Let's return to John, chapter 13, and I pray that my voice will not be a distraction for you. I like you. I am enjoying all that comes with the season, the yuletide greetings, and also the fluves and the sneezes. And so I pray that God will bless us in this passage, which I am very excited about. I love this passage of the washing of the disciples' feet, and I pray that you will rejoice in the truths of this passage as I have. And John, chapter 13, let's read from verse 1, which we studied last week, but let's pick that up to capture the context, to remind us that we are here at the feast of Passover, which is the last supper of Christ. And let's read through verse 11, listen for it is God who speaks to us. 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, 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 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 will 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 was why he said, not all of you are clean. The Lord bless the reading of his word to the instruction of his people. The scene which we have before us is the Passover meal. In the last supper, John has carefully interwoven the themes of the supper together, which we find in the other Gospel accounts, which are in complete harmony with what we read here in the account of John. Here John is weaving together what we would read in Luke 22, here, of course, in John 13, Mark 14 and Matthew 26. If you wanted to do a study on the different accounts of the Lord's supper, you would find each one adding color to the other to give us a full picture of this evening, which Christ spent with his disciples. Jesus weaves, or rather John weaves all these things together in a living parable, a footwashing. Judas' betrayal, Peter's need of restoration, the lesson on humility, the lessons on discipleship are all here in John 13 and this living parable, those which are spelled out more clearly and more of a doctrinal dissertation or teaching and the other Gospels are here captured in this act of the washing of the disciples feet by Jesus. Ray Stedman in his book Secrets of the Spirit suggests this, there can be little doubt that here Jesus is working out a parable for the instruction of his disciples. He was dramatizing for them the character of his ministry. He was showing them by this means what he had come into the world to do and what he would send them out to do. In fact, if you listen carefully to the entire account of the washing of the disciples feet, you will find here finally, we might be saying to ourselves, a consolidated place where all of the careful study we have done throughout the scriptures comes to be manifest in one teaching. We mean such as the teaching on reprobation which we had a couple of weeks back. Certainly the themes that we have uncovered concerning the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world are here captured in this living parable. The incarnation and all of the teaching of God who has become flesh and who has Christ Jesus is here in this lesson in John 13. We find here teaching on justification and on sanctification and there are others which we have taken one at a time singularly week after week in the first 12 chapters and here we find that if we have grasped them and if we have understood them much as the disciples were to have reflected on Jesus's teaching each of these themes one after another through his ministry and these first as it's recorded in the first 12 chapters. If they have paid attention if they have grasped them then they can see on this evening leading up to the Lord's Supper. At this time the celebration of the Paso