All Sermons

18 April 2004 By Richard Wilson

As we open our Bibles to the 13th chapter of the Gospel according to John, as we have followed the sequence of events to this point where the Passover was celebrated with the disciples, and of course the Lord's Supper is instituted in the midst of the Passover. The Last Supper that the Lord had with his disciples was where he instituted the Lord's Supper and he turned the Lord's Supper from the object of the lamb that was sacrificed to himself.
He said, this is my body. This is my blood.
And this pointed to the fact that he must die and fall to the ground like a grain of wheat so that he would pay the price for our sin.
And it was necessitated that one man should die as one man was disobedient in the first Adam.
So the second Adam was to die in our place as a representative head of all those that believe that we might come to faith and life in the Lord Jesus Christ in his resurrection on the first day of the week.
And so, which is also the first day of the new creation, the first resurrection of Christ was the resurrection of the new creation.
And the new creation is the body of Christ of all those that are redeemed throughout all of history and not one will be lost and he tarries for this season of two thousand years so far so that all of God's children will be brought in. And in his patience and forbearing he has included us in that great number of the congregation of God's people.
He says, in all this the scene now changes from this public scene of the temple precincts,
that public scene of him entering into Jerusalem, along with all those others that were entering into Jerusalem.
But he was set out as the coming king of the Jews The king of Israel is coming they said, Hosanna in the highest.
And they were bringing with them their lambs on that particular day.
And he administered to them in this sequence of ministry that revolved around his final act of redemptive work that had to be performed so that we might be saved.
There is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.
And therefore we see here in verse one of chapter thirteen this secluded upper room, this place where he was with his disciples alone.
And we find that he says, 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, or to the uttermost if you like.
And the supper being ended.
Now here we find that the supper of the Passover had ended.
This is recorded in detail in Matthew's Gospel and in Luke's Gospel.
But here it's not recorded in detail of how the Lord's Passover and the institution of the Lord's Supper took place.
We'd had to go to the other gospels to learn of that.
And we find that the Passover had passed over and gone and finished.
And we see here that the supper being ended, the devil having already put in the heart of Judas Iscariot,
Simon's son, to betray him.
So he now had left the intimate company of the disciples with their Lord having instituted the Lord's Supper at that point.
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God.
He arose from the supper and lay aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself.
After that he poured water in a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded.
And then we find that there was a discourse of protest from Simon Peter.
Now this changing of the scene from the public area of Jerusalem to an upper room on the Passover eve.
This Wednesday evening when the Passover sacrifice on Thursday to be eaten on the Thursday evening on the 14th of Nissen,
this was according to the law on the 14th of Nissen the sacrifice of the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed.
So really the Lord's Supper was this precursor to it all.
And after this on Thursday that the lambs would be sacrificed in the evening.
The very same hour almost that the Lord himself was sacrificed on the cross of Calvary.
And therefore he was sacrificed on the Thursday not on the Friday.
So often is the case that we've understood.
The Passover feast was that sabbatical celebration on the Friday
on the 14th of Nissen proper.
And the general regular Sabbath was kept on the Saturday,
that's the 15th of Nissen in the Jewish Levitical calendar.
This Passover meal of the Lord celebrated with his disciples
was his last supper.
And it was a lambless, a Paschal meal which is very significant
because Christ himself was that Paschal lamb,
that Passover lamb.
And he would be the one who would be sacrificed once and for all.
But we find that it was the time that he instituted the Lord's Supper
that John does not mention this institution
but he goes on to other aspects of this whole lesson.
And then from chapter 13 right through to the end of chapter 17
this long and extensive discourse which also includes
the intercessory prayer of our Lord
that he prays the final intercessory prayer.
Now here we find in verse 1 this Passover was celebrated
as the central feast of the Levitical calendar
and yet the essential event of all of world history
was played out here in this solitary place with his disciples
explaining to them the full meaning of what was about to happen.
We find that Jesus knew that his hour had come.
Up in this point, there are many points within the entire record
of the Gospels, of the life of Jesus' earthly pilgrimage
here in this situation.
