Water Into Wine

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Well, we come tonight to the second chapter of John, and I know I was away for a week, so just to give you kind of a little recap from where we started, we began in the Gospel of John a few weeks ago, and looked through the prologue, the first 18 verses of John's Gospel, which really outlines in a grand fashion, in a glorious way, that Jesus Christ is not only a man, but Jesus Christ is God.
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And you'll remember that when we began our study of the Gospel of John, I made it very clear that John's entire Gospel points to the deity of Christ, that Jesus is God.
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And we also talked about the fact that John wrote his Gospel to prove this point, not only that we would know that, but also so that it would lead the readers to believe in him for salvation.
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And so throughout the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we heard the verbal testimony of John, and of John the Baptist, and of others, that Jesus truly was God.
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And so now as we come to chapter 2, there's going to be a shift from just verbal testimony to actually hearing about the things that Jesus did.
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So we move our attention from the words about Jesus as God, to actions that actually prove that Jesus is God.
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And throughout the remainder of this Gospel, we're going to see this pattern of switching back and forth between the words of Christ and the works of Christ.
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But no matter where we're at, if we're reading a discourse of Christ, things he's saying to the Pharisees or to his disciples, or in his miracles, we need to know one thing.
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This book points us that Jesus Christ is God, and the only proper response to that fact is belief in him for salvation.
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And so in today's passage in John chapter 2, we're going to see that Jesus is God because he does what only God could do.
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We're going to look at this miracle of water being turned into wine, something that maybe we're all familiar with.
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But we know that only God could create wine without the necessary ingredients, and without touching it, and without even commanding it to be so.
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And so as we look into this text, I would encourage you to consider just what a miracle this is.
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Now I find that for many of us, it's far too easy for us to read the Bible.
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That might not make a lot of sense to you right now, but here's what I'm trying to say.
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I think we have a tendency when we come to Scripture to read through too quickly.
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We don't really stop and think about what we're reading.
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And so we just read right over things.
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I think partly it's because some of these stories are really common.
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If you're like me and you grew up in church from the time I was tiny, I was hearing Bible stories.
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And so I've heard them so many times that sometimes I just take it for granted.
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I don't really look and read what the Scripture is saying here.
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I think another thing that causes this is in our society and in our world today, our culture seems to smack us in the face every day with an onslaught of things that are incredible, things that are outlandish and outrageous.
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We just see one insane thing after another to the point where we become disenchanted.
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We're not really connected and paying attention to what's going on.
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We've seen it all.
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What more can there be? But if we're to know God and to know him through the study of his word, we have to slow down and really consider what it's saying.
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And I find that to be especially important as we study the miracles of Jesus and the gospel of John.
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We have to remove ourselves from our modern society and all of the comforts and the craziness and place ourselves in the shoes or maybe more accurately in the sandals of the original readers.
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What kind of things would have been going through their minds when these things happen? How would they have understood it? These are questions that we as faithful students of the word must ask.
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And so today, as we come to this first miracle recorded in John's gospel, let's slow down and think through what's happening and how it applies to us.
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And so I want to read to you from John chapter 2.
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We're going to read verses 1 through 11.
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I'll be reading from the ESV.
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On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
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Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.
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When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.
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And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
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His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you.
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Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons.
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Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water, and they filled them up to the brim.
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And he said to them, Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.
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So they took it.
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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.
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And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine.
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But you have kept the good wine until now.
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This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.
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So as we look into this text tonight, we're going to see Jesus presented in three ways.
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First, Jesus is a great problem solver.
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Second, we'll see Jesus as the obedient son.
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And then finally, we'll see Jesus as the ultimate provider.
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But before we get to these points, I want to give you a little bit of background information on this story, because I think it's important for us to really be able to understand what's going on.
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We're told that the wedding took place in Cana at Cana in Galilee.
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Cana was a very small town that was north of Nazareth.
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We know Jesus of Nazareth.
