Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through John 13:1-17, emphasizing Jesus' act of washing the disciples' feet as a model of humility and service. He highlights that true abiding in Christ leads to a life of humility, where believers are called to serve others selflessly, just as Jesus did. The sermon challenges listeners to reflect on their own willingness to submit to Christ and serve those around them, illustrating that blessings come from not just knowing Christ's teachings but actively living them out.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Wonderful job, young people. If you have a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, first grade and under, that's available for you. Be heading out this way. And thank you,
young people, for leading today and being a part of our service. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in John chapter 13. John 13, we are going to start a series of looking through one of the final teachings of Jesus with his disciples, the final recorded teaching that we have.
John 13 is the abide in me passage, the remaining in Christ. And this was taken in the upper room context.
As I was in Israel and we were planning out our trip, and one of the things that we were able to do was just sort of plan where to go and different places to go.
And I did not get to go to the upper room last time I was there. And so I wanted to go to the upper room.
I'm going to show you a couple of pictures. But the upper room that we went to was not the upper room that Jesus taught in. If you understand that, this was a place that was built in the 1800s.
It's the believed to be place where Jesus would have had this teaching. And I always had my observation of the upper room as a very small, very small room.
But after we got to looking at it and talking through it, this is just a picture of me, just as room of the last supper.
But as you get to thinking about it, this is the same place where the disciples would have met with the 140 in the upper room during the day of Pentecost.
So it would have been a larger room. And so you can see this is from one of the side corners. In between these two pillars would have been a long table. This is from the back corner looking through that. It would not have probably had these massive arches.
But this was a recreation in the 1800s by the Byzantine era that would have built this.
And I think I wrote one more picture from the other side that you can sort of get a glimpse of what it would have looked like, where they would have been at. You can imagine there would have been a table in the middle here.
And around all the outside would have been all the preparations for the Last Supper,
the Passover meal, to sort of give you an image of where they were at. And as Jesus comes into this passage, as he comes into this moment, they've prepared this room.
Jesus Washing Disciples' Feet
Peter would have been the one that would have secured the room, the oldest of the disciples. And as they get to this portion, you begin to sort of get this image of where we're at in this passage. And so John chapter 13,
we're going to read the first 17 verses and then look through this. And so if you have your place there, the words will be on the screen as well. But we'll stand out of reading God's word and we'll read through these 17 verses. The Bible says,
Now when it was time for this supper, the devil had already put in the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot's son, to betray him. Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God, and that he was going back to God. So he got up from the supper, laid aside his outer clothing,
took a towel, tied it around himself. Next, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet and dry them with the towel tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who asked him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? And Jesus answered,
What I'm doing, you don't realize now, but afterwards you will understand. And Peter replied, You will never wash my feet. Jesus said, If I don't wash you, you will have no part with me.
And Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.
One who has bathed, Jesus told him, does not need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean, and you are clean, but not all of you. For he knew who would have betrayed him. And this is when he said, Not all of you are clean.
And when Jesus had washed their feet, he put on his outer clothing. He reclined again and said to them, Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you are speaking rightly, since it is what I am. So if I,
your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you all show to wash one another's feet.
For I have given you an example that you should not just do as I have done for you. Truly I tell you, a servant is not greater than his master, and a messenger is not greater than one who has sent him.
For if you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
Father, we thank you for your reading of your word. Thank you for this passage that Jesus has laid out for us of how we can serve and live our life in humility.
Opening Illustration of Humility
I pray that you would go before me as we preach your word today. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
I came across a story this week that I thought was fitting for the opening sermon illustration, and it goes like this.
A couple of years ago, during a very large pastor's conference, and I've had a part of being of many different pastor's conferences, the largest I've been at was up in Kentucky with over 100,000 pastors there. And this specific group was scheduled with different preachers each night.
And between one of the sessions, a young man had went out into the lobby, and where I was at up in the Yum Center up in Louisville at this specific conference, this was there, and you had men that were there.
