Episode Transcript
Let's jump in here. Our series that we have been in, that you may believe is study in the Gospel of John, is where we've been for the last few weeks and we'll be for a few more weeks, a lot more weeks. And then as we go through this, I've entitled this today, the wedding in Cana as you look in your Bibles, chapter two, verses one through 12 is what we'll look at, very simply, just an account of the first miracle of Jesus. So let's pray and then we will, let's read this passage actually, and then we'll pray and then we'll get into our passage here and dig into this in some detail. Look with me in verse one, John chapter two, if you don't have a Bible, you can open your screens or apps or whatever that might be. Read with me on the third day, we'll get into that in a little bit, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. Jesus said to her, woman, what does it have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Now there were six stone jars there for the Jewish rights of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water and they fill them up to the what? Up to the brim. And he said to them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast. So they took it out, verse nine, 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, the groom and said to him, everyone serves the good wine first. But when people have had drunk freely, then the poor wine or the wine with not as great quality as that is, but you have kept the good wine until now. This is the first of the signs Jesus did at Canaan and Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him. Verse 12 concludes, and after this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples and they stay there for a few days. Let's pray. Oh Lord, as we look at this passage, as we consider the things that we have sung earlier, reminding ourselves as we sung out the words of your holiness and of your kindness and of your love for us, that you loved us first and that's how we can love each other and love you Lord. Because you are a holy God, we know that it was impossible for us to approach your throne with any kind of confidence. But because Jesus of what you have done, we can approach you with confidence. And we do that here and now this morning as we gather with many others in spirit across our community who are also opening the word, who are praying, who are singing, we come together in one spirit with all of our brothers and sisters across this community looking to you, the God who transforms our hearts. And we ask today as we spend time looking at this passage, that we would not just look for information, but that we would look to be transformed with a God who transforms and loves to transform. Help us to hear what you have to say, the things that I say would be from you. You would be glorified in what we do here. In Jesus' name, I pray everyone said. This first miracle, private miracles, not just public miracles are meant to cause us to glorify Jesus. Kind of hold on to that. Now I don't know about you, but there are times that we as Christians as a whole can have doubts. We can have doubts about our faith. We can have doubts about how much God cares about us. We can know as we sung earlier that God is good, that God exists, and that God is holy. And there are times though, that we especially in the midst of hardship, that we might ask ourselves the question, does God see my problem? And does God actually care? We may know from a distance and believe from a distance, yes, he cares, but is God willing to move to bring about a resolution to my problem? I think some of us, maybe all of us, have had a moment where we thought, God, I know that you hear me, but are you gonna do anything with the knowledge of what's happening in my life right now? I think that truth for us, that maybe reality that we've all perhaps experienced is very relevant to this passage here today. Now, many of you, maybe all of you, have already read through this passage before. You've already heard it preached. You've already heard it taught. You've already heard it before. And so, as you look at it, you're like, I don't know what we're really gonna get out of this. We'll answer that question in just a moment. Maybe the spirit will as we go through this. The big idea that I want us to get here today, maybe that you could hold on to is this. I put it on the screen, that Jesus is willing to demonstrate heavenly power to help us with our earthly problems. If we truly believe this, it will not only cause us to come to Jesus more frequently, but to come to him with more faith. Now, we're gonna see this as we walk through this together. And that's something that we should just hold on to as we walk through this. Jesus demonstrating heavenly power for earthly problems. And as you know, as we read through this text, it's not a matter of life and death. The problem here, is it? Someone who's not about to die or somebody hadn't just died, but we see here that Jesus still cares. So it's a story about a wedding. And my eight year wedding anniversary is in two days actually. I didn't realize that until here. And as many of you who are married or have been in relationship with people who are married, when wedding anniversaries come around, there often is times that you look back and you look at old pictures, that you tell stories. Some of you still have your wedding cake stored in a freezer somewhere. If people do that, I don't. But I would have eaten it on the first day of, first actually on the wedding day, I would have just eaten it all. But weddings are often very memorable. And we hope that people remember these weddings, or perhaps your wedding, for the right reasons. This wedding was memorable to Jesus' followers, even though the bride and the groom may not have actually even realized how significant it was. They, from what we see in this text, we don't see that they even knew about how significant what Jesus did was. Look at the first point on your outline with me. Really, this is just context and characters, the words you can write down as Jesus went to a wedding, very straightforward, versus one and two. On the third day, it says there was a wedding in Cana. And so third day, this matters. Why does this matter? Because this is an eyewitness account. And again, we're reading through John, the apostle John, he's writing this and he's saying, "I want you to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I want you to believe that He's the one who has the power to not only create all the things that you see around you, but He also has the power to