SPEAKER_00: Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 8 calls the riches of Christ unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean that we can't or that we should not dig into and discover new and profound mysteries of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It simply means that when we think we're to the end of understanding Jesus, that there is still even more to discover.
SPEAKER_00: As much as I think I may understand about Jesus, as much as you may think you understand about Jesus, there is still more.
SPEAKER_00: There is more, deeper and deeper levels to plumb in understanding the love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When Christopher Columbus uh reached the Caribbean in 1492, the natives that he met there, he referred to them as Indians.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because he thought that he had reached the Indies, what was then perceived to be India and China and Japan.
SPEAKER_00: And in Christopher Columbus's mind, he thought that he'd reached the end of the world, the furthest distance that he could go from Europe.
SPEAKER_00: But as you know, and as I know, uh Columbus was nowhere near South or East Asia.
SPEAKER_00: In his past were vast regions of land and territories yet to be explored, yet to be discovered by the Europeans.
SPEAKER_00: His mistake was he assumed the world was smaller than it actually was.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if we've made similar mistakes at times with regard to the depth of the love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Have we seen it as smaller than it actually is?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna consider Isaiah 53, what Rebecca just read, some of what Rebecca just read for us.
SPEAKER_00: These are verses you just heard and you've likely heard many times before.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to recognize in your mind something that is important for us to understand as we look at these verses that may be very familiar to us.
SPEAKER_00: These verses were all known by Jesus before he came to this earth.
SPEAKER_00: Not only were they known, they were understood by Jesus that this was going to be his experience.
SPEAKER_00: The experience of Isaiah 53 was going to be his experience when he came to this earth.
SPEAKER_00: Keep that in mind as we go through these texts and understand the depth, or begin to try to understand and plumb deeper the depth of Jesus' love for us.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53 and verse 2, for he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.
SPEAKER_00: He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
SPEAKER_00: He was despised and rejected by men.
SPEAKER_00: A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as some as one as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knew in advance that he was not going to be popular.
SPEAKER_00: How many of us want to go someplace or choose to go someplace where we know from the outset we are going to be rejected?
SPEAKER_00: How many of us go places where we know that there are going to be people there that from the get-go are not going to like us?
SPEAKER_00: They're just not going to want to be around us.
SPEAKER_00: None of us say, that's the place I want to work, that's the place I want to live, that's the people I want to hang out with, these people who will not esteem me or find any value in me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knew that, and yet he came.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53 continues.
SPEAKER_00: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: You might be going through some sorrow and grief right now in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You might be carrying something that is afflicting you.
SPEAKER_00: And I would dare say that if that if you could get out of that sorrow by by some means, you would do whatever you could to get away from that sorrow, from that grief.
SPEAKER_00: Yet Jesus knew that this sorrow, this grief was going to be his, and he still came.
SPEAKER_00: It said 66% of people alter their daily routines to avoid potential physical harm.
SPEAKER_00: 66% of you drive on a road that maybe takes a little bit longer, but it feels a little bit safer.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you drive around certain neighborhoods because you you think there might be potential harm there.
SPEAKER_00: 66% of you alter your lives in order, just out of the potential of phys.
SPEAKER_00: Just the potential of physical harm.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knew the physical harm was coming and yet he came.
SPEAKER_00: He knew what he was getting into.
SPEAKER_00: What's even more interesting is that 75 to 85 percent of us alter our activities to avoid emotional conflict and harm.
SPEAKER_00: We want to avoid physical harm, but even more so, we want to avoid emotional harm.
SPEAKER_00: 75 to 85 percent of us avoid conversations, avoid interacting with certain people, avoid going places because we don't want the emotional conflict.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to feel rejected, we don't want to feel despised, and yet Jesus knew this, and yet he still came.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah continues, all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
SPEAKER_00: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way.
SPEAKER_00: How would you feel if the nicest thing that you ever did, if the the most wonderful gift you ever gave was rejected by everyone that you did it for in some way or some capacity?
SPEAKER_00: I was reading Zechariah uh just yesterday, chapter 13, and this verse came up, and I added it to my sermon this morning, wanting for you all to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah chapter 13 and verse 6, think of this.
SPEAKER_00: And if one asks him, this is speaking of the Messiah, what are these wounds on your back?
SPEAKER_00: He will say, The wounds I received in the house of my friends.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, you don't like it, I don't like it.
SPEAKER_00: If we do something for our friend and they forget to say thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Yet Jesus knew that not only would many of us not say thank you, but many of us would wound him again and again.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he came for us, to us.
SPEAKER_00: He considered all of these things in Isaiah chapter 53.
SPEAKER_00: And what did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He came.
SPEAKER_00: In 1873, a Belgian priest by the name of Damien de Wooster volunteered to serve a leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
SPEAKER_00: The king of Hawaii had sent all of the leopards over this town on the island of Molokai.
