Love

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here today. It's great to be here today. We've got a great topic today, I think, how Jesus expressed, actually did love. He didn't just talk about love. And we've got one of the most powerful parts of this. We're coming towards the end of our series called Emotional Jesus, by the way. Next week is the last one, and we're going to look at the emotion called delight, where you're just like, wow. Do you realize Jesus doesn't just love you, he likes you? I know that some people think, oh, well, he has to love me. He actually wants to be with you. He enjoys being with you. I think that's where we're going to end up with, which is great, because that's where love lasts forever, right? We're going to be, instead of looking at Jesus saying, love your neighbor or love your enemies, we're going to see him actually do it by washing his disciples' feet, loving them, who, by the way, would become his enemies. And he knew it. Judas betrays him, Peter denies him, and they all flee from him, and yet he still washes their feet. And it wasn't necessary, OK? But in his point, it was. So we're going to be starting now in John chapter 13, so you can open your Bibles to that or use the Bible app. Starting in verse 1, and we go through verse 15, and then I think the real heart of the message in John 13 is verse 34 and 35 will include that as well. Now before the feast of 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 am doing, you do not understand now, but afterward, you will understand. Simon Peter said, 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 only my feet, 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 is why he said that 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 should also do, just as I have done to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. By the way, John 13 starts the longest section of teaching Jesus ever taught in any of the Gospels, it's John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, five chapters of him teaching and praying for his disciples, and all on the night when he was going to be betrayed. And it's really profound, he doesn't start by just talking, he starts by doing. And we see how that works. And so we're going to learn from this text these three things. We're going to look at the person, the who behind all of this, the passion, the why he did this, and the pattern, the how do we receive this and respond to this. But first of all, the person. You probably heard about, foot washing is not something, well, the only people who did it in the first century were the people forced to do it. The lowest menial task given to a slave who was commanded to do it, and not a noble slave, but the lowest in the household, if there was ever a household slave, because nobody wanted to deal with dirty, dusty, smelly feet. By the way, in the Middle East, even to this day, the foot is kind of one of those things nobody really wants. The foot is, in the Middle East, to what the buttocks is to our culture. So I won't ask how often you've washed that for somebody else, but do you understand what you're dealing with there? We kind of go, ew, yuck, gross, and Jesus does this. You really don't understand Jesus until you see that he is really a paradox, a conundrum. It's like, he didn't need to do this. This text says, he knows he's going back to God, he knows what's before him, he knows he is going to receive all honor and glory, that he's got just a few...