Lead Like Jesus

Like Jesus is the name of our series for the 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Palm Sunday Services here at TLC. My name's René, another one of the pastors here. Just for fun this morning, let's start with a game. I call it Name That Animal. I want you to listen to these animal sounds and try to tell me which animal made it. For example, what is this? You recognize that? All right, let me make it multiple choice. Is this a squirrel, a crow, or a baboon? I'll give you a clue. We regrettably hear this a lot around our house. It is a crow, all right?

Now I'm gonna try to make it a little bit harder. What is this animal? Well, that's pretty intense. All right, multiple choice. Is this a penguin, a monkey, or a taun-taun from the ice planet Hoth? Believe it or not, this is a penguin. Somehow I thought the penguins made much cuter sounds than that, right? All right, what is this sound? It sounds vaguely familiar. All right, is that me before I've had my morning coffee? Is it a mountain lion, or is it a stag elk? Well, it does kinda sound like me before my morning coffee, but actually that is the sound of a stag elk. So if you hear that in the forest somewhere, that's what it is.

Those sounds, here's the point I'm trying to make. Those sounds identify those animals. Those sounds are their distinguishing characteristics. So let me ask you this question. What is our sound? And I don't mean what is our sound before we've had our morning coffee. I mean, what identifies a genuine Christian? What is kind of our distinguishing behavior? When you look at somebody, you know, man, that person is definitely a sold-out Jesus follower. What is it? You know, memorizing lots of Bible verses. Is it a perfect church attendance? Is it a fish sticker on my Toyota?

You know, Jesus actually had an answer for this question, his answer from the Bible in just a moment. But first, today I wanna tell you a story. It is a great story, and that's actually all I really wanna do today. It's the story behind this moment that Leonardo da Vinci captured in his famous painting, "The Last Supper." And this morning, what I wanna, I wanna dare you to discover what actually happened behind that moment. A lot of Christians just skip right over it, but if you really learn what happened then, I guarantee you it may change everything about how you approach life, everything you think you know about being a Christian.

This happens in the Gospel of John chapter 13, but I wanna establish the context for this by flipping back a chapter to John chapter 12, four days before this, a very different scene. Jesus is welcomed into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday by this massive crowd waving palm branches, and you really need to get this to understand what happened next. Because in the Gospel of John, the author is putting those two events next to each other in the narrative to make a stark contrast between those two events.

So what happened on that day, on Palm Sunday? Well, remember, the country was occupied by the Romans. In fact, this is a Roman carving of Roman soldiers from those days. Everywhere the Jewish people walked in their own country, they saw this, Roman occupiers. And they hated it, understandably. And many of them believed that because of prophecies in the Bible, God would send them a Messiah, which they pictured as a great warrior, a political liberator to free them from all this Roman oppression. And Messiah fever was at a high in the first century.

So with all this in mind, John 12, chapter 12, verse 12, says, "The great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem." It says a great crowd, but how great was that crowd, really? I mean, in all the Jesus movies, it's like 30 extras that is so far from the truth. John gives us a clue when he says, "The great crowd that had come for the festival." What festival is he talking about? Well, it's the Passover, the Seder, which is the great Jewish holiday that's still being celebrated to this day. Happy Passover, by the way, to all our Jewish friends.

The Passover or the Seder is the time every single year that Jewish families gather to remember how God delivered the Jewish people, the Israelites, from slavery in Egypt. And again, like I said, it's happening again this very weekend. Well, in Jesus's day, scholars say there was a huge annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover of about one million people. It was probably the biggest religious pilgrimage in the world at the time. Now, to help you picture this number, let me show you two or three pictures. This was a prayer at a pilgrimage in Thailand recently. That is a crowd of one million people, as far as the eye can see here in the States.

This was the Million Man March, as it was called in DC a few years ago. So you get the picture, the great crowd that had come for the festival is about this many cheering Jesus into town. It must have been deafening. And then they took palm branches and waved them. Imagine a million people waving palm branches. Just the ripple effect must have been stunning. You know, the wave in stadiums, well, a million people doing this with palm branches must have been amazing, but why palm branches? Was it a hot day? Were they trying to cool Jesus off? No, no, no, there was symbolism behind that as well.

