Wedding at Cana Pt1

Each week, it's the custom in our car ride home to ask the kids, what did daddy preach on today?

And last week, Jennifer was riding with the children. She said, what did daddy preach on today?

And Faith said, John 1. And JJ said, well, that's not fair.

Daddy always preaches on John 1. Well, this morning,

I want you to open to John chapter 2. We have finally made our way out of the first chapter of John's gospel.

And we are making our way now into the second chapter. And as I have been saying, now that we have reached the narrative portions of this text, we will be taking a larger sections.

We will be taking larger sections of text as we go through, because it's important that we hold together the narrative.

And we don't miss the forest for the trees. And so this morning, we're going to be reading

John chapter 12, or excuse me, John chapter 2, verses 1 through 12.

And this is one of the most familiar stories in the whole

Bible. And the problem with familiarity is that we end up in two ditches of familiarity.

One is the ditch of complacency. Oh, I've already heard that. I know it. It's common.

It's even, in some sense, boring. I know what's going to happen. I know the end of the story. I've heard this 1 ,000 times.

Every time I've ever seen a play about the life of Jesus, this story is included. Every movie that's ever had a narrative of the life of Jesus, this story is included.

And it's easy to look at these narratives and become somewhat complacent.

But the other problem, and this is the other ditch, the other side of that pendulum, is the problem of the seeking of novelty.

There are men who are not satisfied with merely what the text says. And they want to read something into the text.

They want to overanalyze the text to the point that they're drawing out conclusions that were never intended to be drawn out.

I'm going to speak today, at least for a few moments, on how Roman Catholicism does that very thing with this text.

They draw out things that are never intended from the narrative to draw from this text, specifically about the person of Jesus's mother.

So today we're going to read the text, we're going to seek to understand what it means, and hopefully apply its truths to our lives, and knowing that that ultimately is the work of the

Spirit as He does what only He can do. So let's stand together and read this text.

And then we will pray and ask God to apply its truths to our heart.

It begins in chapter 2 by saying this. On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited to the wedding with His disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, they have no wine.

And Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.

His mother said to the servants, do whatever He tells you. Now there were six stone water jars there for the

Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

And He said to them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.

So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted, where the water now become wine and did not know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew, the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, everyone serves the good wine first.

And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.

This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested

His glory. And His disciples believed in Him.

After this, He went down to Capernaum with His mother and His brothers and His disciples.

And they stayed there for a few days. Father in heaven, I thank

You for Your Word. I pray now as I seek to give an understanding of it,

Lord, that You would please, by Your mercy and by Your grace, keep me in the very center of Your will.

Keep me from wandering off into error. Keep me from chasing the rabbits of my own mind and heart.

Keep me tied to the post of Scripture. Lord, keep me from error.

And Father, open the hearts of Your people. For the believers in this room, Lord, I pray that they would be moved toward greater worship of the

Son of God as we see His glory put on display and manifested in this, the first of His miracles.

God, give us eyes to see that wedding in Cana. Give us an insight into this text that perhaps we have not had before.

But Lord, I pray for the non -believer in this room, for the one who has not bowed the knee to Christ, that they would see

Jesus demonstrating His power and be reminded that He is, in fact, the

Creator of all things. As John has already proclaimed, all things were made through Him and nothing that was made was not made by Him.

And so, Lord, we can say that in this creative miracle where Jesus brought forth the fruit of the vine without a vine and without a fruit,

Lord, we see the hand of God. We see the power of God and a manifestation of His glory.

Father, may we be moved. May the believer be moved by the unbeliever, be drawn by the power of Your Spirit and by the beauty of Your Son.

And we pray this in His name, amen. We arrive at chapter two of John's gospel, having just seen

Jesus in the introduction to some men who would become

His apostles. They are now defined as His disciples.

In fact, it's interesting that John never uses the word apostles for the twelve, but he uses the word disciples, learners, students of the

Master. We've seen Andrew who went and got Peter. We saw Philip who went and got

Nathanael. We've seen the unnamed disciple who, I am convinced, is likely

John himself. And these men are now following Jesus.

They are now going in the entourage of Jesus. Where He goes, they will go with Him.

And as I mentioned last week, John is more concerned with theology than he is with chronology.

I'm becoming more and more convinced of this as I study through John in my preparation to preach.

