The Passover Foot Washing

Good afternoon, everyone. It's a nice springtime day outside. It's good to see everyone here today, and nice to be enjoying, hopefully, the end of snow for the year. Some of my family is still back in Minnesota. They had snow just within the last couple of days again, and having a lot of it there. Well, as already mentioned, we're coming up very quickly now on the Holy Days. In fact, this is the last Sabbath we'll have before the Passover service on Thursday evening. First Holy Day coming up next Sabbath. So we look forward to celebrating these Holy Days with everyone. We think, of course, at this time of year about the different symbols of the Passover and all the different meaning that's in this time of year. We've talked about many of those coming up to the Holy Days. I don't think we've talked much about the foot-washing ceremony this year coming up to the Holy Days. And I'd like to start this sermon in John 13 and read about that ceremony and use that as a starting point for this message. If you'll turn, please, to John 13. We'll read verses 1 through 17. John 13, verses 1 through 17.

And supper being ended, the devil, having 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 to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded.

And then he came to Simon Peter and Peter said to him, Lord, are you washing my feet? And Jesus answered and said to him, What I am doing you don't understand now, but you'll know after this. And Peter said to him, You will never wash my feet. Jesus answered and said, If I don't wash you, you have no part with me. And Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

And Jesus said to him, He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all of you. For he knew who would betray him, and therefore he said, You are not all clean. So when he had washed their feet, taken his garments, and sat down again, he said to them, Do you know what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you say, Well, 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 shall do as I have done to you.

Most assuredly I say to you, A servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. So we've all heard this passage read many different times. Of course, we know and have probably heard in sermons in the past, and talk about foot washing, and what it meant in the time that they lived in back then. The fact that it was usually a servant, the lowliest servant, who would come and wash someone's feet.

And in this part of the world, if any of you have traveled to the Middle East, even today, it's a matter of etiquette. If you're in that part of the world, you don't sit and cross your legs and point the soles of your feet at somebody, because it's considered an insult.

The feet are considered the dirtiest part of the body, the most uncomply part of the body. And so Jesus Christ was doing something that the lowliest servant would do. What I'd like to do today is focus not so much on that specific act of foot washing, but as we look at a couple of things that Jesus Christ said here in this passage.

First of all, telling Peter, if you don't let me wash your feet, you have no part of me. He was pointed to something very important that was going on. It was more important than just the water and the dirt on the feet and the towel to wipe them. And likewise, in the end of the passage in verse 16 and 17, he talks about the importance of being a servant, knowing these things and being blessed if we do them. I think we understand this was a symbol, a very important symbol, one that we rehearse every year.

But what Jesus Christ was talking about was not the fact that we should go out into the world and wash every foot that we see. But symbolically, he was talking about the attitude that goes behind that, and it's an attitude of humility. And so intrinsic to the foot washing service, and as we'll see, intrinsic to God's way of life, is this attitude of humility, one that we need to develop within ourselves as the way that we are. So what is humility, and why is it so important?

Let's start out at the beginning of this message just definitionally and figure out what is humility, actually. Now, there's a lot of different places we can go for this. Probably a good thing first to go back into the Bible and look at a couple of the words that are translated into the English word humility. The first word in Hebrew, anav, a-n-a-v, is usually defined to mean poor, meek, or low.

Poor, meek, or low. And probably if you're thinking about humility and what it means, that's what you think of. Somebody who might be meek doesn't necessarily speak up, not assertive or pushy. Somebody who considers themselves perhaps a bit lower than other people. In Greek, there's the adjective tappenos, which means, according to one of the Bible dictionaries, low-lying, or figuratively, lowly, or hence, lowly in spirit. So some of the same sort of meaning in terms of being low, being lower than, or considering oneself to be low-lying.

If we go to dictionary.com, we get a little more definition in terms of how most people today understand the word to be used and what they expect it to mean. And dictionary.com has four different definitions that they apply to the word humility. First, not proud or arrogant. Modest. So talking about the idea of someone being able to be humble, although successful. Secondly, having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc. And as an example for that part of the definition, it says, in the presence of so many world-famous writers, I felt very humble. Third definition, dictionary.com, low in rank, importance, status, or quality, lowly. And the example they provide there is someone being talked about being of humble origin or coming from a humble home.

And the fourth definition that they provide is courteously respectful. And they give the example of someone saying, in my humble opinion, you are wrong. So those are all the definitions that we see. How does that match up about what you think godly humility really is? If you had to define humility from the sense of what we see in the Scriptures, what we see in God's word, how would you define humility? Take a minute and maybe think about how you would define it. Would you define it the same as what we've read here in these definitions? Or would you see some additional definitions associated with the word humble?