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Nazareth in itself was a relatively small place that would have had probably around 500 residents.
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But Cana, nine miles north of Nazareth, was much smaller still.
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It was an agricultural town.
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It probably had, we don't know for certain, but maybe 30, 50, 60 people.
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So we're talking about a very small town.
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So certainly because this was a small agricultural center next to Nazareth or nearby to Nazareth, there would have been occasion for the residents of Cana to know the residents of Nazareth.
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I'm sure they would have traveled to that town.
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Maybe there were marriages between people from the two towns.
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And so for that reason, we can assume familiarity.
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And it wouldn't be a surprise to us that Mary would have been at this wedding and also Jesus and his disciples.
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You know, it's an interesting point that this is where Jesus performed his first miracle.
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It wasn't in the midst of a city with thousands, crowds of thousands and thousands gathered around.
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In fact, we see throughout the Gospel of John and really all the Gospels, that's what the Israelites would have expected.
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That's what the Jewish people of the day would have expected.
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The Pharisees would have expected the Messiah to come in a grand fashion and perform some miracle in front of all these people.
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But that's not what Christ did.
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He did it in the countryside at a small intimate wedding.
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And so we see again that in his glory, our Savior is humble.
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And that's really something that we should all strive for.
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Now about weddings in this time, they were quite a big deal.
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Weddings today are still pretty important to us, but the wedding celebrations we have are nowhere near on par with what they would have had back in these days.
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They were huge celebrations that often lasted for several days, some as much as a week long.
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So if you can imagine a week long wedding to us, that's unimaginable.
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I think we spend two years planning for 30 minutes, but they were really a big, big deal.
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And so the way things work is that once a man and a woman became engaged in this time, there was a period of betrothal.
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It was official.
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They were engaged to be married, but in order to dissolve that, they actually had to have a divorce.
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So it wasn't like today where you could just go, oh, never mind.
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And during that period, the bridegroom or the future husband had some responsibilities.
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He would go and prepare a home.
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He would prepare a place for he and his bride to live.
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And it was also custom that the groom was the one who was to throw the wedding feast.
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And so he builds the home.
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He gets ready for this new wife to come in.
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He throws the big party to initiate the marriage.
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He's the one responsible for everything.
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So you can imagine now knowing that, what an issue it would have been for the wine to run out.
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All of the guests and certainly the parents of the bride would have been a little upset by this.
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We already know, thankfully, I don't have little girls, but fathers tend to be a little nervous about giving away their daughters in marriage.
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Imagine if the man had failed to prepare even for the wedding, what kind of doubts and thoughts it would have put in your mind.
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In fact, in these days, it was possible that if something like this happened, if the groom failed to provide enough for the ceremony or for the feast, he could even be sued and fined for failing to provide.
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So that's a little bit of context that will help us understand when we get to the narrative, what's going on.
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Another thing I want to point out, it's not really the main point of this text, but I want to point out it's important, I think, that Jesus performed this first miracle at a wedding.
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What a better person to invite to your wedding than Jesus Christ, God Almighty, the one who instituted marriage.
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And we know in our days that, unfortunately, marriage is suffering at the hands of people who want to twist it to fit their sinful desires, who want to make it something that it's not and was never intended to be.
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And so as as the church, as followers of Christ, I think we need to lend the same importance and the same place of honor to marriage that our Savior did.
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We need to defend it.
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Marriage is not a creation made by government.
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It's an institution that was blessed and created by God to join together a man and a woman who mutually love and serve one another.
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And so it's kind of neat to see that this all started at a wedding.
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But with that information in our mind, let's move on.
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The first point I want to show you, the first thing I want us to see is that Jesus is the great problem solver.
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If we look back into verses one through three, we see it says on the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
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Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.
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And when the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.
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So we come to the scene of the miracle, a wedding feast occurring in the small town of Cana.
