SPEAKER_00: I invite you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: And while you're doing so, I just want to affirm Eleanor on that children's story.
SPEAKER_00: That is what we call discipling.
SPEAKER_00: That is good.
SPEAKER_00: Teaching them, walking them through that bit by bit.
SPEAKER_00: I appreciated that so much.
SPEAKER_00: I kept whispering to Erwin, oh, that's good, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, she has good energy.
SPEAKER_00: So good job on that, Eleanor.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful for that.
SPEAKER_00: And now, parents, if your kids say, Let's go wash feet, you better get up and go wash feet now.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 3, verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
SPEAKER_00: And then jumping down to verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, his food was locusts and wild honey.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jerusalem and in all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
SPEAKER_00: But when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.
SPEAKER_00: Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down, and therefore that does uh cut down and thrown into the fire.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, let's put ourselves just for a moment in the positions of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, listening to this message from John.
SPEAKER_00: This would be a very challenging message to hear.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to recognize how difficult it would be for the Sadducees and the Pharisees to hear this.
SPEAKER_00: And we might think that this is only challenging from the aspect of the message that he delivers.
SPEAKER_00: He calls them a brood of vipers.
SPEAKER_00: He says they're not bearing fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But but the messaging is challenging, the message is challenging beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: The message is challenging, not just because of the message, but because of the messenger.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the messenger.
SPEAKER_00: John is described in the Bible as, let's just say, uniquely dressed.
SPEAKER_00: He has an interesting diet.
SPEAKER_00: We know from the Gospel of John that he lives in isolation to himself.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees and the Sadducees are the opposite of that.
SPEAKER_00: We would see the Pharisees and the Sadducees as dressed to the nine, proper in their manners and in their comportment and in their delivery of their messages.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees and the Sadducees are often framed in our books and in our sermons as ignorant villains.
SPEAKER_00: We probably do this because in some ways we want our hearts to have a bad guy that we can point to, say, Well, I'm not them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not the Pharisee, I'm not the Sadducee.
SPEAKER_00: But they were anything but ignorant villains.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' day, people generally viewed these men in a positive light.
SPEAKER_00: As Pastor Larry Osborne points out, in Jesus' day, being called a Pharisee was a badge of honor.
SPEAKER_00: It was a compliment.
SPEAKER_00: That's because first century Pharisees excelled in everything that we admire spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: They excelled probably in some of the things that we say to ourselves sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I was more zealous for God.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I was more completely committed to my faith and what I believed and why I believed it.
SPEAKER_00: They were seen as theologically astute.
SPEAKER_00: They were masters of the biblical text.
SPEAKER_00: They fastidiously opened, obeyed even the most obscure commands of God.
SPEAKER_00: And just to make sure that they stayed above reproach, they even made up some extra commands for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And if that sounds familiar, staying above reproach and doing a few extra things just in case to show God I'm holy.
SPEAKER_00: It should sound familiar to some of us in here.
SPEAKER_00: So when someone said you're a Pharisee in that day, or when the people saw the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they didn't have the reference of someone negative as we do now.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we'd probably see these men like we see a lot of spiritual leaders that we respect in our day and age.
SPEAKER_00: These men could be your pastor, they could be your conference president, they could be the officers and the directors in the North American Division or the General Conference.
SPEAKER_00: And I recognize there might be some people watching us right now who have no idea what the North American Division was or the or is or the General Conference.
SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
SPEAKER_00: Where we live, it's very real and very present for us.
SPEAKER_00: But I remember I was probably two years into being a theology student before I even knew who the General Conference president was or where the general conference offices were at.
SPEAKER_00: So I was studying to be a pastor of this church and I didn't even know who the hierarchy was.
SPEAKER_00: So I understand if you don't know who it is, that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: But the Sadducees, the Pharisees were religious people who you actually admire and were grateful to be leading you.
SPEAKER_00: And this was probably not only the way, in fact, not probably, we know this was not only the way the people viewed them, but this is the way, this was part of their problem, that the Pharisees viewed themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They were used to doing the challenging, not being challenged.
