The First Sign - [John 2:1-11]

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While I was in California, though, last week, not only did I go to a wedding, but I went to a different church on Sunday morning, and I had the opportunity last week for the first time in my life.
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I mean, you know, it seems like I've been a Christian for a while now, which is good.
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But I'm still, you know, there are still new things to be experienced, and last week I had the first opportunity ever to see movie clips used as sermon illustrations.
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Hated it. You know, some of you may think, well, why, that doesn't seem so bad.
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Well, you know, let me just, if you haven't seen this before, let me just kind of break this to you gently.
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You know, the first one was fine, it was kind of, you know, the message was about work, which by the way, I mean,
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I think I did a Sunday School, maybe one or two parts on work a few years ago, and I thought,
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I listened to the whole message, and he went on for about maybe 45 minutes or so, and I thought, I could have done this whole message in about 10 minutes of Sunday School, at most.
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You know, it was pretty light on information. But here was the thing with these video clips.
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The first one, you know, it was just, I thought, a total distraction. The second one was so heavy.
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It was so emotionally heavy that I was actually crying. Of course, some of you will say, well, you've told us before you cried during Rocky II.
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Well, that's true. But this was really an emotionally heavy, heavy message.
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And I thought, what is wrong with this? And ultimately, here's the problem with video illustrations.
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When we gather here on Sunday morning, what are we here to do? We're here to worship
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Christ. We're here to focus on our risen King. And so when we bring in movie clips, and they may be funny, they may be sad, they may illustrate some little point of life that we all struggle with, whether it's working too hard, not hard enough, being bothered with our coworkers, whatever.
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If the focus on Sunday morning is to be worshiping God, how do we focus on the cross?
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And then we're going to do that? We're going to show movies on the big screen? It just, it really, it was just a major distraction.
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I mean, why not have Michael Buffett, that's the guy who used to do the boxing introductions. You know, why not have him introduce every sermon, ladies and gentlemen, you know, all that kind of thing.
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And maybe some smoke and mirrors and a little band with a drum roll. It's just a distraction.
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What we do here at Bethlehem Bible Church is very simple. Our philosophy of ministry is extremely simple.
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We preach the Bible verse by verse. Why? Because not only are we commanded to, but our goal is to see
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Christ exalted, to see his word lifted up. And that's how we magnify him.
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That's how we worship Jesus Christ. As Pastor Mike often says, if Jesus Christ is not enough for you, then we have nothing else.
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What else are we to give you? With that as an introduction, and I think it will make sense as we get to the close of this message,
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I'd like to invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 2. John chapter 2.
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As we look at the second chapter, first 11 verses of the fourth gospel, the only non -synoptic gospel.
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And for those of you going, what's a synoptic gospel? Well, that would be Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And they're called the synoptic gospels because in many ways they cover much of the same material.
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Although, and I'm not going to get into this, there are a lot of differences too. But John was written long after those three gospels and with a different intent, with a different purpose.
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Well, as we enter this second chapter, it is good for us to be reminded of where the beloved apostle has taken us so far, what we've seen to this point.
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In chapter 1, we were introduced to Jesus as eternally existent.
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And when I preached at my father's funeral, I stressed that point.
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I mean, I had 10 minutes and I kind of camped, I mean, it seemed like a long time. It was probably because the clock's ticking, you know, in the back of my mind.
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But this is vital. This is vital. If we don't understand Jesus Christ as eternally existent, we'll never get the gospel.
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We'll never understand that God became man. We'll never get that. We'll think of him as just another created being.
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And I focused on that because I knew I had a lot of Mormons, Latter -day Saints in that audience that morning.
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But we would see that in chapter 1. We'd also see Jesus as equal to the Father, as the creator of everything, indeed, as the sustainer of everything.
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We would also see him as the eternal son who came to earth and took on a body of flesh.
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We would see him as the Messiah, as the one who fulfilled the Old Testament and yet was rejected by the
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Jews. We would see him as the God -man who approached
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John the Baptist to be baptized, as he said, to fulfill all righteousness. And we would see him as the rabbi, the teacher, who began gathering disciples to himself.
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They're at the end of the chapter. And also in chapter 1, we also get to know John the Baptist a little bit.
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In fact, you know, all of us, a lot of us have life verses. John the Baptist's life verse is
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John 1 .8, where it tells us that John the Baptist was not the light but came to bear witness to the light.
