Two More Gleanings from the Passage

Introduction: Re-reading John 13 and Seeking God's Help

0:02 Now then, let us turn again to the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John, and I trust you are not weary of my reading this passage. We may have some who are not with us for the previous expositions, and I would like to know that the basic facts of the incident are fresh in everyone's mind. I read then John 13, verses 1 through 17.

0:53 John 13, verses 1 through 17. Peter, he that is Peter, said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do you do not know now, but you shall understand hereafter, or more literally, after these things. Peter saith unto him, You shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash you not, you have no right to wash me.

1:53 You have no part with me. Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed needs not save to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all.

2:16 For he knew him that should betray him. Therefore he said, You are not all clean. So when he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and sat down again, he said unto them, Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say, Well, for so I am.

2:39 If I then the Lord and the Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done. Truly, truly, I say unto you, a servant is not greater than his Lord, neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

3:12 Now let us again seek God's face and ask the help of the Spirit of God in the ministry of the Word. Our Father, we read in the Scriptures that the testimony of Jesus, Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy, and we pray that the Holy Spirit would take of the things of Christ and set them before us, that our hearts may burn with love for him, that we may know the stirring of our affections toward him, our love for him, our trust in him, that in our coming to the table of remembrance we may come with fresh, actings of faith and love and wonder at all of the grace shown to us in Christ. Meet with us then and bless us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Review of Previous Gleanings and Introduction of New Ones

4:15 Well, we come again tonight to this field of John 13, 1 to 17, in order to gather some additional gleanings from this portion of the Word of God. Having sought in some, I trust, responsible way to open up the passage in terms of the two central lessons that the Spirit of God intended to give us in the passage, we came back to it this morning to gather some gleanings, or, without that imagery, to take up some further observations and applications that are in this portion of the Word of God. And we looked at two this morning, and I stated them this way. First, the foot-washing. The foot-washing incident contains a striking explanation of the distinction and the inseparable relationship between the initial and the continuing cleansing from sin based upon the sacrifice of Christ. And then secondly, the foot-washing incident constitutes a convincing manifestation of how fruitless, how fruitless are the best spiritual practices, without the transforming power of inward grace. Bishop Ryle has captured that truth very succinctly when he wrote, in commenting on this passage,

5:44 on all the coasts of England there is not such a beacon to warn sailors of danger as Judas Iscariot is to warn Christians. He shows us to what lengths a man may go in religious profession and yet...

6:00 turn out a rotten hypocrite at last and prove never to have been converted. He shows us the uselessness of the highest privileges unless we have a heart to value them and to turn them to good account. Privileges alone, without grace, save nobody and will only make hell deeper. Judas shows us the uselessness, of a mere head knowledge.

Gleaning 3: Jesus' Infinite Patience with Sinful, Dull, but True Disciples

6:33 To know things with our brains and to be able to talk and preach and speak to others is no proof that our own feet are in the way of peace. These are terrible lessons, but they are true. Now tonight I ask you to consider with me further two more observations and applications or gleanings from this passage that I trust will indeed be blessed, blessed of the Spirit of God to warm our affections toward our Lord Jesus and thereby prepare us to come to the table with fresh stirrings of love for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so our third gleaning I'm expressing this way. The foot-washing incident contains a moving manifestation of the infinite patience of Jesus towards His sinful, dull, yet true disciples. This foot-washing incident contains a moving manifestation of the infinite patience of Jesus towards His sinful, dull, but true disciples. According to the words of this passage, the eleven disciples there in the upper room are those who are,

8:01 are Jesus' own. Look at the language again. Having loved His own that were in the world. That is a reference to the eleven.

8:12 It is a reference to all who are there with Him in that upper room with the exception of Judas. And they are considered His own. Concerning them, Jesus said at the end of verse 10, And you are clean. But not all, and the only exception was Judas.

8:36 All of the others He accounts His own. The others are regarded as clean. They are His true disciples. When He says later in the passage, You call Me Teacher and Lord.

8:52 You address Me that way. You refer to Me that way when speaking of Me to one another and to others. And you do. You do well, for so I am.

9:04 That is, I am not only Teacher and Lord in My official capacity, but I am that to you. If He were not their Teacher and their Lord, they would not be saying well when they called Him that. That would be gross hypocrisy. He would say to such, Why do you call Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

9:28 And so they are His true, disciples. And yet in this very passage, what is their present state and condition? Well, they make it abundantly evident that they are yet sinful, spiritually dull. And yet, He shows such infinite patience to them in the face of the very manifest evidences of their sinfulness and of their dullness.

