Well, now, I hope you are holding on to your seats this morning—ready for anything.
John 17. I am going to read a few verses from the great high-priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus. We will read from John 17:12.
While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me; and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I come to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy made full in themselves.
I have given them Thy word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
I pray not that Thou shouldest take them from the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth.
As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the world.
And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us: that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I knew Thee; and these knew that Thou didst send Me; and I made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them.
Shall we pray?
Lord, this time this morning has not taken Thee by surprise, although perhaps for us it is a surprise. Lord, we commit very especially Your Highness and his family to Thee, that Thou wilt give them journeying mercies and bring them safely to us.
And we pray for ourselves, Lord, that as we turn now to Thy Word, Thou wilt be gracious to us. Lord, grant, we pray, that every one of us may receive something from Thyself. We thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast made a special grace and a special power available for this time this morning, and we stand by faith in that provision. We appropriate it in the name of our Lord Jesus.
And we look to Thee that both speaker and hearer alike may know that anointing upon them, so that together we may fulfil Thy will, may meet with Thee, and may receive of Thee. O Lord, hear us, we pray, as we commit ourselves to Thee, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I would like this morning just to say a final word, as far as I am concerned, about the love of God. I did not expect to, but when I was asked late last night and I began to think about the Lord, it was really only in the early hours of this morning that the Lord gave me a further thought, which I think draws together all that I have said about the love of God.
I entitle it “The Divine Method.” Now, we are rather afraid of methods, but I have called it the divine method—or the divine way, if you like.
What a wonderful way the Lord Jesus ended that great prayer of intercession recorded in John 17, that prayer which we call the high-priestly prayer. He ended it with these wonderful words:
That the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them,
And I in them.
That the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me—oh, how the Father loves the Son—that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be shown to them? No. That was so, but may be in them. And I in them.
You will remember that it was a sentence in one of the letters of the Apostle Paul that started us off on this consideration of the love of God:
I pray that your love may abound yet more and more, in knowledge and all discernment; that ye may approve the things which are excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Jesus Christ.
We are nearer to that day than ever before in this age. We do not know just how near we are—whether we still have some years to go, a decade or two to go, or whether tonight the day of Jesus Christ might dawn.
The great prayer of the Apostle Paul for that beloved church at Philippi—and, I suppose, for all the churches that were in his care, and all the churches beyond his province of authority—was, “I pray for you, that your love may abound yet more and more.”
Nothing else will keep us in the will of God. Nothing else will enable us to triumph in adversity. Nothing else will enable us to endure all the pressures and strains of the last phase of the end times. Nothing else will enable us to overcome but that love of God in us, and the Lord Jesus in us.
That is what you and I need more than anything else. That may be why the Lord Jesus ended His great prayer of intercession with these words: “That the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them.”
If the love that the Father has for the Son—that same love, that same fullness of love, that same power of love—be in us, and the Lord Jesus be in us, we must surely be invincible. By the grace of God, we shall overcome and stand before His face. We shall come, by the grace of God, to the throne of God.
For nothing else will ever satisfy the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit, than a heart and a life that is filled, immersed, in the love of God.
Now, I said I would speak about the divine method. I want immediately, then, since we have not so much time, to turn you to John 15—this wonderful Gospel of John, where we have already remembered that it ends with those words:
Lovest thou Me? Tend My lambs.
Lovest thou Me? Shepherd My sheep.
I want to read a few verses, first of all, in John 15, from John 15:9.
Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love.
If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you.
These things I command you, that ye may love one another.
The divine method. What is the divine method? Will you first note here that the Lord’s end, in one sense, for us is that we should bear much fruit, and that our fruit should remain—not transient fruit, not decaying fruit, but fruit that is eternal.
“Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go, and that ye should bear much fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” Fruit.
You will remember that the Jewish people were judged and dispersed to the ends of the earth because there was no fruit. God is always looking for fruit. To be given salvation, to be given revelation, to be given life—eternal life—is, viewed from one aspect, a grave responsibility, because the end must always be fruit.
If we are barren, if we are fruitless, something is wrong. Now, there are many, many believers that are barren. Indeed, I think one has to say honestly before God that the great majority of us believers are fruitless.
