The Heart of Christ

[0:00] The following message is given by Walt Alexander, lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Athens, Tennessee.! For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com.

[0:14] John 13, verse 1. Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

[0:35] During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper.

[1:00] He laid aside his outer garments and, taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.

[1:25] 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.

[1:46] 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.

[2:01] Simon Peter said to Him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

[2:13] Jesus said to him, The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean, and you are clean, but not every one of you.

[2:29] For He knew who was to betray Him, that is why He said, Not all of you are clean. When He had washed their feet and put on His outer garments and resumed His place, He said to them, Do you understand what I have done for you?

[2:51] This is the Word of God. Thank you, God. You know, long before Barney, Blue's Clues, and Daniel Tiger, the hit show Sesame Street was the undisputed heavyweight champion of preschool television.

[3:09] Beginning in the late 90s, each episode concluded with a segment called Elmo's World. The Red Muppet, Elmo, was the friend every kid needed.

[3:22] He taught us how to live in the world, how to help a neighbor, how to be a friend to those in need. Well, several weeks ago, Elmo logged on to X.

[3:34] Who knew Elmo was on X? And Elmo went viral. He wrote, Elmo, just checking in, how is everyone doing?

[3:44] And the responses came pouring in. Tens of thousands of folks replied and quote replied, whatever that means. 214 million views as of this week.

[3:58] The responses, though, were not good. One said, Elmo, we are tired. Another, Elmo, 2024 feels like 2020 plus four.

[4:13] Another, Elmo, I'm suffering from existential dread. Another said, Elmo, I'm so tired of this life, Elmo, the anxiety and the panic attacks.

[4:28] My depression is killing my mental health. Another, Elmo, my man, it's not looking good. I had to pull a noose off my friend's neck today after she tried to kill herself.

[4:43] I don't know if you logged on and saw Elmo's tweet to the world or even reply, but you know what these folks are talking about. We live in an increasingly disoriented and rootless age.

[4:58] We have cut the ropes from customs, wisdom, experience, and increasingly organized our lives around ourselves. Our lives have become little more than a burrito bar that's customizable, in which you're free to modify every detail of your life according to what we think, feel, and want, and by all accounts, the results from the freedom are not good.

[5:23] We're tired. Tired of the endless options. Tired of being overcommitted. Tired of trying to do it all. We are fearful and anxious, quite possibly more so than any culture in the history of the world.

[5:37] We are alone. Deep relationships have been on a free fall for the past several decades, then COVID happened. They're not recovering.

[5:52] Listening to a book right now, New York Times bestseller, How to Be a Friend. I don't remember the title, but how to be a friend. What? Because we lost the ability to be a friend. So Elmo asks, How's everybody doing in the world?

[6:06] And one guy sums it up well. Not good, Elmo. Not good. This morning, we begin a series designed to help us live as disciples in this very world.

[6:20] It's entitled, The Last Words of Jesus. Now, it's not literally the last words of Jesus because he had seven sayings from the cross, but it's the last words of Jesus to his disciples. It's the study of John 13 through 17, what has been called the farewell discourse or the upper room discourse, which is why I chose the last words of Jesus for the title.

[6:40] On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus gathered his disciples for one final meal to prepare them for how to live in the world after he's gone. It's a private gathering.

[6:52] Thirteen people are there. The Lord and his 12 disciples gathered into an upper room. Literally a room at the top of a house in Jerusalem.

[7:04] It's a very personal gathering. Jesus' language changes in this setting. He does not speak to his disciples as mere followers or as adherents or something like that, but he calls them his own.

[7:19] Little children. Friends. What a word. He speaks to his disciples in the upper room in a way like he doesn't speak to them anywhere else because there's no one else listening in.

[7:34] And he reveals what he's all about. John Calvin, I think we have for you, John Calvin has said, all of them, the four gospels, we have four gospels, four pictures of Jesus Christ.

