easy to hold a grudge. As Christians, we should know more about forgiveness and grace than anyone else. So why do we all so easily struggle with this? Well, this teenager knew why. He told his counselor, I want you to pray that my pastor would know just how much God loves him. and that he really is forgiven. The counselor didn't know what to say. This teenager saw something in his pastor that nobody else could see because he understood something that many of us struggle to understand. His pastor struggled to show God's love towards others. because he struggled to receive God's gracious love for himself. This teenager understood that we will treat other people the same way we believe God treats us. This truth is so foundational for the Christian life that it is the first lesson that Jesus teaches his disciples on his very last night with them. The passage we're looking at in John chapter 13 is the first in a portion called the Upper Room Discourse. It spans from John chapter 13 through 17, and this is Jesus' last conversation with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. It is his last opportunity to teach his disciples what he knows is going to be most important for them before his death. And he begins by teaching them this very lesson. So I invite you to please stand for the reading of God's word. John chapter 13, verses one through 17. This is God's word. It is trustworthy and true, and he gives it to us in love. John 13, beginning in verse one. 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. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, 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, the one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you. For he knew who was to betray him. That was why he said, not all of you are clean. When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. For it is no empty word for you. Amen. You may be seated. We will treat others the same way that we believe God treats us. Jesus, who was preparing his disciples for life and for ministry without him on earth, He was preparing them to be his representatives on earth. And if they were going to show and tell the world about God's gracious love, then they would need to first know his gracious love for them. And if we're going to live as God's representatives in this world, then we need to know the same. This passage has two parts. In verses one through 11, we get to see and experience God's gracious love towards us. And then in verses 12 through 17, we get to see how we can show that same gracious love towards others. First, Jesus shows us that his gracious love towards us is unchanging and unrestrained. Verse one sets the scene. Jesus' hour had come. He knew that very night he was going to be arrested, and the next day he would be crucified. And it's with this end in sight that John says, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. How could Jesus love them to the end? Judas was about to betray Him. Peter was about to deny Him. Every single disciple was about to abandon Him. How could Jesus love them to the end? Because Jesus' love doesn't depend on us. It depends on Him. That's what we call the doctrine of impassibility. It means that God cannot be affected or changed by anything outside of himself. You see, for us, our emotional life is what we would call passionate, which means that our emotions are reactive. They're responsive. They're shaped by what's outside of us, by our external circumstances. So someone says something to us, something happens to us at work, and the emotions that we experience are a response to that. God isn't like that. God can't change. God can't be manipulated or controlled, and he is never surprised. So God's emotional life isn't passionate. It's affectionate. His emotional life is fixed in his own unchanging nature. And that's why we can say that the love of God is unconditional. We can't earn it. We can't lose it. We can't increase it. We can't decrease it. Because it doesn't depend on us. We can be completely secure in Christ's love. because His love is fixed in His own nature. It can't be changed by any circumstances, even our own sin. So Jesus can love His disciples to the end because His love doesn't depend on them. And Christian, Jesus will love you to the end as well because His love does not depend on you either. But his love is not only unchanging, it's also unrestrained. He holds nothing back. And he shows it by getting on his hands and knees. Verse three begins, 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, now pause there, How would you finish that sentence? What would you do if you were in that situation? Well, it goes on to say Jesus rose from supper. He took off his cloak, he grabbed a towel, and he washed his disciples' feet. The One who is going to sit at the right hand of the Father, who is going to be crowned King of all creation, who is going to defeat sin and death and Satan, humbled Himself to do the job that only the lowest servants did. Jesus told us that He loves us, but now He shows us. He acts out a parable of the gospel to show us just how much he loves us. Jesus and the disciples had just eaten the Passover meal. And when they did that, they remembered how God had saved Israel from slavery in Egypt in the Exodus and how God had passed over their sins to do that. How a lamb had been sacrificed