have
in their physical, cognitive, academic selves, emotional selves. He snatches it away. You ever
seen those people? Excited for the Lord. So much
so they're trying to sell everything and go into the mission field.
Week one, Six months later, eh, I don't care. I don't believe. I don't know what's up. Doesn't
matter. God puts a sealed reality in
Judas' life that he permits the devil himself to enter into him. And what's that look like? Hollywood
has given us clear pictures, right? The theology of film. Don't believe the way that looks.
The enemy, according to scripture, doesn't ever pose as what we
would consider the demonic, except in those cases of pharmakia,
which is a translation in English of witchcraft, where people are
doped up and then they're dealt with that way. But most of the time, the scripture
always shows the enemy as an angel of light. And I've said
this jokingly before, you know, if the enemy came in here like
a dragon with horns and breathing fire, like, oh, there's the devil,
ah, you know. But he won't come in like that.
He'll come in the back door with a suit on. We'll know he's out of place
then. Wait a minute, who's that guy?
Must be an FBI agent. Where's Trey? No. He'll come in and be one of us. He would have the truth in his
mouth. He would have zeal in his heart. He would have passion
and affection in his mind for us. And then every now and then
we'll see a glimpse of things that don't quite make sense.
And when the edge is there and we shove the fellow off the edge
of standing for what he believes, then all of a sudden we'll see
this is the enemy of the cross. That's how the enemy works. For
three and a half years, the enemy worked in Judas by the will of
God the Father for the sake of God's own glory, so that at the
appointed hour before the creation of the world, Jesus Christ would
ascend to the cross and die for his people, having justified
them through his blood to be received by faith. And no matter how much the moral
level of Judas decided in his flesh, you know, I really love
Jesus. He's been kind to me. I really don't want to do this.
What's 30 pieces of silver going to get me? A field to die in.
That's what it's going to get you. Property to leave behind. Money for your family to fight
over. Because that's what the enemy
does. He gives you gods that you cannot
get away from. But only, only, only, only by
the mercy of God do we ever get free from that. By the will of God, He snatches
us out of this darkness, lest we be like Judas. So that at
the end of the day, we worship Him and we exalt in Him and we
exclaim and say, listen, If it were not for the mercy of God
for me, I would perish. I would not believe. I would
not receive. I would not understand. I would
not. I would not have life for the command of God is life. And the purpose of God and the
command of God, the son is to be life and the way he gave life
to those of us who are his who are guilty before God is that
he substituted himself and the wrath of God for us. The devil had put into the heart
of Judas to betray Jesus. It was done. The deal was made
and it was sovereign and Judas is guilty. We'll see the latter part of
that sentence is verse three of chapter 13 of John. 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. I remember preaching. This is
so these days that I wish I could just erase from my brain. But
I remember preaching to a very large congregation that I was
a pastor with all over. I don't know how you say that.
I was pastoring a congregation and it was in great turmoil.
And I remember in my youthful zeal feeling so confident and thinking, you know what?
It's going to happen this Sunday because of this garbage in here.
These 43 people who are messing up the lives of 1900 others.
in this congregation. There were fourteen, fifteen
hundred people in our Sunday school program at the time. This was
in 2001. And I felt it in myself, I'm going
to get in that pulpit and I'm going to just, I'm going to show
this church how evil this is. And I responded to the circumstances
thinking that I could through oratory, teaching, rebuke, whip
this stuff into shape, and it was the will of God that it be
destroyed. Because you can't, as my grandmother
Tippins used to say, make chicken salad out of chicken poop. You can't make a church out of
unregenerate people. You can't take people who care
not of Christ And because you rebuke them and make them guilty,
make them into Christ's people. And so I've learned through that
experience and several others throughout the years that, number
one, I was completely disqualified to be in the pastorate. I should
have been rebuked and taken out of the pastorate for a year or
two. But that wasn't the will of God. The will of God was for
me to continue in the minutia of American ministry for at least
another year and a half until the wool came off of my eyes
and I went, And then they gave me the nickname The Prophet.
