What True Love And Service Look Like

Good morning and welcome to Buffalo on this last Sunday in January 2023.

The title of the sermon this morning is “What True Love and Service Look Like.” And since we’re looking at love today, Christian love, biblical love, I did some research on love in our society. I asked Google some questions and this what I got.

Did you know — it is estimated 100 million songs have been written about love, from the beginning of time until now. 100 million.

How many songs have been written that love in the title? 1,187.

Why are so many songs written about love? Well, I learned, because it’s so relatable, and therefore easy to market and sell.

Do you know what the number one love song is of all time? Whitney Houston, I Will Always Love You in 1992.

Have you ever wondered how many couples have a song? 60%. My parents’ song is When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge. And yes, Shannon and I have a song, more like an album. John Mayer’s album Room for Squares, 2003. I’d be interested to know what songs you couples have out there that are special to you.

Did you know that some scientists say that romantic love activates the same type of brain response as narcotics?

Did you know that 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Speaking of that, it takes, on average, about 3.5 months to recover from a breakup of a relationship, and 1.5 years to recover from the breakup of a marriage — and probably more than 1.5 years.

I was reminded of two things from this information — 1) love is an all-consuming thing that can leave you either ecstatic or suicidal, and 2) love is not something we are very good at.

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But we need to get good at it, because Jesus commands it. And our four words have the word love in them.

Speaking of our four words, they’re on the screen. Worship - Grow - Love - Serve. I need you to do me a favor. Use your loudest outdoor voices and belt it out as loud as you can.

I wish we could do justice to everything in this text, but time won’t permit us.

What does God say through His Word about love — not so much about romantic love but Christian love, biblical love, Jesus’ kind of love? John 13 will show us.

#1: The background of the footwashing

John 13:1–4 ESV

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 it 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.

What is God showing us in verses 1-3?

Two things: Jesus knew, and Jesus loved.

What did Jesus know? He knew that His hour had come. It is time. His death on the cross in our place, bearing our sins — it is near. Jesus is troubled about His death. But He is resolute and steadfast in His purpose. “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again”” (John 12:27-28 ESV).

He knew who He was. As Son of God, He had come from heaven where His Father is. As Son of God and Son of Man, He would soon go back to God, back to heaven where His Father is. These are things that prove that Jesus was fully man and fully God. Jesus knew.

But Jesus also loved. Look with me at verse 1: knowing who He was — the King of Kings, the fully divine Son of God — knowing that He had come from heaven and is now headed back, his work on earth having almost been completed, with all of that in mind, we’re told in verse 1, “he loved them to the end.”

Right up to the end of Jesus’ life, He loved His disciples. He had loved them, and His impending death did not change that, neither did the fact that He did not owe them love. He loved them to the end, till the very end. He was faithful. He is faithful. He will never let you down. He will love you to the end.

That’s the background. With all that in place, John paints a very vivid picture for us.

#2: The preparation for the footwashing

John paints a very vivid picture for us.

John 13:4–5 ESV

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.

The disciples are reclining in front of the table. They’re almost laying on their stomach, one hand propping them up, the other hand being used to eat. Their feet are stretched out behind them. But they stiffen up when Jesus begins to do what He’s doing.

He stands up. He sheds His outer layer of clothing. He ties a towel around His waist. He gets a basin and pours water into it. All eyes are on Him. No one is saying a word. What Jesus is doing is to their mind unthinkable. Why?

Jesus is dressing like a servant, or a slave, and really like less than a slave because not even Hebrew slaves were forced to do this job — It’s a job that literally no one else will do. Think cleaning toilets, seriously. It’s bad enough to have to clean your own toilet. You’re not cleaning someone else’s unless you’re getting paid, amen? That was footwashing. Even the way He was dressed would cause people to turn their noses up at Him.

So the Son of God, King of Heaven, Lord of lords, fully and completely and totally divine, fully and completely and totally human — the One who spoke worlds into existence and upholds the universe by His word alone — none of that went to His head! He lowers Himself below the lowest social class — servants — and serves His disciples by doing something for them that was desperately needed but something nobody else would do. Not because no one else would do it. But because He loves and He shows His love. Because He wasn’t above it.

