John 21:1-11 (Coming To The End Of Yourself)

The Shepherd's Church

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You know, some might argue that one of the great triumphs of humanity, a picture of human ingenuity and a testament of our creativity and genius, and even

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God's love and care for his people, was the invention of the hamburger.

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It's the world's most perfect food. You think about it, if you're in the mood for something spicy, throw a couple jalapenos on it.

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If you're in the mood for something sweet, a cowboy burger, onion rings and barbeque. A variety that you can make, it is a meal that will satisfy you down to your bones.

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Smash burger, thick burger, it doesn't matter. World's most perfect food.

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On my food pyramid, one entire column is just hamburgers.

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It's an evidence of God's love for us. But as much variety as you can have,

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I ate a burger one time that had avocado and a fried egg on top of it.

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I felt really sophisticated and very West Coast -y on that day. As much variety as you can have in the middle, the outsides are pretty consistent.

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I'm not talking about the abomination that is lettuce wraps. That's not a hamburger. That's like a vegan handing you a boiled carrot and calling it a hot dog.

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That is not what that is. But the outside of the hamburger, the bun that holds it all together is pretty consistent.

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I mean, you might have a butter toasted brioche, you might have a pretzel roll, you might have a good old -fashioned bun.

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It's still two pieces of bread holding the entire thing together. Two carbon copies.

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You don't have two different kinds of bread on the ends. That would be weird. That sounds like something like a modernist would do just to try to ruin a good institution.

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You have two pieces of bread that hold the entire thing together. I think that's a good metaphor for hermeneutics, for biblical hermeneutics.

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Because the entire Bible, there's a lot of variety in the middle of the Bible. There's a lot of different literature and stories. There's war, there's peace, there's love stories.

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There's all sorts of variety in the genres. And yet the bookends, the bread, is the same.

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You think about the example. The whole Bible is this way. The end, or the beginning and the end, are about the garden.

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You've got God making a garden people who dwell with a garden God, who live forever in a garden, through the

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Savior who comes, mistaken as a gardener, to bring us back into the garden.

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The whole story is about that. That we live with God in paradise. That though we have fallen out of His good graces and wandered in the wilderness all these years, that He has, by Jesus, saved us and is bringing us back into paradise where we will live with Him forever.

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The whole story is all about that. A garden God who brings us into His garden presence.

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That's what bookends do. Bookends tell you that this section is all about the same things.

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Imagine if the middle bits didn't match the outer bits, how confusing that would be.

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It's the end parts that tell us what the middle parts are really all about. Imagine the confusion that you would have if you showed up to my house and I handed you a hot dog and a hamburger bun.

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That would be weird. Or, maybe even worse, a hamburger and a hot dog bun.

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You'd be confused because the middle bits wouldn't match the outer bits. That's what I'm trying to say is, in the

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Bible, the ends actually define the middle and tell us what the middle is about so that if you come to the middle and you have a conclusion that you're drawing that is outside of the bookends, then your conclusion is wrong.

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It's something you've imposed upon the scriptures. And we see these.

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We see these all over the biblical story. We see them in the way, the beginnings of the

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Bible and the end of the Bible. We see it. But we also see it in smaller ways, in micro ways. So for instance, the book of Matthew, you may not have noticed this, but it has bookends.

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In the beginning of the book of Matthew, it says that Jesus was born and his name is Emmanuel, which means God with us.

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That's right in the very beginning of chapter one. Do you know what it says in Matthew 28 when Jesus rises from the dead? He says, all authority in heaven and earth has now been given to me, so therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And behold, I am with you always. So the beginning of Matthew, it says

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God is with us. And when Jesus is getting ready to leave to go to heaven, he says, no, no, no, I'm with you always.

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The whole story of Matthew is about a divine king who's come to live with his people forever. You see how that bookends define the entire gospel of Matthew.

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God with us, I'm with you always. Those are the bookends that define the whole gospel of Matthew.

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That is called an inclusio, if you want the technical term. If not, just call it the biblical brioche.

