Gospel of John, chapter 12

Okay, we are in John chapter 12 and I forgot to mark how far I got. Anybody want to tell me? We didn't get all the way through, did we? Where? Question 12. Okay. Maybe to set this up a little bit. Let's see. He was speaking to the Jews in general about the fact that he's going to have to be crucified. And then he's telling them that in a little while he's going to be gone and the light will be gone and while they're in the light they should take advantage of it. before he leaves. And then he quotes Isaiah by saying, Lord, who has believed thy report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And then we get down to 41. These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory and spoke of him.

Nevertheless, even among the rulers, many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. For they loved the praises of men more than the praises of God. So, in verse 43 and 44, what principle is the Lord Jesus teaching here?

These Jews have their reason convinced, right? They were convinced. But their hearts were unchanged. So the consequences that they face, they can't overcome. We're going to see this very same thing probably next week when we talk about Peter and the washing of his feet. And the Lord says to the disciples, what I'm doing now you don't understand, but you're going to understand later. What they don't understand is that it's going to take more than just intellectual apprehension of certain facts in order to be steeled against the assaults that are going to come against them.

And so here are the Jews that absolutely believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But they won't say so out loud and the reason is, what's the threat? Throw you right out of the synagogue. Is that a big deal? And it's like so what you get kicked out of the club. What? Why is that such a big deal?

Well, you're not part of the sacrifices and don't have the privileges of the synagogue. is the center of all that Judaism is. And if you get booted out of there, it's like losing your salvation, losing all your connection with God alone. And of course, we've talked about what a corrupt Jewish system is in play right now. This is not the way the Lord had set it up. with Moses but they had corrupted it so much over the last 400-500 years and the Pharisees being kind of the controlling party kept everybody in line by threatening excommunication if they didn't comply. Do you have that same kind of threat today? Sure you do.

The Catholic Church holds it over You don't follow their dictates, you do exactly what they want. There's all kinds of things in the Catholic Church that you get excommunicated for, and that means, or today if you are a Jew, and you belong to a fairly orthodox synagogue, and you marry a Gentile, or you become a Christian, what do they do for you? They pray you out of the synagogue. They pray you out. So it's a huge letter.

And so what the Lord, or what John says here, that well really what's going on is that they love the praises of men more than the praises of God. The motive or moral reason is given is this love of men rather than the glory of God. They fear the religious world being keenly sensible of human glory but dull to that which was from God. How does that ever change? I mean, don't you find that even in the confines of Holly Hill's Bible Church, there are certain things we do because we all do it?

One of the guys that teaches came to teach one Sunday morning, and he had on a shirt that was not ironed. And he got more grief for that. He really did. I said, boy, you've learned your lesson. Better go buy an iron. You can't be holy without an iron.

You see, I mean, we think, we laugh. But the subtlety of that is, from a worldly religious standpoint, is there. We observe behavior and say, well, they're not very spiritual because they go to bronco games or pick something. They like tennis. Yeah, they like tennis. So we do do a lot of things because our peers expect us not to do them or to do them, and so we comply.

You all took showers this morning because I was expecting that you wouldn't. My point is the principle there. I said love man's approval, but that's not really a principle. Well actually it is a principle. Here's the principle. If you walk in the flesh, then man's approval is what you're really concerned about. If you walk in the Spirit, then the only thing you're concerned about is whether it's of the Lord or not.

What behavior or what you're doing is pleasing to Him and glorifying to Him. The Bible, especially Paul's epistles and John, talk a lot about the glory of God. And it's kind of like, well, what is that about? How important is it not to put you on the spot? But how important is it to you personally that what you do in the next two hours is glorifying to God above anything else you do?

So, what's practically laid out for us here is that religion isn't the answer, it's intimacy with Christ. And intimacy with Christ means you get to behold His glory and that's what affects your decisions and your behavior. So that you would come out and say, you know, I believe in Christ no matter what the opposition is.

This is also the lack of understanding now of the principle of grace. I mean, I think that, you know, I think of all the, what we make traditions and, you know, offenses, the offense, who, what offense means, that and the principle of grace. not under law, all the things. It's a lack of understanding of that that we then fall under these laws or the offenses. We disregard the authorities that are given here, all the things that are wrapped up under grace. I think that's where we get into trouble.