Watch this. When the Jewish people made their own coins in that era, all of them have palm branches or palm trees on the coin, much like American coins might have the American eagle or the American flag on them. The palm branch was the symbol of an independent Israel. It was kind of like their national flag. And so what we've got here is a million people waving their national flag and the gospels say they were shouting, shouting what? Hosanna. And by the way, do you know what Hosanna means? It means save now.

A million people waving the national flag, shouting save now, save now, save now from what? They didn't see Jesus as the savior from their sins. They saw him as the savior from the Romans because watch what they say next. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the Messiah. Blessed is the what? The king of Israel. And so this religious pilgrimage is very quickly becoming a political rally. Jesus save us now. You're the guy, lead on. We are ready to follow a million people.

And then it says Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it as it is written. And that means there was a prophecy understood in the Hebrew scriptures to be about the Messiah. And it said, do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. See your king is coming seated on the colt of a donkey. The prophecy was that one day the Messiah will come into town riding on the colt of a donkey. So the people are all cheering, the king is here. The king is here. This is our moment.

Meanwhile, the Judean aristocracy is watching all of this sipping drinks from the rooftops of their mansions, thinking to themselves, we have got to do something about this Jesus person ASAP. And that's because, follow me here, in Jesus's country, Judea, in his time, there were three basic ways that people dealt with the fact that they felt like their nation was being polluted by, for example, the Roman oppression. Three basic ways people dealt with that.

There were first the fighters. And the fighters basically were like, we got to kick those Romans out with force. And this was mostly the common people. And then there were the collaborators. And this was mostly the aristocracy. And their attitude was, well, let's use the Romans for our own political gain. But both of these two groups, their goal was really to win through military force, through political force. We're going to get what we want. We're going to win.

But then there was a third group. You could call them the withdrawers. And the withdrawers, yes, withdrew from normal life in order to remain pure. They withdrew to religious communes. And their goal wasn't to win. Their goal was to be right. We're going to stay pure. We're going to be undefiled. So everyone was either about, we're going to win. We're going to win this war for our culture and nation. Or at least we're going to be right and pure in God's eyes. And you still hear these two options talked a lot about today.

Among Christians, even today, there's a culture war going on. We're going to win, or at least we're going to be right. But what Jesus is about to show is that he's a different kind of king leading a different kind of kingdom that those other three groups really had not thought about yet. Now follow the plot here. See, what does Jesus do with all of this political momentum? Does he ride the wave? What does he do in that moment? In the gospel of John, what does Jesus do next? This is so good.

He says to his 12 friends, let's go find a private room to have the Seder meal together. And what happens there is the most surprising thing imaginable. What Jesus chooses to do next was shocking then. And really it is still shocking to this day. With that as the context, a million people cheering him on. Let's go to the very next chapter, John chapter 13, verse one. It was just before the Passover festival, night before. Jesus knew, what did he know? What did he know? That the hour had come for him to leave this world. He knows it's over. The hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.

Now watch this. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Just think about what this means. Jesus is looking at his room of 12, well, frankly 12 disappointments, right? He sees Judas over here. He's gonna betray him. He sees Peter who knows he's gonna deny him. He sees every single other disciple in that room of 12. And he knows they're all gonna run and hide from him. And he looks at them and thinks, I will love them to the end.

Which is amazing because I'd wanna say, no, this is the night before I die. And I wanna say you 12 have just been a bunch of big disappointments, but he doesn't scold them. He loves them. And let me just say this before we move on. Jesus loves you to the end. Someone else may have told you, I had loved you, but now it's over. I don't love you anymore. Jesus will never say that. No matter how you feel like you've disappointed him, no matter how you feel like you've denied him or run away and hid from him, he loves you to the end. And I don't know about you, but for me, that is a huge, huge relief.