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You don't need to know the fancy term, but if you want to know the fancy term, it's inclusio. Inclusio serves as a guardrail.

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You ever been bowling and you push the little button and the bumper rails come up? And then in all your zeal, you throw that da -da -da -da -da -da, and it still hits the pins?

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Yeah, just help us stay in the lane of what true interpretation is. Now the gospel of John has the same phenomenon.

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There is in the beginning of John and at the end of John, something that bookends the entire narrative.

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And it's the first miracle Jesus performs and the last miracle that Jesus performs.

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Chapter 21 and chapter two. The first and the last miracle, the turning water into wine and the miracle we're going to look at today, which is the miraculous multiplication and catch a fish.

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They're accomplishing the same things. They're doing the same things and they're defining for us the gospel of John.

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Remember last week, we talked about the purpose of the gospel of John. These things have been written so that you will believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of God. And by believing in him, you'll have life in his name. What are these things? Well, today we're going to look at the inclusio, the brioche in John's gospel that tells us what

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John believes his gospel is all about. And we'll find the answer to that question in between these two miracles, the first and the last, which are connected together and they're telling the same story.

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So with that, turn with me to John chapter 21, one through 11, as we're going to see three things today.

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We're going to see how the first and the last miracle are connected. We're going to see that they're accomplishing the same things and we're going to see what that teaches us about Christ and his kingdom.

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And I believe that once we see it, it will be encouraging. So if you will turn with me, John 21, one through 11, begins this way.

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After these things, Jesus manifested himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias.

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And he manifested himself in this way, Simon Peter and Thomas called

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Didymus and Nathanael of Cana and Galilee and the sons of Zebedee and two others of his disciples were together.

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Simon, Peter said to them, I'm going fishing. And they said to him, we will also come with you.

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And they went out and they got into the boat and that night they caught nothing. But when the day was breaking,

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Jesus stood on the beach and yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. So Jesus said to them, children, do you not have any fish?

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Do you? And they answered him, no. And he said to them, cast the net on the right hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.

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So they cast and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. Therefore, the disciple whom

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Jesus loves said to Peter, it is the Lord. So when Simon Peter heard that it was the

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Lord, he put his outer garment on for he was stripped for work and he threw himself into the sea.

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But the other disciples came in the little boat for they were not far from the land, but about 100 yards away, dragging the net full of fish.

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So when they got on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it and bread.

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And Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish which you have now caught. Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land full of large fish, 153.

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And although they were many, the net was not torn. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you of all of the little connections in your word.

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Lord, we know that your word is interconnected because you are a three -in -one

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God. We know that all of creation bears testimony to the interconnectedness of the triune

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Godhead. And yet we see in scripture how there are all of these little inclusions, there are these bookends, there are these things that remind us of other things and we go back and look and we see, oh, there's similarity there and there's beauty there or there's so many layers to the scriptures that we can see.

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Lord, as we look at the scriptures today from this lens, would you help us see the point and see what

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John is doing in his gospel? It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Now one of the ways that you have to look at how

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John presents it. So we've been looking at it now for a few years, since 2019 in December timeframe.

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So we've been in it for a little while. And we've been looking at it line by line, verse by verse. And sometimes you see clarity and you see structure later.

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I didn't see this until this week, but there's this bookended section here in the gospel from chapter two to chapter 21 that demonstrates what

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John thinks that his gospel is all about. Where he's purposely connecting things, he's not making up things.

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He's telling us things that are truly happening in the life of Christ, but he's not making us remember and be reminded of what

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Jesus is doing. Now I want to prove that these two miracles, the wedding supper in Cana and the miraculous

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Keshe fish, I want to show you how these two things are connected. You'll remember in John chapter two, Jesus goes to this wedding and his mother comes to him and says, we ran out of wine.

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He says, woman, what does that to me? And that was respectful back then. He was acknowledging her femininity.

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Wouldn't it be great if our world did that? Anyway, Jesus says, my time has not yet come.

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And yet Jesus tells them to take these six massive jars that are empty.