We are barren, and if we do bring fruit—if there is blossom and the beginning of fruit—it is cast before it comes to ripening. Something goes wrong. It is as if the tree cannot take the fruit. It has the early promise of fruit.
There are many people who have real experiences of the Lord, real experiences of the Holy Spirit. You can see all the blossom, and you can see the beginnings of the fruit forming. Then you come a little later, and the whole thing has dropped. It is just leaves. There is no fruit. It is all leaves.
It is so with many assemblies of God’s people, many companies of God’s children. You go and see a real moving of God. God speaks to them. God gives them revelation. God challenges them. There is a real influence, as it were, brought to bear upon them from the throne, and it seems as if for a while they are going to bear fruit.
There is blossom; there are the beginnings of fruit. You can see the little fruit forming in the tree, and then you go back, sometimes months later, perhaps a year or two later, and it is all gone. The leaves are there. The life is there. But there is no fruit.
But the Lord Jesus said, “I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go”—anywhere where He appoints, in the desert, anywhere in the most uncongenial place on earth—anywhere, if He has appointed you and sent you, you should bear fruit, and your fruit should remain.
What, then, is the key, if it is not this matter of divine love? If somewhere or other, in all the revelation and all the zeal, the love of God is somehow missing.
Now, I want to be very careful in this matter, because it is much more than that. You see, the Lord Jesus put His finger on this matter infallibly. He said:
Greater love hath no man than this,
That a man lay down his life for his friends.
In other words, it was as if the Lord Jesus was saying, “Now look here, look here. It is no good just talking about love, singing about love, praying about love. Love is expressed in action. Love is expressed in a way of life. Love is expressed in lives laid down.”
Why do we not see people saved in the office, or in our places of work? Why do we not sometimes see people saved in our families? Why do we not sometimes see people saved in our circle of friends? Because we give the impression that we know it all, that we are the same, that we are something, that we have got everything, and that they should listen because they are going to hell.
They do not see a life laid down. They do not see all the little jobs done for them out of love. They do not see a deep, real concern. They only see themselves as a head to be counted, as a trophy to be won, as another name to be added to someone’s popularity and glory as an evangelist, or a teacher, or a servant of the Lord, or a witness to Jesus Christ. The people are not loved.
Most of us have made these mistakes in our families. When we were first saved, we went back like a steam train, like an express, like Concorde—a British production—zooming in with great noise. We said, “Now listen, you, I have been saved!”
Because we are full of it. We are full of it. It is not that we are doing anything necessarily wrong, but we fail to see that the thing that wins a family, or wins friends, is character.
We fail to see that, by opting out of family responsibilities because we have been saved, we have damaged the reputation of the Lord. Somehow or other, by never being the one in the office or place of work who bears the burden, cares for people, and loves people, we have opted out of our responsibility. We have damaged the reputation and the name of the Lord.
Here is the divine method: you cannot lay down your life unless you are filled with love. Try it. Try it. All it is, is a dead teaching which brings you into a cast-iron bondage.
I know many people who talk about the cross all day long and nearly all night long. It goes round and round and round in their head like a spinning top. And what is the result? They look dark; they are dark; they are heavy; they are dull; they are lifeless. They have got a kind of self-imposed brokenness. It is not the Lord.
When God comes in with the work of the cross, the result is resurrection. Resurrection swallows up the brokenness and the death, so that in you it is death, but it is life in them. They touch the Lord. They touch the power of God. They touch the glory of God. You touch the brokenness, personally. You touch the death, the brokenness, the affliction.
The Lord Jesus does not demand of us anything that He has not done. That is why I spoke about the divine demonstration—if you managed to get anything out of that evening in the dark.
Dear beloved people of God, if you and I are not baptised in the love of God, if we are not immersed in the love of God, if the love of God has not been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, if the love of God is not the dynamic of our living, of our service, of our church life, and of our worship, then it seems to me that we come only into a formalism.
We cannot but come into a formalism. We are barren; we are fruitless. No matter how beautiful the leaves are, how shiny the leaves are, or how strong the trunk is, God is not satisfied, because He looks for fruit.
I know so many companies—forgive me, I do not want to sound condemning or accusing—but in my little ministry, travelling over part of the earth, I go generally speaking to those companies that know something about church truth.
