John 13:5-11 (Washed in Jesus' Grace)

The Shepherd's Church

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I love how the Holy Spirit works. We read Luke 7, this moment where Jesus' feet are being washed, and that's what we're talking about today.

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I love how that lines up, because we didn't plan that the New Testament readings would have to perfectly line up with the sermon that we read through the

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New Testament. And yet every week I feel like there's some connection that I see that God has worked in the text.

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And today it was very obvious. So I'm thankful that the Holy Spirit uses his word in so many ways. Now, as we're talking about foot washing, there's many things that come to mind.

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There's lots of different things that maybe impress upon our thinking. The first thing for me is, what did that smell like?

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That's what I think about. I think about the calluses, the bunions, the ingrown toenails.

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I think about the foot funguses and the aroma of Limburger cheese. Maybe you don't.

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I do. But the question we have to wrestle with today is, what is the Bible saying about this moment that Jesus is in, the foot washing that he is doing for his disciples?

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What do we think that it means? What is it actually saying? What's going on in this text? That's what we have to wrestle with this morning.

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What's being pictured by this moment? And last week we were able, praise the

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Lord, to be able to get a few different aspects of what this is. It's a picture of the gospel we talked about last week.

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We said that the foot washing is not just a physical thing that happens, so that churches that just do the physical action and say that we fulfilled the scripture, we washed each other's feet.

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It's not sinful to do that, but it's shallow. It misses the depth and the beauty of it.

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This picture is pointing to the very gospel. We didn't mention this last week, but Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53 paint

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Jesus as this suffering servant, that he's the one who's going to come and he's going, his image is going to be marred.

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He's going to be, he's going to have all kinds of grief and humiliations. They're going to look upon him who they rejected.

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He's the one who's going to bear our wounds and our sicknesses and our infirmities. His appearance is going to be marred in that Jesus.

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It says in Isaiah 52 is the one who's going to sprinkle the nations. He's going to use water, albeit he's going to use his blood to cleanse the nations.

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It's an illusion even to the foot washing where Jesus uses this water as an analogy, as a metaphor, as a sign, as a symbol of what he's going to do with his precious blood when he heals his people of their sins, when he washes them white as snow with his blood.

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The entire scene in John 13 is a picture of the gospel. When he stands up from the table and he assumes the lowest role, he's entering into where we should have been.

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Christ is King. He was sitting at the head of the table. Everyone at that table should have been serving him.

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And yet he stands up and he takes upon himself this humble posture. He goes down lower than anyone would have ever expected.

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Mind -blowing event where he takes on this humility, which points forward to his humiliation, where they arrest him, the king of kings, where they beat him, where they blindfold him and then punch him in the face, where they, where they beat him with whips, where they do all of these degrading things.

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Jesus is picturing the humility in that moment when he washes his disciples feet.

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When he disrobes in that room, he's picturing what's going to happen on the cross where they take his clothing and they crucify him naked on that cross.

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And then they throw him into a borrowed tomb. When he washes their feet, he is picturing the gospel, the justification where he's going to wash the souls of his elect people in his precious blood, where he's going to purify them, justify them, atone for all of their sins, where it's going to be a final permanent legal forensic action, where his blood will cleanse us of all our sins.

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All of them. When I first came to Christ, I thought that he forgave me.

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I didn't say this with words, but I acted like that moment that I came to Christ, everything in the past was wiped away, but everything in the future is on me.

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That's not the way the gospel works. The gospel is all your past, present and future sins.

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You are free. Christ pictures that when he washes his disciples feet.

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When he re -robes and he stands up and he puts on his clothing again is the very picture of his resurrection.

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Because when Christ was raised from the dead, he not only laid aside the old robes, but he put on his new creation flesh so that when even

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Mary touches him, he says, don't touch me yet until the coming of the kingdom. Christ has done the same thing for you and I.

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He's wrapped us in the robes of new creation. When Jesus sat down, after he had washed his disciples feet, after he put on his new robes, when he sat down, that's the very picture of his ascension, is it not?

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After his resurrection, after he has done his work, he ascends to heaven, he sits down at the right hand of the father almighty and he reigns.

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Everything in this moment is a picture of the gospel. But it's also not just about what

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Jesus has done for us. It also sort of this biblical, theological, redemptive, historical picture of what you and I went through in our salvation.

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From Genesis to Revelation, it's this story of the Bible pictured in the foot washing ceremony.

