Foot Washings

Well, for communion, turn to John 13. I'm going to look at a few verses here and just give a little bit of, a little interpretation, a little application, I hope. So John 13, 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.

And so we have a little context here, which is that Jesus is loving his own. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, that's Jesus, 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 I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand. 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.

Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus said to him, So Jesus washes the disciples' feet. this passage is very easily interpreted as showing servant leadership to people that leaders ought to serve others not like the Gentiles who lorded over others this shows Jesus' humility and there's certainly the idea here that this was a dirty job and so when you think about your feet at night that are probably relatively clean having worn socks and shoes most of the time walking on cement walking through rooms that have been cleaned if you wanted to try to picture what this might be like think about how dirty your feet are like maybe after the beach and they covered in sand and there sand in between the stuff and your feet still aren as dirty as Middle Eastern feet would have been 2 years ago that walked around in that environment at the time. So this was an extremely humbling task for anyone to do for anyone.

This was really the type of task a slave would do. So if you remember, John the Baptist said he's not even worthy to tie Jesus' shoes or the sandal strap of Jesus. and that was John the Baptist expressing his humility in that sense, that he wasn't even worthy to strap a sandal. Even worse would be the guy that has to wash the feet before you put the sandal on.

And you're supposed to be reminded, too, of the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her own hair. But here's Jesus washing feet, and there's a couple points of application I want to bring out. The first one is that this is not just about foot washing. So if you go over to the Grace Brethren Church here in town, Grace Brethren Church has three ordinances.

They have baptism, which they do kind of a weird baptism anyway. They do three dunks, one for the Father, one for the Son, one for the Holy Spirit, which I think is unnecessary. They have communion, which we're about to partake in, and they also have a sacrament they call foot washing. and I've never been there for one I don't know how often they do it I don't know if the people there are even doing it but that's one of their distinctions you also have in 1st Timothy when Paul is talking to Timothy about whether to take care of widows or not he actually references if a woman has washed the feet of the saints so there is a sense that at that time at least that would have been something that would have been expected of each other to help one another out.

And I don't think that that's to be taken completely spiritually or allegorically in 1 Timothy. But here, I do think that Jesus has a spiritual lesson for us. Because in verse 11, in verse 10, Jesus says, the one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And so if you're thinking of long carnal terms right now, someone took a bath, he's clean, but the only thing left is his feet are still dirty because even getting out of the bath and walking across the room, his feet are dirty.

It's nice not having a mic sometimes. I can do more walking around. But he says, and you are clean, but not every one of you. and so unless you think that at this point in time Jesus using his divine power of omniscience has realized that Judas didn't take a bath that day you have to conclude that Jesus is now speaking spiritually and has been then the whole time that he's giving them what he does non-stop throughout the book of John a physical example of a spiritual lesson he's trying to teach them so God in his infinite wisdom who is also incomprehensible condescends to give us examples so that we might understand things that we can't understand otherwise by showing us things in terms we can't understand.

This is why God says things like by the power of His right hand. Because God doesn't have a right hand. But if you go through Scripture, He's got a whole bunch of body parts in the Scripture. And unless you take them all literally, or if you take them all literally, you're going to have a problem. But if you understand that God condescends and uses anthropomorphic language, he uses language in the form of humanity to explain things so we understand So his right hand is just significant of his power of his ability to do whatever he wants But here Jesus says Not every one of you is clean for he knew who was to betray him.

And that was why he said, Not all of you are clean. And so what Jesus is telling Peter, I think, is that... But getting back to the point, let me back up one step. So Peter is saying, You shouldn't wash my feet. I should serve you, right? I think Peter's actually trying to be a really good guy here.

His problem is he argued with the Lord a little too much. If the Lord says that we're going to do it this way, you don't have a better idea. You never will have a better idea than the Lord. If I say, hey, let's do it this way, boom. You may have a better idea than me. That's great.

Jason Roberts has an idea. You may have a better one. When the Lord says we're going to do it. When the Lord says I'm going to go and be crucified. And Peter says, no, forbid it. No, no, no.