SPEAKER_00: And what makes the challenging even worse for them in this moment is they're being by they're being challenged by someone who on paper would fully appear to be inferior.
SPEAKER_00: He had the right family lineage, but beyond that, no formal training, no refined process, no culture in his approach.
SPEAKER_00: It was more than the content of the message that would be disturbing to these Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: It was the messenger himself that would be disturbing.
SPEAKER_00: There are things that we interact with that that block us from hearing messages.
SPEAKER_00: It could be that we see someone as inferior to us.
SPEAKER_00: It could be that that we see an act as an act that is below us or not necessary or inferior to us, and so we miss the message that is there.
SPEAKER_00: We've come this month to the end of Black History Month, and I think about stories from the Civil Rights Movement.
SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is people that actually were doing good for the civil rights movement, they still missed some of the messages of that day.
SPEAKER_00: I think of an individual such as Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president at the time, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it's considered a champion of equality for black people in America.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, the accounts state that when individuals like Martin Luther King or other black civil rights leaders tried to give him advice on how to move forward, because of the color of their skin versus the color of his skin, he saw their thoughts and their examples as less than his.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's records of him being very paternal and patronizing to Martin Luther King, saying, You need to settle down and just follow my political judgment.
SPEAKER_00: There's records in the White House, the White House records that have him referring to black people as uppity and then the word after, which we will not say, as they would try to counsel him.
SPEAKER_00: He was doing good just like the Pharisees did good, but but there was something in them that blocked them from fully hearing the message and fully getting the meaning of the message.
SPEAKER_00: What would it take for Lyndon Baines Johnson to hear from these black civil rights leaders?
SPEAKER_00: What would it take for the Pharisees to hear from someone like John the Baptist?
SPEAKER_00: What does it take in our lives for us to hear a message or to participate in a message that seems inferior or beneath us in some way?
SPEAKER_00: It takes the word that Eleanor used, humility.
SPEAKER_00: The Baptist preacher John Stott said, Pride is your greatest enemy, and humility is your greatest friend.
SPEAKER_00: And C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis in Mere Christianity wrote, the essential vice, the utmost evil is pride.
SPEAKER_00: And then I love how he frames this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, and all that.
SPEAKER_00: So whatever else your sins you want to add to that, and all that, he says, are mere flea bites in comparison to pride.
SPEAKER_00: It was through pride that the devil became the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Pride, folks, is a universal human problem.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us suffers with it to some degree.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us.
SPEAKER_00: We all struggle with exalting ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We all struggle with missing the message, maybe that God wants for us in various occasions because there's some sort of pride in us that blocks us from hearing that, from seeing that.
SPEAKER_00: And God wants to draw us and say, no, you need to humble yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Which is one of the reasons why this service is so important.
SPEAKER_00: Why this service is so important.
SPEAKER_00: Ellen White writes in the book Desire of Ages in the chapter A Servant of Servants, that when Jesus walked into the upper room on that night with all his disciples, they were all concerned about who was in power, who was in charge, or where people were gonna sit.
SPEAKER_00: And he recognized that, he recognized that they were not ready to hear the words that he wanted to share with them.
SPEAKER_00: And so he decided to give them living physical examples of the message he wanted to convey.
SPEAKER_00: And so we know that the Bible says that he took off his outer robe and he got down on his knees and he began to wash their feet.
SPEAKER_00: I believe our perspective on humility and pride can be radically changed if we will consider the greatest example of humility in history, and that's Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the greatest act of humility was him leaving heaven and coming to this earth to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, although that he was God, he did not consider himself equal to God, but humbled himself, taking on the form of a man.
SPEAKER_00: Throughout his life, Jesus demonstrated a spirit of profound humility, saying that he came not to serve, but to be served and to give his life as a ransom for many.
SPEAKER_00: And on this last night with his disciples, just before his death, he took a towel and he washed their feet, their dirty and stinky feet.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment was not just a message for them.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that it's a message for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, If I have done this for you, you ought to do likewise.
