Why Should We Wash Feet in the Church?

Greetings to all. You can turn your Bibles with me to John 13.

John 13. I've been working through what we call the New Testament Christian ordinances, and I noticed here in our passage this morning in Malachi that one of the things that was falling away or turning away from God was they stopped doing the ordinances of the Old Testament. And the New Testament, we have about seven, I think, Christian ordinances that we recognize as New Testament ordinances.

And this morning we're going to look at a rather unusual one. It's the foot washing.

John 13. Now, I know we have a number of visitors here this morning, and I want to say two things to you. I want to welcome you, and I'm glad you're in our midst. Another thing I'll tell you, don't get too nervous because we don't plan to wash feet this morning, but we're going to look at a passage that's going to point us and teach us that very clearly.

And for your information, we as a congregation here, we do actually practice this here about twice a year in our love feast service. We gather together here, and the men usually in the auditorium here, the ladies are dismissed in other rooms, and they'll take their shoes off and socks, and we do that here at the men, and we begin to wash each other's feet with real water and real basins.

And I don't know about the rest of the folks, but usually when I take a shower that morning, I try to spend a little extra time with my feet and my toes and make sure my toenails are clipped, and I don't really want to put my brother through some extra things there that he doesn't have to go through.

So I think by that we're going to see that this has a deeper meaning than dirty feet. So we're going to read John 13, beginning in verse 1 through 17.

Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

And supper being ended, the devil having put 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 was come from God and went to God, he riseth from supper and laid aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself.

After that, he poureth water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter, and Peter sayeth unto him, "Lord, does thou wash my feet?"

Jesus answered and said unto him, "What I do, thou knowest not, but thou should know hereafter." Peter sayeth unto him, "Thou shalt never wash my feet." Jesus answered him, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."

Simon Peter sayeth unto him, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." Jesus saith to him, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every wit, and you are clean but not all, for he knew who should betray him. Therefore said he, 'You are not all clean.'" So after he had washed their feet and had taken his garments and was set down again, he said unto them, "Know you what I have done to you. You call me Master and Lord, and you say, 'Well, for so am I,' so I am.

If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If you know these things, happy are you if you do them."

Part of my burden to share these ordinances is to stir up within our hearts and put life and conviction behind them because these things that we do can so soon, generation after generation, sort of become a lifeless kind of form that we just do, and we sort of don't really have the personal conviction.

A key verse to bring that out is found in 1 Peter 3:15. Peter says, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always." Now, the word sanctify there, I understand, simply means set apart as you sort through your heart, set apart everything in there, set God in the first place, and sanctify him there in your heart that whenever somebody asks you, be ready always, not sometimes, but always to give an answer to every man, not just some man, but everyone that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

That's conviction. That is giving an answer that's not just, "Well, I don't know why we do these things. It's just how we do it in our church. I don't know why, but we've always done it." I don't think that's good enough for most people.

They want to hear your conviction on it, and that's my point. Let's get the heartbeat of Jesus here on this in this setting. So let's think about the setting a little bit. So they're here. Jesus' public ministry is coming to a close, and he takes, in fact, if you take the Gospel of John in its order, 1 through 12, I understand is pretty much the three years plus of his earthly ministry, and then you take this chapter, 13 through about 17, and it all happens within 24 to 36 hours.

And if you read the next four or five chapters, and if you have a red letter edition Bible, you will see that most of the words are red. Jesus is speaking. He takes aside his handpicked, chosen disciples, and he takes them into this upper room, and now he sits down and he begins to teach them. You remember Jesus told his people one time, "A new commandment I give unto you," or "I bring unto you." Does anybody remember what that new commandment was?

The love one another. Well, the Old Testament had that in a commandment, didn't it? I mean. Love one another as I have. As I have. So he puts a new definition behind an Old Testament teaching. The Old Testament taught very clearly that brothers were to love one another. I think we read that in Sunday school. Jesus comes along and he says, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another." Is that new? But as Edsel said, Jesus finished that by saying, "As I have loved you." And I think that is what Jesus is doing in this service here because, and in my study and research, I find it very interesting the excuses and reasons groups and people take to not wash each other's feet.

They'll say things like, "Well, that was an old custom that was done clear back," and it was. Foot washing was an old custom. We read clear back in Genesis. Abraham did it. Lot did it. To their guests, it was an old custom that when you had a guest, and it wasn't a commandment at that point, it was just simply out of your good heart, you would be hospitable. If you would take in guests or strangers, one of the things you would do, you would have a basin of water for them to wash their feet.

