Signs Point To The Savior - [John 2:1-12]

Take your Bibles and turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 20. The Gospel of John, chapter 20.

Hopefully, we have enough. I think I made 60 or 70 copies. Good to be with you today again in the house of the

Lord to be able to study the Word of God. Anybody else not have one?

Okay, a couple up here. One on the front row, Eric. One or two?

And then there's a bunch in the back there. I know it's a bit wordy.

Don't worry about it. It's mainly for you to take and study later. The print is small.

Some of you may need a magnifying glass like me or to get real close to be able to see it all.

But we won't cover all of it. It is just again for you to take and study later to have for reference.

And I trust that the study this morning will prepare us for worship. We're going to look at one of the chapters in the

Gospel of John. And it is going to point us to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And He is whom it's all about, isn't He? He's our blessed Lord and Savior. Those of us in this room that know

Him or better yet are known of Him. We've been saved by His grace. It's wonderful to be able to come to His Word and to be able to study and to be able to be taught of our

God. Why don't we pray before the lesson and offer up this class to the

Lord. Pray with me if you would. Our Father in Heaven, we thank You that we are numbered among Your people.

We who name the name of Christ here in this room this morning in this building. It is our desire as the

Lord Jesus taught in His teaching His disciples to pray when

He said, Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Oh God, it's our desire that You would be hallowed today, that You would be treated as holy, that You would be treated as God.

That is not the case when we leave this building. Many times when we're out and about in this world at places of business, shopping centers, visiting others, just in public, when you are not treated as you should be, when the name of Jesus Christ is not even used as it ought to be used.

And yet Lord, we were that way. Such were some of you, Paul, wrote the Corinthians. We were numbered among those who would not treat

You as holy, but we're thankful that You have called us, that You have revealed

Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to us, and that He has become our all in all.

He is our Lord and Savior, the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. And He is the

One who died and was buried and rose again that we might have life in His name. And so we thank

You that we can be here. We thank You that we have a desire to come to this building to worship, to adore, and to magnify

You. May Jesus Christ be praised in this building this morning. May You attend to those that are teaching every

Sunday school class that Jesus may be known, that He may be magnified, that He may be glorified.

Bless us as only You can in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I don't know about you, but when it comes to an event when there's an occasion in someone's life that you know, and it's time to buy a card, a greeting card,

I don't know if you just go into the store and just willy -nilly pick any old card off the shelf and just say, this is the card

I'm going to give to the person. No, I think there's more forethought there.

We have to go to the right section of cards to pick the right one for the right person or the right type of card because when we send that card or give that card, we have a purpose in mind.

And usually it has to do with some type of an occasion, a birthday, anniversary, somebody sick to get well, whatever.

Unless you're in my family, my birthday and Father's Day fall within a couple of weeks of each other.

And one year, one of the children reversed the cards and on Father's Day, I got my birthday card.

My birthday comes after Father's Day. And since then, with that person in our family, it's always been kind of an inside joke that they'll take.

Sometimes they'll take like a birthday card and they'll cross out happy birthday and they'll write happy Father's Day and give it to me.

But we do it on purpose, right? We write with a purpose. And John wrote with a purpose. John 20,

I ask you to come here. Pastor Steve mentioned this in his message last week. In John 20, the

Gospel of John, verse 30, John penned these words. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book.

So what John is saying there is that they had witnessed many, many, many signs, many more miracles, many more powerful demonstrations of the powerful hand of God and the glory of Jesus Christ.

There were many of them, but they were not all recorded in this Gospel. But he says in the next verse, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

So John records a certain number of them. And if you look on your sheet down the bottom, the very bottom of the first page, it says

Jesus' eight signs or miracles in the Gospel of John. And there are eight of them that are listed there.

Those eight are the ones that John pens and he writes and records by the ministry of the

Holy Spirit in this Gospel and surrounding the whole Gospel of John surrounds these signs.

They're there. And the purpose that he writes them is what? What did John say here in this chapter?

I mean in this chapter, in this verse that we just heard. What is the reason for John writing them? Anybody got a clue?

I see a hand in the back. Steve, go ahead. Right, so the purpose there is that we may perceive something through these signs.

It's not the signs themselves. It's something else that's more important, right? It is Christ.

It is Jesus. That he is God. That he is the Son of God, the Christ, the

Son of God, and that believing, and when we believe upon him, we have life in his name.

That's John's purpose. And so what I want to do this morning is I want to go look at one of these signs.

