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Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
If you would turn to John 13. We're continuing our study on the life of Peter. Last week, we discussed what Jesus meant when he said to Peter, on this rock, I will build my church. And, we discussed what that rock could possibly mean. Is it Peter's to Peter's confession?
Joel Brooks:Granted, I didn't know later that Jesus maybe he was referring to kid rock and Super Bowl halftime show. You never know. But, in all seriousness, last week, we we looked at how Jesus said he was going to build his church, build his ekklesia, his called out ones, his assembly. In this passage here, we're looking at the last time Jesus will assemble His disciples before He goes to the cross. And just to frame John 13, I wanna read you one verse from Mark ten forty five first.
Joel Brooks:The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. John 13. Now, before the feast of 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, he rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks: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 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.
Joel Brooks:If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. This is the word of the Lord. Praise to God. You pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for sending your son, Jesus, to show us your heart, to show us how much you love us.
Joel Brooks:Lord, I pray that we would feel the glorious weight of that in this room as we look at this text this morning. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away, not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:As you guys are aware, this is pretty much my uniform for Sunday mornings. I wear the same thing. I wear some version of a button down shirt with jeans, and I wear dress shoes in the summer and the spring, and I wear my boots in the fall and the winter. That has happened for seventeen years. I've kind of moved away from plaids because y'all were making fun of me for wearing them so much though.
Joel Brooks:So this has become my my official uniform. However, there there are times how to get this? I I I never use a prop, but I do wanna show you. There are times that I will wear this. If if I'm doing a wedding, I I like to dress up, you know, a little bit, kinda makes it a little more official, and so I will wear this.
Joel Brooks:This is a ministerial robe. Every time I wear this for wedding, people ask, are you going to wear this on Sunday? No way. Do you know how hot this is? And by the way, thank you for those of you who who did not have outdoor weddings in July and August because wearing this during those But I love you.
Joel Brooks:I'm glad I got to do it. This right here is called a ministerial stole. Most people don't know why it's there. You just think it's decoration. Most ministers I've met don't know why it's there.
Joel Brooks:This is actually there as a representation of the towel that Jesus took up, that he he wrapped around him, and it's to remind us as ministers that we exist to serve, to wash feet. But you're not going to wash feet with this, are you? I mean, this the robe itself is beautiful. An old pastor, when he retired after my ordination, he gave me his, and then then my mother-in-law, she made me this one, and I think it's silk. It wouldn't clean anything.
Joel Brooks:It would it would just get dirty. So so you're not actually gonna use something like this to clean. Let me put this back up. So, the reason I wanted to show you this is because I I think that stole, that that robe there is is a good representation of what we do to a lot of things in the Bible. We sanitize them.
Joel Brooks:The things that were shocking, the things that that were filthy, we we make them beautiful. We have golden crosses on necklaces, or we have silk stoles. Nothing wrong with those, but we need to remind ourselves of what they truly represent. Something stunning, shocking, filthy, something who would have ever imagined. And that's what this story is in front of us.
Joel Brooks:It's shocking. It's filthy. And, I don't want that to be lost on us because it's become so familiar and we even turn it into beautiful ceremonies at times. It wasn't at this moment. And here, we're shown the grace we need and we are shown the grace that we are to give and it's a shocking amount of grace.
Joel Brooks:The story begins with Jesus making a statement that he knows his time in this world is coming to an end. He's gonna go back to his father, and we read that Jesus loved his own that were in the world, and he loved them to the end. To the end. There's not many love relationships that go the distance to the end. There's not many friendships that last to the end.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes, marriages don't even last to the end. I I've got in my old yearbooks, I've got several f f's there, Friends Forever. I even got a few b f f's in there. I got a little heart. I can tell you what, I don't even know where Blair King or June Boyd are right now.
Joel Brooks:But apparently, they they were, you know, my friends for life. It's it's hard to have a relationship in which you actually love somebody to the end. And, he's not just talking about time. He's not just talking about to this end of his earthly life here. The end has that notion of completeness or fullness.