That was usually the first thing they did, and maybe the second thing, they would offer them a meal or some kind of food, and we see that pattern. We see Abraham did it, like I said, Lot did it, many others did it.

Interesting, Abigail did it to David. Interesting, David did it to Uriah. When he sent him to his house off the battlefield, he sent food and water for him to wash his feet. So that was a custom that was practiced. That was practiced clear up until this time. So Jesus and his followers were very familiar with it because Jesus referred to this custom when he was at the Pharisee's house.

Was it Simon? And the woman that was caught in adultery came in. Remember what Jesus told the Pharisee? "This woman washes my feet with the tears, but you never offered me any water." So these disciples were all very familiar with the old custom, and yet in the middle of this foot washing service, Jesus told Peter, "You don't know what I'm doing.

You don't understand what I'm doing." So you see Jesus is establishing something brand new here. We never have a foot washing service like this before that we read about. In the Roman times, we had, if anyone was hired to wash another's feet, it was a bond servant of the Jewish people. If he got himself in trouble and he was indebted and so on, then he was hired often to wash feet of the master, or a Gentile slave would be hired to wash feet.

Also in the Old Testament, we have foot washing as a ceremonial kind of cleansing. We read about that in the law. Now, Aaron and his sons, if you remember, there was a container set there between the people and the altar, and the priests had to wash their feet and their hands, and that had to be to do with a purifying and so on.

It's not that that Jesus is establishing here. We will see that as we study this. So Jesus is establishing something very new here, something new, and I wanted to ask this morning to capture, at least in part, what is Jesus establishing here in this particular passage? If you remember, if we back up one chapter, which I think is six days earlier, we see there was another foot washing service of its kind, and that was held at, I think it was Simon's house, according to some of the other Gospels, but the people present were the disciples, and it was Lazarus, the man that Jesus had raised from the dead, and Lazarus's sisters, Martha and Mary, were there, and it says that Martha was serving, and Lazarus was sitting at the table with Jesus, and Mary brought a pound of ointment into the room, and the whole room was filled with this odor, and she took that ointment and she washed the feet of Jesus with it, anointed his feet.

And then Judas was there, and he criticized. He said, "Why do we do this? I mean, this could be sold for so much money and given to the poor. This is dumb. I mean, taking this expensive oil and putting it on the feet of Jesus."

And Jesus rebuked him. If you remember, he says, "Just leave her alone because she's doing this in preparation of the burial, of his burial." And here in this now, six days later, we have another foot washing ceremony, if you want to call it that, service time, and I would like to think of this. The previous one was in preparation of burial, and this one is preparing the disciples for life in the New Kingdom.

New Kingdom life. So if this needs a title this morning, the title would, "Why should we wash feet in the church?"

Why should we wash feet in the church? And I hope as we go through this, we can have a little clearer answers for that. Should somebody ask us, "You mean you wash feet? You mean you take your shoes off in church and you wash feet? Really?"

Someone should ask you why you do that. If you're taking notes this morning, let's look at things. First of all, let's see, let's say this. If this is all we can answer, it's because Jesus commanded it. He turned to his disciples after he was done, and there's no other ordinance in the Bible that I'm aware of that Jesus has been so detailed with as this one. If we just want to look at some of the details, we read them, but I'll try to point some of them out.

It's so detailed. He laid aside, first of all, he rose up, and then he laid aside his outer garments, and then he took the towel, and then he took the water, the basin. He began to pour water, and he began to wash the disciples' feet, and then after he's done washing their feet, it says, "He dried their feet with the towel that he was girded with."

It's so detailed how he does this, and when he's done there, he looks at the disciples and said, "You know what I just did to you? Do you get it? Do you get it?" I mean, I don't think you could have been in the room and not get it with all the detail.

And then he turns and says, "Okay, I have set an example for you to do. Just as you've seen me do it, to you, I want you to do it to one another."

Is that clear enough? I mean, this passage preaches for itself. I could sit down. It's just very clear. If the only answer I have is because Jesus commanded it, do you know what people say? There's many groups that have practiced this in the past that don't anymore, and some of the arguments and excuses.

One writer said, "We don't practice this partly because it's only brought up one time. All the other Gospels are silent on it."

