Good morning, brothers and sisters. It is good to be here with you. I see many faces that we have known for thirty years. I think I first came to Richmond in 1974, so more than thirty years ago. It is just good to be here.
I see some faces I do not recognize, and maybe during the meal, if you are going to stay here, just come by and say hello and introduce yourself.
This morning, I would like for us to focus on a portion of God’s Word found in the Gospel of John, Chapter 13. I am sure it is familiar to all of us here.
Let us begin to read John 13:1-17, and then John 13:34-35.
Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour had 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.
So He cometh to Simon Peter. He saith unto Him, “Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?”
Jesus answered and said unto him, “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter.”
Peter saith unto Him, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me.”
Simon Peter saith unto Him, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
Jesus saith to him, “He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.”
For He knew him that should betray Him; therefore said He, “Ye are not all clean.”
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.”
“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.”
Let us pray together.
Lord, we thank You for the privilege and joy and blessing of being gathered together in Your name, and being invited by You to come and sit with You at Your table. Lord, we trust that something of eternal value has been accomplished as we have been together with You at Your table. Thank You for providing such a wonderful honor and blessing for us.
Thank You now that we have a copy of Your Word in our hands. We have read a portion of it, and Lord, we ask this morning that You will simply help us to understand the truth that is important for us to understand at this point in our lives.
Lord, we know that You are able to take this written Word and make it a living Word to each one of our hearts—make it something that is applicable to our own situation. We want to commit it all into Your hands, trusting that as we stand under the anointing of Your Holy Spirit for speaking, for hearing—yes, Lord, for obeying—we will see Your working in our lives during this time together.
Be glorified. Have Your way. Build Your church. We ask it in Your name. Amen.
Our Lord Jesus, in a matter of hours, is going to be nailed to a cross by Roman soldiers, instigated by the Jewish rulers of the people to whom He came as Messiah. Now, it was not the Jewish people so much as it was their rulers that instigated this death. But here He has just a matter of hours left, and it is very evident that our Lord is aware of the shortness of the time.
Our Lord is and was a master teacher. He was the truth, and He had the ability to communicate that truth, especially to these twelve men whom He had called to be disciples and apostles.
It seems to me that here, in these last hours before the crucifixion, our Lord knows that there is a very important lesson for these twelve men to learn. I think in my own heart that He was aware of this, and He was just waiting for this event.
They had witnessed our Lord doing many things. They had heard Him say many wonderful truths. But now there seems to be this one lesson that our Lord wants to indelibly impress upon the hearts of these twelve men.
You know, they are in a very crucial place. In a matter of days, our Lord is going to be ascending back to the right hand of the Father. He is not going to be here, and these twelve men have a very serious responsibility.
So I think He allows this final lesson to be the lesson that He hopes they will never forget. I hope that happens to us this morning: that as we have this fellowship in the Word of God, somehow the Holy Spirit will impress this lesson indelibly upon our hearts, that He will draw it upon each one of our hearts in such a way that we will never forget.
It is the most important of all lessons, in my estimation.
Our Lord wanted us to learn this lesson because there is another experience that He is going to have that you and I cannot enter into—that is, being crucified. There is a great work that He accomplished there, and by the working of the Holy Spirit, we can enter into the reality of it.
But this event that we have just read about is an event in the life of our Lord Jesus through which, I think, He was seeking to communicate to these twelve men the lesson of all lessons. If that is true, then you and I need to learn this lesson as well.
It is a lesson that maybe you have learned to one degree or another, but it is one of those lessons that we can easily forget as well. It may be a day when the Lord wants to renew our understanding of this wonderful, necessary lesson as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not optional.
We want to fellowship about this lesson. I want to do it by first talking about the things that happen before the actual event, then having some fellowship about the event itself, then considering what happens after the event, and finally making some application and summation of these verses.
We have many pictures painted by artists of our Lord Jesus doing many different things. We have pictures of Him being crucified, pictures of Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and many other pictures.
But a few years ago, as we were fellowshipping about this passage of Scripture, I mentioned that I had never seen a picture of our Lord Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. It is an interesting thing. Of all the lessons that He wants us to learn, here is one of the most important ones, and seemingly there was no one who felt the necessity of painting a picture about it.
