Which basin will you choose?

Welcome to the TAB tonight. We're glad you're here. We're here not just to have a good sing and then to listen to a talk.

We're here to meet with God and to listen to Him and His Word. So let's just pray to start with, shall we? Father, we know that worship is the divinest activity that we can engage in. And because of that, if we are to meet with you as you are this evening, we need your Spirit to come amongst us here.

And so we pray for Him that He really will make Jesus real to each one of us this evening. As we sing the praise of Jesus, as we hear about Jesus, may our hearts be so warmed and touched that we are drawn to Him again and not only find that we worship Him with our hearts and in our minds, but we have the will to serve Him for His sake. Amen.

To His Spirit, hope, and comfort of all praise, Is now the truth of our great soul, And to the weary, we praise. I am a praying treasure, Filled with boundless source of praise, Savior, friend, my prophet, priest, and king, I look, I hide, I pray, I am, Accept the praise, I pray, Thee is my help, I say, Thee at the hour of praise, Thee at my hour. Filled with my hope, I offer pray, Pray every need, we pray, And may the music of my praise be heard.

Let's turn to the first account where a basin is used, at least as far as our Scripture readings this evening are concerned. We'll go to the 27th chapter of Matthew's Gospel. The context of the story is the notorious trials of our Lord Jesus.

He's been brought before the priests. Like a tennis ball, He's been shot over the net, so to speak, to Pilate, who will in turn shoot Him over to Herod, who will in turn send Him back to Pilate. And all the time, the amazing thing about our Lord is He returns to the dignity.

And so here's Pilate trying to get himself off the hook. Verse 19 of chapter 27, Matthew's Gospel. While Pilate was sitting on the judge's seat, his wife sent him this message, Don't have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.

But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. Which of the two do you want me to release to you? asked the governor. Barabbas, they answered.

What shall I do then with Jesus who is called Christ? Pilate asked. They all answered, Crucify Him. Why? What crime has He committed? asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, Crucify Him. When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. I am innocent of this man's blood, he said.

It is your responsibility, all the people answered. Let His blood be on us and on our children. Then he released Barabbas to them.

But he had Jesus flogged and handed Him over to be crucified. Another second reading, not in chronological order but in the order of the Gospels for this evening, is in the account of John of the life of our Lord Jesus. And in the thirteenth chapter, an event prior to the arrest and the maltreatment of Jesus, He is in the company of His disciples.

They have come in from Jericho and actually it is the end of a long journey, not exactly a bicycle ride, but nonetheless a fairly long haul of itinerant preaching that has taken the Savior from His home county of Galilee back to the final time to Judea and Jerusalem. John thirteen, it was just before the Passover feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father.

Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love. The evening meal was being served and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, 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.

So He got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing and wrapped a towel around His waist. After that He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples' feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around Him. He came to Simon Peter who said to him, Lord, are you willing, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus replied, you do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.

No, said Peter, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you will have no part with me. Then Lord Simon Peter replied, not just my feet but my hands and my head as well.

Jesus answered, a person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet. His whole body is clean and you are clean, though not every one of you. For He knew who was going to betray Him and that was why He said not everyone was clean.

When He had finished washing their feet, He put on His clothes and returned to His place. Do you understand what I have done for you? He asked them. You call me teacher and Lord and rightly so, for that is what I am.

Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." Jesus is our Lord and our teacher, and the Father has put all things under His power, but He is also the wonder of wonders, our servant. Psalm 77 in the White Supplements brings this wonderful combination together, meekness and majesty, manhood and deity in perfect harmony, the man who is God, Lord of eternity, dwells in humanity, kneels in humility, and washes our feet. We'll stand and sing this modern song of praise to our Lord Jesus, number 77.

Let's just turn to the Word of God as I read it to you from the Gospel of Matthew and also from the Gospel of John. Matthew's Gospel, we were in the twenty-seventh chapter, and in John's Gospel we were in chapter thirteen. Father, we offer these moments to you and pray for a sense of your presence as we look into your Word, speak to our hearts, convince us of our sinfulness.

We just ask, Lord, that by your grace we might be able to make a full response to all that your Word contains, for Jesus' sake. Amen. I had to address a meeting of leaders, of Christian leaders here in the town just a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago.

And as I was contemplating that occasion, I was asking the Lord what to say and I felt the impulse upon my heart, Him telling me, well, talk to them about the two basins. And I reflected back to something that I had read some days earlier, which made this sort of assessment of Christianity. It says that Christianity in its essence couldn't be reduced to the challenge of two basins, the choice of them and the use of them.

So what I want to do is to pick up that theme and develop it a little differently from what I did when I was with the leaders and speak to you fairly briefly on Basin Theology with the objective of sending you out with a basin full of theology this evening. You see, here is Pilate, and he has got an unenviable task. He has in front of him our Lord Jesus, and there is a judgment that is pending for him to make in terms of the future well-being of the Savior.