Is that good enough? Parents, when you ask your child to take out the garbage in the morning and you come home in the evening, you dads, and he hasn't taken the garbage out, and he would say, "Well, I only was told one time."

Is that good enough? Maybe you train your children that way, that after I say it four times and you don't do it, now it's disobedience. But I think if you're wise, if he doesn't do it on the first time, it's probably called disobedience.

Is that clear enough? How much clearer does Jesus have to make this until we say it's a commandment? Another person said, "We don't take this as serious as some of the other ordinances because Jesus says, 'You ought to,' instead of saying, 'You shall.' He says, 'You ought to,' the old King James. Marvin, what's your say?" It says ought also. Ought.

Now, if Jesus was here in person here this morning and he would tell me or you that you ought to, I think we'd sit up and I think we'd say, that voice, if that wasn't a command, I'm going to do what he suggested because he knows best. He's the Creator. He's the Savior. He's Lord and Master.

He says, "We ought to wash one another's feet." Is it clear enough?

You know what else he says?

If you really want to be happy, I don't know if there's any other command that Jesus ever gives that he backs up with a fulfilled, blessed happiness like he does here. So if someone asks you, "Why do you wash feet in church?" if all you could say is because Jesus, the one that died on the cross, the one that was there at creation, he told me that if I know about this and I do it, I'm going to be a happy person, and the whole world's pursuing after happiness. That's why I wash feet. I'm going to be filled with joy and fulfillment in life if I obey his commands.

Number two is because this has been practiced in the early church. Now, people would argue with that, but if we read Timothy, remember when they were trying to figure out who an honorable woman is or widow is in the church, Paul made it very clear that among the good works and that makes an honorable widow was one that washed the feet of the saints.

So that's a given there. It was practiced in the first church, and if we read early Anabaptist writings, it's very clear that they believed this and they practiced it with literal water and feet.

And I guess my question is, if this was understood by the first church and it was understood by the early Christians and has been practiced for generations, do we have the right to change it?

I might just say this. Another reason, I think, and we'll look at the principle behind this practice in a bit here, but it's with almost every Bible principle, there's also a practice that goes with it. You take baptism, for instance.

Does the water clean us up from our sin? Hardly. The Bible says it's the blood of Jesus, but we do believe that water baptism is an outward expression, or we could say a practice, an ordinance that we do to express or to show as a deeper principle. Communion, marriage.

I mean, our wedding days are not our marriage. Our marriage is when two people actually move together and live together for years. That's the marriage. It's not necessarily the wedding day. The wedding day is an example or a picture or an establishing of something much deeper.

And I just bring out a warning again. I've seen this in my short life in so many areas. When we stop to practice things, the principle goes away as well. I've seen it with head coverings for the sisters.

When we stop the practice and we devalue the practice, often the principle goes out the door. What about Thanksgiving, leading in a little prayer of blessing and Thanksgiving before every meal? I think most of us have been taught that, and I've thought of that already. You know we could save a lot of time if we at every New Year, we just take a half a day and we set this half a day aside to ask God to bless my 900-plus meals that I'm going to eat this year.

Just bless them and just give me the I want to be thankful all year long to you for every meal that I'm going to eat, and then just go throughout the year. Oh, we took care of that, but no.

We do that over and over and over. It is a practice that we do that has a deep principle behind it. We just do it again. It reminds us, I think, yeah, give us this day our daily bread.

So we thank God over for it again three times a day if we eat three times a day, right? We ask God to bless this food. Practice. Practice. We're just made that way. We need to practice things. God has set it up that way. Another principle that I thought of, and I think this principle was taken out of Peter, but I'm going to sound ancient now when I say this, but when I was a young boy, my father did a lot of traveling by public transportation, like the Greyhound, the trailway, and the train system, I'm sure what it was called back then, and I enjoyed going with Dad to other states, just going and whatever, visiting or whatever.

Anyway, I just clearly remember, it always fascinated me, the bus driver was often a dressed-up, very professional person, and when we're about ready to unload this bus, he'd make the announcements, "We're getting up to so-and-so city and we're going to dismiss," and so on, but he always made it very clear, "Ladies before gentlemen." And then where we would re-board the train or the bus, he would stand there at the stairway and he says, "Now remember, ladies before gentlemen."