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That was his whole purpose. In fact, because so many, because this was a time of religious upheaval, of many claiming to be the
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Messiah, the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, the religious elite of that day went to investigate
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John the Baptist because people were flocking to him and they wanted to know what all the commotion was about. Was this the Messiah?
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Was he a false Messiah? So they went out to investigate him. And John the
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Baptist revealed to us in chapter 1 that one of the purposes of his ministry, the reason why he was baptizing people in verse 31, it said so that he,
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Jesus, might be revealed to Israel. It was through the baptism that John the
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Baptist came to know that he was the Son of God, that he was the foretold fulfillment of everything.
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In fact, he had been received a special prophecy that he would see the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and remain on the
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Messiah when he came to be baptized, and that's what happened with Jesus. John the Baptist also identified
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Jesus as the Lamb of God, which eventually leads to the recruiting, the gathering of the first disciples as Jesus begins his public ministry.
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Now the last time I preached, which wasn't last week, you know what, I'm just so happy to be here, it feels like I've been gone for,
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I don't know, months, but you get sick and then you're gone and that's what happens. But the last time
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I preached in John, I talked about how the disciples came to be followers of Christ.
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A lot of them were disciples of John the Baptist and they left him and John the Baptist was happy for that.
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So how did this happen? It happened by, as I outlined last time, by deflection, and what
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I meant by that is referral by John the Baptist. John the Baptist says, you know what, it's time for you guys to stop following me and to start following him, he's the
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Lamb of God, follow him. By direct invitation from the Lord himself, by communication from another disciple, in other words, one of the disciples went and told two friends and they told two, well, it was by that direct kind of invitation from another disciple and then finally by demonstration as the
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Lord tells Nathanael of something that he could have only known supernaturally and just kind of blows
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Nathanael's mind as it were. So now let's read our text for this morning.
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John chapter 2 and I'm going to read verses 1 to 11. 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. 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 that 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. Now there were six stone water jars there for the
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Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water.
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And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.
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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, 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, 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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Now this morning as we walk through this passage, really the first miracle of our
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Lord's ministry I want us to be transfixed by his glory. His disciples certainly were and we can have a tendency to get bogged down in the details whether it's in life generally or in this passage.
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We could want to know things that aren't even here and I'm going to talk about some of that. But the main thing that we need to focus on is the main thing, which is
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Jesus Christ and what he does here. So this morning,
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I really just have four touchstones for little stopping points, as it were, as we go through this passage for markers.
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As we look through this remarkable and yet simple passage of scripture.
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First let's look at the setting, the setting in verses one and two. 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. Now this is the third day, the third day from what?
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Well, the third day since the conclusion of chapter one. In other words, this is the, the, if you skip the two intervening days, this is the third day and he, he wants us to know that this really, if we, if we counted it all up, what we would see is this is the seventh day of his public ministry.
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Since he started, this is the seventh day and it's about a two day walk from Bethany where the, where he met with Nathaniel and gathered the disciples or started to, to Cana.
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So apparently from that point forward, we don't know exactly why they were at the wedding.
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We don't know if Nathaniel invited them. We don't know if Nathaniel was involved. There are a lot of things we don't know and that's why you can get bogged down in all these details and John, I think was probably an eyewitness to this.
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He doesn't include the details, so guess what? We don't know and they're not important. That's not the focus of what he's writing.
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How do we know that? Because John told us what his whole function of writing this gospel was.
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What was the purpose for which he wrote this entire gospel? It's in John chapter 20 verse 31.
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Don't turn there, but this should be very familiar to you. Why do you write this gospel? That you, the readers, may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Messiah, the chosen one, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies, the son of God.
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And that by believing you may have life in his name. That's his purpose. Not to give a detailed list.
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You know, sometimes my wife will read novels so fast that I, I basically stopped buying them for her.
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You know, I get them on Thursday afternoon and by Thursday night she's done. Like, how do you do?
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I mean, I am a slow reader, a slow reader. And it's, I won't get into the reasons why, but I'm just a slow reader and she's done like in a second.
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I go, well, how can you do that? She goes, well, you know, all the details and stuff, I just kind of skip over. And really in this passage, that's kind of the focus here.
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We're not to be caught up in details that aren't there. The focus is on Jesus Christ. Now it doesn't take much in the way of speculation to think that this may have been, could be probably was some extended family member of Jesus.
