The God Who Got Lowly
June 11th 2023
Grace Baptist Church
Vermillion, South Dakota
Welcome In The Name Of The Father, The Son, And The Holy Spirit.
The Ground Beneath Your Feet Is Holy Ground.
Let Us Worship.
The Gospel According to St. John 13:1-4
1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
2 During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him,
3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God,
4 *got up from supper, and *laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.[1]
Prayer
Let us pray. O Father of lights, how You shine as illumination and beacon of hope on our darkest days. Recall to our hearts and minds and souls that the Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed did the work that You gave Him to do. That in the midst of paralyzing darkness and despair, of unpleasantness and a betrayer whose smile hid jagged teeth meant to tear Him apart, The Lord chose to serve, and wash His enemy’s feet, to wash His denier’s feet, to wash friend’s feet who would quickly turn into fleeing cowards. In this way the Lord Jesus has washed all of us, though we are fickle, though we are fragile, though we betray and are ashamed to be counted as His disciples, still He is the suffering servant who is compelled by love to wash us. In His Good Name, Amen.
If you’re ever going to let faith break your heart it might as well be right here, in John 13, because it’s a meal, and more poignant, The Last Meal. One last time to sit around and laugh, and eat, and to talk about the things which really matter, actual.
This fellowship, this communion, this talking about things which really matter is rare in our time and culture. We tend to be small talkers, and the talk tends to be frivolity, and it is at trivia which we excel most. But I have a feeling that though the Lord Jesus had a good sense of humor, and liked kids, even, “suffer the little children to come to me” (Matthew 19:14), He had a way of cutting to the chase, getting to the rich stuff, the stuff which we all long to talk about: the meaning of life and all the heartache that seems to flow like a river through it all, but seldom have the courage to broach, for to do so would reveal us to be too much, too intense.
The Lord sits down at table, if you will, with these friends, these disciples who’ve been following Him around for the last three years, one last time. The things they’ve witnessed together, the miracles, the sermons, changes of affections and salvation. All this redemption that just floated in the air around this carpenter king from Galilee.
The end of this great adventure nears, and with it the dawning of another adventure, one which these Apostles could never have fathomed: The Church Age.
If you’re ever going to allow Jesus to break your heart and build another one, it’s right here, at The Last Supper.
Because it is a meal. A moment in time, shared, baptized, made holy, by the real presence of Christ, and these eternal souls with differing destinies yawning out before them. There is eye contact made, humor, sarcasm, wit, compassion, and dreams shared. Prayers too.
This is a meal, a sacred night, 24 holy hours tinged with bitter sweat knowledge that death is on the way. Just as it is for you.
Jewish days go from sunset to sunset rather than midnight to midnight like ours do. John chapters 13-19 all happen during this 24 hour period, Thursday dusk to Friday dusk. It is as though St. John slows down time, lets us peak into his memory, and says to us as it were, hear the voices, see the faces, smell the smells, taste and see, this old, sacred story, actually happened. Hear His voice, even now. These are my people, I knew them all. I want you to go there and dwell there for a bit and contemplate it because The Lord Jesus is real, true God and true man, and we should dwell upon it all.
Foot washing to burial, all in 24 hours. The Lord knew.
Luke 22:14-16
14 When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him.
15 And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer;
16 for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”[2]
Doesn’t it make you sad sometimes: how it all goes down, how it all pans out, the deep sad depths of how our lives really are?
See the love of the savior. He shares His last meal with a traitor, dips His last morsel and shares it with the man He let in, in with the 12 apostles. Doesn’t it make you sad to know that death is always stalking you and all your stuff will mostly end up at Good Will and maybe a few cherished souls will carry around some select memories with them like gold. That some things go out with a bang, and some with a whimper, and others go out betraying us with a kiss, and if only we knew the time on the clock remaining we’d avoid all the awkward small talk and fake niceties, for death is coming for The Lord Jesus just as it is coming for you, so say what matters while you can.
The question is: are you tied into Christ’s resurrection from the dead and His work of making all things new?
The Lord Jesus for His part, knew the clock, knew the hour, and chose to serve with the small measure of time remaining to Him. All the more astonishing when we think about whom He was serving.
Psalm 55:4-7
4 My heart is in anguish within me,
And the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me,
And horror has overwhelmed me.
6 I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.
7 “Behold, I would wander far away,
I would lodge in the wilderness.
Selah.[3]
Jesus could no doubt identify with much of the sentiment expressed in
Psalm 55:12-23
12 For it is not an enemy who reproaches me,
Then I could bear it;
Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me,
Then I could hide myself from him.
13 But it is you, a man my equal,
My companion and my familiar friend;
14 We who had sweet fellowship together
Walked in the house of God in the throng.
15 Let death come deceitfully upon them;
Let them go down alive to Sheol,
For evil is in their dwelling, in their midst.
16 As for me, I shall call upon God,
And the Lord will save me.
17 Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur,
And He will hear my voice.
18 He will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me,
For they are many who strive with me.
19 God will hear and answer them—
Even the one who sits enthroned from of old—
Selah.