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Let me explain to you why. Jesus begins at the table and then he's cast down, he casts himself down low.

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Isn't that a picture of what happened in the garden of Eden? Where we were at the table with God and then because of our sin, not for Jesus, but because of our sin, we were cast away from his presence, cast down into the lowest possible humble posture.

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Foot washing would have been the lowest of the low. It would have been the servant of the servant. It would have been a despicable place in society.

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If you think about the Hebrew, I mean, the Indian caste system, it would have been the untouchable who was washing the feet.

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That's what happened to us when we fell in sin. And Christ goes down to the lowest place to pull us back up.

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Do you see the pattern? The very first work of the gospel is that it exposes our sin.

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This is a really important concept for us to grab hold of because the very first work of the gospel is not salvation.

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The first work of the gospel is to expose that we need it. It's to expose that we're broken, it's to expose that we're riddled with idolatry and that we can't save ourselves.

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That's what is being pictured here when Jesus is cast down onto the floor to wash his disciples' feet who are unworthy.

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And in this foot washing, we have to understand that we are not worthy. That's the first work of the gospel.

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If God doesn't come and awaken you and cause your heart to see your sin and causes you to abhor your own sinful nature, if that doesn't happen and you never have that moment where you run away from your sin and you run to Christ, then you're missing an element of the gospel.

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The gospel awakens our eyes to where we look around and we say, I can't do this anymore.

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I'm not sufficient. And then you lift your head and you look to the one who is and you run to Christ.

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The gospel first exposes how ugly we are, how worthless our own effort is and our faith is apart from him so that we will cry out to the only one who's master and Lord.

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The disrobing of Jesus pictures what was done to us after we noticed our sin. When we saw our sin, we saw how ugly it was.

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Praise God Almighty that the gospel doesn't stop there. Imagine how depressing our life would be if the gospel stopped it.

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You're ugly, you're broken, you're worthless, you're a worm. The Bible calls us these things, polluted.

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That wouldn't be good news at all. That would be a life filled with misery. In the same way that Christ disrobed,

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Christ has taken away the power of your flesh. He has flayed your soul of its death and he has given you new creation life.

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When he cleanses his disciples' feet, that pictures that we were cleansed from our sin. We're not, we still sin, but the power of your sin has been broken.

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The effect of your sin has been broken. You are no longer headed for hell because the power of your sin has been crucified on the cross of Jesus Christ.

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If you're in him. When he stood up, it pictures the very moment where with Christ, we were resurrected to new life.

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The Bible says that you were crucified with Christ and you were raised with him in his resurrection. So if you're in Jesus today, you have new life.

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You've been raised. That is such good news because the death that surrounds us, the death that still clings to us will not have the final victory.

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If you're in Jesus, the things you struggle with today will not have the final answer. The depression or the anxiety or the brokenness, the medical issues, the problems that you have with family members or with even with you, the moments, the self -destructive tendencies, the things that you find yourself getting into, the addictions and the brokenness, none of that will have the final say if you're in Christ because you've been raised with him.

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And the final work will be on the last day when Christ returns and you'll be raised, perfected in Christ.

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New creation, flesh forever, no more curse, no more tear, no more brokenness where you will be reclothed to worship

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Jesus Christ forever in New Jerusalem. So the foot washing not only pictures what

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Christ has done for us, but it pictures our journey from the fall to New Jerusalem, from our depths of sin and depravity to our future glory in Jesus Christ, the foot washing pictures, beautiful things.

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It also, as we learned last week, it's not a physical action, it's a spiritual reality in the same way that when we eat the bread and we drink the juice or the wine, these things don't save us and give us grace.

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Ex operae operata, which is a very snazzy Latin phrase, which just means the working of the work.

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The bread doesn't do anything. The wine doesn't do anything. The juice doesn't do anything. They are symbols.

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They're signs that point to the working of God. This event that Christ is doing, the foot washing didn't cleanse his disciples.

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The foot washing didn't save them. It's pointing to the cross. It's pointing to the moment where he would win his people's freedom.

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Now again, if a church wants to do foot washing, I'm probably not the pastor to lead that.

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Maybe for you, Pam. It's not a sin, but the message has to be intact that this is about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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If it's just about washing wiggly toes, then it's missed its significance.

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This whole aspect of this is so that we will see what Christ has done for us and that we will see what has been done for us in our walking towards Christ so that we can begin to do these kinds of things for others.