Well, next it says the evening meal was in progress. And the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Ascariot to betray Jesus. So Judas' mind is already elsewhere. And not only Judas, the other disciples are all distracted in the gospel of Luke, it says, at this moment, a dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be the greatest. What was all this about? They'd been in that parade. They'd seen a million palm branches. They'd heard the cheers. Here comes the next king of Israel. They're thinking, awesome, Jesus is like the Messiah-elect.

And so which one of us gets to be the Secretary of State? And which one of us has to settle for like Secretary of the Interior or something, right? They're arguing and Jesus looks at all this and what is going through his mind? Well, next, John says, Jesus knew. And this is such an interesting phrase. Jesus knew he was fully cognizant of something as he looked around that room. He knew what? Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power and be it that he had come from God and that he was returning to God.

Jesus knows who he is. Jesus knows where he is going, but what's more, don't miss this, he knows that God the Father has put all things under his power or some of your translations say under his authority. Now just think of that. As he looks around at the room and he sees all these disciples arguing about which one is the greatest, he knows he is actually the greatest. He knows he is the most powerful person in that city and not only in that city in the country and not only in the country on the planet. Jesus knows he is the most powerful person in the world.

So what does he do next? This is what John's building up to. What is your next move? When there are a million people outside the door of your room willing to try to overthrow the Romans and lay down their lives for you militarily. And what do you do when you know that you not only have the acclaim of the crowd, but you know that the Father really has put all things under your power? What do you do next? So shocking.

I'm gonna tell you the next part of the story the way I heard Andy Stanley tell it. He's such a great storyteller as he says, the next word may be the most important little word in the whole New Testament. So this is the hinge that the whole of the world that the whole plot turns on here. Jesus has been given all power. The masses love him. So what does he do next? So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing. Jesus was a rabbi, so he wore a robe that was a symbol of that kind of authority, right? So Jesus stands up, all eyes go to him and he takes off the rabbi robe.

And then what he does next, I'm sure there was not a word spoken and he wrapped a towel around his waist. And at that moment they suspect what he is about to do and it becomes very awkward because it says after that he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, what? Drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him. Okay, not until this week did I discover some things about foot washing that surprised me. Foot washing in the Roman, I mean, it seems gross to us. Well, it seemed gross to them.

It was considered in Roman culture, such a dirty job that in some, watch this, in some provinces in Rome, there were actually laws prohibiting you from making your own servants wash your feet. Yeah, in Roman days people could legally force their servants to do a lot of things, but foot washing that was over the line. Now at real fancy dinners, people would hire people to do foot washing for their guests, but the people that they hired were the people of the lowest possible social standing because those were the only people who would do this job.

And here Jesus, who has just been cheered on by a million Palm branch waving people and who knows God truly has given him all power is serving in the lowest way possible. How would you react if Jesus did that for you? Probably something like this. He came to Simon Peter who said to him, "Lord, are you gonna wash my feet?" You know, he's saying, "I've seen those hands heal people and now they're gonna touch my dirty feet? I don't think so." And Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing." Pause for just a second. I think Jesus probably could have said this to Simon Peter like every single day of the last three years, right? Peter, you really don't understand, do you? You don't realize now what I'm doing, but later you will understand.

So now go to verse 11, look what happens next. "When he had finished washing their feet," excuse me, now that implies all of them. He didn't leave anybody out. And remember who this includes. Not only all the disciples that are gonna run from him, it includes Peter who's gonna deny him and it includes Judas who's going to betray him. After he had finished that, he put on his clothes, puts the rabbi robe back on, and he returns to his place at the head of the table and he sits and I am telling you it was silent in that room at that moment.

You know, nobody's eating, anybody who had food in their mouth, they're not chewing, there's a lot of sideways glances like what's happening? And then he asks this question, do you understand what I have done for you? And nobody says a thing to that question because they're all thinking, you literally just told us that we don't understand? So I'm not saying a word and honestly, Jesus, we really don't get you a lot of the time. And he knows that's what they're thinking. So he makes it very clear, here's the meaning of this.

He says, you call me teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. You know, Jesus never said, oh, don't call me Lord. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, don't say that. No, you call me Lord and that is what I am. You should call me Lord, I am the Lord. But watch this, now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Let me just repeat that. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.