He began with a powerful prologue. This is who the Word is. The Word was with God.

The Word was God. The Word became flesh in Him. All things were created by Him. All things were created.

Nothing was created that wasn't created by Him. He's got this wonderful truth of who Jesus is in the first 18 verses.

And then He immediately runs into the testimonies of those who would come and confirm the very things

He says in the introduction. He introduces Jesus as the Word of God, as the

Son of God, as God Himself. And then John confirms this when he says, here, behold, the

Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the Son of God. Nathanael comes on the scene. He says, you are the

King of Israel. You are the Son of God. And we have this testimony after testimony after testimony of who

Jesus is. John's more concerned with the testimonies of these individuals than he is with the chronology of events.

We're gonna see more testimonies as we go. We're gonna see Nicodemus come to him at night and say, we know that you're sent from God.

Well, like, that's a testimony. We know this. We're going to see the woman at the well who she runs back to the city.

This man said everything I ever did. He knows me. This is he. John is concerned with these testimonies.

He's concerned with identifying who Jesus is so that he can build up to that later verse which he gives us later in chapter 20 when he says, these things have

I written that you may believe. That's the point of the book.

That you may believe. John is essentially a gospel tract.

Extensive, yes. Thorough, yes. But it has a point.

And the point is that we would believe. Amen. And we have in this book seven signs that are given to us as encouragements for belief.

Seven specific events in the life of Jesus are highlighted by John. We could say eight if we count the resurrection and certainly we probably should.

But prior to the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, there are seven distinct events that all occur.

We see the healing of the nobleman's son in chapter four. We see the healing of the lame man at Bethesda in chapter five.

We see the feeding of the 5 ,000 in chapter six. We see him walking on the water also in chapter six.

We see him healing the man born blind in chapter nine. And of course, culminating in the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11.

All of these miraculous things are testimonies of the person of Jesus Christ.

Who is he? He's the man who gave sight to the blind. Who is he? He's the man who made the lame walk.

Who is he? He's the man who made a dead man, four days dead, raise and come out of the tomb.

That's who this man is. And that's what John wants us to understand. But it all begins, all of these signs begin with this one simple story, a wedding feast in a little town called

Cana. Now, this tells us that this is the third day.

This is how the text begins. It says on the third day. Well, if you go back to chapter one and you add up the events that began with the entourage coming from the

Pharisees to talk to John, that would be the first day when he says, I'm not the Christ. I'm not Elijah. I'm not the prophet. And then it says the next day, he saw

Jesus coming. He says, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he who God told me when

I see the spirit descending upon him, this is him. This is the son of God. So that's day two. Then we have the next day where two of his disciples are standing there next to John.

He says, behold, the lamb of God. Those two go and be with Jesus. So that's day three.

And then we have the next day. And that is the day that he goes towards Galilee, meets Philip, and he has that conversation with Nathanael where he says to him, behold, an

Israelite in whom there's no guile. Four days.

Now from there, we are three days later. So this concludes a week in the life of Jesus.

Again, I said we're not too concerned about chronology, but we are concerned, I believe

John is concerned about theology. And I think it would be remiss of me if I did not at least mention that John has already tied his gospel to the book of Genesis.

If you remember, how did he begin? In the beginning was the word. How does Genesis begin?

In the beginning, God created. And so John has already tied his gospel to Genesis, at least in its opening words.

The very opening words of John are the same opening words as the Septuagint. John would have not been ignorant of that because the

Septuagint was likely the Bible used by most of the early church. And here he gives us a week in the life of Jesus.

Now I do not want to over read into this. I don't want to spiritualize the event, but I also don't want to miss anything either.

And I think it's significant that he points to the fact that this is a week in the life of Christ because this begins

Christ's ministry where up until this point, he has been in relative obscurity.

Up until this point, Jesus is just the carpenter's son. In fact, that's how he's defined it.

Who is this? He's the carpenter's son, the son of Mary. But now everything is about to change.

Now he's coming on the scene and he's going to break onto the scene in a very interesting way.

He doesn't break onto the scene by immediately healing blind people or immediately giving a hearing to deaf people.

He doesn't break onto the scene by going and raising the dead.

But he breaks onto the scene even still in somewhat of a quiet manner.

We're gonna see in the text as we read through it that even the master of the feast and the bridegroom don't even seem to know what has happened or who did it.