And as good pastors go, we have nice dress shoes on, and there was a place where the man was there shining shoes.
And the young pastor that was at this specific conference that he walked by, and there was a long line of men, and he got in the line, and he began to see that there was a man working. He didn't say a word.
He never really lifted his head. He never really did anything. He just had a towel over his shoulder. He's buffing the guy's shoes. He's getting the cream out.
He's doing everything he's supposed to do. And he saw the little tip jar there. And later that evening, when the session came to be,
the lights dimmed, and the conference director stepped out and said, before we open the word tonight, I want you to introduce the man that's going to be preaching today. And the light shined over to the man, and the man that was out in the lobby shining shoes walked onto the platform.
He was the keynote speaker for that night, and he was serving and helping other people. And afterwards, one of the men went and asked him and said, I recognize that you were out there, and you were shining shoes, and you really didn't say much about that. This is his response.
I didn't come here to be seen. I came here to serve.
And I think often this is the spirit of what Jesus is saying here. Jesus, he didn't need to prove that he had authority.
He didn't need to prove that he was the Son of God. He didn't need to prove that he could do miracles. We had seen that.
We have seen that in Scripture. We know these things. But what Jesus was coming to prove is that he can take the lowest place in the room and do the job that no one else wanted to do.
Abiding in Christ's Example
And in doing so, he showed us this truth that when we abide in Christ, it produces humility, and it produces a life of an example for other people.
As we live our life, oftentimes we fail to do the things that God has called us to do. In this specific example, this would have fallen on Peter as the one that would have reserved the room. He was the caretaker of the room, and this would have been his responsibility.
And yet Jesus was the one that began to say, I'm going to give us this example that we need to follow by.
And if we're walking with Jesus, if we believe in Jesus, if we believe he's the Son of God, we've got to begin to ask ourselves, are we walking and abiding the way he wants us to walk and live our life? This whole passage, this whole couple of chapters from John 13 through 17,
is Jesus' final teaching to his disciples. It was an intimate gathering with just him and the 12, and they begin to speak,
and he begins to really begin to hammer home some things that he had been teaching and preaching his other three years of ministry. And so as we begin to walk through this, I want to look at the first thing. This is our example, which is Jesus.
Verses 1 through 5, before Jesus begins to teach, before he begins to give a command, and he begins to give a picture of what our life should be like.
As we were walking through Israel, and again, the second time, this was the second time I went, I had a group that was there, 31 of us that were there, and I had some pastors that were there that are now some of my best friends. I talk to them almost every day now.
But I was telling them, as we're walking through the garden, as we're walking through the old city, I said, one of the things that you'll notice is that everything that Jesus taught, there was a word picture or an illustration around.
And so as we're walking to the garden of Gethsemane, I stopped a couple of the guys, and I said, I want you to look over there, and you could just, as far as the eye could see, was just tombs after tombs after tombs, all white sepulchers.
And I said, I want you to imagine, Jesus is teaching his disciples, and he says to the Pharisees, he says, you're whitewashed tombs, you look good on the outside, but you're full of dead men's bones.
And he would have pointed to that graveyard, and he would have said, this is what you look like.
So as Jesus is teaching, as Jesus is going through everything that he's going through, he gives these word pictures for us to be able to connect our mind's eye into what he's saying.
And this is what Jesus does in verses one through three. He takes the position he has, and he lays it aside.
He says, I'm going to know where I came from, I'm going to know who I am, and yet I'm going to go further, I'm going to kneel down, I'm going to take off my outer cloak. One of the things that we tell our kids often is that you are a safer it.
It doesn't mean a lot, but what it means is that you have an example, you have a heritage, that you can do some things, that you will do some things. And as we look to our example of Jesus, we begin to see that he was humble in his life.
The next blank is the position that he laid aside. You see, his humility was the strength that he had. Oftentimes, we don't like to take the humbling position.
We don't like to be put in a humbling position. And Jesus shows us that his humility is his strength because he had control over his humility.