Manifestations of Disciples' Sinfulness and Dullness

9:57 Now, according to Luke chapter 22, it is in this very setting that while the Lord Jesus has either just finished washing their feet or is about to wash their feet, for the chronology is not precise here in Luke chapter 22, one thing is clear that it is in this upper room, in the very setting of our Lord's washing their feet, instituting the Lord's Supper, that we read in Luke 22, 24, and there arose a contention among them which of them was accounted to be the greatest. Here the Lord Jesus has either just taken the place of the common slave or is about to take that place symbolically demonstrating that He will procure their redemption in the way of servitude. And these guys are sitting around, arguing about who's going to be number one. They are manifesting crass, carnal ambition and pride, a contention among them which of them was accounted to be the greatest. And when our Lord begins to deal with that in the subsequent language of Luke 22,

11:23 it is evident that He goes to the heart of the fact that their minds are still filled, are still filled with carnal conceptions of Messiah's kingdom. You see, they would have been very much at home if Jesus had set the principles of the kingdom before them under the image of a throne and of a sword. But a towel and a basin does not fit their present messianic perspectives. This is why, again and again, when Jesus, in that last journey to Jerusalem, with ever increasing clarity, tells them, we are going to Jerusalem, there the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests, and in turn they will hand Him over to the Gentiles, and He shall be mocked, and He shall be scourged, and He shall be crucified. And yet the Scripture says, they understood none of these things. And in that setting, where their whole messianic process, their perspective is so skewed, they are filled with pride. And Jesus, knowing these expressions of their pride, He has addressed it, according to this passage in Luke chapter 22, Yet our Lord owns them as His own, and declares of them that they are clean,

12:49 and is prepared to set His face like flint to go to the agonies of the cross on their behalf. So they have shown their carnal ambition. Furthermore, in this setting of the upper room, in this setting of the incident of the foot washing, they manifested their pride by their unwillingness to take the place of the servant. As we saw in the exposition several Lord's days ago, the basin was obviously there.

13:22 The jug full of water was obviously there. The apron-like towel was obviously there. Waiting for someone in that intimate circle who would be willing to step forward and take the place of a servant. But in their pride, none of them will do it.

13:42 They wait for one another, and then the Lord shames them by girding Himself with the towel, taking the basin, and washing and drying their feet. They are indeed His sinful disciples. Guilty of carnal ambition in that very setting. Guilty of this crass expression of pride that they would not stoop to the task of foot washing.

14:09 And they are still unable to get rid of their dullness. We have already alluded to the dullness. We see it in the passage itself. Jesus acknowledges it when He says, No sense in My trying to explain to you the heart and soul of the significance of what I am doing right now.

14:30 I have spoken plainly of the necessity of My death, of the absolute necessity of My rejection and My crucifixion and My resurrection in pursuit of the redemption of sinners. But you have shown absolute dullness. What I am doing now in this acted-out parable of the work I will accomplish in My humbling of myself, to the death of the cross, you are too dull to perceive it. You do not understand now.

15:03 Yes, after My death, after My resurrection, after the descent of the Spirit, you will understand after these things. But at this very time, in this setting, they are not only sinful, carnal ambition cropping out, pride manifesting in their reluctance, there is spiritual dullness. They do not conceive of a Messiah who is at home with the towel and with the basin. And we must not think that Jesus just floated by that dullness because He was God.

15:44 There are ample indications in the Gospel records that when Jesus faced the spiritual dullness of His disciples, it grieved Him. You remember on the road to Emmaus, and you've got these two people dragging their chins along the road full of sadness. Their countenance is sad and Jesus draws near to them and begins to talk with them. And they tell Him why they are sad.

16:10 We had hoped that it was He who would redeem Israel. Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know this? If you knew what we knew, you too would be sad. There is humor in it.

16:20 Can't you see the humor? He's the one to whom all the things happened. And they said, if you only knew what happened, you'd be sad with us. And what did the Lord say?

16:30 Oh fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered and been raised from the dead? Ought not the Christ? Jesus did not float by the dullness of His disciples.

16:50 You and I know what it is when there are things deeply precious to us and we're trying to communicate them to those we love the most. Wife, husband, son or daughter. And they don't get it. How frustrating it is.

17:06 How grievous it is. Jesus felt the pain of that. So when He said, what I'm doing now, you do not know. He didn't just say, what I'm doing now, you don't know, but you know.