Pilate has always struck me as being an enigma in Scripture. I sympathize with him in some degree. I see that in the way that he pussyfooted around, he typifies a lot of people today.

And really, he did draw the short straw, didn't he, in terms of, well, being a governor of part of the Roman Empire, which straddled the then known world. Marching orders were given in Rome, and the most tempestuous colony that the Romans had was that little tract of land just east of the Mediterranean Sea called Palestine today or Holy Land or Israel. It was chock-a-block full of the most brilliant and the most difficult people on the earth.

I don't know what position was Pilate's as far as the Zodiac was concerned. Certainly, people in his day were as immersed in the occult, looked to the horoscope, as the last people do today. But whether he was pisgahs or cancer or goodness knows what, he hit the wrong spot because, well, he was moved out to Palestine, this hotbed of resistance and trouble, and there he has ultimately to adjudicate as far as Jesus Christ is concerned.

Pilate might well have said on that occasion, see if there is any governor troubled like I'm troubled. I really do have a difficult situation. I don't know what brought you here this evening or what brings some of you week by week and year by year to listen to me or someone else proclaim the gospel.

But there is a sense in which you are like Pilate in as much as he had to make up his mind about the Lord Jesus. It seems to me that you can't duck the issue because the Galileans sometimes, and for some of you frequently, crosses your path. Maybe it was your wife who pushed you to be here.

Maybe it was a Christian friend. Or maybe, well, you found yourself here by circumstances and you are really quite puzzled at this moment to know just how it all came about, and you are meeting up afresh with the person of Jesus. Now, there is a sense in which everyone has to do a Pilate.

You have to make a decision in terms of who Jesus is in your own estimation, whether you are going to respond to the ministry that he claimed to achieve in this world. Jesus was a difficult character for Pilate in many ways, wasn't he? I mean, here is this man, the procurator, the governor of Rome, all the authority of the empire is invested in him, and when he has got Jesus in front of him, he leaps back, does Pilate, backwards into his political authority, the cauldron from which he has emerged. And he says to Jesus, don't you know I have power both to crucify you and to release you? And I reckon to the dying day of Pilate the words of Jesus just echoed in the corridor of his memory, you would have no power over you except it was given you from above.

Here is a man who does not cringe in front of Pilate, the representative of Caesar. And Pilate is not used to this, nor is he used to his wife dashing off a telegram to him and saying of Jesus, have nothing to do with this just man. Now what do you do sometimes when it looks as though a responsibility is yours but you really don't want to rise up to it? Adam, why did you do what I told you not to do? The voice of God to Adam at the beginning of time.

And he used a ploy that would be repeated oftentimes by his descendants. Well, it wasn't really my fault, it was the woman who you gave me. She actually led me astray.

Henry Ford is known as the man who had on his desk in the United States of America the little motto, the buck stops here. And there aren't many people who are really prepared to accept in life that the buck does stop with them. I mean the heroes it seems to me at least at the secular level are those who are prepared to say it was my fault, it wasn't because I was badly treated as a boy that got nothing to do with my upbringing, I really do have an impossible task trying to discipline myself and the mess that I get myself into I am fully responsible for.

I mean that may not add up to repentance and conversion but at least it's truth. But it seems to me that the human species has the tendency always to pass the responsibility on to somebody else when confronted with something that's perhaps not too acceptable that hits them personally and they really want to reserve their judgement. When I was a lad back in the north of England we used to sing a little song, what will you do with Jesus? Neutral you cannot be, someday you will be asking what will he do with me? I think I'd like to just tidy the theology up now but in more mature years.

But there is a sense in which when Jesus is before Pilate he presents Pilate with a problem because the man really has to make a decision that he doesn't want to. He's a fair man in some degree, most Romans in the New Testament when you read of them come out as being decent folk and yet he's got the pressure of his sensitive wife, he's got the conniving Jewish authorities who are after the blood of Jesus, he's got the thought of Caesar back in Rome, there are rumours that Jesus is actually a seditious man, a man who has committed treason and Pilate doesn't really know what to do and so he says bring me a basin. Let the buck be passed on to someone else.

Actually, washing your hands in a basin and flicking the water at others as an indication of not wanting to feel responsible for a certain act is not a Roman practice, it's a Jewish practice. You find reference to it in the book of Deuteronomy, you find reference to it in the Psalms. The psalmist in Psalm 73 who really is in quite a predicament spiritually, he says to the Lord, I've washed my hands in innocency, you see, I'm completely guiltless of certain charges that might have been brought against me.