We just don't understand grace. And I think that's really right. In defense of that though, I would say we're always learning and we never stop. And as we grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, both. I don't think we appreciate what a great motivated grace is. That we live under grace, that we live in grace, constant all the time, 100% the throttle is wide open. If you don't live under grace, you're always looking for a way to cut down the flow because you can't stand it. Our goal as believers is to live before God and not before men.

Is that basically what the principle is? The principle here is pointed up as every single character in this play, in John's Gospel, will at some point in the next six chapters dishonor God because they are afraid of being dishonored by men, including all the disciples, every single one of them. They'll all go hide. Peter will deny Christ. What it's pointing up is how powerful emotive peer pressure is. It's huge.

Contrasted with that, as you go forward in John, you begin to see that, like Courtney was talking about, the grace of God and the life of the Lord Jesus in persons will be able to overcome that incredibly strong desire of self-preservation is really what it is. So it's a principle that's just beginning to be developed here because the Lord Jesus has gone in the span of three days. He's gone from being hailed as king of the Jews on what we call Palm Sunday until they are going to crucify him in five days. So the fear, and one of the guys, you know who the central character in all this is that wouldn't claim him to be Messiah that was keeping quiet, don't you? It's our pal Nicodemus. You don't see him standing up and making a big deal.

But then you do see later on in the Acts of the Apostles Our man Stephen stands up in front of that whole Sanhedrin and gives them the what for? Because it says he was full of the Spirit. That's the difference. That's the difference. And when you walk in the Spirit, your concern is more the glory of God than it is preserving your perceived dignity. Question 13.

His message and mission was the appealing attractive mission of salvation and not judgment. There was everything in it to win rather than repel. What then will condemn them? Do you understand the question? All that Christ is doing, all of his message is attractive because it offers salvation and not judgment. If you live under a lost system, it's nothing but judgment. You sinned, you died, right? So the Lord for 12 chapters has begun to lay out the grace message and to win over souls to him.

So what then is going to condemn those who don't respond? Well the word will condemn them but unbelief I suppose. Verse 48. What's it say? He who rejects me and does not receive my words has that which judges him, his word. The word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. So, let me quote another verse for you.

In Hebrews chapter 2 verse 3, a very interesting verse. The writer of Hebrews says, How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? which at first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him." In other words, you have the Jewish system in place, legal. If you comply, you'll become righteous in yourself, right? The Son of God shows up on the planet and really his message is that if you come to me, all you have to do is believe in me and you'll be righteous. You'll be accepted of my Father. It's a grace message.

So, maybe I should have asked it this way. If you want to calculate it by degrees, is it more severe to violate a law or to reject grace? Rejection of grace, obviously. And that's what's going on here. The Lord is laying out the gracious message and it's being rejected.

OK, now, the end of chapter 12 is like somebody takes an axe and slams it right into John because there's a huge change that takes place here. Anybody want to tell me what it is? What happens here? And by the way, just to keep you up to speed, we are at probably the Sunday after what we would call Palm Sunday, Sunday or Monday, what we would call Holy Week. So the Lord has got about five, six days, four or five days before he's going to be crucified. But what's going on here at this time with the Lord's ministry? There's a huge change here.

This is the end of his message to the Jewish population. He's not going to go after them anymore. And now he's going to spend the next, it's interesting, chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and part of 18 are devoted solely to personal teaching of the disciples only. And this is an awful lot of information he's going to give these disciples. Give me the forms in which he's going to teach them. One of them is at the supper of the Passover, which we call the Last Supper. Some of this instruction is in Gethsemane. Some of it is walking around. And all this takes place in 2 or 3 or 4 days. These next few chapters. And it's instruction specifically to the disciples. Not to the Jewish nation. It's important as we go through this that you understand who the Lord is talking to. He's not talking to the general population. This is just his disciples.

So, in lesson 23, the first question that I asked was, if I can find it, what two things are realities at this point? Now, let's read verse 1. Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he should depart from this world to the Father, Having loved his own, who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Now, what two points are here that are significant? The first one is, now is the time that he is going to go back to his father. This is the time.

The second thing that is not spoken of here, but is implied, is that the world has already rejected him. But the other thing that's mentioned is that he loves his disciples and he won't give them up. And he's going to go and leave and prepare a place and fit them. And here's the underlying thing. What's he still doing? Now that he's just talking to his disciples, what's he still doing? He's serving. Because that's his role. He's serving.

So the supper being ended, 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 had come from God and was going to God, rose. I'm going to stop right there. The second question I ask, in what sense were these disciples his own? In John 10 he says that the father gave them to him.