And before we go there, I want to kind of do just a real quick overview of sign or miracle as John uses it.

Now, you can be turning to chapter 2 because that's where we'll be. If you can flip back to John chapter 2.

The first thing I'd like to bring up here is this definition of what a miracle is.

Now, I got this out of... I believe I got some of this wording out of Grudem's systematic theology.

And the wording here says it's a less common, extraordinary demonstration of God's activity in the world.

Less common. And by that, we mean that you do not see miracles on every page of the

Bible. There are certain segments of time where they really stand out. If you look back, think about the

Old Testament. Where do we see some miracles really happen in the Old Testament surrounding what individual?

Moses? Did I hear Moses? Yeah, Moses, right? Moses and Aaron going before Pharaoh.

And those miracles there where God is going to glorify

Himself in the deliverance of His people out of Egypt. And many times these miracles surround not only someone like Moses, but what else in the

Old Testament? Who else? What group of men do they surround in the Old Testament, Steve? Yeah, prophets, right?

We see around the prophets to prove the authenticity of their message and the messenger.

That God's hand is with these men. And there's something that God wants the people of Israel and the world to know through them.

And the same thing happens when we see in the New Testament coming on the scene. The Lord Jesus comes and the apostles then follow

Him. And there's these signs and these wonders demonstrating

God's activity in the world, displaying divine power, things that just don't make sense naturally to us.

They just can't be explained with human intervention. There's the hand of God.

At one point in the Old Testament, I believe it's around one of the ten plagues, when

God sends, it might have been the gnats, I'm not sure, the little teeny gnats when they came.

Someone said back there that this is the finger of God. It's God interjecting here and God doing something wonderful in a demonstration of power.

And it arouses people's awe and wonder. And more importantly, it bears witness to God Himself.

I give you some examples here. The Scripture tells us that God Himself is the one who performs miracles or wonders things.

The first verse there is Exodus 15, 11.

And that is after God had separated the Red Sea and the children of Israel went over safely.

And then Pharaoh's chariots come charging after them and God closes the water on them and kills them.

And Moses and the children of Israel, they sing a song. And it really exalts

God and His power and what He had done on their behalf. And there's one question, a way of teaching, a rhetorical question in there.

And it is, who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee?

Glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, and doing wonders or doing glorious deeds, you might say that in your rendition, your version.

There are verses like Psalm 86, which is very similar.

It says in there that God alone, God alone does great wonders.

Some of the other ones there have to do with the 10 plagues. In 1 Kings 18, in the parentheses there, you'll remember that is when

Elijah is up on Mount Carmel. And there is that standoff with the prophets of Baal.

There's like hundreds of them and there's one Elijah. And Elijah puts before them that what they could do is they could take a sacrifice and put it on an altar.

And they could call out to Baal and he would call out to God, Jehovah God. And whoever's

God would answer would be the true God. And so the prophets of Baal... And I never understood this because if the idea is for fire to come out of heaven, they get in such a frenzy because nothing's happening and they're calling all day long.

Where do they end up? They end up on top of the sacrifice and they're in a frenzy.

And if Baal were to answer, of course, they'd be consumed, but he doesn't answer. And Elijah lets them know that.

Where's your God? You know, he's out about doing this or that. There's none to hear.

And it kind of reminds you of the psalm where it describes the idol. An idol that has eyes but it cannot see and it has ears that cannot hear.

It has feet but it cannot walk, hands but it cannot handle. And Elijah knows that that is their false

God that he's not going to answer. But then he quietly builds the altar and he puts the trench and he puts the water in the trench.

And then he begins to pray. And his prayer goes up to the

Lord and his main purpose in all of this is he says that men may know that there is a

God in Israel. And when he prays and he cries out to God and he asks God to show the people that he truly is the one and only

God, God hears from heaven, answers him and consumes the sacrifice.

But not only the sacrifice, but licks up the wood and the stones and the water that's in the trench.

It's a demonstration of God. I mean, it was such a demonstration of God's power, a significant demonstration and it caused the people to stop and to say, the

Lord, he is the God. That's what they end up saying at the end. So we see these demonstrations through the

Scriptures. And don't look at your paper there. Think of some other miracles in the

Old Testament. Tell me some other ones that you remember. Yes, Peggy.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fire. What I like about that whole story, I mean, the best thing is is that there's one like unto the

Son of Man in there with him. Christ, this Christophany, this visitation of Jesus with them, protecting them and being with them.

But when they come out of that fire, they don't even have a hair singed and they don't even have the smell of smoke.

