Our text this evening is John chapter 13, verses 1 through 20. It was just before the Passover feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. The evening meal was being served and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet. drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus replied, you do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand. No, said Peter, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you have no part with me. Then Lord, Simon Peter replied, not just my feet, but my hands, My head as well. Jesus answered, A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet. His whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you. For he knew who was going to betray him. And that was why he said not every one was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. Do you understand what I have done for you? He asked them. You call me teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you as an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth. No servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who has sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. And I am not referring to all of you. I know those I have chosen, but this is to fulfill the scripture. He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me. I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe that I am he. I tell you the truth. Whoever except anyone I send accepts me. And whoever accepts me, accepts the one who has sent me. After he said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me. Well, our catechism teaches that the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts by the preaching of his holy gospel and confirms and strengthens this faith to us by the use of his holy sacraments. I recently had the joy of preaching this text, by coincidence, at my home church in Washington, D.C., on a Sunday in which we were going to be administering both of the sacraments, both baptism and the Lord's Supper. And this text, this evening, presents an interesting confluence of the imagery of both baptism and the Lord's Supper. The setting is, of course, the Last Supper, the night before Jesus was betrayed. Interestingly enough, you may recall John's Gospel does not record for us the institution of the Lord's Supper at his account of this meal. Instead, he provides for us this particular account, which is unique to John's Gospel of Jesus' service to his disciples in the washing of their feet. He also provides for us in the chapters that follow a great deal of instruction that the Lord had for his disciples over the course of that Last Supper. So we have a very different picture between the Synoptic Gospels and John's Gospel about the Last Supper and Jesus' fellowship with his disciples at that meal. So we have the setting, which is reminiscent of the Lord's Supper, if it's not mentioned explicitly. And we have the washing of feet, which Peter, at one point anyway, confuses with a washing that's for purification or for cleansing. And it's very tempting to think of, and many commentators have thought of, the imagery of baptism in association with this washing. Perhaps in John's Gospel we have a record that reminds us of baptism in lieu of the teaching of the Lord's Supper, the institution of the Lord's Supper that we find in the synoptics. But when we look at this chapter, we're struck by the fact that the foot washing that we find here is not sacramental in its force. Peter's conclusion that this is about cleansing is somewhat brushed aside by Jesus. He says, you are already clean, all those who have followed with me. You disciples are already clean because you have heard of my word and trusted in my name. No, the focus of the foot washing in John's gospel is not on the sacramental work of baptism and the cleansing that occurs therein. The focus is on the person of Christ and his service. It is on the coming of his hour, which is a momentous event in the gospel. and it is on the nature of our salvation. The washing of feet at the Last Supper is not merely our Lord's modeling of servant leadership, what it would look like to be a true leader who serves His followers. It is rather the opening scene in the deepest, darkest hour, in the humiliation of our Lord, the beginning of the end, so to speak, of our Lord's descent to the very depths of hell. And if we look at the sweep of John's Gospel, in chapter 12, Jesus, the last chapter, announced that the hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified. And the opening verse of this chapter, likewise, sets the scene by telling us that the Passover was at hand, the climactic Passover of John's Gospel. That Jesus knew that His hour had come, that He should depart out of this world to the Father. There's that interesting setting of scene. In Jesus' mind at this supper is His awareness that He had come into the world, been sent by the Father, and that He was preparing to leave. From the beginning, John's Gospel has identified Jesus as the eternal Word. The One who has come down, who has descended from heaven. The one who has been sent from the Father in order to save the world. The Baptists described him as the one who was from above. And Jesus bears witness that in order to enter His kingdom, we all must be born of the Spirit. Born from above. He is the bread of heaven. The bread which comes down from heaven. He is the salvation And the life which he brings is tied together, is interwoven with