That's one of them. He had chosen them. They were his sheep. They were his sheep. The Father gave them. Could you start out by saying they were his own by creation? He brought them into being. Could you say that they were his own by redemption? He's purchased them. Could you say that they were his own, as you said, they are the Father's gift to him. Could you say they were his own by right? He has worked in them to be born of God and made his children, yeah, he could say all of that.

They were his own by subjugation. It was his own grace that ended their rebellion and brought us and them to himself in love. And what's interesting here is what your verse says, he loved them to the end. Another translation could be he loved them all the way through because he loved them all the... idiosyncrasies of them didn't matter. He loved them to the very end.

So what does that tell you about motive? The motive is that God loved us. Those of you who were in the grace class, remember the grace circle? God loves us. We love him because he loved us. We obey him because we love him because he loved us. He rewards us because we obey him because we love him because he first loved us. You've got to complete the whole circle. You can't take a piece of it out at a time. So he loves us and he loves them all the way through, all the way to the end. It's the unconditional part. Say that again? The good part is the unconditional part.

It's not what they did. He still loved them. Yeah, you have Peter denying three times. You have all that, but it wasn't their actions that predicated any. It was unconditional love. Yeah, agape. The value is in the lover, not the object loved. And we'll talk about Judas in a minute. We'll see if he's loved. Judas, was Judas highly respected among the disciples? What do you think? How many think he was? How many think he wasn't?

He was highly respected. He had the money. He had the wallet. I think they knew he was with the money on the side. You think they did? I think later on John realized. I agree with that, yes. But not at this time. No, he's one of the twelve. Now granted he's doing a lot of complaining, you know, he shouldn't spend his money, he should give it to the poor and he's stealing.

But if twelve of us got together and we decided we were going to hang out for three and a half years and we said, Jack, you're a trustworthy guy. We're going to all give our money to you and you take care of it. Did we respect Jack? You better believe we did. We wouldn't give him the money if we didn't. Sure he's respected. Now he's not Peter who seems to be the boisterous leader and John who loves the Lord Jesus, but he's respected because he's got the money from an earthly standpoint. It shows you that the guy with the money is not to be trusted.

In Psalm 55, 12-14, it reads, For it was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it. Neither was it he who hated me that did magnify himself against me. Then I would have hid myself from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my guide and my acquaintance, who took sweet counsel together and walked into the house of God in company.

So Judas is one of the guys. He didn't walk around with, I'm the betrayer, you've got to watch out for me. He's trusted in the loop. Now, interesting verse. By the way, in verse 2, mine says, the supper being ended, I think being ended, Or the word ended needs to be taken out of there. Because what the Lord Jesus is about to do is wash the feet of the disciples.

When did you do that? After dinner? When do you do it? Yeah, you do it when they come in the room. Not when it's over. You know, linear says, and supper taking place. While it's taking place, while they're getting ready? Yeah. He doesn't wait until it's over. And we'll find here that he goes and sits down when he's finished. So, let's see.

In verse 3, Jesus knowing the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God. My question is, Jesus being God, in what sense has God put all things in His hands? He's the Son of Man. He's a man. So God has put confidence in all things in the hands of a man. And the all things, what are the all things?

The will of His Father. What's that? The will of His Father. The will of His Father and He was here to do what? To glorify God? So he's been given that sole responsibility by himself to do it. So everything, I'm going to put it this way, everything that matters to God has been put in Jesus' hands. Does that make sense? Maybe a better way to say it. I'll read something from, let's see where did I get this quote, from William Kelly.

It was not merely messianic sphere, not even that the son of man. The father had given all things into the hands of his son and he was going back a man with not a shade over that intrinsic holiness which marked his coming out from God to become a man. Point being is that God entrusted everything that had to do with humanity to Christ and Christ fulfilled it. What role does Jesus continue to function in here? I've already given you the answer. Servant. Okay. He's functioning as a servant. And what service is he doing? The job of a slave. Job of a slave. Why is he doing what he's doing? Why is he serving? What's his motive?

Teaching the disciples back in Luke, they're arguing about who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom. That's a great point. You know, in Luke, when they sat down, they had this little discussion going on about who's going to sit where and be the greatest in the kingdom. And so the Lord demonstrates to them that if you love me as I love you, here's how it works out, fellas.