I must tell you, with a heart that is deeply grieved over much of what I see, that we find again and again that people have church truth, but they have not got the church.
They have got a certain amount of doctrine, a certain amount of vision, a certain amount of understanding; and in spite of the fact that we say again and again that it is organic, they try to put it together. It cannot come together without love, because the church is a community of love.
It is something produced out of the passion of its Lord. When His side was pierced and there came out blood and water, out of that side was brought the bride. Out of that great demonstration—that supreme demonstration of the love of God on Calvary—came the church.
If the church contradicts the principle upon which it was born, the love of God, she is nothing. That is why the devil will work and work and work to set us all at sixes and sevens, to spread insinuations and doubts through all, till we are all suspicious of one another, all disillusioned with one another, all colliding with one another, all, as it were, up against one another.
Till, in the end, we cannot win. It is a sham. We take the Lord’s table—it is a sham. We worship—it is a sham. We do not want it to be a sham, but it has become a sham because we have failed to understand that first and greatest commandment:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
And with all thy soul,
And with all thy mind,
And with all thy strength.
And the second greatest commandment:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Church truth is only the beginning of the matter. Thank God if God reveals truth to any brother or sister. There is so much ignorance and so much error in the world that it is a wonderful thing when God reveals anything to any child of God, any servant of God, or any company of the Lord’s children.
But, dear ones, remember this: the understanding of church truth does not automatically bring about the producing of church life. The only thing that brings about the producing of church life is when a few brothers and sisters fall into the ground and die—when they all lay down their lives, one for another.
When you have a marriage in which the husband is all “I,” and the wife is all “I,” and the children are all “I,” you are going to have a very, very unhappy home. Somewhere or other, a wife has to lay down her life, not only for her children but for her husband.
Somewhere or other, a husband has to lay down his life for his wife and for his children. Somewhere, parents have to lay down their lives for their children, and there sometimes comes a time when children must lay down their lives for their parents.
But when that happens, you have an atmosphere of love. You have an atmosphere where there is true authority, where there is true order, where there is a real family life, and where it represents something of what God intended.
So it must be with the divine family. You cannot get human beings living together unless we are prepared to lay down our lives for one another—and actually lay down our lives for one another.
Fruit comes out of this. Lay down your life, and fruit will be the result. Lay down your life more deeply, and there will be more fruit. Lay down your life even more deeply, and there will be even more fruit. It is an infallible law with God.
So, if there is no fruit in your life, I must tell you, whatever your excuse, whatever you say, you do not have to come and discuss it with me: somewhere the love of God is absent. Somewhere in your life the love of God is absent. It is being contradicted, ignored, overlooked.
For when divine love takes hold of a born-again believer, then surely as night follows day and day follows night, that believer will be led to the cross. And there, in their path, stark and bloody and inescapable, is Calvary.
For the first time, you are faced with whether you will fall into the ground and die. It is not all glory and ecstasy, as we sometimes think. It is wonderful when you see that you have been crucified with Christ, but within hours someone will be nailing the nails into your hands.
You cannot do it yourself. God will so ordain that your nearest and dearest will do it for you. Within a matter of hours—your colleagues, your co-workers, fellow members of the body of Christ, circumstances, unsaved relatives and friends, your husband, your wife, your children—they are the agents that God uses to see that you know what it is to be crucified with Christ.
You do not have to bother your head about how to be crucified. The Lord will take care of that. Fear not. He has already done it two thousand years ago. It is the application of it in your life, and He will use your nearest and dearest, your circumstances, all the people that come into your life, to do this very thing in your life. You do not have to worry about it.
But we all know that we should lay down our lives until we come to it. It is all right if it is a lovely feeling that suddenly, as we lay down our lives, immediately the Lord will be there to fill us with power, life, joy, and revelation.
But the Lord often stands back and allows a time to go by where everything is impossible. Everything within us screams, “Do not go this way! Do not go this way! They will trample over you. They will walk over you. They will destroy you. They will do this and this to you. You will never be the same.”
Thank God. Had you not asked the Lord to change you?
The divine method. There is only one method. God has no other method. He has only one method: you must lay down your life. It is the way of the cross.