And the psalmist was right there, he had problems that we can't go into this evening. But here is an illustration of washing your hands, so to speak, and indicating your innocence. Now, what Pilate is here doing is he's washing his hands in front of the Jewish mob and he is using that Jewish practice, an extraordinary thing for a Roman to indulge in, in order to show that he himself backs out of responsibility as to the future of the man from Galilee.

Basin theology, it smacks of irresponsibility and what's more, it's utterly impossible logically to sustain. Because you do have to make a decision whether your name is Pontius Pilate or whether your name is John Brown as to who Jesus is and whether His claims to be Saviour are recognized by you and the benefits of His life and death are entered into by you. To use the basin to wash your hands of responsibility is bad theology.

But let's move over to our Lord Jesus, for He is also a man who enters into a situation where a basin proves to be of great consequence in a certain act. You find in the thirteenth chapter of John's Gospel our Lord is with His disciples. They've come to quite a critical time in their experience and Him especially in His own.

They've moved, as I say, from their native Galilee, at least for the majority of them, their native Galilee. They're now in Jerusalem and more particularly they've come up from Bethany. Their feet are dirty and sweaty and they're in the upper room.

And you know the story so well, don't you? And the fact of the matter is that somebody needs to wash the feet of the disciples, but they're in such a state of broken relationships that there is not one of them who is prepared to do the task of ministering to the other in this capacity. Where I was preaching last Sunday in the morning in Bristol, a man was inducted into the office of an elder. The pastor didn't make much of it actually apart from mentioning his name and shaking him by the hand.

And he says, in effect, we're going to give you your towel. And I knew what he meant because you see the insignia of the Christian ministry never was a dog collar, and I'm not speaking against people who wear clerical collars, but it's not the insignia of the ministry. Neither is the cassock.

The insignia, the badge, the emblem of those who are following the Lord Jesus in leadership positions and also those who are following our Lord Jesus and perhaps not with the public spotlight so much on them. Nonetheless, the insignia is the towel and the basin. Because those who are called to follow the Lord Jesus Christ are called to emulate, that means to copy, His example.

Verse 15 of this chapter, I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Well, what did our Lord Jesus Christ do? Well, at a time of great need, He engaged in an action of deep humility. There's a text in the Old Testament that says, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

It's not easy to humble yourself. It wasn't easy for Pilate to humble himself before Caiaphas and the Jews. It wasn't easy for him to humble himself before the Roman officials and follow the direction of his conscience and proclaim that Jesus from Galilee is innocent and it would be wrong to have Him flogged, let alone have Him crucified.

Now, here is the majestic Lord Jesus Christ who knows where He's come from and knows that after the crucifixion and the resurrection He will return to the Father and He starts to minister to disagreeing disciples. They won't listen to what He has to say because they're squabbling. I mentioned a few weeks ago preaching in another church that one of the most difficult congregations to preach to is a congregation that is at sixes and sevens.

I've been a preacher long enough to know that I've only to pray in a church and to pick up the atmosphere in the first four or five minutes to know whether the church is hanging in together or whether they are all disfellowshipped in terms of one-to-one relationship. In other words, whether there's a church squabble or whether they're in unity. You can't preach very well to people who are not united because the atmosphere bespeaks the fractures of relationships.

And here are all those disciples and they're mad at one another. Why? Well, you see, one of their mothers has come along and said to Jesus, when you come into your kingdom will you let my boys have positions at the right hand and at the left hand? Now, the disciples weren't critical of the lady. What they were critical of was that she got in first.

And so when it comes to the position of the disciples with their sweaty, smelly feet, waiting for someone to perform the task of a slave, there's not one of them because they're wreathing with anger one towards the other who will perform that menial duty. But Basem theology, which is basic theology, says that somebody has to humble himself to perform this task. Now, don't you see that in this very act our Lord Jesus is encapsulating His own incarnation.

He was God and yet He became man. You know, says the apostle Paul, the grace of our Lord Jesus, His supreme example. He's always luring Himself.

He was God, yet from heaven He comes onto earth. He is God and yet He is born in the obscurity of Bethlehem. He is raised incognito in Nazareth.

The birds, they have nests. The foxes, they've holes. But the Son of Man, well, He has no Hilton Hotel.

There's nowhere for Him to lay His head. He's always humbling Himself. The apostle Paul later on will write with a pen that must have been trembling in his hand as he took the stylus across the parchment.

He humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross. So, here is our Lord and He's ministering to these squabbling men and He does so with Basem theology. He takes the towel.

He takes the bowl and He goes from feet to feet of the individual disciples and He immerses them in water and the atmosphere is quiet apart from the splashing of the water. This is fantastic that He should perform that role, an action of deep humility. Now, He didn't have to do it, did He? I mean, there were many things that Jesus didn't have to do.