I cook a barbecue. I mean, I'm not a very good barbecue guy. I'm not like a...

I'm probably a grill private, not a grill sergeant. I'm, you know, I do my best. I'm one of those cheaters.

I have to take the knife and cut it open and look, I don't go by the temperature or the feel, you know. But when

I'm done, I smell like the barbecue. But they came out and they didn't even... didn't have any smell on them.

What else in the Old Testament? Miracles. Yes, Joan. Daniel interpreting the dreams.

That's something that man could... he could not have done that on his own. God giving him that divine supernatural wisdom.

Steve? Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar being turned into an animal,

God writing upon the wall. We're all missing one big one. Genesis 1 in verse 1 through 3.

Come on, tell me. What is the greatest, one of the unbelievable, most unreal, miracle awesome in all the

Old Testament? Creation, right? God from nothing creating something.

And that, of course, carries over into the New Testament. What about the New Testament? We have the recreation, right?

The salvation of a soul. That is a miracle. I mean, if when you look at your life, if you're a believer here this morning and you say,

God, there was a point in my life when I was without Christ, without grace, without God, without forgiveness of sins, and God opened up my eyes and I was able to see

Jesus. And I was able to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ to the saving of my soul. And now

I'm forgiven. I'm adopted. I'm a beloved child of God. If that does not thrill your soul, do one of these.

You got to check your pulse and make sure your heart is still beating in your body and your spiritual eyes can see that that's a wonderful miracle.

But there are others in the New Testament, right? Tell me some others that you remember from the

New Testament. Yes. Yeah, just sometimes we don't think of that as a miracle.

He spoke of the resurrection of Christ. And even before that in his life, the beginning of his life, the virgin birth, a miracle.

Incarnation, God manifested in the flesh. God coming in the flesh, a miracle. Jesus being raised from the dead.

But then Jesus in his ministry, what did he do? Same thing before he was raised from the dead.

Did he raise people from the dead? Yeah, there's not much of that going on today, is there? I mean, maybe it's proposed that it is.

But, say again? Yeah, right, right. But we see and we know what thrills me as I study this and as I read these passages of divine truth.

What gets me is it grips my soul because it's real. And we as believers, even when we look at the one here today, what we're going to look at is the first sign, the first miracle of Jesus here that John records in John chapter 2.

And this is where Jesus turned the water into wine. Now, here's a danger for us as believers that have all the things that we've all talked about.

I mean, fire from heaven, creation, a recreation of the soul.

In the Old Testament, one of the prophets makes an axe head swim, you know, comes up to the surface so he could get the axe head out of the water.

I mean, things like that. We know about things like that. And we come to John chapter 2 and our tendency might be, ah,

Jesus turned water into wine. I mean, he calmed the sea. He raised the people from the dead.

He made the lame to walk. He made blind people see. He made an impotent man who was by the pool of Bethesda.

He made him to be able to get up and walk. But water to wine? And sometimes our familiarity with the supernatural almost becomes natural.

We need to be careful. When we look at this text here this morning and see what's taking place, we have to look at this with the eye of faith and say something significant happened here.

Something beyond human explanation or beyond human... It doesn't have anything to do with human intervention or ingenuity or scheming.

This is something that God did. Let's take a look at this. Now, before we take a look at the text,

I just want to let you know I'll do a quick rundown. There's a section here in the middle of the first page about the purpose of miracles.

There's some definitions here about the different words used in the Bible like sign or wonder or miracle or signs and wonders.

And then again down the bottom of the first page, there's the eight signs that John had recorded in this book using those signs as a means to surround all of his gospel so that people would look at these signs and look beyond these signs and they would look to Jesus and say,

He is the Son of God. He is the Christ. He is the one that I'm to believe on and when I believe upon Him, I will have life in His name.

So we come to John 2. And on the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, verse 1.

And the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with His disciples.

And we see here, this is... And I'm not going to be able to cover all this because there's just no way.

And I'm going to try to get to the meat of it what I want to say here this morning. But this is an important social event in the life of a

Jewish young couple. This festival could last up to a week.

It's paid for by the groom. It brings an end to the betrothal period. And what's going to take place is there's going to be this gathering together of people and there's going to be food and there's going to be the need to have something to drink.

And for some reason, we don't know why, Mary is invited here,

Jesus is here. We don't really have many details as to why. And I'm going to kind of allude to that or deal with that a little bit later.

But for some reason, they're here. And it's almost as if Mary might be in some type of a capacity of serving possibly because notice what happens.