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Again, not the physical aspect, not just washing other people's feet. No, we're to live a sacrificial life like Christ in the same way that Christ gave everything of himself to save and rescue us.

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Now we give everything to help and to serve and to care for those who are his. Look at the table.

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You've got 11 people who are called by God as disciples to be his sheep.

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So now in this church, we've got people who are around the table with us, who are loving

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Jesus with us, that if you look around, these are the people that God has called you to serve and to care for and to pray for and to be sacrificial for.

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Sometimes we wonder like, okay, where am I supposed to serve? Well, look around you, get into conversations, find out what people's needs are.

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If people have medical issues, if they have COVID or something, bring them food. If someone needs a helping hand with a bathroom floor,

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I don't know. Praise God it's fixed now. But there's all kinds of needs that we have where we can be sacrificial to one another.

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There's spiritual needs that we have. There's people here today who would love to be discipled by someone who's mature in the faith.

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Those of us who are mature in the faith, do you know who those people are and are you willing to spend time with them, pouring into them?

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There's marriages that are struggling. Are you willing to spend time with those couples and sacrifice for them?

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What this is showing us is that this is not about our ego. This is not about us. The Christian faith is about how

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Christ has given everything for us so that we can give everything back to him and in the service of his church, in the building up of his kingdom, and also even how we can love and serve the nations.

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It's so easy for us as a church. Not just us, but every church. It's so easy for us to stay inside of our bubble, to stay inside of our four walls, and to prioritize comfort.

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And yet look at Christ, he embraces the utterly uncomfortable and he goes to a place that no one could have ever imagined him going in order to serve his people who were not yet Christians at this moment.

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They were not yet filled with the Holy Spirit. There are ways in which that this church can begin to serve the nations, to showcase the gospel to the nations that may be uncomfortable for us, but I think that it showcases who

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Jesus Christ is. And I pray that we step into those things in the years, months ahead, the decades ahead.

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We're going to be here until I die. And then someone else is going to take over and they're going to be here until they die.

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We're a church for generations. We also are a church to serve the nations.

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Now, today, as we turn to John 13, that's your cue, I'm giving you plenty of time.

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As we turn to John 13 today, we're going to look at a few other aspects of foot washing because we didn't cover them all last week.

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And we're in verses 5 through 11 today. We're going to look at the social priority for foot washing.

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We're going to look at the people who performed the foot washing. It's all P's. So just so you know, we're going to look at the way that people practice foot washing.

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We're going to look at the purpose for foot washing, the problem that's inherent under the foot washing. And we're going to look at God's predestinating love that's revealed to us in foot washing.

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So if you will turn with me to John 13, 5 through 11, as we see what the word of the

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Lord has to say for us this morning. John 13. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.

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So he came to Simon Peter and he said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered and said to him, what

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I do now, you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter. And Peter said to him, never shall you wash my feet.

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Jesus answered him. If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.

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Simon Peter said more than wash, not only my feet, but wash my hands and my head. Jesus said to him, who he who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but it's completely clean and you are clean, but not all of you.

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For he knew that one, the one who was betraying him for this reason, he said, not all of you are clean.

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, there's so much richness and beauty in the text, in your word, where there's so much that we could mine the depths of and see.

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Lord help us today to enter back into the world that you entered into 2000 years ago to see the kinds of things that you want us to see.

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Lord, help us to see that your electing love is for your people, that you have called us according to your purposes, that you have predestined us to be redeemed and to be your people.

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Lord, we also pray that we would see the beauty in your will, that we would trust your will, that we'd be grateful for all that you've done for us.

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It's in Jesus name that we pray, amen. Now there was a great priority for foot washing in the ancient world.

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It was not just a Jewish thing, it was a culture of all ancient peoples. It was a practice of all the ancient peoples and it's because a lot of travel was actually on foot.

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They didn't have Teslas back then. They didn't have modes of transportation for the average person like chariots or horses.

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Most people, their travel would have been completely on foot and they would have had limited available footwear that they could have used for that.

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Now I know that it's surprising, but there were no Air Jordans in Jerusalem. Okay, the loneliest of travelers, the poorest of people would have traveled barefoot at that time.

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Now this is actually a fascinating thing that I learned this week, that footwear in the ancient world was one of the most affordable costs that you could incur so that you would actually have to be one of the poorest people in the nation not to be able to afford footwear.

