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    Apr 15, 2022

    Good Friday through the Eyes of John

    Passage: John 13:1-38

    Preacher: John Repsold

    Category: Good Friday

    Keywords: love, humility, omnipotence, honesty, self-sacrifice, all-knowing, jesus divine-human nature

    Summary:

    This devotional during a musical Good Friday service focuses on three characteristics of Jesus' relationship with His disciples and all disciples that have followed.

    Detail:

    Good Friday

    April 15, 2022

     

    So much happened that night between Jesus and His disciples.

    So much happened those last 24 hours between God and us.

    How Jesus related to his disciples has so much to teach us about how He relates to us today.

                In what has been read and in what you are about to see, I’d like you to think about 3 dominant qualities of Jesus towards every one of us:

    • Complete humility…being God Almighty.
    • Complete honesty…being God all-knowing.
    • Complete love…being God self-sacrificing.

    Ponder these three life-changing ways God in Jesus Christ related to the disciples that night and still relates to us today.

    1. Jesus lived complete HUMILITY…while being God Almighty.

    When looking at Jesus in his humanity, it is so easy to forget that we are looking at the only true God whose radiant, blazing glory is far greater than the 200 billion trillion stars He spoke into existence in this universe.  Veiled in a human body and nature, it’s far too easy to think of Jesus as just another man.  But without that veil of human flesh, we would have no greater chance of survival in His presence than we would have trying to survive a trip to our sun in a rowboat.

                But that night of Passover 2,000 years ago, the only human who never needed to demonstrate humility, served a group of flawed, selfish, arrogant, confused and even treacherous friends.

    As was read from John 13, Jesus took off all the robes of an esteemed teacher and put on the uniform of a servant…a towel. It wasn’t enough in His mind to hide His deity behind human flesh.  He humbled himself in every way conceivably possible, even taking on the most humble clothing available in that day—the towel of a slave. 

    He did so, we are told, because He knew who he was—God—and He knew who WE are—sinners in desperate, desperate need of forgiveness from God.

    He did so because He knew where he had come from (heaven) and where He was going (back home to heaven)…and because he knew where all of us were headed (hell) unless He intervened. 

    From His humblest of earthly beginnings in the womb of a virgin and the manger of a stable Jesus ended His life on earth in the humblest of ways—as a servant wearing a towel…and a Savior wearing but a crown of thorns as He was nailed naked to a Roman cross, exposed to the greatest imaginable human shame by the very people He came to save. 

    Jesus lived…and died…completely humble while being God Almighty.  Think of that tonight as you sit here.  Imagine God himself in the person of Jesus kneeling at your feet, wrapped only in a towel, asking you for permission to wash off the sins of your soul…all the while knowing that you will still fail Him in the hours and days ahead…but caring more about YOU than himself. 

     

    1. Jesus demonstrated complete HONESTY—being God all-knowing.

    Absolute knowledge of just who we are is frightening in the wrong hands.  The more someone knows about us, especially our failures and weaknesses, the more they can use that knowledge against us.  But not Jesus.

    Jesus knew things about the disciples that they didn’t even know about themselves that night.  Yet he only used that knowledge to help and protect them from themselves and what was about to happen.   

    John told us in John 13 that Jesus absolutely knew that night…

    • how flawed Judas Iscariot was going to sell him out for 30 measly, dirty coins.
    • He knew that Peter, so confident about his loyalty, would deny he even knew Him in a matter of hours…not once but three times…not with a shrug of his shoulders but with a tirade of profane curses.
    • Jesus knew that the most devoted among them (Peter, James & John), his closest friends, would opt for the comfort of sleep in less than an hour rather than the challenge of prayer for Him at his time of needing their support the most.  
    • Jesus knew that every one of the men around that table would, when the pressure was on in the next few hours, turn tail and run for the cover of darkness rather than declare their allegiance and stick with Him, the Light of the World.  

    Knowing all that, Jesus didn’t use any of it against one of them.  He guarded His betrayer Judas’ identity at dinner that entire night.

    He gently warned Peter about his over-confident declarations of allegiance.

    He kindly and lovingly washed the dirty feet of every disciple, stuck in their pride, who should have grabbed that towel first and washed His feet. 

    He broke the bread and gave it to every one of His closest companions who would break His heart with their sin and abandonment of Him on the cross. 

    Jesus’ gentle honesty—knowing more about His disciples than they knew about themselves—offered them unconditional forgiveness when they deserved unreserved rebuke.

    APP:  So, as we sit here tonight, know that Jesus knows far more about our sinfulness and future failures than we can possibly know about ourselves, what do we want to tell Him?  What do we need to hear from Him about our own failings and weaknesses…not someone else’s who has wounded us…but our own that has and will wound Jesus?  Let’s let Him speak truth to our souls that may not be very flattering but which can lead us to reality and a better future with Him.

    1. Jesus demonstrated complete LOVE…being God self-sacrificing.

    The love of Christ that we are gazing upon tonight is not the mushy, romantic, self-serving sort of love our culture uses to define love.  It is a bloody, self-sacrificing, completely self-spending sort of love that does everything possible and necessary for our rescue and good. 

                Jesus knew that without the complete giving of himself on that brutal cross, you and I would be hopelessly bound for an eternity of hellish separation from Him.  Jesus knew that the price for rescuing us from our own self-inflicted rebellion against God would be every drop of His own blood and perfect life.  Jesus knew that if we were ever to have even the hope of knowing how deep the love of God for us goes, He would have to go to the depths of suffering, pain, broken-heartedness and self-abandonment for us. 

                Jesus would tell them later that evening in John 15:13 that “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

    APP:  As we contemplate and perhaps even recoil at the death of God in human flesh for us tonight, even more than the brutality, the bloodiness and the horror of humanity against God, may we see and be awed by the complete, self-sacrificing and freely-given LOVE of God for us on that Good Friday so long ago.  May the doubts of our souls and the accusations of our past be drowned out by the love of God in Jesus Christ.  May His tenacious love melt our sinful hearts and fuse our souls together with His forever. 

    • As we close this service in a time of reflection, if you have never surrendered your soul and life to the One Lord Jesus Christ who gave his very life for you, I invite you to do so. If you’ve seen tonight how much God knows about you and still how much He loves you, why not respond to Him with your whole heart?  Why not let Him wash you of your sin?  Why not embrace Him as the only Savior capable of saving your soul?  Invite Him into your life and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior. 
    • If you’ve already taken that step of faith in Jesus, invite Him to show you afresh tonight in these concluding moments His complete humility towards you, His total knowledge of you, and His self-sacrificing love for you that is unparalleled by anyone in this universe.

    PRAY:  Lord, please show us yourself tonight as you truly are.  In Your name, Jesus, AMEN.