Let’s look at John 13.
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
2 And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, 4 rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. 5 After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded…John 13:1-3
Being Ruler, King and Lord, next to being naked on the cross, the greatest act of humility Jesus did was to wash His disciples’ feet. In doing this, Jesus knew that He was going to wash His betrayer’s feet. He gave equal service to the eleven that would follow Him and the one who would betray Him. Verse 3 is a key verse, I believe, in here.
3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God …John 13:3
He, then laid aside His garment, took up the servant’s garment, filled the basin and began to wash their feet. He did this because He knew what He knew. The next five chapters talk about knowing or not knowing. By knowing God, knowing Father, and understanding, it then keeps opening doors of where our life comes from—our identity. He knew everything was given to Him. So, He didn’t need to keep anything. It was already His. He knew where He had come from and where He was going. He knew He had come on assignment from Father and He was returning to God.
I believe that is the heart of intimacy, the heart of worship, the heart of having prayer. That we would let God build inside of us – to hear Him say, “You have everything you need in Me. I am your sufficiency.” That becomes a part of our knowing. We can then lay down our lives. It is not something we are trying to keep because it’s something we have already been given. Jesus walked in a supreme place of identity, rest and trust.
Jesus positioned Himself to wash Peter’s feet. Peter said, “You can’t wash my feet.” This sounds like such humility but it was just his fearful pride. Jesus said, “If I don’t wash your feet, then you have no part in Me.” Peter then said, “Well, give me a bath.”
I have to love Peter. Cammy has to love Peter because she’s married to one. Peter’s are always projecting ourselves with our mouth. You know. If I made a mistake, I would compensate with another stupid statement. That’s Peter.
Jesus said, “No, you don’t need that because you’ve already been made clean from the water of My word. We have been walking together.” Then He sets an example. “I’m doing this for you as an example; that you would love one another.”
I believe that Jesus was super-conscience of God as probably any of us would be. He was very aware of where He was about to travel into, so He was really following and listening. Then, suddenly, He said,
18 “I do not speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me. 19 Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He. 20 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” 21 When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” John 13:18-21
The good news about these chapters is that the disciples were being carried into their future, yet they were clueless to most of it. Even like this statement… I think if I were watching this and I heard the voice of the Lord Jesus was talking about the fact that there was going to be a betrayer. This was actually going to happen and it would be one that He chose. So when this does happen, they would already know that He had previously told them. His spirit was then troubled. He thought that they were not getting it. He told them that one of them would betray Him. Jesus got very frank, very blunt. His spirit was troubled, yet He was sustaining an atmosphere in a room. Nobody else was even aware of what was impending and probably growing in that very moment. Yet He was holding an atmosphere.
This is a beautiful picture of our Lord. Because, even as He was about to go to the cross, He held an atmosphere because Peter looked over and they were trying to figure out who would do that?
In Luke’s account it says, that they had begun to ask the question, “Who is going to betray Him”? The next verse says that then they started arguing about who was the greatest. It’s just one verse behind the other. So when we’re looking at self, trying to sort that out, it’s all we can do….either we are the worst or we’re the best.
Peter leaned over to John. John was out, in the Spirit, drinking of this intimacy – this love of the One he loves. Peter motioned to John to ask Him who it was. So John said, “Who is it?” And Jesus said, “Whoever I dip this bread in and hand it to, it’ll be him.” He then did so and gave it to Judas Iscariot.
John’s account further said that the devil entered into Judas. Jesus said, “Whatever you go to do, do quickly.”
So, Judas got up and left while the disciples were still thinking, “I wonder what he’s doing? Maybe he’s going to get some more food, or more preparations for the feast. Or, maybe he’s going to go give some money to the poor.” They were just in the midst of very intentional, supernatural, sovereign exchange. They were just having to surmise the whole way.
I think this is cool. We too are guessing most of the time, when Jesus is on the move.
John continued, with this moment in the upper room, by saying, “I’m going to now leave a new commandment. The new commandment was, I command you now to love one another as I have loved you.” I think it is really the one commandment that Jesus gave us. And it was a little different than love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus went beyond that kind of love. He set a love standard that is way out of this world. Yet,
He said, “Where I am going, you are not going to be able to follow Me now, but you will follow Me later.”
I was meditating with the Lord on this. The thing that I started to see was that, where ever Jesus is taking us, He has to go there first for us. Where He is going, we will come, but not right now. There is a delay factor. Have you ever had that experience? We see what God is doing, but we can’t get there yet?
What we do in those times, more than anything, is to love. Love is the part that keeps everything connected. It covers a multitude of sins and allows humanity to peek ahead, until God comes and brings us into the place that He prepared for us.
It allows us to have this, “What do I do now?” Love. “What do I do now?” Love. But, our answer is usually, “I want to follow You. I’ll die for You”. We would rather be heroic.
Peter was again shooting off his mouth, “I’m ready to die.” Jesus then questioned him by asking, “Are you? Will you?”
I love the way He does this to us as well.
He said to Peter, “You think you can? You are going to betray Me. You’re going to deny Me three times before sunrise. But don’t let that trouble you, Peter. Don’t let that trouble you.”