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They're full of dust. He tells them to fill them full of water, about 150 gallons of water go into these jars.

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And then he tells them to draw it out and it's miraculously turned in the water. And the headmaster, the waiter, the master of ceremonies comes up to them and says, why did you save the good wine until the end?

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No one can appreciate it now. You remember the story? And then now today we have this miraculous

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Keshe fish where the disciples are out all night and you think, I've actually fished all night long before and not called anything and been eaten alive by mosquitoes down in North Carolina, intercoastal waterway, and it's miserable.

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So I can imagine the misery that these men are going through, especially that they're master fishermen and they've caught nothing.

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These are men who knew these waters better than anyone. This was their home turf, as it were. They knew every little bay in this lake, the sea, and yet they've caught nothing.

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So now how do these two miracles connect? Well, they're similar geography. Cana happened in Galilee.

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Cana is a little town in Galilee. Galilee is the northern part of Judah, and that's where Jesus inaugurated his ministry with that very miracle.

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He jump -started his ministry with this miracle in Cana, a miracle that was about abundance,

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God bringing abundance to his people, joy to his people. Jesus didn't have to create the most beautiful, incredible wine they've ever tasted, and he certainly didn't have to create 150 gallons of it, but God is gracious and he's good, and he gives us abundant blessings for loving him and for being a part of his people.

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But it happened in a small town in Galilee called Cana. Well, the Sea of Tiberias is also in Galilee.

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It's about 10 miles away. So these two events are connected geographically. You remember John 20,

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Jesus was in Jerusalem at that point, and he shows up in the upper room and he reminds

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Thomas of his divinity, and Thomas cries out, my Lord and my God, that I was in Jerusalem. And all

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John tells us is after these things, now we're in Galilee. John's doing that on purpose, to line up these two miracles because they have the same geography.

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Is it interesting that the first miracle Jesus ever performs and the last miracle that Jesus performs before he ascends to heaven happen within 10 miles of each other?

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I think not. There's no coincidence there. So both of these miracles happen in the same place.

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That's why they're connected. They both teach us about Jesus bringing a kingdom. They both teach us that Jesus provides for his citizens when they're in need.

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Those two things are connected. The second thing I would tell you is that they both have a confession that precede them.

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There's only two confessions, great confessions in the Gospel of John, and they happen from Nathanael and they happen from Thomas, and both of them are immediately before the miracle, which shows that they're connected.

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You'll hear one right before they get to Cana and they do their thing. It's Nathanael who makes this great confession of Christ.

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And you'll remember that Nathanael in John chapter one was skeptical of Jesus. He said, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

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Remember, his brother came to him and said, we found the Christ. And he says, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

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And then he sees Jesus and Jesus says, before I saw you, you were under the fig tree.

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And Nathanael says, what does he say? He says, my God and my King, my

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Lord and my King. The great confession of chapter one happens immediately before they storm into Cana and do this great miracle.

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He was a doubter, the first doubting disciple. And then he confesses this

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God glorifying statement right before this miracle. Rabbi, you are the son of God and you are the

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King of Israel is what he says. Now look at John 21. Right before John 21 happens, there's another doubting disciple.

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There's another disciple that says, even if I stick my fingers into his wounds and I put my hand in his side,

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I will not believe. He's saying the same thing. What good can come from Nazareth? And yet when his eyes were opened, he also announces this great

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God glorifying confession saying my Lord and my God.

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Both confessions preceded the miracle. Both confessions prepared us for these miracles. The point of each of these miracles is that God is

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God provides for his people and in space and time, his people finally saw that he had come in the flesh.

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Nathanael saw that Jesus was God. That's the point. Thomas saw that Jesus was God. That's the point.

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And this God is the kind of God who doesn't, he's not a miser and he's not stingy. He provides for his people.

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When his people have a need, he covers it. That's what these two miracles and these two great confessions are pointing out.

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And this is how these two stories are connected. Both stories also have

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Jesus manipulating time and space. Both stories have Jesus acting like the creator of the universe.