You see, when we begin to see what Jesus is, and we begin to see who he is, and how he knelt down, and how he began to wash these disciples' feet, we begin to see that Jesus was more secure in his identity, and that made him freer to serve other people.
When you know who you are, when you know who God has designed you to be, when you understand the whole mentality of who God has created you to be, you begin to live more and more free in that.
One of the things that I tell young people often is, you don't have to have your life figured out when you're in kindergarten.
When you enter kindergarten, they make you fill out a personal evaluation of what you want to be when you grow up, and it's almost like they begin to curtail everything you do from like the earliest you can become.
Your whole life picture has been laid out. You don't have to know all those things. You just have to live day by day, step by step in who Jesus has declared you to be. But once you understand that,
once you know who God has called you to be, now you can begin to live free and in that identity. And this is what Jesus did.
He knew he was the son of God. He knew who he came for, and now he has the ability to serve and serve in a way that the disciples were appalled in this. They were like, hold on, this is Jesus. He's the Messiah.
He's the one that's bowing down. He's the one that is washing my feet. This is reserved for the lowest of low servants who really couldn't afford a job anywhere else.
If you understand the culture, if you understand the idea of a young first century Jewish person, there were no automobiles,
right? Automobiles were invented by, mass produced by Henry Ford in the 1900s. This was 1900 years before this.
Okay, so they had horse and buggies, but really you couldn't afford that. So you walked everywhere. And you would walk on dusty, dirty roads, and you would come into a house, and when you would come in to eat, we wash our hands, right?
They didn't really wash their hands. That wasn't something on their mind. And what they would do, because they would sit and they would recline at a small table, is they would begin to wash their feet. The servant would kneel down.
The servant would grab a basin, and he would wash these people's feet as they come in. And the owner of the home would then take care of that servant and would pay him. And often you would throw a tip in there to thank you for what you've done.
And Jesus comes in, and he begins to see that we're all sitting at this table. We're about to have this massive Passover feast. This is the holiest of holy days.
And Jesus is sitting there, and he's waiting, and it says here that he is sitting at the table, he is waiting for everything, and yet no one had washed anyone's feet. No disciple wanted to lower themselves to this standard. And Jesus, in his humility,
said, I'm going to take off my outer cloak, and I'm going to come, and I'm going to serve each and every one of you. Everyone in this room knew this wasn't the place for Jesus. Everyone in this room began thinking,
why is Jesus my Lord and Savior, the one that I have served for three and a half years now, why is he the one doing this?
Yet no one stood up, and no one took the bowl from him, no one took the towel from him, and no one said, Jesus, let me do that for you.
Serving Like Christ
And the question that I want to ask us today as we begin to really immerse ourselves into this first couple of verses is, what would change in your life if you begin serving in a way that Christ served his disciples?
If you begin to say, well, I don't have to be top place, I don't have to be number one in my scene, I'm going to serve other people, I'm going to love other people the way that Jesus loved
other people and gave himself for it in a way that he laid down his position, and he said, I'm going to serve other people.
Number two, in verses four through five, we look at the posture that he took, the posture that Jesus took. I want you to look at, again, if you've been around me at any moment in time, I am not a grammar person.
I don't like grammar. When I went to high school, we didn't teach grammar in high school. We taught literature.
And then I went to college, and I was like, you know what, this is going to be great. They're going to teach literature. I got to college, and they gave me a grammar test.
I had to take a grammar test the first day of college. I was so bad, to get this church, I was so bad at grammar that they took me, and they said, you can't take college grammar. You're going to have to take high school grammar
in college, and not get a credit for it, but I had to pay for it. They called it bonehead English, basic English.
We called it bonehead English. And so I get there, and I'm like, teacher, I don't know what you're talking about. A verb? A noun?
An adjective? I don't know these things. Okay? I've learned a little bit now. I've married an English major, so she helps me on a lot of things.