But I was proven wrong. Someone came to me afterwards and gave me a copy of a picture of our Lord Jesus washing the feet of these twelve disciples.
When we read these verses, we discover that our Lord is fully aware. This whole situation is not going to catch Him off guard. He is not unaware that in a matter of hours He is going to be crucified.
With all of this happening, our Lord demonstrates His love in a way that we do not see it demonstrated in terms of these kinds of relationships. Certainly, when He is crucified on the cross, that is the ultimate demonstration of His love. But here there is a lesson—something that He is going to do—that He is going to require those who believe in Him also to learn and put into practice.
Our Lord knew that His hour was coming, that it was time for Him to leave the earth and go back to the Father. The Lord knew that Judas was going to betray Him. John tells us, having loved His disciples, He loved them to the end.
One of the other translations is that He loved them to the uttermost. He could not have loved them any more than He loved them. Here at the very end, with all the dynamics that were going on, the other Gospel accounts seem to indicate that these twelve men were having a heated discussion among themselves.
Remember what the discussion was about? Who was going to be number one? Who was going to be the greatest? So this dynamic among the disciples, this struggle and tug of war to be number one, was also part of this event.
Our Lord knows that it is time for Him to go back to the right hand of the Father. He is going to be crucified, buried, resurrected, and then ascended. But He is also fully aware that one of these twelve men, with whom He had spent three and a half years, had already worked out an arrangement to betray Him.
Now, I want us to think this morning: if this were your situation, put yourself in the situation of our Lord Jesus. Knowing all of this, how would you have reacted? If it had been me, I would have tried to find a motel room far away from everything and get away from this whole thing.
But John tells us, having loved those who were in the world, He loved them to the uttermost. He did not allow anything to prevent Him from manifesting His deep love for these twelve men.
In terms of preparation for this event, it is very clear when we read the other Gospel accounts that our Lord Jesus is the One who took the responsibility to prepare for this final meal together, the Passover meal with these twelve men. He made arrangements with a man for a large upper room. At some point, He sent Peter and John to this place and had them make all the arrangements.
When you stop to read about the event, you begin to discover that apparently something is missing. What is missing is a little Gentile girl responsible to wash the feet of the people coming to have this meal together.
This task was looked upon by the Jewish people as such a lowly task that not even Hebrew girls were permitted to do it. It had to be a Gentile girl, a little teenager. She sat at the door, and when the disciples came in, when the guests came in, she had the responsibility of washing their feet.
But there was no Gentile girl. There was nobody to wash feet. Do you think this was an oversight on our Lord’s part? Do you think He just made a mistake and forgot about this? I do not think so, brothers and sisters. I think this was intentionally planned by our Lord.
This was going to be a learning opportunity for these twelve men. Let us not forget what is going on in their minds. They are thinking about who is going to be number one. So when they walk in the door to have this meal with our Lord, apparently they do not even consider the matter of washing feet.
Some of you, I am sure, have been to Jerusalem and have walked in the streets, in the souks of Jerusalem. You discover that it is a very dirty place. There are live animals there, and you know when you have live animals, you have other things.
When you walk with sandals without socks in the streets of Jerusalem, you can be sure your feet need to be washed.
So they had come to this Passover meal. They came in, and nobody was thinking about washing feet. It is an amazing thing that not one of those twelve men even mentioned, at least in the record we have, the need to wash somebody’s feet.
They are all there with this thing going on in their minds, and they are seated around this table—or, I should say, reclining around this table. It was not a meal like we have a meal, like we are going to have afterwards.
We are going to have a table where we sit down on chairs and share some food together. But this was reclining. The table was low; probably there were some pillows on the floor, and they lay down on the floor. They reclined close to each other.
Remember later on in John 13, John is lying next to the Lord; he is lying on His breast, on His chest. When Peter wanted to know whom the Lord was talking about, he gestured to John, and John leaned over and asked, “Who is the one who is going to betray You?”