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. So she might be in some capacity of serving and when things don't go too well here, there's something wrong, she goes to Jesus.

And it's interesting here that surrounding this instance, this is pretty significant.

This wine runs out and for wine to run out at a wedding would be a big embarrassment to the groom.

And he and his family could actually suffer a lawsuit.

And imagine this more than anything, they might have the stigma of, remember that wedding that we went to?

They were the couple that was so cheap, they didn't even buy enough wine to have for the wedding. I mean, this was an embarrassment.

This was a real problem in a first century ancient Israel. And the topic here, and again, remember how

I said, sometimes we can look at a text and we can miss what's really important. Though some people come here about the whole topic of, should we or should we not as believers drink wine or even have wine?

Well, you can go here to deal with that, but you're going to miss the real meat, the deeper divine reality that's here for us this morning as we drive toward this.

And Mary says, she says to Jesus, she goes to him, they have no wine.

Now, I don't know if that means, and we're not really clear, we don't really know if it's because maybe she knows what

Jesus has been like in all her life. She's taken note, you know, of all the things that he's done.

She said he's very an unusual child, not like the others on the street. Or maybe she just turned to him because he's the firstborn.

It's the natural one. Maybe Joseph's not mentioned here, so maybe he's dead already and she's turned to him for some help because she's in some type of serving capacity.

We really don't know. But Jesus says to her in verse 4, Woman, what does this have to do with me?

My hour has not yet come. Jesus' hour, I believe, refers to his death and his ultimate glorification.

You'll remember there were times when the crowds tried to seize him and it says that they could not.

He would slip through the crowds because what? His hour had not yet come. You can see that, I believe, in John 7, verse 30,

John 8, verse 20. You see that. But then you get to chapter 13. And if you want to look there real quick, this is just a little side note.

Hold your place in John 2. But in John 13, in verse 1, we see a change when it comes to using that phrase.

John 13, verse 1, Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew, it says here, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the

Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And we have at that time when he disrobes, he serves them, and then it is the

Last Supper. So that's the time, but not now. And what Jesus is saying here is he's on God's timetable, the

Father's timetable, not Mary's and not man's. And he's not being disrespectful to her.

He uses the word woman. It's like saying ma 'am or lady. And just says to her, just telling her that the relationship that they have has changed.

It's no longer primarily mother and son, but now it's savior and saint.

It's different. And he's marching or he is driving to his father's will to be done in his life.

And he says my hour has not yet come. But then he doesn't say no to her.

And you'll notice that Mary says in verse 5, do whatever he tells you.

So what does he tell them to do? He tells them to take the pots of water that are there for purification.

These pots, these stone pots that are used for that ritual, for that rite, for washing, purification.

And he says fill them up. And they filled them to the brim.

And I really like that description there. They filled them to the brim. And then they took off the top of that and brought it to the head person over the feast to taste it.

And he finds out that it's wine. He filled it to the brim. I like that because there's not going to be any human shenanigans here.

There's not going to be any like, you know, instant huge packets of wine, you know, condensed wine to stick in there.

It would overflow, be a big, big mess. And here we go. Let's just step back a moment here.

What's taking place here? What was before H2O? What was before just plain water?

After Jesus intervenes here and tells them what to do, something significant happens.

The nature of that liquid is changed. And it's changed to wine. And it's real wine.

There's no doubt about it because when it goes before the head person of the feast, he says, wow, when he goes to the groom, he says, you did things backwards here.

Usually people put the good wine up front. And when people are drunk enough, then they give them the bad wine or the cheaper wine afterward.

But you did the reverse. You put the cheaper wine because what? When Jesus' wine, the wine that Jesus made came, it was the best.

Of course, it would be, right? It would be the best because it's from Jesus' own hand. But it is something significant.

Don't look at this and say water to wine, big deal. It's huge. It's something that just doesn't take place.

It's just not something that is natural. It's supernatural what is taking place here.

Jesus turned the water to wine. And the man said, you have saved in verse 10.

He says there, he said to them, everyone serves good wine first. And when people are drunk freely, then the poor wine.

But you have kept the good wine until now. And then John writes these words in verse 11.

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and the disciples believed in him.

First of his signs, the sign is a miracle. It's seen as a proof of divine authority and majesty and power.

In verse 11, it says it revealed the glory or it manifested the glory of Jesus.

And he uses this word sign. I want to just use a little bit of an illustration here.

On my way, on my way to service to the BBC this morning and on your way, no doubt you saw signs, right?

