Isaiah 52:13-53:6, and we'll also be reading from John 13. Isaiah 52:13. Behold, My servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, His appearance was so marred beyond human resemblance and His form beyond that of the children of mankind.
So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of Him. For that which has not been told them, they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand. Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. As one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Let's move to John now. John 13:1-17. 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 and 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'm doing, you do not understand now, but afterwards 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 has 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 is 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, and you are 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. 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. For if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. I'd like to start this morning with a quote from Billy Graham. So Billy Graham said, the highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service.
The highest form of worship is unselfish Christian service. Now just because Billy Graham said it doesn't mean it's true. This morning, I wanna show from God's word the truth of that statement. Serving one another isn't just a good Christian principle, it's what sets us apart from everyone else. Christian service is what made Christians stand out from everyone else in the ancient world.
In the fourth century, the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, wrote about Christians. They support not only their poor, but ours as well. The sacrificial love of Christians put the pagan world to shame. The Bible calls us to serve one another. And I wanna look at three questions this morning.
Why do we serve one another? How did Jesus serve us? And how are we then going to serve each other? So why do we as Christians serve one another? Why is serving a part of our Christian DNA?
Well, firstly, because Jesus told us to. Jesus says in our text in verse 14, if I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. Washing one another's feet is the ultimate expression of humble service. We're gonna unpack that more in point two and three. But I wanna start by focusing on that word ought.
Jesus isn't commanding us here to wash one another's feet. This isn't an imperative, a command. Rather, Jesus is saying we are obliged to serve one another. Washing one another's feet is something we ought to do. Secondly, we serve one another because we are to follow Jesus' example.
That's Jesus' point in verse 15. For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. Just like Jesus washed His disciples' feet, so we ought to wash one another's feet. Just like Jesus served us, so we should serve one another. You can't call yourself a Christian and not serve other people.
That would be an oxymoron. A Christian who doesn't serve others isn't following Christ's example. In fact, we serve one another because we want to be like Jesus. Jesus says in verse 16, 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. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, it is enough for a servant to be like their master.
Our goal as disciples of Jesus is to be like Jesus. We serve one another because we wanna be like the one who served us. Finally, we serve one another because Jesus says in serving one another, we will be blessed. Verse 17, if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. Do you believe that?
Do you believe that God will bless you as you serve other people? That in serving others, you will be blessed. So how do you experience this blessing that Jesus promises? Well, firstly, we experience it as we do God's will. Corrie ten Boom said, the safest place to be is in the centre of God's will.
And it's not only the safest place, it's the best place to be. There is an inner peace and an abiding joy in doing God's will, in serving other people, just like there's a gnawing anxiety and persistent unease when you ignore God's will and just live for yourself. God blesses those who seek to reflect His character. Secondly, we're blessed by others' gratitude. Paul expresses his gratitude for the support of the church in Philippi.
He says, it was kind of you to share my trouble. Serving one another is one of the ways we express our love for each other. Serving one another is one of the ways we build Christian community. It's a blessing when others thank us for how we've served them, and how we've been a blessing to them. But while it's great to receive the gratitude of those we serve, we don't serve others for their praise, but for God's commendation.
The truth is that sometimes other people won't be grateful for the things we do for them. Sometimes our service will go completely unnoticed and unthanked, but God sees. We serve because we wanna please our heavenly father. Jesus says, for those who serve faithfully, God will say to them when they get to heaven, well done, good and faithful servant. Our ultimate blessing in serving one another is God's commendation.
We serve one another because Jesus told us to, because He called us to follow His example, because we wanna be like Him, and because in serving one another, we receive God's blessing. But that leads us to our next big question. How has Jesus served us? If He's the example, it's one thing to say, follow My example, but what is Jesus's example? So I wanna answer that by reflecting firstly on the song of the suffering servant in Isaiah 52 and 53.
Because Jesus is God's servant about whom Isaiah sings. So let me point out four things this song says about how Jesus served us. Firstly, Jesus serves wisely. Isaiah's song starts, behold, My servant shall act wisely. Now when you read the rest of the song and how Jesus serves us, you might wonder about Jesus' wisdom.
It doesn't look very wise. But Jesus serves not according to the wisdom of the world, but according to God's wisdom. Paul writes, for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. What we preach is the death of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. But the death of Jesus seemed absolutely foolish in the eyes of the world.
But God proves His wisdom by using His death to save sinners. Laying down our lives to serve others might seem foolish in the eyes of the world, and foolish in our own eyes sometimes. Why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself out there again and again? But God uses our humble service to build His kingdom and bring Him glory.
Committing ourselves to serve God by serving other people is showing wisdom. Secondly, Jesus' service is unattractive. Chapter 53:2 says, He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him and no beauty that we should desire Him. We want our service to be recognised. We want people to go, wow, look what an amazing guy that guy is, or how kind is she.
But there is nothing attractive in what Jesus did for us. The cross was ugly. The cross was terrible. The cross was horrible. And yet Jesus chose the cross to serve you and me.
When Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me, He's not saying it's gonna be all butterflies and roses. He's saying that serving one another like He served us is gonna be hard. Serving can be really unattractive, but we do it to honour Jesus, not for personal gain or for fame. Thirdly, Jesus' service is costly. Isaiah sings, He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
We think doing God's will will mean people will like us, but they didn't like Jesus. Jesus was despised. Jesus was a man of sorrows. Jesus was acquainted with grief. People didn't esteem Jesus.
Jesus says, if they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. Like Jesus, when we serve others, we can expect sorrow and scorn as well. While serving one another will be a blessing in many ways, it will also cost you in many ways. But the point of Jesus' service is that it's sacrificial. Verse 4, surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Verse 5, He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And verse 6, the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Jesus served us by laying down His life for us on the cross. That's what Jesus says.
The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Jesus' greatest act of service is a spiritual one. He gives His life to ransom your life. He gives His life to redeem yours. He gives His life to give you eternal life.
He gives His life to reconcile you with your heavenly father. The heart of Christianity is that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and for mine. And that's our example. The Apostle John writes in 1 John 3:16, He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Our service is most like Jesus' when it's sacrificial.
We can't bear one another's sins, but we can lay down our lives for one another. Serving one another is often unattractive, it's costly, it's sacrificial, but it's also the wisest thing that you can do with your life. It's what makes you most like Jesus. So now let's turn to John 13 and look at how Jesus washes His disciples' feet. We'll look at the actual foot washing in point three, but I wanna look at the spiritual significance of what Jesus is doing here.
If washing His disciples' feet seems pretty weird, the interaction between Jesus and Peter in verses 6 to 11 is even weirder. Jesus goes to wash Peter's feet, and Peter says, You shall never wash my feet. As far as Peter is concerned, someone as amazing as Jesus should never do such a gross and menial task. But Jesus says, if I do not wash you, you have no share with Me. And Peter, his usual overexuberance, replies in verse 9, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
And this is where Jesus gets to His point. Verse 10, Jesus said to him, the one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but he's completely clean, and you are clean. The point isn't just washing people's feet, but how Jesus cleanses us. I don't think God cares much about how dirty your feet are, but He does care about the state of your soul. Jesus serves us by cleansing us from our sin.
Firstly, this cleansing is once and for all. If you've been washed clean of your sin through faith in the death of Jesus, you are clean. That's what Jesus tells His disciples. You are clean. When you put your faith in Jesus and His death on the cross, you are cleansed from your sin once and for all.
The writer of Hebrews says, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. If you believe in Jesus, all your sins have been forgiven. Your entire record of debt is nailed to the cross. You've been made clean. You've been sanctified or made holy.
But that doesn't mean we don't need to come to Jesus for cleansing every day. Peter didn't need a bath because he was already clean, but he did need his feet washed. Jesus teaches us to pray every day, forgive us our debts. The apostle John says, if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. The confession there isn't past confession, but present or continuous confession.
And the justice and faithfulness of God isn't just what He did in the past, but what He does for us every single day of our lives. We know that our sins have been forgiven, but we ask God to forgive our ongoing sins because God wants us to hate our sin and to be holy. Jesus serves us by cleansing us from our sin once and for all and every single day of our lives. So I wanna ask you, have your sins been forgiven by Jesus' death on the cross? Do you know how Jesus has served you?
Have you come to believe that in that Jesus being crucified, He did that to serve you, to save you from your sins once and for all and every single day of your life. Is that the truth that you grasp hold of? So if that's how Jesus serves us, how are we to serve one another? There we go. I wanna look at five ways that you can serve your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Firstly, you can serve one another with the humility of Jesus. That's the whole point of John 13, that Jesus humbled Himself in order to serve us. John actually starts with Jesus's glory. He mentions three things. Firstly, he mentions Jesus' divine pedigree.
In verse 3, it says how Jesus knew that He had come from God and was going back to God. Jesus came not just from heaven, but from God. He wasn't just returning to heaven, He was returning to his father. Jesus is of divine origin. Secondly, Jesus knows His divine authority.
Verse 3 starts, Jesus knew that the father had given all things into His hands. What does that mean? Well, Paul sings about Jesus in Colossians 1, by Him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him, and He's before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Being given all things really means all things.
Everything belongs to Jesus. Jesus holds it all together by His divine authority and power. So Jesus knows all authority has been given to Him over everything. Thirdly, John mentions Jesus' divine love. John says in verse 1, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
Notice firstly that Jesus owns us. He loved His own, those that belong to Him. Secondly, Jesus loves us to the very end, or completely, or all the way to the cross. This is Jesus in His divine pedigree, His divine authority, and His divine love. And what does Jesus do?
Verse 4 and 5. He 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. Jesus, in all His glory and authority, shows His love by washing His disciples' feet. Jesus, in all His glory and authority, humbly serves His disciples, doing the most menial of tasks.
