If you brought a Bible with you tonight, if you turn with me to John chapter 13, if you want to use the Bible in front of you, you'll find us on page 1673, 1673. I'm going to pick up a theme from where I left off the Sunday morning, Palm Sunday morning. I preached to you from John chapter 12, and I refer to this passage, and I wanted to go ahead and pick it up and continue that thought. The Apostle John writes, he was just before the Passover feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. Even me was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist. After that he poured water into a basin, began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter who said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus replied, you do not realize now what I'm doing, but later you will understand. No said, Peter, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you have no part with me. Then, Lord, Simon Peter replied, not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well. Jesus answered, a person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet, his whole body is clean, and you are clean, though not every one of you. But he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not everyone was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. Do you understand what I have done for you? He asked them, you call me teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example, you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. We pray with me. Father, we ask on this night, this night where we pause to pay special attention to that last supper. We ask that you would take your word now, and you would use this word to remind us to give us a fresh glimpse into the scene there in that upper room, somewhere in Jerusalem that night, night unlike all other nights. When the Lamb of God would begin to take upon himself the sins of the world, or speak to us through this word I pray, and impress upon each one of our hearts, use this word to mold us and to shape us, and to make us more like Jesus himself, and whose name I pray, amen. I wanted to pick that theme up from Sunday morning, and I talked about Jesus as the servant here in John chapter 13. And this passage here is the only place in all the New Testament when Jesus says I've done something as an example to you. Is Jesus a good example for us? Of course, he's the best. Is he a good role model for us? Of course, there's none better. He did not come merely to be an example or merely to be a role model. If that's all I needed to do, we didn't need to cross. He came to be an example or role model, but more than that, he came to be our atoning sacrifice, our redeemer, the one who take upon himself our sins, and make a tellment so that we could be made one with God. But here in this passage, he says I have done this, verse 15, I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. It's the only place in the Testament he says that. So let's look at the example of Jesus. Again, I began to talk about this Sunday morning. Let me talk about it again. Servanthood flows from strength. Servanthood flows from strength. Look back at verse 3 with me again. Jesus knew that the father had put all things under his power that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. Jesus knew who he was. He knew how big he was and that's why he didn't have any problem being small, taking the lower role, taking the role of the servant. He knew that God had put all things under his power that he had come from God and he was returning back to God. Jesus knew exactly who he was. Take somebody who served himself to take the role of a servant. Take somebody who knows how big he is. Doesn't mind taking the low position. The world doesn't get this. The world doesn't. The world looks up to the conquerors and the dominators and the high and the mighty, the Donald Trumps and the Ted Turners of the world. The world doesn't get this. The world wants to say, I rule. It doesn't get that there is blessing to be found in servitude. Christianity introduced to the world the idea that servitude could be a virtue. The rest of the world's belief systems at the time and a good many still to this day look down upon servitude. They seek self-exaltation. Christianity was the one that introduced the idea of servitude or virtue. The world doesn't get it. Jesus does. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Blessed are the poor in spirit. The one who is your servant will be the greatest among you. The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom from many. Servant who flows from strength. It leads, by example, quietly. Servant who doesn't come with blinking neon lights and blowing its own horn and comfort parades and waving banners, servitude leads quietly, quietly by example. You know of D. L. Moody, the great evangelist of late 1800s, early 1900s. In the late 1800s a large group of European pastors came over to D. L. Moody's Northfield Bible conferences in Massachusetts. Following the European custom of the time when these evangelists went to bed that night they placed all their shoes out in the hallway of the dorm they were staying in expecting for the shoe shine boy to come around and shine their shoes at night. Minor problem. In America we don't have shoe shine boys who go around the halls and shines shoes at night. So walking through the dormitory halls at night Moody saw all the shoes lined up like that and he'd been to Europe before he knew the custom. They didn't want his guests to be