17:16 No big deal. It was a big deal to Him. The thing for which He had come from heaven lay before Him. And they don't have a clue.

17:25 That's why later on in Gethsemane He says, what? Could you not watch with me one hour? He felt their dullness. And their dullness is manifested in the very setting of the foot washing.

Peter's Brash Blethering and Jesus' Response

17:44 They are His sinful. They are His dull but true disciples. And then we see the sinfulness of Peter's brash blethering. Those are the only words that came to me when writing out my notes.

17:59 Brash blethering. He's running off at the mouth. At first he says something good. But the only thing good that Peter says in this whole incident is when he said, feeling the disparity between Christ and Himself, when he says in verse seven, I'm sorry, verse six.

18:20 So he comes to Simon Peter and he said to him, Lord, and the emphasis in the original is very clear, do you wash my feet? Peter sensed the incongruity. The Lord and the Master has the towel and the basin. There is something skewed in this.

18:40 It ought to be the other way around. One of us ought to have the towel and the basin washing your feet. And there we have to say, Peter, you get A plus for that comment. You're expressing the disparity, the great distance between the Master and the servant.

18:56 But everything else is bad. Verse eight, after the Lord tells him, what I'm going to do, you do not know now, but you shall know hereafter. Peter says, you shall never wash my feet again. In the original it's powerful.

19:11 You shall never wash my feet unto the ages. As long as you have being, I have being, you're not going to take the towel and the basin and do anything but my feet. There's the creature, first of all, saying, it's not right for you, the Lord and the Master, to wash my feet. Now he becomes the Lord and the Master and starts telling the Lord what he should and shouldn't do.

19:33 Isn't that what it is? You, the Master, are never going to, hey, wait a minute, Peter, who told you to call the shots? When did the Lord step off the throne and invite you up there to start dictating what should be and not be? This is wretched, horrible arrogance.

19:51 Then he adds to his arrogance his wildly impetuous and excessive response. When the Lord says, if I don't wash you, you have no part with me. Then he says, Lord, it's not enough for you to wash my feet. Oh yes, you were there with a towel and the basin to go after my feet, but Lord, there's something more to be done.

20:11 My head, my hands. Peter, shut up. Peter, shut up. You're making a fool of yourself.

20:19 But he's being true to Peter. Now you kids don't go out and say, Pastor Martin said shut up. I can say shut up to my, no, please don't do that. I'm trying to make the passage come alive.

20:29 I'm not justifying you saying shut up to one another. I'm saying to Peter, Peter, shut up. Stop. Same Peter, who earlier, when the Lord seeks to take him into the councils of redemption and says, yes, Peter, blessed are you.

20:47 Simon, son of Jonah, flesh and blood is not revealed to you. My identity, you just confessed me as son of God. You've just confessed me as Messiah. Blessed are you, Simon.

20:58 But I want to tell you, in my messianic mission, I must go to Jerusalem and die. And Peter says, this will never happen to you. And the Lord turns and says, get behind me, Satan. Impetuous Peter.

21:12 Later on in this passage, he says, look, if we've got to die with you, I'm ready to die with you. Impetuous Peter. And those expressions of wild impetuosity are not innocent. Those excessive responses to divine providence, they all show that this bunch of true disciples were sinful, they were dull, they were imperfect.

The Source of Jesus' Patience: Infinite Love

21:40 But in that very setting of the very evident manifestations of their sinfulness and their dullness, what is Jesus doing? He's taking the place of a slave to them. He is patiently instructing them. And He's pronouncing blessing upon them.

22:06 If you know these things, blessed are you. If you do that, you will stand under the canopy of covenantal blessing, the favor and the goodwill of God and the internal joy that it brings to the soul of the obedient disciple. He will go on in this very room to give to this bunch with no evident change at this point. No words of repentance from them at this point.

22:41 He will go on to smother them with some of the most warm, loving, tender, precious pronouncements that ever fell from the lips of the Lord Jesus toward His disciples. The upper room discourse, cherished by God's people through the centuries. In that setting, He says, I no longer call you servants. In one sense, yes, you're still My servants.

23:10 But you see, a servant, a slave is not taken into the councils of his master. I call you friends. For a slave does not know what his master does. But I'm going to take you in to the deep secrets of My heart.

23:24 What is this? But a manifestation, a moving manifestation of the infinite patience of Jesus toward His sinful, dull, and yet true disciples. Now I hope that raises a question in your mind. And I hope the question is this.