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Unlike today where footwear can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

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There's a Instagram channel that my sister told me about called

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Preachers and Sneakers. These are not good preachers who are wearing $25 ,000 shoes when they're preaching.

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That reality was not the case in the ancient world. Footwear was affordable, it was cheap.

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Only the most extremely impoverished person would have had to go around barefoot, which again is very different than today.

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The average person would have worn sandals, but they're not sandals like we're thinking with, you know, all of the

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Velcro or all of the different things that lock in place. No, it would have been sort of like a wooden board with leather straps that go from the thong of the sandal and wrap around your ankle and they would have held that in place.

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So much of your foot would have actually been exposed. Only the heel and the underside of the foot would have been protected from the road so that almost all of your foot would have been covered in dirt by the time that you finished traveling.

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It was hot and it was humid. There was lots of water in Israel, so there was humidity involved.

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So you're sweating, there's dirt coming up on your feet. It would have been a pretty dirty endeavor to walk and you would have needed some mechanism to clean before you come into the house.

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Now the wealthiest person found this fascinating, would have had shoes made out of something other than the wood or out of bark from a tree.

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They would have had porpoise skins, which is hard to imagine.

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Sandals have aged well. We still have sandals today, but not made of porpoise skin. This was a pretty unique feature.

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Ezekiel 16 .10 sort of shows this. It says, I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk.

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We still have silk today and fine linen, but not porpoise skin. But that would have been a very wealthy feature, it would have been like Gucci shoes.

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Does Gucci make shoes? I don't know these things. Now as you are traveling, the way these sandals would have been made is they would have been very lightweight.

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They would have been very, very good for long distance traveling. They would have been durable because of the leather straps, but they would have been lightweight, but you would have gotten a significant amount of dirt onto your feet.

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And that's not all you would have gotten onto your feet. These were unpaved roads, rocks, dirt, stones, you would have gotten probably small pebbles stuck in your sandals, which would have worn blisters on your feet.

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You would think about the bottom of your feet in that culture, how hard that they must have been and callous they must have been.

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But also we have to remember that animals traveled on the street and animals do animal things on the street.

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If you've ever been to Disney World, you'll know what animals do on the streets of the Magic Kingdom.

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There's actually a job there where somebody walks around with a bag behind the horse. I wouldn't want that job.

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It's a nice way of saying that they were defecating in the streets. There was no pooper scoopers and duty bags back in those days, so the road itself would have been quite polluted.

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So that when you got to your location, you'd have had a mixture of dirt, feces, and urine on your feet.

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And there would have been a great need for washing so that you didn't bring that into the home. According to the Mosaic law, if you brought that into the home, you would have defiled yourself and you would have defiled your whole household and you would have been disqualified from going to the temple for worship.

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So they needed something to be able to wash the feet so they could be cleansed of their impurities.

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Now, if you were an average person, you would not have a servant.

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You would probably just have medium income level. You would have done this yourself. You would have sat down as soon as you were entering into the home.

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You would have had a basin of water right there ready so that you wouldn't have to go into your home to get it.

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And you would sit down, you would wash your feet, and then you would empty the basin of water because it was dirty. You would go fill it back up again and put it by the edge of the door and it'd be there for next time.

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That was what the average person would have done. We see this example in scripture a few times where Abraham gathers a basin of water together for his three guests that are coming to visit him because he was traveling, the three guests were traveling on the road.

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Lot does the same thing in the city of Sodom. Laban does the same thing when Abraham sends an emissary.

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It's in Genesis 24. He washes or he provides water for the washing of their feet.

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Now we read earlier in Luke 7, that's the Antioch example. They didn't provide water for Jesus's feet.

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There was no hospitality there for Jesus. They allowed Jesus to walk into their home with polluted feet, which meant that they cared little about Christ.

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They cared little about who he was and having him into their home. And I don't know exactly the whole situation of why they invited him on that day, but they certainly did not provide a hospitable, welcoming, loving environment for the

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Lord. And he rebukes them for it. And he praises this woman who washes his feet with her tears.

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Think about the fact that they were walking on polluted streets and she was washing and kissing his feet as a sign of worship to him.

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And it takes on a brand new effect when you know what was on their feet as she's worshiping

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Christ in this way. She's making herself as low as humanly possible in light of the one who is infinitely high.

