Hi-dee-Ho, It’s so good to be here. I love Tuesday. It’s Bible Study day and this is so much fun. I’m so very glad you’re here. Come study with me, we’re in John 13.
If you have an NIV, you will be reading what I am, but if you don’t, pull this up in another window, so you can understand whatever we’re going to talk about.
These last three chapters have taken just a few days in time because John has been referencing the Passover Festival in each one. It’s like you telling a story about what happened before Christmas while referencing it in all your stories. Time-wise anyway. Kind of like they had a New Year and since then, for those two weeks, they’re focused on getting to the Festival with all they need to do. It’s a marked difference in how Jesus has spent the time.
This is a God-Appointed Festival. Here it is in Leviticus 23:4-8
The Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread
4 “‘These are the Lord’s appointed festivals, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times: 5 The Lord’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. 6 On the fifteenth day of that month the Lord’s Festival of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. 7 On the first day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. 8 For seven days present a food offering to the Lord. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.’”
Let’s Pray:
Lord, help us see. Help us understand what these words mean and how we’re to live in light of them. I ask, point out what You want us to focus on and bring these words to life in us in such a way to know You better. Thank You, Lord, through You and for You and in You is all of this. For Your glory. Amen.
Here we go, John 13. Read verse 1
Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet
We have such a different concept of time. This is a very long hour if we’re talking in time as we know it. But that isn’t what those words are saying, I suspect. I suspect they’re talking about the same thing Jesus said in John 2:4, – Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
Having loved his own, He loved them to the end. He still loves his own. Every one of us in the world who are His.
Read verse 2
Evil is in the room. Jesus is aware of it, He knows everything.
Lord, I pray, come fill my heart, all our hearts, in such a way to remove everything You don’t want in them and turn us into the people You want us to be. Thank You.
What was in progress?
I just love how John tells a story.
Read verses 3-5
The Father had put _________________ under _______________. He knew who He was and yet He took the position of the servant.
Do you know who you are? Beloved of the Lord, yet we must serve too. His very own, but we are to love others.
Read verses 6-11
John 15:3
3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
We won’t get here for two weeks, but John 15 is in my mind quite often and those words in light of these from John 13 must clarify something, don’t you think?
We don’t need to be physically washed by Jesus to receive His cleanliness. His words have the power to do that. Read His words and you become clean. He works on the inside. That is where the cleanliness makes the most difference. That’s how he can tell Peter ‘you are clean, though not _______________’ Because John realizes Jesus is all powerful, he knows that Jesus already knows who and what the evil in the room is. And John’s purpose in writing this is so you will believe as he does.
Read verses 12-17
In light of verses 15-16, what do you see in verse 17?
Read verses 18-20
Jesus Predicts His Betrayal
“That you will believe that ________________________. Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts _____________________________.”
Jesus says ‘believe’, John says ‘so you will believe’ Peter says this in 1 Peter 1:3-7
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
And there are many, many more places where it is only through Faith and only in Christ we are His and our futures are secure.
Read verses 21-30
“One of them, the disciple whom Jesus __________.” John is very attuned to how loved he was. We should be too because we are no less loved than he was.
Why do you suppose John mentions that “it was night”?
Read verses 31-32
Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial
Glory, God’s glory and the glory He gives Jesus, oh how we will be amazed by the glory. One day, we will be given glory too, it will overflow from them to us.
Romans 8:18
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Read verses 33-35
Recognize this? Yes, it comes back up in chapter 15.
Beloved family loves. ‘By this everyone will know’ what?
Read verses 36-38
Lord, we know that You are all-knowing and all-powerful, that You are our friend, our savior, our glorified Lord. Thank You for these words and this story. Thank You for Your constant presence. Fill us, Lord, with your peace, your love, your joy. Come soon, Lord Jesus, we need You.