No lie. But I'll never forget the feeling
in all of the ministry bumps and bruises when something happens. And some of you have experienced
that in your lives. And even in our congregation, we've had
trouble. And that first feeling you get
It's very much akin to that bump in the middle of the night or
that broken glass that you hear at two or three in the morning.
You're like, what is that? If you've never heard of an eight
foot high voltage fluorescent bulb falling and hitting the
ground 60 feet away from your house, you will wake up and you
will think that you're under siege. But that initial fear,
that heartbeat that goes from resting at 45 or 50, from a dead
sleep, to 160, just like that. And you're awake immediately.
You're alert. You're reaching for all the Rambo toys. I mean,
you know, you're getting all this, you're flipping all there,
you know, the helicopter's coming. You're ready. You're just looking. If your neighbor's out there
trying to put out a grill fire, you'd probably fire at him. You
know, cause you're scared, you're responsive. And that's the way
I was. Like we see in the synoptics
where Peter walked on the water. That's not about Peter's faith.
Peter had no faith. It's about the faithfulness of
Christ. We see these problems in life
and we respond to them. We react to them. We forget that
sovereignty is true and we forget that God is sovereign. We forget
that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And we
just sort of flush all that stuff down the toilet for that nanosecond
or that few minutes or that day or that week or that month or
that year or that season. And we forget. That's why this
narrative is written here. To give us a small little reminder,
just one of the little things here that you don't need to miss.
You need to just slow down. Out of all of the pain, the frustration,
the fear, the anxiety, the death, the disease, the torment, the
divorce, the destruction, every other D I could think of. All of it, none of it compares
to the passion of Christ. None of it compares to the knowledge
of knowing that Jesus knew that His time on this world was done,
and that He was about to approach Calvary, and that He was about
to die in His flesh, and that He was going to suffer for six
hours on the cross. But more than that, He was going
to do so by the will of God His Father, who loved Him with all
the love, who gave Him the Spirit without measure, so that His
love would keep Him on the cross for His people in order to satisfy
their sin debt against the Father's righteousness. is the righteousness
of God, that we might become the righteousness of God. And Jesus knows this, and Jesus
knows that his accuser is in the room, Jesus knows that his
accuser is at the table, and Jesus is just fine with it. You see? He's fine with it. Why? Because of verse 3. Jesus
knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands. What does that mean? It means
Jesus was in control of it all. Jesus was not a pawn in anybody's
playbook. Jesus was not a drone sent by
the Father on strings. Jesus is God, the son become
man and everything that was commanded of Jesus. He orchestrated himself. Every word that came from him
was commanded by the father, but he did it all. He did it
all in his own will, in his own power, in his own ability. By the mercy of God the Father.
See the dichotomy. See what happens when we start
thinking of Jesus in this way. We see the divine work and we see
the human. And we can't merge them. We just
see them existing and working together. We're not going to
understand that, so we rest. This is sufficient enough for
you, beloved, in the deepest hurt of your day. That as the writer of Hebrews
would say, as Paul would say, that we have a high priest, not
one that cannot sympathize, but one that can sympathize with
everything we've ever experienced. There's not a feeling in this
room, from birth to death, that Jesus Christ has not dealt with, except personal guilt for sinning
against God. But Jesus has experienced the
wage of guilt, of sin, because He's been crushed. He's died. He's given over to death the
ways that he did not earn. But he took upon himself because
he would save his people from their sins. Jesus had given the father had
given everything into the hands of Jesus. So that in this moment,
what Jesus would do is that which he needed to do and that which
he wanted to do in order to fulfill the purpose of redemption, the
covenant of grace. And what does Jesus do with the
knowledge of his death? Has supper. What does he do in
the midst of all of that omniscience? He knows that he came from God
and he was going back to God. See, that's the focus of Christ.