As we've seen in some of these definitions, we think often about externalities when we think of what humility is, don't we?

So if we read, for example, historical books or biographies of people, it'll often talk about the humble beginnings that someone came from. They'll talk about whoever it was, a president or some famous person. And when they say they come from humble beginnings, what do they mean? One of the places I drive by most mornings is the reconstructed log cabin where President James Garfield was born. It's just up Psalm Center Boulevard on the east side of town. And most people, if they were using common language, would say he came from humble origins because he was born in a one-room log cabin, which back then would have been out in the middle of the woods. Is that what it means to be humble? Can you be humble if you weren't born in a log cabin? There's much more than those externalities. And I'd like to consider Jesus Christ, for example, because we always have to start with him as our example. We don't necessarily have to turn there, but in Matthew 11.29, if you want to look it up, is one of the few passages, perhaps the only passage, where Jesus Christ actually defines himself and talks about his own qualities. And you might remember he speaks in this passage about the fact that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And then he says about himself that he is humble. So humility is an attribute that Jesus Christ ascribed to himself. Now, let's think about a few of the things that Jesus Christ as a humble person did. One of the things Jesus Christ did was throw the money changers out of the temple. And if we read the description of that in the Gospels, again, we won't turn there, but it talks about him very forcefully going into the temple, overturning tables, telling people what they were doing was wrong, telling them to get out of the temple, and it speaks of him driving them out of the temple. Jesus Christ says he was a humble person. Humility has more elements to it than just some of these things that we might talk about. He was born in a stable. We would say in our usage those were humble origins.

But would we say that driving money changers out of the temple was one of the acts of humility of Jesus Christ? Then, if we think about Matthew, the latter part of the book of Matthew, I think it's chapter 23, when he is confronting the scribes and Pharisees, what does he do to the scribes and Pharisees when he's talking with them?

Is he meek and lowly to them, saying in hushed tones, Guys, I think maybe some of the stuff you're doing isn't so good. If we remember that passage, what does he say? He says, you guys are a bunch of snakes! And you're misleading the people, and you're misusing your power, and you're exercising false authority.

And he said it forcefully, and he gave them a tongue lashing. Jesus Christ, who said he was humble. How does that square up with the definitions of humility that you have? What is it that's at the core of humility? We think about the way that Jesus Christ acted. It has to make us believe that some of the things that we think of, as being defining traits of humility, might not be quite what we thought that they were. So humility is not a physical condition. It's actually a state of mind, and it's a state of mind that relies on an assessment of self, an accurate measure of self. And we'll dig into that a little bit more deeply as we go through this.

Now, how do we measure things? If we're measuring things physically, it's pretty easy, right? We learn pretty early on in life how to take out a ruler or a tape measure. We hold it up next to something, and we can measure it. We could say, yep, this one is six inches long, whatever it might be. Ten inches long, this has a circumference of 24 feet, whatever it is we're talking about. We can measure it. But not everything is so easily measurable, is it? And so easily defined. For example, if I asked you, how old are you? You can measure that in the number of years, right? But if I asked you, what age is old?

What would you say? I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I know Glenn is already willing to volunteer. So if I asked a 12-year-old, how old is really old? I'd probably get an example that I'd consider personally distasteful. If I asked somebody who's in his 80s, how old is old, I would probably get a different answer, wouldn't I?

And in fact, when you talk with people who are into their 70s and into their 80s, you're likely to hear them say something like, I remember when I was your age, or I remember when I was young, I used to think being 50 was old. Not anymore. I wish I could be 50 again and have all that energy I had when I was 50, right? That's what older people say. And likewise, again, younger people, they look at somebody who's 35 and they think that time has passed them by. How cold is cold? My wife's not here. She's traveling this weekend, visiting some friends so I can tell a story on her.

One of the big things I always get from my wife, if we're going to go out for a walk, is she'll say, is it cold outside? Or if we're going to go somewhere for a dinner or something else, am I going to be cold there? Is it going to be cold? I don't know how to answer that question, so I pretty much defaulted to yes because I found that it's easier to prepare for things being a little bit cold.

You can always take off a sweater or something like that and be comfortable. But these things are subjective, aren't they? And if you ask somebody so many different things, and what is it, it's not so easy to measure. And how you measure it depends on what you're measuring it against, right? I'm always amazed when I go to a basketball game or watch a basketball game on television. And you see these guys out on the basketball court, and they look tiny. You see a guy like Matthew Delavadova, right? He's out there playing as a guard.