[7:45] All of them have the same object in view to point out Christ. The first three exhibit his body, what he does with his body. We may be permitted to use this expression, but John exhibits his soul.

[8:00] All the other gospels show his body, show what he does in the body, but John gives us a window in his soul. That's exactly what one Puritan says. Well, in John 13, the Lord just, or John opens up a window into the soul of Christ.

[8:15] Nowhere is the soul of Christ in the gospel of John more clearly displayed than in these chapters. But what does he say to his disciples? On the one hand, what he says is very sobering.

[8:29] It's a bolt out of blue. They weren't prepared for it. The world we know so well, the world in which we're disoriented and weighed down by fear, anxiety, and aloneness is the world he's preparing his disciples to live in.

[8:42] He says, you'll be hated by all because you love me. He prepares them to feel lost. He prepares them for the cascade of sorrows that continually fall on disciples in a fallen world.

[9:01] But what he says is so hope-filled. He promises that he's going to the Father, and he's going to heaven to prepare a place for them.

[9:12] He promises that he's going to send the helper, the Holy Spirit, to them. He promises that in just a little while, what a phrase, in just a little while, they'll see him again.

[9:24] And so my desire in these next several weeks, I don't know how long this is going to be, for us to ascend the stairs, so to speak, to the upper room to listen in to what our Lord has to say. My desire is for us to eavesdrop eavesdrop on this private and personal gathering.

[9:40] But God does mean for us to do more than eavesdrop. These words were preserved with other disciples in mind, those who would believe the word of the gospel. These words were preserved with us in mind.

[9:52] Right now in 2024, four years after 2020, who need a word from the Lord. In a word, where we're going this morning is have no fear.

[10:03] Jesus was determined to love his own to the end, cleansing us of all sin and setting us apart for himself. Jesus was, have no fear, Jesus was determined to love his own to the end, cleansing us of all sin and setting us apart for himself.

[10:19] So we're going to break this down in an organizational way. The first is the setting. So verse one kind of sets the scene. Verse one sets the scene for the next four chapters, for the last words of Jesus to his disciples.

[10:32] It's the beginning of the second half of John's gospel. Now, theologians over the years have said John's gospel splits very nicely into two halves. One is the book of signs. It's the book in which Jesus is revealing who he is through his signs and wonders.

[10:48] And so we know he has seven signs in there, turning water into wine, raising Lazarus from the dead, feeding the 5,000. These signs are pointing to his glory.

[10:59] But this, they're pointing to who he is. But the second half is the book of glory. You can say the book of his passion, but I think the book of glory is better. It tells of his suffering, his passion.

[11:11] When he is lifted up, and in John's gospel, the way he's glorified is by being lifted up to be crushed in the stead of sinners like you and me.

[11:22] The transition is obvious in our verses. Look in verse 1a. Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come.

[11:33] Jesus knew suddenly that his hour had come. If you remember when in the very first public moment in the gospel, John, he was at a wedding with his mom. And his mom comes and says, they have no wine.

[11:46] She's saying, essentially, listen, you know who you are, and I know who you are, so can you do something about this wine?

[11:56] What does he say? My hour has not come. Now he does turn some water into wine, but he's saying all that he came to do is not yet going to be revealed.

[12:09] Later, twice, the chief priests and scribes go to arrest him. But John says, they did not arrest him. Why? Because he ran out of power. No, no, because his hour had not come.

[12:24] His life was under the sovereign hand of God, and so his hour had not come. But the scene shifts here. Jesus is gathered in the upper room in a private home in Jerusalem preparing to celebrate the Passover.

[12:35] So you know the Passover is a time when the people of God would celebrate how God passed over the houses of Israel and struck down the firstborn of every son in Egypt.

[12:47] And as they're preparing to celebrate the Passover, Jesus knows something is changing. My hour has come.

