John 13:1-17 "The Cost of Pride"

Okay.

Um as we're settling in, if you have a Bible, please uh open it to John chapter 13.

John 13 · chapter mention

We are we are proceeding with our series in John.

Our text today is John 13, 1 through 17.

You know, if you were gonna give your farewell address, the last thing you ever say to the most important people to you, how would you start it?

This isn't mine, by the way.

Because that's what we're looking at here in John chapter 13.

John 13 · chapter mention

The public ministry of Jesus is over.

He is now sitting down to the Last Supper, uh, what's called the upper room discourse, and it's the next several chapters where he's giving his last uh exhortation to his disciples, to the men he has discipled for the last three years.

Hear the word of God from John chapter 13, 1 through 17.

John 13 · chapter mention

Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

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

He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.

Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet?

Jesus answered him, What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.

Peter said to him, You shall never wash my feet.

Jesus answered him, If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.

Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

Jesus said to him, The one who is bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean, and you are clean, but not every one of you, for he knew who was to betray him.

That was why he said, Not all of you are clean.

When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you?

You call me teacher and lord in your right, for so I am.

If I then your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you.

Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

If you know all these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Please pray with me.

Jesus, as we as we see your great sacrifice, your emptying of yourself, I pray that our hearts would be moved, as those who name ourselves as your followers, or those of us who are considering it, that we would see the beauty of who you are and what you've done for us, and be moved to follow you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Um, one of my favorite books is The Divine Comedy by Dante.

A lot of you probably have heard of The Inferno if you haven't read it, but you may not know that there's two books after the Inferno.

The Inferno is Dante going down through hell and he visits all of the different levels where the sins are punished and all that.

And then the next book is The Purgatory.

Now, Purgatory is not in the Bible.

There's a reason I'm telling you about it.

You see, what he has to do is he has to have all of his sin purged from himself so he can go to paradise.

Right?

So he goes up this mountain, and each level of this mountain, a different sin is removed.

And at the beginning of it, an angel draws or he carves in or something like that, seven P's for the Italian word for sin, right?

The seven deadly sins.

Again, we're not getting our theology from Dante, but it there's a reason.

So the first the first circle that he comes to is the circle of the pride.

And when he arrives there, he just looks out and sees a bunch of big rocks and no people.

But then he notices these rocks are moving very, very slowly.

And so he goes to investigate and he looks underneath one of these huge rocks, and he sees a person, one of the people whose whose sin was pride, and now they are being brought low, you see.

And not that that's not gonna happen to you guys.

That's the like Jesus died for our sin.

Don't worry, purgatory is not in the Bible, but here's here's what I'm here's why I'm telling you about it.

When he completes this circle, and the the angel at the end removes the P that represents pride, a funny thing happens.

He feels that all of the other six are lessened.

All the other six P's on his forehead become far less.

And here is here is why I'm this is why I'm telling you about it.

Is because even though it's bad theology, it's it's it's spiritually insightful.

Because at the core of all sin is pride.

You really can't rebel against God without it.

You can't have a war if there's no pride involved.

You can't rip a family apart or a marriage apart if there's no pride involved.

Wherever you find division, wherever you find strife, wherever you find a power struggle, you are going to find pride.

Now, by pride, let me tell you what I'm not talking about.

Because we we have two different definitions in English, it's unhelpful.

I'm not talking about my kid had a great report card, I'm proud of her.

That's not pride in the simple sense.

Or I'm not so good with tools, I built a great doghouse, I'm proud of myself.

It's not that's not what pride is in the Bible.

What pride is in the Bible is I belong in the place of God.

I am my own law to myself.

I'm main character.

To use the kid's phrase, main character energy.

Right?

That is pride, the desire to put myself in the place of God.

So some things that indicate pride and unwillingness to forgive, and unwillingness to repent, and unwillingness to appear weak, right?

That is pride and it is at the heart of all sin.

And every last one of us struggles with it.

And the thing is, is that when we're holding on to pride, it actually holds us back from some really essential parts of being human and of following Jesus.

The three things that we're gonna look at that come up in the text are the things that pride prevents you from doing.

You can't love, you can't receive, and you can't learn.

Okay?

But Jesus actually shows us a more beautiful way here.

