Archives: August 2007

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it 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 had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “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; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 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.” (John 13:1-16 ESV)

As a people, the human race is not supernaturally wired. This is evident because of the fall. Humanity is naturally wired to see things at a superficial level—a level which God can not be seen. If life were a 3D movie, God would be the 3D, and man would not have a pair of 3D glasses in which to see Him. We would merely see the blurry pictures on the screen and think that is reality—there’s nothing more to it. Humanity even does this to creation. Nature is telling of the glory of God, but Paul says that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse ” (Romans 1:18-20 ESV).

And the problem doesn’t change when we move from nature to religion. What God absolutely abhorred in the nation Israel is the same thing that He abhors in His church—taking a God-besotted event such as communion, and making it a mere ceremony with no thought of its implications for God and you. Here is the way God spoke about it through Isaiah, “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:12-17 ESV). In essence, don’t let the worship end at the Lord’s Supper. Show His majesty through a changed life and sacrificial giving to others. With this in mind, I want to make three observations that will help us know how to take the Lord’s Supper with a view to Isaiah 1.17—the application of good works to our communion.

1. began to wash the disciples’ feet v.5

Just in case you are wondering what this passage has to do with the Lord’s Supper, I want to remind you of the context. When it says that He rose from supper in verse 4, Christ is rising from giving the Lord’s Supper to His disciples. It seems that John passes over this event because of the abundant material we have in the first three gospels, but that it is the context here. It’s relevant to us because it’s the first thing our Lord did after instituting His New Covenant.

So we notice what He did—the very first thing after instituting the New Covenant—He washes His disciples’ feet. Now Christ did not wash random people’s feet. He did not start a feet-washing business. And He did not wash His disciples’ feet to increase their own individual pursuits of Him. This act, in the very shadow of the beginning of the New Covenant, increases our fellowship with one another. You are not alone in your pursuit of God. The goal of your taking the Lord’s Supper is not so you can be more inclined to make business partners, or to be more liked. Listen to the way Luke describes the early church in Acts 2.42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers.” The Lord’s Supper is meant to get you to become more radically dedicated to Him in His church through eagerness to hear and teach, fellowship, take communion, and pray. Only when we are changed into heavenly minded saints, will the world recognize that we have been with Jesus (Acts 4.13).

· Remember His body broken and His blood poured out to establish His church.

2. The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. v.10

Catholics believe that Christ is sacrificed every time communion is offered. The bread and wine become the body of Christ and He is killed anew and offered, bodily, to the members so that their sins may be atoned for by this new sacrifice. There continues a perpetual need for the believer to take communion in order to have his sin paid for by Christ that day or that week. Protestants, which of course is what we are, believe that the sacrifice of Christ—was made once for all time and was sufficient for all our sins. As it says in Hebrews, “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3 ESV). He was finished. But notice how precious and full of mercy Christ is in this passage.

After revealing that His disciples are fully cleansed from their sin through His death on the cross, He gives them the context of their life on earth. “The one who has bathed does not need to wash.” We don’t need daily atonement for our sins—we have that. We need daily cleansing. No matter how clean we are, we walk through a filthy world. No matter how high we are in the Himalayas fellowship with Jesus Christ, our feet never leave the ground. They are constantly being muddied and covered with the dust and clay of sin. But the believer must never worry that Christ might not accept him for his filthy feet. Believer you need only go and ask forgiveness and He shall cleanse your feet. For it is as unavoidable for the believer to be free from sin in this world, as it is for you to wear your favorite shoes everyday and keep them forever clean.

· Remember His body broken and His blood poured out for your daily forgiveness.

3. For I have given you an example v.15
Lastly, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:5-7 ESV). The New Covenant was not just made so that you might meet friends and experience forgiveness. The New Covenant, which we celebrate in the Lord’s Supper, is given and is a reminder that you are here on earth to make Jesus Christ look glorious by loving other people in the most menial and glory-less ways that may be needed.

For some of you the very idea of humbling yourself for others is the least attractive thing on this planet. Teaching a Sunday school class seems worse to you than washing the most gnarly of feet. For some of you, you believe that it is beneath you to pour out your love on those people, or that place. To you, Christ says, “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.”

· Remember His body broken and His blood poured out to free you to love.

For some of you, you need to hear what Jesus told Peter, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” You can not celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Christ through the Lord’s Supper without experiencing His forgiveness. It would be like celebrating the Fourth of July as British citizens who have never even heard of America, much less experience the existence of it. We would be celebrating a contradiction. But instead, Christ invites you to be forgiven of your sins. He has died to sufficiently cover all your sins. Will you believe in Him for that? He lived a perfect life in order give you a perfect righteous standing before God. Will you receive that? Was His body broken for you? Was His blood poured out for you? I invite you to call upon the name of the Lord, and He will save you from your sins.

My first remembrances of religion (not in the saving sense) was of my prayers to God as a first grader. I could not finish my work, so I would pray that God would help me. Laughingly, I remember when my teacher caught me praying. Caught in the act, I lied because I was scared that I would get in trouble. I also remember when I was tall enough to stand in the seat of my father’s Chevy pickup, and ride happily at that. We were on our way to my grandmother’s house in Georgia and I was anxious to be there. It was raining horrendously and my father had mentioned the need to pull off to the side of the road to let the rain die down. I, in my childish ignorance, prayed that God would stop the rain. I remember the looks on my mother and father’s faces when, at that very second, the rain stopped. Those are fun to remember, yet it would be many years before God would call me to Himself.