You're a servant to all. none of you and Right here is a very interesting part because the Lord knows what Judas is going to do He knows what's coming down the road as the disciples band together and Witness all these events that are going to happen then Christ is goes up into heaven and then Pentecost comes, and they're all indwelt with the Holy Spirit. What's going to hold these guys together against the attacks that are going to come?

Because they're going to come. It's got to be the love of God. It has to be that motive. Otherwise, they're going to splinter. Because you're not held together by your own thoughts, your commitments, you know, I gave you the secret handshake, none of that. And so he's demonstrating to them the love that a servant has, one for another, and that's what holds you together. That's what holds a church together. Okay, let me read down a little farther.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside his garments, took a towel and girded himself. And after that he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel which he was girded. And then he came to my pal Peter, Simon Peter, and Peter said, Lord, are you washing my feet? In other words, what are you doing? Is kind of the flavor. So, does Peter understand what the Lord Jesus is doing? Hasn't got a clue, has he? Why not? Now, maybe to set this up.

How does Peter perceive Christ to be? What does he think he is? Master and Lord, Messiah of Israel. So what's Peter's comprehension of what the Messiah is all about? What kind of character is he going to be? King, ruler, everybody serves him, the knight and the white horse, all of that kind of thing. And so, Peter's apprehension of who the Messiah is, is this incredibly powerful figure that everybody serves him.

So here comes the one who he thinks pretty sure he's the Messiah, and he says, Peter, let me wash your feet. And Peter says, you're going to wash my feet? Thinking that this is just ridiculous. So Jesus said to him, what I'm doing you don't understand now, but you will know after this. So Peter doesn't understand. He shrinks from the idea. of Christ humbling himself. See that? He can't stand the fact that Christ is humbling himself. So when will Peter and the others fully understand what Jesus was doing by washing their feet? When do they kind of figure this out? When? I didn't hear you. Acts. Where in Acts? Yeah, it's when they're in dwelt with the Holy Spirit.

So what have they got to figure out? What is it about this that they don't get, that they do get then? They don't understand what he's going to accomplish by his atoning death for one thing. That's really good. Did you hear what Joanna said? They don't understand what he's going to accomplish by his atoning death. They don't understand anything that he's about to do Understand something else here too. The Lord Jesus is fully aware that these disciples are going to feel abandoned when he's arrested and crucified.

They do not have the spiritual capacity to stand in the gap while all of this is going on. They just don't have it. You can blame them, but they don't have the spiritual unction to stand in the gap. They don't have it. because they're natural men, even though they have been, I think at this point, they have been given the life of Christ and they are saved. But what don't they have? They don't have the word of God. They're not in Christ and they're not indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

So the Lord says, well you don't really... Peter, and look how gracious the Lord is. Peter, you don't understand, but you're going to understand, so you know, in other words, let me go ahead. Our pal Peter says, you shall never wash my feet. Don't you love this? And Jesus said, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. Now, what does Peter realize after the Lord tells him this? What does it dawn on him? This is a warning to him. and the alarms just went off. So what does Peter do? Typical of Peter, he goes from this extreme all the way over to this extreme, right?

Wait a minute. Do you think Peter submits to the thought that sin is such that nothing less than the humiliation of Christ can in any sense clean us from it? Do you think he understands that? Absolutely not. So, did Peter believe what he was seeing? Look at this exchange of conversation.

The Lord shows up and says, OK, Peter, you're next. And Peter says, you're going to wash my feet? And the Lord says, well, what I'm doing you don't understand, but you'll understand later. And then he says, well, you're not going to wash my feet. Peter says that. And the Lord says, really? If I don't wash you, you don't have any part with me. And Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. And Jesus said to him, he who is bathed or washed needs not only to wash his feet, but is completely clean and you are clean, but not all of you.

So my question is, what Peter realizes, what does Peter sort of wake up to after he's told this? He wants to be part of what the Lord's agenda is, and what's his frame of reference? His frame of reference is, I'm hanging with the Messiah, who will be King of Israel. I want part of that. So if he says to me, you've got to be washed, I'm with it. I'm here. Even because the warning probably frightened him. If you don't let me wash your feet, you're not going to have any part of me at all.

I keep thinking, whenever we look and we laugh at Peter or whoever, and we think about that, I always put myself in the same picture. I keep thinking, with grace, what do we do? Grace is, and I hate to keep harping back on that, but unmerited. We always want to try and do something.

And I feel just like what Peter is saying here. Well, you can't wash my feet. I've got to do something. And in the grace, we're in the same boat. We always want to do something. unmerited. And so as Peter, we do the same thing in grace. Yes, we do. We throw ourselves under the bus and we've got to do something. At the very minimum, we've got to feel bad. Yeah.