And so as you begin to study through some verses, you can begin to see the action of the verbs that take place.
And this is what I want you to pay attention to. It says that there are a couple of, about five different verbs that I want you to look at. And look at it like here in verse four. It says, he got up, he rose, he laid aside his outer garment,
he took his towel, he poured the water, and he began to wash. Every one of these verbs is a downward progression of humility and submissiveness.
He took off his clothes, he began to pour the water, he took the towel that would have been reserved for the lowest of low servants, he put it on his shoulder, and he got down on his knees, and he began to wash
the servants' feet, the disciples' feet that were supposed to be his disciples that were supposed to be serving him, and he is now serving them.
Jesus is modeling for us that there is no one in this room and no one in this world that is above serving. He is telling us that we must be serving everyone.
No one is below serving as well, and we must be in the room, and we must be serving other people and loving other people, and this is what I really want us to understand. He got to John, the disciple that he loved, and he said, John, I'm going to wash your feet.
John didn't question it. The only person that questioned Jesus washing his feet was Peter, and Peter said, Jesus, you're not washing my feet. How dare you think that you can wash my feet? And Jesus looked at him and said,
if I don't wash your feet, you'll have no part with me in the kingdom. If you're not going to be cleansed in this way and allow me to serve you, because Jesus is thinking ahead and saying, listen, I'm about to go to the cross. I'm about to die for your sins.
I'm about to hang my life on a tree so that you can have eternal life, and if you won't allow me to serve you now, how are you going to allow me to serve you in that area?
And as Jesus is doing this, and now Peter gives this wonderful statement, and we're going to look at it in a minute, so I'm not going to talk about it now,
but then the Bible says that he even went to the one that was going to betray him.
Now this passage, I have studied it for many years of my life, and this is the first time I get to preach it and the first time I've ever been able to preach through this, but he says he
gets to Judas. The one that's going to betray him, the one that's going to give him over for 30 pieces of silver. In today's day and age, silver runs about $100 an ounce. You're looking at about $3,000. If my math is right, about $3,000 is what he gave Jesus over to be crucified.
And he goes to Judas, cloak off, down on one knee, basin there, and he looks up at him and says, Judas, I'm going to wash your feet.
Judas knows, I've already betrayed you. I've already taken 30 pieces of silver. I'm leaving this room. The Bible says that it was already in Judas' heart that he was going to betray him. The devil already knew it, and he pulls up Judas' feet.
He begins to wash his feet. He takes the towel off. He cleans his feet.
He stands up, and he goes over, and he sits down, and he begins this teaching moment.
And you can imagine, as Jesus takes this, the room would have went quiet. Everyone in this room would have known that this was not what Jesus was supposed to do, but Judas in his own mind would have known, I've already rejected you. Why are you doing this? But he doesn't object.
He doesn't stop. He doesn't say, Jesus, no, I don't want you to wash my feet like Peter did. He allows him to do it. This is how I want you to imagine it. You're at a car wash. You're at a fundraiser. You're doing something.
You're helping someone, and you're a person that you know that trash talks you in the community, that you know spreads rumors and lies about you, comes through this car wash that you're trying to raise money for, and you see them, and you're like,
I don't know if I'm going to wash this person's car.
Kids, I think it's your turn. But you're the only one there, and you go up, and you wash their car, knowing that when you finish watching their car, they're going to leave, and they're going to put something about you on social media that isn't
true, they're going to put something about you on social media that begins to deteriorate who you are,
and yet you are willing to serve them and wash their car. This is the level of grace that's in this room.
This is the level of grace that's in the room where Jesus is at is he knows that he is going to be betrayed. He knows that each and every one of these disciples are going to run away from him. We know that there are ones that run away. Peter denies him.
We know Judas betrays him, and yet he lowers himself to wash their feet.
Whose feet is the hardest in your mind right now to wash? Maybe it's a loved one.