[12:57] Now that's a strange way to talk about time. If you called up your friend tomorrow and said, the hour has come. I will meet you for lunch tomorrow. They would be finally certain you've lost your mind.

[13:12] But what Jesus is saying, he's not realizing that it's a certain day or a certain time of day or a certain month. What he's saying is that a decisive moment has arrived.

[13:23] Jesus knows that his public ministry and teaching has been completed and now it is time for his suffering. Jesus has already told his disciples this much.

[13:35] Look in chapter 12, verse 23. He says, Jesus said to them, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Remember I told you, they can be glorified by being lifted up and that's what he says next.

[13:49] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. So the fruit of the kingdom of God will be the fruit of a passion, fruit of suffering, fruit of death.

[14:06] The disciples don't know what this means. They don't know that this hour means he'll be betrayed, delivered to the chief priest and scribe, flocked and mocked, crucified.

[14:29] They don't know it'll mean he'll depart from this world. Even though he, his hour has come, his heart is set on the disciples. Look back in verse 1 of chapter 13, now before the Passover when Jesus knew, having loved his own.

[14:47] So it's time for him to depart from the world. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Look at the way John refers to his, Jesus thinks of his disciples, John refers to his disciples as his own.

[15:06] Now there's a sense in which all things are his own. We said that already today. The earth and the fullness thereof are the Lord, Psalm 24. There's a sense in which all people also, all things and all people are his own.

[15:20] It is from him that every family on the earth is named. He gives to all humankind life and breath and everything, but there is a more profound sense in which his people are his own.

[15:34] Jesus further clarifies who he's thinking about, his own, if you saw in the original language they're right next to each other, his own, his who are in the world.

[15:49] His own are not just those in heaven, not just the heavenly court, his saints and angels, his own, some of them are in the world. John 15.

[16:02] We have this for you. He has this as well. There's an important contrast going on here between the many who are in the world and the few in the world who belong to Jesus.

[16:13] The word world, it's repeated 40 times in John's gospel, twice here and many other times in these final words of Jesus to his disciples. Again and again, the contrast is underlined between the many who are in the world and the few in the world who belong to him.

[16:29] This is what we see in John 15. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But you are not of the world because, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

[16:42] Now he says something very obvious. If you're of the world, the world would love you. The world loves your own. If you play by the rules of the world, if you, if you, you know, commend the right things, you, you praise the right things, the world will love you.

[16:59] Who cares if you love those who love you, Jesus says. But that's the way it works. The world, the world runs that way. But the point underlined here is that Jesus loves his own.

[17:13] In a unique, powerful way, D.A. Carson helps us understand this even more. He says, if Jesus loves the world, for God so loved the world, it is in order to draw men and women out of it.

[17:28] Those so drawn out constitute, now that's a smart guy's way of saying, gather together, a new entity, a new group, set over against the world, contrasted from the world.

[17:40] The world loves its own. Jesus loves his own. The object of the love of God in Christ in these chapters and the farewell discourse is therefore not the lost world, but the newly forming people of God.

[17:58] His own. His who are in the world. Now think about this. He knows what's about to happen.

[18:13] He knows these disciples have been fallen for three years, but one's about to betray him. All of them are about to abandon him. Each of them will continue to sin and fail against him.

[18:29] And yet he loves his own. Though he's now in heaven, his heart has not changed. He's not changed. Often I think we think about love for God and it's so hard to think about love.

[18:47] John Owen says men think it, are afraid to have good thoughts of God. They're afraid to have good, if they're really honest with themselves, they're afraid to think that God could be gracious and merciful towards them.

[19:00] So when we begin to talk about the love of God, we so often move to our love for God. Our response of love, we think we got to make ourselves worthy of this. We got to love.

[19:10] We got to hold on to him. Well, this, there's something that precedes your love for God and it is God's love for you. That's what he's saying here. The love of God is not presented mainly as your response, but as God's initiative.