the nature of his mission, the ark that he travels from heaven above, his pre-existence down, his descent, his humiliation, and finally his death on the cross and burial. Just in the last chapter, Jesus taught, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. The hour of glory, the hour of power in John's Gospel is the hour in which Jesus is at His lowest point. The hour in which He is departing out of this world. Having loved His own, again this chapter begins, having loved his own, having loved you to the very end, to the uttermost breath of life, to the darkest depth of hell, he came and became in and through that death a victor over death. He became the recipient of glory that lifted him from the pit, that set his feet back on high places from whence he had come. There's strong echo here, or we find a strong echo, of this tracing of our Lord's mission, his ark in the words of Paul to the Philippians, having emptied himself by taking the form of a bondservant, made in the likeness of men. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And therefore God also highly exalted him. That image of humbling himself is reminiscent of the humbling work of service we see in this account of the supper. Now it's important to note that the ark traced by our Lord Jesus Christ, this path from heaven above down to earth again, this career is not random. It's not like some natural cycle. It's not, as some in the ancient world thought, an emanation of the Godhead and then a return to heavenly places. It's not like the planet circling the sun or the seasons or the ebb and flow of the tides. It is a career premised instead upon the sending of the Father, the command of the Father and the obedience of the Son. Jesus is the messenger. He is the apostle of the covenant. He is the suffering servant. Jesus was not an independent traveler, not some wayward sage musing on the deeper things of life to a group of followers. He was on a mission. Listen to what he says. I and the Father are one. He tells us that those who know him know the Father. Those who love him know and love the Father. He knows that the Father has given all things into his hands. He knows that he has come forth from God and was going back to God. And he knows that his saving act, not only the entire sweep of his saving mission, but that the cross, the saving act, that low point of his humiliation, is an act of service. He serves us. He saves us. The will of His Heavenly Father, the will that He fulfills, is to raise up all of those whom have been given to Him on the last day. This great mission, this great work, is of a Savior who saves His people. And this is the great offense of John's Gospel, and the great offense of the Gospel in general. It's our complete and utter need of salvation. Our need for a Savior who serves us in the most humbling of ways. A need for a Savior who saves us when we are lost in darkness, not by the will of man or by the will of flesh. It's by His will, by His working, that we are saved. We become children of God. The offense is that the glory of our salvation, the glory of our Savior Himself is in His humiliation, in His cross. Read the Gospel. Read through John's Gospel and you will see it on every page. This utter shock and amazement from the Jews and the leaders of the Jews that this one, this one from Galilee, this one we know His Father and His brothers, That this one is the Messiah, the one sent from God? Can anything good come out of Nazareth, as we see in the opening chapter? Shock and amazement that God would save by this means. For ultimately, that weak and humble means of our salvation says something about how deeply, how desperately we need His work on our behalf. Now, it is the case that a lot of people, and indeed even a lot of people in the gospel, a lot of people today are looking for a Savior. It is indeed a particular form of worldliness to seek a champion to follow. A leader who inspires us, inspires the crowd by heaping praise on us, who elevates us. The crowd likes glory. They seek Jesus because of His signs and wonders. Yet Jesus did not come to save with glory. His work of salvation is not yet another sign and wonder. He came to save with a cross. It is not enough to know that you need to be saved. You must need to know how you are to be saved. And behold, Jesus saves by setting aside his power, by taking off his garments that mark his station as a teacher and a master and becoming in form and in action a slave. There is some offense, isn't there, when we think about it, that you and I, that all of us, are saved by a sweaty, filthy, boot-looking slave. And how does that feel? Peter, in this chapter, doesn't like it one bit. The entire arc, the entire trajectory of our Savior, from heaven through humiliation to glory, has never sat well with the twelve in John's Gospel. And foot washing was just too much for Peter to take. One would never think to wash the feet, even of a fellow peer, much less someone who was lower in status than you. Many Jews of this period argued that even a Jewish slave ought not to wash the feet of a stranger, that only a Gentile could perform that function. And there's one episode of a rabbi who famously would not allow even his own mother to wash his feet because he felt it dishonored her too much to perform such a lowly task. No doubt all the disciples were shocked in silence by what they saw before them. But it is Peter who objects, as he so often does, to