Maybe it's a mom or a dad or a brother or a sister or a co-worker or someone who betrayed you or someone that hurt you or someone that said something wrong to you or maybe it was someone that said something 10 years ago that you just can't get out of your mind
that Jesus is telling us this morning I was willing to humble myself and wash their feet and then eventually go to the cross and die for them.
And yet you can't forgive them of something that they said or something that they did to you and now you're living in that guilt and that shame and you can't wash it away because you have been living in that life. Jesus took this posture and he said I'm going to lower myself.
Modeling Humility
I'm going to bring myself down and ultimately he did this he set a pattern for us. Jesus didn't merely just teach humility.
Jesus modeled humility in a way that we can visibly see and we can visibly act on.
He didn't send them and say hey you're going to go and serve and I'm not going to show you how to serve. He stopped what he was doing he knelt down and he modeled in a way that we can see in a tangible way that he served.
There's a lot of things that we can delegate in life.
Hey I'm learning in a little bit of this as my first senior pastor for two and a half years there are things that I have to delegate that I have to allow other people to do even though I
want to do it even though I can probably do it pretty well it just it takes up too much of my time and so I have to delegate some things.
Jesus knew that he couldn't delegate humility. He knew that if I'm going to be humble if I'm going to show them humility I've got to demonstrate it
and he couldn't delegate it away and as we begin to go through our life as we begin to live our life what would someone else that's looking on the outside of our life and looking in would they see humility in our life?
Would they see an example of someone who's following Jesus in a way that says I want to know what they've got. I want to know what they're doing.
Their life is radically different than my life and I want to serve whatever they're doing.
I want to go and be a part of whatever they're doing. I want my family to be like their family. I want to be modeling my life after what they're doing and how would they learn about humility in our life?
Jesus set the pattern for his disciples that would eventually 40 some days from the day from the day we're looking at right now would begin the day of Pentecost where Peter stands on the southern steps and he says
this wonderful Pentecost message that we looked at early last year and when he preached that 3,000 people came to know Jesus. Why did that happen?
Because 45 days before that he sat in a room with Jesus and Jesus said this is how I want you to live your life.
This is the blueprint for the life that I want you to live and I'm going to model it and I'm going to have a pattern that's set for you to be able to look at for the entire rest of your life.
So we see the example that's Jesus but the last portion here is verses 6-17 the biggest part that we're going to look at is our obligation.
He turns from him being the example to now where is our obligation?
The believer the person in the room here today that believes in Jesus and maybe you've never accepted Jesus and today would be the day that you submit your life to Jesus and say I want to serve you with
my whole life I want you to become my Lord and Savior I believe that I've done wrong and I want to live my life for you but Jesus moves from the example to the expectations for each and every one of us that call ourselves believers of Jesus.
Jesus he moves from what he did to what we must do and he now begins to say listen there's some things that are going to happen where we're going to walk through these over the next couple of weeks and we're going to see the different things that we must do
Submission to Christ
but the first thing that he lays out in our obligation is that we must be submissive to Christ there must be a submission in our life to Christ in verses 6-11 you see Peter resists this submission
Peter gets to this point and he says I cannot humble myself and as we looked at this morning in Sunday school pride begins to come into Peter's life
and pride that begins to say that my life is greater than this and you're not going to serve me Jesus and the pride of life begins to well up inside of him and he says Jesus get off of
me you're not going to wash my feet how dare you think that you're going to lower yourself and he uses this statement you shall never wash my feet Peter gets to this point where he cannot submit to the humility of Jesus
and Jesus looks at him and says this you have to receive this or you will never respond to me pride says this pride says I don't need that someone I don't know if you're like me it is hard for me to accept things
the cheek she just gave me the most delicious I told my wife do not eat this cookie she gave me there's some things that's really easy for me to accept like food desserts
it's the best thing ever you give me a dessert but when someone comes and like hey pastor let me do this for you I can handle it myself I don't need any help I got this like I'm a big boy I can do this
I can relate to what Peter is saying here Peter's like
Jesus I don't need you to do that I can wash my own feet come on Jesus what are you doing
this is Peter's attitude and Jesus comes in with grace and says it's not that you have to it's that I need you to respond in a certain way I need you to have this attitude of submission and humility
in your life that I'm going to be able to come in and work with and mold see you can't serve Christ until you submit to Christ
until you submit your will as Jesus as we're going to look at in the garden when he looks at the father and he says not my will be done but your will be done this is what Jesus is trying to model it's not your will Peter
it's my will it's what I desire for you I desire for you to be clean I desire for you to be humble and I desire for you to be submissive