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And we'll, we'll talk about that for a minute. But we don't know. We'll talk about it in a minute. We don't know whose wedding it was and, and again, that's not his purpose.
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But even if we had no other information, we'd know that this is a pretty good sized event. Jesus was invited, his disciples were also, and we'll see that this must have been a fairly large crowd.
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And we know weddings today are big productions, speaking for personal experience.
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And even last week, the wedding I was at was bigger than anything we ever tried to do.
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It was huge. Hundreds of people there and this gigantic reception.
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And you know what? Before that, even Wednesday night, we had the bachelor party where we all sat around.
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I mean, and we, we gave marital advice to the, the groom and then, then we prayed and it was supposed to be a quick prayer and it went on and on and on.
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But I was listening and I'm just thinking, all these people just talking about how the Lord used this man in their lives and how thankful they were for him.
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And I was like, I was blessed to be there. It was really a lot of fun for me. Then Thursday night, so that was
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Wednesday night, the crazy bachelor party that we wrapped up at 10. And then
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Thursday night was the rehearsal dinner. Okay. And then Friday night, the wedding, well, and the wedding went on for quite a while.
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Well, in the ancient world, a wedding celebration might go on for a week. This was a big deal.
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And you know, entire villages, a lot of people would be at these things and they would kind of come and go and this would just go on and on and on.
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Massive celebrations like today's only more. And I'm like, well, knowing what ours costs, I'd hate to see what these were.
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That's beside the point. I'm getting bogged into the details. See what's happening already. So that's the setting.
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Now in verse three, we see the crisis, the crisis. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.
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Now you say, well, what's the big crisis? What's the big deal? You know, parties over time to send them home. It's like when people are over at our house and you know, a lot of times on a
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Saturday and it gets to be about that time where I need to start winding things down so that I can put the finishing touches on whatever
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I'm doing on Sunday. And I just go, well, thanks for coming over. Had a seminary prof who used to, you know, at the appointed time would come down the stairs in his pajamas and just tell everybody that it's one way to clear the house out, you know?
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So maybe that's it. Right? Hey, they're out of wine. Start ushering these people out. It's not that way.
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This is a big deal in the ancient world. When you were hosting something, you were expected to prepare adequately.
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You were expected to have enough food and whatever the occasion called for it to make sure that you didn't run out.
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So this is a problem. And if Mary was, you know, guest number 317, she just had a little place taken in the far table back there.
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You know, it was just kind of like looking around going like, you know, like we generally do at a wedding. Would she know that they were out of wine?
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No. So, and that's why I say I think maybe it was some kind of a relative because apparently she was involved.
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So she was either running a catering company or she was somehow, you know, involved, involved in this thing.
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But some of us might, again, might just think, meh, they've had enough to drink, you know, let's just substitute something else.
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Can't they just have water? Can't they just have, you know, some sparkling punch, some, you know,
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Martinelli's sparkling cider or whatever? But it's a lot more serious than that.
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As I said earlier, it would be culturally shameful to run, I didn't really go that far, but it would be shameful.
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And for those of you who are familiar with the Asian kind of mindset, shame is a big deal.
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If you go to Japan, you go to India, you go to China, you go to these kind of countries and you embarrass someone, it is a big deal.
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Or if they call you a liar, I had this happen once where a man called, a Japanese man called me a liar and I was telling the truth.
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And when I proved to him that I was telling the truth, you should have seen what he did. He couldn't throw enough free stuff at me, you know, because he had shamed me.
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He had brought shame upon me. And that is just unimaginable. That's something you don't do. But it wouldn't just be shame to run out and to improperly prepare.
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There also could be legal ramifications. There could be lawsuits. I mean, can you imagine that?
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You show up at my house and things don't go well and you just go, that's it, I'm suing that guy, you know, lack of root beer.
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It's on. But that's the way it was. You had to adequately provide and plan and acquire things.
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But obviously there's no plan here, they're out. They didn't have a few extra cases just kind of stashed over the side waiting to come up.
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So now the question comes up to us, well, why would Mary bring this to Jesus, right?
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Why to him? Well, again, I think we have to infer a few things and Joseph is not mentioned here.
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In fact, he's not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament after the time where Jesus kind of ditches his parents and is running around the temple when he's 12.
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That's the last time we see any kind of mention about Joseph. So in all likelihood, he's dead.
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Well, what happens to a widow when her husband's gone? Maybe immediately or maybe it takes a while.