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If you think about it, in Cana, Jesus bypasses time. He takes empty pots and he puts water in them and then when they draw it out, it's wine.

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What did Jesus do there? Jesus bypassed time. How do you get to wine?

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You get to wine from rain falling from the sky and landing on the dirt. And then it sinks down into the dirt and the farmer plants the seed.

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And then the rain gets sucked into the vine. And it goes up through the branches and it creates these beautiful little blooms.

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And then it creates these clusters that don't taste like water anymore. They've been transformed into something sweet and beautiful.

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And then after an entire season of growing these things, you collect them, you stamp them, you squash them, you squeeze them, you put them in bottles.

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And after you've bottled them, you allow time for fermentation. Which if it's a good wine, the kind of wine like maybe

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Jesus was making, that doesn't happen instantly. We've got some winemakers here.

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It takes time to make good wine. So Jesus bypassed ten years, 20 years.

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Maybe it was a fine 25 year wine, maybe a sweet port from Spain, 25 year

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Porto, I've had one of those before, it was really good. He skipped all of that and he made it instantly.

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Because he's the God over all time. Instead of this taking years of effort, Jesus did it in an instant because he's

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Lord over time. Same thing happens in John 21, except being Lord over time, he's

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Lord over space, material reality. These are master fishermen, I will remind you.

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These are men who didn't need a fish finder. They knew where the fish were, they knew the habits of the fish and they knew exactly where to cast their nets.

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They grew up in this region, their fathers had taught them all of the tricks. They knew how to catch fish and yet they couldn't in this moment.

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Because all of their human effort, Jesus was showing them is futile without words. And Jesus yells out to them,

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I love this. Have you caught any fish? And the one word reply, no.

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And what does Jesus do? He circumvents time and space. He calls forth, he calls forth out of something that was barren, the ocean.

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And he makes it fruitful and he multiplies it. He calls forth this great school of fish so that at just the right moment, they throw out their nets and they're so full that they can't even carry them in.

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They have to use their boats to drag them to the seashore. Because he's not just the

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God of all time, he's the God of all space. When he speaks, space moves and it obeys him.

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You think about when he walked on water and he says, or right when he's in the boat and he says, be still, and it obeyed him.

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In this moment, he told the fish, come, and they came. Do you know the only creature on earth that doesn't come when

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God says, come, is us? The fish obey him, the trees obey him, the mountains obey.

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If he looked at this mountain and said, be ripped up, it would be. And yet we are the ones who struggle to obey him.

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Interesting. Both these miracles are connected. They're connected in geography.

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They're connected in the confessions of faith that happen right before them. The only two confessions of faith happen right in front of the first and the last miracle.

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And they also happen in the fact that Jesus is acting like the creator of the universe, which he is. He's the one who holds the universe together by the word of his power.

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So when he speaks, the fish come. When he speaks, time fast forward, and wine or water turns into the best wine.

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The next thing that you'll see is that the number three shows up in both of these passages. It happened on the wedding miracle at Cana happened on the third day.

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And this miracle of the fish was Jesus's third appearance to his disciples. Now, there's a lot of points of comparison with the number three in the gospel, but I do want to remind you the number three, especially to John, is very important.

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It is not a coincidence that the wedding miracle of Cana happened on the third day after Nathaniel was brought into the discipleship community, and it's not a coincidence that this is the third appearance that happens in the gospel.

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John is reporting accurate history, but he's also giving us a thematic link that connects these stories together.

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At Cana on the third day, Jesus's ministry was inaugurated. On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, consummating his kingdom, and then, or bringing it to bear, and then at the

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Sea of Tiberias, his ministry was coronated on the third appearance. So this inclusio confirms the message.

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Here's another thing that connects these two miracles together. There's people who have need. In the first one, there's a family who's wanting to avoid embarrassment.

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At that time, if you were throwing a wedding and you ran out of wine, it would have been pretty embarrassing.

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In today's time, it's not that big of a deal, but in those days, it would have been, yeah, we went to that wedding, but they ran out of wine.

