Sermon Cloud

July 13, 2008

John 13:1-38 “The Serving God”

Jesus Serves

              Peter (Simon) feels like it is wrong for God in the flesh, Jesus, to wash His nasty, dirty feet.  Jesus will have none of this and confronts a very subtle sinful tendency in people now and then.  It seems, at first, that Peter’s refusal is based in humility and that He doesn’t want Jesus to demean Himself in this way.  After all, He is God and the Creator of the universe and the highest King the earth has ever seen!  What king would wash His servant’s feet?  Instead, it should be Peter washing Jesus’ feet.  This does seem right, doesn’t it?

            But it actually hides a very subtle form of pride and grace refusal.  If our pride won’t allow us to let a friend buy a meal, I can promise that our pride won’t allow us to receive grace from God!  John Piper calls it the “Debtor’s Ethic.”  The short version is that we feel like God is so great and has done so much for us that the right thing to do is to repay Him by our acts of service to Him.  The only problem with that is the Bible.  The Son of man didn’t come to be served, but to serve us. I know some of you are squirming right now when you hear this.  It seems just as wrong to you as it did to Peter that Jesus came to serve us.  The rest of the NT shows us that Jesus is still serving His church by creating it (salvation) and growing it and protecting it.  In fact, in service we do to God or on His behalf with people all flows out of the service that He has already done to us.  We don’t give anything that hasn’t been given to us.  Bottom line on how we glorify God:  We serve Him by enjoying and loving Him and receiving His service of us that was boldly declared by His death on the cross and only then it overflows into obedience.  More on this later.

            I’ve found this is a tremendous problem for us.  But if you refuse Jesus’ service of you, then He confronts you like He did Peter.  His service is not entitlement for your best life now.  His service is not affirmation of sinful, destructive tendencies.  His service intends to give you life and like His action with Peter, washes your dirt and stink and wear and tear from life’s hard road!  This is very good news and distinguishes following Jesus from every world religion that is trying to do things for God.

Scene 2:  Many reject Jesus’ service and their hearts are unaffected. (Judas)

            I’ll keep this one short.  Judas saw and heard everything (nearly) that Peter did, but instead of His heart melting and erupting into worship, his heart was hardened.  There aren’t others named in this passage, but the rest of John has shown us this same principle many times.  Lots of people aren’t moved by this serving, saving God.  The majority of the world feels like they are fine on their own so don’t be shocked when people hear this story and are unmoved. 

Scene 3: Just as Jesus serves/loves us, we love people

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

            This is huge!  On the heals of Jesus serving His people and establishing a paradigm where He is the giver and we are the receivers, we now get a picture of how we can rightly love people.  Just as Jesus loves and serves us, we love and serve each other.  Verse 35 shows us that this is the sign that distinguishes us as Christians and apparently will fuel our mission.  Let that sink in.  We are designed to be a people that receive the love of Jesus and then give it away and this loving community becomes our strongest form of evangelism-sharing the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf.

1.  Example- in house.  Let me involve you in some repentance we had last week as a staff together.  I had a meeting with a couple and came back in the room and few events had driven my guys together in prayer and had become aware of our tendency to control things and the idolatry that we Americans are so prone to do- thinking that solid organization and strategies can solve any organizational problem- has become an issue for us.  We spend dozens of hours planning how to best do small groups and thinking through how to missionally engage Lubbock and integrate folks into our church.  While we recognize our sin in thinking we can plan our way into Christian growth and fruitful mission, let me challenge you to consider some personal repentance on this note.  Maybe we are forced to think about organizational changes and strategies because we don’t love lost people very much and we don’t love each other very much and we don’t do either of these well because we don’t love Jesus very much and we don’t love Him much because we are rarely gripped by His love and service for us.  Think of it.  Regardless of organization, would you want to be part of a group that was looking to Jesus to do great things among them and in their city and they made a real big deal about Him and each other because of Him?  I would.  Our prayer is that we’ll receive Jesus’ love and then love each other and impact our city by our community and that we won’t try to cover up our lack of vitality with external solutions.

2.  Example- in Lubbock. 

It would be tempting to end the sermon right here! Jesus serves us.  Some people don’t care that Jesus does.  But He does serve His people and causes us to love each other and advance the mission by His active love and service of His people.  Go fight win break.  But it isn’t always that easy, is it?

Scene 4.  Even sincere followers of Jesus deny Him (i.e. lose sight of Jesus’ love and service of them.)

36 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” 37 Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” 38 Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.

            It’s interesting that the specific individual that was served by Jesus, Peter, is told by Jesus that he will deny Jesus.  And he does.  This is important because as glowing as this first part has been, much of our Christian experience ends up here, doesn’t it?  We are moved and really want to follow Him, but we temporarily go brain dead.  We functionally deny His rule over us by our self-rule and the exaltation of good things into objects of worship and evil things into places of control over our hearts.  Right?  The reality is that temptation and failure are part of this thing.

            Let me encourage you with this.  Even with Peter’s failure, Jesus served Peter while He knew He would later betray Him.  After the meltdown, Jesus was there to comfort and restore Peter.  Again this is paradigmatic for how God still deals with us because of Jesus’ work on the cross our behalf.  If there was no death, He could not offer mercy like this to us.  But because He died and came back to life, He still serves and restores those who do lose sight of His love and service.  We need more real to life heroes who have loved Jesus in the midst of failure and not all of them are from England in the 17^th century!  I want to introduce another hero…Johnny Cash.  Our God is a God who serves and loves us in the midst of failure!