They're just surprised this has happened, but they don't know how. They don't know who the servants knew because they were the ones who drew.

So this event, this week in the life of Jesus, this reminds us again of who we are dealing with.

Do you realize Jesus is your Creator? Do you realize that?

I mean, do we really think about that? We sometimes become so comfortable with the humanity of Jesus.

We think of his eyes, his hands, his countenance. Just this past week, the

Shroud of Turin, which is supposed to be the burial cloth of Christ. I don't believe that it is, but some people believe it is.

The Shroud of Turin was put through a computer that measured all of the visual images and produced a 3D image of Jesus.

And now if you wanna look at what Jesus supposedly looked like, you can go look at this 3D image.

Everybody wants, they wanna know what he looked like. They wanna know the humanity of Christ.

And there is blessing in that. Certainly, he is truly man. But John's gospel points us back over and over to his divinity, that Jesus is not man who became

God, but he is God who took on flesh. He's God -man, not man -God.

He's not some kind of deified human. He is

God who took on flesh. And John emphasizes, this is your creator.

And we see that in this miracle. We're going to see Jesus perform a miracle of creation.

Not with a word, not with a gesture, but simply with a command.

Draw and take it to the master of the feast. And in an instant, a creative miracle occurs.

This is the narrative here. So we're gonna walk through the text.

I have a very simple outline today. It just simply is the first five verses give us the occasion.

The next few verses give us the occurrence. And the last two verses give us the outcome.

So let's look first at the occasion. It says on the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Now, before we go any further, just want to make a mention that weddings in the ancient world are quite a bit different than weddings today.

Weddings today are still a important social occasion. Being in a wedding is a big deal.

Being a part of a wedding is a big deal. It's an important social event, but even more so in the ancient world.

We tend to have parties all the time. We celebrate all kinds of things. We celebrate holidays, we celebrate birthdays.

Happy birthday, Jack. We celebrate all kinds of things, right? But in the ancient world, there was no greater celebration than the celebration of a wedding, especially a virgin wedding.

There were times where widows would be married, and it was less of an event if a person was having their second wedding, but the first wedding, the primary wedding, the wedding of the virgin, was a seven -day event on some occasions.

And the role of the bridegroom in this event was to make preparations for this seven days.

He had a year beforehand, the betrothal period where a contract was made, and we know about this with Joseph.

He signed the contract. He was essentially married to Mary prior to them coming together, and it is said that it was about a year where they would go, and he would prepare a place for her to live.

He would prepare to take her from her father's house into his house. There were all of these things that had to be done, and preparation for the feast had to be made.

And it was the responsibility of the bridegroom to make sure that that feast was properly prepared for.

So, there's a wedding at Cana, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Interestingly enough, in this text, she's not called Mary. John never calls her

Mary. He refers to her as the mother of Jesus.

Now, it doesn't say this in the text, but I think we could at least assume that there is a relationship, and probably so, between Mary and the family who is having the wedding, because later when an issue arises,

Mary feels like she needs to be involved. I'm not saying

Mary was the wedding planner. There was a man called the master of the feast, which is a long

Greek word, archeloktes. It simply means the man who was the head of the feast.

So, Mary was not that, but Mary was likely involved in these preparations, and she was invited, and so too was

Jesus invited with his disciples. Again, interestingly enough, these are called his disciples at this point.

These are men who are following him, learning from him, and Jesus is invited. So, likely

Jesus knows the family. In fact, I would go as far as to say they probably all knew each other. This is a small town in Galilee, not too far from Nazareth, which was also a small town in Galilee.

There would have been probably family relations. There would have been probably interactions over the years, and like with any wedding, people who are close to the family are invited to come and celebrate, and so they come.

Jesus comes with his disciples. As I was preparing this week, reading different commentaries, and trying to get a feel for some of the things that I might be missing, because I do my work first.

I study the text. I try to learn as much as I can, and then I read the commentary to see if I missed anything, and I went to David Guzik, who's become a dear friend, and wanted to see what he had to say, and he made a good point that I hadn't really picked up on.

He said, you know the interesting thing at this point is that Jesus is not opposed to celebration.

And I thought about that for a second, because I really think especially in cultures that have been tied to certain forms of piety that we almost feel like as Christians we're never allowed to laugh.

We're never allowed to enjoy ourselves. We're never allowed to celebrate. Everything has to be serious all the time.