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They must not be under the blessing of God. So what does Jesus do?

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Jesus gives them an unbelievable amount of wine. By some reports, it's 150 gallons, which means it's bottles of wine, according to our current modern day.

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Can you imagine? Oh, oh, you think you're not blessed, boom. Now a blessing running out of their ears now.

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At the sea, there's a very similar thing happening. They haven't caught a single fish, so what does

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Jesus do? He gives them 153 of them, and it says that they were large fish.

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They were the best of the breed. 153 fish would be equivalent of nine to 10 months of a person's salary.

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You gotta think about it. Food cost a lot more back then than it does today. We go and we, I mean, we think food costs a lot now.

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It has, inflation has affected it. Things cost more than they used to, but not like this. You go to the store and you buy 153 fish.

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It's probably not gonna be 10 months of your salary, but it was then. This was a massive blessing to them.

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And we wonder, why were they fishing? Were they hungry? Maybe. Were they broke? Because they hadn't done a lot of work lately.

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They've been sitting in the upper room, scared that they were gonna die. Maybe. Whatever it was, Jesus blessed them unbelievably.

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Another point of comparison here is that both of these miracles happened by the command of Jesus. He says, go do this to the water pots, and it happened.

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And then he tells the fish, you go do this, and it happened. So both of these miracles are by the direct command of Jesus.

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Here's another one. The abundance of the provision. We already talked about this. 150 gallons of wine, nearly a whole year's wages of fish.

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Jesus is giving them abundant provision. Here's another one. They both use specific numbers, both of these miracles.

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There's six stone water pots. Have you ever wondered why there's six stone water pots? Well, the number six often points to incompleteness.

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It points to man in our sin, in our incompleteness.

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So you have six stone water pots. What were those water pots used for? They were used for ceremonial washing.

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Where does ceremonial washing come from? The Mosaic law. So now you have Jesus showing up at a wedding, and the one feature that was connected to the law of Moses, their ceremonial cleansing was empty and dry.

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And then you ask, what is Jesus doing? He's not bringing water. He's not reinstituting the

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Mosaic covenant where they can now wash their hands again. He brought wine, which meant that he's bringing a better kingdom, which means that he's putting away the old kingdom of Moses and its dustiness and its incompleteness, and he's bringing the wine of the covenant.

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An unbelievable blessing. He could have put the wine in anything that he wanted to, but he chose those stone pots for a very specific reason, to show that the law of Moses, the clean and unclean, the ritual washings, actually can't bring about the blessings of God, so he brought wine.

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God gave wine. And, just in case you're worried, this was not grape juice.

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Grape juice was invented by us when we boiled all the good things out of wine in the late 1800s.

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There is no such thing as unfermented wine in the Bible. There just isn't. So when God decided to bless his people, he blessed them with fermented wine.

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Let that bake your noodle a little bit. God loves the gluttonous on his blessings.

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Being a drunkard is always a sin, right? But enjoying the good gifts that God gives us is not a sin.

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That's why we have wine at the table, because God gives wine in his kingdom, he does.

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153 fish. I will admit to you right now that I don't know how voracious what

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I'm getting ready to say is. James Jordan is a great scholar, and he said it, which helps me give credence to it.

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But I know the number 153 must be specific for something, because it's in the Bible. He didn't have to say it.

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It could be that he's just recording accurately historically. But I think that there's a reason for this number, and I'm not fully satisfied with this answer, but I'll tell it to you just so that you'll know what others are saying about it.

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What I'm saying to you is that the number's specific, whether this specific application is true or not.

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So I wanna be clear about that. 153 is what's called a triangular number.

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Have any of you ever heard of the concept of triangular numbers? We've all been out of school way too long, or most of us.

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Triangular numbers are numbers that when you add up the sum of the numbers involved, it equals another number.

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Triangular number for the number two would be the number three. One and two together make three. Triangular number for four would be one, two, and three, and four added together.

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What's that off the top of my head? 10, six, 10. So the triangular number for the number four would be 10.

