Today on the verdict with Pastor John Monroe. Do you know anything about washing feet? You'll say, What do you mean, John? Washing feet. I mean this: willingly serving others by doing menial tasks that no one else wants to do.
I would suggest that most of us are involved in serving, but I'm not talking just about serving, I'm talking about humbling as we serve. I'm talking about washing feet. Welcome to the verdict, featuring the Bible teaching of Pastor John Monroe. There's an unforgettable moment in Scripture when Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords, kneels down in humility. to wash the dirty feet of his disciples.
Today on the verdict, John shares what this incredible moment can teach us about love, power, and humility.
So, to begin, here's Pastor John Monroe with part two of a message: serving others. In our current study, we've been learning that those who encounter Jesus are never the same again. As the long-awaited Messiah, the very Son of God, Jesus, came to demonstrate the love of God to the whole world. If you trust in Jesus as Saviour, you will not perish, but have everlasting life. He will forgive your sins.
and your life will be transformed. and you can begin to follow him in a life of faith. And by saying Part of that blessing is to serve others. If you're like me, you like people to serve you, but As we saw in Last Dome. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve.
The lesson is an obvious one, isn't it? is also very convicting. Let's listen now as we think of Jesus serving others. John thirteen, then, verse one.
Now, before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that his hour had come, That he should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who are in the world, he loved them. to the end. And 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 hand. and that he had come forth from God And was going back.
to God. Here is our first picture that I want you to paint in your mind, a picture of enduring love. You may think because of unexpected difficulties in your life that God doesn't love you and want to assure you on the authority of the Word of God. that you are greatly loved. Here's our first picture then, our Saviour's enduring love.
Our second picture A picture of humble service, verse four. He rose from supper. Laid aside his garments, and taking a towel, he girded himself, and 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. This is what God is like.
Here is love on its knees. Here is love in action. Here is the heart of God revealed in humble service. Our second picture. Jesus is washing.
Fit. Here's a third picture, a picture of spiritual cleansing. Verses six through ten. And 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 shall 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, not my feet only, 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. Peter here, as we read, didn't want his feet washed. He doesn't understand the spiritual significance of what Jesus is doing. But Jesus makes it very clear to Peter: Peter, if I don't wash your feet, You have no part of me.
Peter then wants not only his feet washed, but his hands. and his head.
Now we must make this contrast as Jesus does here between bathing and Feet washing. In that culture, before you went to visit someone, You would have a bath. And so here you are, you're all cleaned up. Looking good. and uh you start walking to visit your friends.
But as you get there, Your feet. are now dirty. Coming into the host's home. And what you need is not another bath. But your feet certainly require.
Washing. This bathing, having a bath pictures are spiritual cleansing. For our sins. We all need this spiritual bathing.
However, Those of us who have come to Christ, who have had this spiritual bath, as it were. Who have had all of our sins forgiven. What happens?
Well, as we follow the Saviour, What has happened? We get dirty feet. will become contaminated. and defiled. By sin.
What's the answer to the Christian sinning to become re saved again? No. You don't lose your salvation when you are spiritually contaminated. No, what you need is, spiritually speaking, to have your feet washed. Says John, if we confess our sins.
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all Unrighteousness that those who are in the family of God, we need every day of our lives as you pray at the end of the day. One of the things you should always pray for is for God to forgive your sins, to confess the sins that you have committed. Things you've said, attitudes. as defilement comes so easily. Into our lives.
That's our third picture. spiritual cleansing. Enduring love, humble service, third spiritual cleansing, fourth picture is a very dark picture, it's a very sinister picture. but one which is in our text, a picture of satanic betrayal. Do you know this verse too?
During supper, the The devil already having put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him. Verse 11. For he knew the one who was betraying him. For this reason he said, Not all of you are clean. Here in the upper room, the devil invades Judas's heart.
The devil, it is, who puts it into the heart of Judas. Judas, you need to betray Jesus. And Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him. But still he washes his feet. From chapter twelve we know that Jes that Judas was a thief.