[19:25] For God so loved the world that he drew men and women out of the world so that he might set his love on them forever and ever. And so this verse sets the scene, I said, for the next four chapters.

[19:38] His heart is set on his disciples. He's preparing them for what's to come. He tells them he will be betrayed. He will lead the world. They'll be persecuted, but they must love one another and wait for the spirit.

[19:52] But he also prepares them for his death. He loved his own to the end. He loved his own throughout his life, serving and caring for his disciples, but most importantly, he loved his own to the end through his sacrificial death.

[20:11] The next time this word, end appears, is the last word, the root word, he says on the cross, it is finished.

[20:22] He loves his own until his sacrificial death. So the setting, point to the act. The next couple of verses kind of break out the act.

[20:37] It's one long sentence describing the act of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. There's few things more memorable and meaningful in the life of Jesus than his washing of his disciples' feet.

[20:50] In these verses, it happened during supper. Look in verse 2. During supper, he begins to wash their feet.

[21:04] The previous verse sets the scene and now the evening Passover meal is being served. Before supper, we learn that Judas has decided to betray him.

[21:15] Look back in verse 2. When the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him. Lest we be confused, John is telling us, there's nothing that happens in this meal that prompts or provokes Judas to betray Jesus.

[21:31] The devil had already planted this desire into the heart of Judas. The devil had been opposing the work of God from the beginning and now moves the heart of Judas to want what he wants.

[21:43] This sinful desire that will lead to the betrayal of Jesus Christ. The kangaroo court verdict. The crucifixion began in the heart of one of his disciples.

[21:58] Judas. Simon's son Iscariot. But Jesus already knew this.

[22:11] Look in verse 11. He knew who was to betray him so there's nothing he's learning in this scene. He knew who was to betray him. During supper we also learn that God has already given all things into his hand.

[22:24] Look at verse 3. He says, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands. He's already given.

[22:37] Yeah, notice this. You know, Judas plans to give him over. Same word to the authorities but God had already given all things into his hands. So even Judas' plot is in the hands of Jesus Christ.

[22:50] What he's saying is Jesus is not merely the promised Messiah and not merely the promised deliverer. He's the sovereign Lord of all. So he knows he's come from God. Verse 3 And was going back to God and knowing all this, knowing what Judas was going to do, knowing that all things have been given into his hand, what does he do?

[23:07] He stops eating. Rises from supper. Lays aside his outer garments and begins washing the disciples' feet. Now, how would you conclude this sentence knowing that Judas had already decided to betray him, Jesus?

[23:30] But how would you think it would be concluded? He dismissed him. You are dismissed. Threw him out. Jesus doesn't do that.

[23:44] He rose from supper to wash his disciples' feet, even the feet of Jesus. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who hates you? Jesus was as well.

[24:02] It's hard to imagine a more powerful demonstration of loving one's enemies. In fact, the actions of Satan and Jesus are contrasted with the same verb.

[24:12] After Satan put betrayal into the heart of Judas, Jesus put water into a basin. And he washes their feet, knowing all things had been given into his hand.

[24:30] He didn't show off his power. He didn't put his enemies under his feet. He rose from supper to wash the disciples' feet. Now, we read this as something we've seen on a felt board over the years.

[24:44] You know, felt board Jesus and the blue-eyed Jesus down there washing. Yeah, it just kind of sounds really normal. But it's very shocking in that context. You know, it appears that when they arrived for dinner, no one washed their feet when they arrived.

[24:58] Now, in an arid climate in which transportation was mostly by foot, it was customary to have water out as you would enter a home to wash your feet because they're covered with dirt. Or for a servant to wash their feet when they arrived.

[25:10] Knowing this did not happen, the disciples would have gladly washed the Lord's feet. They would have jumped at a chance, I believe, to wash the Lord's feet.

[25:22] They are his disciples after all, but they would not wash one another's feet. It was reserved for the lowest of servants. It would not have been right or proper or fitting for them to wash one another's feet.