My sixth grade year found me a professing (to my friends) Christian because I had been baptized; of course the statement of baptism was a lie because I was uneasy about the subject. Nonetheless, I was coaxed into going to a Judgment House presentation of the gospel later that year and I went. At the end of the presentation, in which I was not impressed or frightened, someone asked if anyone wanted to be saved. The friend that invited me thought I should, so I went in the room and an older man led me in a “sinner’s” prayer. No follow up call was ever given to me. Of course, I was no more regenerated than a chair and gave it no real thought until I was saved in earnest seven years later. This event would later instill in me a deep passion for Biblical discipleship, because of the lack of it here.

My home life up into my high school years was broken at best. My father was an alcoholic that split his time between work and bars. With the absence of my father, my mother and I became great friends. I saw her miserableness and her faithfulness to my father, though I never understood why. I could count on two fingers how many times I attended church during those days and up until my nineteenth birthday. But, God was at work in my family and in His providence, my father nearly lost his job due to his alcohol addiction. Forced to get some help, he became a new man and my father for the first time when I was fifteen. The happiness would not last long for my father died of a heart attack shortly before his one year sobriety and a few months after my sixteenth birthday.

Until this catastrophe, I was a reserved sinner. This event led me straight down the road of my depravity and ended in the arms of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Depression crept into my soul as I mourned my father’s demise. By my senior year of high school, I was a corked cauldron of boiling emotion ready to explode. Thoughts of suicide pounded in on me, but lack of strength kept me from crashing my car into a tree. I decided that if I was going to be depressed, I might as well be depressed with some people around. I formed close bonds, for the first time, with the school-mates that I known for seven years and with them, became an alcoholic. I always sought new experiences to make me happy, but I found nothing that satisfied me. In spite of all these shaming acts of half-hearted hedonism, the single most shaming act that haunts me is my blasphemy of God’s Word. Although I had never read it, I gave promises that I would never subject my life to a book that was “inspired by God” and made fallible by men. Little did I know that Jesus was coming toward my tomb to call me forth like Lazarus.

After graduation from high school, I met a friend through my job who invited me to attend church. It was during this time that I became concerned over the status of my soul. From the life of my godly grandmother, I was familiar with the idea of Jesus Christ dying on a cross. But it was not until I turned to the Bible that I found Christ, the Son of God, dying for a purpose—that sinners might have the wrath of God turned from them and they might have Christ’s own righteousness reckoned to them. This gospel was almost too good to be true. For months I would pray to God that if He would have this sinner, I would be His. Then, my apprehension to trusting God with the outcome of my soul crumbled as I was thinking about God’s promise, “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Why could I not just believe and trust Him? So I did. Just over four months later, September 1999, I realized that I was called to give my life to the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Anything short of the ministry of the Living God seemed miserable to me. And I still am quite miserable when I am not studying and preaching His Word.

I enrolled as a student of Theology to the University of Mobile in the fall of 2000. I served in different roles at various churches and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2004. I moved back to Gadsden, Al. only to meet the love of my life. On May 14th, 2005, Miss Shannon Nicole Bender accepted my hand in holy matrimony. Shannon is such a God-given, rare, beautiful treasure. She has shown herself to be everything I was looking for in a wife and bestfriend (and she has also become everything wonderful that I didn’t know to ask). She is spiritually mature, able to feed herself on the Word of God. She is extremely intelligent, and eager to exercise her mind on theology and pursuit of understanding the Scriptures. She has a wonderful personality that allows her to laugh at me (How I need the humility!). And she is one of the most beautiful, well-rounded people I’ve ever met. She has become the missing piece of my life, and we gladly look forward to the future together. We are prayerfully considering the Lord’s plans for our lives in regards to ministry, seminary, and locations.

Long term, I hope to fulfill my calling as a pastor/missionary. I long to minister to a people and take them through the books of the Bible. I long to meet with them, have them over to my house, and hold their hands as they die while we are there quoting Ps. 46 to them. I also have a desire to finish my life preaching Christ where He has not previously been named. I would love to write my dissertation on Jonathan Edwards. Yale has his unpublished works, and I would love to see as much of that published as possible. I would also love to see an Edwards Study Bible in print. I’m also currently working on my first book, God’s Passion for Your Day, an expositional daily devotional. And in June, Shannon and I launched, Treasuring Christ, what will become my lifelong ministry to encourage the church at large by spreading a passion for the supremacy of Christ through faithful biblical expositions to all peoples for the equipping of the church.

So, for now and forever, I will depend on His Spirit that dwells within me, crying out like a child with faith, begging Him to reach the standards He has lawfully given. I am sanctified by the same grace that saved me. I desire to live a life of suffering (That I might know Christ!) to magnify the preciousness of Jesus Christ and to show to unbelievers that my hope is not in this world. I trust in Jesus Christ and His grace to bind my feet to the path of His glory. I flee to the cross in my failing and work out my salvation with fear and trembling because God is at work in me. My satisfaction in Christ is THE joy in my life, though I slip out of my marriage bed to Him often. I long for the day that nothing, not even my passions, will take me from Christ, for He will be my passion in full! I long to be addicted to Jesus Christ. As my mentor says, “God is most glorified in me, when I am most satisfied in Him.” But I recognize with John Newton, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world, but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”