Mark 10:45 ESV

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Not only is Jesus doing a job that no one else would do. He’s also doing it for an enemy. Judas is at the table. He washes Judas’ feet, just minutes before Judas would leave to gather an army and betray Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But the real meat of this scene that the apostle John is painting for us is still to come. It turns out that to have Jesus serve you in this way is offensive.

#3: The offense of the footwashing

Look at this with me and let’s try to understand what’s going on here because I think we’ll all be able to relate to it.

Jesus begins washing the disciples feet. He’s on his knees. One container of water was under the feet he’s washing, and he’s pouring water over the feet from another container into the container below, after he wipes the feet with his towel. Their feet are filthy — dust is caked on from the miles and miles they’ve walked with nothing but sandals on. Not to mention the corns and bunyons — I don’t even know what those things are, they just sound really bad. Not to mention the stench.

And Jesus is doing his one by one with each of the disciples. One after the other. And they’re all silent. Until he comes to Peter.

“Lord, do you wash my feet?”

We know the NT was originally written in Greek, and if you could look at the Greek you would see that Peter is absolutely stunned that Jesus is doing this. “Lord…you? Wash MY feet? Jesus, I should be washing your feet…you have creatures in heaven who exist only to worship you. And you’re…gonna....this is just unthinkable.”

As a pastor I visit people in their homes and there’s always this one type of person. This type of person thinks their house is always filthy. “Oh pastor, I’m so sorry you have to see my house when it’s in this horrible condition.” And I look around see shelves without a speck of dust. I see carpet without a shred of grass or dirt from a shoe. I see hardwood that honestly looks like it was swept and mopped and sanded and stained and polished just for my visit.

And I’m thinking, man my wife and I are really glad you can’t see our house right now. Or my car.

“Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” And what do you think Jesus’ answer is to Peter’s question: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (v. 8).

“Peter, it’s your choice. But if you don’t let me do this for you, you and I can’t go on.” He says “you will have no share with me.” He means “if I do not wash you, you can have no relationship with me.”

“Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my feet!”

Peter — man, I just love his enthusiasm. He doesn’t understand everything Jesus is saying. But He is all-in with Jesus anyway. Have you ever been there? Jesus, I don’t understand how all of this works and there are so many questions I can’t answer but, man, as long as I have you, that’ll be enough for me. So whatever I have to do, I’ll do it. If you have to soak me from head to toe, do it! Whatever you ask, I’ll do it. It’s a small price to pay for simply knowing you.

Now look at Jesus’ response: “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” (John 13:10 ESV).

Is Jesus is talking about the footwashing?

And we smack ourselves in the forehead and say, Oh! The footwashing is a picture of something else! Jesus is humbling Himself by washing their feet. It’s a picture of how He will later humble Himself by washing us from head to toe our bigger mess: ..our sin.

We have this sense of shame when people catch us dirty, right? We want to keep them out until we can get cleaned up. And even though we know Jesus loves us, the vast majority of you — like me — have been conditioned to think that Jesus really doesn’t want to see you in your mess. Like the well-meaning parent that says, “Go to your room until you can stop crying and pull yourself together.”

And so part of what Peter is thinking is, “Jesus, are you really gonna go there with me? Do you want to go there with me?” We do the same thing with those parts of our lives that we don’t want Him to see.

Church family, be real with Jesus. He wants you, the you that exists right now, even if you’re not the you that you want to be. He will make you into the you that He wants you to be in His time, but His first priority is for us to know His goodness and His grace. You won’t be able to grow as a Christian the way until you understand His grace and His goodness. It will always be touch and go, you know? And all your obedience and all your growth will be motivated by the fear that you will lose His approval.

#4: The meaning of the footwashing

John 13:12–17 ESV

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? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 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. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

On my phone I have a series of reminders. I use them to remind me of certain tasks and appointments, as many of you are aware! But I also have certain statements that pop up at the same time each day. One of them is “You are first and foremost a servant.”

I don’t want to be a man who is in a position of leadership and because of that position of leadership thinks himself above serving others. I wish that I was able to remember that more often. If you are in a position of leadership, before you are someone who makes decisions or plans new events or initiatives, you are there to lead others by serving them.

“In 1878 when William Booth’s Salvation Army had just been so named, men from all over the world began to enlist. One man, who had once dreamed of himself as a bishop, crossed the Atlantic from America to England to enlist. He was a Methodist minister, Samuel Logan Brengle. And he now turned from a fine pastorate to join Booth’s Salvation Army.