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The triangular number for the number 17 is 153. If you add up one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, all the way up to 17, you get the number 153.

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It's a special number. It's a very specific number. And what Jordan argues is that 10 and seven make 17, and 10 and seven are always specific numbers in God's kingdom.

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10 represents his kingdom. Seven represents perfection. Seven and 10 together represent the perfection of his kingdom.

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And here you have this 153 representing that all the nations, according to Jordan, all the nations are going to come in.

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This is a symbol of all the nations coming into the kingdom of Christ, a massive swarm.

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And I think there's some merit to this because the first miracle in Cana happens in a Jewish town.

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This happens at the Sea of Tiberias. That's really important because John never calls this the

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Sea of Tiberias. He calls it by its Hebrew name, the Sea of Galilee. But here, he doesn't call it by its

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Jewish name. He calls it specifically by its Greek name, the Sea of Tiberias, which none of the other gospels do.

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So there is this idea that the first miracle was a very Jewish miracle, and the second miracle was a very

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Greek miracle that God is gonna provide for his people, the Jews who believe in Jesus, and God is gonna provide for his people, the

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Gentiles who, like fish, are drawn into his nets and who are brought into his kingdom in abundance.

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So whether you believe the number 153 means what Jordan believes that it means or not, that point is true, that God is gonna bring the

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Gentiles into his kingdom like swarming fish into the nets, and it's gonna be so abundant that it's gonna basically be breaking the nets.

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So that is true. Whether you think that is what that number means or not, well, that's a different story.

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The point of all of this, why are these passages connected? That's our next question. Well, I think they're connected because they wanna tell us what the

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Gospel of John is all about. What is the Gospel of John all about? Why are both miracles saying the same things?

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Why do they both happen in the same geography? Why did they both happen by the direct command of Jesus? Why did they both happen by him providing to people who are in need?

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Why are these miracles so similar? Because they're teaching us something about our

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Lord and Savior that we are not allowed to miss. He is the

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God who brings transformation. He's the God who brings wine out of water and fish out of nothingness.

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He is the God who brings life into dead places. He is the God who brings fullness into things that are empty.

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He is the God who brings life into dead things, and that is true for each and every single one of us.

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Before we knew God, we were empty as those stone water pots and full of nothing but dust, and by the power of Almighty God, he filled us with his life -giving spirit.

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And just like those fish, off doing our own thing, stuck under a rock somewhere like a fat striper, he drew us and brought us to himself by his command.

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The fish did not get together. The fish did not, hey, I think we'll get caught today.

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That sounds like a great idea. How about all of us do it together? No, by the calling of God, they were drawn to him in the same way that you and I.

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Though we were empty, we've been filled in Christ. Though we were blind, he pulled us and drew us into his nets and brought us into his kingdom.

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He's a God of transformation. The second thing I would tell you is he's a God of provision, and with that,

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I'm gonna add on top of that, sacramental nourishment. At Cana, God brought wine, and it was just a one -time thing.

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That wedding didn't happen every week. They didn't renew their vows and get a new 150 gallons of wine every week, but it points to something that never ends.

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That wedding is a picture of something that never ends. What is it? Brothers and sisters, at the Lord's table every single week,

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God brings wine. He brings wine to us, a never -ending bounty of wine to us so that over the course of our life, we probably end up consuming about 150 bottles of wine week in, week out at the table of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. This miracle shows us that he brought wine to his people, and he did, he brought it here at the table.

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The second aspect, in John 21, he brought flesh. He could have fed them in any way that he wanted.

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He could have had bread rained down from heaven. God did that in the Old Testament. He could have done that. But God sovereignly called his disciples to have a little bit of anxious energy sitting in that upper room.

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Peter, who's the most anxious of them all, which, by the way, when he says, cast all your anxieties on him, he knows a thing or two about that.

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Peter says, time for us to go fishing, and then the other disciples. Did you also notice that the disciples that are mentioned are

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Thomas and Nathanael, further connecting these two miracles together? Did you notice that?