In the early places he would say my hour has not yet come
and he was withdrawn.
My hour had not yet come.
But suddenly here he says my hour has come.
The impending crisis of his life,
the climax of everything that he had come out of heaven among man
has yet now come.
Indeed it was not only central to the Levitical calendar, this event,
but also it was central to world history.
The whole of history turns on this event
and the Kingdom of God was now going to be established
on the basis of this event.
And all subsequent history would be played out
on the basis of what Christ has done here.
And so the accomplishment of the Lamb of God
that was spoken of in the first chapter of this Gospel
where John the Baptist says,
Behold the Lamb of God that cometh.
And he was baptised with a baptism only that Jesus could do,
a baptism of Christ.
And now he has come to that event three years later
and he was now going to fulfil that prophecy
that had been made of him,
that he would lavish out his life
as the Lamb that was to be the sacrifice for our sin.
And so what the Passover lambs could not do,
as Josephus the Jewish historian said,
there was nearly 300,000 lambs
that were gathered in Jerusalem at this point,
all to be sacrificed on this night.
And none of them would be effectual under salvation.
All they could do is to strengthen their faith
for this one yet to come.
And that Lamb of God that came on the donkey's back
came as the King of Israel but also the suffering servant
that would be the Lamb that would be sacrificed before him.
And so we find that here that the history
in the days of Exodus was pointing toward this event.
And we find that all the significance and the procedures
that were played out in the Levitical calendar
was all to do with what Christ would do
on the behalf of his people,
because we couldn't do it for ourselves.
Only Christ could do it.
And so we find that the expression of this covenant,
this agreement, this bond that God had made with his people,
I shall be your God and you shall be my people,
that reframe comes throughout all the scriptures,
that I have bonded myself unilaterally to you as my people
and I will spill my blood as the diathake,
the covenant that will be cut in my own blood
and then all the blessings shall be released
as an inheritance to my people,
as the last will and testament of the King of Kings has made
and it could be released to the living
as he was now the one who was to die in our place.
Now here he gives the necessity of the shedding of blood.
The blood was to be taken by the believer,
publicly shown and on the entrance of their own houses.
The blood of the Lamb was to be sacrificed
and the daubed on the doorposts and the lentils of all their houses.
Now we've got to know that too.
Christ's blood must be daubed on the doorposts
and the lentils of our soul.
Without that we have no proof that the angel of death
will pass over our sins and will not destroy us.
The only basis by which the angel of death can pass over us
is that the indelible blood of the Lamb be daubed spiritually
on the hearts of our souls.
And here we find that the dwelling place was daubed,
the dwelling place of life is daubed with the dead Lamb's blood
in our place as a substitute for us.
And so Jesus himself is the Lamb, as it says in Philippians,
and if we just turn to that because it's so significant,
Philippians chapter 2 and verses 5 to 8.
This is not our confidence, we have no claim to life at all
because we are dead without Christ.
He says here in chapter 2 of Philippians and verse 5,
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ,
who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant
and coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in the appearance as a man he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death,
even death on the cross.
The significance of that is absolutely life changing.
Without that there is nothing.
That's what the Lamb came to do.
That's what the Lord's Supper represents.
That's what must happen for us.
And so by grace, having loved his own, he says in the passage,
having completely given himself to those whom will be saved,
he had completed this work of love.
He loved them to the end.
He could have said at the point, Lord, take this cup from me.
He could have just left it at that, but he said, Thy will be done.
And they had covenanted in eternity the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
He said, Thy will be done.
He could have said that, but he didn't.
He loved them to the end.
He loved you and me to the end.
We must know this and feel this in our heart by faith.
And if we are at this point, then we need the cleansing.
Remember there was one among them that did not know this cleansing.
He was a disciple of Jesus, Judas Iscariot.
And it's well to say that we have Jesus as our teacher
and we are taught by him.
And that qualifies us to be a disciple of Jesus,
to see Jesus as our teacher.