And if there was a sort of a sometimes there was sort of a drunken person that's walking in through the crowd and he's pushing ahead of the ladies, the bus driver would be there and he says, he'd pull him right back and says, "Remember, ladies before gentlemen.

The ladies go first and then you go." That was a practice. You come to a door, to a public place, and there's men and women. The men open the door and the lady would be ushered in. That was a practice that we just did. What was the principle?

I think the principle was taken from Peter was to honor the women, honor the wife as the weaker vessel. It didn't mean in a negative sense that, "Ladies, you're of lesser value," or it meant, "You're of greater value." It was a respect. It was an honoring. It was, "You go first."

Men took the heavier, the dirtier end, and the ladies had the respect and the honor. And you know by practicing that over and over, it kept America, North America, reminded of the principle. I'm sorry to tell you, ladies, today in the greater society out there, you've lost your honor.

You've lost I mean, I drive through construction sites and there's the women out there working in their dirty jeans right along in the hot sun side by side with men. I had probably a 20-year-old girl coming in recently on the farm on a big old straight truck, and while she looked pretty tiny up in there, I must admit I was about half impressed the way she handled that big truck.

And she got herself backed into a corner and I said, "Well, I'm here if you need help getting out of there," and she just gave me a smile and she just maneuvered that big old truck out of that corner as good as I would have.

Now, she and I might meet at Walmart tonight and we'd come to the door at the same time. Who's going to open the door for who? If I open the door for her, she might look at me, "Aren't you the guy that thought you could back my truck out of that corner and I did just fine, didn't I?" I have to say, "Yeah, you did." So we back up and we all get ushered in through the door at the same time.

Big deal, male or female. You know the principle has been almost lost in North America, hasn't it? That's an example. I'm curious what would have happened if we've had the gentlemen at every government door, at every church door, at every home insisting that the ladies go before the gentlemen.

See, when we stop the practice, the principle goes away, and that's what happens in this particular passage as well. Let's look at the principle.

Some of the principles there's probably many in here. We don't have time to look at all of them.

When Jesus asked, "Do you know what I've done to you?"

I think here's what he's trying to teach us. Washing feet serves as an example.

Serving is never beneath us. It's a token of humility. Jesus is establishing something brand new here in this service because he turns to them and says, "You call me Lord and Master, and you're right when you say that because I am Lord and Master."

So they got that part right. They all agreed. I don't think any of the 12 would have disagreed with that, even Judas. I think they would have all said with one voice, "If there's one person above anyone else, it's going to be the Lord Jesus Christ in our midst."

But Jesus turned to them and the problem that he was finding was right among themselves. And we can turn our Bibles back to Luke and just read in the same setting. Let's go to Luke 22. Flip your Bibles if you have them with me to that, and we'll look at the same setting and see what's going on here.

Just break into this, verse 21, Luke 22:21 to 30. "But behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table, and truly the Son of Man goeth as it was determined, but woe unto the man by whom he is betrayed." So now he's pointing out a problem. It's Judas in their midst. Verse 23 says, "And they began to inquire among themselves, which of them it was that should do this thing?"

And I think some of the other gospels say they went around the circle and said, "Is it I? Is it I? Is it I?" But verse 24 here says, "And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest?"

Here's where the problem lies.

John's account is pretty clear. They all agree that Jesus is the greatest, but they're trying to figure out who is the greatest among them, and I think that's what Jesus is trying to establish here. It is among them that he's trying to teach a deep principle behind the footwashing.

And then he goes on in Luke there and says, "You know the Gentiles exercise lordship and so on," and he says, "This ought not to be in your midst, and I tell you, whoever should be the greatest or is to be the greatest should become as the younger or the servant of all," and so on.

So who's the greatest? That's their discussion at this point.

Another thing I see that he's establishing here is, you know, in the New Testament, I think if I count it correctly, there's between 50 and 60 one anotherings mentioned in the New Testament. Love one another as one. Greet one another.

Be patient one with another. Maybe be hospitable on one. I mean, the list is huge, and this is the first one, I think, with any kind of action that shows up in the New Testament when Jesus says, "Wash you one another's feet." So we have the first one anothering showing up here. It's not about washing Jesus' feet at this point. They've all agreed he's the greatest.

The problem is among you who's the greatest. So now to prove that, you wash one another's feet.