With whom there is no change,
And who do not fear God.
20 He has put forth his hands against those who were at peace with him;
He has violated his covenant.
21 His speech was smoother than butter,
But his heart was war;
His words were softer than oil,
Yet they were drawn swords.
22 Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you;
He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
23 But You, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction;
Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days.
But I will trust in You.[4]
What a day it is going to be, we will spend months reading about this last day here at Grace on Sunday mornings, for this day is truly the beginning of the new creation and restoration of the world.
Leslie Newbigin says that the Greek word for world, “Kosmos” occurs some 40x in St. John 13-17.[5]
This is a word that can mean world, or universe (Kosmos sound like the English “Cosmos”), or even earth as opposed to heaven. The dwelling place of mankind. It also has this idea of “to set into order” or “adorn”, that is to say that the world cannot be thought of in any real sense without the God of order who made it all. You cannot speak of the world without speaking of God.
In Genesis there is darkness and God makes light and life and order.
And even if the world be in chaos and rebellion right now, it is God’s hand which made it all, and so it remains His.
The Apostle John’s testimony of the Lord Jesus is:
John 13:1
Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end[6]
Here is the truth about Jesus Christ. When faced with the prospect of searing loss, when faced with betrayal and sorrow, He chose to keep doing the slow and good work of love. You can feel utterly destitute and destroyed and still endeavor toward faithfulness. Jesus was faithful, to the end.
Silver lining proclivities plague us and provoke us to skip over the hard and the ugly, the very last days of the Lord Jesus, His agony, His anxiety, His betrayal, His passion, because the story ends well in victory and resurrection- but to do so diminishes Christ’s heroic life and work, and it diminishes what is true of all who suffer: that you can suffer and still do good. You can be falling apart and still be faithful.
To skip over Christ’s heroic faithfulness in the midst of this sorrow He was working through is to diminish our worship, and we are needful of worship of a God who somehow became small like we are, of mere flesh and bone and dust, but who still nonetheless is cosmically eternal and everlastingly larger than life.
The Christian recognizes the human need for worship, but also believes in the revelation of God found in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Scriptures. Humans need to worship, and we need to worship something bigger and eternal, but that everlasting and eternal thing is not at all nebulous, God has revealed Himself. God has spoken. And God is, it turns out, good.
Faithful even, to the end.
This is seen for His love for sinners like us, as well as enemies like Judas, and smooth talking boasters like Peter who said He’d never leave Jesus yet was found to be strangely absent, a 3x denier of Christ.
And still The Lord Jesus girds Himself. Not with a crown of gold and robes of purple, not with new tires and an apple phone without a case, but with a towel for He has much serving and washing to do.
This is our King.
I leave you for now with what Augustine writes about it all.
“But why should we wonder that He rose from supper, and laid aside His garments, who, being in the form of God, made Himself of no reputation? And why should we wonder, if He girded Himself with a towel, who took upon Him the form of a servant and was found in the likeness of a man? Why wonder, if He poured water into a basin wherewith to wash Hi disciples’ feet, who poured Hi blood upon the earth to wash away the filth of their sins? Why wonder, if with the towel wherewith He was girded He wiped the feet He had washed, who with the very flesh that clothed Him laid a firm pathway for the footsteps of His evangelists? In order, indeed, to gird Himself with the towel, He laid aside the garments He wore; but when He emptied Himself in order to assume the form of a servant, He laid not down what He had, but assumed that which He had not before. When about to be crucified, He was indeed stripped of His garments, and when dead was wrapped in linen clothes; and all that suffering of His is our purification… for proud man would have perished eternally, had he not been found by the lowly God.[7]
The Liturgy For 6.11.23
Congregational Singing
The Call To Worship
Psalm 92
Call & Response Blue Hymnal #119
The Apostle’s Creed
The Lord’s Prayer
The Offertory
Congregational Singing
The Proclamation
The Gospel According to St. John 13:1-4
The Supplication
The Communion
1st Thessalonians 2:13
We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.
To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein.
To thee cherubin and seraphin continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.
The glorious company of the apostles praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee.
The noble army of martyrs praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee:
the Father of an infinite majesty;
thine honourable, true and only Son;
also the Holy Ghost the Comforter.
Thou art the King of glory, O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man,
thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death,
thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants,
whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save thy people and bless thine heritage.
Govern them and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee;
and we worship thy name, ever world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.
~ Te Deum Laudamus BCP (We Praise You, O God)
The Benediction
May you go forth from the House of the Lord,
Free from all anxiety due to any treacherous social entanglements you cannot escape. Amen.
The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
Chapter 9, Paragraph 2
Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God,2 but yet was unstable, so that he might fall from it.3
[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Jn 13:1–4). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Lk 22:14–16). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[3] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Ps 55:4–7). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[4] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Ps 55:12–23). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[5] Frederick Bruner, “The Gospel of John” p.747
[6] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Jn 13:1). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[7] Augustine, “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 7” p. 301
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“You cannot speak of the world without speaking of God.” 🔥