Jesus shows us the cure to pride.

Well, let's look at verses one through five again.

It says, now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own, who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand.

That's a statement of his status.

Who is Jesus?

He's the one to God had given all things into his hand.

So he it's established he is God, he has the right to everything, he has the highest status, he has the right to all privilege, and what does he do?

In verse 4, he rose from suffer, laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.

He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Now, some of you may have heard this before.

You're already getting that that is not a very dignified thing to do.

If any of us did that right now, we'd all be freaked out.

But in the ancient world, in the ancient world, you see, the the washing of feet was considered the most demeaning task available.

In fact, you have some rabbis who said, even a Jew who is enslaved cannot wash feet.

You've got to reserve it for a Gentile because it's such a degrading job.

Don't be insulted if you're not Jewish, but you're getting the gist.

That this is the this is lower than low.

So this one who has the right to all of the glory there there is available in the universe, does what?

He puts himself in the place of the lowest slave.

He humbles himself, he empties himself of his status, of his power, of his rights, of everything.

And what does he call us to do?

Look at verse 14 and 15.

It says, If I then your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that you should, that you also should do just as I have done to you.

So we're called after him to do what?

To empty ourselves in the same way, to lay down our pride.

Now that just, if you think that's like, well, okay, bed of nails, here I come.

Right?

Or if if being following Jesus is supposed to make me miserable, okay, I guess I'll do it.

That's not what we're called to, actually.

We're called to something so much greater because holding on to pride prevents us from the best things in life.

First of all, it prevents us from loving.

So we need to lay down our pride in order to love.

Now, in our c this is not news to anybody, but love is a really central subject matter for almost everything we produce as a culture.

Books, uh, t-shirts, um, movies, and and and not least of which is songs.

If you if you look at, you know, I mean, some of our favorite songs.

We're told, all you need is love.

Have you ever noticed the verses make zero sense?

There's nothing you could do that can't be done.

There's nothing you can sing that can't be sung.

There's nothing you can say that you can't learn to play the game.

Oh, John, that makes so much sense.

What is this song about?

All you need is love.

What is love?

Who knows?

You can be crazy in love, according to Beyonce.

Drunk in love, according to Beyonce and Jay-Z.

We're told love is a burning thing by Johnny Cash.

Pat Benatar, that love is a battlefield.

I'm not sure she is doing it right.

But perhaps most profoundly is Hattaway, who has the courage to admit he doesn't know, and he asks, What is love?

Baby, don't hurt me.

Don't hurt me.

No more.

Which I hear he's gonna have a follow-up single called What is Grammar?

Okay, I got a little check.

It was a personal joke.

If we went out and did man on the street stuff, even with us, stuck a mic in your face, rolled camera, what is love?

Go! How are we gonna do?

Isn't it funny that we're so fixated on it that it's the dominant subject matter of most of our cultural odd artifacts?

But I think most of most people in our culture, including ourselves, would struggle to define it.

Jesus actually embodies love here.

When we look at verse one, it says that he it says, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Now that that end there doesn't mean until the end of his life, it means to the utmost.

As far as you can love, as far as it is possible to love someone.

And what he does here is the demonstration of this love.

What does he do?

He forgets himself.

He considers himself the most important person in the universe of no importance.

Why?

To benefit the beloved.

This foot washing isn't about their feet.

Okay?

It is about their sin.

And him washing their feet is pointing to him going to the cross for them.

Okay?

What is love?

It is forgetting yourself to benefit your beloved.

We all want to be loving people.

I've never met someone who says, I'm totally uninterested in being a loving person, right?

We all want to live lives of love.

The question is, how?

Because you hear people say, oh yeah, he's terrible to his wife, but he loves her underneath it all.

It's like, really?

You know, I mean, how can you really say that you are loving if you are gonna hang on to your pride, you are gonna hang on to your rights, right?

You're not going to forget yourself for the benefit of your beloved.

The only way that we love is by laying down our pride.

Love and pride are mutually exclusive.

You can't love someone if you are hanging on to your pride because love requires what?

To lay yourself down for the benefit of someone else, right?

Do you see how you can't do that if you're hanging on to your pride, if you're insisting on your rights, if you're insisting on your status?