SPEAKER_00: And Ellen White says in him stating that message that he was instituting a service, a religious service that we were to carry forward till he comes.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist couldn't be heard by many of the Pharisees because they lacked humility.
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't know how to receive that message.
SPEAKER_00: And the message that John the Baptist had for them was you can't just look good on the outside, you got to be cleansed inwardly.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus had the same message in the upper room.
SPEAKER_00: He said to Peter, you don't need to have all of you cleansed, but your feet cleansed.
SPEAKER_00: And as Ellen White states, what Jesus was saying to them was, they had been washed in the great fountain open for sin and unclean open for sin and uncleanness.
SPEAKER_00: Christ acknowledged them as his, but temptation had led them into evil, and they still needed his cleansing and grace.
SPEAKER_00: Like Peter and his brethren, we too have been washed in the blood of Christ, yet often through contact with the evil heart, with evil, the heart's purity is soiled.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, even many of us, and maybe there are some in here who have never made a decision for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have not, I hope that you'll let us know and that you'll make that decision even today.
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to journey with you on that.
SPEAKER_00: But probably most of us in this room have made a decision for Christ at one point or another.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells us we still need this service to remind ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We still need the footwashing to remind ourselves that there's still stuff in us that needs to be cleansed and needs to be washed away.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, one of the ways we're asked to remember that and to humble ourselves is through footwashing.
SPEAKER_00: And let's face it, footwashing is not in vogue with our modern society.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, most churches have gotten rid of it.
SPEAKER_00: And you even see it in Adventism in some places being put aside as not as important, as long as we have the bread and the juice.
SPEAKER_00: But but Jesus said, as I have done for you, you ought to do for one another.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you're a bad person, not because you're not doing good, but because, like every human being that walks this earth, you need to be reminded and to be humbled so that you can allow Jesus to cleanse your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to, in just a moment, invite you to participate in the foot washing.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage you to prayerfully consider in just a moment if this is something that Jesus wants you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Now I believe the answer is very clear in the Bible that He does want us to do this.
SPEAKER_00: So then I guess the question would be: are we willing to respond to what Jesus asks us to do?
SPEAKER_00: This institute that He, this religious service that He instituted by His act of humiliation, so that we would be willing to be able to humble ourselves and be reminded that we still are in need of the cleansing of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So many times we miss a message because we're not willing to be humbled in our hearts to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's because it's some from someone we feel that's inferior to us or whether we feel it's an inferior act that's being asked of us.
SPEAKER_00: But I ask you, will you be willing to participate in this service?
SPEAKER_00: I love how Ellen White wrote the ordinance of Christ appointed preparation for the sacramental service, which is the taking of the bread and the juice.
SPEAKER_00: She instant he instituted this to bring man out of his selfishness, and I love this phrase, down from his stilts of self-exal exaltation to examine one's heart.
SPEAKER_00: So, brothers and sisters, will we come down from our stilts, participate in this and examine our hearts today?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna take a moment to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And when I'm done praying, let's just have a moment of silence and you talk to the Lord yourself.
SPEAKER_00: If you choose not to go, we're not gonna say anything else.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome to stay in here and still participate in the bread and the juice.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to prayerfully ask the Lord, is this something you want me to participate in today?
SPEAKER_00: Is there some part of me that needs to take on that position of humility, to surrender to you and to be humble and to be cleansed by you?
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that though you are God, you humbled yourself by taking on the form and the limitations of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, all around the world, people are more than happy to to partake of the bread and the juice, but this foot washing aspect, it's become out of style.
SPEAKER_00: It's uncomfortable, it's awkward, it's inconvenient.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it's right there in the scriptures that you're appealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you need us to do it to prove something to you, but there there's something about this service that you have ordained that humbles our hearts and reminds us anew and opens our eyes to see where we still need to be cleansed by you.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord Jesus, I pray just for a moment that you will speak to each of our hearts and you'll you'll convict us of what you want us to see and to know about ourselves, and what we need to surrender to you in our pride and our willfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, now as we prepare to come off our stilts of sex exaltation and to experience self examination.
SPEAKER_00: Bless us, Jesus, in your name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.