The Servant King

Product Information

Exhibit A” is the fact that just as he promised through Isaiah (see Isa 13:17), he’s raised up the Persians and Cyrus, their king, to topple Babylon, who took them into exile (see Isaiah 41:2-5, 41:25, 45:13). Jesus calls it a new commandment. Why is it a new commandment? The command to love others is not new. The Old Testament said very clearly, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What is new is the measure of this love, the example of this love given by Jesus himself. He says, “Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.” He’s showing us how to do it! He’s giving us the example of love. This is the new commandment: to love this way, the way Jesus loves.

Rest On Us Chords by Brandon Lake, Elyssa Smith, Eniola Abioye, Harvest Parker, Jonathan-Jay, Rebekah White, and Tony Brown Now, the application for us is that we, of course, should imitate Jesus in his love. In fact, Jesus will teach this. This will be a running theme in John 13 and following. You have it in verses 34-35: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We sometimes think of God as a Celestial Santa Claus, who dispenses goodies to good little Christians. Right? Be a moral person, be a good person, and God up there, like Santa Claus, is watching who’s naughty and nice, and he’ll give you goodies if you’ll be a good person. That’s just moralism! That’s not the gospel! Here he is, about to be crucified. This very night he will be betrayed; the next day will be Good Friday. What is on his mind as he is headed towards the cross? That’s what we’re going to find out as we study these chapters together.D.A. Carson, once again, says that “his act of humility is simultaneously a display of love, a symbol of saving cleansing, and a model of Christian conduct.” We’ve already considered his love, but I want to think for a minute about these other two things, how Jesus’s act of humility is a symbol of saving cleansing and a model of Christian conduct. Now, the way John words this I think is really interesting, because it’s not merely that Jesus was doing this functional task. It was that; this isn’t mere ceremony. But the way John words this shows us something about how this reveals the heart of Christ and the heart of God. The Good Book Guides have been developed to ensure that each session not only seeks to uncover the meaning of the passage and see how it fits into the big picture of the Bible, but also leads people to apply what they have learnt to their lives. Flexible and practical, the Good Book Guides are ideal for small groups, or individual study. What Jesus is showing us in this passage is that the expression of love—the tangible, concrete, real-life, on-the-street expression of love—is serving people. It’s servanthood, which means that if you’re not serving people you don’t love people, and if you do love people, it should bear the fruit of service. We do it for love. We serve for love. The concepts explained in my presentations affect everyone; the people of every nation on earth. Some of these concepts are easy to see once they are exposed, but some are very difficult to grasp. There is a subtlety to them. Right now these concepts are foreign and alien to your way of thinking. These concepts will require you to think like you have never thought before.

First of all, this is obvious—everybody’s expecting me to say this—serve at church. Join a ministry team, serve in children’s ministry or on the worship team or hospitality team or whatever. Obviously, we’ve talked about that a lot in recent months. That is a way to apply this, and we want you to do that, of course. Jesus serves by breaking boundaries to be with those on the margins. He serves by teaching what it means to participate in God’s kingdom. He serves, as our text says, by offering his life as a ransom, a deliverance, a redemption of all people. Or what about Emperor Nero of Rome? He was a tyrant too. He executed countless people, even his own mother. It was also his mission to ruthlessly torture and execute Christians -- he is considered the first major persecutor. Nero also eliminated those who might rival his throne and was described as being “obsessed with personal popularity” [2] -- which is yet another trait we associate with those in power. Here I Am To Worship Chords by Chris Tomlin, Hillsong, Jeremy Camp, Lincoln Brewster, Michael W. Smith, and Tim HughesLet me invite you to turn in your Bibles to John 13. Today we are resuming a long-running series through the Gospel of John. We’ve been taking it in segments, a few chapters at a time, and the last segment was in John 11-12 in the spring of 2020, so it’s been over a year since we’ve been in this Gospel. But we’re returning to it this morning, beginning a series that will take us 12 weeks; John 13-17. They also know all of the gossip of the house, and share that with one another. Not only do they have the details on their superiors, like Lord Grantham, they also know secrets about one another. Thank You Jesus For The Blood Chords by Bryan McCleery, Charity Gayle, David Gentiles, Ryan Kennedy, and Steven Musso

We’ve seen the love of the servant king, the humility of the servant king, and his teaching. What’s our response? Love him, and love others as he has loved you. Trust him. He stooped to wash your feet, he went all the way to the cross to wash your soul. Trust him. Then follow him by loving and serving one another. Let’s pray. Listen, what this means for us is that Jesus in his humility as a servant king reconfigures our understanding of God. If you want to know who God is, you look at Jesus. This is so important, because all of us have a theology. We all absorb certain ideas about God. We get it from our parents, we get it from school, we get it from church, and not every idea that comes from church is necessarily a good idea. We get it from TV and from movies and radio, and we absorb this theology of God. It’s not necessarily accurate. You have to test your theology by Scripture and supremely by God’s revelation of himself in Jesus in Scripture. You see, in Jesus, we are set free from the cultural expectations of who we are supposed to be, and we are set free to live this life of servant leadership using who we are.Why? Because his love is so deep. Its dimensions are so infinite, when you consider the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of Jesus Christ! “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end,” and he will now display that love. All of this evidence should have an effect on God’s covenant people. Experiencing the power, grace, and providence of their God should motivate the Israelites to become God’s “servant” who will bear witness to God’s justice and mercy before all of the nations. This is what the poem in Isaiah 42 is all about. The idea was that the exile would have chastened and purified Israel (as Isaiah spoke about in Isaiah 1) so that they would become “a light to the nations” (42:6) and unleash God’s justice into the world. But that’s not what happened, and chapter 48 is wholly dedicated to making this point. Now, I feel like a baby in this, so I’m not trying to hold myself as a model, I’m just trying to say, if you will do this, if you will embrace it, if you will take the risk—yes, get outside of your comfort zone and serve others—you too will find this joy. If you know these things, happy are you if you do them. That becomes clear when we consider the servant king’s teaching in verses 6-17. That’s point number three. The servant king’s love, the servant king’s humility, and then thirdly, the servant king’s teaching.

Jesus turns the meaning of Kingside upside down. No longer is Kingship to be understood in terms of garnering wealth and power for oneself in other to defend others. Now it is understood to be about service; giving your life that others might live. Jesus, as the servant King, says to us, ‘I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.’ But what does this all mean for us? It is well and good that Jesus is our king who came to serve, but we aren’t kings or rulers, right? This is true, but in some way or another, each of us is a leader, which means we can follow Jesus’ example of servant leadership. Even though they’ve heard Jesus anticipate his suffering and death twice already, they still “imagine a triumphant, regal scene with themselves sitting in positions of honor at King Jesus’ right and left.” [1] They want power and prestige.The servants are often caught in their own mix of power struggles, lies, and negotiations. While the servants portrayed on this show are treated better than servants were treated in the real Victorian era, they certainly don’t have much power to affect change or to do anything outside of their employer’s rules. Do any examples of kings who serve or who were willing to die for their people come to mind easily? Although this kind of leader may have existed in history, we do not readily associate “service” or “being willing to die” with the role of a king.