embarrassed. So we went back over to the cafeteria where some of the students, some of his students were still having a late meal. We mentioned the problem to them and they mumbled and they demurred and they said they had studying to do another thing. But not one of them. Not one of them rose to the occasion. So D. L. Moody went back to the dorm that night and took every pair of shoes to come back into his room and he began to polish them. Now the only reason we know this story is because one of his co-workers came along and came into the room and saw Moody shining the shoes of all of his young evangelist students. So we put him back out that night, no by the wiser, but word got around. And the next night he had help. The next night the other students came along and said they'd help out too. He's Servin Hood. Servin Hood leads by example. It flows from strength. It flows from strength and it grows from humility. It grows, it's rooted in, it flourishes in the soil of humility. You ever wash somebody else's feet? Other than your own children's. Have you ever washed someone else's feet? Feel pretty proud of yourself? How about a bunch of sweaty fisherman and tax collectors? What takes somebody humble? If you're willing to get up from dinner and wash the feet of a bunch of sweaty, nasty men, tax collectors and fish fishermen. Richard Foster, I guess it's probably been 20, 25 years now since he wrote the book, Celebration Discipline. Richard Foster and there gives this checklist, this litmus test if you will, how to know self-focused service from Christ-focused service. Let me just read what he says about it. Self-focused service is impressed with the big deal. Christ-focused service doesn't distinguish between small and large. It indiscriminately welcomes all opportunities to serve. Self-focused service requires external reward, appreciation and applause. Christ-focused service rests content and hiddenness. The divine knot of approval is sufficient. Self-focused service is highly concerned about results. Christ-focused service is free of the need to calculate results. Self-focused service picks and chooses whom to serve. Christ-focused service is indiscriminate in its ministry. Self-focused service is affected by feelings. Christ-focused service, ministers simply and faithfully because there's a need. The service disciplines its feelings. Self-focused service insists on meaning the need. It demands the opportunity to help. Christ-focused service listens with tenderness and patience. It can serve by waiting in silence. Self-focused service fractures community. Christ-focused service on the other hand builds community. Self-focused service is temporary. Christ-focused service is a lifestyle. We're all called to serve. There is a gift of service in the New Testament. You want to know how you know who's got the gift of service? Those who have been through inquires class with me, you know this. I tell you how you know who's got the gift of service. Wait till the next time we have a meal in Leslie Hall and everybody's there. All ages. And wait for the first child to knock over a glass. You'll get three reactions. Somebody will say, well those children doing it here, why do we have to have kids in here? Look at the message kids make. Somebody else will see that happen and say, somebody's really going to have to clean that up. The person with the gift of service, about the time that glass hits the floor, he or she more than likely will be over cleaning it up. That's how you know who a servant is folks. We're all called to serve. Some have the gift. We're all called to serve. Servanthood grows and flourishes in the soil of humility. Servanthood finds a way to be practical. You can't be a servant in theory folks. There is no hypothetical service. We either serve others. We either meet the needs of others. We either put the needs of others ahead of our own as Paul tells the Philippians, we're just kidding ourselves. I feel like Yoda do or do not. There is no try. We serve or we don't serve. There's no hypothetical service. When a person says he agrees with something in principle, it's around about way of saying he's not going to do anything about it. He's not going to act on it at all. He disagrees with an in principle. You can't be a servant in principle unless you're acting out a lifestyle of servanthood. Young mom and dad come home from the hospital with that baby. Might be the third, fourth, fifth. They come home with that baby. They go through the doors and they say welcome home, son, daughter. Here's your new place. And just before they take him to his room, show him his new crib, he says, wait, mom, dad, I know it's been kind of rough on you. You look a little tired. Before I go to that room, anything you need me to do around here, you want me to pick up the mess that the other kids made. Go in the kitchen and maybe finish the dishes for you. I know you didn't have much time after I announced my intentions of coming. I know I didn't give you much time. Anything I can do to help out around here? Of course, I'm being facetious. Of course not. Babies don't do that. Babies, some total of their thoughts seem to be, I'm hungry. Feed me. I'm wet. Change me. I'm cold. Blanket me. I'm getting ready to have an organic event. Avoid me. Babies aren't thinking about you or anybody else. They're thinking about themselves and their own needs. Well, of course, they're babies. It's cute. But the child's five. Still acting that way? Or 10? Or 16? Or 21? Or 35? It's not cute