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What does she start to do? She starts to rely on the oldest son, right?
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That's Jesus. Got a problem? You go to him. I just got a call the other day from my sister.
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She said, you know, mom went to the lawyer and the lawyer said, well, how can
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I help you? And she said, well, my oldest son told me that I needed to come and see you, so I'm here. And I thought,
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I've suddenly got influence, you know. That's exactly right.
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She is counting on him to do something. She doesn't know what, but she wants him to do something.
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She has some kind of role here at the wedding. What did she expect?
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Did she expect a miracle? Maybe. Did she expect him to know what to do or to solve the problem?
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I think so. And so we get to verse four and what I call the tension. This is the dramatic moment of the story here.
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I mean, we have a problem already, but how about this response in verse four? And Jesus said to her, now
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I'm going to read it how we read it, I think, in our heads. See, this is one of the reasons why I read so slowly, because I verbalize everything in my head.
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If you do that, it slows you down, by the way. But when you read this, doesn't it sound like this? And Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me?
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Does this sound like, I mean, that's what it sounds like to me. Then he says, my hour has not yet come. Doesn't that sound like a rebuke?
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And no matter how I say it, you're going to hear it like Jesus is sort of blasting his mom. But this is one of those occasions where the
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English really cannot possibly capture the meaning, the essence of it.
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Let me give you a few examples of King James, and the King James, I think, is the worst. Listen to this, woman, what have
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I to do with thee? I mean, why not just get behind me, Satan, or something like that, you know?
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The new King James, woman, what does your concern have to do with me?
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Not my problem. I think the new
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English translation of the ones I looked at was probably the closest. It says this, woman, why are you saying this to me?
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It really kind of smacks of almost being impolite. Now, can you imagine Jesus, you know, kind of snapping at his mom?
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I don't think so. Honor your mother and your father, it's the first commandment with a promise.
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Does this sound like something Jesus would do? Inconceivable. Really, it's a
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Hebrew idiom. And what he's in essence trying to say, and he is respectful, and again,
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I don't think there's any good way of translating this into English, but Mary would have understood that, and we'll see this in a second.
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She would have understood, not that there was no good way to translate it into English, but what he was trying to say. And what he's really trying to say is, ma 'am, respectfully, no offense intended, but I have other business.
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This is not a situation I should be handling. Why? Because I need to be about my father's business. Jesus is establishing some distance here and reminding her, not telling her off or anything like that, but reminding her that this is no longer
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Mary, baby Jesus, Mary, mom, and the little boy
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Jesus. This is Mary and the Messiah. This is subject and king.
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She knew that he was going to be her savior. She knew that. She understood that from the time the angel told her, but this is the time where he cannot be doing the mundane things of life that she's relied on him to do for these many years.
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So it's not really as cold as it seems to us when we read it. In fact, in another part of this gospel, as Jesus is on the cross and he commends
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John to Mary and Mary to John, what does he call her then? He says, woman. Same phrasing.
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But it's not like his affection, his love for her has waned.
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It's not like he loves Mary less. He's just reminding her that this is a different phase of their life.
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This is the first week of his ministry. He's no longer a Jesus the carpenter, Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, Jesus the older son.
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He can't be that. He is Jesus the Messiah. He has to be about his heavenly father's business, not handling the little problems of a wedding party, of a wedding crisis.
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Now look at the second part of his response, my hour has not yet come. Again, this strikes us as being a little bit odd.
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Like what? He's got a little watch on and he's going, isn't that time for me to be doing this?
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Or maybe, you know, he's looking at some kind of schedule of events going, uh, not yet.
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Give me a couple of minutes. That's not it. That's not it. Whenever John, the writer of this gospel, uses the word hour, this phrasing hour, he's always pointing forward to the fulfillment of Jesus' ministry, to the cross and to Jesus' ultimate purpose.
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Let's look at just a few of those. I'm just going to quickly go through them. John 12, 23, and Jesus answered them, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified, looking forward.
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Now as my soul troubled in John 12, 27, now as my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father saved me from this hour, but for this purpose,
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I have come to this hour. John 13, 1, before the feast of the
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Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of the world to the father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
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John 16, 32, behold, the hour is coming indeed. It has come when you will be scattered each to his own home and will leave me alone.
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Yet I am not alone for the father is with me. John 17, 1, when
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Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said, father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you.