And we do well to be taught the Word of God
through the facilities that Jesus has given us.
But you know it doesn't make us fit for heaven?
Did you know that?
You can be a member of a football club and be dedicated
in the first grade team and still merely be a footballer.
And you can say, I've given my whole life to this football team.
But it still only makes you a footballer.
And you can be those who have come and sat under the ministry
of the Word of God.
All your life.
And be discerned as a disciple of Jesus
and come under the teaching of Jesus.
But my friends, we can be like Judas.
Depart from among them.
And if at that point Jesus said,
the necessity for you to be cleansed by me and by you
is absolutely imperative.
In Romans chapter 5, again I want to look at that,
Romans chapter 5, because it is a sequence of thoughts
that I want to bring through to you.
And verses 8 to 11.
Where he says,
But God demonstrated his own love toward us
in that while we were yet still sinners
Christ died for us.
Much more then, having now been justified by his blood,
we shall be saved from the wrath through him.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God
through the death of his Son,
much more, having been reconciled,
we shall be saved by his life.
And not only that, but we also rejoice in God
through the Lord Jesus Christ
through whom we have received this reconciliation.
So the point here is that God has demonstrated his love
and we've come under the teaching of that.
But we've got to enter into it.
Judas had not entered into it.
Indeed he had come so far,
and he had come under the teaching,
but his lifestyle actually held it in contempt.
The teaching in contempt.
And unless we find that this kind of
faithful commitment to the Lord Jesus is cleansing,
there will be not an ongoing work of God in our lives.
And so here we see that the Lord Jesus actually enacts
this parable of the cleansing of the feet.
And this is not an action of ablution,
but an action of symbolic necessity
upon all those that were gathered with him at that point,
remembering one had departed.
So not all of them were cleansed,
but we find that those who were with them were cleansed.
But some of the significance of this washing,
after the Lord's Supper,
and before this important teaching,
and the removal of Judas by the providence of God
from the body of the disciples,
here the bodies of the disciples were cleansed.
And he went out from among them,
and he was those that was a type of the Antichrist,
who comes under the knowledge of the teaching of Jesus,
but they do not partake of the cleansing of Jesus.
And Jesus' knowledge that the Father had given all things
into his hand, and that he had come from God
and was going to God.
There was no doubt where he had come from
and where he was going.
And we find here that Peter begins to protest.
And he says, the greater to the lesser.
He says, I am not worthy, and by no means shall you wash me,
says Peter.
He says, how I should wash your feet,
you should not wash my feet.
And the words of Jesus says this,
what I am doing to you, you do not understand now,
but you will know after this, in verse 7.
And this kind of cleansing was absolutely essential
for every believer to undergo.
And I want to say that it is often missed in the gospel
of the necessity of this ongoing cleansing
that Jesus gives his disciples.
He cleanses with the word of God.
He cleanses from the fellowship of other believers.
He cleanses us, yes truly, by the blood of the Lamb.
But there is a whole ministry of the gospel of grace
that must be applied to us, and we become too good for that.
If we exempt ourselves from that, if we think we are above that,
then you are proclaiming that you are not part of them,
but you are part of the antichrist.
Do you see what I am saying here?
And we must be those that are ready to be humbled
and be ministered by the lesser to the greater.
Jesus only can cleanse us.
He says that Jesus' blood is the only cleansing agent.
In verse 7 it says it clearly.
Jesus answered and said to him,
What I am doing to you, you do not understand now,
but you will know later on, or after this.
In other words, there is a certain fog
that was over the disciples' eyes at the moment.
They had not seen the full significance
of what they had just undergone in the Lord's Supper.
They will only come to understand the full significance of this
when the whole work is complete.
Most of the disciples had fled from Jesus.
Peter had denied Jesus thrice.
And it was as though there was no faith on the face of the earth
at that point of the crucifixion of Christ.
There was a sense in which the full knowledge
of what was absolutely essential for them had not dawned upon them.
It wasn't until this Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit,
had come upon them that they had fully seen
the significance of Jesus' sacrifice
and the cleansing blood of Christ upon their own souls.