anymore, folks. It's pathetic. It's immature. You need to grow out of it. Great violinist, Nicolo Paganini. In his will he left his favorite violin to his home city of Genoa, Italy. But he left it to them on this condition. It was to be displayed in a museum and never to be played again. Well, they honor his wishes but it was an unfortunate wish because the kind of wood that violin was made out of, it stays strong and resonant. If you play it, it stays strong and resonant. If you use it, but if you put it in a glass case, it becomes food for worms. And after a while, all that beautiful marvelous instrument was just a rotting shell. Folks, service keeps you vibrant. Service keeps you fresh. Service keeps you alive. It's a way of making sure you don't become a moldering relic of a vibrant life to stay in service to others. Service. Servinhood finds a way to be practical. It finds a way to be useful. It finds a way to meet the needs of others. It looks for needs to meet servinhood, results in blessing. Look at the very end of the passage with me again. I set you an example. You should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth. No servant is greater than his master nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. What's so blessed about serving others? What is so holy about washing a bunch of other guys' feet? I've told you before I am a survivor of a veteran of probably 30 to 35, I lost track, short-term mission projects. And on these mission projects, we would go to a third world or developing country where through a local contact, we'd find a church that was already meeting and gathering. The people were there. God was there working as people. They didn't have a place to meet or they were meeting in somebody's home or out under a tree in a field or a hut. When we go into a community like that, we spend a couple or three weeks building a cement block, a concrete block building for those people could use as a meeting place. They could use it for a school during the week and they could get medical teams out there. The medical teams could come and use that place as a clinic. And in most of the places where I've worked before, when the hurricanes came, that concrete block building was served as a storm shelter as well. We would take American teenagers, American adults, take them from this life and take them to places in the Dominican Republic and in Mexico and in Ecuador and other places that I've been and we would put them in, shall we say, rustic conditions. It might have running water. It definitely would have other running things and we would work them like burrows and treat them in a rustic fashion and work them hard with that in the comforts of home. Some of you know if you've been on a project like that, after the two weeks were up or if there's an adult project, it might be a one week or a 10-day project. After treating them like that and working them like that, and by the way, we charge them large amounts of money for the privilege of being treated that way. They get on the airplane to fly back to South Florida and they'd say, this is the greatest thing I've ever done. This is the greatest experience I've ever had. Why? Too much sun? Too little oxygen up in the Andes? Why would they react that way? Because folks, when we serve others, sacrificially. We get a sense of fulfillment, a sense of connectedness, a sense of this is what I was made to do when you give your life away to others in Jesus's name. You have a sense of, this is what I was made for, servanthood. It results in blessing. Sounds great. Why do any of it? Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond servant. Being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Years ago, Paul Robbins wrote, in Christianity Day, he wrote this story, I'll just read it in his own words. Marion Mill was born in a fairy tale royal palace in Hungary. Her first spoon was solid gold. They sent her to school in Vienna where she became an actress and there she met and fell in love with a young medical student named Otto. Otto and Marion married and went to live in Hollywood, California. They set up house. He began to dabble in movies. He became so interested in movies that he gave up his medical practice, went on to become the internationally famed movie director Otto Preminger. Marion's beauty wit and irresistible charm brought her everything a woman desires. In Europe, New York and Hollywood, she became a famous international hostess. But Otto's princess could not handle the fast life of Hollywood. She went into alcohol, drugs and numerous affairs. Her life and lifestyle became so sorted even for Hollywood that Otto Preminger divorced Marion. She tried to take her own life three times unsuccessfully and finally moved back to Vienna. There at a party, she met another doctor, Dr. named Albert Schweitzer. The well-known Dr. musician, philosopher, theologian and missionary. Schweitzer was home on leave from his hospital in Lamborghini, Africa. She was so fascinated by Dr. Schweitzer. She asked him if she could talk to him alone and he permitted that. For almost six months, every week, she met with Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At the end of that time, he was going back to Africa and she begged him to let her go with him. Schweitzer surprised everybody by green. Marion, the young princess, who was born in a palace, went to a little village in Lamborghini, Africa and spent the rest of her life emptying bedpans and tearing up sheets to make bandages for cutered