SPEAKER_00: They were there alone.
SPEAKER_00: There was there was unrest and just lawlessness and godlessness in this place.
SPEAKER_00: And this priest, Father Damien, raised his hand and said, I will go to serve them.
SPEAKER_00: When he made the decision to go, he knew exactly what he was getting into.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that leprosy was incurable, disfiguring, and almost certainly a death sentence for anyone who stayed amongst this people long enough.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he went anyway.
SPEAKER_00: He built churches, he dug graves, he dressed wounds, he held the hands, the mangled, missing fingered hands of the lepers as they died.
SPEAKER_00: He lived among the people of the world that the world had thrown away.
SPEAKER_00: And 11 years after he got there, when he got up one Sunday morning to preach his message, he began with these words.
SPEAKER_00: He contracted the disease.
SPEAKER_00: He knew he would before he even boarded the boat to go to Molokai.
SPEAKER_00: Why would he do this?
SPEAKER_00: We know the reason why he would do this.
SPEAKER_00: Because just six months after his arrival, he wrote his brother back in Europe a letter.
SPEAKER_00: And here is what he wrote.
SPEAKER_00: When we are at our best, we're like Father Damien.
SPEAKER_00: That sacrificial level.
SPEAKER_00: When we are at our best, when we are at our most sacrificial and our most unselfish, we have those glimpses of moments where we see in each other pictures of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is always like this.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is always going for us, stepping into the struggle, stepping into the challenge, stepping into the difficulty, stepping into the pain, stepping into the rejection by us in order that he might win some for him.
SPEAKER_00: He does this so that we might know the love that surpasses all love, that we might have the joy that is a joy that passes all understanding, that we not might know the peace that passes understanding, that we might have joy and have it more abundantly.
SPEAKER_00: He does all of this.
SPEAKER_00: He knew what he was getting into.
SPEAKER_00: He knew the pain, he knew the rejection, he knew the suffering, he knew all the things that we naturally as humans tried to avoid, and he did not avoid, but he stepped into it so that you might have life eternal with him, and that you might know the height and the depth and the width of his love.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saw you, Isaiah 53 tells us this in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted as righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Out of his anguish, out of his suffering, he said, What I saw was that some would say yes to me.
SPEAKER_00: And that was enough.
SPEAKER_00: This is my body, which is broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go in just a moment to serve one another with foot washing, and then we'll come back into this room together, and I'll read those familiar words.
SPEAKER_00: This is my body which was broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: This is the cup of the new covenant of my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Drink this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: And what will we actually remember about Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Let us not make the same mistake as Columbus did, thinking that he had reached the end of the world, that the world was smaller than it actually was.
SPEAKER_00: Let us not come into this service or go into the foot washing service and think, oh, I've done this before, I understand everything about it, there's nothing new I can discover.
SPEAKER_00: No, let us not think that we have grasped the height and the depth and the magnitude of the love of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who loves you so much that he knew exactly what he's getting into, and he came anyways.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who loved you so much that even if you sit here right now and say, I want nothing to do with you, Jesus, he still came for you.
SPEAKER_00: The depth of his love is more than we can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: It's unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you, I want to implore you, that as you wash feet, as you take of the juice and of the bread, that you will ask Jesus, that you will ask the Holy Spirit to show you the depth of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe not only the depth of the cross, but but your part in it.
SPEAKER_00: As Mrs.
SPEAKER_00: White wrote in The Desire of Ages, upon all of us rests the guilt of crucifying the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: The pain that he endured is the responsibility, is the result of all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he still came.
SPEAKER_00: He still came.
SPEAKER_00: And as you understand that magnitude, rather than thinking, how can God love me?
SPEAKER_00: Remember this.
SPEAKER_00: To all forgiveness is freely offered.
SPEAKER_00: Whosoever will may have peace with God and inherit eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let this service today be a small moment in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: But remember that Jesus knew what he was walking into, and he walked into it for you, and he walked into it for me.
SPEAKER_00: He came to us because he saw the potential of you coming to his table to say yes to him.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, I pray that as we come to the table today, as we participate in the service of humility, of the foot washing, Lord, as we do these things, some of us have done literally hundreds and hundreds of times in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Help this moment not to be small.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to understand that, Jesus, what you did is the exact opposite of what most of us do as humans.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us avoid the pain, avoid the conflict, avoid the suffering, avoid the rejection.
SPEAKER_00: Yet you, Jesus, you knew it was all going to happen, and you moved towards us all the same.
SPEAKER_00: That is not a small love.
SPEAKER_00: That is a love that is rich beyond what we can measure.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, convict us of the very big God and the very abundant love of our God as we participate in this service this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord Jesus, I pray that we will leave this space here today seeing that Jesus is far more, far greater, more loving, more gracious, more merciful than what we thought when we even walked through the doors today.
SPEAKER_00: In your name, Jesus, I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.