[25:35] There was a custom in that day, an unwritten code of conduct. Like you go to a dinner and you eat with the wrong fork, there's an unwritten code of conduct.

[25:45] Leave that fork alone. Ask somebody to help you out. Well, there's perhaps no professional sport in which there's a more clear unwritten code of conduct or etiquette than tennis.

[25:58] Maybe golf, but spectators are meant to remain silent during the match. Players are meant to contain their celebration after the match. Yet when Australian Pat Cash beat the world number one player at Wimbledon in 1987, he lost all decorum.

[26:15] He celebrated in the middle of the court. He ran to the stands and began climbing through the stands, climbing up to his mom and dad.

[26:30] His coach was like, what in the world is he doing? There's a trophy ceremony going on. He's climbing up. Fans are like, has he lost his mind? It was so unfitting, so improper, so unseemly.

[26:46] There must be a similar response to Jesus Christ. It's so improper, so unfitting, so unseemly. The master washing the disciples' feet.

[27:01] But there's more than the radical humility of Jesus in the way John describes the foot washing. It becomes clear that this act of foot washing is a symbolic act.

[27:16] Some of the way the prophets would do something symbolically, raising a staff, slapping the waters that are meant to open up. It's a symbolic act pointing to something else.

[27:29] He rose from supper. He laid aside his garments, took a tool, wrapped himself and washed the feet, resumed his place.

[27:39] It's a picture of nothing less than the gospel. In total. I mean, one of the way Sinclair Ferguson puts Philippians 2 right next to it. Jesus knowing he had come from God.

[27:51] Philippians 2, he was in the form of God. Jesus rose from supper. Philippians 2, he did not consider equality with God, a thing to be grasped, a thing to hold on to.

[28:03] He laid aside his outer garments. He emptied himself. Philippians 2, he took a towel. What's he doing? Taking the form of a servant. Philippians 2, he poured water into the basin.

[28:16] He humbled himself. He began to wash his disciples' feet, but that was pointing to the work on the cross. He became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. And he put on his outer garments, resumed his place after he was done.

[28:30] What was that pointing to? That God had highly exalted and bestowed on him the name above every name. Do you see what's going on? Jesus is not merely washing the disciples' feet. He's picturing his ministry.

[28:42] These guys that don't know that his hour has come, they don't know what that means. He's giving them a picture. You will understand afterwards. He's come from the highest of heavens. He was glorified with the Father before the foundation of the world, and yet he, even he, takes the form of a servant and will go down to the lowest of lows.

[29:07] We know the end of the story, but the disciples do not, nor do they anticipate what is going on. They know him as the Messiah, the Son of God. who turns water into wine, multiplies loaves and fishes, forgives sin, but he knows his authority will not be won with the sword, but bought with blood.

[29:35] He said, for the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom. What Jesus is doing in this picture, in this scene, is startling. John Stott helpfully says, the affirmation that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve was startlingly original.

[29:56] What he's saying is that there's a putting together of Scripture's expectations about the Messiah that is startlingly original for the Son of Man, and Daniel's vision was given power so that all nations would serve him.

[30:10] You remember that, Daniel 7, 13, and 14. Jesus claimed the title, but changed the role. He did not come to be served, but rather to be the servant of the Lord, Isaiah 53, who is crushed of the servant's songs.

[30:26] He was both the glorious Son of Man and the suffering servant. He would enter glory only by suffering.

[30:36] this picture. It's what the disciples will not forget from the foot washing. Point three, the meaning.

[30:48] The meaning. Verses six through twelve unpack the meaning of Jesus' act of washing his disciples' feet. Jesus does not just come out and explain why he's doing what he's doing.

[31:03] I mean, that's so typical of Jesus. You know, he answers questions with questions. You know, he's just not going to be put into a box. You know, some of those guys can frustrate you to death.