And then Jesus, in this passage, he said a very interesting thing. He had a very secure position in who he was, knowing that this particular time, who he was, where he came from, and where he's going. He knew he came from God, he's going to God, and that all things were given onto him, all things of God. In other words, it's like we give I remember when some of our children were coming to that age where they'd started to drive and we bought the first car and we gave the key to them.

Wow, you know, and it's a little bit like Jesus is saying that here, the time came when God gave the key over to me. All things are now in my control, in my power. He has a very secure position. He has all knowledge. He has all power. He has all glory.

All things. You know, we as human beings, we couldn't handle that, could we? If all of a sudden we were given we don't even Paul says, "We don't even know how to deal with knowledge." He says, "Knowledge puffeth up." You know what else puffeth up, especially men? Oh, my memory goes back to when I was 18 years old, probably. I had back in our shop there in a little shed there, I put in a weight bench and I began, you know, every day, probably after every meal, I'd take a little time, go back there and lay on my bench and press weights.

I exercise weightlifting. I did that daily for, I don't know how long, a year or so maybe. And you know those muscles build up and they build up, and my weight bench wasn't heavy. My weight system wasn't heavy enough, so I borrowed some more rings from a friend and I added another one and made it heavier and heavier. It's interesting what you can do with your muscles if you exercise them.

Push them up. Push them up. Practice that. You know, one weekend we had a huge youth group from Lancaster County visiting our community and we had them at our house. And I'm like, "Oh, these are big Lancaster County muscle men," and I knew several of them worked on a construction crew building silos. So they're throwing silo staves and they're taller than I am, and I'm like, you know, do I dare them? Do I dare take them back to the weight set?

They're going to make me look like a little whatever. And sure enough, we found our way back to the weight bench and some of these big stave guys got on there and I'm like, you know, I had the bars loaded.

So they take this thing off the hook. I remember the one guy that I had high expectations for, I mean, he had a pretty good chest on him, and this thing came down. I think he struggled it up once or twice and he was shocked.

And then another guy, whoa, he couldn't even get it off his chest. And I'm sitting there, you know what? I know something those guys can't. They don't. I can push that thing up 14 times.

And I was humble enough to wait until they asked me to get on. You know, I just laid on there and I just pushed that thing up and they're like, "Oh, I can't do it. Oh, I can't do it." I just blew them all away. You know, I had biceps. I wasn't a big guy, but I tell you what? I got so puffed up it was ridiculous.

Now I look back and say, "That is so vain. So vain." You know, Jesus could have been really puffed up because God had just given him the key to all things. He had all power. He had all knowledge.

He had all glory.

What about some of you young girls? Do you ever anybody ever tell you, "You're really pretty?" I mean, beautiful looking. You get puffed up. Maybe the young guys? Wow. You know, my challenge here is, whether we're really intelligent, whether we're knowledgeable, whether we're strong and muscular, whether we're pretty, what are we doing with all of that? You know what Jesus did with it?

It says he took off his outer garments and he went and he got a towel and he got water and a basin and he began to pour water and then wash the feet of his disciples. And he says, "I want you guys to do that to each other," okay? The principle is humility.

Serving is never beneath us. It's never beneath us.

Principle number two, serving is not about who is worthy, but it's about Christ. Who is worthy? When Jesus began to wash the feet of his disciples, he could have gone to come when he came to Thomas, he could have stopped and said, "You know, this is the guy that after I die and I'm resurrected, even though I made it clear that this is going to happen, Thomas is not going to believe my word. He's going to stand back and he's going to doubt the whole scene, and I'm going to wash his feet?"

What about Peter? Within when he came to Peter's feet, Jesus could have stopped and said, "You know, this is the guy that within 36 hours he's going to deny me three times.

I don't think I'll wash his feet. He's hardly worthy of that, is he?" He washed his feet. What about Judas? Judas was a bad guy. Remember Matthew tells us that Judas went to the uppity guys and he said, "Hey, what do you give me? What will you give me if I deliver Jesus into your hands?"

And they made an agreement. They made a little contract there. Jesus knew all that, and he's coming along and Judas's feet are there and I'm going to wash his feet?

I remember my dad taught me a valuable lesson when I was a kid at home again. We had two neighbors that were completely contrast one from the other. We were farmers and they were farmers. We had on the one side, we had a really friendly, outgoing, lovable neighbor that we got to know quite well. He's always friendly, always kind. He drives past. He has a happy wave and, "Hey, you're doing?" First one to come there when there's a need or whatever.

