We’re going to be in John 13:1-20 today. Let’s pray together.

Father in heaven, thank you for the men and women who place themselves at the frontlines of caring for the people of this nation. Lord, they love so much, so they give of themselves this way. We ask that you protect them, and guide them, giving them discernment, wisdom, and courage to continue serving the people of our communities well.

Lord, we thank you for gathering us today to worship you, to praise you. Thank you for all that you have done and all that you are doing. As we learn from your word, inspire us to live faithfully. Lord, you gave us a model that bears the burdens of our brothers and sisters, give us the strength to bear those burdens and to carry them well.

Lord, I pray over those who are struggling with sins in their lives right now. God, there is sin that is festering, unconfessed, covered, and hidden, and it’s eating up the souls of those who harbor it. Give those men and women the courage to confess it to somebody who will walk with them and guide them through toward healing and reconciliation. God, on the other side of that, there is bitterness because of those sins, inflicted on some here, and those people need peace. Peace that washes over blood and tears and allows for forgiveness.

Father, help us recognize the kingship of your son, and bring us security in your promises today. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

John 13:1-20

¹Now 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. ² During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, ³ 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, ⁴ rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. ⁵ 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. ⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” ⁸ Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 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.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. ¹⁶ Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. ¹⁸ I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ ¹⁹ I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. ²⁰ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” (John 13:1-20 ESV)

How many hikers and campers do we have here today?

• You like to go on hikes
• getting lost in the woods
• sleeping inside polyester wrapped around sticks
• encountering all sorts of wildlife
• catching or preying on your own meals
• making your own bathroom facilities?

Man, a lot more of you than I thought… now I know whose house to go to when our power goes out.

A few years ago, a group of guys I grew up with decided it would be great if we got together and went hiking / camping for a long weekend in the Rockies. It was going to be epic! This trip would solidify our friendships in adulthood. So despite knowing better, and a lack of planning, we got to the base of the mountain range we would be hiking the road started changing. It went from interstate to local road, then down to a single lane road hanging off the side of a cliff face with no egress except off the cliff.

• Then we all lost cell service. And when you lose cell service you can’t load Google maps on your phone?
• With no viable way to navigate, you don’t really have a choice but to follow the road until it ends somewhere.
• I don’t know what it is about not knowing where you are going, but that added stress caused whoever was driving to get struck with altitude sickness…so we were rotating drivers.
• Camping wasn’t going to solidify our friendships, it was going to end it. We were all going to die in a firery crash and nobody would make a movie because story would be so anticlimactic.

Anyways, we got to the campground right around dusk. It’s getting pitch black. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be there with a bunch of dudes who also have no idea what they’re doing as it’s getting dark.

The good news: we survived, but we will never talk about it again and we will never do a camping reunion.

We survived….isn’t that the sentiment we feel after a long trying period of following Jesus in faith? We stretch out in faith to do something, to go somewhere, and we just barely scrape by—we survive. And when we do make it out, we don’t talk about it again. I’m a therapist’s worst nightmare.

We don’t talk about the act of faith or the results of it, and we don’t try exercising our faith like that again because well, we only just survived. But when we start to think why we only survived and not thrived in faith, we realize that at some point:

• God suddenly went quiet,
• Or we found ourselves places we’re not comfortable being
• Or we’re around people we never imagine being with,
• and you’ve never really figured out which way you’re supposed to go when that fork in the middle of the road confronted you.

Some of us may currently be sitting at that fork in the road, surviving the tides, neither picking a direction to move forward in, but also not going back in retreat.

Today, we start a brand new series titled, “The Followers Trail Guide: Navigating the Path of Jesus” where, for the next 10 weeks, we’ll be studying John 13 through 16.

This section of Scripture is called the Last Discourse, and it’s the last things Jesus teaches his disciples in preparing them to follow him when he’s going. Michael Jordan has his Last Dance, Jesus has his Last Discourse. The goal of studying these passages of scripture is to understand and use the trail guide Jesus gives to his followers in bringing clarity and direction to our lives as we follow him in faith.

Here’s the big idea for us today:

Big Idea: Jesus paved the way for us to follow.

Jesus paves a way for us because he loves us. Look at verse 1: 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. 

So if you’re feeling like the silence of God is deafening, and you feel lost on your spiritual journey, or you feel like you’ve been burned by God, know that Jesus loves you. It’s a love that doesn’t stop until the end, that is the end of your journey, when you’re finally arrived at your destination.

If you feel unlovable, know that Jesus calls you his own and loves you. Everything Jesus teaches us in this series hinges on the fact that we are loved so deeply by Jesus, we are called his own, and that nothing will separate us from his love.

You are loved as Jesus’ own because:

• he chose you,
• he gave himself to you,
• and because you submit yourself to him.  – that’s what it means to follow Jesus.

So, no matter

• where we are in our faith journey,
• regardless of what our circumstances are,
• no matter what our secret sin or temptations,
• or whatever disgrace you hold against yourself

Jesus loves us and paves a way for us to follow him.