So I want you to get that picture. They are basically lying there, reclining on the floor. The table is there in front of all of them, and it is a place where they can reach and get the food that is on the table.
Brothers and sisters, when you are lying in that position, you are pretty close to people’s feet. There was a real need for the feet to be washed so that there was not something happening that interfered with enjoying that meal.
But apparently none of these twelve men gave a second thought to the need for these feet to be washed. I wonder if our Lord did not wait a while when they got there. It says, “During supper.” I think He waited to see if anybody would volunteer. But they did not.
So He gets up from the table, takes off His outer garments, and takes the towel. The towel is there, the basin is there, and the water is there, but there is no little girl to wash the feet.
Since none of these twelve were willing to volunteer, He got up, took off His outer garments, girded Himself with a towel, put water in a basin, and proceeded to wash the feet of these twelve men.
Brothers and sisters, we have to give some thought as to Who it is that is performing this task. Who is it? Do we remember?
This is none other than the eternal Son of God in human flesh, taking off His garments, girding Himself with a servant’s towel, pouring water in a basin, getting down on His knees, and washing the dirty, stinking feet of twelve men.
Please, do not ignore the reality of Who this is. He is the Maker of the universe. He is the sovereign God. He is God the Son, having been incarnated, having come and been born into the human race as Jesus of Nazareth.
Here He is, having been responsible for creating the whole universe. John tells us that not one thing was created but what He created. Now here He is in this lowly position, down on His knees in front of the dirty feet of these twelve men, taking this menial task of washing the disciples’ feet.
I do not know if we have as big a concept and understanding of our Lord Jesus as we need to have. Let me try to magnify this a little bit.
A few months ago, I was reading an article in a magazine. The article was telling about a new telescope—not the Hubble, but a new telescope they had invented. With this new telescope, they were able to see quite a distance.
Do you have any idea how far they could see? Any guesses? Nobody wants to guess? Six hundred quintillion miles.
Did you hear? Six hundred quintillion miles. Any mathematicians here? Six hundred quintillion miles.
Who created that? The same One who is on His knees here in front of these twelve men. He created all of that, and now He is taking this lowly position of washing dirty, stinking feet.
This is Who it is. We should not forget. Do not read this story as just another story. You need to see, dear brothers and sisters, because He is going to make some very radical statements before we get finished with these verses.
He has a right to make them. We, as His disciples—if we are His genuine disciples—need to listen to what He has to say. It is not a suggestion. It is not a good idea, but a commandment. We need to understand what that commandment is, with a willingness to obey what He says for us to do.
We have this situation prior to the event, and then we have the event itself, where these twelve men are around the table, apparently enjoying the food that is on the table. Our Lord gets up, as we said earlier, puts on the servant’s towel, pours water into a basin, and proceeds to wash the feet of these twelve men.
There are two of these men that I want to call attention to for just a few moments. The first one is Simon Peter.
Apparently our Lord began with some of the other disciples. But when Peter saw Him coming toward him, he could not keep quiet. I mean, this is Peter. He could never keep quiet. He always opened his mouth at the wrong time and said the wrong thing. This is another instance in which that happens.
When he sees the Lord coming to wash his feet, he says, “Lord, are You going to wash my feet?”
Dear brothers and sisters, I cannot say this morning what was going on inside Peter. Why did he say such a thing? Was he embarrassed that he had not taken the initiative, gotten the water in the basin and the towel, and begun to wash the others? Was he embarrassed?
Or maybe there was some pride. “Lord, You can wash other people’s feet, but I am able to wash my own. I do not need for You to wash my feet. Just give me the basin and the towel, and I will wash my own feet.”
But the Lord did not respond in that kind of way. He simply responded by saying, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.”
Peter said, “Well then, in that case, Lord, not only my feet, but my hands and my head. I want You to wash all of me.”
One day we have to meet Simon Peter, and we have to be careful what we say, because he may challenge us on anything we might say. But I feel that one of Peter’s problems was that he did not know how to be loved.
Now, you say, “Well, Ernie.” But I think this is his problem. Not only do I think it is his problem; you know what, dear brother? I think it is your problem, and I think it is my problem.