And he looks small out there, and I've looked him up before, and I don't remember the exact number, but I believe Delavadova is something like 6'2 or 6'3. And you get him out there on the basketball court, he looks tiny. You walk in here, and he would tower over most of us, and certainly be taller than pretty much all of us. And again, these things tend to be somewhat relative. So if we're not careful, we can kind of get this idea that everything is relative, humility is relative.

And the way that we judge ourselves in terms of humility is relative to the people that we're around, relative to the situations that we're in. Is that really the case? We tend to think that way in a lot of things in terms of how we measure them. And in fact, we've got a lot of phrases in the English language that reflect that, right?

We talk about being a big fish in a small pond. And what does that mean? It means that you can feel really important about yourself when you're in the midst of a group of people who have a different set of skills than you do. It doesn't really say anything about your level of skill or ability or anything else. There's another saying that you might have heard that says, In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Many of you have heard that saying. And also very true, right? When you think of somebody who can only see through one eye and the limitations that come from that, but if you're dealing with people who can't see, the person who actually can see has abilities that go far beyond the others. I've got a colleague at work, and I don't mean anything disparaging by this, but the saying is kind of funny and I think it rings true in this context, too.

He likes to use this term often when he's talking about somebody who's gotten a little too self-important. He says, you know that guy over there? He's the tallest midget. And again, what he's saying, it's like us walking onto the basketball court. If I walked onto the basketball court with a bunch of basketball players, I would look so tiny.

And yet if I was in a room of second graders, I would tower over all those little children. So do we measure, do we think about humility when we do? What is the measure that we measure it against? What's the measure that we should measure ourselves against?

It's important for us to have a clear understanding in our mind of how we're to do that. Turn with me, if you will, to James 4. We'll talk a little bit now about the biblical yardstick for humility. James 4.

And this concept is repeated also in 1 Peter 5 verse 6. We'll read James 4 verse 10. And there it very simply states, Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up. So there's one true measure of humility, only one, and that's God himself. And the challenge for us as human beings is we're physical, we deal every day with other human beings, and our tendency is to compare ourselves to people and things that we're around.

But we look at what it says in the Bible. It says clearly that we are to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. That means we're to understand God and his greatness and see him as the measure of what we compare ourselves to. And the one thing that's clear when we honestly compare ourselves to the greatness of God is, there is no greatness of me. And that's what humility is, plain and simple. To understand that we're a created being, we're physical, we live a certain number of years, we go through all the miseries, the tragedies, and the triumphs of life, and we die. Meanwhile, God is everlasting.

He created everything around us. He directs our life. He gave us his Son. He gives us his spirit so that we can have a life that's different, perhaps, than others around us. But the measure of everything is God. And that puts us very quickly into our place as we understand what it is that we really have and can do of ourselves in comparison to the one who created the universe. It's important to understand as well that there's no place in the Bible that it says that we are to humble other people.

In fact, that's one of the hallmarks, really, of toxic leadership. If we think about situations where people say, you know what? My job is to humble you. You're not going to find a biblical passage that gives any human being the authority to do that. We're to humble ourselves before God. People who instruct in God's Word are to take people and point them to God, to point them to His Word, which will lead people to be humbled before God.

But they're not to be humbled before any human being. That's not our job to humble someone else. It's an operation that happens between us as individuals and our Creator, as we measure ourselves against God's greatness, and we understand when we see that in clarity what we are and how we compare to our great God in heaven. So as we leave this portion of the message talking about the definitional side of humility and what it is, humility is not something subjective.

It's not something that depends on the situation that you're in. It's not something dependent on physical surroundings. It's something that's compared to one specific measure, and that measure is God in heaven.

And what we have to understand with clarity as human beings is the fact that compared to God, He knows everything. He has all power. He has all ability, and we don't. And we construct our lives and we move forward, walking with Him, with that understanding in our mind. So let's move on and talk about some biblical examples that define humility. Biblical examples that define humility. And we'll see in the first one, again, that humility as an idea is bound up in these spring holy days, because we're going to talk first about Pharaoh and the story of the Exodus.

We spent some time in this last week, so we're not going to read through chapter and verse of the entire passage, but let's talk through it a bit and set the stage and understand what was it that God was doing with Pharaoh? What was that central message that he was pointing out at that point in time? So if we work our way back, we think of all the great empires that have ruled humanity. At the time of the Children of Israel, Egypt was that great empire. So we think today about the fact that no country can stand up against the military might and the resources economically that the United States has.