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We have in attendance here, Mary, the mother of Jesus, also Jesus and his disciples.
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It tells us that it's the third day.
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But the third day from what? Well, if we look back to the end of chapter one, it's the third day from the last thing in the narrative when Jesus called Nathanael.
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And so at this point, Jesus has called five disciples, John, Andrew, Simon, Peter, Philip and Nathanael.
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He's starting to gather together his disciples.
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But they've only been with him now a couple of days.
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And so everything there's a lot happening.
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It's very new.
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Jesus is just beginning his earthly ministry.
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He spent the last 30 years in relative anonymity, not with any significant public ministry.
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But that's all rapidly changing.
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And so Jesus and his disciples and Mary and the others are at a wedding feast and everything's going great until the wine runs out.
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Mary comes to Jesus and says they have no wine.
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And knowing what we know now, what we've just talked about with how these wedding feasts work, we can see this is truly a big problem.
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This is an issue.
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Now, we can make many assumptions about why Mary was the one to bring the problem to Jesus.
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In fact, many have, as I studied and read different commentaries, I saw a myriad of theories, mostly unsupported and with no real backing.
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But there are a lot of possibilities.
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Some say that Mary was a close family friend of the bride or the groom and was possibly even one who was helping with the catering of the supplying of the food and drink for the for the event.
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Some say it was because she was concerned to save the embarrassment of the groom that he would have suffered due to this problem.
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But regardless of how much of that we can know, we do know one thing.
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She came to Jesus with the problem.
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Now, why do you think she would have come to him? Well, there are several reasons that are likely.
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First, it's very likely that Joseph had died prior to this time, leaving her as a widow.
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We can't say this for certain, but it does seem very likely.
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Joseph is never mentioned in scripture after Jesus is 12 years old, when his parents lose track of him for a little while and then they find him teaching at the temple.
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Also, it would be strange that John had pointed out that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there, but he makes no mention of Joseph.
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If he were there, we would think that he would have enumerated that also.
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But it's very likely that Mary was a widow and this would have caused her to lean heavily on Jesus.
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He would have assumed the role of the man of the house, right? As a young man, he would have taken over that role if his father had passed.
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He would have provided financially and in leadership for the family.
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And so it would have been a very natural thing for Mary, who had grown over time after the passing of her husband, to really rely upon Jesus as the man of the house to come to him with this problem.
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But I think there's also another possibility, another reason she would have come to him.
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Think for a minute about what it must have been like to have Jesus Christ living and growing up in your house.
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Can you imagine? It would have been quite an amazing and wonderful thing.
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And although we know that he was fully a man and therefore he grew and learned in his human capacity, we also know that he was fully God and perfect.
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He never had a bad idea.
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He never came up with a bad solution.
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He always had the perfect answer for every problem and every issue.
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He never led anyone astray.
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Mary had never gone wrong by following the wisdom of what Jesus had told her in any issue.
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I'm not referring to things that are recorded in scripture.
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I'm just saying in general, who else in the world would you go to with a problem if Jesus Christ lived in your house? I mean, really, where else would you go for advice? And so it would have been a perfectly natural thing for Mary to come to Jesus with this issue, knowing that he would have a perfect solution no matter what the problem was.
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Now, some have suggested, and especially because of what we'll get to later in the text, that she came to Jesus imposing upon him to perform a miracle.
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We can't know that.
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The text doesn't tell us that clearly.
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But I think we can say that she knew no matter what he did, it would have been the right thing to do.
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And so I know we're only a few verses into the text here, and we haven't really gotten to the miracle yet or the meat of what's going to happen here.
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But I think even in this point, we can see application.
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Jesus Christ is the great problem solver.
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He's the one whom we should look to for all of our troubles, for our greatest trouble, which is our simpleness and our need for a savior, but also for every other thing that overtakes us in this life.
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All the little ills and the things that just bug us and bother us in life.
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Jesus Christ is the answer for everything.
