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Have you ever been so dirty you could feel it? I'm thinking of the kind of dirty you get in the depths of the summer when it's so hot outside the horizon shimmers. You can't take a step outside your door without sweat beginning to pour off you. Your clothes cling to you. Dirt and dust and grass and everything else sticks to every bit of your skin, and your hair looks like you just got out of the pool. I'm talking about the kind of dirty you can smell on yourself. Ever been that dirty? Of course, you have. We all have. 

When you're that dirty, there's nothing you want more than to get clean, and once you finally do, you realize there's nothing like it. It's at times like that you think to yourself that you've never felt better in your life than you do right then. It's only when we realize just how filthy we are that we come to appreciate how good it is to be clean. 

That's true not only for our bodies but also for our souls. 

Read John 13:1-11. On the night before He died, Jesus gathered together with the twelve disciples, His closest followers , to observe the Feast of the Passover with them. This was a special meal that was part of a larger celebration, during which the Jewish people would remember and reflect upon God's deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12). Typically, as people arrived at a house in preparation for the meal, the host would have a servant or the lowest member of the household wash each guest's feet. Why? Because they were filthy. Roads weren't paved. They were dusty and dirty, and since most people wlked around in some sort of sandals, that meant their feet were dusty and dirty too. The Passover meal was celebrated with everyone reclining at the table, and the last things you'd want is for someone's nasty feet to be near your food or face. 

However, Jesus and His disciples were celebrating their Passover meal in a borrowed room, and they certainly didn't have any servants. It was just the thirteen of them. Clearly, Jesus would serve as the host for the meal, but since the disciples were often more concerned with who was the greatest among them (Luke 9:46), none of them jumped at the chance to fill the servant role. 

So, Jesus did something shocking. He filled the role Himself. 

Jesus got up and "laid aside His outer garments." These garments would have included a prayer shawl called a tallit. For a revered religious teacher like Jesus, this tallit symbolized His authority. In removing it and laying it aside, Jesus demonstrated a giving up of His God-given authority in order to serve His followers better, an act we see echoed in Philippians 2 where the Apostle Paul wrote that Jesus "Did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:6-7).

Jesus then washed His disciples' feet. When it was Peter's turn, though, he balked. He couldn't fathom why their Lord was stooping so low. What Peter didn't realize, of course, was that this foot washing was a symbol, a picture of the cleansing Jesus would provide for them all, a cleansing from their sins. 

Peter gets lots of attention here, but it's important to take note of one other disciple in particular, Judas Iscariot, of whom "the devil had already put it into the heart...to betray."

Jesus was well aware of Judas' impending betrayal, yet Jesus washed His feet anyway. He did this so that His disciples, and us, might fully understand afterward what it was He was doing. 

You see, we're all like Judas. We've betrayed our Lord and Our Creator through our rebellion and disobedience. We're covered in the filth of our sin, yet Jesus set aside His authority as God and came to earth to die that we might also be like Peter, made clean by Christ. 

 

Something to think about:

1. Yesterday we saw Jesus as King. What do you understand about Him now that we also see Him as servant?

 

2. What does it mean for Jesus to make you clean?

 

3. How can you follow His example and serve others today?

 

Content from "Alive Again" by YM360