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And he praises her for this. Now, there are other examples in the text where when a very powerful person would come and visit you and there was an extreme power differential where they're very high and you were very low, that a wife, a wise wife would wash the feet of the person who was coming as a sign of you're welcome in our home and we are submitted to you.

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If you remember Abigail in the Old Testament, David, he sends his soldiers to go and visit her after her wicked husband dies and she washes all of their feet as a sign of humility.

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There's also records in Greek literature of children washing the feet of guests, especially a very prominent guest as a sign that our entire household is submitted to you from the tallest to the smallest.

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If you're wealthy at that time, you would have hired servants. You would have hired people who would have done this task for you and they would have been stationed right at the front of the door so that when your guests came, it was almost like an express service.

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They would wash their feet, welcome them, and they would deal with the mess while you introduced and were hospitable to your guests.

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They would have viewed that person as almost inhuman. They would have viewed them as untouchable. They would have viewed them almost like their pet, but maybe lower in some ways.

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What you do not see in the ancient record, and I looked at every possible example that I could in all of the

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Greek texts that I have, I've got a computer program, which has got like 2000 of them. I searched for the word.

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I could not find a single example of a host washing his guest's feet where he was of higher status than they.

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Here you have Jesus, who's God in human flesh, who's infinitely higher status than his guests doing the absolute unthinkable.

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And as far as I can tell, the only time in history that it ever happened where someone of supreme rank got down on the floor and washed his disciples feet, it would have been unparalleled in ancient history.

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It would have never happened. It would have been more shocking than any social interaction that you and I could ever imagine.

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I hate to bring in the example, but it would have been infinitely more powerful, more palpable than a survivor of Auschwitz washing their captors feet.

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That is how strange this was. That is how beautiful this was.

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And it showcases not only the priority of the foot washing, but the power of Christ in his resurrection and his atonement, that he, the high one, has saved all of us who are infinitely low.

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That's the first thing I want to show you is that the practice and the priority of foot washing was there, and it would have never been done from someone of Jesus's stature.

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And he does it anyway, showcasing the very nature of the gospel, that there's no one who's too low to be saved by Christ.

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There's no one who's too entrenched in their sins to be rescued by Jesus. There's no one that he won't come to.

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He demonstrated it right there for us to see. The second thing

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I want us to see is the practice of foot washing. It says that in verse five, that he poured water into the basin and he began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel in which he was girded.

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Again, here you have a man of infinite status who's going lower. A man that defies cultural logic, doing something that no one else would have ever done.

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He is serving them. He is becoming situationally a servant of them. It says that he did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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He went down low for his disciples. It says that he got down from his table right in the middle of supper.

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He prepared the cold water basin. Likely you would have had two different water sources.

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You'd had cold water in the basin to wash the feet. You've had warm water to rinse the feet with clean water because the water in the bowl would have been polluted.

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And one by one, he washed their feet to their astonishment.

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And it was Peter who spoke up, isn't it always? Verse six through seven. This is, that's the practice.

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That's what he did. Now let's look at the purpose. Verse six and seven. So he came to Simon Peter and he said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet?

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Simon's the guy who doesn't, he doesn't have the filter, right? He says what everybody else is thinking.

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Jesus answered and said to him, what I do, you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter what

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I've done. Jesus is pointing beyond the foot washing here. He's pointing beyond the physical act.

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He's pointing beyond the astonishment that Peter's going to have. Peter knows he's seen this man walk on water and he knows that he sunk.

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Peter has seen Jesus do miracle after miracle, healing after healing. He saw him teach with wisdom that nobody could overthrow.

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He's seen Christ do things that only God could do. He's even admitted that you have the words of God.

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Peter had the best front row seat to who Christ was in his infinite authority.

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And Peter was shocked. Peter was like, Lord, you've lost your mind.

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Look at me. I don't deserve this. Why are you doing this for me?

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Grace when we really understand it should be astonishing. Grace should be something that when we grow up as children, we hear it.

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We shouldn't say, yeah, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace that forgives all my sin. No, grace is shocking.

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It is unbelievable when you see it happen that Christ would bend down and wash the feet of Peter.

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Astonished him. Do you have that astonishment when you look at what Christ has done for you?

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Do you see yourself as polluted, as dirty, as broken? Do you see yourself in the depths of your depravity?