Now immediately someone says, “Well, what about the Holy Spirit?” Quite right. What about the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit will only come upon you in fullness and power, in an abiding way—not a transient way.
Now, get me right on this. There are experiences of the Holy Spirit that are transient. There are touches from heaven; there are touches of glory. They come and they go. But there is a coming of the Holy Spirit upon a human being that is forever—not only an indwelling, but a committal.
When Jesus came to those waters of Jordan, He did not need to be baptised. He was already righteous. He was without sin. When John the Baptist saw Him, he said, “Thou shouldest baptise me, and comest Thou to me?” But Jesus said:
Suffer it to be so now:
For thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
What did Jesus mean? He meant something far, far deeper than perhaps most certainly at that time realised. He meant this: “If I am to do the will of God, I have to make a cold-blooded decision today. That cold-blooded decision is to commit Myself to the death of the cross three years before I come to it.”
I do not believe anyone helped the Lord Jesus—neither the Father, nor the Spirit, nor anybody. It was a decision that He had to make with His own will as the Son of Man. He chose to go into those waters of Jordan and be baptised.
He was really saying, “Father, I love You, and I love this world, and I love those whom You have given to Me out of this world. I commit Myself to the death of the cross, that I might win them.”
In that moment the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit came in bodily form as a dove, and dwelt upon Him—abode upon Him. John said, “I was told that whoever I saw the Holy Spirit coming and abiding upon, He was the Messiah.”
He did not just touch Him. He did not just fill Him and go. He did not just open heaven for a revelation and then close it again. The heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit came upon the Lord Jesus and dwelt upon Him.
Many of us have understood the dove as a symbol of meekness, a symbol of greatness, and a symbol of sweetness. It may be so. But in my estimation, that is not the meaning of the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove.
You see, John the Baptist knew instantly. He came from a very poor family, and he knew too that Joseph and Mary were poor people. Their sacrifice in the temple was not a bullock—they could not afford it—nor was it a lamb. They could not afford it. It was two turtledoves.
The moment John the Baptist saw the Holy Spirit coming down in that symbol of sacrifice, he said:
Behold, the Lamb of God,
That taketh away the sin of the world.
He understood instantly: the Holy Spirit had come upon Him to enable Him to lay down His life, that the sin question might be forever settled.
It is not different with us—with you or with me. Only when you are, in a cold-blooded way, willing to do the will of God and commit yourself to the death of the cross, even though you may not fully understand it, only then are you a candidate for the Holy Spirit to come upon you and enable you to do what you cannot do yourself.
You cannot do it yourself. There is no way for you to do it yourself. Try. Try to die for other people. Try to fall into the ground and die. Try to be humble. Try to be broken. Try to lay down your life for the church and for the world. You cannot do it.
You may do it for a day, but believe me, you will be exhausted. You will nearly be in a mental home with a nervous breakdown by the end of a month of trying somehow to lay down your life. It is impossible. It is unnatural to the fallen nature. It is unnatural to our self-centredness, to our instinct of self-preservation.
Only the Holy Spirit indwelling us and coming upon us can enable us really to lay down our lives, so that all that sordid ambition, all that desire for assertion, all that desire somehow to be something, or somehow to fight for our rights, or whatever else, is finally dealt with.
It is not dealt with in one single moment; it is a lifetime. But the Holy Spirit is there to enable us to do it. If Jesus, who was without sin, needed the Holy Spirit to die daily for three and a half years of public ministry, how much more do you and I?
It is not an experience of the Holy Spirit that you need in the first place. It is love.
It is only when the love of God has touched your heart initially, perhaps in a first way, that turns you toward the Father, turns you toward the Lord Jesus, turns you toward His will, that for the first time you are faced with the possibility: “Shall I lay down my life, or not?”
There are some other wonderful things in John 15. I would like to touch on two other matters, if we have time. In John 15:11, listen to this. Oh, I think these are beautiful words:
These things have I spoken unto you,
That My joy may be in you,
And that your joy may be made full.
One has to say that there are very few Christians who have joy. Very few. Is that not so?
Now, we are not talking about that bubbly, effervescent thing, although now and again even that is a relief. We are not talking about that bubbly, effervescent type of joy that the world knows when it gets hilarious and then commits suicide the same night.