That empire, back in those days of the Children of Israel, was Egypt. Egypt had everything. They had the Nile River, which poured down, brought all this water down, it flooded every year, put all this silt out that was incredibly fertile in the Nile Delta, and they could plant an abundance of crops there. And every year they could count on the fact that floods would come, that fertile land, that dirt would be spread out and watered, they could plant their crops, they would bring in all of these crops, so they had a huge economic base.

And then they were able to build these incredible edifices, some of which still stand today. You can go out and you can see the Temple of Hatshepsut, you can see the pyramids in Giza, things that were built millennia ago, still standing.

And they had all these gods that they worshipped. And because they had all this plenty around them, they had all this prosperity, they believed in all of these gods that did these things for them on a regular basis, just like they could count on the seasonal flooding of the Nile, and all of the blessings that would come to them from that fertile land and everything that they could grow.

And so they built up this entire culture of worship that had different gods that they worshipped, that all had different attributes that they thought blessed them. And who was the greatest god of all within Egypt? They actually believed that their ruler, the Pharaoh, was a descendant of the gods. And they revered the Pharaoh as a god.

And so when we look to the Bible, when we look in Exodus 5 through 13, what we see happening as Moses first comes to Pharaoh and says that God wants Pharaoh to let his people go, to go out in the desert to worship God, it's a challenge.

It's a challenge to the greatest empire on earth that controlled everything that was there, that had endless resources and prosperity, a monstrous army that enslaved those people. And Moses had absolutely no standing before Pharaoh. To even come before him to ask that was probably a large request.

And then to ask that these slave people could go. And what was done as a result of that? In Exodus 5, the result of the first request is that he says, you know what? Not only are you not going, but you're going to have to get your own straw, and we're going to up your quota of bricks that you have to produce.

So not only am I not allowing you to go out to worship your God, but you're going to have to work harder than you ever did before, just because you asked.

Why is that? Because I'm Pharaoh, I've got all the power, and you're nothing, and that God guy that you talked about never heard of him.

He's not one of the gods that we worship. We ascribe no power to him.

So everything that we see in the plagues that follow, then, within, between God, as Moses continues to come before Pharaoh and say, God asks that we can go, every one of those plagues begins to strike at one of the gods that the Egyptians worshipped.

We're not going to go through all of those today, but if you want to look it up, you can see how all of these different things that happened were a direct attack on the power of one of the gods of Egypt.

And what God was doing, step by step by step, as he was approaching Egypt and the Pharaoh, was to show that he was greater than any of them.

It was a lesson of humility that not only Pharaoh, but all of the Egyptians at the end of the day, would have to recognize that God was greater than anything that they had built up around themselves.

None of the things that they trusted in, none of the different gods, not even Pharaoh himself at the end of the day, could stop anything that God, the God of the Hebrews, as he was showing himself at that point in time, was able to do.

And that was a lesson that had to come at the end of the day.

Now the final plague that came, as we know, is what we think about as the Passover approaches, where you can almost think of it as a one-on-one between God and Pharaoh, where God was showing when he struck down the firstborn, even the firstborn of Pharaoh, who the Egyptians revered as a god.

The God in heaven was showing that, I am more powerful than you are, and you cannot protect even your firstborn, the one that all of the Egyptians believe has inherited the divine right of kings from you, is going to be struck down, because I am God.

And that was the final lesson before Pharaoh finally let the children of Israel leave Egypt, as we know.

So that entire lesson, all of the things that happened throughout all of those plagues were made to show the Egyptians the power of God and to humble them before the true God so that they would understand who he was.

And certainly the children of Israel learned that lesson as well, as he was saving them and taking them out of Egypt.

So the big lesson we think about the story of Exodus, in terms of humility, is that Egypt and Pharaoh had to learn not to overestimate their own power.

And when they compared what they thought their power was to the power of God, they began to realize, as these plagues went on and on and on over that period of time, that their power and what they could do was nowhere near as high as what they estimated it was.

And even in the end, as they chased the Israelites down to the Red Sea and the armies were drowned in the Red Sea, they saw that last step that their physical military might that they trusted in so much, they had also overestimated, and that God was so much greater than it as well.

So as we think of this first example in the Bible about humility, and the fact that we have to humble ourselves before God, we have to think in our own lives and look at our own lives as well, and think about in what ways do we overestimate our own power and ability to do things.

I remember hearing a message many years back when I heard a minister say, he said, you know, I used to think of God and the fact that I need God to help me out in areas where I can't do things.

