Remember What He’s Done

1. Purposeful Acts of Service

John 13:1–5 Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would 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, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.

The scene here is set. As we read these verses, what we know for certain is that these are Jesus’ final moments before his arrest. It’s a Thursday night and Jesus gathers around the table with His disciples for a meal. It is during this meal that He institutes that Lord’s supper so that His disciples might remember His sacrificial, atoning death. As John makes plain, Jesus knows that these are His final hours and His death was coming. What would you do with your final hours? When a doctor tells you you don’t have long to live, they simply tell you to get your affairs in order. Make sure everything is setup for when you are gone. Well Jesus had already done a lot of that, but was there more to do? Was there something more He could’ve been teaching His disciples? After all, if we fast forward to immediately after His death it was clearly that they had missed something that He was teaching. Maybe you would think of all the things you wanted to do with your life, like your bucket list. Anyone have one of those? I have two bucket lists - one realistic, the other one unlikely. On the realistic one I have go to the grand canyon, visit Italy, and drive a supercar. On the unlikely one, I have go on an arctic expedition to see narwhals and scale the cables of a bridge to climb to the top. The bridge one may be doable if I ever get to know the right person. The narwhal one will only be doable if I can ever justify $14,000 plus money for cold weather gear on a single trip for just me. Yes, I have researched this. What would you want to do with your final hours? Be with the ones you love is an easy one - and here Jesus certainly did that. Maybe there’s some food you want to eat?

On death row they give inmates what they call a “last meal”, and it can pretty much be whatever they want and however much they want. Though that depends on where you’re at. Florida caps it at $40 and it can only be local, and Oklahoma caps it at $25. So in Oklahoma, your last meal is probably just going to be fast food. In 2011, a man named Steven Woods was executed and this was his last meal:

Two pounds of bacon, a large four-meat pizza, four fried chicken breasts, two drinks each of Mountain Dew, Pepsi, root beer, and sweet tea, two pints of ice cream, five chicken fried steaks, two hamburgers with bacon, fries, and a dozen garlic bread sticks with marinara on the side.

Anyone feeling hungry now?

There’s a lot of things we might want to do in our final moments, and probably almost all of those things revolve around us and what we want to do for ourselves to most enjoy our final moments. Yet here we see Jesus in His final moments and he turns toward His disciples and sets aside Himself and any desires He may have and seeks only to serve His disciples and set an example of service for them to follow after. I think we may be able to look at this and see how easy a decision this is for Jesus - after all, it’s Jesus, why would He be worried about anything when He knows everything? John lays out for us exactly what Jesus’ mindset was here, and it sets a valuable example for us:

He knew the hour was coming - there was no escaping or changing it He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands He knew that He had come from God and was going back to God

Jesus could take this moment to care for His disciples because He knew that God was in control. As terrible a day as He was about to have and He could still take a moment to turn away from what was about to come and focus in on serving His disciples and setting an example for them of how to serve one another. He chose in this moment to not grieve over the hour to come, but to step back in humility and wash His disciples feet. We talked about how gross foot-washing was a couple weeks ago, so we won’t get back into it. But washing someone’s feet is really not something that anyone was going to volunteer to do. Heck, even today the people most likely to wash someone’s feet are the people that get paid to do it, and our feet aren’t nearly as gross as the feet of these disciples. How could the King of kings and Lord of lords stoop to such a low level? No king should serve anyone, let alone serving someone like this, but Jesus wasn’t any ordinary king.

If we want to follow the example of Jesus, then we should recognize that our service should be deliberate and purposeful. We don’t wander upon the opportunity to serve, though we seize it when it comes. Rather, we state plainly, “I am going to serve”, and then we go and serve.

Let’s dive into the next few verses and see Peter carry out what would probably be our own initial response.

2. Receiving Grace with Humility

John 13:6–11 So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.” Peter said to Him, “Never shall You wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” Jesus said to him, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.” For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, “Not all of you are clean.”

Peter’s initial response kinda makes sense here. Of all the disciples, he probably had the highest view of Jesus. After all, when Jesus asked who the disciples said He was, Peter was the first one to answer that Jesus was the Christ. Peter couldn’t possibly allow Jesus to stoop down to such a low level as to wash Peter’s gross, nasty feet.

Is this how we think about our sin sometimes? Is it too dirty for us to let Jesus come near it? Do we feel like we can’t be forgiven for what we’ve done? I’ve heard something along those lines come out of someone’s mouth before. “I’m just too far gone for gone.” I’ve heard people question whether or not God could forgive something that they’ve done. I’ve heard people claim that there is no forgiveness for what others have done. Part of the enemy’s plan is to put this doubt in our mind, causing us to often resist accepting the grace of God for us, or simply making us feel unworthy to receive it. And of course, we are unworthy, yet that doesn’t stop God from giving us this free gift.

So when Jesus comes in with this offer of grace, this offer to wash our feet clean of the shame we’ve been carrying around them, we quickly lash out saying that we couldn’t possibly allow him to come down to such a low level. But then look at how He responds to Peter.

“If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” And Peter responds as only Peter can. “Lord, wash not just my feet, but all of me!” If we want to be part of Jesus, He needs to wash us clean. And much like Peter, we should want all of us to be washed, not just part of us. We should look at the filth of our sin and long to be cleaned, just as Peter sought not only a small part of his body to be cleaned, but all of him.

The humility of Jesus’ sacrificial service wasn’t just in the washing of the disciples’ feet, but His going through the punishment of the cross to wash each and every one of us of our sin by His spilled blood.