That means the unconfessed porn addiction you’re trying to hide, but it’s occupying too much of your thoughts that you can’t function right, you need to confess that, get it in the open because that won’t make you less loved by Jesus. In fact, confessing it will open doors for your brothers and sisters, or maybe even your husbands, wives, or children to wrap their arms around you and walk with you.

The same goes for that same sex attraction you’ve been wrestling with, confess it for the same reason, because it won’t make you less loved or less accepted by Jesus; but confessing it will open yourself to people who will wrap their arms around you to walk with you in the same love Jesus has for you, because you are his.

That goes for the addict, junkie, thief, murderer, liar, coveter here amongst us. It is also for the self-righteous, pompous, and judgmental. God is aware of who you are and what your sins are.

We may not be aware of our sins, but Jesus came to rescue us with the full knowledge of all those things and none of those things stop him from loving you or me.

If that’s you, welcome to church. The person sitting next to you is just as un-derserving of Jesus’ love as you are but we all receive it. The person standing before you, he’s also a sinner, undeserving of the love Jesus has for him. So we’re going to journey together. Verse 2.

² During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, ³ 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, ⁴ rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. ⁵ 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. (John 13:2-5 ESV)

Look at what Jesus does for the people he loves. This was intentional. He knew exactly what he was doing, and who he was doing it for. He didn’t owe his disciples anything, but he washes their feet to show them his love for them.

Point 1: Jesus paved the way as a servant

What Jesus did for his disciples was so raw! He took off his nice clothes. The clothes of a Jewish man. Then with nothing but his under garments, he tied a towel around his waist so that he could wash the feet of his students. He is doing the job the most menial house slave would have been tasked to do. For a free Jewish man in the first century to strip down to look like a slave, and wash the feet of commoners, this posture was undignified.

In fact, even if he were a Jewish slave, he wouldn’t have been given this task. It was a task reserved for gentile slaves. Jesus was willing to be shamefaced for his posture out of his love for his disciples. To love in such a way that even in the face of shame, you bow lower in humility to serve somebody else, especially if you know they are not worthy of your service, this is the way Jesus models servanthood!

That is love! Unashamed of what the world thinks as you elevate others in service.

• How many men serve your wives that way?
• Or wives serve your husbands this way?
• How many serve your kids that way?
• How many of you serve your neighbors or co-workers that way?

Maybe we did, but not anymore. Maybe, though, a few times every bloodmoons, we actually do serve this way—elevating others above us. But then we get turned off by the people we’re serving and say, “we’re better than this” and we walk away. I know that’s exactly why some of you stopped serving or choose not to serve— because the target of our service doesn’t deserve it.

So we’ve grown out of it. We’re further in our spiritual journey. We’re too good, we’re too important, we have too many other things to do. We’re about discipleship and bible study…

But look at Jesus. He was in the form of God, but emptied himself to take on humanity, to serve you and me. We follow Jesus by serving like Jesus. That’s the way he has for us.

Don’t give away the privilege of serving others, especially if they are un-deserving. Because that was us when Jesus came to us. And when you give away your privilege to serve others by not serving, you give up the right to disciple the people and the very culture you pray to be changed.

Serving like Jesus may not look like what you imagined, it’ll get dirty, yes, it may put you in a place that is not socially acceptable for a person of your socio-economic stature. But that’s exactly what our savior did.

Yes, you could be doing a million things much more fulfilling than ministering to ungrateful or un-deserving people, but you follow Jesus in serving because that’s the way Jesus paved for us.

Let’s go to verse 6.

⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 

Peter is mad because of WHO is serving him. It wasn’t right for his master be washing his feet. He can’t understand what kind of Messiah would stoop down to this level of servitude. He is mad at the other disciples because they accepted Jesus’ service without any hesitation.

Doesn’t Peter sound like one of those angry Christians we all know that get so worked up because they feel God offers forgiveness for offenses that are too offensive? They want people to pay for their injustice the same way they did. I know you got people like that in your lives. If you don’t, then that’s okay because Jesus washes you too.  

Verse 8: Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”

This statement Jesus makes actually alludes to the type of spiritual cleansing he is going to perform when he sacrifices himself as the Passover lamb on Calvary. You see, Jesus was sent to earth to be the blameless Lamb of God, a sin offering to take away a person’s sin. Anybody who believes that and receives that, can come before God.  

Without this offering, we cannot come before God. He is holy and perfect and if we stood before him without Jesus surrendering his perfect body for us and pays the penalty of sin for us in his death, we would be condemned to an eternal death because of our sin. His blood washes over us, giving us right standing before God, the Father.

I know some of you grew up Christians, you don’t have a bad bone in your body, you’re not corrupt like your pastor. But wrap this around your minds: “sin is not wrong doing, it is wrong being.” I ripped that off Oswald Chambers.

Sin is not being able to live up to what and who God created and called us to be. Sin is not being able to live in reference to God. So when we fail to be washed and cleaned in faith by the blood of Jesus on the cross, that sin of not being separates us from God.