And he said, as time went by, I learned that that's not what I need. I need God in every single part of my life, because none of the power that I have to do anything is going to succeed or be of any worth without God being involved.

And I'd say, as my life goes on, as every day goes on, I learned to understand that lesson more as well. How much do we think about that in our lives? How much do we think that we have the power to do what it is we want to do?

Certainly, God has given us minds. He's given us ability to do things. But in the end, we have to be sure that when we look between ourselves and God in heaven, that we don't overestimate our power.

And that we put our lives in His hands, and that we realize in the end, He has the power over our lives, and He will direct those lives and the circumstances in our lives in the direction that He wants them to go.

Let's turn the page and consider another example. And this example will be close to the one that we looked at already. It comes right after it, and that's Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years.

Now, how many remember what the incident was that brought on the wandering in the desert? A few hands, okay? So, we can see it in Numbers 13 and 14. Again, we're not going to read through it. I'll talk through the story a bit and paraphrase it.

But Israel went through, came out of Egypt, went through the Red Sea, had a few adventures, was on the cusp of going into the Promised Land.

And God took spies out of the tribes of Israel and said, go out and spy out the Promised Land. And so, those spies went through Joshua and Caleb and others, and they spied out the Promised Land. And what do we remember that they saw there?

They saw everything that was promised, right? There's still, you can buy still now in Jerusalem, these wood carvings of two men carrying this huge bunch of grapes between them on a stick.

That's like the symbolic thing that they saw, the land flowing with milk and honey. Incredible abundance in this land. So much food, you couldn't carry it all back.

They were carrying back examples of all the things that they saw there. But, as a number of you were saying, they also saw something else. That was really strong people. Giants, they called them.

People of huge physical stature, a lot of strength, a lot of military might, walled cities. And they looked at that, and they said, how in the world are we, a bunch of slave people, who've just been trudging across the desert, going to go in and drive out these incredibly powerful people out of the land?

And, as a result of that lack of faith, as a result of that reaction, and not believing and understanding that God could and would deliver that land to them, He sentenced them to 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.

And what was the reason for that wandering? Let's turn to Deuteronomy 8. The Bible makes it quite clear, actually, exactly why the children of Israel were led to wander in the desert.

Deuteronomy 8, we'll read verses 2 through 4. Deuteronomy 8 verses 2 through 4.

Now, Deuteronomy was written a number of years afterwards. It was written as the children of Israel were getting ready to enter the land. It was a reminder of so many of the things they'd been through in the couple of generations before that. And here in Deuteronomy 8, verse 2, So as they're entering the Promised Land, He's coming back and He's saying, look, the reason you wandered for these 40 years was when your parents and grandparents were there about to enter the Promised Land, they didn't believe that God had the power to deliver that land to them.

And because of that unbelief, they would spend the next 40 years wandering in the desert to be humbled. And it's interesting what it points out as some of the supporting facts here.

Because in the end, what it's showing is that what they were learning was God's care for them and the power that God had to take care of them.

He talks about the manna that was miraculously delivered to them every morning, like dew on the ground, so that they could eat.

The one thing that had to be clear to anyone in the Israelite camp was that they had nothing to do with producing their food. It showed up for them, supernaturally, from God.

And they had to understand at some point in time, this God that's leading us, as they saw that pillar of fire and that pillar of cloud, is providing us our food. It's nothing that we're able to do of ourselves.

We're living from the mouth of God. We're not living from things that we're creating for ourselves. And likewise, their garments not wearing out.

They had to have encountered other people during those 40 years. They had to see how other people's garments did wear out. And theirs didn't. There was something else going on.

So the point here, God was leading them through to humble them, to show them that He had the power to sustain them, because it was something that they didn't understand or weren't able to act on at that point in time when their forefathers were about to enter the Promised Land.

So the point here is that Israel had to learn a lesson about humility, and the lesson they had to learn was a little different from what the Egyptians learned. Israel had to learn not to underestimate the power of God to help them.

They believed in God at some level. They knew God. It wasn't the same as the Egyptians that way, but they underestimated God. They didn't believe God had the power to bring them into the Promised Land and conquer it for them.

And because of that, they turned back and they were sentenced to those 40 years.

In what ways in our lives do we underestimate God's power? And what does it lead us to do? It's something we have to think about in our lives as we go through the things that we do.

Do we believe at times that we need to break God's law in order to, fill in the blank, make a living, buy a house, acquire whatever?

Do we believe that we have to break God's law in order to do that? Because we underestimate the power of God to bless us with the things that we need when we need them.