Or maybe, maybe you've traveled on the road and you see road signs. I remember when

I was driving back in May with Caleb, I was driving my son Caleb down to Texas and we would see the signs and it would let you know how far away the cities were.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I don't even look at them. It gets so discouraging because it seems like you drive, you've been driving for a half hour and you look at the next one and it's only, you've gone five miles, but it feels like, you know what

I mean. But you see the sign. And I remember the first time we saw a sign, he was going to Dallas and we saw

Dallas. It was pretty exciting. Dallas, 350 miles.

Caleb and I didn't get out of the truck and stop right there and hug the sign and say, yes, we're in Dallas, right?

The sign points to something beyond itself. The sign isn't the end all.

We, you don't, you don't stop at the sign, you know, if you're going to, I don't know, whatever, maybe you're going to Six Flags and you see a

Six Flags sign, you don't stop at the sign and start getting on the sign and ride it, right?

It's pointing something else. It's pointing to something beyond itself. When we look here at this, let's not get caught up in the sign like the

Charismatics do, the Pentecostal churches, some folks that they stop short.

They want the sign and that's it. They got to have the sign. The sign points beyond itself to some, and I think

MacArthur put it really well. He said something along the lines that, he said that these significant displays of power point beyond themselves to a deeper divine reality.

And if you really look at the first page on the left side, it has the sign there, Jesus turns water to wine.

Really on the right column to the right of that, I probably could have put that up top, but I don't want to add to what, because I pulled this out of his study

Bible. That's the deeper divine reality. Jesus is the source of life. He heals an official's son.

Jesus is a master over distance. He healed at a distance. The man thought that Jesus needed to come into his house, but Jesus not only healed from a distance, but he's the divine healer.

Power in his hand. He feeds 5 ,000. Jesus is the bread of life.

Jesus walks on the water. He's master over nature. That's the divine reality. When it comes to the water being turned to wine, there's a deeper, deeper reality here for us to see.

We don't want to stop at the sign. We want to go on and want to see what does the sign point to.

And in this case, of course, in all these eight signs, it points to Jesus. It points to his deity.

It points to the fact that he is God, that he is all -powerful. It points to the fact, and there's something that's being taught here, and of course, water being changed into wine, it's created.

He is the creator, John. And in John 1, it says there's nothing that was made without Jesus. He's the creator.

But I want you to notice something interesting about this. Somebody last time I taught Sunday school, they said, boy,

I thought you were supposed to be teaching Sunday school, but you were preaching. The problem is that I've been out of the pulpit so long, when

I get behind here, I just let it go. So, sorry that it's not so interactive.

Maybe we'll have time for a couple of questions afterwards. But I want to point out this one significant thing. The sign.

I talked about signs on the highway, and how it points beyond the sign.

It's not the destination. It points to something better. It points to something greater. It points to something bigger.

It points to reality. That's what it does. It's not the real. It's the sign points to the reality.

And when it comes to these eight signs in John's Gospel, it shifts, and it ought to shift the attention of the spectator, away from the deed, or away from the miracle itself, and onto the miracle doer,

Jesus himself. Hendrickson wrote this. He said, the sign points away from itself, to the one who performed it.

And again, we don't want to get caught up in the miracle, but get caught up in Jesus, the miracle doer.

And you know, in this text here, it's very interesting. Jesus is really in the forefront.

Everything else is in the background. I could ask you some question. What is the groom's name? What is

Mary's real role here? How many of the disciples came to the wedding?

We don't know. Who were these relatives of Mary, or one of the disciples?

It doesn't say. Was one of the disciples, maybe one of the groomsmen in the wedding party?

We don't know. All these details are in the background. And what is at the center of all of this?

And no matter what, whenever you go into any text like this, yes, you can pull out, and you can see the application of things about wine, or you can see things about the institution of marriage in this, and you can see things about serving in this.

But you got to get the main point. And the main point is

Jesus. He is the Son of God. That's why John wrote these signs, and had these signs recorded.

He is the Christ, the Anointed One, the One sent from God, the Savior of sinners. He is

God who's come in the flesh, in that when you believe upon Him, you'll have life in His name.

We're to take our eyes off the miracle, and put them on Jesus. Everything else pales in comparison to the

Lord Jesus. Water to wine. Seems like a small thing if we're not careful.

But this demonstrates His power. It demonstrates His glory. That's what John said in verse 11.

And you know what else is significant here? Look in verse 11. What happened at the very end of verse 11?