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These always referred to the fulfillment of his ministry, of his purpose. So again, if we kind of blend these things together, we would see that he's saying, listen,
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I'm not trying to create any kind of emotional distance. I'm just reminding you that I have other, another purpose that's higher that I have to take care of.
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He's gently reminding her that she needs to let go. So we've seen the setting, the crisis, the tension, and now the miracle.
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And I've divided this up into three points that all nicely start with P. First, the peculiar instructions.
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Look at verse five. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Now there were six stone jars there for 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. 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. Now at first glance, even as we think about this, this doesn't really make any sense.
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We know what the end of the story is, but these do seem peculiar instructions. But look first, Mary's response to what
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Jesus said. She didn't leave the room and say, you know, sniffling,
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I need to powder my nose. She didn't say, how dare you talk to me like that? She wasn't offended.
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So whatever it is that we do in our minds, when we see that woman, I think it's, that's what throws the whole thing off.
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But whatever we do there, we just need to understand that that's not her response. And the original response is what really matters.
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His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. She understands that he's going to do something. She doesn't know what it is, but she knows he's going to do something.
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That's a, as I said, it's a far cry from, you know, why don't you ever listen to your mother? Whatever we might want to respond with, that's just not how it goes.
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But then the gospel writer goes and sets the scene for us. Six stone water jars, big jars,
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I mean, those are huge jars, 20 to 30 gallons.
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So we have, what, somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons of capacity there.
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They weren't previously filled with wine, so there's no kind of trickeration here. What were they filled with?
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They were filled with water. Why would they need all that water? Well, because what do you do, what do the
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Jews do before they eat? They always wash their hands. So we're talking 120 to 180 gallons, that sounds like,
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I mean, how many gallons of water does it take you to wash your hands? I don't know, for some of the kids who just leave the sink on, it might take a while, but might take a lot of water, but typically not that much.
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So again, we can gather that this is a big feast. Now there are many fanciful interpretations of this narrative, and I'm not going to waste your time or my time talking about them, because I don't think any of those things really matter.
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Mary tells the servants to obey Jesus, and he tells them to fill these massive jars, which are really more like barrels, but you don't make barrels out of stone.
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He says, fill them with water, and they do it. Now if we just stop there, we might conclude that Jesus had just kind of come to the conclusion, enough of this wine business, wine's no good for you, aren't you guys counting calories?
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You know, you've had enough to drink, let's just go with the water. Maybe he was worried that some of them might be over the legal limit, but there's none of that here, none of that here.
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We've got 120 plus gallons of water, and one last instruction now, draw some out, and take it to the master of the feast, so they do, they take a little bit out.
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Now who's the master of the feast? Well, he's the master of the feast, but he's kind of between sort of a wedding coordinator and a caterer, he's the guy who makes sure that everything runs well, maybe if we just thought of him as kind of the, again, not to get much into the slavery aspect of things here, but if we just thought of him as the chief slave in charge of this thing, servant, that would be right, you know, to think about it that way.
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But if the family of the groom would have been shamed or sued for a lack of wine, well just imagine, if you're the guy who's in charge of this, and you're out of wine.
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I think he was probably a little tense at that moment, maybe he was running around looking for wine, again, we don't know what he was doing, but whatever he was doing, he wasn't present when the jars of water, or the jars were filled with water, and so the servants follow
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Jesus' instruction and take some of it, just a little bit of it, to him. And then look at the perfect result in verses 9 and 10.
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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, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine, but you've kept the good wine until now.
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Now a transformation had occurred, right? 120 plus gallons of water had somewhere along the line become wine.
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Now I want to do a little aside here, because some people might be troubled by this, they might be quick to point out that it wasn't really wine,
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I mean, it was grape juice. Grape juice, wine, could be, right?
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After all, he didn't really have time to ferment it, so just water into grape juice, and, you know, grape juice.
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Well, I think there are some problems with that. Definitely there are different uses of the word wine in ancient
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Greek literature, but this is the same word that Paul uses in Ephesians 5 .18
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to warn us against being drunk on wine. And I'm going to suggest to you that it takes a lot of work to get drunk on grape juice.
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That's my understanding of it. Also, if it was grape juice, the bit about generally serving the good stuff first, and then the cheap stuff, when people have drunk freely, really wouldn't make much sense.
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What do you give the Welches, and then you give the store brand later on? People will say, well, you know what, they say that ancient wine was diluted.
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It's not as strong as what we have today, and that's true. Sometimes it was ten parts water for every part of wine.