No, I am not saying something funny. It is true. It is one of the tragedies of the world, because it is a façade. It is a façade. It is not joy.
Many Christians have fallen into the same thing. They can come into a meeting where you have a worked-up emotional atmosphere, where all apparently is joy, but it is not. You get out of it and you fall flat on your face. Taken away from it, you spiritually die.
What did the Lord Jesus mean when He said, “These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you”? Ah, so that is the beginning: His joy—not my joy, but His joy. When His joy is in me, then my joy is made full.
There is only one way for His joy to be in us: it is when we go the way He went. When we go the way He went, His joy is in us, and our joy is made full.
Do not think for a single moment that when you go the way of the cross it is all dark, all morbid, all dreadful. No, no, no. There is a joy that is made full.
God delights to do things for people who have let go. He cooks up the most amazing surprises for them. Sometimes He will leave you for years and years to go through a lonely way of difficulty and problem, and then at the end He will come with little surprises that only love could conceive.
There is a wonderful word in the Old Testament. It is in Psalm 37:
Delight thyself also in the Lord;
And He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
I think that is one of the most amazing promises in the Word of God. “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” So few people have the desires of their heart.
But if you delight yourself in the Lord—and that is more than just obeying, more than just by duty following, more than just an understanding or knowing of the will of God—it is a life of worship, of delight in the Lord, of transport in the Lord. He gives you the desires of your heart.
Another wonderful thing in this chapter is John 15:15:
No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you.
I think that is a wonderful word. To friends, He divulges His heart. The secret of the Lord is given to us. The Lord does not give His secrets to everybody, and He does not divulge His heart to everybody. But if we are prepared to lay down our lives, then there is a kind of revelation, a manifestation of the love of God to us.
Then John 15:12:
This is My commandment,
That ye love one another,
Even as I have loved you.
There is no other way for the body to be built up, is there? How interesting it is, as we saw on one of these evenings, that 1 Corinthians 13 comes in the middle of a passage all to do with church life—with the gifts of the church, the functions of the body, the disorders that can come to the Lord’s table, and all these things.
Right in the middle of it, suddenly the apostle says, “Now I will show you a most excellent way.” It is as if the Spirit of God said to the apostle, “Do not let them just think that it is a matter of functions and gifts, and exercising these things, and manifesting the Spirit. There is more to it than this.”
Then comes 1 Corinthians 13: “If I have not love, I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal,” and so on. Then he ends the matter with, “Pursue love. Follow after love.” Or, as Phillips puts it, “Make love your aim.”
In Ephesians 4:16, it speaks of the building up of the body of the Lord and says that it “maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.” The divine method.
“This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I also loved you.” How did the Lord love you? He loved you when you were an ugly, impossible, self-centred, self-seeking, empty, hell-deserving sinner.
When you were in that state—blind, dead in sins, darkened in your mind, alienated from God—He loved you. That is how we are to love one another. But, oh, we do not.
Our brother or sister has only to display one fault, and we are getting all upset straight away. It is strange what the Lord Jesus said about taking the beam out of our own eye before we take the speck out of our brother’s eye.
Very often, the speck in our brother is the beam in ours, only we just cannot see it. It is only when God gives us an understanding about ourselves, and we take the thing out, that we suddenly realise, “I had no right to speak about so-and-so like that. I had it ten times more.”
Love, even as I also loved you. Can anybody finish with another believer? If you are disillusioned with another believer, if you are disappointed with another believer, if all you can see in another believer are the failings and faults, the weaknesses and frailty, God has not yet done too much in you.
How are you to love your brother? Not because he is perfect. Not because he has only one per cent of faults. Not because he has only ten per cent of faults. You are to love him as if he is one hundred per cent at fault. That is how the Lord loved you.
It is amazing: sometimes the Lord takes five years to get us to an issue, but we get disillusioned with another brother or sister because they have not got through in a week. We say, “They came to that conference at Richmond, and they did not settle it.”
We forget that it may have taken us ten years before the Lord almost dragged us in. Finally He met us, and we came through. Then we turn round and say, “Why is it not happening? Something is wrong.”
Oh, if we could only understand how God has dealt with you and dealt with me, if we understood how God has dealt with us, then perhaps we would understand a good deal more about one another.