Brengle later became the Army’s first American-born commissioner. But at first Booth accepted his services reluctantly and grudgingly. Booth said to Brengle, “You’ve been your own boss too long.” And in order to instill humility into Brengle, he set him to work cleaning the boots of the other trainees. And Brengle said to himself, “Have I followed my own fancy across the Atlantic in order to black boots?”

And then as in a vision he saw Jesus bending over the feet of rough, unlettered fishermen. “Lord,” he whispered, “You washed their feet: I will black their boots.”1 R. Kent Hughes, John: That You May Believe, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 316.

Conclusion and call for response

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So how can you take this and put it into practice on Monday? Three ways. Three questions.

You say you know Jesus. Ok. Do you serve like He did?

Don’t be too quick to say yes. Ask yourselves these questions:

Do I serve in uncommon ways?

Do I serve the lowest?

Am I willing to serve my enemy?

...Am I?

Here’s a good question in our polarized time: Republicans, would you serve a Democrat like this?

You see, it’s is so easy to say, “Oh, yes, I’m a very loving and serving person”, but when we’re pressed to think of an example of how we’ve done that recently, we come up short. We all fail to love and serve others the way Jesus did.

You say you know Jesus. Do you serve in uncommon, lowly ways? Do you serve the enemy? Of course not. And neither do I. Only Jesus has. And only He can forgive us and cleanse us from our failure to love.

18,000 people — that’s how many Chinese citizens became Christians as a result of the ministry of Hudson Taylor in the 1800s. Not only that, he brought and trained 800 missionaries to China, was responsible for 125 Christian schools, with 300 stations of work. He founded China Inland Mission. On top of this, he awakened the nation of England to their duty in China.

And through it all, no matter how much he accomplished, he remembered that he was first and foremost not a missionary or a leader. He was first and foremost a servant of Christ.

And so when he was introduced as the guest speaker one night at a church, the introduction was just elaborate and over the top and it concluded with something like, “now, I give you, our illustrious guest, the Rev. Hudson Taylor.” His first words were these: “Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master.” [John Stott, Mark Meynell ed., The Preacher’s Notebook, 2018]

Where do you start, church? It’s so simple. Just commit yourself to following Jesus. To follow Jesus, is to serve Him, because He serves. To serve Him is to serve the lowest, most frustrating, people, because He will lead you to it. And you will find life.

You say you love Jesus. Do you love like Him?

He loved them to the end. He will love you to the end. The book of Hebrews tells us “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him” (Heb. 7:25 ESV).

So, do you? Do love like He does?

Do you love those around you with perfect, consistent, unfailing, steadfast, unselfish love?

How about your spouse? Have you ever noticed that our constant tendency is to treat the person we’re married to worse than we treat anybody else? You’ll be super gracious to the stranger in the Food Lion parking lot who offers you their shopping cart. And then we go home and lay into our spouses like they’re our worst enemies.

That’s the point of the question “do you love like Jesus?” Of course you don’t. I don’t. That’s the whole reason why Jesus came and died in the first place, to do for us and in our place what we have failed to do ourselves.

You say you know Jesus. Do you love like Him? Of course not. Only Jesus has. Only He can forgive us and cleanse us from our failure to love.

You say you have a relationship with Jesus? Has He washed you?

“If I do not wash you,” Jesus says, “you have no share with me” (John 13:8 ESV).

It’s possible to come to church and sit through sermons and go to Sunday Morning Bible Study and be on a serving team here. It’s possible to do all of that and yet still not have a relationship with Jesus.

Jesus Himself said this would be the case: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:21-23 ESV).

Judas was one of these people. Judas was one of the 12 who were with Jesus, heard His teaching, experienced His friendship, saw His miracles and acts of mercy, and washed by Jesus -- but He was not one of them. “You are clean”, Jesus said to His 12 disciples sitting around the table with Him. But then speaking of Judas he said, “But not every one of you” (John 13:10 ESV). He was called, but not chosen. He was washed, but not clean.

If you think that’s you, don’t despair. You can change that today. Make Peter’s words your own: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my feet!” (John 13:10 ESV). Confess your sins to Him. He will forgive you. And He will set about making you into a person who loves and serves like Him.

Actually, that should be the prayer of every one of us today. Lord Jesus, wash me completely clean, and make me like you. I want to practice real love and true service.