He didn't have to be baptized, did He? But the baptism, in effect, is another illustration of this principle. Here He is with John, his cousin. John's a very perceptive man.

There are many people who've come from the villages and from Jerusalem to be baptized and now Jesus pitches up. But John's baptism is a baptism for sinners. Jesus is no sinner and so John demurs.

He will not baptize Jesus, but Jesus says in Matthew's Gospel that has the account there along with others in the synoptics, it is sufficient for me to fulfill all righteousness. In other words, I will stand in my role as Son of Man in the place of all sinners and I will be baptized as they are or will be as their representative. You see, this is the essence of Jesus.

He's always becoming what you are in order for you to become what He is, a Son of God. And the only way our Lord Jesus can achieve His life's objective is by becoming a servant. Now, some of you were present the other Sunday evening when I had the privilege of preaching from the Acts of the Apostles, Philip coming alongside the Ethiopian eunuch in his chariot, and the Ethiopian was reading from Isaiah 53, which talks in the Old Testament about the servant of the Lord.

And the Ethiopian doesn't know who he's reading about, and so he says to Philip, is the author talking about himself or of someone else? And if you were to ransack Jewish theology, that of the rabbis, the commentators of the Old Testament Scriptures, you will discover that they are completely at variance as to understand who the servant of God is. But Jesus understands. He is the servant of God, the Messiah who will play the humble part.

He doesn't have to, but it's part of His objective as He comes on earth, an action of deep humility. An action in which He ministers to the disciples, an action in which He plays the part of the slave. And as our Lord Jesus does so, you see how He is so different from Pilate.

And in many respects, unless you've made a commitment to Jesus Christ, He is so different from ordinary men and women. He is prepared to take a basin and in deep humility meet the needs of other people. And afterwards He'll minister to the disciples, and they'll hold on to His every word for several hours.

And then He'll be taken away into the garden of Gethsemane where He'll be arrested and eventually placarded in front of Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas and all the rest, and then He'll be done to death foully on a cross. Jesus, the man with a basin theology. Now which basin are you going to take? You see, and with this I sharpen and bring my address to a conclusion.

It seems to me that Pilate is a crass example of a man who blew it in terms of his opportunities to accept responsibility and to come down on the bottom line as to who Jesus is and blow the consequences to make a commitment to that. He didn't have a mettle. He couldn't humble himself.

He couldn't correct himself. He couldn't align himself with Jesus. And he limps on into history and eventually he's absorbed in its obscurity.

He limps on as a pathetic person who possibly would have gone with the epitaph of the Frenchman whose tombstone I sometimes refer to in Paris, who left this world without ever realising why he originally came into it. But then, then there's our Lord Jesus Christ and He shows you what you ought to do in terms of acknowledging with deep humility who He is, taking, so to speak, the basin and correcting your own life as He ministers to you by His Spirit, as you submit yourself to Him, as He submitted Himself to the purposes of His Father. Here is basin theology.

Now you respond to the way that you feel you ought to go, and if God be gracious, may your decision be a right one as you turn not your back on the Lord Jesus and sink into anonymity as did Pontius Pilate, but rather may you say yes to the Lord Jesus. I submit to all that you have done for me through your life, your death and your resurrection and I want, Lord Jesus, to live a life on earth that is in some senses a miniature of yours, ministering to others and bringing other people face to face with the truth of the gospel. Basin theology.

Which basin will you choose and how will you use it? Jesus's or Pilate's? Irresponsibly or responsibly? God give you grace to make the latter your reaction to my address. Let us pray. Just a moment for you to make some personal response in your heart to what's been said.

Maybe some of us need to come back to the towel in the basin and to don it and to pick up the ball and recommence a ministry of humility and foot-watching. Certainly, all of us need to realize that we can't pass the buck, but we can pick up the bucket. Flee from Pilate as your example.

Flee to the Lord Jesus. Father, we thank you for your goodness and for your grace. We ask you right now that our response to your claim upon our lives may be one hundred percent positive.

Enable us, Lord, to live lives that are pleasing to you as we commit ourselves to you by your Son and all that He has done on the cross for us. In His name, Amen. Let's turn to the King of love my Shepherd is, which is 396 in hymns of faith.

After we've sung this hymn, you're free to go or stay behind and take some coffee and tea with us in the lounge, which is through the doors here beside the piano and the organ. If you'd like to talk to Tim or myself or another of our workers here, then we'd be glad to meet with you in the foyer. Next Sunday evening, we'll be having our communion praise.

We hope that you'll come along enthusiastically to that. And also on Sunday morning, it's going to be my privilege to be preaching here, and Hugh Hill will be preaching at our fellowship over at Maybridge. 396, the King of love my Shepherd is.

Amen. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, the friendship and fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and until the Lord Jesus comes or calls. Amen.

Thank you for coming. Good night. God bless you.