Okay, so number one, love focuses on serving; not on position and title. He wasn't concerned about that at all. Secondly - now get this one, this is a really good one: love is not selective, in its foot washing. This is a very big one. This is a very big one for the church. Love is not selective in the foot washing. Most of our foot washing, we're selective. I'll show you what I mean by 'not selective'. Notice this: position-minded people are incredibly selective in who they serve. So I will come, and I will serve this person, if it looks like serving them, will get me ahead. I will come and I'll serve - no, I won't serve this person. I'll come and serve this person; that's a Pastor, now that might help me, that might help me get ahead. See? Or whatever, yeah. So what happens is, people judge the value of others; and whether serving them, will help them get ahead, and get me an advancement. I've seen it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again; people using their serving, as a way to advance their own case, and their own position. Literally, in other words, their serving has got a self-centred agenda, to get them ahead somewhere; and you'll find with people like that, that the moment you cease to get them ahead, they will stop serving you; because the serving never came from love. It always came from: I want something from you.
It was never love; it was trading. I give you, you give me something; and even if they never said: you give me; there was always an expectation. Now notice this, when you look into the story - I've read it clearly, and tried to highlight as I was reading it - did you notice that Jesus knew who would betray Him, that He absolutely knew Judas, not only that he was a thief, and he was stealing regularly and ripping the money off from Him; but he had it in his heart, right there at that point in time, that he'd already consulted, and he already had it in his heart, to betray Him. Now you ask yourself this: most serving is done to get someone somewhere; or, it's because people deserve it. We may not serve just to get ourselves somewhere, but usually we think: we'll serve and do something nice, if the person deserves it. If they deserve it, I'll do it; if they don't deserve it, I don't do it. Now did Judas deserve what he got? He got God Himself, in the flesh, came and knelt at the foot of a betrayer, and washed his feet; knelt at the foot of a thief, and washed his feet. How can you do that?
I mean sometimes people do the slightest little thing, and we get so tiffed-off and so upset, we don't even want to know them anymore. Jesus was able to go to them, and washed his feet, knowing there's betrayal in his heart. Not only that, He was able to take a piece of bread and dip it, put it in a pot, dip it and then give it to him as a sign of friendship; and give him another chance to come clean, that there was treachery in his heart. When you look through the Bible, the Bible speaks about many, many sins, and of course people kind of got them all ranked; and there's many different ranks of sins, but the number one sin, that is the biggest sin of all in the Bible is this - in my opinion - and this is what it is. It is covenant-breaking, breaching covenantal relationship. That is the number one, in God's eyes. You can get away with a lot of things, but you don't get away with that. God is a covenant keeper, not a covenant breaker. Now this man Judas was in connection and relationship, it was a covenantal relationship. He breached it by stealing; he breached it because stealing and lying to together, by lying; and then he breached it by finally selling Jesus out. Yet Jesus washed his feet. That's what love in the kingdom looks like. It still can go to people who are messed up, and are doing things that are bad for you, and show kindness to them. It still can serve people, in spite of the fact that you see right through them, and see what's going on in their life.