Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 612
Delivered on Sunday Morning, January 29, 1865
“Then He came to Simon Peter: and Peter said unto Him, Lord, do You wash my feet?” John 13:6.
OUR Savior had so steadfastly set His face towards the awful sufferings of His passion that when they actually approached He was not in the slightest degree disturbed or disconcerted. If you were perfectly aware that tomorrow morning, after a night of terrible agony, you would be led forth to a cruel and ignominious death you would probably feel like men distracted with terrible apprehensions. At any rate, if through Divine Grace you were able to be calm and peaceful, your mind would scarcely be in a fit state to minister consolation to others, or to conceive new methods of instruction for your friends.
But behold your Lord and Master! It is eventide of the same night in which He was betrayed. He foreknows that the bloody sweat within an hour or two will crimson all His flesh. He is well aware that he who is eating bread with Him will that night betray Him. He foresees that He must feel the Roman scourge and be the victim of Jewish slander. He knows right well that He must bear all the wrath of God on the behalf of His people. And yet He sits at supper. He feasts as if no unusual cloud were lowering. And when the supper is over His inventive mind is fully at work with admirable plans of instruction for His disciples and among the rest He takes off His upper garment.
He wraps Himself about the loins with a towel. He goes to them as they are reclining at full length around the table and coming behind them He begins to wash the feet of first one, and then another! What blessed calmness of mind! What hallowed serenity of spirit! O that our hearts were equally fixed on God in our days of trial and grief! Without question we may go further and take most solemn notice that there was in the near approach of death a joy in Jesus’ heart into which no stranger could enter.
Now was about to be accomplished that which He had longed for. Did He not say, “I have a Baptism to be baptized with and how am I straitened till it is accomplished. With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I die”? Did this account for His giving out a hymn of praise on that doleful night? “After supper they sang a hymn.” Did that account for His adding these remarkable words—“Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him”? Did His joy in the prospect of what He was about to accomplish for His people swell to the very highest just about the time when the fountains of the depths of His griefs were about to be broken up and His spirit to be flooded in agony as He cried, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death”?
O to know His joy—the joy of loving even unto death! Let us come at once to the teaching of the Savior and let it be surrounded with an unusual interest because of the fact that it is His dying teaching. Let us see Him as He girds Himself with the towel, remembering that He was soon to be girt with the bands of death! Let us see Him, I say, with a more profound interest because He is just upon the verge of these terrible depths where all the waves and billows of Jehovah’s justice dashed over Him.
His sermon beginning, “Let not your heart be troubled,” is His swan song. These are the last drops of His life that He is now spending—at the supper table you have the wine which He keeps until now. As we see Him washing His disciples’ feet we shall discover choice love worthy of the last solemn hour of departure. We shall take the text in four ways. First here is matter for enquiry, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” Secondly, here is matter for admiration—“Lord, do You wash my feet?” Thirdly, here is matter for gratitude. Fourthly, here is matter for imitation.
I. HERE IS MATTER FOR ENQUIRY. We know that the Savior washed the feet of Peter, but does He wash our feet, also? We do not expect, of course, the literal transaction to take place. But is there anything in the conduct of Christ now analogous to His washing Peter’s feet when on earth? He has washed all Believers, once and for all, in His most precious blood.
But of this we do not speak this morning. Cleansing, as before the bar of justice, is completely accomplished forever for all the chosen by the great blood-shedding upon Calvary. That is a matter of the past—a thing for which to bless God for all eternity. “We are clean, through Jesus’ blood we are clean.” But here is another kind of washing—not of the entire man, but of the feet only. Not with blood, but with water—not in the fountain filled from the Savior’s veins—but in a basin filled with water. Does our Lord Jesus do anything of this kind now? Doe He do anything so humbling to Himself and yet so needful for us?
We answer, yes, He does. And, first, does not the Savior perform an action parallel with this when He watches over the temporal affairs of His people? You know, Beloved, that not a hair of your head falls to the ground without His care. In all your afflictions He is afflicted, and as the Angel of God’s Presence, He saves you and carries you. Your most trifling trouble may be taken in prayer to Christ and spread before Him with as much certainty of deliverance as when Hezekiah spread Sennacherib’s letter before the Lord—for Jesus waits to be gracious to His own. In every transaction we should adore the providential care of our great Shepherd and Friend for the government is upon His shoulders.