23:48 What lay behind such patience? What was it that moved our Lord to manifest such patience with His budge? Well, the answer is given in the opening words of the passage. Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them to the uttermost.

24:23 Having loved His own, when they were not clean, when they were yet unclean and vile and filthy and unwashed, having cleansed and washed and made them His own, in spite of all the junk that was adhering to their feet at this point. They had lots of dirt on their feet at this point. The dirt of carnal ambition, the dirt of pride, the dirt of dullness, Peter with the dirt of his arrogance and the dirt of his wild impetuous mouthiness, having loved His own with all their dirt, He loved them to the uttermost. And I submit to you that behind this infinite patience was the infinite love of Jesus for His own. For we read in 1 Corinthians 13 these distinct characteristics of love, what it does and how it acts in the presence of sin and dullness and wildly impetuous mouthiness. 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 4 Love suffers long.

25:51 What's that mean? It means love suffers for a long time. Our Lord experiences inner suffering when He sees the contrast of the disposition of His own heart with that of these disciples. While He has a troubled soul, John 12, before He enters the upper room, His soul is agitated as He sees His hour coming.

26:17 He is filled with the thought of what it will cost Him to go down into the bowels of hell to redeem His own. And they're having a fuss and an argument about who's going to be the hotshot in the kingdom. He's contemplating the way of redemption, the way of the servant, the slave who goes down, down to death. And they won't even take a towel in the basin and wash one another's feet.

26:45 But in that setting, Jesus feeling that pain and disappointment, suffering with their sinfulness and their dullness. He has the love that suffers long. Verse 5, This love not only suffers long, it says, is not provoked. If anything would have provoked Jesus, were He anything other than what He was and what He is, it would have been Peter's brashness, the disciples' carnal ambition breaking out at this point, their pride and unwillingness to take the place of the servant one to another, but He has that love that is not provoked. He has that love, verse 7, that bears all things, the sin, the dullness, the brash mouthiness of Peter, that believes all things, that is confident that His redemptive work when it is done with this bunch will land them in heaven with no sin, no carnal ambition, no pride, no mouthiness. He is confident that His redemptive work when it is accomplished will have them totally conformed to His own likeness

28:13 and to His own image. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, that is as a confident expectation of promised blessings, and the Father had promised Him a people, a people whom when He had finished His work of redemption would indeed be like Him and therefore a love that endured all things. Thinking of it in this imagery, the pool of our Lord's patience would have long gone dry were it not fed by streams from the ocean of His infinite love. The pool of His patience would have long gone dry were it not fed from streams flowing out of the infinite ocean of His love to His own. The foot washing incident contains this moving manifestation of the infinite patience of Jesus toward His sinful, dull, and yet true, disciples. And as then, so now.

Application of Jesus' Patience to Believers Today

29:37 What's the Lord got in this place tonight? Is it much to brag about? He's got a bunch of sinful, dull, but true disciples. People who've come to Jesus and said, Lord, wash me.

30:00 They've been made clean in the virtue of His precious blood by the mighty work of the Spirit. You've embraced Him. He is your teacher and your Lord as well as your Savior, prophet, priest, and King. And the root of the matter is in you.

30:18 You want to serve Him. You want to love Him. You want to be willing to do anything for Him. And yet, if you're honest, even this past week, you've seen the outcroppings of pride, temper, selfishness, lust, unmortified, carnal ambition, sinful mouthiness, internal arguing with the Lord.

30:47 You can tell Him better how to do what you think He ought to do to others and to you. And yet, as we come to the table tonight, what do we find our Lord Jesus to be? We find Him to be exactly the Jesus who was there in that upper room, infinitely patient with His sinful, dull, yet true disciples. I have a lovely hymnal produced by InterVarsity decades ago that is my devotional hymn book.

31:25 I use it in my own devotions. And there's a lovely hymn that I hope eventually we can incorporate into our hymnody by Horatius Bonar. I hear the words of love, I gaze upon the blood, I see the mighty sacrifice, and I have peace. And I have peace with God.

31:46 Tis everlasting peace, sure as Jehovah's name, tis stable as His steadfast throne, forevermore the same. And then this stanza. My love is oft times low, my joy still ebbs and flows, but peace with Him remains the same. No change Jehovah knows, I change, He changes not.

32:12 The Christ can never change, never die. His love, not mine, the resting place. His truth, not mine, the tie. And I urge you dear people of God without in any way making light of our remaining sin, without in any way making light of how our Lord is yet grieved when we are dull and so slow to grasp some of the most elementary aspects of the Christian life.