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They're the ones that are mentioned. They're the ones that are named in this passage. And what they do is they go fishing, and they're fishing for flesh.

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And when they get to the shore, Jesus is cooking the flesh, and he feeds them the flesh. That's a one -time event.

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Jesus is going back to heaven. They have no hope of showing up at that same beach for the rest of their life, and Jesus having a barbecue.

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But it points to something better than itself. It points to something that for the rest of their life, and for the rest of ours, and for anyone who is in Christ, he will feed us every week with his flesh.

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The flesh of the fish point to the flesh of Christ, and we at the table have the wine of Cana on display for us, and we have the flesh of Christ that we feast upon.

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These are sacramental signs. So the gospel of John is pointing to us, even in the miracles, that the whole point of our relationship with God is communing with this great king, and feasting with him at his table.

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Isn't that beautiful? Another thing it teaches us is that we must depend upon Jesus.

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Mary in John chapter two realized that she didn't have any money to purchase any more wine, and she needed

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Christ. She had come to the end of her humanity. She had come to the end of ordinary, and she needed

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God to do something extraordinary. Mary had a need for dependence, like the disciples did on that lake.

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They had come to the end of their rope, literally, the end of their fishing line. They had tried all night to catch something, and they were at their wit's end.

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That is the place where we're often ready to receive what God has for us, when we've come to the end of ourself.

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There's been so many times in my life where I've been comfortable, and I've been, you know, not thinking about the things of God.

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I don't receive from God in those seasons often. It's when I've come to the end of myself, when

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I finally realize how broken I am, when I can't, in my own human strength, do what God has asked me to do. That's when

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I see God show up in my life, almost every time. When we were called to plant this church, we had no idea how difficult that was gonna be.

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Derek and I were gleefully drawing things on napkins at Press Cafe in Burlington, and we had no idea that planting this church was gonna be, that the church would dwindle down to about eight people a week, and we both thought that it was gonna collapse, that I fell off of a house, that we were gonna walk through COVID, and that I was gonna go through a massive bout of depression right there in the first six months.

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I reached the end of myself, and I saw God move, and we are still here because of God, and not because of any person.

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I can tell you story after story after story of coming to the end of myself. You must come to the end of yourself.

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You must stop trusting in your own human effort. If the Lord snaps his fingers, the seas go empty, and you can't find what you were looking for.

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If the Lord snaps his fingers, the wine runs dry, and at the same time, you can work as hard as you wanna work until the

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Lord God provides, you're waiting on him, and he will take you to the end of yourself, and he will show you that you actually have to depend on him.

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Brothers and sisters, don't wait for the thunderclap to knock you on your face.

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Realize now that you can't depend on you, and that you must depend on him because it's when you come to the end of yourself that you actually are ready to receive the good things of God.

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Another thing that we see is the unification of Jesus' church. The first miracle is a miracle of the

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Jews. They're in Canaan. The second miracle is a miracle of the Gentiles. God is bringing his church together, past, present, and future,

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Jew and Gentile under one name, the Lord Jesus Christ. His miracles prove that. He's also a

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God who restores fellowship with God. At Cana, they were feasting without wine, and it was about to be a tragedy, and then

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God in the flesh shows up. We don't wanna miss that point in this miracle is that God in the flesh shows up and makes their celebration joyful.

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It wasn't actually the wine that made the celebration a big hit because they were already full of wine.

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It's when God himself showed up and brought his presence. It's when God himself shows up on the beach that morning when things start to happen.

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What John is telling us is that he is the one who restores us into fellowship with God, that without God, we're alone in this world, but when he shows up, we have everything that we need.

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The point that I want us to understand today is who Jesus is. He's a transformer.

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He brings life into dead things, and he will, because he loves you, take you to the end of yourself so that you will stop trusting in you and you will start trusting in him.

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Jesus does not want to be a part of your life. Jesus is going to break you until he is all of your life to the glory and praise of God.

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Jesus is the one who will teach us that we need him more than anything, that we must trust him more than everything, and he will bless us far greater than we could ever imagine.