Now, I want to make something clear about humility also.

What I don't mean by humility is that you hate yourself, have low self-confidence, or lack self-esteem.

That's not humility.

In fact, like self-hatred is more a sign of pride and self-fixation.

In the words of Tim Keller, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

Real love manifests in forgetting yourself for the benefit of the one you love.

Which is exactly what Jesus does here.

He lays down himself for us.

If we want to love, we need to lay down our pride.

But but also, pride prevents us from receiving.

We need to lay down our pride in order to receive.

How does that work?

Because you're like, hey, sometimes you can be prideful and be like, yeah, you know, wait on me, serve me.

But you know, to receive in a way that requires humility, that's one of the hardest things for me.

Um, just before we started Grace and Peace, like before as we were getting ready feverishly for like our first service, one of the things that I had to do was like get all of our gear together and the bins and everything that we need to kind of make church work.

This was, you know, me with stacks and stacks of boxes and assembling that drum kit over there, which still works.

We were planning on that thing going kaput after a couple of years.

It's still kicking.

But anyway, this was this was pretty like it took a lot of time, but it also was physically like, you know, you had to lift and you get it.

I was a one-man setup team at that point.

So as I was uh I was doing something else, I was in a meeting or something like that, and I was sitting on like crisscross applesauce, but I had my right foot like I was kind of sitting on it.

And as I stood up to write something on on the board, I felt a pop in my ankle.

And I said, I was like, uh, shake it off.

Shake it off.

Oh, that's not shaking off.

That is agony.

And I thought that I had like dislocated my ankle.

Turns out it was the worst ankle sprain I've ever had.

And I've had quite a few.

From sitting in a chair.

I had just turned 40.

And so I was I was on crutches, right, trying to get all this gear together.

And you know, it was sad.

I couldn't do it.

Like lifting bins when you're on crutches, it just doesn't work.

And Sharon's like, ask for help.

And so I put out the call to our little plant team and was like, I sprained my ankle.

Can someone help, can someone help me with the bins?

And a couple of people showed up.

Amanda was one of them.

But okay, this might make everyone think less of me.

It was only women that showed up.

And my in my pride inside was doing backflips of like, you can't let them do things for you.

This is ridiculous.

Look at you.

That makes me worse as a person.

Maybe.

Just keeping it real.

It was so hard for me to receive help because my pride said, I am enough and I can do it.

I don't need help.

I'm sufficient and I'm strong.

Sprained its ankles sitting in a chair.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know what you said, but it's probably true.

Receiving help like you're a baby, like you're an invalid, is humbling.

You can't do it and hang on to your pride.

When Jesus comes to Peter, do you notice Peter's response in verse 6?

Peter said to him, You shall never wash my feet.

Now, in defense of Peter here, this Jesus was flying in the face of every rule of decency and right relationship Peter had ever learned in his life.

If you were the disciple of a rabbi, you serve your rabbi, your rabbi doesn't serve you.

And here was the rabbi taking his clothes off.

Did you catch that part?

This rabbi, you know, shirtless with just a towel washing feet.

And he's like, What?

Like, I'm sure if I tried to do that for you guys, you'd respond the same way, and not because you respect me.

Jesus answered him, What I am doing, you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.

Peter said to him, You shall never wash my feet.

Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have what?

No share with me.

So he needs to lay down his pride in order to receive.

Receive what?

Jesus himself.

But not only that, forgiveness.

When Jesus says, Don't just wash my feet, but my hands and my head, and he Jesus says the bit about the one who bathed doesn't need, does not need to wash, except for his feet, he's completely clean, you are clean, right?

The point there is it's not about his feet.

It is about the cross.

It is saying, no, you don't need more than what I'm doing for you.

So in order to receive Jesus, we've got to lay down our pride also to receive forgiveness and also to receive blessing.

Look at what Jesus says here in verses 15 through 17.

He says, I've given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you.

Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Now that word blessed, it's the same way he starts off the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are those, right?

The idea there is lucky.

Living a good life.

Got it made.

So this laying one's pride down, Jesus isn't saying, like, hey, trust me, it'll it'll be, you know, like, yes, you'll be miserable.

He's saying this is the life of joy.