in their place. and how they covered a doorpost with the lamb of the blood, symbolizing that their blood would not have to be spilt for their sin. This foot washing is a symbol to show that Jesus was the ultimate lamb of God. That he would cleanse them from their sin completely and forever. by dying in their place on the cross. He was going to take the wrath of God that they deserved in their place so that God's wrath would pass over them. He was going to wash them with his own blood to make them holy and blameless in God's sight forever. Jesus' love was unrestrained. He held nothing back, not even his own life. And that is the same love that Jesus has for all of his disciples today. This is God's unchanging and unrestrained love for his children, that he set his love on us before he ever made us. He loved us even when we were dead in our sins and deserving His wrath. He loved us and sent His Son to live the perfect life that we could never live but the life that was required to be made right with God. That He would die the death we deserve for our sins so that our slate could be wiped completely clean. so that we could become God's holy and blameless children, all because of Christ's righteousness given to us. We do nothing to earn His love, we do nothing to prove ourselves, and we cannot do anything to lose His love. But we do have to receive His gracious love by faith. We have to believe that Jesus really is God. that He alone makes us right with God, and we do need to follow Him as our God. And if you are here this morning, you're just visiting, maybe you're here with family or a friend, maybe you're just investigating what Christianity is really all about. If you have any questions about what it really does mean to follow Jesus in this way, then I would love to talk with you after this worship service, as would Jack or any of the elders here. So please grab somebody and talk with them about that. We have to receive God's gracious love by faith. But that can be hard to do. The reason we struggle to treat other people the same way God treats us is because we struggle to believe that God could really love us as much as He says that He does. That's exactly what we see with Peter in this story. In fact, in Peter, we see two of the main ways that we can struggle to receive God's love for ourselves. First, Jesus comes to wash Peter's feet, and Peter says to him, do you wash my feet? You shall never wash my feet. we can be too proud to receive God's love. We don't want his love to be free. We don't want his salvation to be gracious. We want to earn it. We want to have something to show for it. We want to be able to say, at least in part, I'm here because of something that I did. Because you see, if that's true, that means God owes us. We can demand that God give us something. We can threaten to leave God if he doesn't. But if we didn't contribute anything to our salvation, then we can't control God. And we are completely indebted to him. And so Jesus responds to Peter in his pride. He says, if I don't wash you, you have no share with me. If you don't come in by grace, You can't come in at all. But then Peter swings to the opposite extreme. Okay, if you have to wash my feet, then wash all of me, my hands and my head too. You see, if we're not too proud to receive God's love, then we can be too ashamed to receive his love. We can feel too far off, too sinful, too dirty to ever really be loved by God. So we try to pay Him back for it. Because God loved me and saved me, now I have to show Him it wasn't a mistake. Now I need to be the best, most put-together Christian that I can be. But look at what Jesus says to Peter again. Whoever washes his feet is completely clean. When Jesus cleanses us, there is nothing more to do. There is nothing to be repaid. Both pride and shame deny the same two truths about God. They deny that Jesus' death and resurrection are really sufficient to make us right with God. There must be something more. And they also deny that God's love is really what he says. Completely free. Unchanging and unrestrained. Brothers and sisters, God wants you to know how much he really does love you. God wants you to receive his gracious love and to experience the greatest joy and freedom in all the world. To know that you are completely loved. And that can never change. And only then, when we've received God's gracious love, will we be able to show the same gracious love towards others. because we will treat other people the same way we believe God treats us. That's what Jesus says in verse 14. If I then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. Jesus is God. He is the only one who actually deserves glory, status, honor, praise. but he didn't live like it. The only one who deserves all glory humbled himself and made himself a servant for our sake. So often we can live trying to make people think that there is some glory, some praise, some status or honor that we deserve. So we refuse to get down and serve those around us, or we only do it when we know that it's going to make us look good, to get a little bit of that glory that we want. But friends, Jesus here calls us not to self-exaltation, but to Christ-like humiliation. To do what no one else is willing to do in order to show the love of God that only a Christian can show. to be more concerned with the needs of others than