It's not too Small a Thing

 

Jesus answered and said to him [Peter], “What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.” Peter said to Him, “Never shall You wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” (John 13:7-8 [NASB])

            When we read John 13:1-17, we realize Jesus, God’s Son, did not consider himself too exalted to do the lowest of tasks-washing dirty feet. He took off his outer tunic and wore just what a servant would and wrapped a towel around his waist as a servant would. Next, he knelt beside Peter to put his foot in the basin and wash and dry it. Peter and the other disciples recognized this action for what it was, a servant’s duty. To him, Jesus was Teacher and Lord (vs 13). Jesus wanted His disciples to see He was more than what they thought they knew about Him. Yes, He is God’s Son and is divine. Jesus also humbled Himself to come down to earth from His throne in heaven, to be incarnate. Paul spoke of this humility of Jesus in Philippians 2:6-7. Jesus made sure the disciples realized His work comprised more than just being recognized as a Teacher and the Lord, the Son of God. His life was to be a humble servant to the Father and humanity so each person would come to know Him as his or her Savior.

            Isaiah in Isaiah 49:1-13 recognized the different facets of the Messiah. Through Isaiah, the Messiah prophesied of His coming humility by birth as a human (vs. 1). He would come to speak the words of God with protection from the shadow of His hand (vs. 2). Jesus would come to toil as if in vain to bring Israel back to God (vs. 4-5). God deemed His Son’s work too important for just the Israelites. The Messiah said He would be a light to all nations. He would come to speak for God and toil for His purposes so all may see the Light of God and come to know Him as their Redeemer (vs 6-7a). Though the Messiah said He people would despise and abhor Him, He would serve people. Kings would rise to their feet and princes would bow to Him because the LORD God chose Him (vs. 7). He said He would release the captive, bring light to those in darkness, feed the hungry, and give drink for the thirsty (vs. 9-10). Jesus the Messiah would make the roads straight and people would come from near and far to be with Him (vs. 11-12).

            Jesus prophesied through Isaiah that He would come to earth for the Israelites to restore them to God. He said He would come for people everywhere, too. Jesus’ ministry on earth was almost exclusively to Israelites. Yet, we know He came for each person who lived during and after His life on earth. Jesus gave the Great Commission to His disciples saying, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19 [NASB]). In Acts 1:8, Luke wrote what Jesus told them in the upper room. He said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

John, in John 13:1-17, told of Jesus preparing His disciples for ministry beyond what they understood. He prepared them to be like Him. Isaiah 49:1-13 foretold the Messiah’s work on earth-speaking to and toiling as a servant for the people of Israel and other nations to receive salvation. Jesus came to serve the Father. That required being a servant for people, too. Jesus showed this to His disciples while He walked with them. He healed, taught, fed, proclaimed, and raised the dead. For the disciples, He did the miraculous. How else could a poor carpenter’s son have taught with authority, though uneducated? How could he have done miracles of healing, feeding, and raising people from the dead? With John 13, Jesus showed His disciples a deeper understanding of His miraculousness. He came to serve, to cleanse people-from dirt and from sins. Jesus served in whatever way was necessary so each person would come to know Him, believe in Him, and receive salvation from sin and death. Jesus modeled this to His disciples. He instilled righteous leadership with righteous servanthood. Jesus instilled servanthood with righteousness so they could be His leaders, too. Only through the righteousness of Christ imparted in each believer through the Holy Spirit can a person fulfill God’s purposes as God foretold in Isaiah 49, Luke shared in Acts 1, and Jesus lived as relayed by Paul in Philippians 2. A servant cannot be greater than the Master and the one who is sent cannot be greater than the One who sent him. Yet, a servant and a leader can live the life of a Christian by Jesus’ Spirit living within them upon faith in Him for salvation.

            It took Jesus, incarnated and fully divine, to transform the actions of people to always be actions of righteous service. Without His indwelling a person, righteous serving cannot happen. It took divine Jesus to redeem serving and leading so they would be useful for God’s purposes. It was too small a thing for Jesus to come just to save Israel (Isaiah 49:6). Just as it was too small a thing for Him to come to redeem only one aspect of life. Jesus came to redeem each person wholly, including each action. He came to redeem every action, bringing it back into alignment with God’s purpose. God’s purpose is that we glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. His purpose is that we live in an eternal, loving, and righteous relationship with Him. It is not too small a thing for us to live righteously and tell other people about Jesus. It has everlasting consequences.

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11 [NASB])

Is there something you think is beneath you?

If you think that, then you have not had your feet washed by Jesus.

Vision for Life

Consider the life of Moses; his family did not raise him (Exodus 2). Yet God allowed him to see the burden of his brothers and know that something was not right with the situation. God burdened Moses. Moses knew from his mother these slaves were his kinsmen. The Pharaoh's family raised him to see them people as a necessity for the Egyptian empire, as a commodity to make it productive. On one day, God opened Moses’ eyes and he saw the Hebrews no longer as a staple of the kingdom, but as people, his people. God gave him a vision; he was the one to lead these people, his brothers and sisters, out of slavery. God opened his eyes to see them as people. He gave Moses His own vision of the people.