[31:15] What he's doing, though, is so improper, so unfitting, so unseemly that it demands an explanation and Peter draws it out. This is a classic scene between Peter and the Lord.

[31:30] No doubt, our favorite disciple. During supper, the disciples would have been lying on one side around the table with their feet facing outward. Jesus makes his way around the table washing the dust and grime off his disciples' feet one by one.

[31:53] The only sound you would hear is a subtle splashing of water as the Lord washes their feet, dries them off.

[32:08] We have a policy in our office, keep your feet at home. You know, no one wants to see Chacos at work. You want to be doing a counseling appointment and someone see your toe jam, you know.

[32:20] Keep your feet, that's the way I feel about feet generally. And here the Lord is washing them off. When he comes to the feet of Peter, Peter breaks the silence.

[32:34] All of the disciples are shocked at what Jesus is doing, but Peter cannot let it continue. It's emphatic. Lord, do you wash my feet?

[32:46] You, the master, do you wash my feet? Say, no way. No way will you wash my feet.

[32:59] Jesus says directly, but somewhat enigmatically, what I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand. Peter hardens his resolve.

[33:11] If no one will tell Jesus he's disgracing himself, then I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell him. Look what he says in verse 8a. He says, you shall never wash my feet.

[33:24] Literally, he says, you shall never, ever, into eternity wash my feet. You shall never, in a million years, wash my feet. That's literal.

[33:37] Jesus says, if I don't wash your feet, you have no share with me. suddenly the mood in the room shifts.

[33:51] The air is filled with suspense. Did Jesus not realize that Peter was speaking out of love? Peter was trying to help him. Peter was trying to not let him shame himself.

[34:02] What does Jesus mean? You'll have no share. Would he really reject Peter out of the fold, so to speak, because he refuses to let him wash his feet? Though Peter does not understand, the disciples do not understand all of what Jesus has said, he understands enough, and he says so wonderfully, not my feet only, but my head and my hands wash all of me, is essentially what he is saying.

[34:27] Jesus then explains himself in verse 10. The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean, and you are clean, but not every one of you.

[34:43] He said it because Judas was present. When Jesus is done, he asks his disciples, do you understand? So we should ask ourselves, do you understand what he's saying?

[35:02] The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet. Jesus is contrasting two different words for washing here. He's saying, essentially, the one who's bathed, whether at home or at a public bath, and then walked somewhere, does not need to have his feet washed again.

[35:21] I mean, does not need to have his body washed again, just his feet. Other than his feet, the rest of the body was clean. So it's kind of a metaphor or an illustration for them.

[35:33] And so Jesus says, all of you are clean already. All of you are clean by the word. And he says, the only thing you need is your feet to be washed. So the idea is that first and foremost the foot washing symbolizes the total cleansing of sinners purchased through the sacrificial death of Jesus.

[35:51] So what it's pointing to is the cleansing, not pointing to baptism or anything he's saying, it's pointing to the cleansing that Jesus does through the gospel and through the word of the gospel.

[36:03] Now several weeks ago, foot washing hit prime time during the Super Bowl. For the second year in a row, a group of Jesus followers, self-described, put out an advertisement in the Super Bowl under the banner of he gets us.

[36:19] It included numerous still shots of people washing the feet of other people. It seems that the intent was some sort of pre-evangelism.

[36:30] Such a curious phrase in and of itself, but we can't get sidetracked on that. Breaking the ground for Jesus or something like that, I don't know. Seems to be an odd practice.

[36:43] Trying to help people remember the compassion and love of Jesus. But the ad was wrong-headed in several ways. The foot washing went one direction, mainly.

[36:56] The police officer with the homeless man. The cool girl with the alternative girl. the manifest destiny claimed the land with the Native American.

[37:10] The pro-lifer with the person who just had an abortion. The Christian and the Muslim. The pastor washing the feet of the homosexual. Now, it's a provoking ad, but it mainly went one direction.