What helped you most? Was it someone standing there like some old schoolmaster, grimacing at you, looking with a thunderous brow? Did that help you? Did those people help you, forever pointing out all your failings and faults?
Or was it the person whom you felt in your heart had a real, shrewd suspicion of just what you were, but loved you just the same?
We all know such people in our spiritual history: people who loved us in spite of what we were, who knew, and somehow were faithful. They spoke the truth in love, but they loved us. Those were the people who built us up. Those were the people who finally brought us to the place where we would break down in tears and melt before God. Those were the ones who helped us on with God.
Oh, the damage we do to one another. The building up of the church.
Now, I would like to pass you on to another portion in this matter of the divine method. You will find it in John’s Gospel again, in John 13. We cannot read all of this; I will read just a few verses from John 13.
Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
And during supper, the devil having already put 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 came forth from God, and goeth unto God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments; and He took a towel, and girded Himself.
Then He poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.
And then, in John 13:12:
So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments, and sat down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
Ye call Me, Teacher, and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
For I have given you an example, that ye also should do as I have done to you.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord; neither one that is sent greater than He that sent him.
If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them.
And John 13:34:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.
What a beautiful phrase that is at the beginning of this marvellous chapter: “Having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them to the uttermost.” I like that much more than “to the end.” It was not that there was an end of the Lord’s love, or a point of time when He finished. He loved them to the uttermost.
Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Son of Man, Jesus in whom all the fullness of the Father dwells in bodily form, Jesus, God the Son, took a towel, laid aside His outer garments, girded Himself with the towel, took a basin, a bowl, filled it with water, and then knelt in front of each of His disciples and washed their feet.
It is almost too much for the mind. Can God kneel before a creature He has made? Can the Messiah kneel before His subjects? Can the Master kneel before the disciple, the Teacher before the student? This is something the world knows nothing of. This is an inversion of the world order.
Jesus said, “I have given you an example, that ye also should do as I have done to you.” Now I want you to notice one thing, so that one matter becomes inescapable: every one of those twelve disciples was present.
Not only John, who had such an understanding of the Lord Jesus and was nearest to His heart than any of the others, but Peter, who was to deny Him with oaths that very night. And all the others—they all denied Him and fled. We forget that. We often think Peter was the only one, but it says in the Book that all of them did the same.
All of them were there. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all was that Judas was there. I am not sure that many here—I must include myself—I am not sure that many of us would wash all the disciples’ feet.
I think we would say, “Now, so-and-so is going on with the Lord. I will wash so-and-so’s feet. Oh, God is doing something in so-and-so. I will wash their feet. I do not mind kneeling for a moment before them because I am so delighted with the way they are going.”
But so-and-so? “I would not give you two pennies for so-and-so. All wind, noisy gong, clanging cymbal. The sooner someone comes down and bangs them on the head, the better. The sooner somehow or other they come to an end, the better.”
Jesus washed all their feet.
Maybe you say there is somebody in the company whose feet you just cannot wash. You could not do this kind of thing with them. It would be misunderstood. Somehow they would take advantage of you. There is no such thing. I must remind you that Judas Iscariot was there, and He washed the feet of Judas.
If my Lord, if our Lord, can wash the feet of Judas Iscariot, is there a single believer, a single one within the company of the church, whose feet I cannot wash?
It is not that you become a partaker of that one’s sin. Jesus knew exactly what was in Judas’s heart. Jesus knew that every one of them would deny Him and flee from Him. He knew it all. He knew what was in them. He prayed for them. He knew exactly what was going to happen. And He washed their feet.
In the old days, in the Middle East and especially in Israel, when people walked with sandals, their feet got grimy and dirty, filthy. The first thing you did when a person came to visit you, as a mark of respect, love, and hospitality, was that a slave came and washed their feet.
The master did not do it normally, nor the owner of the house, but a slave was there on hand to wash the feet. You all know, I am quite sure—especially since most of you folks over here never seem to wear sandals—that when your feet are hot, you are hot; and when your feet are dirty, you feel dirty.
That is why the Lord Jesus said to Peter, “He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet.” What we contract through the world in day-to-day life.
Do you know, here is a ministry that most of us have overlooked and somehow not faced. Most of us have to go out into the world and have contact with the world. Many of you have jobs in the world. You rub shoulders with the world.
