The First of Jesus' Signs

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according.

The Wedding at Cana in John 2

To St. John chapter 2 verses 1 through 11. On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was invited to the wedding with His disciples and 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. They filled them up to the brim. And He said to them now draw some out. Take it to the master of the feast. So they took it. And when the master of the feast tasted 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 is the first of His signs that Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested His glory and His disciples believed in Him. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus.

Amen. Now I remember when I was pretty new to Lutheranism one of my fathers in the Lutheran faith told me something that I have never been able to confirm but his claim was that historically speaking that the gospel of John that there are more commentaries written on the gospel of John than any of the other gospels.

In fact he made the claim that when you add up all the commentaries on the gospel of John that the commentaries on the other three gospels don't even come close to that number. John seems to be a text, a gospel that people are obsessed with.

Now at the time I didn't understand it because John seems like a pretty straightforward gospel. It tells the story of Christ. It's different than the synoptic gospels. But as I began to understand the kind of brilliance of this particular gospel it made it very clear to me over time as to why so many people spend the time writing commentaries and really meditating and thinking through what it is that is revealed in this gospel.

Think of it this way. Have you ever been to a website where while you're reading one of the passages or one of the pages that it's just chock full of hyperlinks? So you're reading and in the middle of the sentence you have entire words.

Hyperlink here, a hyperlink there, a hyperlink there. And if you're thinking well what is this author trying to tell me? And so you open up all the different hyperlinks. You end up with like 45 tabs open on your browser and you're thinking there's a lot of supporting stuff going on with this.

The gospel of John is a lot like that. In order to really plumb the depths of what's going on in this gospel you have to know how to hyperlink it to other parts of the scriptures. And so as part of my discipline in putting the sermon together this week I decided to spend a lot of time in John's hyperlinks on this text and I realized that if I were to work through all of the different hyperlinks we'd probably about have four sermons.

So I've decided to put all four into one. We're going to be here for about two hours. No, I'm joking. Really, I'm joking. I've decided to take a subset of that. And so here's what we're going to do. We're going to work our way through it and I'll work some of the hyperlinks for you so that you can get it.

Signs in Scripture: Moses, the Apostles, and Jesus

Now as we work through this we obviously saw, as I read out the text, that Christ takes water in these water jars and miraculously changes it into wine. And if you're thinking, it seems to me like an obvious way of understanding this text is that it's going to have something to do with baptism and it's going to have something to do with the Lord's Supper.

If that's your inclination, you're in the ballpark. Let's see if we can figure out how to tighten that down. And so in order to do this, we're going to consider the last verse of our Gospel text. The last verse says in John 2 .11, this, the first of Jesus' signs that Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and he manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.

It's kind of fascinating. Think of it this way. The Gospel of John, according to our commentators and biblical scholars, that the Gospel of John has seven signs that are recorded in it, plus one. Seven plus one that are designed to demonstrate that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in his name.

The seven signs that were recorded in the Gospel of John are these. The first, the changing of the water into wine. The second, healing the royal official's son. Then healing the paralytic at Bethesda.

And then feeding the 5 ,000, which is a huge sign. Jesus walks on the water. Jesus heals the man born blind. And then raising Lazarus from the dead. A full seven, and that's a good biblical number because you remember that God, when he created the universe and everything that is, did so in six days and then he rested on the seventh.

And then always kind of fascinating, biblically, the eighth day is symbolic of and pointing to the first day of the new creation. So the eighth sign that is there recorded for us in the Gospel of John is Jesus' resurrection from the grave and that of course takes place on the third day.

So note here, signs have a purpose in Scripture and if you ever hear somebody who's in the charismatic movement saying, the Bible from beginning to end is full of miracles and signs and wonders, it's the norm in the Bible.

No, it's not. In fact, as you read your Bible you're going to note that there are particular high water marks when it comes to signs and wonders. Moses being the first signs and wonders fellow and he was given signs for a particular reason.

And then it kind of fast forwards all the way to Elijah and Elisha. Nothing really monumental happening in between there as far as signs and wonders. And then everything's quiet until Jesus shows up. And you'll note that in Scripture, Jesus says of John the Baptist, who's the last of the prophets, that there's none greater born among women than this fellow.

And Scripture's very clear. He performed no signs, no wonders. And then Jesus shows up on the scene and there's this pinnacle of high water mark of signs and wonders and then the disciples themselves perform signs and wonders.

So let's talk about the purpose of signs, if you would, and note the distinction then between Moses and the apostles and then Jesus himself. So in order to kind of unpack this, we're going to look at Exodus chapter 4 starting at verse 1.

God is, actually Jesus is speaking to Moses from the burning bush, commissioning him to go to Pharaoh to tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. And of course Moses isn't really keen on this assignment.

