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Father in heaven as we focus on loving each other the way we have been loved.

I pray that across all three campuses now your people would be knit together in love. I pray that the love of Christ for us would be manifest and that we

would be united to it like branches in a vine

so that it would not be a labor for us to love,

but a free, flowing, resting, drawing upon Christ.

So grant me, Lord, the ability to be faithful to this text, be carried by your Holy Spirit,

to build the faith of your people and to strengthen their resolves by your power

that you might be honored in this church.

I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

So it's the night before the most most important meal that perhaps ever was.

Jesus has just said in verse 21,

truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.

John, the writer of this letter, was lying there, reclining next to Jesus at this table.

And in verse 25,

John leans over and says to Jesus, Lord, who is it?

Evidently Jesus answered softly so that John heard him and could quote him, but the others didn't hear him because when Judas was to get up and leave in a minute, they were non-plus as to what was going on, but Jesus says in verse 29, apparently quietly,

it is he whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it." So John hears that, the others evidently don't.

John now knows who the betrayer is, nobody else does.

And then Jesus dips the bread in the cop and he gives it to Judas.

And Jesus says what you're about to do, do quickly, and Judas goes out.

...