That's the focus of what Paul tells his people. When we have
all of this calamity to not put our focus and our thoughts and
our eyes and our hope or hopelessness on the circumstances, but rather
to look at what is beyond them. and that all things have been
given into the hands of Christ. That means he is, as I quoted
from Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1 a moment ago, he is preeminent. He is the author of it all. He
upholds the very molecules of your brain this very moment by
the word of his power, by his mere pleasure. And because
of his love, he has granted you a great salvation that he has
secured in his own body and with his own blood. Because Christ looked to that
glory, which is as we'll see in John 17, He so longingly deserves. Jesus is not selfish to desire
glory. It belongs to Him because He
is God. We have taken Jesus in our culture
because there are so many false Christs in evangelical worlds.
In evangelical life, we have taken Christ as just a really
good guy that happens to be God. And it's such a ho-hum thing
that we miss over verse three. We just look right over it. All
things. The creation of the cosmos is
Christ's to command. The revelation of God himself
is Christ to reveal. No one has ever seen God, but
the God that sits at his side makes him known. Verse 18 of
John 1. I am the resurrection and the
life. I am the living water. I am the bread of life. I am
the way, the truth and the life. I am the good shepherd. Unless you believe that I am,
you will perish in your sin, John. Or Jesus says, unless you
know that he is God, you will perish in your sin. Jesus was
not a victim. That God orchestrated working
into the relationships of human history and say, well, that'll
work, that'll work, OK, I'll make that work, I'll stick Jesus in
there. No, God is the author and cause of all the things by
his decrees. And the philosophers' minds are
on fire. But Jesus rose from supper with all of this. Can you imagine? I know I've mentioned Marvel
Comics I found some of my old Spider-Man comics from the 70s
and 80s the other day. I'm like, oh, yay, building fun. No, they're worth like $4. Nothing
good. Why couldn't I have the nice
ones? Because my friends that knew they were valuable took
them from me years ago. So it's OK. You know, I mention Marvel Comics
because superheroes have been around since antiquity. the demigods of Greek and Rome,
the strong men. There's always a hero. And I think what's happened in
our culture is that we've taught our children that Jesus is just
a hero. That Jesus is just a strong man
with a strong resolve, with a lot of power. And we've played down humility
as a weakness rather than a strength. We've played down sacrifice.
Don't you let people take what ain't theirs. Don't you let people
cause you to have a hard day. Toxicity. I've asked a lot of people in
the last six months what it means, what a toxic environment. Now,
I'm not saying it's not there, but I can't get a straight answer.
What does it mean? Sulfuric acid is toxic. And you
better have the right gear on when you're playing with it.
I mean, you know, working with it. Not playing with it. Don't play with
acid, children. All sorts of other things are
toxic. Yes, people can be toxic, but what does that really mean? Was Jesus' life not in the center
of an incredible toxicity? Did the very people of Israel
not reject the glory of God in their face? Did they not abuse
their privilege of knowing the rules and the laws of Moses?
Did they not put burdens on people too heavy to lift? Did they not
rebuke and stone and arrest and refuse grace? Were they not haughty,
horrible, envious, jealous people? Did they not wrongly accuse Him,
belittle Him, lie about Him and His people? That's a toxic situation. And
one of the most toxic sat right here in the midst of Jesus. And
Jesus eats His meal. Now how about you? Could you
fake it for a few hours to eat? Just to save face? Probably. But you know what a fake smile
looks like, right? You know, you could, we could tell unless
you're a sociopath, you can tell when somebody's fake smiling.
I mean, you know, can tell if you know, if you know them. I don't think Jesus sat like
that. I think Jesus sat at the supper with all this knowledge,
knowing that his time had come, that his focus was on the glory
that he would receive. The focus was on that eternal
truth that the Father had promised him, the things that he knew
that he had been before. He had come from God and he was
going back to God. And so with all of that in his
heart and in his human mind, his soul was at peace. And so
he rose from supper, not like I would do, kicking Judas out,
barring the door, handing out shotguns. They're coming for
me, buddy. Let's show them who's God. I
mean, you know, could you imagine? See, that's a Marvel movie. And
they break in and then this God-man says, okay, I've had enough.