our Lord's nasty insistence on pursuing complete and utter humiliation. The point of this washing, unlike baptism, was not about purification. It was about service, about who saves whom, who serves whom. And it is about, for that reason, the nature of the gospel. If you don't humble yourself, if you don't realize the depths of your need before the Lord and let Him save you, you have no part of Him or of His blessings. Peter is wrong to adamantly reject this washing as he rejects so many things, so many steps our Lord takes on his way to Calvary. But he is equally wrong when he assumes that this washing, therefore, must express his need to be ritually purified. Jesus tells Peter that he is already clean. He has received the word of life for some time now, confessed his faith clearly, if confusedly, in the Lord of glory. But Jesus had to wash his feet so that he might grasp that the uttermost of humiliation, of service, and of obedience was required of his Lord to save him. This was not a cleansing moment, per se. This was a teaching moment of our Lord Jesus Christ to his followers. That it is a teaching moment is clear. It is explicit in what he says after this act. Do you know what I have done to you? He asks. If I, the Lord and the teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. There is great and profound truth conveyed to us in this example and conveyed powerfully. And there is a great opportunity as well for error when Christ holds him forth as our example. The error very common among conservatives and liberals alike is to take the moral example of Christ as merely a moral example. Now, many liberals in the history of the church have taken Christ as a moral example and thus set aside the cross and the resurrection. But this is a practical temptation even for you and I, for those of us who continue to affirm the saving value of the cross. It is quite easy, in other words, and quite common, I fear, For us to affirm the value of the cross. But then in our worship, in our life, in our preaching, we turn to Jesus as a moral instructor, as a model, as an example. And there's no doubt that his example is sublime. Which of us loves our family, much less our neighbor, to the degree shown forth in this text? We're not talking about foot washing. We're talking about contemporary equivalents. Things you wouldn't think to do, think to stoop to do for a neighbor or a friend or a loved one. Acts of selfless service. There is much for us to learn. Selfless service as a paradigm for the act of love that is demanded, The love of God and neighbor of every Christian is an example that is second to none. But the problem with a Christianity focused on the moral example of Christ is that it is all too easy to substitute someone else, something else, as a different moral example. There are many such examples in the Bible. There's Abraham, what great faith he had, or David, or Moses, or Paul. And then there are, of course, many in world history, Muhammad or Buddha or Gandhi, Mother Teresa, great saints even of the Christian church in this last century and beyond. Now, while Christ's moral example was uniquely excellent, it is not what is most unique about Christ and about his work. Christianity focused on moral example all too easily, all too often becomes what has been called by some Christless Christianity. And it is a scourge on the church as much today as it ever has been. Now, even more important as a practical concern, note that our text does not allow you to take this example of Christ as a mere example. In this most explicit example, in the entire gospel of Christ setting himself forth as a model, we are hedged against this danger. Our evangelist goes out of his way to present the story in the context of this broader sweep, this broader redemptive arc of our Lord's mission to save us. This act of foot washing first and foremost illustrates the turning point in our Lord's career. That moment at which he knowingly was entering the very depths of his descent from the Father. He sensed, because he was coming so low in his humiliation and service, the approach of death that was the way of his return. This introduction of our chapter that introduces it in this context is mirrored at the end of chapter 13, if you look beyond where we stopped reading tonight, by a conclusion that likewise establishes the theme of this story, the theme of this story, which is the glorification of the Son of Man, the glorification of His heavenly Father that is marked in this humiliation and it is returned to heaven. The linking of this episode further with the beginning of Judas' betrayal is not accidental. And it further ties the exemplary service of Christ to the historical developments leading to his death. Jesus, the newly anointed in chapter 12, the newly honored King of the Jews, who has triumphantly entered the royal city, now approaches his final enthronement on the cross through a most typically Davidic event. Just like King David, he was betrayed by one of his beloved. The love of the true master, of the true servant, the true teacher and the true student is illustrated all the more by this contrast with anti-love, the contrast of betrayal. Note that Jesus not only knows that this hour for his betrayal is at hand, he commands the betrayer. He tells Judas in the following portions of this chapter to go do what he must do. An obedient servant to the very end. Jesus is nevertheless entirely in control of his march to the cross. He is a servant, but he is in control. And it is the cross that is already here in view in chapter 13. It is the cross that is portrayed even in the washing of the feet. The cross is the act of love to the uttermost. The cross is the coming event, the coming glorification that will make sense of the unbelieving episode for the disciples. You don't understand this now, but later you will. The cross is the great humiliation, shame, offense, folly. The cross which is no mere example, but rather, as John so carefully points out in his epistle, rather a saving tool, an instrument. In this is love, John writes. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, if He loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. You see, this is not an example that drives and founds our love. It is more. The cross is loving not just because it is a selfless act, but because it is a selfless act that saves us. Peter didn't want his feet washed for the same reason that he didn't want his Lord going to the cross. This was not the kind of Savior he wanted or the kind of Savior that he thought he needed. And this, as the end of this chapter will proclaim, is the new commandment that Jesus gives us. The new commandment that the gospel gives us. Love, of course, is not new. The Old Testament law was summarized by love of God and neighbor. But loving as Christ loved us is new. Loving unto self-sacrificial death raises the bar to the extreme. Indeed, greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. I want to conclude this evening by noting two things about this new commandment that is given to us. First, as I already noted, John doesn't recount for us in his gospel the institution of the Lord's Supper and the new covenant that is therein conveyed. But he does give us here a new commandment. And I'd like to suggest to you that this is, in a sense, a parallel concept. In all of the gospels at the Lord's Supper, at the eve of the cross, Something radically new is occurring. The covenant of Moses was synonymous with the commands that were written on stone. And in his death, Jesus inaugurated a new covenant. And in doing so, couldn't help but establish a new commandment. The gospel, Christ's death for us, creates a new powerful formulation of the law of God. It not only provides the foundation and the motivating force for our obedience, we see with our own eyes, we behold the death of the Lord on our behalf, but it also establishes and sets a new bar for what true heavenly love is like. Do you love your neighbor? Oh really, have you laid down your life for him? Have you washed his feet? This is yet another sign our text uses to warn us against taking this as a mere moral example. In this story, we behold in one sense the parallel and in one sense the opposite of the scene at Mount Sinai, where at Sinai Moses went up and received a law inscribed on tablets of stone. Here, we see God come down. Jesus, tabernacling with us, personified, personifying the law in the flesh, not in stone. It is not marked by thunder and lightning. It's not marked with the glory and power and noise of Sinai. But do not mistake the glorious scene set before your eyes in the humiliation of our Lord. Second point about this new commandment. People struggle, I think, with the relation between the gospel and the law. But I believe that this text sets a clear model before our eyes. And I think this is generally the model that the Reformed tradition in our confessions, in our preaching, and in our worship captures better than most in the history of the church. Law and gospel are in one sense totally opposite principles. The one stating what God demands of us, the other pure offer, pure gift for us. Yet they do not, for this reason, compete with one another. They are not antithetical to one another. The gospel is nothing other than the satisfaction of the law by another on our behalf. This satisfaction, both in the active love of foot washing and in the death he suffered, doesn't therefore set the law aside. No, on the contrary. It illustrates it in all its force and its binding power on our lives. How do law and gospel speak to us this Sabbath evening? You have not understood this text, this sermon, if you don't feel crushed right now under the burden of loving your parents, your husband or your wife, your children or your boss as you ought to love them. You have not understood this sermon if you don't rejoice at the very same moment in the fact that your Lord has loved them for you on your behalf. That He has provided this fulfillment, this righteousness for you in your Christian baptism sealed to you in the Lord's Supper. And behold, how are we, like little children, needing to be born again when we inherited this kingdom of heaven, this great service from our Lord and Master. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we rejoice to call you Lord and King. And as you rode into Jerusalem, you surely suffered the energy of that praise and glory. But you knew that your hour was one of humiliation and service. And just as you have gone through that work of humiliation, we pray that you would make us faithful as we serve and love one another, as we keep our eyes on our heavenly glory. And don't expect to see it here in our day and age, but trust and reside and reflect in the glory and comfort that we have in Christ and his work on our behalf. We thank you for these blessings in your son's precious name. Amen.