Joel Brooks:He loves them fully. It's actually the same root word that Jesus cries out on the cross when he says, it is finished. Tell us. Completed. There's no more I could ever even show than this love.
Joel Brooks:So, I hope you know that Jesus loves you. It's likely the first song you ever learned growing up. Well, it's probably Wheels on the Bus. Second second song you ever learned growing up was probably Jesus loves me. This I know.
Joel Brooks:Do you? Do you have any idea how much Jesus loves you? There's nothing more He could do. No more love He could give. Verse three, we also read that Jesus, He knew something else, that the Father had given Him all things into His hands.
Joel Brooks:All things. That means all power, all wealth, all authority. Now, He had those things earlier in heaven, but, then He came to earth as a human. And, because He lived a perfect life as a human, the Father has now given this to Him as a human as His reward. So, he's been given all things.
Joel Brooks:What would you do? Last night on Earth, you've been given all things. What's your bucket list? I'd like to skydive over Mount Everest. I'd like to see the sunset at Machu Picchu.
Joel Brooks:Shoot. I I'd like to eat caviar. I've never had caviar before. I mean, my bucket list could get kind of low. I I There's things I'd like to do.
Joel Brooks:Given a thousand years, we would have never guessed what Jesus did. In the middle of the last meal with His disciples, He rose up from supper, partially stripped Himself down, got a table or a towel, tied it around Him, knelt down before people got water in the basement and began washing feet. If you if you read it, you know, it's like John just He tells you all the details like he's slowing down because these are things that are just burned in the disciples' memory. They will never forget each individual act. I believe this is the source of the the hymn, the ancient hymn that Paul actually refers to in Philippians two when he says, Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself.
Joel Brooks:Now, in the first century, washing feet was virtually synonymous with slavery. You either washed your own feet or you had a slave do it for you, but no one else I mean, do you know where those those feet had been? I mean, people in the first century, they weren't walking around urban sidewalks wearing their adidas. They're in sandals, feet exposed, hot, dirty, dusty roads often covered with animal dung. These feet would have been disgusting.
Joel Brooks:Certainly, that work is beneath the Christ. Now, when Peter sees what Jesus is doing, what what's what's happening before him and Jesus kneeling down before him, it's like a slow motion horror film to him. He just can't believe it. We read, he says, Lord, are you washing my feet? But, in Greek, it's like he's he's having a hard time getting out the words.
Joel Brooks:He's it's like he says, Lord, you wash me. He just can't even articulate this. And who can blame him? I mean, was trying this week to think of some contemporary examples of what this would look like in our culture, and I struggle. Here's one bad example I came out up with.
Joel Brooks:It would be like if you were going to an interview, you're interviewing to get a job at a Fortune 500 company, and as you're being interviewed, the CEO of the company comes in, just bursts through the doors, and says, hey, I am so sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if I could get your car keys. I was just going to take your car out and detail it and wash it myself. I'll get it back before the interview is over. Wouldn't happen. Dumb illustration, isn't it?
Joel Brooks:Let me tell you a dumber one. This came from Ford. He said it'd be like a bride on her wedding day before she's even gotten her pictures taken, kneeling down in the mud and washing someone's dirty feet. It it just doesn't happen. I mean, you have a hard time thinking of any example of this.
Joel Brooks:And it's because what Jesus is doing here doesn't happen. It is not an exaggeration to say that nothing like this had ever happened in history. I didn't know this until this week, but there is no parallel of a story like this in the Bible or in any ancient literature at all of any superior ever voluntarily washing the feet of an inferior. There's no record of it in history nor even in fiction because people simply couldn't imagine it. Guys, this is the God we worship.
Joel Brooks:This is God kneeling before Peter and washing his feet. Are you starting to get a sense of how much he loves us? Jesus tells Peter, you don't understand what I'm doing now, but you will. And, what he means by this is, the cross is going to be the light bulb that sheds light on all of this. You're going to understand when I go to the cross.
Joel Brooks:If you're having a hard time with this, you just wait and see how much I'm about to descend, how low I'm about to go. But, when I go to the cross, you'll understand this because the cross is where I'm really going to wash away your filth. This is just a picture I'm giving here to let you know what I'm about to do. I'm about to go to the cross, and there I will wash you fully. And so, Peter here, he needs to let Jesus do what only Jesus can do, which is wash away his sins.