Enough! And everybody just vanishes. Thanos included. I mean, everything's
gone. The gloves gone, everything's gone. It's my third pop culture reference
this year. But he rose. What did he do?
He took off his outer garments. He stripped down to his loincloth.
He stripped down to his underwear. And he tied a towel around his
waist. Then he went over to the water
basin, and he poured water into the basin, and he began to wash
the disciples' feet. And wiped them with the towel
that was wrapped around him. So here we are in his underwear,
wrapped a towel around him for modesty's sake, I guess. cleans
their feet and then takes off that which covers him and wipes
their feet. You ever thought about that?
Jesus doesn't do anything for no reason. There's a great point
in this and we'll see it all next week. So what it points
to. And of course, he comes to Peter. Kepha, or as we like to say,
Cephas. Simon Peter. And Peter just can't imagine
the fact that his teacher, his rabbi, his superior, his mentor
is going to wash his feet half naked. Not happening. You're going to wash my feet?
You're going to wash my feet, Jesus? And then verse 7, This should
really settle it for most of us, especially these men. He
says, what I'm doing, you don't understand now. What I'm doing
by washing your feet, you do not understand now, but afterward
you will understand. See, Peter should have said,
oh, OK, no problem, here you go. But Peter in his mind knew
better than Jesus. Peter knew better than Jesus
there. Peter knew better than Jesus at the arrest. Peter knew
better than Jesus at the charge. Who do you say that I am? You
are the Christ, the son of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona. Simon, the son of Jonah. For
man has not revealed these things to you, but my father who was
in heaven. And then just a few minutes later, he's like, I must
die. And Peter's like, you ain't got
to die. Let me show you, I got a plan. I got shotguns, we bar the door, you
know, and you show up and it's going to be good. You ain't got
to die. Andrew before, remember for the Passover in John 12,
Or John 11, they're gonna go and wake up Lazarus. And what
is, I'm not Andrew, I'm sorry. Thomas, what does Thomas say?
Let's just go die with him. He's gonna die. He didn't even
go with them, because it wasn't his time. He wasn't gonna go
the way they wanted to go. He would go the way he wanted
to go, which is the way the Father had commanded him to go, of his
free will. Jesus is not going to be charged
by the circumstances. He's going to stay the course.
And so with all the knowledge of despair, of judgment, of death,
of suffering the wrath of the father for the sake of sinners
who were spitting in his face. He decides to become a slave
and to take off his clothes and to wash their nasty feet. Now,
let me give you a picture of this. Kids, y'all listen carefully
to this. I don't like my children being
outside without shoes on. It just doesn't settle for me.
You come inside, I have to wipe them off, especially when they're
young. I do this. We check feet every night, even after bath.
You go to get in the bed, we check feet. We have wipes by
the bed just for the fact we're going to check feet. Now, I don't
do it with my teenagers, but when they were kids, we did it. So Abigail still
gets the feet checked. She's gotten pretty good. She'll
do it by herself. Because believe it or not, you
can't keep 2,000 square foot of floor mopped 24 hours a day.
But if you go outside, your feet are real nasty. How do you know?
You look at them, and they're black on the bottom. They're
not supposed to be. They're supposed to be white. We clean them. Imagine being
in the sandals of first century Palestine, where there was no
pavement, where there was sand and dirt and mud and spittle
and horse and camel, and sheep, and oxen. And you just walked through it.
And then you sat with your feet to your left, and you put your
knees down by the carpet, and you ate your food. And the guy
sitting to your left, your feet were on his knees, which was
right next to his plate. There you go, kids. So imagine
having camel poopy feet on the dinner table. This is how you
keep children engaged in sermons, and adults too. They had slaves at those gatherings
that would wash the feet of all the attendants as a courtesy,
and so they didn't die from whatever kind of coli might have been
on the feet. Jesus took this role. Why? Because there wasn't another,
there was probably a servant. As a matter of fact, I suggest to
you that the feet were already clean because they'd eaten. He rose from supper and he washed
their feet again. And he tells Peter that you don't
understand, but afterwards you will. And Peter, instead of submitting
to the sovereignty of Christ, Peter says, you will never, ever
wash my feet. That is beneath you. I will not
permit it. You know what that's saying to
Jesus? What you're doing for me, to
cleanse me, I reject. The same thing Peter says to
Jesus when He says, you don't have to die. The same thing we
say to Jesus when we reject His Word, when we fail to believe,
when we have seasons of doubt. Peter wasn't lost. Peter just
had not been matured. Peter had not been given the
Spirit in the way that he would receive it. To help him understand
and write his epistles. and teach the church that we
might also be taught by God. You will never wash my feet.