You don't have to be a Bible scholar to understand the word example. Jesus could not have made it clearer. Christians, these are our final marching orders from Jesus the night he was betrayed. Let me put it this way. We are called to something holier than winning. And we are called to something holier than being right. We are called to service. Jesus says that should be your reputation. That should be the reputation of the church in our neighborhoods, in our community. Here in Santa Cruz County, in the nation, in the world.

When people think Christians, they should think, maybe I don't believe what they believe, but I'm sure glad they're here in this community. Because unlike literally everybody else on the planet practically, they're not about winning. They're not trying to jockey to be influencers politically or something. And they're not just sitting there being holier than thou withdrawing and being right. Unlike almost anybody, they are here to serve at a world record level.

Jesus then says, very truly, I don't miss this, very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. In other words, you think you have a better strategy for reaching the world than Jesus? Because I hear Christians say sometimes, well service was fine back when the Christians didn't have any political influence possible, like back in the Roma days when they were being persecuted, but now we gotta win and we gotta be right. So you think you're better than Jesus? You think you have a cleverer strategy than our Lord and Master? I don't think so.

Jesus says, now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you, not blessed if you just believe them, not blessed if you study them, not preach them, not exegete them, not just build a doctrine around them. He says, you will be blessed if you do them. You will be blessed, your church will be blessed, your neighborhoods and communities will be blessed, the world will be changed if you do this. Do this, leave behind the fighters and the compromises and the withdrawers and join the servants of Jesus.

Listen, our world is a mess in many ways. Our nation is a mess in some ways, many ways. There's hatred, there's sin, there's injustices and the reputation of Christians is at all time low in some circles, so what do we do about it? Try to win, withdraw from that mess. What if, what if we actually did what our Lord and Master told us to do? What if we took off our cloaks of religiosity and put on the garment of a servant? Imagine how that would change the tone of the discussion in our nation right now.

And I mean right now, I believe we have the opportunity of a lifetime, the opportunity of a generation right now. There will probably never ever be another moment like this in our lifetimes when the whole world was in need of help. So what if we, as both individual Christians and as a community of believers just decided I am no longer going to fret about who is in power or how my people can get in power. I'm gonna focus on what Jesus told me to focus on serving my neighbor and my community. Just imagine, just imagine that.

Imagine the witness of the church in the long run because you know this is what the first century Christians did. Think about it. They didn't have political power, they didn't have buildings, they didn't have microphones, they didn't have the internet slide shows. They went around picking up babies off river banks and adopting them and raising them in a Roman culture that did not believe in the sanctity of life. They went into cities where the plague was killing everybody and nursed people back to health.

They didn't fight the Romans with force. They did not withdraw from Roman vice either. What they did was they stayed and served and served and served and served and within about 300 years the Romans turned and looked at the Christians and said that is a better deal than ours and a whole empire was turned upside down. Not because Christians outfoxed the Romans or outmaneuvered the Romans politically or outpowered, outmuscled the Romans because they served in love. And it can happen again.

So let's bring this in for a landing. When I am like Jesus, what have we seen in this text? I love to the end as he did. I don't hate and fear people, even my betrayers, even those who run away, even those who might deny their faith at times. I love them, I serve them, I wash their feet. And I know who I am as he did. Remember it says Jesus knew who he was and where he was going. It's hard to serve when you're insecure but when you know what the Father has done for you then it's not demeaning because you know who the Father says you are and that's all that matters.

And I serve to the max. Jesus says I have set you an example. Be like this. Okay, that's great. Yes, but how? How do I start? Well, two things real quick. Start serving in your current relationships, right? Don't start by thinking I must solve the problem of world hunger. Just clean the cat litter and then start seeking ways to serve in the community. And I mean that literally. Start with a neighbor. Write a card and leave it on their porch or make them dinner or go shopping for them, right? Let's be on high alert every day for ways to serve.

Let's make this what we are all about as a church. Now here's the really cool thing and here's the thing I love about our church. So many of you do this in ways that blow me away. I mean I'll just name two or three names. I think of people like Barry Schneider. You know when the fires happened last August and a third of our county was evacuated from their homes, Barry and his team said let's make this the best fire evacuees center in the state right here in our parking lot. And they did. They put in electric and Wi-Fi and all kinds of other great things.