Oh, Jesus we love You. How could Jesus carry Himself under such pressure and under such conflict?
He then really began unlocking what He was doing, and what we see in scripture in the epistles that He was doing.
He said, “You believe in God, believe in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come and receive you that you can be with me. You know the way; and you know where I’m going.”
The disciples were getting overwhelmed with revelation…..”Where are You going? We don’t know where You’re going. How can we know the way?”
And He answered, “I am the way, the truth and the life – no man can come to the Father but by Me.”
Where was Jesus going? If we read into these chapters, He tells us where He is going. He was going to the Father.
He is the way that all of us are going to come to the Father.
All four chapters are talking about union, or oneness, or coming into the you in Me and I in you. As I am in the Father and the Father is in Me, so are you in Me and I in you. This is abiding – oneness. It is pulling everything as tightly as it possibly can be, to become one.
This is what Jesus was accomplishing and therefore, part of our journey. We may ask how we can allow this oneness to take root in us. How do we allow the truth that, “I am in Christ and Christ in me” to be an abiding place from which we live? How is that going to happen?”
Jesus said, “I am the One that brings this about.”
They answered, “Show us the Father.”
Jesus went on to say, “How can I show you the Father? If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father. Have I been so long with you that you don’t know Me?”
The thing that Jesus was trying to actively challenge was that they were not getting it. They were not allowing the knowledge of this to influence them, so they could have this encounter.
“If you’ve encountered Me, you’ve encountered the Father. Let who I am be for you who the Father is. Let the Father be as good as I am. Let this oneness come into you because this is accomplished by what I have accomplished.”
Jesus got to this one point and said, “If You can’t believe what I’ve been saying, then believe the miracles. Besides the miracles that I’ve done, you are going to be doing greater miracles than this, because I go to the Father, and I’m sending Holy Spirit.”
In these next chapters, Jesus continues to talk to us about Holy Spirit.” He said, “I’m leaving. Father is greater than I and He’s sending Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the one who is going to cause all of these truths to become tangible. They are going to be experiential. He’s going to comfort. He’s going to guide.”
The descriptions of Holy Spirit and what His ministry is are found in John 14-16. Most of them are specifically to the believer and for us to have the ability to partake, receive, understand, to be taught, to know, and to be comforted. Let this become a point of meditation. This is delightful because you start to get faith. “Wow, Holy Spirit, You are going to show me things to come? You’re going to give to me all things that are mine? You are going to remind me of things that Jesus said? Come, do it! We honor You.”
If the Holy Spirit was not here, it would not be good. We couldn’t get close to Jesus. If He had never died and just lived in Jerusalem and run the world? How would we ever get near Him? But instead, Holy Spirit multiplies Jesus in every one of us and makes the relationship with Jesus intimate, more intimate than it ever had been for the disciples.
He then went on and started to explain the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16)
16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. John 14:16-18
Here we get a hint how this is going to come to us, that we might be with Him and He might with us…
19 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” John 14:19-21
I love this verse. It is very precious to me because it was the first verse I was ever given to memorize. We memorized scriptures in the house I was living in when I got saved – one scripture every morning. We were given the scripture in the morning and we needed to be able to recite it by dinner. This was my first scripture.
Since then, I have meditated on it for many years. The picture is simply this: he who has My commandments and keeps them…
The word keep is to guard, to watch. It Is not to do. If it was just to do, we would be back to law. And law would have been sufficient and Christ would not have had to die. It is holding His word, guarding His word. It is not letting His word slip, not letting disappointment or discouragement steal them from us. It is holding the word. And, if we keep these words, there is a love that is being received by Father and given to us. Jesus comes, abides. He then begins to reveal Himself in a greater way.
This why, if we are ever really stuck and we can’t remember where we lost our place, we simply go back to the last thing we heard Jesus say. We go back there and encounter Him. Because He will start with us right there and start the journey again. This is because He is faithful to always take us to another revelation, as long as we are holding the one He is giving us in fellowship in union. He is expanding on this whole picture.
In going to John 16, we read
23 “And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. John 16:23-24
Jesus is saying to us, “The union that you and Father are going to have is like the union that I and the Father have and you will be in that awareness of His love for you, for you have loved Me and believed in Me. We are to allow this access and the oneness, to happen.
Upcoming Events
CONSECRATION AND CELEBRATION!
Friday, April 17, 2015, 7pm: Join us as we consecrate ourselves and the Lord’s house anew. For one year we have been in transition, as we renew our building and ourselves to the Lord. Now it is time to bring all that has been done, and to present ourselves to Him.
Sunday, April 19, 2015, After both the 9 am and 11 am services is our “Celebration and Open House”. Come see all the changes and renewal.
SERVICES
Sunday, April 19, 2015, 9am: Richard and Christina Woldum will share, “Supernatural Provision”.
Sunday, 10:20am: Prayer for the Nations. Christ is coming and we are joining His coming through our prayers. Come be a part of shaping history before it happens.
Sunday, 11am: I will be sharing “A Life Worth Living – Righteous Holiness and Being Loved!” There are victories that are won, when we come into unity with what He has done, what He has called us to, and from where our value comes. A consecrated life set apart for His glory.