Joel Brooks:But Peter, you'll stop it. You shall never wash my feet. In Greek, it's a double emphatic. You shall never wash my feet ever. I'm a really early riser.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I was here this morning, 03:45. I'm I'm often, where I'm always, up before my wife. And I'll go downstairs, you know, shower, have brush my teeth, have coffee, sit, and I'll be reading for a while before she comes down. And then when she comes down, she always, every morning, she walks over to my chair and she kisses me on the top of my head. I've tried to kiss her on the lips.
Joel Brooks:She goes, I haven't brushed my teeth. Terrible morning breath. Nope. Nope. Can't have that level of intimacy when I'm like this.
Joel Brooks:When she goes to the gym, or when she runs and she comes back and she's just all sweaty, I always try to give her a hug, she goes, No, don't touch her, I'm disgusting. So Peter's doing here. Peter loves Jesus. Peter worships Jesus. So Peter does not want Jesus anywhere near his disgustingness.
Joel Brooks:No. But in order for Peter to have any type of relationship with Jesus, he's gonna have to let Jesus get intimately acquainted with his filth. And that's what's happening here. Jesus is getting intimately acquainted with Peter's filth. Washing feet is a very intimate thing.
Joel Brooks:Putting your fingers in between someone else's toes. Some of you, just me saying that, like, literally, you squirm. Like, yeah. To allow somebody to wash your feet, especially somebody you love dearly. It's hard because you're allowing them to to feel, to see, and to smell the worst parts about you, to see your filth, and you've just got to trust that I can truly be known and I can truly be loved at the same time.
Joel Brooks:That's what Jesus is saying, I know you. I know the parts you try to keep hidden from others. I'm intimately acquainted with them, and I love you. Peter says, never though. Jesus, he responds to Peter's objection by saying, Peter, if I don't wash you, you have no share with me.
Joel Brooks:Peter, if I do not watch you wash you, then we can't be together. We can't have a relationship. Now, listen closely here, church, because Jesus here is teaching Peter about what actually separates us from God and it's not what you think. It's not what Peter thought. Yes.
Joel Brooks:Sin is the initial thing that separates us from God, but sin is not the thing that keeps us separated from God. So, it's not our sins that separate us, it's our own self righteousness. Jesus is kneeling at our feet, ready and willing to wash away our sins. But then, some of us in a heart of arrogance disguised as humility, say, never. No.
Joel Brooks:Never. Because we think cleaning ourselves up is something we should do. I could do that on my own. I can make myself presentable. I can wash myself.
Joel Brooks:I'm better than I look better than others, don't I? I'm presentable to God. Grace is really hard to accept. It's hard to accept because in order to receive grace, you have to acknowledge need. You have to acknowledge your desperation.
Joel Brooks:Who wants to do that? Hear me. If the grace of God is no longer shocking to you, it's because somewhere along the road, you abandoned grace because grace should always be shocking. If grace is no longer shocking to you, it means that somewhere along the road, you have tried to earn it and you thought you were earning it. Therefore, loss of shock value, but earned grace isn't grace.
Joel Brooks:I'm just like, I'm a sinner and I I need to be cleansed only by you. Do what only you can do. Peter needs to let Jesus do what what Jesus wants to do, even if it makes him uncomfortable. After Peter responds that way, Jesus tells Peter after Peter tells Jesus or Jesus tells Peter, he's gotta wash him in whatever relationship with him. I love Peter, one eighty.
Joel Brooks:Well then, let's take a bath. I mean, wash me. Wash all of me. I mean, that reminds me of I mean, at a Super Bowl party, somebody next to me, they offered me like a Dorito. And I said, no, never shall I ever have a Dorito.
Joel Brooks:A whole bag later because you just can't stop. That's Peter. No, never. Well, we might as well go all in. God, I love Peter.