And by the way, Barry runs the IT department here at the church. He is a department head here. He's got plenty to do on his plate. And he did not say what he could have said. He didn't say I feel so sorry for those fire victims, but that's not my job. It wasn't his job. But he took off the mantle of authority and put on a towel and served. Or I think of people like Matt Twizzleman. Matt volunteers with our helping hands team here at the church and last year Matt was called to help an older widow here in our church who said she had problems with pests.

And Matt arrives and is blown away by the scale of the problem. A severe rat infestation. Now Matt knew nothing about catching rats. So he researches rat catching videos on YouTube. I didn't know that was a thing. And Matt spends weeks trapping rats at her place. Repairs the hole under her house where they were getting in. Her home is now completely pest free. And I didn't mention Matt is the chair of our church board. Matt is the owner of a local business. But Matt didn't say that's not my job. Matt just took off those cloaks and put on a towel and he served.

I think there's so many of you watching even during COVID at the height of it last year when many of you didn't have job security. You still gave so generously to our food drive enough to feed two million people. Let me just say this. That is the church in its glory. Our church in its glory isn't colored lights in a beautiful comfortable auditorium for which I'm grateful. But our church's glory, our finest moments are the moments that we love our neighbors. The moments we are catching rats under a widow's house.

Because of just a few verses later in chapter 13 of the Gospel of John, it says, "Everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another." That's the sound we make. That's our identifying call of our species. This is what draws people to Jesus. And when people don't hear this sound, if what they hear from us instead is win, win, win, or withdraw, withdraw, withdraw, fight, fight, fight, or stay pure at all costs, then they won't know. Jesus says it very clearly, "The mark of a genuine Jesus follower is loving service."

I'll close with this. One year we hosted a little conference here at Twin Lakes Church, a gathering for pastors from all sorts of churches around California. And for one of our afternoon sessions, I thought I would do something a little bit different. I asked a friend of mine who's very successful here in town and who is an atheist to speak to the pastors. I said, "I just wanted to be a Q&A. Ask an atheist because you're very articulate and this will give us a chance to ask somebody who doesn't believe any question that we want to ask them." And the pastors were all into it.

I thought they might ask, you know, "What can churches do better? Why don't you believe in Jesus? What kind of evidence are you looking for?" But the very first question that several pastors asked was this. "What do we need to do as churches to get you and people like you to come into our buildings and check out church?" And they suggested things like, "Do we need, like, better stage design and, you know, moving colored lights and cooler music and funnier and more relevant sermons?"

And now I like all that stuff, so I was on the edge of my seat. I wanted to hear what he had to say. All these pastors are suggesting these things. And finally, I'll never forget this. I'm kind of emotional about it, actually. He says, "Stop, stop!" And he pauses, and he looks around, and he almost looks like he's mad at us. What he was was incredulous. And here's what he says. He looks at us and he says, "You really don't get it, do you?" He says, "What do you have that no one else has? Jesus." And he said, "It's when you act like Jesus, when you serve sacrificially, when you're in the community doing good works."

He says, "That is when I have to sit up and start to take notice. That's it." We had to hear it from an atheist in the 21st century, but Jesus said it in the 1st century. When we serve, that is when we are most like Jesus, and that's when we draw people toward faith in him. It may take a little longer. It may seem a little harder, but it's the only thing that works. And so if your heart longs for people, for our youth, for the old or needy people in our community, longs for people to be drawn to Christ, longs for justice, Jesus says, "This is how it's done."

Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? With our heads bowed, let me just give the opportunity right now to receive Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior, because the kind of life we've been talking about is really only possible when he is living inside of us. So I just want to invite you to pray, "Lord, I choose to follow you. I admit my need of you on a sinner, and I now surrender my life to you as Lord and Savior." And now, Lord, may the reputation of this church, the sound we make, be the sound of service, because we know you have loved us to the end, and we want to be like you. In your name we pray, amen.