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Very true. But I doubt very seriously that you get drunk if it was so watered down that there's little or no alcohol left.
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It seems reasonable to conclude that the really watered down wine was what? It was what he was referring to about serving later.
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That's the bad stuff that you bring on the cheap stuff. Others might object that Jesus would not turn water into actual wine because the wine itself is the sin.
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Wine is not inherently sinful. Period. End of story. It's like money is not inherently sinful.
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It's what people do with it that determines its morality. However, make no mistake about it.
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If Jesus had only turned, think about this, if you'd only turn the water into grape juice, that still would have been a miracle.
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One of the other things I did last week was I read part of a book. Someone wanted to discuss it with me, so I read part of this book called
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The Secret. Can I see a show of hands of how many have read
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The Secret? No, never mind. I hope you haven't read it. I hope you don't own it. If you do, it should go right to the top of Pastor Mike's burn list.
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As soon as you see something called The Secret, and it's only something that some people have known through the ages, well, you know you're in big trouble.
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When it talks about a multitude of religions all have the same truth. One of the things this book talked about was that the most powerful force in the universe, and I was originally told, by the way, that this was a
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Christian book, the most powerful force in the universe was the Law of Attraction. The idea being that if you have positive thoughts, positive things will come into your life.
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If you have negative thoughts, negative things will come into your life. If you really want something bad enough and you just focus on it, it will come into your life.
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If you want a lot of money and you think about it, and I'm just like, well, how does that work with the lottery? There are probably millions of people who really, really, really want to win it, right?
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But they don't all win it. So, go home today, pour yourself a big cup of water, and really, really, really believe that you can turn it into grape juice.
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See how that goes for you. I don't think it's going to work. This is not some magic trick.
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This is not something that Jesus learned how to do. This is the creative power of God on display.
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So, even if it was grape juice, and I'll explain why it couldn't be grape juice here in a minute, even if it was just grape juice, that is a miracle.
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That's something that you and I cannot do. There's no physical explanation for that.
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It can only be the power of God. Now, you say, well, why couldn't it have been, well, again, if we say, you know, they give it to the steward.
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Now, the steward would know a little something about wine, because this would be something that he does fairly frequently heading up these wedding feasts.
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He says, look, people typically do what? They give the good stuff out first, and then they give the bad stuff.
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But you've reversed the whole order. This stuff is great. And what? He doesn't know where it came from.
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He has absolutely no idea where it came from. He doesn't know that, you know, a couple minutes before that, whatever the time frame was, it was water.
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All he knows is he tastes it, and he goes, you know, my life or my reputation or my master or whomever has been saved, because this is great stuff.
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And we have how much of it? 120 to 180 gallons. I think we're okay. I think we're set.
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Now, what else does this tell us? It tells us something about the graciousness of Christ. If we just think, look, here's a little crisis.
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You know, who knows how much wine it would have taken to solve this. I seriously doubt, because if there was any kind of planning at all, it's doubtful that they needed 150 gallons of wine.
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So what would they do with a hundred and, you know, let's say they have some leftovers. What would they do with that? Well, it would be quite valuable.
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They could even sell it. So they're given something of very substantial value.
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Jesus didn't just barely solve the problem. He went over and above. So first, we have the peculiar instructions.
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Secondly, the perfect result. And thirdly, we have the purpose revealed. Why did he do this?
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Was it to make Mary happy? Was it because he can't resist his mother? No.
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Look at verse 11. 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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Now, I know Pastor Mike has been talking about the miraculous gifts for a while. Weeks, months,
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I don't know. But what do you say that they're for? Why are people given the gift of healing?
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Why were they given the gifts of prophecy or what have you? Why were they able to do these things?
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Over and over again, we would see in Scripture that it was to authenticate the message and the messenger. So here we are again, culmination of the first week of Jesus' ministry.
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And he does a miracle. Now, the disciples who had just decided to follow him a few days before are probably looking and going, you know what,
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I think we chose wisely. This is good. This is very good.
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His glory was displayed. It was manifested. But it's interesting too, here's the pattern that we even see right here.
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Did it say all the wedding gifts believed? Did the master of the feast believe?
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No, because he didn't even know what the source of the wine was. Our text tells us what?
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That the disciples believed. They saw his glory. And that's what we see throughout the
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New Testament. People are fed miraculously. Do they believe? They just want to be fed again.