And then we'll go to the extreme. We'll do nothing. We're as vacillating as Peter is. Whenever I look at these, I immediately look in the mirror and see myself and go, And under grace we do the exact same thing. Or the extreme is, well I'm washed so I'm apathetic. I'm covered, not a problem. But that's almost if I myself, and if I am washed then you're not, or if I myself am washed then you're not.

Understand that? Who's doing the washing here? The Lord Jesus. I want you to understand something that's kind of cool about this. How is a believer completely clean and what's he washed in? When the Lord says, now you're completely clean, what was the substance that made you clean?

The blood of Christ. So what's he doing with the water? In other words, there are two commodities here. One is blood and the other is water. What the blood does is what? makes you completely clean, right? And I'll answer a couple of questions in a row here. What is represented by water? The Holy Spirit? No. The Word of God. But the Lord Jesus is saying to them, here we go again, another presentation of identification truths without explanation. You understand what I'm saying? You have to go to Paul to figure out what he really means. It's the same way in Acts. You see all of these great pronouncements in John's Gospel. But if you've never read Paul, you don't know what he really means. Because Paul explains it.

Being washed in the blood of Christ not only refers to your sins being paid for, but if the blood of Christ just paid for your sins, and you were still a sinner, how could you possibly be clean? Do you understand what I'm saying? It's one thing to be a man from Adam with his sins forgiven, but still being a man from Adam and a sinner. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's another thing to not only be washed in the blood of Christ, but to be included in his death, burial, and resurrection, so now you are a man from Christ who is totally and completely clean. Okay? You with me?

So why the necessity then of this man to have his feet washed? How come? By the way, remember Hal's little phrase about what this phrase refers to? Poopy feet. That's what it means. That's what it means. Because if you have sandals on, walking around in the streets of that day, what are you walking in? Dirt. And horse manure and you name it. It was there. So people always had their feet clean. So what's the symbolism or the analogy here?

Here's a man who is totally clean because he's washed in the blood of Christ and he's resurrected to a new... but he's got to have his feet washed. How come? Are we talking about daily cleansing by confession? Why do you need that? I thought you were clean. Why do you need that?

Because you're still walking around in this world. What's the contact with the earth? It's your feet. It's not so much moral purification as what? What's it doing? Growth. What is the word of God in washing your feet? What does it accomplish? Fellowship. It's fellowship. When you confess, what do you do? You're agreeing with God. You're agreeing with God about what?

About the first part. I'm totally clean. Right? Okay, my feet got dirty. The Word of God is washing my feet by doing what? By laying out for me anew the information that I'm to believe is about my total cleanliness. And that even though I'm still here, walking around on the earth with my feet on it, I have contact. This is not a once every other month sort of event. I think this goes on every day because you're in and out of the house all the time. So I think every believer has the necessity of having his feet washed often.

Now here's what's cool about this. Notice who's doing the washing. and notice his attitude, and notice how the roles are reversed as to how we would view them. If I were one of these guys living, I'd have a guy hired to do this. I wouldn't do it, right? If I invited you over for dinner, trust me, I'm not washing your feet. I've got a guy to do that.

But the example that the Lord Jesus sets is that I'm the son of man, I am the Jewish Messiah, I am your leader and teacher, and you say correctly, he's about to tell him that, and here's what you do. So as a son of God, identified with Christ in his resurrection, this is normal behavior for a believer. Normal. We all do this all the time.

In Hebrews it said if one is overtaken in a fault, what's the rest of the verse? If he was spiritual, should restore such a one. What are you doing? Washing feet. See? Every one of us has this job. Every single one of us has this job. But it's based on the fact that the person who is having their feet washed is already clean. You're not making them clean. They already are clean. Does that make sense? Another quote, and I think I quoted this because I'm going to use this in the Lord's Table today.

Hebrews 10.12-14 But this man, the Lord Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified. One offering, perfected or made perfect every single one that has been set apart.

So here I think we need to distinguish between the blood and the water and what they're both used for. Okay? Is that okay? You understand that? So in question 10 I said, so why the washing of the feet? And so we've kind of answered that, but I want to add a couple more things.