Gleaning 4: Comforting Principle of God's Providence – 'You Shall Understand Hereafter'

32:44 Nonetheless to believe that Jesus yet loves us, is yet patient toward us as He was with His true but sinful and dull disciples in the upper room. And then the second and final gleaning for tonight in preparation for the Lord's table. The fourth of these gleanings today. The foot washing incident contains a comforting articulation or statement.

33:20 The foot washing incident contains a comforting articulation of a vital principle of God's providential dealings with us. A comforting articulation of a vital principle of God's providential dealings with us. I go back to verses 6 and 7 of John 13. So he comes to Simon, Peter, and says unto him, Lord, do you wash my feet?

33:53 Jesus answered and said to him, What I do you do not know now, but you shall understand after these things. Now in opening up those words in the original exposition, I underscored that they had a very limited, specific meaning with reference to what Jesus was doing there at that time and the subsequent unfolding of God's mighty acts of redemption. When Jesus said to Peter, What I'm doing right now in taking the place of a servant to wash your feet has significance with respect to the redemption I'm going to accomplish in the next hours. And you do not understand it now. You've not understood any of my references to redemption by my rejection, my death, and my resurrection. But after I die, and after I'm raised from the dead, and after I ascend to my Father, and after the Spirit is sent, you will understand.

35:01 Those words had a very distinct, limited, specific meaning in that setting. However, that particular, specific, limited significance of those words does not exhaust their significance. In a very real sense, the specific, immediate application of them is taken out of a much broader principle that in all of God's dealings with His people, God is at liberty to do things with them in the now that they cannot understand until the hereafter. God is perfectly free to do things with His people concerning which He says to them, what I'm doing now, you do not understand. But you shall understand hereafter. The hereafter, or the after these things for Peter and the other disciples was, as I've indicated, these further acts of Christ's redemptive work. For us, it is not some further act of redemptive work, it is God's gracious purpose that in His dealings with us

36:27 He is free to make known to us when He pleases the significance of what He's doing with us. Now sometimes, what He's doing with us now that we cannot understand, that we do not understand, the hereafter is some period later in our earthly pilgrimage. The classic example of that is Joseph. You will remember, Joseph has his dreams and his dreams indicate that he's going to come to a place of prominence, his own father, his own brothers will bow down to him, all of that.

37:06 And then Joseph ends up being sold as a slave, ends up in a totally pagan setting, gets wrongly accused of trying to hit on a leader's wife, ends up in jail, is overlooked and forgotten. All of these things happen and concerning all of those things God would say to Joseph, what I'm doing now, you do not understand. But, you shall understand hereafter. And the hereafter for Joseph came when after those wonderful events that brought his father and all his brothers down into Egypt and the father dies and the brothers are scared, witness now, they say, now that daddy's gone, Joseph's going to zap us. He's going to get even for all the stinking rottenness we did to him. So they're scared to death and whether their language of repentance was deep and sincere or they were just scared because they said, it jigs up, I don't know. But they used the language of repentance and say, look, we're sorry, we shouldn't have done it and Joseph, have mercy on us.

38:10 And Joseph says, look, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to save many lives as he has done. That's a paraphrase, the last part. What happened? What I do now, God said to Joseph, you do not understand, but you shall understand hereafter.

Trusting God's Wisdom in Mysterious Providence

38:34 Joseph lived long enough to see that though all he was seeing was the backside of a tapestry that was woven with silver and gold threads, the backside of the tapestry is usually ugly. It looks like a tangled mass of an irrational putting together of threads. But you turn the tapestry and you're made breathless with the beauty and the symmetry and the order and the geometric design. All Joseph saw for those years was the backside of the tapestry.

39:10 And when his father and his brothers are brought down into Egypt and they are provided for and the purposes of God unfold, God flips the tapestry over and Joseph says, all that seemed to be evil on this side, I see from this side was good. And whatever God does not make plain to us in our pilgrimage, 1 Corinthians 13 says, we see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face, we shall know even as we are known. And dear people, I'm not a new Christian. God spares me. No, God has spared me. It's 2002, isn't it?

40:04 I have to catch up in my brain. It's been 50 years since God in grace laid hold of me as a 17 year old, pimply faced, insecure, well frightened, unconverted sinner. There are many chapters in my life concerning which I shake my head and say, God, I don't have a clue what you are doing. There are chapters in my life today concerning which I have to say, oh God, I don't have a clue as to why you are doing what you are doing.