you see this is not necessarily about salvation often times people will look at this and they'll say because Peter was not willing for his feet to be washed there was no salvation this was specifically about the salvation that
produces service and we have to ask ourselves if we are loving Jesus if we are on this journey and we begin to say I want to follow Jesus there is a physical washing that comes in salvation that turns
into a spiritual submission that turns into a spiritual service as we begin to flow through this in verse 8 it says it very clearly and very plainly it says here you will never wash my feet Jesus said to
him if I do not wash you will have no part in me this is the spiritual application that begins to lay out for us and begin to say what are we doing how are we living our life as salvation comes as the glory of God departs into our life and he
redeems us of all of our past and all of our failures and everything that we've done wrong how are we now serving him in return
he gives this wonderful illustration and sometimes I have to find illustrations or think of illustrations I love it when Jesus lays out an illustration for me right he looks at Peter and he says you can't clean yourself before you take a shower
how many of you ever tried to clean yourself before you take a shower like it's pointless you're about to get in the shower why would you clean yourself why would you get the baby wipes out and start trying
to clean yourself up it's like no you're going to get in the shower and you're going to get clean and then when you come out you're completely clean
you don't step out dirty you step out clean and this is what Jesus is saying you step out of the shower and you're clean and you walk and you go through life and as you go through life there
are things that get dirty and now you've got to clean up those little bitty things
and Jesus begins to lay out and say these are things in your life that are now trying to be clean the impurities of life that get on to you that you have to clean I've given this illustration before
and I'll give it again because it just came to my mind when I was a kid we played in the woods all the time my kids do the same thing and we had little bitty little briar little black things that would get all over my clothes
before we could come into the house my mom would stop me at the back door because she'd yell hey dinner's ready and when I heard dinner I went running and so we ran to the house and she'd stop
us and say no you can't come in until you clean up what the world has put on you
these little black little things you got to get those off that's not coming to my house and I'd go to step in and she'd say whoa whoa whoa your shoes are dirty you're not coming here with those dirty shoes so I'd take my shoes off
and then I'd walk in hey wait you got one more thing you missed back there she was examining me she was seeing that the world was putting things on me that I had to take off before I could
come in and eat dinner and Jesus is saying the same thing you're walking this life and you've been clean you've taken the shower of grace but now there's a little bit dirt on you
we've got to clean some of that up we've got to get some of these things right and in order for that to happen you've got to submit to the Savior Jesus
oftentimes if you're like me we resist this we resist the cleaning right mom come on I'm hungry I've been playing outside mom the food smells good I want to go eat do I have to take my shoes off mom come on
this is what the disciples are saying Jesus is saying you're resisting the things you're putting away from things that you don't want to and I'm telling you that you've got to submit and you've got to turn from these things that you're going through in life
what is it that we feel uncomfortable or we are resisting Christ in obedience of his asking us to submit to him
there's a submission of Christ in verses 12-16 we see a life of labor as Jesus continues to walk through this passage it says that Jesus puts his robe back on
but he doesn't take the lesson off he's still teaching in this moment he begins to reassemble himself and he begins to sit down and he says this question if I then your lord and teacher
he makes this statement if you believe that I'm your lord if you believe I'm your teacher this is not an optional statement this is something that is firm and it is something that is tying him to their savior
that they can't deny and all of them say yes lord you're my lord yes you're my savior yes I'm going to follow you yes you're my master I'm going to listen to what you say he then begins to say there are no titles in life that cancel out your
ability to serve others others he looks at Peter and he in those eyes of love and compassion I can just see him looking at Peter and saying Peter you're going to leave my church one day
the world's going to be turned upside down and you don't even understand the amount of persecution you're going to have the amount of victories you're going to have you don't even understand the
Living in Obedience
what I have planned for your life but until you can get to this point and until you can understand what this looks like and how to serve and how to love other people everything else doesn't matter and Jesus begins to lay out this humility as a lifestyle
often times humility we think is an event well today I'm going to let so and so go in front of me at the dinner line because I'm going to humble myself
in this one area no Jesus says humility is a lifestyle of events as I was talking with some guys this past two weeks ago in Israel I made the statement I said in college I would often say I'm humble and I'm proud of it
right you can be humble and you can be so prideful in your humility yes I am going to serve you I'm going to let you go in front of me look at how humble I am everyone look at
me we can do this in life we can be so humble that we are living in our humility as a prideful way of life
and the way that Jesus is saying here is this humility that we have to live in this life that he is modeling for us is a life that is so humble!