He's trying to figure out how to get out of it. So it says this though in chapter 4, Moses said to the Lord, behold, they will not believe me, nor will they listen to my voice. They're going to say Yahweh did not appear to you, which is kind of a, that's a legitimate concern.

You know, how am I how are they supposed to know that I actually talked with you? We're going to need some proof here. So God said, what is that in your hand? He said, well it's a staff. He said, well alright, throw it on the ground.

So he threw it on the ground and it became a serpent. Moses ran from it. But Yahweh said to Moses, put out your hand, catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand, caught it, and it became a staff in his hand.

And then the Lord says this, so that they may believe that Yahweh the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you. The purpose of signs and wonders is to validate the fact that God had sent you.

And so then again the Lord said to him, alright, put your hand inside your cloak. He put his hand inside his cloak and when he had taken it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. And then God said, put your hand back inside your cloak.

So he put his hand back inside his cloak. And when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. Of course, God being a trinity decides to give him three signs. And the last one we should pay close attention to.

So if they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even those two signs, or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile, pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.

Huh. Water to blood. Water to wine. Isn't that interesting? I mean, just if you kind of think about it in those terms. We sit there and we go, I know Jesus said when we take the Lord's Supper, take, drink, this is my blood in the new covenant shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

And you sit there and go, really? Is that what God is doing? Can he do that? Well, I seem to remember he turned water into blood and water into wine. Both of those elements, by the way, are present in the Lord's Supper.

Isn't that fascinating? And then you think of the waters of baptism. Water is there in that sense, too. And we like to always point out that the active ingredient in washing away your sins in the waters of baptism is nothing less than the blood of Christ.

So there's some kind of sacramental thing going on here in our Gospel text, but just consider that. So signs are given for the purpose of validating that you were sent by God and Moses was given three signs.

Three signs in particular to demonstrate that God had sent him. Now the Apostle Paul, on the other side, we'll kind of bookend this by going to the opposite end of the book of the Bible. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, 12, writing to the church in Corinth who had fallen for the claims of the so-called super-apostles reminds them that when he came to Corinth that he actually performed the signs of a real apostle.

And here's what he says. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. You notice that in the New Testament era, signs and wonders were the signs of a true apostle.

True apostle. And so the apostles were able to operate in signs and wonders. And this makes sense because apostle was like an emissary. Somebody sent from somebody else to conduct business on their behalf.

It's kind of a legal status, if you would. And to be able to say, listen, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, somebody would say, yeah, right, prove it. Okay, I'll prove it and be able to perform signs and wonders.

And then we'll note that Peter and the other apostles as well as Paul had the ability to work miraculously and perform signs and wonders which validated their apostleship. For instance, Acts 5, 12 -16 says,.

Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles, and they were all together in Solomon's portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem.

And more than ever, believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, so that even they carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on the cots and mats, so that as Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them.

The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed. Now a little bit of a note here. These people were healed of visible, physical ailments.

This is not like what you see on TVN. If you ever have watched Trinity Broadcasting Network and they have some kind of a healing revival up there, and they've got a healing line where somebody's coming through smacking people on the head and they're falling over, or they're claiming that I was healed of this particular disease.

You'll note that over and again the things that they're claiming to be healed of are generally ailments that you physically can't see. Oh, I had migraine headaches and they just disappeared. Or I was having gastrointestinal problems.

Just ask my wife. And now I'm cured. And so always and again, the ailments that are obvious, those people never make it to the front. And if you go onto YouTube, years ago there was an expose done on Benny Hinn's so-called healing ministry by an undercover investigator.

And what they did is they took hidden cameras to one of Benny Hinn's healing revivals and they noted something very fascinating. And that is that when people would show up to Benny Hinn's healing revivals and they were in a wheelchair and they were quadriplegics or paraplegics, or it was clear that they had some kind of degenerative disease where they're not able to walk properly without the assistance of a walker or something like that.

All of those people were pushed all the way to the back of the room. And then when it came time for the healing line, they were all escorted out a door and they found themselves outside of the building.

They were never brought to the front. It's kind of a fascinating thing. Like I said, you can find that on YouTube. But the apostles, they performed the true signs of an apostle. And those who had legitimate ailments, like people who were born without the ability to walk and those who were blind, they were healed and nobody challenged the miracle because it was obvious that it had taken place.

And so God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of the apostles. Acts 19 says, and here's Paul's version of it, so that Paul, even the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and evil spirits came out of them.

So we'll note then, Moses had signs to prove he was sent by God. Apostles, the apostles that wrote the scriptures, they also had signs to prove that they were sent by Jesus. But here's the qualitative difference.

When you read your Bible, especially in the New Testament, when the apostles perform signs and wonders, they will do it using this formula, if you would. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I command you to stand up and walk.

