Everyone Knows That
John 13
You have probably heard the tag that GEICO used for their sales pitch. Something common is referred to and the person smugly states: “Everyone knows that.” Then the sales pitch ensues about GEICO’s good price they didn’t know about. There is something in the Bible that almost every Christian knows about. It is the washing of the saint’s feet in John 13… at least for those who have read their own book. The difference between these two scenarios is that no one tries to explain away the obvious, “Everyone knows that,” in the GEICO commercial. Yet many Christians explain away the obvious command of Jesus Christ in John 13:14. “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet.”
Shoe Shine Service
The reason I know this to be true is from experience. I was asked to do a wedding at a church a few years ago and a lady overseeing the processional knew that I was a Primitive Baptist minister. She also knew that we washed feet as prescribed by our Lord. She also knew the commandment in John 13. She brought up the subject, not me. As I said, “Everyone knows that.” She was a teacher in her church, and she told me that they were reading John 13 and came to the part where Jesus washed the disciple’s feet. She was happy to inform me of what they decided to do at their next session. They decided to bring their shoes and shine one another’s shoes. To her, that was obedience. I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just do what Jesus commanded?” Isn’t it amazing how people will do anything but what God tells us to do. Wouldn’t everyone know the difference between shining and washing? Today, Christians put gates around the law just as the Pharisees did in Jesus day. It is like the child that told her mother she hung up her clothes when she actually threw them in the closet and shut the door: hang vs. throw?
Dull of Hearing
I was doing another wedding for a relative at a very large church that didn’t practice baptism. They sprinkled. I wasn’t going to bring up any denominational differences out of respect for my relatives that attended the church. While sitting next to the priest/pastor at the lovely rehearsal dinner he turned to me and asked if we washed one another’s feet. He knew I was the pastor of a Primitive Baptist Church. He knew we washed one another’s feet. I told him we did. Then he asked how many people we had at our church. He then turned to his wife and sarcastically said, “Can you believe that they have about fifty people washing one another’s feet?” I was somewhat humiliated, embarrassed, and angry. He was pastor of a church of at least five-hundred people who had never been baptized. (By the way, is that a church?) Yet, he was making fun of a church for doing as our Lord commanded. I could have cited at least a dozen unscriptural practices of his denomination. As I said, “Everyone knows that.” But many are as our Lord described in Matthew 13:15: “For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”
Religious Dung
Things today are much the same as they were in the days of our Lord Jesus when He revisited Zion. His church had abandoned His truths and His prescribed practice. His light was going out. They had put gates around His laws, established their own Mishna, and derided those who did the things that Jesus commanded. Paul referred to their religion as, “The Jews religion.” (Galatians 1:13,14). It was not, “God’s religion,” that He gave them on Sinai. They had perverted the law so much with their oral traditions and their gates around the law that it was nothing like God gave them in the beginning. Paul, after his conversion, counted all their things as dung. That’s Greek for B.S.
Addition and Subtraction
Today, the Christianity that Jesus gave His people has been perverted as well. I call it, “The Christian religion.” It certainly isn’t what He gave to the apostles and the early church. Things that we should do most Christians do not do: like washing feet. Things they shouldn’t do they have added. These include secular music, teachers that are not elders who haven’t been called, people prancing around in robes and gowns, plays and cantatas, and many other schemes to build up their numbers and coffers. If Jesus came back today and preached the things He preached to the Jews, and drove out the money changers, it would be same song, different verse: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” (John 1:11). That is why they didn’t receive Him. His doctrine opposed the, “Jews religion.” It angered the Pharisees when their converts followed Jesus, diminishing their numbers. When Jesus preached the truth to the Jewish church in that day it offended them, just like feet washing offends many today: “Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?” (Matthew 15:12).
People Love to Have it So
Apparently, I offend people for preaching Jesus’s command. Perhaps this article offends. Yet, it is so true. Everyone knows that feet washing is in the Bible. Shouldn’t they practice it? Is He not their Lord and Master? I wonder why so many people in churches today allow this to continue. Have they become like the Jews in that day? "The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" (Jeremiah 5:31)
- Elder Neil Phelan, Jr.