Judas was a hypocrite. Here is a man, think of it, close to Jesus physically for over three years. Ostensibly following Jesus Christ, listening to his words, seeing these seven signs and all of the other signs. Greatly privileged. close to Jesus physically but far from him spiritually.
His heart is focused on what money. Greed. Power. and ambition. Jesus comes to serve others, Judas is there to serve himself.
And he's destined. for darkness. Oh, Judas receives the outward washing, but he never experiences the inner cleansing of the heart. They were not all clean. He ate with the Lord.
But his heel was against the Lord. Verse 18. 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. One of the inner circles One of the people there at the table. Enjoying this meal together.
One of them, Judas, is the man who takes up his heel to try and crush Christ. Verse thirty, John thirteen thirty. And so, after receiving the morsel, he, Judas, went out immediately, and it was. Nights. Yes, it was.
It certainly was night for Judas. This is the hour of darkness. This is the hour of the fiercest satanic attack imaginable The hour. when all of the forces of hell are going to be arrayed against God's wonderful Son. And Judas turns from Jesus.
He turns from the light of the world and goes out into the night. He is in the grip of darkness, he is in the grip of Satan himself. Oh, he will receive his thirty pieces of silver, which was so important to him. Betrays an innocent blood for only 30 pieces of silver. He gets his 30 pieces of silver.
But he hangs. himself. Jesus had said, What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world? and lose his own soul. Judas is the classic example of an individual who gained the whole world, who get got what he wanted.
You'll get your thirty pieces of silver, Judas. Are you satisfied now? No. In so doing, he loses his soul. He is in eternal darkness tonight.
The fourth picture, the very dark picture. of satanic betrayal.
Now the fifth picture. is probably the most difficult one for us. Because it's one that you must personally paint. yourself. Let me go over the four pictures that we already have and put them together.
into this final picture. Your personal picture that you're painting. If you're like me, you're a terrible artist, but whether you're good or not, Paint this in your mind. First, enduring love. Where is that in your life?
Are you a person? of love. First, have you responded to Christ's love, this love which endures to the end? As I said at the beginning of this message, all of us want to love and to be loved, but you will never love others with God's love until first. You receive his love.
John, the disciple here, makes that clear in his first letter. We love because he first loved us. Before you can love others with this kind of love, you must first receive it supernaturally. You may naturally be a nice, kind, loving person, but we're talking about a supernatural love, a love which comes as you receive God's love. And if we have received this love, As many of us here The majority of us here would claim that we have.
We would say we have received this love. Christ commands us now to do as he has done and to love others. Look at verse thirty-four. John 13:34, a new commandment I give to you, says Jesus, that you love one another even as I have loved you. There is the standard of the love.
It's not just that you love other people. It is that you love others as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. The overwhelming characteristic then of followers of Jesus is not what we do. It's not our ministries, it's not the size of our buildings, it's not our political power, it's not even our doctrinal accuracy, although we should be doctrinally accurate.
The overwhelming characteristic of a follower of Jesus is love. for others. If you miss that, We miss everything.
So John says in 1 John 4, 11, Beloved, If God so loved Uh Has God so loved you? Of course he has. He loves you to the end. He loved you so much that he sent his Son to die on the cross for you. What more could he do?
He's done everything. He loves us with an everlasting love. If God so loved us, we also ought. To do what? To love.
One another. To love one another, do you? Husbands? Do you love your wife as Christ? Love the church?
You sensitive to your wife's needs? Or are you just focused on self? Men, do you lovingly? Serve your wife? Do you, as it were, wash her feet.
Is it was taken a bit too far? Is it? Isn't that just what we've been learning? Children? Do you love your parents?
Parents, you love your children? Do you love your brothers and sisters here at church? Do you know anything about putting their needs before your own? Do you love the lost? Do you display the love of Jesus Christ to unbelievers?
Christ commands us to love our enemies. Yes, that irritating person at work. Yes, that obnoxious neighbor. Love. as Jesus loves.
Is that in your picture? Be like Jesus. Wash. Feet. The other part of this final picture that I trust we're painting is humble service, humble.