Peter, let the Lord's plan unfold the way he wants. But so Peter says you shouldn't wash my feet. But then when Jesus says he's going to wash his feet, then Peter's like, no, wash my whole body then if you're going to do it. He just goes from one extreme to the other. Can anybody relate to that? Any married couples know anybody that does that?

I don't know. So anyway, the point here is this, is that Jesus Christ says, I've already washed you, but your feet are dirty. And I think the spiritual lesson that we're supposed to learn is that when Jesus Christ washes a sinner clean, when you're sprinkled by the blood of Christ, when because of your baptism symbolically representing that you've been washed clean so that you can appeal to God for a clean conscience by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that you're cleansed in the eyes of God, but because you still walk around in this sin-cursed world, your feet get dirty.

You still pick up filth on you. In fact, your cleanliness attracts it at times. And so you need to understand that you need to have your feet continually washed. And I think that when Jesus says, I've cleaned you, he's saying he's forgiven your sin and when he says that you need to continually have this foot washing I think one of the aspects of that is that you are to be reminded of the sin that is still there you're to be humbled by the fact that you could like literally maybe not in some of our clean houses but you could step out of the bathtub and you're going to be instantly dirty as soon as you touch the dirty ground and I think that's what God wants to remind us of that we may gain humility.

And because of this, when he says in verse 15 or 14, if I have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. I think this is a reference and I'm not alone in this, so if you doubt me, I'm not alone. But I think this is a reference to the fact that among this church, among the priesthood of all believers, that we are to admonish one another.

We're to pluck the log out of our eyes in areas of life and then we are to go to our brother and seeing clearly and to help our brothers and sisters with sin. Because we can see their dirty feet. If somebody comes up to you, a Christian, and wants to address something with you, a sin issue, even if it's just something they think they're seeing, we should do this with humility. and I've said this before, we want to welcome that.

We don want to get defensive right away We want to welcome that somebody would come to us and say hey brother or sister I saw something and just to use the analogy your feet look dirty Can I point it out to you so we can wash them? So the spiritual application is, you know, I saw you say this thing or I heard you say this thing. I saw something you posted online.

I saw the way you spoke to your wife or to your children. Children, I saw the way you spoke to your parents. I noticed this or that. We love one another, and so we actually care if one of our brothers or sisters is falling into sin. So we want to help them wash their feet. Another thing to note is that Judas was among the group of people whose feet got washed by our Lord Jesus.

And so you would ask yourself, well if Judas was washed by Jesus how come he doesn't go to heaven? Well Jesus didn't say to Judas I've washed you already you just need your feet cleansed. That's not what he said to Judas. He said that to Peter. So Judas could be among the people who are in the religious group who's actually we'll say in the right group.

They're following Christ. And Judas can actually get the service of Christ performed upon him his feet being washed. He can actually be a part of a religious group that's doing the right things. He can actually have his outward sins admonished. He may even get his feet clean at the end of it. But his heart was still dirty.

He was still unclean from the inside out. So you can participate in God's holy worship. You can sit through church service, after church service, after church service. If you come to this church, you get to actually have the body and blood of Christ every week too. You can go to men's groups. You can go to ladies groups.

You can do the Marco Polo thing. You can read the Bible every day. You can pray on your knees. You can buy new jeans every week because your knees are worn out from all of your hard work on your knees praying. and if you are not clean from the inside out by Jesus Christ shed blood on that cross and you believing that he was raised for your justification it's all for nothing and you'll go to heaven the cleanest outward sinner there was you'll go to meet God the cleanest outward sinner there ever was and you'll be cast into outer darkness and so I want you to consider whether you've been washed by Christ from the inside out, I want you to consider whether you are washing the feet of others.

And I'm not going to institute a third ordinance here. I'm talking about being a part of your brothers' and sisters' lives in such a way where you're actually provoking one another to good works. Where you're actually caring about people enough that you care less of what they'll think of you if they don't like what you say and more about how you may be able to help them.

And do it with the humility that says you could be wrong, you could have misperceived something, you could have misunderstood, and you could still love a person even if they don't immediately agree with you as well. But Judas was among that group of people whom Jesus served, and we should serve one another in similar fashions because he loved his own to the end and we should love those that he loves. And he loves his church.

He loves his bride. And so we will serve his bride together.