40:49 You know what my Lord says to me? My son, what I do now, you know not.

40:55 You do not understand. But you shall understand hereafter. And I'm content to say, Lord, wherever the hereafter is in my pilgrimage, and you want to just, as it were, flip a part of the tapestry over and make me stand back in wonderment and amazement, then Lord, I leave in your hands to say when and how the hereafter will unfold. But one thing I know, that in the age to come, God will exegete for me the full significance of Romans 8, 28 concerning every single event in my life.

41:39 For we know that all things are working together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose. And those things that living with them are like living with a knife stuck in one's gut, those things that are like a dark cloud that you wish it would break or go away, but it just stays. And you say, why, Lord? What I do now, you do not understand.

42:17 But you shall understand hereafter. And dear people of God, as we come to this table, I want us to reason backward from the cross to that statement in that upper room. This is the place of stability. I may not have a clue of what my Lord Jesus is doing with me in this set of circumstances that seems so irrational, that have all the external marks of insensitivity and lack of kindness and a host of other things, but when I go and plant myself down in front of Golgotha, and I see my Lord Jesus, knowing that He came from God and goes back to God, laying down His life for me, then surely I must take my stance and say, Lord Jesus, whatever You are doing in my life is impelled by love and shaped by infinite wisdom. You are the Christ of the cross. What wickedness to doubt Your love, to question Your wisdom, Your timing in the afterward of making known

43:44 the purposes of Your heart. Again, the old bishop from Liverpool, you get the impression from those of us who preach in this pulpit, we love old Bishop Ryle. Listen to the bishop. Even in our best estate we shall find that many of Christ's dealings with us are hard to understand in this life.

44:09 The why and the wherefore of many a providence will often puzzle and perplex us quite as much as the washing puzzled Peter. The wisdom, the fitness, the necessity of many things will often be hidden from our eyes. But at times like these we must remember the Master's words and fall back upon them. What I do you know not now, but you shall know hereafter.

Concluding Exhortation: Why Be a Christian?

44:36 There came days long after Christ had left the world when Peter saw the full meaning of all that happened on the memorable night before the crucifixion. Even so there will be a day when every dark page in our life's history will be explained, and when as we stand with Christ in glory we shall know all. I could not help but think of this stanza in the well-known hymn, Be Still My Soul. Listen how the hymn writer has captured this.

45:10 Be still, my soul. Why? Why? Well, there are a number of reasons to be still, but here is the marvelous statement of stanza two.

45:22 Be still, my soul. Thy God doth undertake to guide the future as he has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake, all now mysterious. Shall be bright at last.

45:39 Be still, my soul. The waves and winds still know his voice who ruled them while he dwelt below. The Jesus who has all things delivered into his hand, that's the Jesus of John 13, 3, is ordering all the events and circumstances in your life and mine. And we can afford the luxury of again and again saying, Lord Jesus, I believe you.

46:12 What you're doing now, I do not know, but you have promised I shall know hereafter. And my closing word as I sat at my desk contemplating these things, I said, oh God, why would anyone not want to be a Christian? To have as a savior one who is so infinitely patient with sinful, healthy, but real disciples. Where are you going to find a friend like that?

46:48 Put up with all the nonsense that our Lord puts up with. Why would you not want to be a Christian? And be able to face life with all of its uncertainties and with its dark chapters in the confidence that I face it in fellowship and in communion with a savior who lovingly says to me what I do now, you do not know. You do not understand, but you shall know hereafter.

47:16 Doesn't it make you jealous to want to be a Christian, kids, young people, unconverted adults? Why would you still go on in your unbelief and in your rebellion when such a savior comes before you tonight with a towel in the basin and says, if you will have me, I'll wash you. But if I wash you not, you have no part with me. Let's pray.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

47:48 Our Father, how we thank you again for the richness of your holy word. We thank you for this portion which has fed our souls and given us a fresh sight of our Lord Jesus. And we do pray that as we come to this table of remembrance, our hearts will burn within us that we may feel afresh the sense of horror and shock that we would doubt your love, that we would question your wisdom, that we would at times in our unbelief wonder if you still bear with us in all of our sin and dullness and perversity. But we thank you that having loved us, you love us to the uttermost. How we praise you and ask that your blessing will continue to rest upon us. For your glory and for the good of our souls, we pray.

48:50 Amen.