He can't go a step in life without putting others before him it's not a moment it's not an event that happens it is a lifestyle that he is living
we have to ask ourselves how are we serving and how are we living our life in a way that is putting others in front of us
last thing we'll look at today is the blessings of serving right we've looked at a couple of different things but Jesus gets this point in verse 17 that if I were to say one verse rocked me this week
or as I was studying through this was verse 17 he looks at his disciples and he says if you know these things blessed are you if you do them again I want to preface what I said earlier I'm not a grammar person I don't understand a lot of grammar
but if you look at the context of this sentence the blessings are not tied to the information look at what he says if you know these things
blessed are you to do them he doesn't say if you know these things you'll be blessed it is one thing to have a head knowledge I have a lot of knowledge that some crazy knowledge my wife tells me that I've got these random obscure
that I just have learned and my mind stays with me and she's like why do you know those things I've got the knowledge sometimes it's there sometimes it's off sometimes it's off a day or two whatever but I've
got this knowledge that's here and my mom told me when she was a teenager she had the head knowledge she was poured into going to church and she knew all the catechism she was raised Lutheran she knew all the different words to say she said I knew everything about Jesus and who Jesus was
she said but it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I began to have a heart knowledge of who Jesus was I knew everything about Jesus I knew he came to die for me I knew that he was the son of God I knew
I been there you been to the mechanic I know you been to a mechanic that just knows how to fix everything and you come in and you go now I think this is what's wrong and he goes listen I've been doing this for 85 years my great great grandpa taught me my dad
taught me you don't know what you're talking about and he proceeds to diagnose and try to fix it but he so built up in pride because he knows what's right he's going to do what he thinks he should do and you're like no no I just really think I need an oil change
you don't have to change my rear end you don't have to
change the tires the tires are fine no no you got to get these things done no I really just need an oil change no I'm telling you you you need!
what happens with them and we feel like you're robbing me blind every time I come in I'm dropping a thousand dollars on my vehicle like you can just feel like this is what's going on but Jesus begins to lay out and he says when you begin to just simply obey and do
you live in a life that is filled with joy blessed are those that do them the happiest!