On the other side, we had a neighbor that was very, very miserable and grumpy, and it was just no one in the whole community that he's half mad at everybody else. And he would drive past our house and we would be out in the driveway. We would wave to him. Do you know what he did? He looked the other way.

He just pretended he Jesse, what term did you use? Stonewalled? Stonewalled. Stonewalled. He just turned like, "I didn't see you." He was no one. In fact, he threatened somebody off his farm with a gun one time, and that was the kind of person he was.

And it seemed like he had no friends, no one that would trust him, and he would bail hay all by himself. And he didn't have a kicker baler either. It was an old shoot baler. And one hot afternoon, he was down there in the field all by himself baling. He'd bail five or ten bales, and then he'd stop the tractor and go back and stack them, and then and he was a cribble. He had a built-up shoe on his one foot and he just limped along. And my dad was watching this one day and he said, "You know, this just isn't right.

Harvey, I think you" I was probably 13. He said, "Why don't you go over there and you offer to him your help? You will stack the bales on the wagon." And I'm like, "I can't believe we're doing this to this man." I mean, if it was the other neighbor, sure, I'll go anytime and serve him. I was half scared of this grouchy neighbor.

Dad said, "Go carefully. Now, he might reject you." We don't know what his response is going to be. So I walked in through his field sort of on, "Oh, am I scary?" I walked up. He said, and he looked at me. I'm like, "Dad said maybe we could help you stack your bales."

And he looks at me and he gave me the biggest smile I ever saw. You know, that was the beginning of a lifelong relationship with that man. Long story short, fast forward, we had interaction with that neighbor from thereforth. When my wife and I got married years later, we visited that man in an old people's rest home just at his last years of life.

And he told his roommate right in front of us, he said, "These are my visitors." He was very proud of us. You know, it's not about Jesus once said that if you do it unto the least of these, my brethren, you've done it unto me. So the principle here he's teaching, it doesn't matter whether the person is worthy or not. We can open up our foot washing service to even the heathen. And I appreciate that about I think Brother Lynn used to say that we open our foot washing service. Anybody can come wash feet with us. Now, we don't just do open communion service, but we do open foot washing service. It's okay to wash a man's foot that is an unbeliever.

I believe that's okay. It's always okay to serve your ungodly neighbor, to get down with them in there because it's proven over and over that is one way we can win people to Jesus Christ is to first of all serve them.

Principle number three, Peter's reaction. "You're not going to wash my feet," Peter said exactly what many of us want to say. It's one thing to wash somebody else's feet, another thing to have somebody wash my feet. And I think partly what was going on is maybe Peter didn't feel worthy.

How many of us feel worthy if we'd had Jesus come along and we see, "You're going to wash my feet"? Do we feel worthy when we have our brother wash our feet?

The lesson we can learn from Peter here is if we don't receive anything from the Lord, he thought he knew better and he was rejecting what Jesus wanted to offer. And Jesus told him very clearly, "If I don't wash you, you have no part with me."

And then Peter's reaction was, "Oh, if that's the case, then wash everything about me." And Jesus said, "Well, that's not necessary because you've already been washed." Here he debunks another idea that this is not an Old Testament ceremonial purifying kind of service because these people were already washed. He said, "Every one of you is washed but one," and that's Judas.

And the lesson we can learn from that is he was telling Peter that, "I don't need to wash your face and all the rest of your body because you have already tapped into" the word there in the Old King James is washed, but it's a different word in the Greek.

I wonder if your Bible has where he says that you when Jesus responds to Peter, he says, "You've been washed." And I looked that up in the Greek. There's two different words used in the original. When he's talking about washing feet, it has to do with water and washing hands and feet and so on. But when he turns to Peter and he says, "You've all been washed," it's the same word that's used in Revelation 1 when it says that, "You have been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ.

Your sins have been taken away." So Jesus is suggesting here to these disciples, all but Judas, that you have already tapped into that initial salvation when you trusted Jesus and you say yes to Jesus. And I believe all 11, if we read their life, they have been saying yes to Jesus.

And he's saying, "You're part already, even though the blood hasn't been shed, but you're already operating under the cleansing power of the blood of your Savior." The same word that's used in Revelation. It says you are clean. You're clean.

You're clean. I think some translations say you bathed. I need not to bathe you.

