Ex-Quarterback and ESPN commentator Joe Theismann, allegedly explaining to his soon-to-be-ex second wife why he had an affair: "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy." What do you think about that? "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy." Does God want Joe to be happy? Do you think that ex-wife wants Joe to be happy?
Before you answer, let me
read you another quote by another “fascinating” celebrity: Marla Maples. Ms.
Maples is probably best known for being one of the ex-wives of Donald Trump.
Now, don’t get ahead of me here. Our focus this morning is most definitely not
on ex-wives (thank goodness). I just happen to have quotes that deal
secondarily with that. Marla Maples was asked about her religious roots. She
believed in the Bible, she told interviewers, then added the disclaimer,
"but you can't always take [it] literally and be happy." C.
Colson, The Body, p. 124.
What do you think about
that? Can you take the Bible literally and be happy? Does God want you to be
happy? For those of you that have kids, I think that answer is pretty easy. Do
you want your kids to be happy? Of course you do. Just the same, God wants His
kids to be happy as well. Now, as far as taking the Bible literally, can that
make you happy?
Let me ask you a question.
Is our happiness the goal of the Bible for our lives? If not, what is the goal
of the Bible for our lives? I believe the goal of the Bible is to make us more
like Jesus. From the Old Testament to the New Testament we see models for how
to live our lives to ultimately become more and more like Jesus. Since that is
the goal, then obviously happiness is out, right? I mean, we know that Jesus
wasn’t happy. He died on a cross. He lived His life in poverty. Surely He
wasn’t happy. Right? Wrong.
The Bible says over and
over that He had great joy – even just before His death on the cross. Yet we
know that joy and happiness are two different things so what did Jesus know
about happiness? I’ll tell you by doing something I wouldn’t normally do. I
want to read the last verse of our sermon passage this morning and I want to
read it first.
We will read the whole
thing again in just a minute so don’t worry if you can’t find John chapter
13, verses 1-17 in time. I want to read verse 17 first because to me
it is fascinating. John 13:17 says, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” Did
you see that? The word “blessed “means “happy”. The King James says,
“…happy are ye”. They mean the same thing. Jesus is telling His disciples –
including us as His disciples – how to be happy.
Do you want to be happy?
Sure you do. Everybody wants to be happy. So, how do you get happiness? If you
listened to the TV, the happiest people are the celebrities with their big cars
and fancy houses and beautiful faces. You know the ones I’m talking about. I
mean the ones who commit suicide and get multiple divorces and go to rehab as
often as most of us change socks. The world wants you to think those are the
happy people.
But Jesus, like so often
happens, says something just the opposite. He is concerned about your happiness
and tells us the secret of it right here in John 13:1-17. Let’s
read the whole thing right now. If you grab the Bible in the pew in front of
you it is probably on page 763.
It was just before the Passover
Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go
to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the
end. 2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already
prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus
knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come
from God and was returning to God;
Now, stop right there for
a second. Stop right there and think about that last
sentence. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his
power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so…
Now if you didn’t know the
story what do you think might come next? Because what comes next; what comes
after “so “will tell us a lot about the One being talked about here. If God has
put all things under the power of Jesus; if He had come from God and was going
back to God don’t you think the next words would be something like, “so He
called out with a loud voice and the earth quaked and He called for a legion of
angels to bring His royal crown! Then with just His voice He ripped the temple
curtain in two and Satan Himself bowed down and worshipped Him!”? Wouldn’t
you think that is how it should read? But let’s continue to see what it
actually says.
So he got up from the meal, took off
his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 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. 6 He came to
Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my
feet?” 7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will
understand.” 8 “No,” said Peter, “you
shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part
with me.” 9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter
replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as
well!” 10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their
whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said
not every one was clean. 12 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.13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and
rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and
Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s
feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done
for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his
master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now
that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
I have an idea that the
disciples learned more from Jesus on this day than most of the days put
together. Poor Peter! He was constantly saying something or doing something
wrong but can you imagine being in his place? He is sitting there watching the
One he knew to be the Messiah washing the feet of the other disciples, making
His way around the room and when He gets to Peter, Peter can’t bear it. Washing
feet was the job of the most menial slave and here was the King of Glory making
Himself low as the lowest slave.
The Gospel of Luke writes
that just before Jesus did this that the disciples were arguing over which one
of them was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom. Can you picture this? Here
they are sitting around (or actually more like laying around) a table with
Jesus and they are arguing about which one of them was the best. That’s like a
bunch of bicycles sitting around the Ferrari dealership arguing over which of
them is fastest.
The disciples were all
about following Jesus. They were all about hanging out with Him and eating with
Him and watching Him do amazing things. But they weren’t really motivated to do
the hard work of discipleship. Do you remember what my definition of a disciple
is? A disciple is someone who learns from Jesus and then teaches others with
what they have learned.
These 12 men with Jesus
were all about that first part. They enjoyed learning from Jesus. They just
weren’t motivated to teach and encourage others with what they had learned
because sometimes what we learn from Jesus is difficult. Sometimes what
we learn from Jesus involves turning the other cheek. Sometimes what we
learn from Jesus is that the first shall be last and the last shall
be first or that we are to forgive, forgive and then forgive again.
Sometimes He teaches us to give all we have and sometimes He teaches us to just
be still.
Learning from Jesus can be
fun. I love to go to Sunday evening service or Thursday evening Bible study and
learn through others more about Jesus. I love to just be around my church
family. Being at church is fun. We learn. We share our lives. We support each
other. We make fun of each other. We jab each other with spoons while playing
games after church. It’s fun and we do that because we love each other and our
one common denominator is our love for Jesus.
The difficult part is
having the motivation to teach others with what we have learned because
teaching is not just the transfer of facts from one brain to another. It often
means doing just what Jesus did through sacrificial love. That is how
Jesus motivated His disciples. He showed them sacrificial love.