our own preferences. And think about what it would have been like to wash someone's feet in the first century. There's a reason only the lowest slaves did it. People didn't have closed-toed shoes. They walked in sandals. They didn't have sidewalks. They walked in the exact same place where the horses and the sheep and the ox were walking. To wash somebody's feet meant getting close to one of the grossest, dirtiest parts of a person. But that's what love is. Setting aside our pride and our preferences so that we can get close enough to other people to see the grossest, dirtiest parts of their lives and showing them God's love and His grace right there. And it's not just the people that we like that we're called to serve. It's the unlovely, the difficult, even our enemies. We're called to serve those whom we don't think deserve it because we didn't deserve it either. If Jesus washed the feet of Judas and Peter, then we have no right to think that we are too good to serve anybody around us. So what might that look like for you? What might it look like for you to go into each day, not just trying to accomplish your own goals or your agenda or trying to create a picture-perfect life, but looking for the ways that God wants to use you to get down and serve the people around you? What might it look like for you to come home after a long day of work, exhausted? What might it look like for you to have a long list of to-dos and set that aside so you can pay attention to the needs of your children first? What might it look like for you to just want some time to relax, but then see the needs of your neighbor and put those first? What is the foot washing that God is calling you to do? But treating others the way that God treats us isn't just about what we do. It's also about how we think. One of the main reasons it's so hard for us to live out this gracious servant love is because it goes against our vision of what the good life is. What is that picture of the good life that you carry around in your mind? That picture that you carry around in your mind thinking, if my life could just look like that, then everything would be OK. Then I'd be good. Maybe it's when you can get a certain house, a certain job, a certain income, certain experiences. Once you can finally get a certain relationship, Or maybe it's just a life in which you can make a plan for the day and trust that that's probably what's actually going to happen. I have the joy of having a one-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old at home. That sounds like a pretty good life to me. Just having a plan for the day and being sure that that's actually what's going to happen. It doesn't. Whatever our vision of the good life is, that's our definition of greatness. So how does your vision of the good life and greatness match up with Jesus's? Look at verse 15. I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Jesus lived the good life. He set the standard for greatness. And what did that life look like? He did not look impressive to the world. He was poor and homeless for several years. He made himself a servant and showed that true greatness is a life of glorifying God through sacrificial love for others. We love Jesus. and we want to follow him, but if we're honest, most of us want a better life than what Jesus lived. Most of us want a more comfortable life. And that is such a counter-cultural perspective. It's a perspective rooted in God's gracious love. Because if this is how Jesus lived, whom we love more than anything because we've experienced his gracious love. And that changes our hearts so that we want to live that way too. And the very same truths that led Jesus to serve his disciples in verse three, those are the same truths that enable us to live that same way as well. Look again at verse three. First, it says Jesus knew that He had come from God. And friends, because of His death and resurrection, we also belong to God. It says He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands. And because we are God's children, He has promised to give us everything we need in life as well. And it says Jesus knew that He was going back to God. And because we are united to Christ through faith, we also know that we are going to God. That we will be able to spend eternity with him in glory where our lives will be greater than anything we could imagine. And when we know these things, then we see that we have already everything we could ever want. Everything we could ever need. when we realize that we have every spiritual blessing in Christ, when we realize that we have in Christ everything we could ever want or need, then we are free and safe to serve others. We are free and safe to live a life that is not great in the world's eyes, because God has made us great in His eyes. And when we, Jesus ends in verse 17 saying, if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. This can't all just live up here. We're not blessed by knowing how we should live, but by actually living that way. A life of gracious servant love. Friends, this is the good life. A life of true freedom. A life of true greatness. A life with Christ. This is the blessed life. Treating others the same way we know God has treated us. One of the ways that we get to experience this gracious love of God for us week in and week out is through the Lord's Supper.