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He has the perfect solution.
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I don't mean by this that Jesus is some cosmic Santa Claus or genie who we just go to and whatever we ask.
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We've heard everybody twist the scriptures to say, well, whatever I ask for in Jesus name, I'll have.
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We hear people throw about Jesus name like it's the phrase in Jesus name is some magical formula whereby we get whatever we want.
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But we do know that he's the one who lived as a man and endured the trials and afflictions and sufferings that we face as well, because we live as men and women in flesh.
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He faced all those things and even more.
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In fact, Jesus Christ was the only just person to ever suffer injustice.
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So when we struggle with things, with anything, no matter what it is, we need to look to Christ for relief.
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He's not just some idea or some moral guiding light.
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We can't reduce this to moralism.
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It's much more than that.
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He is God almighty, yet he is our mediator.
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Scripture tells us that he is the one making intercession for us.
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Jesus Christ has the love, the forgiveness, the strength and the joy that we all long for.
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Our entire life should be found in him.
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And so Jesus is the great problem solver.
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The more we realize this as Christians and place our faith in him, the more we become able to follow after him, because it's not something we can do in our own power.
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We're incapable and unable of following him on our own strength.
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And so we need to rest in the work of Christ.
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He is our only solace in this world.
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And so back to our story, we see that the stage is set and the problem has been made evident.
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Mary has done the only reasonable thing that she could have done.
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She's gone to Jesus.
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What a great example.
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And he responds to her how? Well, we'll see that he responds with a rebuke.
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But by his rebuke and his following statements, we come to see Jesus as the obedient son.
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That might not make sense to you right now, but we'll get to that.
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Look in verse four.
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It says, And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
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So Jesus delivers a rebuke to Mary.
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And while it is a gentle rebuke and a respectful one, let me point this out.
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Jesus did not disrespect his mother.
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We know that he didn't sin.
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He always honored his mother, but it was a rebuke.
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Nevertheless, now much has been made of his address of calling her woman.
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Right.
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He says woman.
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He wasn't being disrespectful by saying that it it was a formal way of address.
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In fact, from everything I've read, the best phrase we have to use that to compare to that would be our use of the word man.
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In other words, it's not disrespectful, but it's also not intimate.
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And so what was Jesus doing here when he called her woman? Well, what could he have called her? He could have called her mother.
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That would have been an intimate connection with Mary, but he said woman.
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In fact, it was the same word that he used from the cross when he said woman, behold, thy son, as he commended her care to John.
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So this address of woman shows respect, but not intimacy.
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This is a pivotal moment in the ministry and the life of Jesus Christ on the earth.
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He is officially stepping out of the umbrella of his earthly mother's care and into his public ministry, whereby from this point forward, he will obey the will of his father.
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Not that he hasn't been doing that to this point, but at this point, his sole focus and his entire work, everything he does is following the command of God, the father and fulfilling what was set before him to do.
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He's going to reiterate this for us countless times.
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And as we study through the rest of the Gospel of John, we'll keep seeing Jesus say things like, I do my father's work.
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I do what I see the father doing.
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I obey the father.
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Everything points to the father.
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And so we see that Jesus Christ is the obedient son.
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Jesus is breaking ties and distance, distancing himself, he uses a phrase, what does this have to do with me? Now, this phrase translated here, what does this have to do with me? It's actually a Hebrew idiom.
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It's used several times in the Old Testament, and I think literally it translates what to you and me.
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So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in direct translation.
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But ultimately, what he's saying is, what do we have in common? Every time this phrase is used, it's to provide distance between the two parties.
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Jesus had to make it clear that there was no hotline for his family members to use to command him at their whim.
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That applies to Mary in this case, but also shortly we'll see the story of how his brothers tried to tell him what to do.
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They tried to tell him to go to Judea and do these signs in front of everybody and show yourself.
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And he delivers them a similar rebuke.