Most of you have no idea
how much time and effort Morris spends up here every week. Most of you have no
idea how much time and effort Morris has spent getting our audio / visual ministry
in order. Morris stays behind the scenes most of the time and puts as much work
in as anybody making our worship service able to be seen and heard on Facebook
and he does it because we pay him so much money. Right, Morris? Maybe he does
it for the glory or for the power. You think? No. He does it because he wants
everybody else to be able to worship with us and hear the Gospel even if they
can’t be with us in the building. Morris, come up here for a minute
please. May I wash your feet? Sit down in that chair for
a minute.
I believe that Jesus
washed the feet of the disciples for a reason. For one thing, I’m
sure they needed to be washed. They walked everywhere in sandals or
even barefoot and their feet would get dirty pretty easily. But this
was not something one did for a peer. This was something done by a
slave and since there were no slaves with them, I’m sure their feet were dirty
so Jesus washed them.
But obviously there was
much, much more to this. The great commentator Warren Wiersbe
says: “It is remarkable how the Gospel of John reveals the humility
of our Lord even while magnifying His deity: In chapter 5
Jesus says, “The Son can do nothing of Himself.” In chapter 6 Jesus says, “For I came down from Heaven not to do my own will.” In chapter 7, “My doctrine is not mine.” Chapter
8, “I seek not my own glory.” And in 14, “The word you hear is not mine.”
That is true
humility. That’s not faked. It’s not ginned up or
exaggerated. Jesus had one goal and that was to make God the Father
known. Just like John the Baptist had one goal and it was to make
Jesus known. Paul had one goal. Point to Jesus. That’s
the purpose of the New Testament and ultimately the whole
Bible. Point to Jesus. That is our whole purpose as
well. We are to point to Jesus and we do that by showing sacrificial
love.
Sacrificial love is not
something that the world is known for and when they see it, whether they want
to admit it or not, they know it is different. When they see it in
your life they know you are different and that is exactly what we are commanded
by God to be is different, set apart…holy. What makes someone
holy? Is it being pious, religious and holier-than-thou? Or
is it, as has been said, not thinking less of yourself but just thinking of
yourself less?
That is exactly what Jesus
did and that is how he perpetuated the disciple-making process. He
started by just attracting people and while that can be our most difficult part
of this process we do it by meeting the needs of the people we meet so that
they visit our church or come into our lives just long enough to say, “Those
people aren’t so bad. I think I’ll listen to what they have to say.”
Then while they are in our
church or in our lives in any way we model, because we have seen Jesus model
how we are to pray and worship and have faith. Now, we are really
starting to get somewhere with people. They see that we are not
perfect but that what we say starts to make sense and they want to know more so
we start to teach them what we have learned from Jesus.
We give them the basic
tools and set them up for success just like Jesus did for His disciples and if
and when they fail, they learn a valuable lesson. But they do it in
the context of going and doing not just being and sitting.
Then because we have seen
Jesus attract, model and teach, we are motivated by His sacrificial love that
He not only showed to His disciples when He washed their feet but He also has
shown it to us. How has Jesus shown His sacrificial love for
us? Well, the Bible says that we are all sinners; that we have all
done things that displease God (Romans 3:23). It also says
that the wages of that sin; what we deserve to get for displeasing God is
death, meaning eternal death and separation from God and everybody else in Hell
(Romans 6:23).
That’s the bad news and it
is horrible, horrible news. But the Good News is that Jesus showed
us sacrificial love by taking the penalty for our sin and dying on the cross to
pay that debt that we would never be able to pay. He sacrificed His
life; He gave it up to be THE sacrifice once and for all and just like He
washed the feet of all 12 disciples including Judas whom he knew would betray
Him, he died on the cross for every person, even those He knew would never
accept Him as Lord and Savior.
So, we have Romans
3:23 and Romans 6:23 that tell us the bad
news. But John 3:16 tells us the Good News that God
so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life. “Whoever believes in
Him…” That “whoever” includes you and all you have to do is
accept that He died for you and that He will forgive all your sins if you will
repent and turn away from those sins.
There is nothing more
important in this world than for you to make that decision and if you have not
yet made that decision then I will be right here, as the music plays, to pray
with you about that or anything else that you need prayer for.
Invitation
Well, we did
it! We made it to the end of the disciple-making
process. We have seen how Jesus did it and now we can go through the
process just like He did in our own individual ways and when we get to the end
of the 4th step we can check that discipleship box as completed and we can
relax and sing “This Is The Day” and go home with a job well done, right?
We know it is going to
take a while to go all the way through the process. It took Jesus 3
years to do it and we know we aren’t Jesus. But when we get done we
can just relax and let others go through the process. That’s fair,
right? Well, while there is some truth in there it doesn’t mean that
we are off the hook for making other disciples. I know that because
we got here because of what Jesus said in the Great Commission in Matthew
28. Do you remember?
“Therefore
go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very
end of the age.”
He says go and make
disciples, not a disciple, but disciples plural and He says it in a way that we
know He means continually and constantly. Oh great! That
means that we have to do it all over again??? Yes,
repeat! (Write on board and draw arrows from each one to the next
and back again.)
But wait, wait,
wait! This is a good thing. Do you know
why? Sure, we want other people to have what we have. We
want them to have eternal salvation and eternity in Heaven but do you know what
else we get and, in turn, what others get as well?
Do you remember how I
started out talking about happiness? Read verse 17 again. “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if
you do them.” You will be blessed! Jesus says
you will be happy if you make disciples as He did. Jesus was
concerned about our happiness. We want to point to Him and make Him
glorified. He wants us to be happy. Repeat, repeat,
repeat! That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
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