What kind of love does our Lord have for us? It is perfect love. It is eternal love. It is sacrificial love. It is unchanging love. It is divine love. And it is a love that will transform us.
Why are we not more like what we are supposed to be? Why is not more of God’s work done in us than has been done to this point? Some of us have gray hairs. We have been along this way for a while. The question is, why is not the work more complete?
I am here this morning to say that I think the major problem for us is that we do not know how to let Him love us the way He loves us. For whatever reason, maybe you are so proud and independent that you want to do it yourself. I do not know.
But dear brothers and sisters, if we are in a position where God is free to love us, do you know what the result will be? Do you know what He has predestined us to be? He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we stood beside our Lord today, we would have to admit that there is so much in us that is unlike Him. There should be a lot more of Him in us than there is. Why is it not there? I am convinced it is because we have not learned to let Him love us.
We are not going to be able to fulfill the commandment that He gives us in John 13:34-35 unless we first learn how to be loved.
This morning, in our time at the Lord’s table, you could very clearly see where the emphasis was: in God’s great love for us. Dear brothers and sisters, I ask again, why is it that this great love has not had the impact that it should have had?
I am not trying to make us feel guilty. I am trying to challenge us and encourage us to let God love us the way He loves us. He loves you perfectly.
But I think sometimes, like Peter, we do not even understand. I think Peter was acting out of his own emotions. I do not think he was clear about the dynamic of what our Lord was doing. He was allowing his emotions to get in the way and to prevent the Lord.
In one breath, he calls Him Lord, and then turns right around and says, “Never.” How can you do that, brothers and sisters? How can you call Someone Lord and then say to Him, “Never”? It is a total contradiction.
If for no other reason, Peter should have submitted because He was the Lord Who was washing his feet. But he actually took the position of being lord and said, “Never.”
Fortunately for him, when the Lord rebuked him, he changed. He said, “Lord, not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well.”
You can see, dear brothers and sisters, that sometimes our emotions can be a tremendous hindrance to God loving us. We get angry with Him. No, we would never admit that we are angry with Him, but when things do not go the way we want them to go, when things happen that are not explainable, when tragedy comes into our lives, we can react against Him.
I will never forget. Back in 1970, I was on an airplane flying from Louisville, Kentucky, to Long Island, New York. Next to me there was a man seated reading a newspaper article.
I guess he became so overwhelmed with the information he was reading that he spoke out loud. He said, “How could a holy God do something like that?” He got everybody’s attention. “How could a God do something like that?”
What he was reading about was an article where a father and son were out mowing the grass, and some freak accident occurred in which the little boy was mangled in the lawn mower. Without any judge or jury, this man convicted God immediately.
You see, this is what feelings do. They blind us to reality. I think this is what was happening with Peter.
I do not know if you have ever had someone wash your feet. I have, a number of times. It is a wonderful, glorious experience. But sometimes we make it difficult for people to wash our feet.
It is almost like somebody comes with a basin of water and a towel, and they are down on their knees wanting to wash your feet, and you put your feet in the basin real fast and splash the water everywhere, all over them.
Some of us are like that. We do not know how to let other people love us the way they want to love us. We make it very difficult for them.
I tell the brothers and sisters in Brazil, “You are like a cactus. Have you ever tried to hug a cactus?” It is not easy, brothers and sisters, but we have to do it because the Lord commands you to love me.
Sometimes we make it difficult. Why? I think there are a number of dynamics going on inside of us, and we need the help of our blessed Holy Spirit to come and help us overcome those things that we use to close the door to the love that our Lord has for us.
I think Peter represents this. I would hope that you would be willing to go into the Lord’s presence all by yourself and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you whether there is anything in you that prevents you from letting God love you the way He loves you.
If we can let Him love us just the way He loves us, He will transform us into the image of His Son. There will be no coincidences, no accidents, no tragedies. They will all be something that God will use to produce the character of our Lord Jesus Christ in us.
Predestined, brothers and sisters—predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Can you believe it?