What took place? The disciples believed, right?

John's purpose in John 20, verse 30 and 31. These signs were recorded that you might believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name. And that's what it's all about.

And if you go to the ones on the front, there's several of these down the bottom, these eight, that if you go, you'll see not only when

He turns the water to wine, they believe. In number 6 there, when Jesus heals the blind man from birth, in John 9, verse 38, the man himself said,

Lord, I believe. And he worshipped Him. He fell at Jesus' feet and he worshipped Him. In number 7, where Jesus raised

Lazarus from the dead, the deeper reality is that Jesus has power over death.

In John 11, verse 45, it says, those people that had seen what Jesus did, they saw what

Jesus did, they believed on Him. And that's really where it ends up. You might be in here this morning, and maybe you're outside of Christ.

Maybe you don't know the Lord. Your sins are not forgiven. And you're thinking, yes, we've heard another

Sunday school. Another week goes by, another Sunday school, and here we have the water being turned to wine.

And it's facts, and it's historical, and it's about the life of Jesus. It ought to be more than that.

It needs to be more than that. This is a sign, this is a significant power, demonstration of the power of God, so that you can look beyond it and look to Jesus and see that He's the one for you to believe upon, to the saving of your soul, and you can call upon Him and be saved.

And as believers, when you take this, and hopefully you can take this sheet, use it for your study in the future, and you go through each one of these eight, and you can see such significant, deep, divine realities about Jesus being taught and being brought about by the pen of John through the work of the

Holy Spirit, so that you and I too can believe, and that our belief can be even more confirmed and deepened and strengthened as we see these divine realities in these signs, looking beyond them, and see with an eye of faith what it is saying about the

Lord Jesus Christ. Does anybody have a question? Does anybody have a question or maybe a comment about what we've looked at here this morning in this text?

I want to give a little bit of time. We have a few minutes. Anything of note, stand out.

Yeah, we needed the microphone this morning to capture what you just said.

But I'll do my best to see what Pastor Bob said here. It was written near the end of the first century.

It is past the time when, of course, when Jesus, the apostles were all walking on the face of the earth.

And it's written to churches in Asia Minor, Gentiles. And so it's significant for us.

And we can relate to this because these truths are coming. This is the last of the apostles who's writing.

And he's saying he's recorded these truths. There's a lot of things he could have recorded. He even says so. There's many signs that Jesus did.

But these significant ones, he particularly pointed out and he wrote about.

And it comes to bear for, and the blessingness of what Pastor Bob was saying was, is that we weren't there, us living today.

We weren't there back then. And just like those in the end of the first century weren't there, but this was recorded so that they could have these divine truths and they could be a blessing to their souls.

And they can be a blessing to our souls and encouragement to us. We ought never to take scripture lightly, right?

Never take it lightly. Never say, you know, it's just... I can't imagine anybody opening this chapter and saying, oh, it's just water to wine.

It's just done. No, it's absolutely amazing and it should strike awe and wonder in us that this is the

God whom we serve. This is the God who saved us. This is the Jesus, the Christ whom we've believed upon.

And we have these realities. Another thing I like about John's writing is a couple of times he says, the person who wrote these things, he says, these things are true.

Basically, I've seen these things. He's an eyewitness of these things. Others were not eyewitnesses that were writing, but he was.

And we have the same verity, the same truth to be able to rely upon and to be a blessing for our souls today.

All right, any other question or comment? Wonderful, wonderful passage of scripture.

Use this sheet. I trust it will help you. And then you can use it in your studies as you go on.

And I trust that the time that we've spent here in Sunday School has prepared our hearts to worship.

Let's pray and we'll be preparing for worship service. Let's pray together.

Our Father in heaven, again, we come before your throne. And we would ask that you would even forgive us when there have been times when we have taken your word and not given it the weight that it ought to have.

And we may have passed over passages and maybe treated them too lightly. Even this one here this morning might be one that we've kind of put at the back of the list or the bottom of the list as being significant compared to the other miracles that were performed by the

Lord Jesus. But this is a blessed one. This is the beginning of his signs.

And we exalt him. We lift up the wonderful name of Jesus Christ, our

Lord and Savior this morning and ask that his name would continue to be praised and exalted as we go to the worship service.

And help us, O Lord, to look with an eye of faith and not stop at the sign, but look beyond it to what it's pointing to, our blessed, exalted, and risen

Lord and Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us.

Thank you for encouraging our hearts even this morning. We bless you and pray that you'd be with us as we continue this morning.