The Servant King

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I’ve given a lot of reasons why we should serve. We should serve out of love, we should serve out of obedience, we should serve in imitation of Christ and humility with one another. But here actually is a reason that appeals to your own self-interest. Did you know that the more you serve in this way, the more joy you will experience? This is a different kind of joy. I keep coming up against this in my own life. After all, a king is someone who wields a lot of power, who can even be a tyrant and lord his authority over his subjects. Think about the kings you’ve heard of. How many of you find that following Jesus is predictable, a clear path, and that Jesus is always exactly as you want him to be? I didn’t think so. Jesus often defies our expectations, and he certainly defies the expectations of the disciples in our gospel today. The servants are often caught in their own mix of power struggles, lies, and negotiations. While the servants portrayed on this show are treated better than servants were treated in the real Victorian era, they certainly don’t have much power to affect change or to do anything outside of their employer’s rules. The concepts explained in my presentations affect everyone; the people of every nation on earth. Some of these concepts are easy to see once they are exposed, but some are very difficult to grasp. There is a subtlety to them. Right now these concepts are foreign and alien to your way of thinking. These concepts will require you to think like you have never thought before.

Cornerstone Chords by Edward Mote, Eric Liljero, Hillsong, Jonas Myrin, Reuben Morgan, and William Batchelder Bradbury

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It means serving one another in obscure, behind-the-scenes ways, behind closed doors, where nobody will see. It may mean giving a financial gift to someone in need, doing it secretly, not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing, as Jesus says. It may mean watching a couple’s children so they can go on a needed date night. It might mean mowing an elderly person’s yard or bringing a meal to someone in need. It says that, “having loved his own, he loved them to the end.” This shows the duration of his love. He loved them to the end! The end of what? Well, the end of his life. He loved them to the very point of death. He loved them completely and fully. Some versions would say he loved them to the uttermost. The word carries this idea of the completeness of Jesus’ love.

Greatness, as Jesus teaches it, is risky. It won’t always put us top of the popularity stakes. But as he teaches us again and again, his way of greatness is also the way to life. Jesus is also referred to directly as a King in a number of places in the Gospels: in Matthew’s Gospel, when the wise men come seeking Jesus, they ask Herod ‘ Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?’ Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, of which we heard the beginning a few moments ago continues with a kingly prophecy: He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. Later in the Bible, in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, and in the book of Revelation Jesus is referred to as the King of Kings. First of all, it is a symbol of saving cleansing. Look at verses 6-11. “He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’” Peter is objecting. He doesn’t feel worthy of Christ washing his feet. Typical foot-in-the-mouth Peter goes from one extreme to the other. He says, “Lord, you shall never wash my feet.” Let’s take a couple of fictional examples that are representative of how we tend to imagine servants.We pray for communities shattered by war and violence, and longing for peace, those who, in desperation, risk long and dangerous journeys to reach a place of safety. This becomes really clear in Jesus’s teaching, because what follows the act of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet is a dialogue with Peter, and then explanation and teaching to his disciples. His teaching is these two things; it’s teaching us something about salvation and it’s teaching us something about how we are to live as Christians. In Christ Alone Chords by Keith Getty, Kristian Stanfill, Newsboys, Passion Band, and Stuart Townend Now, the way John words this I think is really interesting, because it’s not merely that Jesus was doing this functional task. It was that; this isn’t mere ceremony. But the way John words this shows us something about how this reveals the heart of Christ and the heart of God.

Why? Because his love is so deep. Its dimensions are so infinite, when you consider the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of Jesus Christ! “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end,” and he will now display that love. 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 also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.” When I don’t understand what people mean, perhaps not understanding their feelings of fear or inadequacy…I Speak Jesus Chords by Abby Benton, Carlene Prince, Dustin Smith, Jesse Reeves, Kristen Dutton, and Raina Pratt

That becomes clear when we consider the servant king’s teaching in verses 6-17. That’s point number three. The servant king’s love, the servant king’s humility, and then thirdly, the servant king’s teaching. Do any examples of kings who serve or who were willing to die for their people come to mind easily? Although this kind of leader may have existed in history, we do not readily associate “service” or “being willing to die” with the role of a king. But then why call him a king at all if he doesn’t act like one? How can Jesus the servant and Jesus the king possibly be the same person? As New Testament scholar D.A. Carson says, “The way Jesus displays his unflagging love for his own is in the cross immediately ahead and in the act of self-abasing love, the footwashing that anticipates the cross. 'Greater love has no one than this, than that a man lay down his life for his friends' (John 15:13)." Peter’s probably thinking what all the other disciples think, but Jesus here is using this as an occasion to teach him something. Jesus says in verse 10, “‘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, and that was why he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’” That’s referring, of course, to Judas Iscariot. We’ll talk about Judas a little bit more next week.

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Here at Covenant Life Church, we have greatly benefitted from the small group resources from The Good Book Company. Many small groups in our family life ministry have used "Colossians: Confident Christianity" in their study of scripture. Additionally, our youth ministry has used "Romans 1-5: God and You" in their small groups. Both resources were very easy to use, helped the reader engage directly with the scriptures, and had a wonderful pastoral emphasis demonstrated in all the questions. There’s one more thing that puts an even finer point on what Jesus does here, and it’s in verse 2: enter Judas. We read that during supper, “the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him.” Jesus knows this, and you have to read between the lines just a little, but it’s pretty clear that Judas does not leave the room until after the footwashing, which means that Jesus, when he washed his disciples’ feet, he also washed the feet of Judas. He washed the feet of his friends, he washed the feet of his enemy. Why? Because of his love and because he is the servant king. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.