In the name of Jesus Christ, I restore your sight. Or something like that, right? And so they always are invoking Christ. Moses says, God gave me these signs, let me show them to you. And they say, yeah, we think you were sent by Yahweh.

But when Jesus performs a sign, he doesn't say, in the name of God, he just performs it. And verse 11 of our Gospel text made it very clear when it said that this is the first of his signs that Jesus did.

He actually performed them. The apostles performed their signs by the power of God. God doing it through them. God doing it through Moses. But Jesus, he did it on his own steam. And by doing so, verse 11 says, he manifested his glory.

Not God's. His. Notice the distinction then. And that's kind of vital as we look at our text today. Now, one other hyperlink, if you would, that will help us a little bit here. And this is where we have to keep in mind that over and again, Scripture is making the distinction between the Mosaic covenant as well as the New Covenant.

And so what we're going to do is we're going to interpret our Gospel text through one of the sentences in John 1, 17, in the prior chapter. And here's what John writes in John 1. The law was given through Moses.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And this distinction between law and Gospel shows up very interestingly in our text.

Let me help us out a little bit and give us a frame to work from. In 2 Corinthians 3, verse 4, it says this. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who made us sufficient to be ministers of a New Covenant.

Not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. And ponder for a second here what Paul is saying. That in the New Covenant, we do not make ourselves sufficient for salvation.

God Himself is the one who makes us sufficient in Christ. We come to Him dead in trespasses and sins. He makes us alive. We come to Him burdened with sin and shame. He unburdens us, forgives us, and makes us sufficient for eternal life.

This is all because of what Christ has done for us. Now watch this distinction then in 2 Corinthians 3, the next part. Now, if the ministry of death, which is the purpose of the law, is to kill you. If the ministry of death, which was carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?

For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.

For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, how much more will what is permanent have glory? And so you'll note Paul is talking about the fact that the Mosaic Covenant is coming to an end.

The ministry of condemnation, the law with all of its demands, which is screaming at you and me today. You have not kept God's law perfectly. You have not loved God with your whole heart. You have not loved your neighbor as yourself.

And the law says you stand condemned. You need to be purified. You need to be washed. You need to repent. This is what the law says. But that glory that came with those words has now been surpassed by the glory of Christ.

The glory of God where we are declared to be pardoned and forgiven in Christ and made sufficient because of His grace. All of this is in play. Let's take a look now at John. Hopefully I haven't confused everybody because from time to time when I do these kinds of sermons, I'm afraid that I've got data overload in the front part of it.

And so if you're looking at me going, I hope you can land this plane without crashing it pastor. Yeah, I share your hopes here. I share your hopes. So John 2 now. We're in our gospel text. On the third day.

Yeah, you've got to pay attention to that third day stuff. Always got to pay attention to third day stuff. Third day is the day that Jesus rose from the grave. Third day in the book of Genesis was also the day when great vines were made.

Very first time. So God makes the vegetation and the plants that make the wine. Just saying. It's all kind of in play here. 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. And when the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. A little bit of a note here. Weddings today are pretty short by comparison with weddings in the ancient days.

Think of it this way. We can get around by car and airplane and we're able to travel long distances very quickly. Not so in the ancient world. So when people got invitations to come to a wedding, they'd hang out for a while.

The wedding feast lasted it's a multi-day long affair and it's important that you plan ahead. So I mean, I don't know what the Norwegian equivalent of this would be. We ran out of lutefisk which I would not complain about.

I'm just saying. But the idea here is you're supposed to have enough wine for the whole event and so a major faux pas has taken place and in an honor society they are running the risk of being dishonored and so Jesus' mother springs into action and says they have no wine.

Jesus' answer to her is actually fascinating. Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. Weird answer. The reason why it's a weird answer is because Jesus is already baptized.

He's already begun calling disciples because his disciples are there at the wedding feast as well. Makes you wonder if the addition of like 12 other guys made it so that that's why they ran out of wine.

But the idea here is that Jesus is our, he's already preaching. He's already beginning to teach. This is going to be the first of his miraculous signs. He's called his disciples. So he can't be talking about the time between his baptism and the time between his death and resurrection.

His hour has not yet come. It's clearly a reference to his dying on the cross. So what kind of answer is that? I don't know. It just kind of hangs out there in space as to what he's referring to. But something happens in that answer and we're not sure what it is because Mary's tone totally changes.

I don't know if Jesus winked at his mom or if he just had one of those like koinonia moments that like mom and son can only have where she could tell by the little smirk on his face that he was going to do something.

It doesn't say. But she totally changes and says to the servants, you do whatever he tells you to do. Which, by the way, is really good advice. And in case you don't know this, this is an actual fact that, well, these are the last recorded words of Mary, the mother of Christ.

These are her last recorded words. She says nothing that's recorded when she's at the cross while Jesus is bleeding and dying. She says nothing. Her last recorded words in all of the Bible are, do whatever he tells you.