We have to have our spines stiff all the time. We can never slap a knee.

We can never bend the heart, and we can never chuckle, because those are worldly things.

Beloved, the first miracle Jesus did essentially was so that the party could continue, that the celebration could go on.

Now we're gonna talk a little bit more about maybe why this is, because there is some cultural implications for the wine running out as far as shame and embarrassment for the bridegroom.

There are a lot of things here that are important to that, but at bare minimum we can say this.

Does not the Bible say there is a time to mourn and a time to laugh? And we can have both.

Something else David said, and I thought this was insightful. He said Jesus didn't go and lead a Bible study. He didn't go and have a prayer meeting.

He just went and celebrated. Sometimes I think we overdo our attempts at piety to the point where, well you're not, if you gather together, you better have some kind of pious action.

You can't just have fun together. There's a time to mourn, and there's a time to laugh and to celebrate.

You don't goof off at a funeral, but you don't mourn at a wedding.

I mean there's a time for these things. And Jesus goes and celebrates at this wedding.

Beloved, we can celebrate. We have reason. We above all people have reason for joy.

We above all people have reason for laughter. We above all people have reason to have a countenance and a disposition that includes a smile.

So Jesus goes to a wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, verse three.

Now again, this is a very serious cultural faux pas.

The man who was supposed to provide has failed to provide.

The one who was supposed to give has not given enough.

Some commentators even say that lawsuits could be made for the lack of hospitality.

Now again, I think that's a bit of a difficult thing to conceive, but as I was considering it more, why would a lawsuit ever be involved?

Well if people are traveling great distances relying on you to provide for them and you don't, yeah, there could be some ramifications both socially and even legally.

If you fail to provide what you say you're going to provide. And so the wine runs out.

And for most of us in the room, we don't understand because for us, if we are somewhere and something runs out, we can go to the

Dollar General, which is now everywhere. Dollar General's gonna be the first thing

Elon puts on Mars. And we can go to the

Dollar General and we can get anything we need. But in the ancient world, there were no

Dollar Generals. There were no corner stores like we have today.

These things had to be provided for days, weeks, months in advance.

And when the wine runs out, can't just go buy another bottle. Especially if you don't have the means to do so.

If he bought the wine he bought, he probably bought it because that's what he could afford. Now, it's gone.

At this point in the text, we have the interjection of Jesus's mother.

And I wanna be honest with you. As I have sought this week to really try to wrap my mind around this interaction between her and Jesus and really try to come to some conclusions,

I still find this interaction between her and Jesus to be enigmatic, meaning it's still to me somewhat puzzling.

And boy, I've read dozens of different interpretations and they all come up with different ideas. But I'm gonna give you what

I think because a couple things jump out to me. Number one, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.

Jesus wasn't responsible for the wine. Mary may have been part of the planning of this.

May or may not, we don't know. Again, these are some assumptions. But she's coming to Jesus and she's telling him about the problem.

Why? Why? I wanna tell you one thing I don't think.

I don't think she thought he was gonna make more wine. I don't, I don't think that's what she was thinking.

Now, it might be, it might be that she had some kind of foreunderstanding that he was going to be a miracle worker because of course the angel said to her, this is the son of God, right?

She knew his identity before anyone else did. But I don't know that her going to Jesus was

Jesus, make more wine. I think this is possible though.

Mary knew Jesus was the most intelligent, wisest and godliest man that she'd ever met because he is the son of God.

And if anyone would have a solution to the problem, he was the one.

If anyone would have a way to get out of this mess, it was

Jesus. Beloved, there's some wisdom in that.

Who do we go to when things go awry? We should go to Christ, right? Who do we go to when things are not going well?

We should take our troubles to the Lord. What does the Bible say? Cast our cares upon him because he cares for us.

She is essentially going and casting her cares upon him. Jesus, there's no wine. Now you would think

Jesus would respond possibly different than he does because his response seems kind of cold.

Now I wanna very clearly say this. Jesus never once broke the fifth commandment to honor your father and your mother.

Not once did Jesus commit any sin, especially the sin of dishonoring his mother.

So when he says woman, which if I said to my mama would not be a good thing, it is not a disrespectful title.

In fact, we know this because later when he's on the cross and he looks down at Mary and he sees

John, he says, woman, behold thy son. So the word woman here is not a title of derision, but he also doesn't call her mom either.