Do we believe in our relationships with other people? That we shouldn't listen to the things that we see in the Bible and the patterns of behavior that we see there because we underestimate the ability of God to work in our hearts and minds and in the hearts and minds of other people.

Things that we need to ask as we consider that benchmark that we measure against of God as the measure of humility.

Let's turn to a third example. This is a man named Naaman. Many people remember the story of Naaman.

So Naaman was a powerful army commander. He was not one of the children of Israel. He was a Syrian.

And Syria, at that point in time, was another great world-ruling empire. Naaman was a very powerful person. He was a commander in the King's army. But there was one thing about Naaman that was difficult for him, and that was that he had contracted leprosy. And leprosy was this horrible skin condition, quite debilitating, and viewed by people at that time. Lepers, we even use the term today sometimes, talking about people who are just outcasts that we don't want to have around us. We talk about them as lepers. Leper colonies were set up until probably even a couple hundred years ago. There were still some leper colonies where people were isolated because of the disease of leprosy. So here's this powerful Syrian army commander, and he's a leper. And obviously he'd like to be healed. He had a servant girl who was Israelite, and she knew Elisha, the great prophet Elisha. And so she urged Naaman to go to Elisha to be healed. Let's pick up the story in 2 Kings 5. 2 Kings 5, verses 9 through 14. Again, another story of humility measured against God and another aspect of it. 2 Kings 5, verse 9.

So after talking with this girl, Naaman was convinced enough and believed, I should go and give this a try, what do I have to lose? And in verse 9, Naaman went with his horses and chariot, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house. So you can imagine Elisha's house, again using the common word humble. Elisha probably lived in a fairly humble house. And you can imagine this, you know, chariots and just this army. Him, along with people who might have guarded him, this whole bunch of people in their uniforms and regalia rolling up to Elisha's house. Elisha opens the door, where he sent a messenger to him in verse 10. He didn't even go to see him. Here's this real important guy, somebody who's a commander in the army, and from what we see here, Elisha didn't even go to see him. So that was the first, maybe, slight, right? If you're an important person and you're going to somebody for an audience, you kind of expect they're going to come and see you, not send out their assistant, right? And it's a bit of a slight when somebody else comes out and says, you know what? He doesn't really have time for you. Just go wash yourself in the Jordan. Everything's good. That's what he told him in verse 10. He said, go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored to you, and you'll be clean. So powerful Naaman, commander in the army, shows up. Prophet won't meet him.

And he sends off his servant to go give him a message. And not only that, but if we read in verse 11, Naaman became furious and went away and said, Indeed, I said to myself, He'll surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord as God. And He'll wave His hand all over the place and heal the leprosy. Are not the Abana and the Farpar the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be clean?

So Naaman had this idea that he was important. He was going to roll up to Elisha's place. Elisha was going to come out. He was going to wave His hands around. He was going to do this holy thing. Call on God and Naaman would be clean. But instead, he said, you know that mucky river over there? Kind of looks like a creek compared to what you're used to in your part of the world. Don't go wash there one time. Wash there seven times in that muddy, filthy looking river, and you'll be clean. Completely outside of the construct of what Naaman could even think about or accept. And so what did he do? He turned and he went away in a rage at the end of verse 12. And in verse 13, his servants came near and spoke to him and said, My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more than when he says to you, wash and be clean? So to Naaman's credit, in verse 14, he went down and he dipped seven times in the Jordan according to the saying of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. So there was a lesson here for Naaman, and it's a lesson that cascades down to all of us because it's written for us in the Bible. And that's that Naaman had to learn that God's purpose is worked out as God sees fit, not as we see fit.