Jesus' Passover would only be the Passover
that would be effectual under salvation.
All the other Passovers in the history of the world
would not cleanse a whit what the necessity
of this cleansing would take place.
All it could do was strengthen our faith.
But it is only the blood of Jesus that can cleanse us.
Now, having been cleansed, the imperative of this same faith
which demonstrates this grace,
that He says here quite clearly that Jesus is the Lord
and that we are to look to His servant role
as the essential way in which the church is to operate.
We are to serve one another and we are to lavish ourselves out.
We are those that we are not greater than Jesus
and therefore it is essential for us to be like Jesus
and to see this kind of service that is amongst us.
And we should be servants if we are going to be leaders
within the church and we are sent to be servants
and to know that this is our primary role within the church.
In Mark's Gospel, and I was trying to look at this before I came here,
there is a story of Mary coming to Jesus just before His crucifixion.
And we find that, just give me a little bit of time
to just identify where that came from.
Jesus, in Mark's Gospel, Mary came to anoint Jesus with the costly ointment.
13? 13, yes.
Yes, verse 3.
And can I just read this because I think that we'll see something of what's going on here.
And Mary is regarded, what she's done here,
is something that really does express the Gospel.
For being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper,
as he sat at table, a woman came having an alabaster flask
of costly oil, of Spinkenard.
Then she broke it, broke the flask and poured it on his head.
And there were some who were indignant among them
and said, why was this fragrant oil wasted?
For it might have been sold for more than 300 denarii
and given to the poor.
But they criticized her sharply.
But Jesus said, let her alone.
Why do you trouble her?
She has done a good work for me.
For you have the poor with you always.
For whenever you wish, you may do them good.
But me you do not have always.
She has done what she could.
She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burial.
Assuredly I say to you, wherever the Gospel is preached,
in the whole world, what this woman has done
will also be told as a memorial to her.
What an amazing statement in verse 9.
Whatever she has done, it will be proclaimed with the Gospel.
There is some intrinsic infusion
of the kind of action that she took here with the Gospel itself.
And I want to say that the body of Christ here
was the most precious thing to this woman.
And she broke her alabaster bottle
and just lavished everything that she had and represented,
anything precious in her life,
just lavished it upon the body of Christ.
Now I know the flesh of man sees something indignant about this,
something over the top about it.
But this is exactly what we are to do with one another.
Many of us sit in our pews in church,
contained, self-righteous,
and thinking that good works will get us to heaven.
But very few of us, unfortunately, will break our souls,
will burst our boilers, as it were,
and lavish ourselves on the body of Christ.
We'll lavish ourselves in work and entertainment,
we'll give ourselves to sport and other enterprises that perish,
but we won't give ourselves to the body of Christ as we ought
and lavish our best upon the body of Christ.
Now I reckon that the true consequence of being cleansed
by the blood of the Lamb once and for all
in the redemptive work of God,
if it doesn't spread out and our alabaster bottles
of our own personage is not broken
and poured out on the body of Christ,
we are living as hypocrites,
and we are not living consistently to the Gospel at all.
And that's why there is an intrinsic value of this woman
as she works here.
And when we do break our alabaster bottles
and break ourselves over the body of Christ,
we will begin to see the fragrance of Christ
everywhere that we present ourselves.
Brokenness, my friends, is the key to true spirituality.
Commitment and surrender to the work that God has given us
within the body of Christ is absolutely essential.
And to use the Church as some kind of convenience
is directly opposed to the Gospel.
My friends, the necessity for us to be involved in the Church
to the body of Christ, even when it kicks us in its teeth,
even when we become absolutely disappointed
with the behaviour in the Church,
even when we are kicked by people within the Church,
we are to lay down our lives
as Christ laid down his life for us.
And we are to do it until it hurts
and beyond what it hurts.
Let us make sure that we are those
that are not only cleansed by Jesus
but also cleansed by one another
in sacrificial service
and that we receive as well as giving
for that is the gracious manner of the Gospel. Amen.