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And do you say, my God, how have you done this for me? Grace shakes us to the very core and it shows us a depth of what

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Christ has done that's truly shocking. Jesus is showing him all of this.

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But he's also pointing to the fact that the gospel is even more shocking than the fact that he washed his feet.

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God, for eternity, never send, never spot, never stain, never wrinkle, never brokenness, living in heaven with his father in the joy of that relationship for an eternity comes down to earth.

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And for the first time in his existence, which is never ending, never beginning.

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He has the face of God Almighty turn from him because Christ, who knew no sin, became sin.

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It is infinitely worse than the pollutions that were on Peter's feet.

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Not just Peter's sins, not just the whoopsies that Peter stepped in on the way to the upper room.

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Every one of all of our sins put onto Christ. It is shocking when you think about it.

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The next thing I want us to see is the problem that is revealed here in the foot washing. Peter said to him, never shall you wash my feet.

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And Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no part in me. Jesus loves to do these sort of cryptic statements, does he not?

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He's talking about washing him in atonement, washing him in justification, washing his soul with his blood that was given on the cross.

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And Peter's still focused on his feet. Now, I can't blame Peter. I've got weird looking toes.

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If Jesus were coming up to me, I'd be focused on my feet, too. I'd be like, no, Jesus, no, you don't want to do that.

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Especially given how royal and regal Jesus is. But Peter could not, like we would not be able to, if we were in his position, see past the physical action that was happening.

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Jesus is talking about what he's getting ready to do on the cross. Now, what

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I find so fascinating is there's two people in this narrative who totally misunderstood what Jesus is doing.

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One of them is Peter, and if you had to misunderstand what God is doing, it'd be best to misunderstand like Peter.

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But there's another man who misunderstands Jesus, and it's Judas. In the Synoptic Gospels, it says that Satan enters into him at the table and he leaves.

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And he goes to betray his Lord and Savior. Here you have two men, Judas and Peter, who are both followers of Jesus, who are both saying that they've given their lives to this man.

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And a misunderstanding causes one to ask questions and to be astonished.

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And it causes the other to abandon Jesus and leave. The same sort of thing happens in John chapter six with Peter, doesn't it?

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Jesus said, eat my flesh and drink my blood. And there's some in the crowd who were misunderstanding

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Jesus. And they said, what is he talking about, cannibalism? That's a hard statement that Jesus is saying, because they were stuck on the physical.

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They couldn't see the spiritual truth that Jesus was communicating. And some of them left. But it was in that moment that Peter's misunderstanding did not cause him to leave.

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It caused him to be astonished. And he said, Lord, where can we go? You've got the words of life. Misunderstanding Jesus is not the problem.

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It's the direction that you go after. That says everything. The entire world can be divided into two camps, the camp of Judas and the camp of Peter.

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When you hear the gospel, will you see it? Will you understand it? Will you run to Jesus like Peter?

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Even if you don't perfectly get it at first and you have questions and you deny him three times, that was kind of bad.

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But will you keep pursuing him and running after him? Or will you be like Judas?

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And will you abandon him? And will you end up in eternal hell forever?

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Jesus says, if I don't wash you, you have no part in me.

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He doesn't say that if I wash you, then you're going to have all the answers. He's saying you have a part in me.

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You will run to me. You will cling to me. Do you see the difference? Peter is continually confused and he will be.

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Paul, even after the Holy Spirit is given to Peter, Paul is going to rebuke him publicly because Peter is

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Peter. And we're a lot like Peter. The question, though, is are you going to run to Jesus or are you going to abandon

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Jesus? I love Peter. Peter is the kind of man that I would imagine storming the gates of hell with a water gun.

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Christ is pleased by that. Christ is pleased by that. If we run at our culture with a super soaker,

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I think Jesus is okay with that. The question is, what side are you on?

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Are you on Christ's side or are you on Judas' side? Will you abandon him or will you run to him? Will you cling to him or will you forsake him?

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Jesus says he who has bathed only needs to wash his feet, but he is completely clean and you are clean.

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But not all of you. Now, what does Jesus mean there? He's not saying, Peter, you're clean, but not every part of you.

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He's not saying your feet still a little stanky. That's not what Jesus is saying with his

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Galilean attitude there. Jesus is saying not all of you are clean and that Peter, you are clean.

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Simon, you are clean. Bartholomew, you are clean. I have chosen you to be clean. But Judas, I have chosen for him not to be clean.