And you know, the lesson we can learn, the principle behind that is though we maybe all claim to have an initial experience with Jesus, when the blood has been applied and we have a testimony of Jesus, but he still turned to Peter and said, "I still need to wash your feet. Even though you've been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, your feet still get dirty." There's a maintenance program that God's people need.

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we say, "This day, give us our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." There's that throughout that prayer, we are recognizing even though we're sons and daughters of God, but we daily pray that prayer and we ask God to maintain and to keep us close to him.

You know, in this world, we pick up a lot of filth, don't we, from day to day. I'm thinking especially men with this time of the year when these ladies take their clothes off and are half naked and we're exposed to that day in and day out. We need each other, don't we, for accountability. We need to wash each other's feet because we pick up the impurities of this world.

I believe that's what Jesus is teaching Peter when he says, "You've been washed. You're a man of God, but we still need to keep washing your feet." The principle is maintenance, accountability. We need our brother and sister. We need the church, don't we?

Principle number four in closing here, make this pretty quick.

Doing what we know, verse 17 closing with that. Happy are you if you do them.

If I resist to wash feet and to have my feet washed, he is saying what you're saying in verse 16, that you are greater than your Lord. You see that? Arrogance, isn't it? It's pride on our part because he says, "If the Lord and Master does this, are you greater than him?" That's a question, a challenge for us to ask ourselves. When we resist to wash feet, we're saying we're greater than our Lord because he did it.

Obedience, just plain old obedience.

Jesus gave the story of the two sons that his father asked them to go work a day in the vineyard. The first said, "No, I'm not going to go do that." And then afterwards, he repented and he went afterward.

And then the second son said, "Sure, sounds like a good idea. I'll go work in your vineyard," and he ended up not going. Jesus asked the Pharisees, "Which of these two did the will of his father?" They answered correctly. They said, "The one that did it."

And you've answered right, Jesus says. So Jesus puts a premium on the doing. Remember James said, "Faith without works is dead." Could we put in there that faith without doing is dead? And Jesus is making this very clear. If you know these things and do them, happy you're going to be. Remember the story in the Old Testament, 2 Kings 5, the leper, Naaman?

I never saw a person that I know of with leprosy, but it's a cribling, just an awful disease that's incurable and so on, and this man wanted healing from that. And Prophet Elisha came along and said, "Well, you go down here."

He was a prophet of the Lord, said, "Go down to the Jordan and dip or wash seven times." Remember when Nathan got that word or Naaman, was it, got that word, how he was angry? The Bible says he was very angry and he stomped away and said, "Well, surely I thought if this is God's work, God would just simply come down and touch this thing and it would go away in a miraculous way."

And furthermore, he's like, "If we're talking about rivers and washing and water, why not these other two rivers?" I mean, he named some other two rivers, and I think if you look at the background of those were rivers that were flowing out of the mountain of what's the one that David talks about? That mount, the big, nice, clean one that had the dew, it's like the mount of Hermon.

So if these rivers are flowing from Hermon, Naaman is like, "Why not go to those rivers?" I mean, they have a lot more to offer than that dirty old flowing from Jerusalem mud, whatever. See what he was doing? He was arguing with God. He's basically saying, "This doesn't make sense."

Remember the servants came and said, "Naaman, if they would have asked you, if the prophet would have asked you to do something outstanding, you would have gone and done it. Now, just go to Jordan." And he went to Jordan. You remember what happened? It says, "His flesh became like the flesh of a child," in contrast to leprosy. He was clean.

Didn't make sense to him, did it? But he did it anyway. There's a principle here, whether it makes sense or not. Jesus says, "If you know to do them, do it, and you're going to be happy people."

The end of the sermon on the mount, Jesus says, "He that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them." He doesn't say, "He that heareth these words of mine and thinks it's a cool idea. I sort of like that. I really like what he said. I like what the preacher said. I like what Jesus" but he said, "No, the one that does it, I'm going to liken him as that wise man that built his house on the rock." The rains came.

The floods came. The rains descended. The floods came.

The winds blew and beat upon that house, and it stood firm because it was founded on the rock. You know what that rock had in it?

Obedience. That's my challenge for you, for me. Let's put life behind. Let's put conviction and life behind the teachings of Jesus Christ. Whether they make sense to our human mind or not, let's do them and claim the promise of happiness the rest of our days. God bless. Any thoughts, anything?

I just.