Joel Brooks:In complete and total, one eighty here. Let me just sum up where we are with Peter so far. He seems humble at first, but then he tells Jesus what he can't and can't do, and now he's telling Jesus how to do it. Jesus tells Peter it's not necessary, verse 10. The one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean.
Joel Brooks:And you are clean, but not every one of you. A few months back, I was taking a shower, and right when I turned off the water, I could hear the garbage truck. It only comes once a week. It's kind of a big big deal. You've got to get the garbage on the street.
Joel Brooks:I knew we had forgotten it. And so, I just I just grabbed a towel, I just wrapped it around me, and I just ran outside, and I I got, you know, our our garbage truck went down, like, 17 steps or so that we have going down to the street, got it there just in time. Garbage man just kind of gives me a little nod. I mean, it's like we've all been there. I mean, we've all done something like this.
Joel Brooks:And so, then I go back to the house. When I went back to the house, I looked at my my feet. I'm clean all over, but my feet, they had picked up a little bit of dirt, they had picked up some grass clippings on them. I didn't need to take a whole shower again, so I just went back in. I just stuck in my feet, stuck in my feet, and I was clean.
Joel Brooks:That's what Jesus is teaching Peter here. Earlier, as he was talking about washing Peter's feet, he was using that as a symbol to teach about the complete and full cleansing that he is going to provide through his blood on the cross. That's what he was earlier talking about. That was a one time event by which we're completely forgiven, forever united with Christ. It's what baptism represents, a very public bath.
Joel Brooks:It's an outward expression of an inward reality, and it's the reason we are only baptized once. If you're baptized again, I'm not gonna say it was a sin, but you shouldn't have. I don't Everybody, they go to the holy land. They see the Jordan River, and all of sudden, theology goes out the window, and they're like, gotta be baptized again. It's a one time event.
Joel Brooks:When when you trust Jesus, you have been washed. So earlier, he he was teaching about that type of cleansing. Now he's talking about ongoing. You could put it this way. Earlier, he was talking about union with Christ, a forever union with Him.
Joel Brooks:Now, he's talking about ongoing communion. Earlier, he was talking about salvation. Now, he's talking about fellowship. The truth is, even after we have been washed by the blood of Jesus, we've been saved, as we walk through life, we still sin, our feet still get a little dirty. And Jesus says, so keep coming to me, not for salvation, but to let me wash those feet.
Joel Brooks:John's later gonna write about this in first John one when he tells those who are Christians, those who have been saved, he says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we live in a time now where we are constantly confessing our sins to Jesus, and we find his grace meeting us there to forgive us. Keep this in mind as we enter into this Lent season. So, this is the grace we receive. And now, Jesus says, this is the grace I want you to now give.
Joel Brooks:Verse 14. If then you if 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. Because Jesus humbled himself and he served us, we are to now humble ourselves before others and to serve them. This means that there is no task out there that is beneath a Christian.
Joel Brooks:None. And we're to take out the trash. We're to serve in our children's ministry or in the parking ministry. We're to let that friend emotionally just dump on us. I mean, the applications of this are in the thousands of what it looks like to to humble yourself and become this type of servant because it means you've made yourself the lowest of the low.
Joel Brooks:That means every task out there. Very well might be what the Lord is leading you to do. And so, without because I can't apply this a thousand different ways, what I want you to do is just this week, I want you to have the picture of Jesus kneeling before you. It's uncomfortable that Him kneeling before you, Him washing away your filth, intimately acquainted with your filth. And then, I want you to ask the spirit this week, how can I show that kind of love to the world?
Joel Brooks:What does that look like? Jesus says in verse 17 that if you do this, you will be blessed. This will not be laborious drudgery for you. This will be a blessed life if you do this. Let's pray to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, I pray we would never lose the the shock of who you are. The God who whose hands created the seas, the rivers, now are dipped in a bowl, washing dirty feet. Lord, I don't know if we can ever know the depths of how much you love us, but I pray that this week, we would just learn a little bit more, get more of a taste of that. And, Lord, that we would, in turn, would then show that love to others. Thank you, Jesus, for washing us and making us clean.
Joel Brooks:And we pray this in your name. Amen.