This has been real in my heart for a number of years, but even this morning, I do not fully believe it: that one day our heavenly Father is going to be able to look at us and see the character of His Son in us.
Think where we were when we started. There was absolutely nothing—zero—of the Lord Jesus Christ in us. Yet He has predestined us. This is the gospel, brothers and sisters: not just forgiveness, not just victory over sin, as wonderful as all of that is.
Think about it. One day, you are going to have the character of the Son of God fully formed in you. When God looks at you, He is going to see the same character in you.
How long would it take you to produce that? If you lived a thousand lifetimes of a hundred years each—that is ten thousand years—and spent every waking moment working on making yourself like Jesus, what would be the result after ten thousand years, with no help from anybody else except yourself?
A total failure. But our God, out of His great, great love for us—this is why He saved us—so that He could reproduce the character of His Son in us.
My dear brother and sister, this will not happen unless you learn to let Him love you the way He loves you. He knows everything about you there is to know. There is not one thing in your life of which He is not aware.
He knows exactly what needs to happen in order for you to be willing to let go of that thing that prevents you from loving Him, to bring it to death, and then through resurrection bring in the character of Christ in us.
I do not know how long you have known the Lord. Maybe you have been one of those faithful ones who has walked diligently right down the path. But even if that is the case, there is still work to be done.
Please be patient with me. God is not finished yet. Remember the little buttons we used to wear? “Please be patient with me. God is not finished yet.”
But when He is finished, it will be a marvelous work. I think the most important thing that you and I can do is learn to receive the love the way He dispenses it to us.
The other person that I want to mention for a few moments is one about whom we do not have any comments in the Scriptures concerning the actual washing of feet. This one is Judas. He was there.
Even though he is not mentioned in the actual washing of the feet, he is mentioned. Satan had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray our Lord. He had already gone to the priests and made arrangements for a certain amount of money to turn the Lord over to them.
Here this man had already made a decision. He was going to sell his Lord out.
Again, I want to find a way to magnify the greatness of this act of our Lord Jesus. If you knew in your heart, if it was very clear to you, that there was someone among this group who had already sold you out, who had betrayed you, would you have washed his feet?
I do not think I would have. I would have gone and said, “Will you kindly leave while I proceed with the washing of these other eleven?” But our Lord Jesus did not.
Because of His love to me and the way He has manifested that love, I want to say to you this morning that I believe when our Lord Jesus came to Judas, He took special time.
It would just be like our Lord to take each one of Judas’s feet, one at a time, in His hands tenderly, and wash those feet, all the time looking into the face of Judas with this desire: “Judas, will you not change your mind? There is still time. You can back out on this deal.”
I believe our Lord, knowing what was going on in Judas, did not give up, but pursued. Even though Judas refused to love, I still think our Lord loved him perfectly all the way to the end, knowing what he was doing.
There is one thing I want to mention before we go on: the importance, in this matter of loving one another, that we learn to be loyal to one another. Dear brothers and sisters, without loyalty, there is no love.
You can have great emotional feelings about somebody, but the basic issue is whether or not you will be loyal to that person. Some of you know from experience the pain that comes when a close friend, someone whom you love and believe loves you, ends up being disloyal to you one way or another.
This is the kind of situation our Lord is faced with in Judas. He knows the decision that has already been made, and yet it did not prevent Him from washing Judas’s feet.
I want us to notice in John 13:1 and John 13:3 that it says, “Jesus knowing.” Jesus knowing. This matter of His loving them, of manifesting this love, this final act of love to these twelve men, was a calculated decision. It was not done on the basis of His emotions.
As a matter of fact, if our Lord Jesus had operated only on the basis of His emotions, He would not have washed the feet of any of those men. They were arguing about who was going to be great, and certainly He would never have washed Judas’s feet.
But it says, “Jesus knowing.” Jesus knowing. Do not think that loving has to be something charged with emotion. He had emotions, but they were emotions controlled by this calculated decision to wash the feet of these twelve men.
Sometimes love is simply making a calculated decision. It is an act of your will. You may have feelings that would take you totally in the other direction, but if this person is your brother or your sister, you do not have an option. You do not have an option. You have to love them.