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Brothers and sisters, let us pray. Let us look to Christ and Christ alone, amen? Lord, the beauty of these two miracles are that two groups of people got to see that they need you.

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They can't do anything without you. Lord, help us to come to the end of ourselves, to stop trusting in our sufficiency, to stop trusting in our ingenuity, to stop trusting in our strength and our power and our ability, and instead to trust in the power of almighty

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God displayed through the work of Jesus Christ and made applicable to us through the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Let us, Father, come to the end of ourselves so that we can stand and receive the beginnings of your blessings.

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Let us, as Matthew says, seek first the kingdom of God so that everything else will be provided.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let us stand and sing in response this morning.

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Let us sing with great rejoicing that in all things all glory belongs to our Lord Christ, this morning, that should nothing of our efforts stand and no legacy survive, that again, all glory belongs to Him.

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♪ Should nothing of our efforts stand ♪ ♪

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No legacy survive ♪ ♪ Unless the

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Lord does raise the house in vain ♪ ♪

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To you who boasts tomorrow's gain tell me ♪ ♪

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What is your life amidst that vanishes at dawn ♪ ♪

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All glory be to Christ ♪ ♪ All glory be to Christ our

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King ♪ ♪ All glory be to Christ His rule is ever ♪ ♪

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And rain will ever sing all glory be to Christ ♪ ♪

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His will be done His kingdom come on earth as is above ♪ ♪

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Who is Himself our daily bread praise

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Him the Lord of love ♪ ♪

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Living water satisfy the thirsty without price ♪ ♪

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We'll take a cup of kindness yet all glory be to Christ ♪ ♪

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All glory be to Christ our King ♪ ♪ All glory be to Christ His rule is ever ♪ ♪

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And rain will ever sing all glory be to Christ ♪ ♪

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When on the day the great I am the faithful and the true ♪ ♪

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The Lamb who was for sinners slain is making all things new ♪ ♪

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And we shall let His people be all glory be to Christ ♪ ♪

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All glory be to Christ our King ♪ ♪

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All glory be to Christ His rule and rain will ever sing ♪ ♪

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All glory be to Christ our King ♪ ♪ All glory be to Christ His rule and rain will ever sing ♪ ♪

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All glory be to Christ, Amen.

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♪ Our Lord's supper passage is from 1 Corinthians 10, 16 through 17, is not the cup of blessing.

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You see how it describes the cup? Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ.

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It is not the bread that we break a sharing in the body of Christ. Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body for we partake of the one bread.

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As we come to the Lord's table today, brothers and sisters, the attitude that we must come with is one of gratitude for the abundant provision of our

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Savior. This morning, we've journeyed through the hamburger buns of the gospel of John, reflecting the two profoundest miracles that showcase

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Jesus's lavish generosity and his desire to provide abundantly for his people.

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In John 2, at the wedding of Cain and Jesus turned water into wine, not just any wine, but the finest and most precious wine and not in small measure.

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This miracle was a sign pointing to this very table. It was a foretaste of the joy of the kingdom of God.

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Jesus took something as ordinary as water, the most common element on earth, and he transformed it into something extraordinary, the wine of the kingdom.

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And today we come to that cup of blessing. And then in John 21, as we've spoken about,

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Jesus appeared to his disciples who'd been fishing all night and caught nothing, and he gave them flesh to eat.

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And as nice as that flesh was to eat, a roasted piece of fish, I'm sure, was delicious. It pales in comparison to what we now consume, the flesh of Jesus Christ.

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Brothers and sisters, you come to the table of a God who loves you so much that he has provided so abundantly for you in a small little cup and a pinch of bread, depending on your pinch, he has provided something so concentrated and so magnificent that our minds can't even fully or truly comprehend it.

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More than just wine and more than just bread, he has given us himself. So when you come to the table, brothers and sisters, you must come as a

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Christian, because if not, this is too potent for you, it will harm you.

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But if you're a Christian and you've been baptized, you must come to this table with great joy, because what will be a curse for the unbeliever is a blessing for you.