in my life are those that are so obedient to Christ that are just living their life in a way that is so full of the joy of the Lord this past week I had not even planned on talking we had a guy that was 89 years old go to Israel with us 89
he gets we're sitting there at the airport before we leave and this older man he comes up with his sister his name is Bruce and Bruce comes up and he's talking he's like every person he stops he's talking
about Jesus he's handing him a gospel track and I'm pretty sure that guy is going to Israel with me
I I never thought at 89 years old I would have so much joy in going to the holy lands
I replied back and said Bruce but but I said Bruce but your testimony has encouraged me
but as he went through here he's out walking me most of the time right I'm 37 years old I'm not in the best shape of my life but man he's! outpacing me we're walking up hills he's got so much energy but there was one day where
Butch he couldn't go he had to stay at the hotel he was afraid that he was going to get a wheelchair because his foot was hurting so bad I get back to the hotel I go to him I said I said I'm just blessed to be here
I mean he can't even walk his foot is hurt he he he is having to have people help him get around and in overflow of what he knows and how he serves the Lord all he can think about is the joy that he has of being where he's at
when we begin to live our life in this way God begins to give us joy that we never saw fit not because we know who he is not because we have this abundant knowledge of who God is and
we can say that we've been in church for 45 years and our grandparents and all this no it's because we are blessed if we do them
as a guy who used to work out a lot and I've got a son who likes to think he can wrestle me and thinks he's stronger at times and so the other day we had a little wrestling match
in the living room and so he ran at me and hit a brick wall and fell down and so I picked him up and was like boom
falls on the ground I was like how did you do that dad you're 37 years old you're not in the best shape you've got a little stomach on you how could you pick me up and throw me
when we begin to work out our muscles when we use them we begin to have this strength that we build physically and God tells us when we work out our spiritual muscle of humility
and serving other people we begin to grow in that as well you begin to grow in the things that you practice
I'm here to ask us this morning church what are you practicing what are you growing in are you growing in your faith our Sunday school has been looking at spiritual warfare
one of the things that continues to come up is how do you fight against the devil how do you fight against the spiritual things of this world as you grow stronger and more firm in the word of God and you grow stronger in your
devotion to who he is and if we are going to be a blessed people we are going to be a people that do the things that Christ tells us to do as we look over the next couple of weeks at this passage he's
going to lay out some crazy things for us to do he's going to lay out some crazy things that are going to change our mind on how we live our life but the truth is
God has already shown us how to do it through his example are we going to follow that example as Terry comes I want to close by just a couple of things a couple of closing statements to bring us into our mindset of who Jesus is see Jesus he didn't just wash his feet
oftentimes we'll get to this point where we think well Jesus all he did was wash their feet what Jesus did he was pointing!
going to go to the point that's going to lead me to a tree that's going to lead me to the thing where I'm going to have to submit my life to people that are going to kill me to people that are going to kill me to people that are
Lifestyle of Service
because he had a lifestyle of service he had a lifestyle of submitting and he had a lifestyle that was humble in everything that he had done so that it would lead him to the place where he could sit on the cross and he could say Father
not my will but thine be done forgive those that are here in front of me the ones that nailed me to this tree Lord forgive them
and as we begin to look through what it looks like to abide in Christ what it means to be connected to Jesus
when we begin to abide in Christ we begin to bear fruit that bears other fruit where people can be come to see the glory of who God is the final question I want to ask you and give you one statement is where is Christ calling you to
begin to get down on his knees and he began to wash his disciples feet
and ultimately he was leading others to follow him what are we doing that others are saying I want to follow you as you follow Christ I want to follow you as you follow what Jesus has done in your life I want to model that for my family I want to model that for my community I want something we just talk about
humility would be something that we do and we live in and it's something that when people see us they're like
listen I just spit in your face I just did something to you that the world if that happened to them they would turn around they would clock me upside the face if I done that to them why didn't you do that
because I'm blessed if I serve the Lord I'm blessed if I can live in this humility and Christ has experienced more than we would ever experience in our life and our life of rejection
and yet if he can do that I can live in the same way how is it that we're living and are we abiding in Christ that way Father we love you we thank you! you've! done for us
Lord you're so good to us the grace that you've given us as we've looked at this first 17 verses oh Lord there's so much grace in this passage there's so much mercy in this passage where you continue to show mercy upon mercy to your disciples
to those that would eventually be your disciples as we look at as you pray for us even in the future in the garden Lord help us to live our life humble
help us to live our life for you and help us to serve you with everything we've got in your name we pray amen thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Clever Grove please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week
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