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People see miracle after miracle. Do they believe? No. They only want more and more and more.
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Now, thinking about it today, I was talking to someone the other day and he said, you know, I don't understand how my neighbors, family, friends don't believe.
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How do they not believe? It's easy. People who saw, these guys didn't even see the miracles, but people who actually saw miracles didn't believe.
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And we're perplexed when unbelievers today do not flee to Christ.
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There's no shock there. It's because God hasn't removed the scales from their eyes. They can't see. They have no spiritual eyes.
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They're spiritually dead. Somehow they delude themselves that they're good enough or that God's nice enough or that Jesus died for them even though they have absolutely no interest in him.
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Again, the master of the feast tasted the wine, remarked on its fine quality, but he had no idea from whom it came or how it came to be.
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It's not the miracle itself that's his glory. It's the disciples who perceived his glory.
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They saw what he did. This wasn't like being on the Mount of Transfiguration and seeing the glory shown through.
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But because what he did, the singular nature of who he was, look, John the Baptist did a lot of great things, but he never did miracles.
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He said a lot of powerful words, but he didn't do miracles. This Jesus is of a whole other level.
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And it says at the end of chapter 1 or somewhere there at the end of chapter 1 that they believed. But I think what we'll see as the
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Gospel of John develops is they believe and then they believe and then they believe. As more is revealed to them, they believe more.
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But they didn't fully embrace him. I mean, think about it. Even after he dies, what happens? They scatter because they don't know what to do.
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They didn't understand that he was going to be back in three days. I think it's quite clear that, again, step by step as the
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Lord revealed himself, they grew in faith. They believed and he helped their unbelief.
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He strengthened them. Now, this could be such an easy passage to just kind of sit down and write questions about.
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Who was the groom? Was Mary related to him? Was it Nathanael who invited
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Jesus and the other disciples? Why did Jesus act? Is there significance to the wine?
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Somebody says, you know what, Jesus here turned water into wine, into a multitude of wine, more than they would have needed.
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And later on, he multiplies loaves of bread and there you have wine and bread. What? The Lord's table.
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It's a foreshadowing of the Lord's table. I don't even know how you get there. You know, it's like that 25 bunker or bank shot.
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You know, I just go, did you? Too many banks for me. A lot of questions.
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But that's, again, not the point. And I would invite you to strip away all those questions and to just simply gaze upon the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's what John does here. He wants us to focus on him, to see what he does.
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And that's all that really matters. Jesus acting in a way that only he could.
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He displayed his omnipotence, his all -powerful nature. He displayed his perfect compassion, getting involved in something that he really didn't have to, he wasn't obligated to.
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It is good to study, it's good to wonder. But, beloved, let us not, in essence, bring our own video clips into the
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Bible. Let's not muddy the water. Let's not use the dry ice of the drum machines and the laser beams.
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We have all that we need in Jesus Christ. Listen to how Kistemacher describes him.
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He says, Christ stands revealed here as the one who honors the bond of marriage. Now, this does not surprise us, for according to John's description,
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Christ himself is the bridegroom who, by means of his incarnation, work of redemption and final manifestation, comes to his bride, the church.
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How then will he not honor that which is a symbol of his own relation to his people? In other words, why would he not act there?
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Secondly, he says, the one who bestows his gifts lavishly. Thirdly, he says, he's the one whose infinite love is made effective by his equally infinite power.
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And fourthly, he says, the one who accordingly is the son of God, full of grace and glory.
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And that's what's on display here, the glory and the grace of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are just struck today by the compassion, the omnipotence, and the grace of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, even as he resolves this seemingly trifling emergency.
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Something he had no obligation to do, and yet so that his disciples might be strengthened, he performed over and above anything that might have been necessary for that particular situation.
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Father, it is a reminder of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who though he did not have to, he was not obligated, but he voluntarily chose to come to earth, to live in our place, to live perfectly in our place, to die in our place, and to be raised on the third day, to suffer all things on our behalf.
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Father, we would pray that you would not let us lose sight of that, that even this week as we travel about, as we celebrate holidays, as we get involved in the hustle and bustle of life,
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Father, would you just cause our focus to be Christ, to strip away every concern, and to just marvel at the grace of our
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Lord Jesus, who would do all these things for us, his undeserving people.
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Father, even now as we go to the Lord's table, I pray that you would prepare our hearts, that we would think rightly about ourselves, that we would think rightly about you, and that our focus would be on our risen