So I think there's at least something we have to consider in the fact that he says, essentially our version would be ma 'am or lady, woman.

Not disrespectful, but matter of fact. Ma 'am, what does this have to do with me?

Not saying he doesn't wanna help, not disrespecting his mother, but is saying, why are you bringing this to me?

And then he says this very important phrase, which comes up several times in John's gospel. In fact, this phrase, my hour has not yet come, will come up again in chapter seven, it'll come up again in chapter eight, and then it comes up again in chapter 12, but then he says, my hour has come.

And then again in chapter 17, he says, my hour has come. So at this point, he says, my hour has not yet come.

The hour is the hour of his demonstration of the love and wrath of God, which is coming on the cross.

Because he says, my hour has not yet come, my hour has not yet come. And when we get to chapter 12, that's when we begin the week of what we call holy week, which we'll be celebrating in a couple of weeks as we celebrate

Easter week from the time of the entrance into Jerusalem to the time of the crucifixion, right?

That's that time. He says, my hour has not yet come. This is the part that to me is so enigmatic because it seems like it doesn't fit here.

It seems like it almost, like he's not dealing with the issue, he's bringing out something else.

And again, John being thoroughly theological here is making a point about the fact that Jesus is on his own timeline.

Jesus has come for a purpose. He has come to do the will of the father, not as I think

John MacArthur got this right, not the will of his mother. She comes and says, hey, we need some help.

And Jesus says, what's that got to do with my mission?

My hour has not yet come. I'm on God's divine timeline. Now, here's the part that's really interesting.

She turns around to the servants and she says, do whatever he says.

That's all we know. John doesn't give us any more of the interaction.

Something in Jesus's disposition or some words that go unwritten for us allow her to understand that even though his time has not yet come, his hour has not yet come, and even though he said, what does this have to do with me?

He still has decided to participate in the help of these people.

And this leads me to my first issue that I wanna bring up regarding this text.

Because one of the main issues in this text is the issue of how does

Mary fit in to our theology? If you look into not just Roman Catholic history, but if you look into church history as a whole, there have been tremendous beliefs associated with the person of Mary.

We find this both in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in the Western Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church has four dogmas associated with Mary.

Four, do you know what a dogma is? A dogma is something you must believe. Roman Catholics don't have a cafeteria -style

Christianity. They say, if you don't believe this, you aren't Catholic. You don't get to take what you want and leave the rest.

And so they establish these teachings called dogmas, and they say, this is the dogma of the

Roman Catholic Church. If you don't believe this, you cannot rightly call yourself part of the church Catholic. And the four things they believe about Mary codified in absolute dogma, cannot be unbelieved or disbelieved.

One is one we would, I think, all agree with, and that is that Mary is theotokos.

The term theotokos means mother of God. You say, well, I don't like that term. That is an early term used of Mary to identify

Jesus's divinity, that she wasn't just the mother of a man, but that she bore

God in her womb. I have no issue with theotokos. It was part of how we define what's called the hypostatic union, that Jesus is

God and man. So if somebody says, I don't like calling Mary mother of God, I understand,

I get where that may not feel right, but that ultimately has been a historic definition, and I just use theotokos because that's what it means,

God -bearer. She bore God in her womb. No problem. The Bible says that, right?

We can affirm that, but the other three,

I think, are a little more problematic. The second one is the perpetual virginity of Mary.

This is a belief that Mary, after having had Jesus, never again was she ever with Joseph or any man.

She stayed a perpetual virgin all of her life. They call this the semper virgo, the forever virginity of Mary.

In fact, in Roman Catholic theology, it is believed that Mary did not even have Jesus in the natural way because they said her virginity was not disrupted by the birth.

And therefore, it is a, I call it from womb to room. He just sort of came, but wasn't birthed naturally.

That, I believe, has nowhere in Scripture to find support. The perpetual virginity of Mary is not something the

Scripture supports because even in this very text, in verse 12, it says Jesus went to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers.

There's no reason in my reading of Scripture to arrive at the perpetual virginity of Mary.

I believe it is a later intrusion upon the text, and it's not a necessary belief.

If you wanna argue for it, hold it, whatever. Just know you're holding tradition and not Scripture. The third is called the immaculate conception.