Otherwise, you have to stand before your Lord and give an account as to why you have not.
What we see here, my dear brothers and sisters, is the sovereign Ruler and Maker of the universe down in the humblest of positions, washing the feet of twelve men who are arguing over who is going to be the greatest. One of them is in the process of betraying Him, and another, for whatever reason, is not making it easy for the Lord to wash his feet. This is the situation.
Afterwards, our Lord got up from that experience, put His garments back on, and went over and reclined again at the table. Then He began to ask some questions and make some comments.
He said to them, “If I, being your Lord and Master—you call Me Lord and Master, and I am—if I am your Lord and Master, I have given an example to you that I want you to demonstrate in your relationship with each other.”
“I want you to love one another in the same way that I have loved you. I want you to wash one another’s feet the same way that I have washed your feet.”
Probably most of us, if the Lord had said, “Now, I have washed your feet; I want you to wash My feet,” would have agreed. That is not a bad idea. We would probably gladly wash the feet of our Lord Jesus.
That is not what He said. He said, “I have washed your feet. Now I want you to learn how to wash one another’s feet,” because the servant is not greater than the master, nor the one who is sent greater than the One Who sent him.
Here we find our Lord taking this lowly, humble position—a menial task—of washing the feet of these twelve men. Now He comes and says, “The same thing that you saw Me doing, I set an example for you.”
Brothers and sisters, it seems to me that our Lord had not said this kind of thing before to the disciples. We talk about walking in the steps of the Lord Jesus. Well, this is one of the steps we need to learn how to take. This is one of the lessons that we, as His disciples, need to learn how to put into practice.
He forgot about Himself, our Lord Jesus did. He washed the feet, and now He has come to give instructions to these twelve men that they are to learn how to wash one another’s feet with the same love that He demonstrated in His relationship to them.
Can I say to us this morning that, naturally speaking, you cannot fulfill this? You may be a person who has an unusual measure of love, but in the Greek language—and I know all of you have heard this before, but I want to remind us again this morning—there are four words for love.
Someone has said that if you can think it or feel it, the Greeks have a word by which you can express it. We have one word, and sometimes we use “like” and “love” somewhat interchangeably. But the Greeks wanted to be more specific.
They had four words for love:
This is the kind of love that our Lord was demonstrating, and the kind of love that He is now saying, “I have set the example, and I want you to follow My example.”
This kind of love is sacrificial. It cares about the other person and forgets about itself. This is not natural.
It means that we have to find a source, a resource, of this love of God so that we can then demonstrate it in our relationships with one another.
In Romans 5:5, it says that the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, this is part of your experience. The love of God is poured out within your heart.
Dear brothers and sisters, I hope that in your understanding you are clear that it is the love of God working in us that will transform us. But we are not only to be the receptacles of this love. We are to be the channels of this love to other people, especially to those who are brothers and sisters in Christ.
The resource is in God Himself. Remember 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16? Twice John says, “God is love.” Not that God loves—He does—but the way God loves is that He is love. He is simply free to express Himself.
If there is no hindrance, nothing standing in the way of God being Himself, then we will see a rich manifestation of the love of God.
Now that you and I are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have access. The Holy Spirit brings this eternal, uncreated, divine love and floods our hearts with it. Now we are responsible to dispense this love, especially to the other brothers and sisters who have also come to know the love of God.
There are no excuses because there is an unlimited supply. But if we have not learned how to receive, where are we going to find it to give it? We have to learn to be good receivers. How very, very important that is.
Let me give you my illustration of being a good receiver. Have you ever seen a nest of baby birds just a few days old? Mom and dad have gone out to get something to eat, and the little birds hear mom and dad coming. What do they do? What do you see in that little nest? All mouth, right? That is all.
Do you see yourself this way in terms of receiving God’s love for you? That is what you need to see, because there is an unlimited supply. Unlimited supply. Unlimited supply. Forgive me, but we need to be reminded.
There is no limit to this love. You can give all of it away that you want to give, and there will still be an unlimited supply.
