READING FOR JANUARY 21, 2025: JOSHUA 23, JOHN 13, PSALM 145:1-9 JOSHUA 23 Joshua, like Moses before him, knew when the end of his life had come. He knew it because, as it says in the King James Version, he “waxed old and stricken with years.” Thus, he gathers the entire leadership to hear his final message. He must have thought it was a message worth making all these folks travel from throughout Israel. Do we remember what Jesus’s final message to His disciples was, and by extension to us? “You shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The thrust of Joshua’s message also has an extended application to us: First, remember what God has done us. For Israel it was rescuing them from slavery and bringing them into God’s promised land by defeated their enemies. For those of us who have made Jesus Lord and Savior, it is God’s rescuing us from sin and death. He did this through Jesus’s atoning death on the cross and victory over sin when the Father raised Him from the grave. By grace through faith, we now enjoy a promised relationship with Him and the Spirit’s indwelling presence.
As Israel establishes itself in this acquired land, did Joshua suggest they adapt God’s previously delivered commands back in Moses’s time to make them more culturally attuned to this new environment? Joshua is clear: “Be very determined, then, to keep and do everything that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, so that you will not turn aside from it to the right or to the left” (vs. 6). This makes sense, why should Israel or why should we adopt sinful practices of those who reject God and who have been defeated by God, first in Canaan and then at resurrection. Sadly, we will we see Israel repeatedly making foolish accommodations to these wrong beliefs instead of clinging to the Lord (vs. 8). Can we faithfully cling to God in today’s post-Christian America?Finally, Joshua warns what will happen if Israel succumbs to the influence of these sinful cultures: “When you violate the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and you go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will perish quickly from the good land which He has given you” (vs.16). Then as now, God warns His people out of His limitless love not to consider His word irrelevant. Why reject His love by disobeying Him?
JOHN 13 We have moved now into the second half of John’s gospel account and are heading toward the crescendo, the fulfillment of Jesus’ ministry. The first three verses of this chapter give us a detailed introduction to the story of foot-washing that follows, but also to the whole rest of the book:
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.
The time had come for Jesus to complete the work he had come to earth for and to return to the Father. The hour had come that would lead to his final tender, pastoral teaching with the disciples, to the cross and his
FOR JANUARY 21, 2025 CONTINUED: JOHN 13, PSALM 145:1-9 death on behalf of the world, to the resurrection into new life, to his encounters with the disciples after the resurrection, and finally to his ascension to the Father from which he had come. The time had come, and he understood the path before him.
This final night with his disciples began with an incarnation of love itself. It was a small act of humble love (washing feet of his followers) that led to the supreme act of humble, sacrificial love (laying down his life for the salvation of the world). This act of humility came because of who Jesus was. We might be tempted to say, “Even though Jesus had come from God, he washed their feet anyway.” But the truth is that because he had come from God, Jesus washed their feet. The foot-washing, just like the crucifixion itself, was incarnational; it was Jesus’ way of showing the world who God really is. This other-serving life was a demonstration to the disciple of God’s love and a model for them to follow. How do we bear God’s image into the world? We serve, we love, we lay down our lives for one another. How do we love even our enemies? We serve them as Jesus did in washing Judas’ feet and sharing bread with him.
When Judas took the bread and went out into the night (notice John’s use of imagery, as we can imagine Judas stepping from the room lighted with candles and the warmth of love into the darkness of night, the darkness of betrayal), we feel the mood shift. It is as if Jesus draws the remaining eleven closer, telling them the most important things, things he couldn’t say when the betrayer was present. The plan of betrayal had been set into motion and the time was short, and Jesus used the next hours – and the next three chapters – to care for and pour into the eleven. Jesus is being so pastoral here – he is calmly and tenderly shepherding the disciples in these last hours before going to the Father. We can hear his love for them come through in every passage as he attempts to convey with his every word, who the true God is and what he is doing in the world.
But before anything else, he gives his new commandment to love. This, of course, was not really new. It was as old as the book of Leviticus (19:18) where the Israelites were commanded to love their neighbors as themselves. What is new about this commandment was that they were to love one another as I have loved you. He was telling them to look back at him washing their feet, to look back even farther to the way he lived his whole life, and to keep watching as he approached and endured the cross – and to find in him a pattern, and example, and a power to love just like he did. This sacrificial kind of love was to become the trademark of those who followed Jesus. Is this kind of love the trademark of Yorktown Methodist Church? Is it the trademark of your life? Let’s ask Jesus through the Spirit to make it more and more so.
PSALM 145:1-9 David commits to praising God everyday forever. How can we do this? We can because His greatness is unsearchable (vs. 3); we can never get to the end of it. We can because we will have forever available to us; “whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). David sees this praise as transgenerational (vs 4). Consider if Yorktown Methodist Church has told of God’s greatness to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren so that they will pass along an unbroken chain of praise. Do we take time to meditate on His greatness so that our conversations naturally erupt in extolling God’s greatness? David states, “The Lord is good to all” (vs.9). How do we reconcile that with the killing we’ve seen in Joshua. Consider God’s goodness to all: “He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). All people have experienced God’s goodness. Yet many, if not most, reject Him.