And ultimately, Jesus will show His love for you and me by laying down His life for us on the cross. Jesus humbles Himself even to the point of death and death on a cross, which is the most humiliating death there was. When John writes, He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for others. He means we are to humbly serve one another like Jesus humbly served us. He means no matter how important you are or think you are, you are to put the needs of others before your own.
You are to consider other people as more significant than yourselves. You are to get your hands dirty. You are to do what the world thinks is unattractive because God thinks serving others like His Son is beautiful. And Jesus isn't even asking you to do anything as lowly as what He did. After all, He left heaven to serve you.
All He's asking you to do is leave the comfort of your own home to serve others. Will you lower yourself to humbly serve other people? Secondly, we serve with zeal. Paul says in Romans 12, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honour, do not be slothful in zeal, but be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. For how do you serve the Lord?
By loving one another with brotherly affection, which is another way of saying treat one another like family, because in Christ you are all family. We serve the Lord by outdoing one another and showing honour, which is making people feel like they really matter. If you're competitive, if you want a competition, that's what you should be investing in. How to make other people feel special. We serve the Lord by not being slothful in zeal, which Paul pretty much uses two words that are opposites.
Like saying, don't be uneager to be eager or undiligent in being diligent or dispassionate about being passionate. We serve one another by being fervent in spirit. Basically, zeal means we're passionate about serving one another. We're excited by serving one another. Now that might sound crazy to you or even impossible.
Who gets excited about serving other people? Well, God does. Jesus did. Jesus was so zealous to serve you, He gave up everything for you, even His life on a cross. Maybe you need to ask the Holy Spirit to give you a zeal for serving other people.
Spirit, make me passionate about serving other people in the name of Jesus. Thirdly, we serve with good works. In 1 Timothy 5, Paul describes a godly woman as a woman who has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. Bringing up children here is good work. Showing hospitality, it's a good work.
Washing the feet of the saints is pretty much serving your brothers and sisters in Christ in any way you can, and that's a good work. Caring for the afflicted is good work. The Apostle John writes, if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? God's love for us in Christ is seen in how we lovingly serve our brothers and sisters in Christ. So I wanna ask you, what good are you?
Your goodness is seen in the good that you do for others. How you share what God has given to you with those in need. How are you doing good to others? Next, we serve with our gifts. The apostle Peter writes, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.
Whoever speaks, as one who speaks the oracles of God. Whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. You have been given a gift, and you are meant to use it to serve other people. God has poured His grace into your life, and one of the ways you steward God's grace is by serving other people. If your gift is speaking, then speak God's word into the lives of other people.
If your gift is serving, then serve with the strength that God gives through the Holy Spirit. When you use the gift that God has given you, it brings God glory. And if you don't know what your gift is, I encourage you in January, go and have a talk to your new pastor Ben and say, Ben, can you help me find out what my gift is? And if he's not sure, tell him to give me a ring. I've got a great gift thing online that he can use.
I'm sure he'd love that opportunity. Use your gift to serve others. Finally, we serve with love. Paul says, you were called to freedom brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. You've been set free from your sin.
That's the gospel. That's what Jesus has done for you. He set you free from your sin. Only don't use your freedom to live your own way and do your own thing. Instead, use your freedom to serve your brothers and sisters in Christ, and you do that by loving them.
If you're not serving other people, it's saying, I don't love you very much. We love one another by serving one another. In fact, it's our love for others that makes our service a joy and not a burden. I started with that quote from Billy Graham, the highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. When you serve one another, you are obeying Jesus.
When you serve one another, you are following Jesus' example. When you serve one another, you are most like Jesus. Jesus served you by sacrificing His life for you on the cross in order to cleanse you from your sin once and for all and every single day. His service wasn't wise by the world standards, but it reflected God's wisdom. It wasn't attractive.
In fact, it cost Jesus everything. And when you serve one another, it will be a sacrifice. It will cost you. Sometimes it will be unattractive, but that's all according to God's wisdom and it comes with God's blessing. God is calling you to serve one another with the humility of Jesus, with zeal, with good works, with your gifts, and with love.
May you unselfishly serve one another. Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we thank You for how You have served us in Jesus Christ. Lord, You sent Him into this world to be our servant, to lay down His life for us on the cross, that our sins might be paid for, that we might be forgiven and reconciled with You. Lord, He gave His very life in service to us, and He calls us to serve each other in exactly the same way.
Lord, I pray that You would help each one of us here and watching online lay down our lives to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ. Lord, may we do that with great humility, putting them before ourselves. Lord, may we do that with zeal. May we be passionate about serving others. Lord, may we do good to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
May we help them in practical ways. Lord, help us to serve others as You have served us in Jesus. Lord, help us to use our gifts that You've given us to make a difference in this church family. Lord, give us the same love that You have for us, for our brothers and sisters. Lord, may this church be known for its service of each other.
May it stand out as being completely different from how everyone else in this world behaves. Lord, we pray this for Your glory and Your honour in the name of Jesus. Amen.