Now, the immaculate conception is not the conception of Jesus. That's what we often consider. Jesus was the immaculately conceived.

No, the immaculate conception says that Mary was born without sin and that she never sinned because Jesus, being brought forth from her womb, was brought forth sinless from a sinless womb.

The Bible never says Mary was without sin. The Bible never indicates that at all.

They'll say, well, it says she is full of grace. Hell, favored one, highly favored,

Gabriel says. But that doesn't say sinless. The fourth one is the assumption.

The belief among Roman Catholics is that Mary did not die and go to heaven but was assumed into heaven, just like Jesus was assumed into heaven after his resurrection.

Those are four Marian dogmas. The divine motherhood, the perpetual virginity, the immaculate conception, and the assumption of Mary into heaven.

All four of those must be believed if you are a Roman Catholic because they are defined dogmatically by the church as essentials of the faith.

But there is another that has been proposed. This is called the fifth

Marian dogma. Now, it's not dogma yet, but it has been proposed that Mary would be considered co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix, and advocate with Jesus.

Beloved, that is heresy. Damnedable heresy.

But here's the thing. The reason why I bring this up is this is the text they use to make the argument.

They say Mary went to Jesus because they had a need and Jesus listened to her.

Therefore, if you have a need, go to Mary and she'll talk to Jesus for you.

Talk about eisegesis. Reading something into the text that just ain't there.

Beloved, Mary in this text, if anything, receives a slight rebuke.

Not an encouragement. When she comes to Jesus and asks him to intervene.

A few weeks ago on social media, and by the way, I know a lot of you are on social media, some of you aren't, and you know

I am quite a bit with my online ministry. There is an abundance right now of Roman Catholic apologetics happening online.

Many young men especially are being drawn to the historic nature of the

Roman Catholic Church. Mike and I have a dear friend who was an elder in a Reformed Baptist Church and in a

Presbyterian Church and now has left and become

Roman Catholic. And so there are people, especially online, who are encouraging things to believe about the

Roman Catholic Church. And a few weeks ago I saw this man, Roman Catholic apologist, he said, do you know why the thief on the cross believed in Jesus?

Because Mary was at his feet praying for him. You see where these false traditions can infect our understanding of the gospel itself.

Just a few days ago I saw another man, very popular Catholic apologist, weeping on his podcast.

And he said, I cannot wait till I see Jesus. And he says, my mother has told me all about you.

Friends, there's nothing in this text that supports

Mary as your advocate with Jesus. The Bible says there is one

God and one mediator between God and man. Jesus Christ. And you do not need anyone to intervene between you and Christ.

He is your high priest and he says, come unto me all ye who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Jesus Christ is our advocate, not his mother. So beloved, if you have been in any way encouraged to fall under the false veil of these teachings about Mary, please come and talk to one of us, one of our elders, please.

These things are not found in scripture and the times where they are used, the scripture is used, it is misused, it is taken out of context, it is twisted into a knot and it's served up as if it were a good meal and yet it is rubbish.

I'm gonna draw to a close because I don't wanna run through the rest of the story, there's too much. But I said what

I wanted to say about your advocate. You have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And I ask you today, have you placed your faith in him?

Have you trusted in him or are you trusting in someone or something else? Because as I've said, and I will continue to remind you, one advocate with the father.

Do you know why Jesus is our advocate? Because nobody else can do what he did. No one else could come and live a sinless life.

Mary was not sinless, the saints are not sinless. There is no thesaurus meritorium or treasury of merit out of which we draw from.

The only merits that we possess are the merits of Jesus Christ, not the saints and not his mother.

We trust in his work alone, his finished work alone. Why? Because our works are like filthy rags.

If you're trusting in your own works, on the day of judgment, you will be found wanting.

But if you trust in the completed and finished work of Christ, you will be saved.

Absolutely, and you know what the Bible says, to the uttermost. Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him.

Have you drawn near to God through Christ? If you have, praise the

Lord for your advocate. And if you have not, what is holding you back?

Come to the son and be saved. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for your son. And I thank you for the opportunity to study this text today.

And I know, Lord, we only made it through a few verses. But yet, Lord, I was moved by how important this is to teach.

That there is only one advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, not anyone else.

And Lord, if we are trusting in anyone or anything else other than Jesus Christ, I pray that you would turn our hearts away from that idolatry and turn it to the