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Marry me to the Savior just like we do.
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That's an important thing to understand.
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The Catholic doctrine of Mariolatry and the way they have exalted her to some higher position is utter heresy.
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They actually use these verses to justify some of their beliefs.
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And I don't see how you can get there because it's clear that Mary was an exempt from sin and in no way was she able to bend the ear of Jesus to have him do whatever she wanted him to do.
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So Jesus further clarifies here that he's about doing his father's work, not simply doing earthly things.
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He is the obedient son who is sent to do the father's will.
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In John 4, 34, Jesus says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and accomplish his work.
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And so Jesus declares that he has one intention at this time to do the will of the father.
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Do we have that same kind of commitment? Do we have that singular focus of mind that Christ had as he walked on the earth, that everything we do is aimed at obeying the father? I would argue that we don't.
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I know at times I don't a lot of times.
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I think a lot of times the will of God to us is an afterthought, being obedient to the father.
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We think about it when we make big decisions and we painstakingly search ourselves and try and figure out whether the will of God is for us to live on the East Coast or the West Coast or whether it's for us to have this job or that job or to marry this girl or that girl.
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But do we consider the will of God? Do we consider obeying the father in the mundane things and the little things that happen day to day? I think what happens for a lot of us is we come to church on Sunday and we think about God and we think about our Christianity and then we set that upon the shelf and we coast downhill for the rest of the week until the next Sunday comes for another pick me up.
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That's not how Jesus Christ lived.
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And by no means is that how we're called to live as his disciples and followers.
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Jesus makes another statement here that we're going to hear repeatedly in John's gospel.
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He says, my hour has not yet come.
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This statement seems enigmatic at best, because what hour is he referring to? Well, if we continue to look through the gospel of John and see what it's pointing to every time, it's pointing to the hour of his crucifixion, the time when he'll be glorified upon the cross.
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And so as he rebukes Mary and says, my hour has not yet come, he's saying it's not time yet for the fullness of God's plan to be revealed.
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It's not time yet for me to be glorified in my suffering.
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We read several times in the next few chapters, the Pharisees come and they want to arrest Jesus, but they don't.
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Why? Because his hour has not yet come.
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And so it's very clear that everything he does and everything he's doing is happening on a distinct timeline.
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He's obeying the father's will meticulously.
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These things aren't happening by accident.
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Jesus Christ doesn't end up upon the cross by happenstance or by some series of tragic events, some comedy of errors.
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This has been the redemptive plan of God from the very beginning of time, from before time began.
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And again, we see that Jesus is the obedient son, faithfully obeying and doing the will of God and everything.
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And that should be what's said about us as believers, that our whole lives and everything we do, everything is aimed at one purpose, obeying the father.
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So as the text moves on, Mary delivers a sermon that's hard to beat.
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I consider just reading this line to you and leaving it be.
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She tells the servants what? Do whatever he tells you.
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It's tough to come up with a line better than that.
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She says, do whatever he tells you.
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Just obey him.
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He's perfect.
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He knows everything.
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He's God.
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Just do whatever he tells you.
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The statement by Mary here is actually a little puzzling, and here's why.
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Why would she assume that he would tell him anything to do? Didn't he just rebuke her? We can only assume one thing, that she had faith.
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She knew that every time she had come to him with anything, he had the perfect solution.
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And so maybe he wouldn't do a miracle.
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I would say that Mary is not omniscient.
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She didn't know, but she knew whatever he told him to do was the right thing.
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And so she says what we exactly need to hear.
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Do whatever he tells you.
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If we could just wrap our heads around that point, how much better life would be? How much more could we glorify God? Do whatever Christ says to do.
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If you don't like it, do it.
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If you don't understand it, if it doesn't make sense to you, if it doesn't fit in with your life plan, do it anyways.
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Just do what he says, because he's Lord and he doesn't ever disappoint.
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Far from it.
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He does things that only God can do.
