Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And my family is, I guess, what you would call a tennis family. I don't know how great I feel. I mean, I'm just kind of trying that term on right now. This is my first time. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. We go to a lot of tennis. Our kids play tennis, which means you show up at all the meets and the matches and everything. It's a very unique sport in terms of the culture of it because I mean you get to know all the players from all the teams, and you get to know their personalities because they come through and how they play tennis. And you sit right next to the parents of your kid's opponent, and you can't really cheer real loud in tennis. It's just a weird culture in that way, but also likable. It's grown on me a lot. I like the tennis crowd. And so you see other players around, you kind of get to know them. And one time there was a player a few years ago who had a very interesting game. And I asked some kids who I knew, you know, hey, what's the deal with this guy? And they're like, ah, yeah, yeah, they said some nice things. And they're like, he's kind of a punk. He's just not uh he's not very likable, kind of difficult, not a lot of fun to be on a court with. I was like, oh, okay, well, that was firm, but um, all right. Then a couple years pass, and I kind of forgot about that conversation, but I saw this kid again. He played my kid. I was like, Yeah, this is a really high-caliber guy, and my son really likes playing with him. And so I started getting to know him over the course of the season and just chatting with him and stuff. And for the life of me, I could not see what those kids from a few years earlier were complaining about. Like, this kid is humble, he's yeah, he's got a pretty good game, he's got good integrity, he can carry on a conversation with an adult. I really like him, and I don't know how it came up, but at some point, finally, I was like, Yeah, dude, it's weird because a few years ago, I feel like maybe you had a different reputation than you do now. And he just started laughing, and he's like, Yeah, he literally said this to me. Literally, he's like, Mr. Whitman, I was a donkey. It's like, who says that? I was a donkey, yeah. Uh, I wasn't a lot of fun, but some stuff changed in my life, and it's been a lot better since then. Huh. Cool. It really has. I mean, but just an absolute flip from whatever the kid was to what the kid is now. I've told you before, I've got a really soft spot for stories like that. Gotta believe people can change, gotta believe people can change, gotta believe people can change. If you're a Christian, you gotta believe God changes people. If you're a Christian, you gotta believe that God can change you and that whatever you are in this moment is not a finished product. It's not calcified. The redemption is just at the heart of everything about the story of God, the story of the Bible. And so I love the kind of story I got from that kid. In the last few days, we've been talking about something that I would very much categorize the same way. It's a redemption story. John the apostle, John, sometimes called the evangelist, John the author of John, John the son of Zebedee, John the one who is often referred to as the disciple whom Jesus loved. This guy, as we've talked about the last couple of days, had some really ugly incidents that indicate that he was kind of prickly, kind of entitled, maybe had a little bit of 80s bully vibe to him. Maybe his older brother, James, was the one who was kind of leading the way with that attitude. But whatever the case, both of those brothers, they do a 180 at some point. They it it locks in, they get that they're not playing around anymore. And they go from early disciples of John the Baptist, at least John looks like he was an early disciple of John the Baptist, to kind of entitled, but trying to get it disciples of Jesus. It looks like Jesus had a soft spot for James and John, despite their rough edges from the beginning. And you know, you gotta figure Jesus, he sees the long game, he's in it for the long game. He clearly understood that what James and John were early in the ministry is not who they would be later in the ministry. And to me, it looks like the transition period is somewhere between John 13 and the end of the book of John, where we start to see stuff get through the armor for this kid, and he goes from being a little bit of a donkey to being, well, spectacular enough that we want to read his work every single day and study it and talk about it together on this podcast. So in John 13, we get a story. This is a fast-forward, it's a little bit of a preview of what we're gonna do later on in a few chapters when we get there, but we get this incident that I think is very telling for John. It was just before the Passover feast, and Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he got up from the meal and he took off his outer clothing, and he wrapped a towel around his waist. And after that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? And Jesus replied, You don't realize now what I'm doing, but later you will understand. No, said Peter, you shall never wash my feet. And Jesus answered, Unless I wash you, you have no part with me. Well then, Lord, Simon Peter replied, Not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well. Jesus answered somewhat cryptically, I might add, a person who's had a bath needs only to wash his feet, his whole body is clean. You are clean, though not every one of you. For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said, Not everyone was clean. When he'd finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. Do you understand what I've done for you? He asked them. You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so, for that's what I am. But now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I've set you an example that you should do as I've done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you'll be blessed if you do them. And then just a little later in John 13, after this foot washing scene in verse 21, it says, After he'd said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me. I'm gonna pause right here and I want to give you a little bit of a preview of what's gonna happen tomorrow. I'm gonna make the case that this John 13 thing, this non-miraculous, not that flashy incident, especially when you compare it to all the amazing, miraculous things that John had already seen. I'm gonna make the case that this is the moment. This is the thing that finally got through the armor for young John and cured him once and for all of being a donkey. We'll break that down more tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again.