You'll never wash it. You'll never pay for my sins.
You'll never wash away my stains. You'll never cleanse me. You're
not going to be the one to sacrifice your dignity for me. That's what Peter's saying. See how hard that is for the
human condition, for depravity, for pride, to allow those people
we esteem to hurt for us. But see that that is the epitome
of Christ mind. That's why it's not maniacal
for God that is due all glory to destroy his son for the sake
of his people, so that he might offer Jesus as a sacrifice for
their sins. so that he can declare them just,
righteous, and saved. Jesus responds to Peter in the
latter part of verse 8, If I do not wash you, you have no share
with me. You have no share with me. If I don't wash you, you are
not in me. You are not with me, you are
not for me, you are not of me. And then of course, Peter and
Peter's style goes, then wash me all, master. My head, my feet, my hands, my
body. I imagine in that moment, Peter took off his clothes. He's
like, just give me a bath. Knowing the narrative of Peter
and the disciples are going, oh, we can never take him anywhere
to eat. I mean, you know. No shoes, no service. That started
then. Shoes, no shirt, no service. wash my hands and my head. In
verse 10, 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. Now, the reality
of this is that Jesus was not talking about their physical
bodies. This physical cleansing, as we'll see more next week,
was a picture of the spiritual reality of the cross. So when
Jesus, with all the knowledge of the cross, rose with his,
what? With his betrayer in the room,
he washed his betrayer's feet. So it's not the physical washing
that matters. It's a picture of the spiritual
cleansing that only God gives by the Holy Spirit to those for
whom cross died. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sin. So in this reality, Jesus declares
you are clean, but not all of you. And he was speaking of Jesus.
You're clean. Before I go to the cross, you're
clean because you belong to me. You believe in me. And when I
die, you will see the truth of what this is pointing to. You
will see my humility. You will see the disgust. You
will see the horror of what's about to take place. Beloved, God has said to you
this day, because of the work of Christ, you are clean. You're
clean. There is no work of your hands,
of your mind, of your mouth, of your ethics, of your morals.
There is no level of by which you can meet the standard of
righteousness that is only available through Jesus Christ himself.
None. And we do not conflate, we do not
mix up the gospel of sovereign grace with maturity, obedience. and growth. Because Christ has said, you
are clean. And if you are in Christ, you
are clean. And if you are in if you are clean, you are in
Christ because his death has washed away your guilt. He took
your guilt on himself, and then his perfect righteousness has
been sent to your account. And that is the crux of the gospel
of free and sovereign grace. Beloved, rejoice in it. When
life has you unable to eat, rise from the table, because you're
clean in Christ. And teach this to your children,
and to your friends, and to your enemies, and to your neighbors,
because there is no other way by which one may be saved. about
Christ. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for the graciousness of your word, for the teaching that you've
given us and for the ability of just working through my verboseness
sometimes for clarity. Lord, I pray that those of us
who are assured of our salvation because of faith in Christ would
rest there and when the world and our flesh and our mind comes
against the truth that you teach us in your word, Lord, that we
would just find solace in the scripture and with the beloved
brothers and sisters to be encouraged in the truth. And Lord, those
who are uncertain, those who doubt, those who fear, Lord,
would you draw them into your presence? Lord, would you convert
those who belong to you? Would you give assurance to the
weary and confidence to the weak? Lord, that we might also be united
in the faith that is ours in Christ. And it's in His name
we pray. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
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