I like this. I like this. Now, what is Jesus telling us to do? Ready? Repent. Be forgiven. Believe. Have eternal life. When we have the Lord's Supper, he says to you, take, eat. This is my body broken for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

And then he says, take, drink. This is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Jesus says, be forgiven and live. Be forgiven and have a right standing with God. Be forgiven and, well, in the waters of baptism, Jesus says, be united with me in my death, in my resurrection.

Have your heart circumcised, that heart of stone replaced with the heart of flesh. Jesus says, I will to forgive you. I will that you have eternal life. So do whatever he says. That'll preach. Great words from her.

The Law, the New Covenant, and the Joy of Forgiveness

So, now the servants are doing whatever Jesus says, and we learn that there were six stone water jars. Hmm. Six. There were six days that God worked in creation. Stone oftentimes has a reference back to, you know, those letters carved in stone.

And these are water, these water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, having everything to do with the Torah and the Mikvahs and the washings and all this kind of stuff. And, by the way, this is not going to be something you're going to want to drink, by the way.

I don't know if you've noticed bath water is like the last water on planet Earth you would ever drink, right? This is not how you party at a wedding, with bath water or washing water or anything like that.

And so this portion, these little details kind of all recall to our minds some of the major pieces of the Mosaic Covenant, the condemning work of the law, the need that we all have to be purified, to have our sins washed away.

And so Jesus, being at a wedding, says, fill the jars with water. They filled them up to the brim. And so He said to them, now draw some out and take it to the Master of the Feast. So they took it. And when the Master of the Feast tasted 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, listen, everyone serves the good wine first.

And then when people have drunk freely, the taste buds are shot, the brain is a little bit you know, happy, right? Then you pour out the stinky peat or the two-buck chuck, because it's not going to matter at that point.

But you've kept the good wine until now. And you know, you can't help but think, you know, is there some kind of allusion here to the wedding feast of the Lamb? There really has to be. There really has to be.

Because you'll note then that the law and its demands and the requirements that it has for washings and da-da-da-da-da, you don't celebrate with that. You're just reminded of just how unworthy you are.

But Jesus, in the Gospel, in the New Covenant, this is about wine. This is about not just wine, this is like wedding wine. Now my first experience with wedding wine by the way, was at an Italian wedding.

Now this is going to end up being some kind of public confession of sins. I just feel it. But let me tell you the story. My mom's best friend at the time was Italian. Her daughter was getting married and they were Roman Catholic.

And we went to an Italian-Roman Catholic wedding. And man, those people know how to party. So I'm just saying. So at the reception, there was a wine fountain. I was nine years old. So the fountain, I mean, it was a multi-tiered affair.

It was coming out the top, burbling down to the second tier, and then down on the bottom tier, there were holes in the bottom tier. And all you had to do was take your wine glass and put it up to one of the holes and fill it right up.

Of course, there were no guards on duty. And I don't have much of a memory after a particular part. And my mom says I slept for a week. But ah man, the wine was flowing and the people were celebrating.

And it was just this amazing thing to see these people having such a great time. And see, that's the idea. The law condemns us. But Christ forgives us. And with that forgiveness comes the joy of our salvation.

It's not stick-in-the-mud time. It's now time to celebrate. First order of business. I've said this before. I'll say it again. First order of business, once the judgment is over after Christ returns, is the wedding feast of the Lamb.

And it is described as having well-aged meat. Oh, thank God there is no veganism in the New Earth. Well-aged meat with fine marrow and well-aged wine. It's going to be a blowout party like it's the year zero.

Because it is. Right? And so the guilt and shame of the law gives way to the joy of forgiveness. The joy of salvation. And all of this is made possible because Christ when His hour comes, goes to the cross so that you and I, sinners that we are, can be forgiven.

So that we no longer have to fear the wrath of God. And you'll note again, this is the first of His signs that Jesus did and He manifested His glory. And the glory of God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love is to forgive and pardon sinners.

It is His glory to forgive and pardon sinners. And so where the burden of the law weighs us down with guilt and shame, Christ takes that away, gives us wedding garments, puts a wine glass in our hand and some steak on our plate and says, let's celebrate.

There's so much going on in this story and I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface. So do whatever Jesus tells you to do. Repent. Be forgiven. Let the law do its killing work and kill you. Stop trying to live as if somehow that you are maybe not really that bad.

No, really you're way worse than you can possibly imagine. Let the law do its killing work because you in the waters of baptism were made alive with Christ. Here at this altar you have received the forgiveness of sins in your mouth and you've already sampled the wine that is there for us at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

And it's great wine. It's the wine of the forgiveness of sins. It's the wine of the blood of Christ rather than, well, drinking the dregs of the wrath of God. This is something worth partying about. Forget the lutefisk.

I'm going to go with the wine. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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