Point 2: Jesus paves the way for us to follow through his cleansing

Peter, just like Jesus said, would come to understand what Jesus was doing later in his life. He writes to the Christians scattered in the Roman Empire in 1^st Peter 1:18-19,21… “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without a blemish or spot…. through him [we] are believers in God, who raised [Jesus] from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

Peter continues in 1^st Peter 2:10: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

Jesus’ cleansing gives all who believe a share in eternity with him. All of us, before we accepted Jesus as our Christ, we were not God’s people, we were sinners before God that deserved death.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Jesus paves the way for us to be with the father through his act of cleansing. Jesus redeems us, paying a price we could never pay. Verse 9.

Pay attention here because John does something very subtle here that we miss if we read it too quickly.

⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 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.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

Peter’s overreaction gives Jesus an opportunity to not just talk about the once and for all salvific act of paying for the sins of all past, present and future through his work on the cross as our redeemer; but also the ongoing cleansing in our lives that occurs within us as we follow him in faith.  

Look at verse 10 again. “The one who has bathed” is somebody who receives the good news of Jesus Christ by faith and has the penalty of that sin taken away. Theologically this is called justification. Justification is what happens when we through grace along by faith alone, are united to Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. It is the legal standing we have before God because our sins were poured onto Jesus on the cross, and our sins paid for by his blood. Once we place our trust in Jesus as our savior, our justification before God is instantaneous and complete.

Then Jesus continues to say in verse 10, “except for his feet”, then and only then is that person completely clean. The allusion Jesus is making is that even though you are cleaned, you’re still living in this world. And if you travel around the dirty world, living in it, taking one step anywhere will get your feet dirty.

What Jesus is talking about in this phrase is the idea of sanctification. Theologically, sanctification is the work of God’s grace in our lives as we follow Jesus. God’s Spirit causes a physical change in our habits and actions to make us holy and become more like Jesus as we follow him in faith. As “our feet are washed” the dirt and imperfections that we gathered from living in this world are washed away by God’s Spirit.

Every time we serve like Jesus serves, we are cleansed by the Spirit of God in us, becoming what we already are before God.

Don’t get this backward. We don’t serve because we’re trying to earn our standing before God. We already received and have our right standing before God. Having that right standing before God actually causes us to become more like the righteous person we are following. I know, it’s paradoxical. That’s why

Point 3: Jesus paved the way by giving us an example to follow

That is the journey of faith—toward holiness, to being like our savior, not because we’re earning it, but because we’ve already received it.

Verse 11 just emphasizes those points. You see, Judas was called one of Jesus’ own, but in verse 2, we saw that instead of being sanctified to holiness like Jesus, Judas instead, was enticed by the devil toward unholiness. We’re going to examine this idea more next week.

Verse 12.

¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. ¹⁶ Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. ¹⁸ I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ ¹⁹ I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. ²⁰ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

The example Jesus gives us is not literally washing the feet of other disciples. I know some of you would love a nice pedicure right now.

The example Jesus is giving us is to live with faithful zeal through service toward others. Our faithful zeal must be married with a transparent humility that loves others sacrificially. That is the fruit of our salvation, that is our sanctification, that is our testimony to a sinful, dying, and unbelieving culture. 

Head knowledge about who God is, and what he does for us is worthless if it’s not applied. Meaning, you and I can never become sanctified to what God intended for us if we’re going to sit gleefully learning without applying.

The gospel is equal parts zeal and acts of justice through service. It’s through zeal and acts of justice through our service that the cultural equilibrium shifts in this world.

Jesus did what he wasn’t supposed to do taking the posture of a servant to. To die for unworthy sinners, to impute his righteousness on people that were enemies of his father. But that is the way of God. God chooses the weak and insignificant in this world and calls them his own to overthrow the world. It was when we were least deserving, and most aware of our inability to come before God that we accepted this gift from Jesus Christ. This is how all of us became his followers.

So will we follow him?

• Will we follow Jesus in his way of humble service?
• Will we follow Jesus as recipients of his cleansing?
• Will we follow Jesus in obedience as our example?

If you are wondering how you will follow Jesus’ example, then open your eyes to the people around you and strip down in humility to wash the dirty feet of the people you see. Give your entire self away. All of your pride. All of your preconceptions. Go get dirty. God will sanctify you in the process.

Let’s pray.

Great God, you called us and received us as your own. Not because we have some merit or because we have some claim. You received us because of your gracious love alone. We strain to follow your example. God, we can hardly accept the idea that you would be kneeling at our feet to wash us clean. God, we can’t even imagine sometimes the humility, the pressure of knowing that you would be betrayed and yet serving them anyways.

Lord, I pray for those of us who have been stunted in our sanctification. We accept you as our Lord. But we haven’t given over lives, our habits, our addictions, our behaviors to your Spirit’s cleansing. We’ve been so enticed by other things that we incorrectly measure what we have in you, in eternity. I ask that for those of us wrestling with that today, you lift our burdens and help us be obedient to the way you modeled, so that grace and peace be multiplied in our lives, not under compulsion, but in eagerness. We want you to restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish your dominion forever and ever, especially in our lives. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.