You cannot help, even though you are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, in the way you have to walk each day, contracting the defilement and dirt of the world. It is the job of believers, one to another, just to wash that away, just to refresh the saints. What a wonderful ministry.
Hands are infinitely nicer things than feet. Normally hands do not smell. Even when they get sweaty and dirty, hands are refined. Now, I know the Chinese never, ever shook hands because they did not like to; they did not feel it was clean. They shook their own hands.
But the rest of us always shake one another’s hands. Do you know why we used to shake hands? Because it showed, with the right hand, there was not a dagger in it. That is why we used to shake hands. It came from the Roman days: when you put your hand out, it was clear there was nothing in the hand.
I say hands are very refined things. Even when they are sweaty and dirty, they are somehow refined. I do not mind taking your hands and shaking them. I do not mind. But your feet—now you laugh, but it brings us immediately to the point.
There is nothing somehow more unrefined, more vulgar, more sweaty, more dirty than feet. Jesus washed their feet. It is inescapable.
It is very easy to be finished with one another, to be done with one another, to write one another off. But it was the feet Jesus said we were to wash—perhaps, we would say, the crudest, most vulgar part of us.
This finds me out, and it must find you out, because all our problems in fellowship come down to feet. We will accept the head; we will accept the hands; but we cannot accept the feet.
Jesus said, “I am your Teacher and Master, yet I have washed your feet. I have left you an example that ye also should do, one to another.”
Before we finish, there is one other thing also in John’s Gospel to which I would like to point. All this is what I have called the divine method. It is one thing to lay down your life for friends, one thing to lay it down in principle; it is another thing to take it to the nth degree—love to the uttermost.
Lastly, in John 12:1, we will read this little story, so well known to you.
Jesus therefore six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus raised from the dead.
So they made Him a supper there: and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that sat at meat with Him.
Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of pure nard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, that should betray Him, saith, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred shillings, and given to the poor?
Now this he said, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the bag took away what was put therein.
Jesus therefore said, Suffer her to keep it against the day of My burying.
For the poor ye have always with you; but Me ye have not always.
This same story, of course, is told again in Matthew 26 and Mark 14. I think, again, it reveals the divine method.
Not one of those disciples who had been with Jesus—those twelve apostles who had been with Jesus for three years and a bit—understood what He was facing. Not one of them. Indeed, every time the Lord Jesus spoke about the cross, they said, “Do not talk to us about it. It is not becoming. It is not right. It is darkness in You to think of such a thing. Do not speak about it.”
But this dear sister, with the perception of love, dimly—how, I do not know, but by the Spirit of God—dimly perceived, dimly understood, that Jesus was to die.
How great was the extent of her knowledge? I do not know. But her perception led her to identification.
She took the most costly thing she had in her home. In those days, not today, it was common amongst Jewish people to keep their savings, because of inflation—nothing new under the sun—in some precious commodity. Many would keep it in spikenard or other precious spices, because they were really worth their weight in gold.
In other words, they would turn their money into spices, or something like that, and keep it. There was an added value to turning your savings into spikenard. The burial ritual of the Jewish people was a very costly ritual and required a lot of spikenard.
Therefore, people often used to keep their savings in spikenard so that if a member of the family died, or they died, the spikenard was there to be used for their burial.
Maybe it brings it home to you if I tell you that this precious alabaster pot, or alabaster cruse, of spikenard was in fact worth one year’s wages. Maybe that will bring it home to you. It was worth one year’s wages.
Now, Lazarus and Martha and Mary were not wealthy people. They were not necessarily the poorest of the poor, but they were not wealthy people. This represented something.
When, by the Spirit of God, because of the love of God in her heart, the sensitivity born of true devotion and love, Mary perceived that Jesus was going to die and sensed His loneliness, sensed the fact that maybe no one understood, no one was with Him, no one was touching Him, she must have perhaps prayed and reflected, “Is there anything I could do to stand with Him, to be with Him?”
She suddenly thought, “The alabaster cruse.” She went and took it, broke it, and poured it over Him. Judas and the disciples were horrified. A year’s wages. Judas said in pompous piety, “We could have fed the poor.”