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In fact, we'll see as the miracle produces or progresses, he makes something out of nothing.
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And so as we look to the miracle, we're going to see the third point that Jesus is the great provider.
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Look, in verse six says now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons.
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Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water and they filled them up to the brim.
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And he said to them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.
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So they took it when the master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine and did not know where it came from.
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And 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.
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And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine.
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But you have kept the good wine until now.
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This is the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.
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And so we see in this text that Jesus is the ultimate provision when they were out of wine.
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Jesus produced wine.
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It's very interesting how he did it.
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He didn't do it by saying, let there be wine.
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He could have done that, right? He could have just said, let there be wine and there could have been wine in the pot, in the pots or flowing from wherever.
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He didn't wave his hands over it.
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He didn't bless it.
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He didn't say some magical words.
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He doesn't even touch anything.
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He didn't touch the pots.
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He didn't fill them with water.
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He physically did nothing really is quite a miracle.
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And we see that he doesn't produce just a little bit.
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Right.
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The the translation of how many gallons here is a little bit loose.
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We don't really know for sure that they were 20 to 30 gallons, but that's a pretty good approximation.
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But nevertheless, there were somewhere between about 100 and 160 gallons of wine.
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Now, think back to where we started in the contextual information I gave you.
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This is in a town that had probably 30 to 50 people.
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And let's just assume maybe they brought in people from neighboring towns, from Nazareth.
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No matter how many people were at this feast, Jesus produced way more wine than they needed.
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Right.
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Way more than was required.
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And so we see that when when Christ provides, he does so abundantly.
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This should remind us of something.
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If you were here for the first couple of lessons, this should remind us when we were in chapter one and we heard John say of his fullness, have we all received in grace upon grace? Christ is the ultimate provision, not just for earthly things, but for our true need, which is salvation.
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Now, there are some interesting points about the story that I think we should notice.
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First, I want to look at the containers that were used.
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It says in the passage that there were six stone water jars that were used for the Jewish rites of purification.
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I'm not big into biblical numerology, I know some guys go way too far with that, but there is a pattern through the Bible of the number six referring to mankind and simpleness and the things of earth.
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And so I don't want to overextend that reference.
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I'm not dogmatically telling you that that's what this means, but there is that pattern there.
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And so.
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These six pots, which would symbolize things of this earth, they were used for the Jewish rites of purification and the Jewish rites of purification, they did they did several things, they washed their hands, they washed their feet, they washed their cups.
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In fact, let's look real quick into the book of Mark.
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There's a passage that will help us understand this a little better.
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Mark, chapter seven, and why you're turning there, it's key for us to understand that when we read these miracles, especially in the Gospel of John, but every miracle is a type of parable.
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There's a lesson there, there's there's a sermon in visual terms that Jesus is teaching.
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Mark, chapter seven, verse three.
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For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves.
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And there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.
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In context, the Pharisees are asking why the disciples eat without washing their hands.
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So these Jewish rites of purification were a method of outward cleansing instituted by the Pharisees.
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The religious leaders of Jesus's day, the people who were busy washing themselves and purifying themselves on the outside while totally ignoring their heart.
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And so the lesson of this miracle becomes more poignant when we understand these six pots that Jesus used were representative of the emptiness and of all their attempts to clean themselves on the outside while their hearts remain black with sin.
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There was no change in their heart.
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As we move forward to chapter three, we're going to get to Jesus talking about the new birth, which is really an explanation of this miracle.
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True regeneration, true change of heart happens on the inside.
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We don't see it just like they didn't see the water turn into wine.
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But we can tell the evidence of it.
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It's interesting that he turned the water to wine, because as we remember the death of Christ, the wine is the symbol that we use to represent the blood of Christ that was payment for sin.
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Wine is also a frequent symbol for joy in the Old Testament.
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Frequently, the prophets refer to the coming of Christ in the time when the Messiah would come as a time when wine would flow abundantly.