How many times in our lives do we go before God to give God an instruction on exactly how he needs to deliver us? All of the things that he needs to provide to us, and how and why, and walk away confident because I told God I'd put in my order, and I think I have enough faith, and God's going to give it to me. And that's what is being pointed out to here in this example with Naaman, right? It was God's will to heal him, but he was going to do it in the way that he was going to do it. And as painful as it is in our own lives, as we humble ourselves before God, we begin to realize there are things that happen in our lives. They happen for a purpose, and that purpose is the purpose of God working in us to fulfill a destiny for us to be his children. And the one thing we can all guarantee if we've lived even for days as a Christian is that the things that work out in our lives through God's hand are going to look different than the things we would have designed for ourselves. And you know what? At the end of the day, we are better Christians and better human beings, and destined to become God's children because of that fact. Because of that fact. And I think we can all relate to this story of Naaman because all in our own ways, we've felt in some situation that God was going to send someone to wave their hands around in a certain way or perform some huge monstrous event and deliver us, and it didn't happen that way. But you know what? So often when we look back, maybe it takes three years, five years, seven years, we see that God did deliver us. God did develop something important within us. He just did it in a very, very different way than we would have designed for ourselves. It's another element of humility to think about. Let's use one fourth example, and this will be Peter. Now, we're all familiar with Peter. Peter was one of the original disciples who followed Jesus Christ. He was known for his boldness. He had a lot of energy. He wasn't afraid to put himself out there and try to make things happen. And Peter walked with Jesus Christ through his entire ministry. At the end of those three and a half years, he really had to believe that he understood not only Jesus Christ, but his teachings in a very special way that probably nobody else did save the handful of other disciples who were with Jesus that closely for that period of time. Let's turn to Matthew 16. Something surprising, off-putting to Peter, happens at this point in time when Jesus Christ essentially calls him Satan and says that he's displaying the Spirit of Satan after all this closeness he's had to Jesus Christ and how he's trying to stick up for him and help him. Matthew 16, starting in verse 21.

And then Peter, in verse 22, takes Jesus aside and he began not to talk with him, but to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this will not happen to you. So he's going to set Jesus Christ straight, because Jesus Christ did not have it right about this crucifixion thing. And Peter was going to do everything in his power to stop him from being sacrificed. And Jesus Christ, as a result of that rebuke, turned to Peter in verse 23 and said, Get behind me, Satan. You're an offense to me, for you're not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. So Peter had to learn something very important, and he certainly displays later in his life that he learned it very clearly as he devoted his life fully to God. But he had to learn a lesson of humility in this situation, and the humility that he had to learn was he could not impose his will on God. Okay, we see here, when he took Jesus Christ aside and didn't just talk to him, but rebuked him, enough of this talk about sacrificing yourself, Jesus Christ went right back at him and said, This is the way it's going to be. And that was an act of humility on Jesus' part as well, wasn't it? Because he was there for one thing, and that was to fulfill the will of God. And he knew that it was the will of God that he would be sacrificed so that all of us could be sitting here as brothers and sisters today. So all of us could be together on Thursday, keeping the Passover as brethren.

Much more important, and Jesus Christ in humility was willing to lay himself down and do that. And to rebuke Peter, when Peter was even talking about standing in the way of that plan being worked out. And so, as we develop that same sense of humility, again, relative to God and his will, not to people and what they're trying to impose on us, but relative to God and his will, we have to learn that we can't impose our will on God.

One of the elements of the Lord's Prayer that we read is, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A very important thing as we humble ourselves before God.

So wrapping up this section of the sermon, the examples of humility. We saw four examples, things that we can and should think about in our lives as we consider it. Pharaoh and the nation of Egypt, understanding that all the power, skill, riches, greatness, anything physical that we can amass is nothing next to God. Our greatness can't come anywhere near to his greatness. Israel, as they wandered in the desert for 40 years, had to understand that God's power is not to be underestimated. It's strong enough to overcome any obstacle that can stand in our way. In the example of Naaman, we learn through humility that God works his plan as he sees fit, sometimes in ways that look really strange to human eyes, not as we see fit.

And through the example of Peter, that we cannot impose our will on God. Rather, we're called to follow his will.

So in the last few moments of this sermon, let's talk about putting humility into practice.

We've seen that humility is a state of mind. We've seen that it's measured against the standard of God. And we've seen examples of the lessons of humility in the Bible.

In one way, humility is very simple, understanding where we stand relative to God.

But practicing it is much more complex. I think sometimes about a piece of advice one of my best friends' mother gave me.

I was thinking about this recently. She passed away within the last six months.

I still remember, as I was getting ready to get married, Karen and I, she said, you know what, let me tell you the secret to a happy marriage.

She said, tell your wife five times a day you love her, and then treat her like you mean it.

To which I thought, thanks for nothing.

The first part I can do, I can measure it, right? I can count it, five times a day.

But that second part, treat her like you mean it, that's where it really gets tough, isn't it?

And that's the way this is with humility as well. So we can recognize, we can understand, we can comprehend, in terms of knowledge, where we stand relative to God. But putting that into practice every day, in the way that we live our lives, that's where it gets difficult.

Go with me again, if you would, please, to John 13. We'll go back to where we started, to the foot washing that we'll participate in together on Thursday night. It carries out this same message, we'll just read verses 15 through 17, where Jesus Christ stated in verse 15, I've given you an example that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

And what do any of us want in life more than to be blessed by God in the way that God sees fit? And so what we have to do is find ways to exercise humility in our lives.