After our Lord said this to them, John 13:17 is, I think, one of the key verses: “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
You see, this is one of our problems. What I have already said, you already know, right? You already know about the love of God. You have heard this, read this many times, and heard other people share from John 13.
But where does the blessing come? Where does the blessedness become our experience? Not just in knowing, but in putting it into practice.
This is where I think we have dropped the ball, brothers and sisters. We have not done what our Lord has told us to do. We have not followed His example. We have allowed other things—smaller things than being betrayed by somebody—to prevent us from being a channel of God’s love.
This is especially to those who are already our brothers and sisters. Certainly it is to include everybody else, but specifically the Lord says, “I want you to learn how to love one another.”
Brothers and sisters, would you agree with me this morning that the Lord has saved some people who are not easy to love? Maybe you?
We do not like to think of ourselves that way, but I can guarantee you, if you have been in the body of Christ for any period of time, there is somebody in the body of Christ who considers you to be a difficult person to love.
But God has saved all different kinds. The amazing thing is that He did not ask us if it was okay. He just saved them, put us in the body of Christ with them—sometimes right next to us—and said, “Love them. Love them.”
Oh, my dear brothers and sisters, this can be a tremendous journey, a great adventure: learning how to be a channel of God’s love, letting God flood our hearts, and then finding among us, as God’s people, those to whom we can dispense the love of God.
We have to be careful when we decide in our hearts that we want to fulfill this, that we want to obey it. I remember a story about a lady named Jane. I will not give you her whole name. Her name was Jane, and she had a precious ministry in the body of Christ.
She told us this story a number of years ago. She was scheduled to go to New Orleans for a conference and would be there for a whole week. A couple of weeks before she went, she said to the Lord, “Lord, I want to learn how to love the way You love.”
Have you ever made such a request of the Lord? You have to be careful.
After two weeks of making this request, she went to New Orleans. After she got checked into the hotel, she was in the lobby and needed to write a note to somebody. She sat down at a table with a divider, where someone else could sit on the other side.
She was sitting there writing her note, and sometimes you have to think a little bit, so you look up to decide what you are going to write. When she looked up, on the other side was the face of a woman looking at her.
She knew immediately, from the makeup and other things, that this woman was a prostitute, a woman of the street. Do you know what her first reaction was? To try to ignore that she was there.
She bowed her head, and when she did, the Lord reminded her, “Remember what you said? You said, ‘I want to learn to love the way You do.’”
She took the grace of God, looked up, and introduced herself. For a whole week, when she had some free time, she took this woman to some of the nice restaurants in New Orleans and treated her like a queen.
When she was leaving, she said, “I was on the bus, and she was standing outside the bus. She had her old dirty handkerchief, just waving at me.” This was one opportunity she had to learn, an opportunity to learn how to love as God loves.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, the Lord does not have to arrange those kinds of circumstances unless there is something special He has to teach us. But do you see that every day in your life, among us as God’s people, the Lord has provided you a living opportunity to learn this most valuable of lessons: to love the way He loves?
Let us look at John 13:34-35 as a way of concluding this morning.
“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.”
I want you to notice in those verses: one, two, three, four times—love one another. Do you think the Lord wants us to learn to love one another? I do not think there is any question, brothers and sisters.
To me, it is something that we need to seriously think about. “By this the world will know if you are My disciples, if you have love one for another.” What is our Lord saying?
We like to be identified in other ways. We are Bible preachers. We preach the Bible. We believe in the oneness of the body of Christ. Maybe we have another doctrine that we think is so special, and this is the way people identify us.
But the Lord Jesus says, if you want to be identified as having been taught by Me, as being My disciple, then this is the one thing that must be evident among you: you have to learn to love one another as I loved you.
Dear brothers and sisters, there is an unlimited supply. The Holy Spirit is prepared to channel some of that unlimited supply into our hearts. Then you can trust Him that every day of your life, the Lord will provide you a living opportunity to dispense some of this love to some of your brothers and sisters.
Maybe it begins in your own home: between husbands and wives, parents and children, children and children. Maybe that is where it will start, but it definitely needs to start among us.