Service, an ardent music lover, once ran into the great Johannes Brahms, and upon recognizing the great composer, the man asked, Master, would you please write for me a small portion of one of your masterpieces and sign it so I could have a memory of this wonderful, fortunate encounter? Brahms took the pencil and paper and scribbled the initial bars of the Blue Danube by Johann Strauss. and signed, unfortunately not by me. Johannes Brahms. I like that.
Here's a great man. who knows something about Humility. Are you humble? Look at verse 14. If our Lord humbly stooped to wash their feet, how much more should we as followers wash one another's feet?
If I then Here is the irrefutable argument. You can't get out of this one. If I then, the Lord and the teacher, wash your feet, You also ought to wash one another's feet. Isn't that right? If the Lord of glory takes the form of a slave, surely we must humbly and sacrificially serve one another without exception.
Now the Lord wasn't instituting an ordinance of foot washing.
so that we in our culture could have a kind of service where we wash our feet before we come to church and then go through a formality of somebody washing our feet. I'm not saying that's wrong, but it's not an ordinance of the church. No, it's much more difficult than that. Feet washing. in that culture is a practical example of meeting the practical and menial needs of others.
That's it.
So in your picture Are you able to paint anything? of humble service. People come to this church, like many other churches, and many people say, I don't know if you are meeting my needs. Imagine if all of us came and said, no one is meeting my needs. The question then would be, who's going to meet the needs?
If I say you're not meeting my needs, and you say to me, Pastor, you're not meeting my needs. I mean, who's going to do the meet the need meeting? When I was a wee boy in Scotland, I learned, I'm sure some of you did. The secret of joy, J O Y. What was it?
Jesus first. Yourself last. and others in between. good theology for children, but also for older folks. as well.
Jesus first, of course. I am to seek his righteousness. Myself last. Others in between. J.
Uh Why? Very good. serving others. Proud people only serve for what they can get out of it. They serve to be seen, they serve to project themselves, they deserve to be applauded.
They serve so that people will have a good opinion of them. They serve to feed their own insecurities. They serve even so that people will say, What a humble person that is. Look how he or she serves. But they stop serving.
when they don't get out of the service what they think they should get out of it. Have you noticed that? Easy to know it is in others, isn't it? a little more difficult to notice it in ourselves. But followers of Jesus are to serve with humility, with selflessness, with endurance, with love.
Listen to Paul in Philippians two. I read from verse five, but listen to what he says in verses three and four. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit. But with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important Than yourself. Yourself?
Last. Put yourself last in line, Paul is saying. Don't merely look out for your own personal interests. Most of us are pretty good at that. But look out for the interests of others.
others. That's it.
Humble.
Now, getting involved in the lives of people like this can be very messy and can be very difficult, can't it? That's the nature of feet washing. But this is what it means to follow in the steps of our Master. We are to follow our Master's example, we are to be like Jesus, we are to wash feet. Martin Tours was a Roman soldier.
and a Christian one cold winter day as he was entering a city A beggar stopped him. And asked him for money. Martin said, I've got no money. but noticed that the beggar was blue and shivering with cold. Martin gave him what he had.
He took off his Roman soldier's cloak, worn and frayed although it was. cut it in two and gave it half to the beggar. That night, Martin Tours had a dream. In it, he saw the heavenly places. And all of the angels and Jesus in the midst of them, and Jesus was wearing half, of a Roman soldier's cloak.
One of the angels said to Jesus, Master, why are you wearing that battered old cloak? Who gave it to you? Jesus answered softly, My servant, Martin, Gave it. To me. Isn't that the teaching of Jesus in Matthew chapter 25?
Inasmuch as you do it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you do it. and to Me. Christ. When we serve others We're serving Christ. Imagine if Jesus walked into church.
and said, I've got something I want someone to do, we'd all be there, wouldn't we? How can we serve you, Lord? But the Lord is here. When we are serving others We are serving Christ. the homeless, the poor.
the orphan, the prisoner, the widow. The lonely, the bereaved. Those with dirty feet, the bruised and the broken, the rejected by others. We're to be like Jesus. We're to wash feet.