I'm going to use perhaps an unusual scripture to bring this idea home. It comes from the writings of John and the vision that he received to write the last book of the Bible. Turn with me, if you will, to Revelation 22. Revelation 22. Now this is an encounter, as John is having his vision, that led to the writing of the book of Revelation, where he's talking with an angel. And so we know that angels are messengers and servants of God. They're made of spirit, not of flesh. And so they have a lot more power than we do, at least today. But as we read in Hebrews, it talks about the fact that we're a little lower than the angels today, but our destiny is different and actually higher than the angels, in that we will become the children of God.

And God hasn't said to the angels that they have that higher destiny. So it's an interesting situation where angels today, they're powerful, they watch over us, they carry out God's plan, they operate as messengers, as protectors, knowing all the while that we, the frail, weak human beings, and they see everything that we do, and they're able to, they can know exactly how weak we are, we have a destiny that's different than theirs, and one that we can actually become part of God's family.

Revelation 22, verses 8 and 9. John, near the end of his vision, says, And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. And then the angel, in verse 9, said to me, Don't do that, for I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God. Now that's really powerful, isn't it? There's one more example that's similar to this in the Old Testament, if you want to look it up sometime.

I don't remember the Scripture, but it's when the angel comes to the parents of Samson, and to talk about the fact that he'll be born, and they offer him a meal, and he says, No, offer an offering to God, and when they do, the angel rises up in the smoke. But again, the same idea with the angel pointing to God and saying, Don't worship me. And what he's essentially saying is, Look, we're all servants of God.

I'm more powerful than you. I'm a spirit being today. In the future, you're going to be part of God's family, but we're here together as servants of God, and we worship the one true God and nobody else. And it's that attitude as a servant of God, a true servant of God, which is what the angels are, he displays that intrinsic attitude of humility.

The same thing that was within Jesus Christ, we just as easily use Jesus Christ, that allowed Jesus Christ to treat all of the human beings that he came into contact with, with respect. With love, to serve them, even if he didn't agree with everything that they did. It led him to sacrifice his life for us and all humans while we were all still sinners. That same example of humility. And so that's what we have to figure out how to put into use in our lives every day.

How do we exercise that same attitude of respect and of love and of care for other fellow human beings, knowing that they have the same destiny that we do. God is dealing with them differently than he's dealing with us. Perhaps God has chosen not to deal with them now in this life, but he will deal with them in the future. And so the way that we treat our fellow human being, whether in the church, whether outside the church, whether people who have a faith in God or who don't, has to be impacted by that same sense of humility, that understanding of God, where we stand relative to God and what God has given us in his grace, especially this time of year as we think of Jesus Christ's sacrifice.

So as we put that attitude into use, especially here within the walls of the church, people who believe in God, we view one another as fellow Christians, as fellow servants of God. Each one of us is different. We think about the example of the potter and the clay that's used in the Bible and the fact that the potter sits there and pulls a chunk of clay, and he decides this one is going to become a beautiful vase.

This one is going to become a chamber pot, and he just decides how he's going to shape different pieces of clay in different ways. If it's not shaping up quite the way he wants it, the potter takes it, pulls it off the wheel, crushes it down, and begins to shape it again. And he's working with each and every one of us as individuals in that way, in a different way with every one of us.

And that's why, going back to the ultimate measure, we have to be careful to avoid the human side of comparing ourselves to each other. Because the one thing I know is that God is not working with me in the same way that he's working with any of you. He has his reasons well beyond what most of us understand, but he has one thing in mind for each and every one of us, and that is we will all be part of his family. We will all be his children. And because of the unique wanderings that we're all going to go through in our lives, and the way that he's going to deal with us in those wanderings, he wants us to reach that destination and to reach it together and have that same goal that we will achieve together of being in his kingdom.

So in conclusion, we've seen today that humility is a central attitude. It's bound up in these holy days that we're starting, central to what we've seen from the time of God taking the children of Israel out of Egypt, to dealing with Jesus Christ and his sacrifice and the attitude that he described. And we see that humility needs to be measured against one standard, and that is our God in heaven. Not against any physical standard, not against any other person. And through the biblical examples of humility, we see the different ways that we need to examine our lives and live them in God's way.

1 Peter 5, 5 tells us that God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. I wish all of us the riches of God's grace that will come through his humility as we keep these upcoming days of Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread. Have a great Sabbath.