My brothers and sisters, I think what is going to have to happen is that we are going to have to make some adjustments, first in our thinking. There is no excuse.
When you stand before your Lord—you know you have an appointment with Him, do you not? You know that you have to stand before His judgment seat. You cannot cancel the appointment. You cannot postpone it. You are going to be there.
You are going to stand before Him, and you are going to give an account of what you have done with your life. If we have been making excuses about this matter of loving one another, what are we going to say to Him? There is no excuse.
What are you going to say to Him? “There was not enough to go around?” Oh, no. You are deceived. “Well, they are too hard, Lord. They are too difficult. Do You realize, Lord, if You were here and had to love them?” Well, you see, He already does.
He wants you to be a channel of more of His love to them. There is no excuse.
I think, brothers and sisters, what our Lord Jesus said to the church at Ephesus needs to be heard by us. There were many good things happening in the church at Ephesus. But our Lord Jesus, with His eyes of fire, could penetrate all the facades and all the unreality.
What did He discover? Many good things were happening. They were persevering. They checked out those who said they were apostles and found them to be liars. But what was the one thing He was looking for that He did not find? What was it, brothers and sisters? First love.
“Because you have left your first love, I am going to remove your lampstand if you do not repent.” There is not agreement about what this first love is, but I am convinced it is this matter of loving one another.
Our Lord Jesus said, “This is the way the world will know. This is your testimony. This is your lampstand.” They see how you love one another.
You do not have to say anything. Just by your sacrificial, ongoing, never-stopping, loyal love, the world will recognize that you have been taught by Me. This is your testimony.
What does this mean for us? I think it means that we need to go and get alone with our Lord and do some business with Him. If we have not been seeking to obey Him in this matter of loving one another, then we need to get some adjustments made in our lives, in our thinking, and also in our concept of what the church is.
I think what has happened, unfortunately and unconsciously, is that we have begun to see the church as a meeting. We know it is not the building. We know it is not the organization. But I think in our minds, we think the church is a meeting on Sunday morning.
If I am able somehow to smile nicely and hug my brothers and sisters, then that is what it means for me to love my brothers and sisters. Then I can forget about them the rest of the week. As long as I am able to come to a meeting and demonstrate love in that way, that is all that is required.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, I think we need to adjust our thinking. They are our brothers and sisters twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We need to learn how to put our love into practice, into practical manifestations.
Think about it. If our God simply communicated from heaven, “I love you,” but there was no practical manifestation, we would have some question marks about that kind of love.
We can say with our lips that we love one another, but in 1 John 3 it needs to be demonstrated. That means we have to learn how to have relationships with each other outside of meetings and not somehow hide behind the facade of just getting together in meetings.
We have to find a way. I think sometimes we are not as comfortable with this matter of being loved and loving as the Lord wants us to be, and we are unwilling to face it. But I think we should face it very clearly.
We need to have some time in which we let the Lord, with those penetrating eyes, examine us and help us. Out of His great love for us, if there is anything that is hindering Him from pouring His love into your heart, He wants to help you remove it.
If, in this matter, you feel uncomfortable manifesting this kind of sacrificial love to your brothers and sisters, He will give you plenty of opportunities. You may fail the first twenty times, but He will give you a twenty-first.
There are many opportunities. You can start with me, and I can tell you, I am not easy to love. But the Lord did not say, “Okay, you can love everybody else except Ernie. He is so hard. You can excuse him. You can bypass him.”
No, brothers and sisters. It is those who are the most difficult that I think the Lord wants to teach us how to love.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us hear what our Lord has to say to us. First of all, “I set the example for you. I want you to do as I have done to you.”
This is a new commandment. Notice: a commandment. You cannot call Him Lord and not obey His commandments. At least we need to seek, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to put this into practice.
“That you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you love one another; and by this shall all the world know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another.”
I am here to encourage us this morning. I am speaking first of all to myself, but I want to speak to your hearts as well and encourage you, beginning today: be a receiver, and then be a giver of this life-transforming love of God.
Let us pray together.
Rather than me praying, would one or some of your brothers and sisters pray?