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Jesus doesn't give the choice. How much evangelicalism could learn from this very scene that Christ has not given us a choice?

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When we say choose Jesus, when we say raise your hand, when we say fill out the card and we check the box for Jesus, because Jesus is up in heaven saying, oh,

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I didn't want that guy, but he checked the box. What am

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I to do? The foot washing. As many scenes in the

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Bible showcases the will of God for salvation and that predestination.

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That Christ has chosen for himself those that he will make clean.

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And the good news in that is that you don't have to clean yourself up because you can't.

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You're a paraplegic with a toothbrush trying to clean the Taj Mahal. You can't clean yourself if you are not cleaned by Christ.

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You remain in your pollutions. This is the last thing that we'll cover.

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It says God's predestined or the point is God's predestinating love is seen in his foot washing.

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Look at verses 10 and 11. Jesus said to him, he who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean.

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You are clean, but not all of you. For he knew the one who was betraying him.

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For this reason, he said, not all of you are clean. We can ask ourselves, who does salvation apply to?

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It applies to the one that Christ has chosen. It applies to the one that Christ has cleaned. It applies to the one that Christ has washed.

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If you are saved, it is a gift of Jesus's grace. You are promoted beyond repair and Christ in his mercy looked at you and he said, you're clean.

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And we struggle as humans, don't we? With doctrines like this, we struggle because we have very, very sinful views.

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Our brains are falling. Our minds are falling. We're limited. I don't know if you know this, but like,

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I don't know if you've noticed this is what I meant to say. As you get older, you realize how little you know. Have you felt that?

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I love listening to my four -year -old talk about all the infinite myriads of knowledge that she has.

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As I get older, as I'm nearing 40 years old now, I realize I don't know very much about anything. There's so much that I don't know.

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And how in the world could I trust my opinion on who God saves? I don't know anything about quantum computing.

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I don't know anything about physics, except like atoms in motion and stuff like that. I really don't know anything about hockey.

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I grew up in North Carolina. We didn't have a team until I moved away. So I don't know anything about hockey.

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I don't know anything about a lot of things. There's so much I don't know about. If you catalog what

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I know and what you know, it's decimal points down of 1%.

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Why would we trust our opinion on what we know? Why wouldn't we trust the infinite

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God who has all knowledge of everything? And if he chooses anyone, anyone, he's infinitely gracious.

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Can you imagine? Giving the lot of humanity, there's 7 .5 billion people today.

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And if you go across all of human history, I have no idea. I'm going to make up a number. Don't hold me to it because I don't know anything.

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50 billion people, maybe, because it's gotten more populated as it goes. Maybe let's say 50, maybe even 100 billion people have lived on Earth.

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All of them have fallen short of the glory of God. All of them have been polluted beyond repair. None of them would have been a good choice.

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None of them would have. Jesus would have looked down and said, ah, that guy, I got to have him on my team.

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If he chose one to be saved, he is infinitely gracious.

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If he chose anyone in this room, he is infinitely gracious. The sum total response to his election, the response to his washing, the response to his purifying of us is not,

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I would have chosen me too. It is nothing but on our face in sheer gratitude and astonishment.

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God, I don't know why you chose me. I don't choose me. I wouldn't have chosen me, but God, I'm so thankful that you chose me.

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It's not arrogance and pride and we don't look down our nose at anyone. We look at astonishment at the heavens and we say,

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God, you're good. This is what the foot washing says to us.

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That Christ is all merciful, gracious, and good. That he would bend down and wash

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Peter's feet. That he would stoop down and save our soul. If we walk away from this text with anything other than the unfathomable goodness and beauty of Christ, then we've missed it and I don't want us to miss it.

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Let us pray. Lord Jesus, you have really, truly done the astonishing for us.

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There is not a single human being in this room who deserves what you did for us. Lord, I pray that that truth would be so sweet upon our minds, that it would be robustly painted upon every inch of our soul.

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That, Lord, our lips would be christened with the praises of gratitude for all of your goodness.

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Lord, I pray that we would see in this moment your beauty and your grace.

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Lord, I pray that it would astonish us. Holy Spirit, I pray that you would open up our shallow hearts to receive the depth of it.

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The beauty and the transcendence of it and the glory of it and the eminence of it. Lord, would you help us see it and receive it?

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And Lord, would it change every fabric of our being? Lord, help us to be a grateful people.