[37:26] The powerful to the powerless, which is mainly the way our culture is teaching us to understand the world. The conservative to the liberal.

[37:39] I don't think it was so much trying to evangelize the loss as it was to disciple the conservative. In that respect, it wasn't shocking who was getting their feet washed.

[37:53] It's very shocking in John 13 who's getting their feet washed. It wasn't shocking at all who was getting their feet washed in that. A few tweaks and it would have been much more shocking.

[38:03] Perhaps a Latino woman washing the feet of a white man in a red mag hat. That would have been shocking. Or a black man washing the feet of Oliver Anthony, as one author said.

[38:18] But most importantly, so it went one direction, that's one wrongheadedness of it. Most importantly, the meaning of Jesus washing the disciples' feet was not to show that he accepts everyone.

[38:30] It was to show that he saves everyone who comes to him. That's the point of it. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, after helping her husband with the murders of Duncan and Banquo, Lady Macbeth tries to wash off the blood.

[38:46] She washes her hands saying, out, damn spot. hear the smell of blood still, all the perfumes in Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

[39:00] As Macbeth sees his wife breaking under the guilt, he says to the doctor, now this is the king's English, but he says, canst thou not minister a mind disease?

[39:11] Can't you rescue a mind broken in disease? Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow? rescue this sorrow from their mind? Raise out the written troubles of the brain and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart?

[39:33] Can't you do something about the guilt? Can't you do something about what's really perplexing her? That's what the husband, Mr. Macbeth, says to the doctor. The doctor says, therein, the patient must minister to himself.

[39:49] With all that, the patient must minister to himself. Well, wonderfully, Jesus is not like that doctor. He does not wash our feet and send us on our way.

[40:02] That's not what he came to do. He came to cleanse us. Jesus does not get us. He forgives us. Jesus does not accept us. He transforms us. Jesus does not empathize with us.

[40:13] He delivers us. Jesus does not befriend us. He redeems us. That's the point of the foot washing. That's what he came to do. It's a picture of his cleansing of sin and forgiveness of sin forever.

[40:27] Those of his own that he brings all the way in so that they might have a share with him of everlasting life and freedom from the curse of sin and death.

[40:38] And how does he do it? God by rising from the right hand of the throne of God by announcing to the Father send me by turning his back on the endless praise of angels and the prerogatives he enjoyed as God by being born in the likeness of men taking the form of a servant by taking up the cross taking up all our sins upon him and being crushed for them by rising from the dead and ascending to the right hand of God to the throne on high and sitting down.

[41:25] The gospel. Wonderfully later in John 15 7 Jesus says you're clean because of the word.

[41:46] Because of the word. That's what I proclaim now to you. Wonderfully I do not proclaim a savior that just wants to understand. I don't proclaim a savior that just wants to feel what you feel.

[42:02] I don't proclaim a savior that wants to accept you and leave you as you are and let you go merrily on your way. I come to a savior that comes in and rearranges the furniture because he wants to rescue you from sin and death and to put you on a new course of life.

[42:16] I come to a savior! Don't you want to be clean? Don't you want to be forgiven? Well bless the savior and the word of this savior that we offer to you wonderfully.

[42:30] Have no fear. Jesus was determined to love his own to the end, cleansing us of all sin and setting us apart for himself.

[42:43] May he receive all the glory. Father in heaven, we thank you for the privilege of sitting under your word and thinking on these things.

[42:56] We want to rest more and more in the finished work of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins for the acceptance for the cleansing we so desperately need and the new life we long for.

[43:13] Lord I pray of any person in this room that might not have a sincere relationship with you that you would bring them to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and to the word of the gospel the good news that he left heaven's throne and forsook everything except love that he might love his own to the end we pray in Jesus name you have been listening to a message given by Walt Alexander lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Athens Tennessee for more information about Trinity Grace please visit us at Trinity Grace Athens dot com