What does God do next? He took Moses to a lonely place for 40 years (Exodus 3). God had a purpose, to bring Moses in line with His plan, with His purpose for the children of Israel. God showed Moses he was one of this tribe of people. Now God had to mold him into the man-leader He needed to take these chosen people from slavery through the desert and the battles into the Promised Land. Moses knew God put a vision in him, His vision. He may have wondered why Yahweh was taking so long to put him into action. God has a plan. During the forty years with Jethro, God taught Moses how to be a shepherd, how to be a Hebrew, how to pray, and how to wait on His timing. After those years, God molded Moses into His own man to lead His people, to stand up to His people as their God-appointed leader, and to hear His voice.

Let us step forward a few hundred years to David. David was a shepherd boy and the youngest of his father’s sons (1 Samuel 16). God, through Samuel, appointed David to be the king of His people while he was still a teenager. Did David ascend to the throne at once? No, God took him through years of shepherding, battle-training, empire-leading, and spiritual learning. God had David live in the king’s palace just as Moses did. God did not just choose the men and put them into the fire of His work. He took His time - put them through the valley, the fires, and the floods - to shape them to be His anointed leader who recognizes Him as their guide and help. They waited on God instead of running and “doing” the vision on their own steam. These men waited on God’s exact guidance to fulfill the vision.

Fast forward a thousand years or more to the time of Jesus and His disciples. Almost immediately upon the start of Jesus’ ministry, He called men to Him. Did He send the men out immediately to perform miracles or preach the Word? No, Jesus taught them the Word was alive and with them. He taught them the power of the Word. Jesus taught them the purpose of the Word. He taught them how to be followers of the Word. Jesus taught them so they would believe. The fishermen were Jewish; that was not an issue. Jesus had to train them that the Word was Himself, God among them. For three years, the disciples walked with Jesus. They walked with Him, learned how to teach, and learned who Jesus was, from where His power came, and through Whom God would save the Israelites. The disciples, too, saw, in person, the life of Jesus so they could not doubt He is the Son of God brought to earth to save humanity from their sins and bring them eternal communion with the Father, Yahweh God. This Yahweh and Son are one in the same and are the same as the One who trained Moses and David. The three years Jesus trained His disciples, He molded them into men of God, not just fishermen. They were used to the storms of the sea as fishermen, but they were not accustomed to the storms which humanity created. The disciples experienced first-hand the cunning of humanity through the acts of the Pharisees and the jealousy of the current kings of the land. They watched the indifference of the people who chose to follow like blind sheep rather than trust a God with whom their people had history. The disciples experienced a Jehovah who calls the lowest in the land to become shepherds of His chosen people. They experienced the denial and wrath of people who chose not to follow Jesus and threw taunts and stones at them for “blaspheming.” In all of this, the disciples did not give up on the Jesus who chose them, the ones whom Jesus asked the Father to sanctify because they remained firmly with Him on earth and stood strong during trials. These men were the ones that Jesus protected and guarded in the Father’s name and the ones whom Jesus felt He must safeguard when His time on earth finished (John 17). The Father chose these men out of His chosen people to be the ones whom Jesus called to follow Him, to receive power from on high (the Holy Spirit), and to “go into all the world preaching the Good News” (Matthew 28:18-20). 

Are Moses, David, and the disciples different from you or me? Did they have anything more in them than we do as Christ followers? God called each of these people to be His own possession, to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8). The desire that each of these people had is no different from the desire we have now as disciples, followers, of Jesus. This desire is not a desire of “doing” for Jesus, but of being in perfect relationship with Him. We, in this way, have a perfect relationship with Him, being entirely His as Jesus stated to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane (John 17). This garden is where countless generations of God-followers went to pray. The garden is where Christ anguished about His sacrifice, the garden of His betrayal. This garden is where we must watch and pray. The garden of Gethsemane is the place where each of the men came before God when He called them to Himself, a garden of prayer and watching and waiting. This could be any garden in your life from where the Father and Son have called you to serve Him. God will become manifest to each person He calls at this point, the place from which God’s transformation of the man and woman He calls begins. It could take forty years like Moses, twenty-five years like David, or three years like the disciples. The timing is not the important part, but waiting for God and His molding of them for His purpose. As children created by God, He calls to each one of us to come to Him, be made new, sit quietly before Him, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. God calls us because He loves. He waits for us because He loves. God keeps watch for us because He loves. Do we hear, watch, and wait for God to call us, remake us, and lead us to the vision to which He calls us? Alternatively, do we “boldly go where no man has gone before” and walk in our own strength and knowledge? Would you not rather have your senses heightened and used for him - your mind renewed, heart re-called, soul returned, and your body replenished - instead of walking forward in your own strength? To have each of these areas transformed by God creates in us a strength unknown to humanity to “go and tell,” no matter how far or into what circumstance He calls us to go - the vision which God places on our hearts. Jesus told us that to love God, we must love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Luke 10:27). Can we give ourselves to God to love Him this way and allow Him to re-mold us for His purposes? God had a vision for His people Israel, to lead them, guide them, and save them. He has a vision for our lives, too. He calls us to the vision He places in our hearts, for which we must be in a continual relationship with Him. What are you and I willing to give to God to be in relationship with Him - to be re-molded and re-made over time for a purpose, to experience and share God’s love, and be a channel of God’s love?