The divine method. When there is love, it will bring you to be identified with your Lord. Whithersoever the Lamb goes, you will go. Wherever He leads, you will follow.
If it is a valley of the shadow of death, you will go. If it is to a place of green pastures and still waters, you will follow. If it is into warfare, you will go. Wherever it is, you follow Him. Into death, into resurrection, you follow Him.
Maybe there is something very precious in your life. Normally there is something that is the most precious thing in our life, and until we let it go, we are blocked.
I do not know what the alabaster cruse is in your life. I know what it was in mine. But I think every single person, intuitively, if they have never put it into words, knows the alabaster cruse, the precious spikenard, that is hidden somewhere in our being.
That is the thing that the Lord requires you to take. He will not push you. He will not cajole you. He will not pressurise you. He will not even say anything. He will leave you. You know.
You have to take that thing. He will not break it. You must break it. He will not pour it over Himself. You must pour it over Him.
Two things came out of that. The fragrance filled the house. If I know anything about homes in the Middle East, I reckon it filled the houses next door as well. The very street outside would have been permeated with the fragrance of that ointment.
Oh, I wish there was more fragrance of the Lord Jesus in my life. Sadly, so often, it is trapped in an unbroken alabaster cruse. I wish there was more fragrance in our meetings, in our assemblies, in our fellowship. Sadly, it is in unbroken alabaster cruses. We have trapped it inside.
The Lord will never thunder at us, “Break it!” He leaves us to the work of love.
If there is love in us, it will identify us so with our Master that in the end, even if it is only on our deathbed, we shall take that alabaster cruse and finally break it and pour it all over the Lord. But why wait to a deathbed? Why not do it now?
Jesus said in the other version, in Matthew and Mark, “This that she hath done shall be told for a memorial of her wherever the Gospel is preached.” What did He mean? Well, I think He meant simply this: that wherever the Gospel—the saving love of God—is told, the manifestation of it in a life such as Mary’s will also be told.
It is very easy for us, with our understanding of church truth, doctrine, the purpose of God, the end of God, and the goal of God, sometimes to think that we love the Lord. Then suddenly we come face to face with a person in a community that many of us would write off, and we meet an alabaster cruse that has been broken and poured out.
Such, in my estimation—and I hope I do not cause any confusion by saying this—is Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Many people could never believe that an abbess in a Roman Catholic convent could be a lover of the Lord Jesus. But that kind of person rebukes those of us who have understood the purpose of God and church truth more than anybody else.
I do not believe it is just religion. I only wish I had the same devotion and the same sacrifice, that I could only, by the grace of God, take any alabaster cruse in my life, break it, and pour the whole upon Him.
In the final analysis, it is our love for Him that is going to determine our love for everyone else. May God help us. May we be amongst that number, that company, that are a manifestation of the love of God.
Wherever the Gospel is preached, there in our lives, in the companies of which we are part, may the love of God be demonstrated in action.
The divine method. We talked about the divine command, the divine diagnosis, and the divine demonstration. We have had this one last thing this morning: the divine method.
God has no other way and no other method. The Holy Spirit will touch no other way and no other method. If we would see the house of God built up and completed, if we would see the bride making herself ready for the Bridegroom, if we would come to the throne of God, if we by the grace of God should overcome, it will be by the love of God.
May the love wherewith the Father loves the Son be in you and in me. And may Jesus be in you and in me. Shall we pray?
O Lord, only You know where there is an unbroken alabaster cruse of precious ointment. Help us, Lord, we pray, by Thy grace, as our love for Thee is kindled, to take that precious thing, whatever it is, and break it at Thy feet.
O Lord, help us in this matter, we pray. It is no easy thing for us to go this way, but Lord, we believe that if Thou shouldest kindle our love afresh, cause that love to be shed abroad in our hearts, and cause that love to abound yet more and more to the day of Jesus Christ, then, Lord, somehow we shall be enabled to fall into the ground and die. So shall come a harvest for Thee.
So, Lord, we shall be enabled to wash one another’s feet, even those who are failing the most amongst us. We shall be enabled, dear Lord, by Thy grace, to take that which is most precious to us, representing, as it were, our life’s work, and break it for Thee.
Help us, Lord, we pray, that that love may be in us, and Thou in us. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.