In our last series of blogs, we looked at the second of the foundations our new church plant will be build on – Heeding God’s word.
Having now laid the two primary foundations for this church – praying God’s will and Heeding God’s word we move to our next foundation that comes from a church that is much in prayer and in the word – we long to be a church that loves God’s people.
Loving God’s people…wholehearted…servant hearted…other personal hearted love…is the foundational character that comes from a foundational practice of heeding God’s word and praying his will. It is the foundational character that Jesus declares will show the world that we are not a club…or a committee or a clique…but the church of the God who loved us and gave his life for us.
Over the next series of this blog, we will look together at John 13.1-30 and see what a church that loves God’s people looks like.
In John 13 we have from God’s word an invitation to share a meal with Jesus and his disciples – the Passover festival. It is a meal remembering God’s rescue of his people from Egypt when he had come in wrath, but that wrath had passed over his people because their homes had been marked by the blood of a lamb. Year after year this meal celebrated God’s grace, but this meal also marks the last hours of Jesus’ life, which will end at the Passover…
Jesus the Passover Lamb…would die as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. As we open chapter 13, the doors on Jesus' ministry are shut. He gathers one last time with his disciples, for a meal. And yet we are allowed in…can you imagine the scene...the small gathering… Jesus speaking to them… private words…and yet words that will change the world.