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There would be joy and happiness because the Savior, the long awaited Messiah, had come.
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Salvation come through him.
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And so in this very first miracle or sign that's recorded in the Gospel of John, Christ is pointing symbolically to that hour that is to come, the time when he'll pay the price for sin upon the cross.
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And he's pointing forward to a marriage, a marriage feast where he will be the groom and the church will be the bride and there will be no shortage of supply because the blood of Christ is sufficient for the sins of the world.
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Christ's provision in this case is abundant and overwhelming and his provision at the cross is the very same.
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The blood of Christ truly is sufficient to pay for the sins of the world and all who come in faith will receive forgiveness.
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In the text, we see that Jesus commanded them first to fill the pots and then to draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.
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And it's interesting that only at this point, almost to the very end of the narrative here, we're actually told about the miracle.
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In verse nine, he says that the master of the feast tasted the water, but come wine.
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John almost slips that in, it's not even the main part of the sentence it's in, and I think that's because Jesus is pointing to the greater symbolism behind this.
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It's not all about the miracle.
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Yes, the miracle confirms that he is God, but he's pointing to the ultimate revelation of him as God, him as Redeemer.
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And so the master of the feast, who is ignorant of what all is going on, hasn't seen all this happen, taste this wine.
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And he was impressed, I would imagine this was the best wine anybody had ever tasted or ever will.
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The master of the feast says something that I think has profound significance.
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He says everyone serves the good wine first and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine.
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But you have kept the good wine until now.
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Isn't that a testament to the wisdom of the world? That's how the world does things.
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We put our best foot forward.
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We put on appearances, make everything great.
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We keep the bad or the worst stuff for later.
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We pull the bait and switch.
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Think about the first date you ever went on, cleaned yourself up pretty nice, made yourself smell good, all those things.
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We try to dress up everything to keep up appearances and only after we've been in a relationship for a while do we pull out the cheap wine.
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But that's the way of the world.
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God's ways are different.
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God didn't give the best wine first.
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He gave the law first, he gave some revelation of himself through the law, but it wasn't complete.
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But in Jesus Christ, he gave the best, the best wine he saved for last.
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The ways of God are truly foolishness to men, though.
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The cross is foolishness to men.
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And if we try to understand it by the ways of the world or if we try to proclaim it to others by the ways of the world, it makes no sense.
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But God's ways are far better than ours.
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And so what does this mean to us? Well, we live in a time when God has given the best.
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We've seen the glory of God, full of grace and truth, and just as it says in verse 11, Jesus did this sign and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.
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This is the point of the sign.
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This is why it's here, that people would believe in him, that we would believe in him.
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Jesus Christ is God.
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He's the perfect, spotless lamb of God.
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And he has paid the price for sin.
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Believe in him and trust him for salvation.
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And if you have proclaimed him for salvation to everyone, you can trust in him as the great problem solver.
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When you have an issue.
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Don't be anxious and worry about it.
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Take it to Christ.
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Follow his example as the obedient son, as the one who made the focus of everything he did to be about the will of the father.
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I wish that could be said about us, that we focused everything on obeying him.
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And finally, know that he is the ultimate provision, not just for things of this world, but the one who has purchased redemption for all who will trust in him.
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And so go from this place and proclaim the gospel to anybody who will listen and trust that the Holy Spirit will work in the hearts of those he's called.
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Let's pray.
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God, we thank you for your word.
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Lord, we thank you for your son, Jesus, and that you have provided a way for salvation.
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God, we don't deserve your grace or your kindness or even your mercy.
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All we deserve is your wrath.
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God, thank you that your love and your ways are not the ways of man and that you made a way of salvation by sending your son.
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Lord, may we trust in him and him only for our salvation.
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And may we teach and preach and proclaim to everyone who will listen the gospel of Jesus Christ so that you might be lifted up.
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In Jesus' name.