The effect of this service is that the Holy Spirit takes away practically, by the word, all the defilement that we gather in walking through this world. You talk about grace. Look what God has done. He not only recreates you in Christ and makes you perfect, But he also employs his body to effectuate all the defilement that we gather up in this world to be taken away. So could you say that, you know, if I wash Courtney's feet, is he going to be clean from now on? No. Has a provision been made by God to restore?

Yes it has, on every minute, all the time. We have a tendency, I think, within the body of Christ that when we see somebody with dirty feet, to be critical. far be it for me to be critical. No. We don't weep. I mean, we kind of give them, as in Hawaii they say, the stinky eye. You know? They give you the stinky eye. And so, but look at what the Lord has set up here. Every one of us knows without the shadow of a doubt that, you know, we're walking out in the street. We just are. But every one of us also has this responsibility of service to be washing one another's feet. Not from a condemnatory critical standpoint, but from an objective awareness.

How do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it? This is really an important part I think. How do you do this feet washing thing? I want to talk to you about your behavior. How do you do it? Contact with the Word. What's interesting about the Word of God is that it has this life of its own. It's living and it's powerful. And it's sharper than any two-edged sword. So you don't use the Word from a condemnatory standpoint. you use the word from an approval restoration standpoint.

In other words, if I said to Peggy, you know, good Christians wouldn't be acting like that, I've just condemned her. But if I said to her, you know, Peggy, the Word of God says that you are, and point out a few things, that's who you are. And that's who God says you are. You don't have to tell her after that that she's been walking inconsistent with who she is. She knows. and you can emphasize the fact that here's who you really are and you've got there by the love of God and His grace only.

Now, like the disciples, you have to learn this. Some of us have made a career out of saying the right thing to the wrong people or the wrong people the right thing, I don't know. So, the ones doing this service in the future up to question 12 is who? It's all of us. Every single one of us.

You know, in the Old Testament time, in the temple, the service, the priest had to wash and bathe once every day. But every time he went to serve God, he had to wash his hands and feet. In the middle, I think, of the temple was this basin where they all went and got clean. So our feet are washed by the word with a viewpoint towards communion and service. Any discussion more about that? I think sometimes because we think we're going to offend somebody, or we think that, oh gee, I'm not qualified, or oh boy, if I make an issue out of that, it's not my place.

I think there's a real ministry in restoration. You talk about spiritual gifts, I think that's one of them. To restore somebody, to wash somebody's feet is in the spirit that's demonstrated by the Lord Jesus here is truly a gift from God. It really is.

But all of us have it. How many people come to you and say, you know, I don't know what spiritual gift I have. I can never figure it out. We all got this one. Every one of us has this one. Because he tells us, this is what you do. Also, one last thing. Do you think it puts an emphasis on knowing the word of God?

I don't think so. You don't get to see the movie. What does Jesus mean, you're not all clean? Talking about Judas. Why isn't he clean? We could spend an hour on Judas. Why isn't he clean? Because he doesn't believe. That's why. Yet here he is hanging around for three years. We've talked before about his motive. What's his motive? What do you think he's thinking? Personal glory. Why?

Because he thinks that this guy might be the Messiah. And if he is the Messiah, I want to be in his entourage. It's like all this juggling that's going on now for the presidential thing. All the people on the outside want to pick the winner. Why? Because if you happen to be supporting the winner, what does that mean for you? You get a job in the administration, right? If you happen to pick the loser, you get no job.

Is he following him because of peer pressure? I don't think so because the peer pressure is all the other way. Yeah, I think so. And what's interesting about Judas is that he's going to switch sides here pretty quickly. So his motivation is not the love of Christ. He doesn't believe in him. And so he's not all clean.

Were the others? Yeah, they were. Because they functioned by faith. So, it would do no good for Judas. Do you think Judas had his feet washed here? I think so. But he was the guy that wasn't clean. I think one of the reasons the Lord had his feet washed I think you're absolutely right, George. I think the grace of God in his forbearance sticks with someone right to the end. That's what he says, he loved him to the end.

He didn't exclude Judas just because he knew Judas was going to betray him didn't mean he didn't love him. The problem that you have here, and this is probably a big topic we'll talk about next week, what role does the sovereignty of God play and Judas's own will play in this scenario because we're going to see a verse that says that all this happens because scripture might be fulfilled. Does that mean Judas got the shaft?

No. So anyway, let's close. So we're going to pick up on verse 14 next time. Awesome. Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you that we are washed in the blood of your Son and that we are also participants in and receivers of the washing of our feet so that we might walk in your Spirit on a moment-by-moment basis and behold the glory of your Son. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.