No one is clean, and not everyone will be made clean, but Jesus can make us clean. Now the story turns to Jesus telling His disciples to follow after His example of service.

3. Leadership Through Love

John 13:12–17 So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Now Jesus appeals to the disciples’ understanding of who He is and puts it in the perspective of what He has done. Jesus came down to a level that probably none of the disciples would’ve been willing to go to. They probably had no plans to go and clean one another’s feet.

Look at what He says again; “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

He is Lord and Teacher. From most every single point of view, He has no place cleaning anyone’s feet. If anything, someone should be cleaning His feet. And yet, cleaning the disciples feet is exactly is what He chose to do, to set an example for them to follow. Here’s another way to think about this command He gives His disciples:

If the Lord can wash your feet, who are you to think you shouldn’t do it for others? If the Lord can wash your feet, go and do it for one another. If the Lord is willing to serve, so you must too be willing to serve. Follow My example.

If we look back and remember what Jesus did, then what He makes clear here is that true leadership in the Kingdom of God is about serving others selflessly. It main mean serving in a way that you think is demeaning, yet there is nothing that Christ would not do to serve His Father.

As we consider Jesus example of what leadership looks like, we should examine our own lives and consider how we follow after it. What does our influence look like? What does serving in love look like? What does it look like to sacrifice in our service to one another and others around us? It’s going to look different for each of us, so maybe we need to be more specific. Ask yourself - what does serving out of love look like for me? What does serving sacrificially look like for me? What more can I do to follow the example of service that Jesus shows us?

Let’s close out the text.

4. Unconditional Love and Betrayal

John 13:18–32 “I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats My bread has lifted up his heel against Me.’ From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” When Jesus had said this, He became troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray Me.” The disciples began looking at one another, at a loss to know of which one He was speaking. There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. So Simon Peter gestured to him, and said to him, “Tell us who it is of whom He is speaking.” He, leaning back thus on Jesus’ bosom, said to Him, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus then answered, “That is the one for whom I shall dip the morsel and give it to him.” So when He had dipped the morsel, He took and gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. After the morsel, Satan then entered into him. Therefore Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly.” Now no one of those reclining at the table knew for what purpose He had said this to him. For some were supposing, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus was saying to him, “Buy the things we have need of for the feast”; or else, that he should give something to the poor. So after receiving the morsel he went out immediately; and it was night. Therefore when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately.”

Obviously there’s a lot happening right here, and we won’t labor over all of it, but we will just focus in on a couple pieces; Jesus’ knowledge of betrayer, and Jesus’ actions towards him.

First, Jesus reminds the disciples that His time is coming, and He warns them once again so that they will remember and believe. But in this section we also see the disciples memory prove itself to be…well, pretty pathetic.

In verse 11, Jesus said they weren’t all clean. In verse 18 he warns that He isn’t speaking His instruction to all of them, because one of the ones who eats His bread would rise up against Him. In verse 21, Jesus tells them that one of them will betray Him. In verse 25, they ask Jesus who it is. In verse 26, Jesus says that the one He hands a piece of bread to is His betrayer, and He is then identified as Judas Iscariot. And in verses 28 and 29, the disciples are completely confused by what happened and seem to have immediately forgotten that not only was someone going to betray Jesus, but that Jesus both told them how they would know who would betrayed them and then showed them right in front of their faces. Clearly the disciples were struggling here! It’s like going to a baseball game, watching your team win, then asking your friend what baseball is and if your team won. If the disciples couldn’t remember this, then of course they weren’t going to remember what He said about His death.

But let’s get back to the focus of this section. Jesus knew who was going to betray. In fact, as Jesus says in verse 18, He knows the ones He has chosen, and He knew when He chose Judas that he would betray Him. But it was all part of God’s perfect plan. Even though Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray Him, consider His attitude toward Judas. We just read that He washed the disciples feet - that means He washed Judas’ feet. When the disciples asked Jesus who His betrayer was, He said it was the one He would feed - Jesus still fed Judas. Judas was trusted with authority amongst the disciples, not only to carry the money, but to go out and do the work of the gospel. Even though Judas was going to betray Him, Jesus showed love and compassion to him. Now, we know how the story ends for Judas - he did not believe in Jesus, and therefore he did not receive eternal life. But the gift was still available to him. The grace and compassion of the Lord was still extended to him, even though he certainly did not deserve it. This is the grace shown in salvation; available and extended to all, but only those who believe in Jesus will truly receive such gifts as they are intended to be experienced.

This is the example of service that Jesus shows us. It doesn’t just go to those who are easy to serve, but also to those who we find difficult to serve or just straight up unworthy of our time and energy. So that’s one more thing for us to consider…who do we find ourselves unwilling to serve? Where do we find ourselves unwilling to show grace and compassion to people that we feel we shouldn’t have to show it to? Let’s admit it, there are times where we look at the evil of this world and the people that cause it, however we may interpret what is happening, and we determine that they are undeserving of the same grace and compassion that we ourselves do not deserve. Jesus offered the same grace and compassion to His faithful followers as He did to the one that would start Him on His way to the cross.

How do we show this same grace and compassion to the people that we are worried about betraying us? How do we wash the feet of those that want to hurt us? It’s not going to be easy, but if the Lord and Teacher can humble Himself to do it, can’t we?

Encouraging believers to reflect Christ's relentless love, regardless of circumstances, can help cultivate stronger, grace-filled communities.