In your picture is is there spiritual cleansing? Have you really received a spiritual cleansing? Are you saved by the grace of God? Are you truly cleansed in the blood of the Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ? Christian friend, if you say you are.
Have you compromised with sin this week? Is there defilement in your life in this picture? As well as having enduring love, as well as having humble service, I trust there is spiritual cleansing. The last part. I trust none of you have.
and that is satanic betrayal. But I need to mention it because Judas is a reminder that it's possible to appear to be a child of God, to outwardly go through the motions, but still never to be spiritually cleansed. John Bunyant, who wrote that brilliant Pilgrim's Progress, spoke of a road to hell at the very gates of heaven. Judas is like that. He turns from Jesus.
He refuses the light. He chooses the darkness and ends in hell where no light will ever shine. You say, why do you mention this, John? Because it's possible. There are some.
who can sing the hymns, who come to church, who may even be involved in ministry, who may be even to some extent enjoy the company of Christians, but still not be a true follower of Jesus. You see, all who profess salvation do not possess salvation. And if the Spirit of God touches your heart, don't turn today from God's truth. Don't turn from the light. Don't turn from the love of Christ.
Encounter Christ and trust him. As your personal Savior and Lord, with all of your heart. Because the Christian life begins not by trying to imitate Jesus. You will, by your own strength, never imitate Jesus. But by first having a personal encounter with Jesus when you receive Him into your heart and your life as your Savior and your Lord, the one who died for you, the One who rose again, and this Christ, this living Christ.
in the uniqueness of the Christian faith will Indwellia. His power then becomes our power. His humility becomes our humility. His love becomes our love. His wisdom becomes our wisdom.
Because Jesus says in verse seventeen, That if you know these things, You are blessed. If what? If you do them. I think it's a good idea. The blessing comes not just from hearing the story.
Not just from saying, well, that was a pretty good message, or it was a pretty lousy message. It doesn't come from that. The blessing comes to you and to me when we do it.
So here is the challenge. for you and for me this week. serve others. wash feet, not to be seen, not to tell others about it. Not so that people would say what a humble person this is.
But out of your love for Christ. And out of your love for others. That all of us afresh would encounter Jesus today. And go in the spirit of Jesus. and serve others.
And be like Jesus. and wash feet. This is the verdict with Pastor John Monroe. Today we're finishing a message on what it means to live like Christ, titled Serving Others. But don't go anywhere just yet, because John will be back in a moment with his closing remarks.
Right now, we'd like to send you a free copy of John's booklet titled Trusting God in Tough Times. It addresses some of life's most pressing questions, like how do we find peace in a world filled with uncertainty? Why should I trust God? And how can my perspective on God make a real difference in my life? The answers to these questions will change your perspective and help you to find peace.
So we'd like to send you this helpful resource today. Just go to our website at theverdict.org and request your free copy of Trusting God in Tough Times. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for John's email newsletter, which he sends out once a month to receive exciting updates and opportunities from the verdict. Here at The Verdict, our work is to share the truth of God's Word and the good news of Jesus Christ with as many listeners as we can. and you can support this gospel work today with a financial gift of any amount.
To give right now, visit theverdict.org. And then, as we close, we invite you to join us in person for Sunday worship at Calvary Church, home of the verdict. We're located at the corner of Highway 51 and Ray Road in South Charlotte. To find directions and details, just visit our website at theverdict.org. And now, here's Pastor John Monroe.
Well, what's your verdict? Each of us must have a personal response. How can we be anything other than moved by the humility of our Lord Jesus? But remember. Being a follower of Jesus is not just trying to imitate Jesus.
By your own strength you will never be able to do so. First, you must receive Jesus Christ into your heart and life as your personal Savior. Then you will begin to follow Jesus in this exciting adventure of faith, which involves serving others. Don't miss the next message, which is on surviving life's crisis. Thanks for joining us today on The Verdict.
I'm Michelle Davies. Today's program with Pastor John Monroe was produced and sponsored by Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