This is the way to a life of joy, is laying down one's pride, washing one another's feet.

We need to lay down our pride in order to receive all the things that God has for us, Jesus Himself.

Right?

The gospel does not flatter us, does it?

It you begin with laying down your autonomy, laying down your right to order your own life to Jesus.

That's what we mean when we call Jesus Lord.

You know how we like to say, You're not the boss of me?

I say it, maybe you guys used to say it.

You're not the boss of me?

Well, guess what?

When you receive Jesus, you were receiving the boss of you.

Okay, our pride must die to receive Jesus.

Jesus.

But also, it has to die for us to receive forgiveness.

Receiving forgiveness, what Jesus provides for us, it is saying, if I were to present my moral resume to God, all of my spiritual practices and mindfulness, all of my best efforts, if I say, God, look at this, do I get eternal life?

He'd say, get out of here.

We would be cast out.

That is what saying, that's what receiving forgiveness means.

It's saying, God, take this resume and burn it.

I want what Jesus did for me instead.

That's humbling.

The best you can do earns us condemnation.

We have to, our pride must die for us to receive forgiveness.

And also to receive blessing.

This is completely counterintuitive.

You know, like when we look around the world, we see that the people with the most stuff are tend to be quite prideful.

You know, it's not that pride cometh before a fall, but goeth before a raise.

But Jesus tells us, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

He's saying that the life of true blessing, a life of true joy, can only be had by laying down our pride, by following Jesus and emptying ourselves.

So when we lay down our pride, it enables us to love.

It enables us to receive.

But also, if we hang on to pride, there's another thing that prevents, and that's learning.

This is always true.

You can't learn if you're prideful about it.

When I was in seminary, um, there was a uh a professor that we all had.

Um, his name was Dr.

Phil Douglas.

And Dr.

Douglas had a very distinct way of speaking.

It's just like this.

And every everybody could do an impression because we heard this so much.

Now, Dr.

Dr.

Douglas.

He he was not at, he didn't sound this was a man with an earned PhD, mind you, but he didn't sound as sophisticated as the other professors.

He was much more down home.

Um and uh and you know that the the the class that he taught was spiritual formation.

And spiritual formation is just growing up into Christian maturity.

That's what he was teaching us, and so a lot of the time he was talking about what to us MDib students was pretty basic theology.

You know, we weren't learning a lot of new content, but here's what I started noticing about Dr.

Douglas.

He would take something that seems like head knowledge to me.

Let's say double imputation, right?

That's the doctrine that Jesus takes our sin, our sin is given to Jesus on the cross, and his righteousness is given to us.

He would talk about that, and as he would have said that right there, he would start crying.

He would talk about the same things I had been reading about for many years before seminary, except his heart was so transformed by it.

Right?

And then I said, oh, this class isn't about learning new things.

It's about learning the old things in a way that transforms the heart.

Spiritual formation.

Here's something else I noticed is that my fellow MDiv students, some of them would sigh when they would talk about Dr.

Douglas.

I already know all this.

And the people who did, I started to notice, were the least mature people in my class.

Let that irony sink in.

Spiritual forgation.

Get it?

If you think you already know, if you think you already have the lesson, if you come in prideful, what do you learn?

Nothing.

It is only when we come empty.

It is only when we come believing we don't know.

It is only when we come humbly that we can actually mature and learn.

And that's what Jesus is saying right here.

Look, look what Jesus says in verses 12 through 15.

He says, When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you?

You call me teacher and lord in your right, for so I am.

If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

For I have given you an example that you also should do, just as I have done to you.

So we gotta lay down our pride to learn to do what?

Just to follow Jesus.

Jesus is saying that the quintessence to capture in a nutshell what it is to be my disciple is this washing feet.

It's like of all the things he could have picked, right?

If you know, like a school administrator.

It's like, hey, you want to see capture in a nutshell what it is to be a school administrator?

We have any school administrators here right now?

We've got a few at the church.

We're gonna answer angry emails from drunk parents for three hours.

That's what we're gonna do.

That captures it.

If I wanted to show you all the capture, the essence of being a touring musician, we would just go to an airport terminal and sleep on guitar cases.

Right?

Just like that's it.

That that captures the whole thing.

For Jesus, following him.