sores on the poverty, stricken nationals. She wrote her autobiography. Paul Robin says, I love the title of it. All I want is everything. When she died time magazine, quoted from her autobiography, these words. Albert Schweitzer says, there are two kinds of people. There are the helpers and the non-helpers. I thank God. He allowed me to become a helper and in helping, I found everything. Let's pray together and after that and ask the choir to lead us in our song of meditation as preparation. I'll give it just a few moments of silence and then I'll pray and then we'll turn it over to the choir. Father, thank you. When you sent your son, you sent him as a suffering servant. You sent him as one of us. God, we can relate to God, we can identify with. Like God, we can reach out and touch. God, who understands. Thank you again for the sacrifice. Thank you for the compassion, for the miracles and the teaching and the healings, but mostly for the sacrifice or that we would be people of grateful hearts, people of humility, people of service to you and others in your name. Where's our prayer tonight in Jesus' name? Amen. I'll pray. Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of my heart by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit. I may perfectly love thee and worldly magnify thy holy name through Christ my Lord. O God, most high, who art of pure eyes and to behold iniquity, I confess that I have broken thy commandments, I have sinned by selfishness and whirliness, by unbelief and pride. I have not walked humbly with thee nor loved my neighbor as myself. Almighty God, who has given thy son to be the sacrifice and propitiation for the sins of the world, spare this thy servant who now confesses his sins before thee, and mercifully by the blood of Christ, absolve him from all his sins. Our Father, we silently confess before thee, yet now have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blood out my transgressions. Give me the humble and contrite heart which thou dost not despise and enable me to forgive others as thou forgive us me through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen. Amen. Tonight is a service of communion. We'll give you a few words of explanation and I'd ask the elders to come up and join me. Here at this church, we don't practice closed communion which is to say, you don't have to be a member of this church in order to say communion. You do have to be a member of the church and that is all those who profess Christ as Lord, who have received the sacrifice, the payment of Jesus' man on the cross for your sins, and that you come to this table or as we bring the elements to you, you come professing no goodness of your own, nothing that you would offer God by a way of propitiation, payment for your sins. You would simply and humbly acknowledge before God that you are a sinner, deserving his displeasure, or not for his mercy. You should have brought to us in the blood of His Son Jesus. These are common elements. They are unleavened bread and grape juice. What is uncommon about them is that God Almighty has chosen to use these elements to represent for us the body and the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. These elements do not magically become flesh and blood when you take them. They represent His body and His blood. He is here. He is here in a very real way and a very spiritual way. He is not present physically in these elements. He is present spiritually with us. The elders will come up and prepare to pass the elements to you. We will do what we normally do here. We will distribute the unleavened bread and matzo first. If you will take it and hold it, we will receive it together and afterwards we will do the same with the cup. Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 11, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread. We had given things he broke and he said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Same way he also took the cup after the meal, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Do this as often as you drink it and remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Take this and eat. Feed upon Christ in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving. In the same way he took the cup and after he had given thanks for it he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink from it as often as you will and remembrance of me. Jesus said, this is my blood shed for you. Drink this and remembrance of me. Have you grateful. Now Lord please set apart these common elements. They would nourish our souls and set us apart for your use, for your service, for your glory, for the building up at the body of Christ and for the advance of your kingdom. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Let's name as we sing. There is a redeemer. Join with us. We'll find the words in the bulletin. Amen. Please remember the deacons offering on the way out tonight. Please remember to be back here Sunday morning at 9 o'clock for the breakfast. The egg hunt will follow as soon as possible and we will start the service at 10.30. Hope to see you all here at that time. Please remember to take this blue card. I think you all got one if not there are plenty in the north-ex on the way out and use this as an opportunity or reminder to pray and invite that person who might not come to church with you any other time but will come on Easter. Toward that end. Receive the Lord's benediction. Now the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.