What captures it?

Taking the job of the lowest servant.

So we mean our pride has to die.

We have to lay it down just to learn to follow Jesus, but also to learn to lead his people.

In verse 16, he says, Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

Now that word for messenger in Greek is apostolos, from which we get apostles.

Right?

It means one who has been sent.

That's their role.

And so what he's saying, like, these are the guys that he's handing the torch to.

And how does his farewell address to them begin?

What does he need to teach them?

This to lay down their pride.

That is the essence not only of following him, but also of leading his people.

If we hang on to our pride, we refuse to ask forgiveness, we refuse to forgive, we insist on our status, we insist on our rights, right?

We remain self-centered, we won't lay it down.

You know, sometimes people are like, I don't feel like I'm growing spiritually.

And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is, what about our pride?

Am I actively putting pride to death?

Am I seeing where I'm holding on to it?

Because we cannot grow.

We cannot follow Jesus another step if we are not laying down our pride.

And this is something we've stressed up also in leadership throughout the life of Grace and Peace.

When it's time to find leaders for any position, whether we're nominating and electing our officers, calling a pastor, whatever, a lot of the time, you know, in my prior experience, people point to the wrong things.

Things that Jesus never says, This is how you know a leader.

Things like, hey, well, they're real successful in business, they should lead a church.

Or, you know, they're very smart, they know a lot of theology.

They should lead in church.

Or, um man, they're pushy, they get their way a lot, they should lead.

No.

That is where strife comes from.

That's where splits come from.

That's where church hurt comes from.

The wrong people being in leadership because we're looking at the wrong thing, because we're so upside down.

Instead, we need to ask: are they humble?

Do they serve others?

Are they gentle of heart?

Are they following Jesus in washing feet?

Our Lord humbled himself.

We need to lay down our pride in order to love, receive, and learn.

One of the great figures in Roman history is a guy named Gaius Marius.

Uh, some of you may have heard of him, but here's his resume.

He was consul seven times.

That's like being elected president seven times.

And the Romans were really scared of having a president.

He saved Rome from destruction twice, the entire Roman uh Republic twice from foreign invasion.

He was a general who drove his soldiers so hard, they actually called his soldiers Marius' mules.

What you may not know, like of course, you'd expect soldiers to have to drill a lot, you know, practice marching and practice formations, and also have to fight battles, which they fought hard.

But also a Roman soldier, one of the they were half soldier, half construction worker.

This is one of the things that allowed the Romans to be so dominant.

They built a wooden fort every night.

They all carried gear on their bag, on their backs, and they would have a whole like entrenched fortress so that they would have a position of strength to fight from, right?

And so that meant aside from all of the fighting, aside from the drilling, aside from the marching, you were also working construction.

It was a tough job, and he drove his soldiers super hard.

Now, you may ask, why did they take it?

Because a lot of the time, if you drive soldiers too hard, they mutiny.

They won't do it, right?

They're like, we, there's a lot of us in one of you.

It happened.

So typically, a general coming from noble stock as they did, they wouldn't live among their soldiers.

They would have their own quarters that were very plush, and they'd have their own cook, you know, from their house, and they'd have their own retinue and all their servants, and and right, they wouldn't, they wouldn't do all the things with the soldiers.

But Marius, despite the fact that he was a noble, despite the fact that he had a right to all these things, he slept in their quarters with them.

He ate the same food at the same rough tables that they ate, and he marched with them.

And he would, when it was time to build the fort, he was out there digging and he was out there hammering with the rest of them.

Right?

He didn't hang on, he didn't insist on his rights.

What did he do?

He laid down his status and his rights and he humbled himself and they followed him.

We don't have a God who commands us from afar.

We do not have a God who says to us, lay it all down, while he hangs on to his rights and status and privilege.

We have a God in Jesus who has laid down every last bit of his pride, of his status, of his rights for you and for me.

We're called not to misery, but to joy.

We're called to lay down our pride so we could love, receive, and learn.

Please pray with me.

God, that we could know the joy, the counterintuitive joy, the joy that scares us of what it is to follow you in laying down our status, in laying down our rights, in laying down our pride, that we would humble ourselves before you and one another, that we could know and receive and love.

In Jesus' name, amen.