give you and I life, or a relationship with God." And he's not just saying, "I heard it from a friend who told me that he had a neighbor who saw Jesus." No, this is Jesus, John's saying, "I was there." So on the third day, and this could be on the third day from calling Nathaniel, so let's say he called Nathaniel on Monday, this would be like on Wednesday, for example. On the third day, this is when this wedding in Cana happened. I put a map on the screen as well that you could see. This is Cana in Galilee, so this is up further north. Judea is down below, Samaria, I put Cana in a circle there to the, let's see, you're right there. You see the Sea of Galilee, which is often talked about in many of Jesus's travels. Cana is also the place that is the home of Nathaniel, one of these disciples, and it's about, depending on who you talk to, you're 24 to nine miles or so away from Nazareth where Jesus grew up. Now, why is that even relevant? Notice who else is at this wedding. Jesus was there with his mom, with his disciples, we're gonna see his brothers were there as well. Point being, they knew the people getting married. They could have been related, actually, to these people as well. They aren't very far away from the town that Jesus, of Nazareth, that Jesus grew up in. Now, what do we know about weddings? You can go to the next slide, because just that verse back on the screen. What do we know about weddings here? First off, they're different from weddings today. Many of us, we go to a wedding, you hope. All right, it's gonna be an hour or two or three, maybe if we hang out for a while, it might be a little longer than that, and then most likely our five were going home. Not the case with the weddings in this culture. Their culture, their weddings could last for up to a week, but most definitely it would be longer than just a day. Now, imagine going to a wedding for like three or four days. Be time off work. That'd be pretty cool, right? Hey, boss, I have to go to a wedding. He's like, all right, I'll see you next tomorrow. No, no, actually, you'll see me in a week. It's gonna be great. We're gonna have a great time. The wedding was, going to somebody's wedding was a great party for everybody involved. It was something that people looked forward to. It was a great time to hang out with people and not have to be bogged down with work and other stuff. You could hang out and enjoy each other and celebrating with the bride and the groom. Now, also different from weddings today, the planning and financial responsibility was not on the wife or the bride and her family. It was on the groom. How many of you would like that? Yeah. Many of the wives are like, no, no, we probably would still be planning our wedding 30 years later if it was on the groom, if it was his responsibility to plan the wedding. Also, the invites wouldn't have been sent. The pastor wouldn't have known and he probably wouldn't have been wearing anything but jeans and a t-shirt. So no, the wife is definitely should plan the wedding today. But then it was all on the groom then and that was something different. And so culturally, as this happened, Jesus, though, gets to go to this wedding. He's invited, again, relative, perhaps a friend. We can glean that from other parts of this passage. What we see here is this also, that Jesus went to a wedding to have fun. Jesus, friends, had fun. He didn't just shout me like, all right, everybody, I'm here, are you ready for another Bible study? Are you ready for another sermon? I have some things to tell you. Let's talk about wine. You know, here's gonna be a lot of people who have debates about alcohol later on. I'm gonna get set you all straight. He didn't have any of those conversations that we see. He went and was having a great time, presumably, at this wedding with his disciples. These five disciples, Nathaniel, Philip, Simon, Peter, Andrew, and John, who's unnamed here. And so they're having a great time. So that's the first point. Jesus, he goes to this wedding. This is where it is, who's involved. And then something happens, right? I don't mean to ruin the story or anything, but there was a problem. The problem we see in verse three. The second point on your outline is this. Jesus was presented with a problem. When, and it says when the wine ran out, not, oh, behold, the wine ran out. Maybe if the bride had planned the wedding, it would have been behold, the wine ran out. But for the guy, he planned the wedding, so it was when the wine ran out. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." So first off, this is a problem. For more reasons than you might see at first glance. Running out of wine would have brought significant embarrassment upon the groom and his family. And also, interestingly, we see from historical writings as well, that if you were to run out of wine or a significant poor planning was done with the wedding, this opened up the groom for lawsuit from the wife, the bride, and her family. Imagine that. You don't plan the wedding, right? And the wife's family could have been like, we're suing you. That would have been so unfortunate. And so, behold, the wine ran out. Now, notice who gets involved here. Jesus' mother, who by the way, isn't even named as Mary in this account. She gets involved. Now, I have to pause here for also a second. I asked the question, as I was reading through this, maybe you did as well. I'm joking, by the way, about because the guy planned it, they ran out of wine. But I asked the question, why did they run out of wine? Now, I think we can read into the text a little bit and see that Jesus and his disciples were invited to this wedding. You notice that? How long ago did Jesus get these disciples? Like three or four days ago. Five more people showed up that probably weren't on the RSVP list. Now, if, and again, I'm speculating, if that was kind of the nature, the culture of what was happening here with this wedding or the way it was planned, there might have been quite a few people at this wedding who weren't planning on being there originally or a week ahead of time. And by the way, you don't come up with a bunch of wine like that. You don't drive down to the nugget and just clear off a shelf and say, "All right, I got all the wine "for everybody who might show up." So why did they run out? Possibly because there was more people there than originally planned. And then we see Mary engages here, who again gives us a sign that maybe she was related to or a close friend of the groom here. And even Jesus may have been a close friend here. And then we see this happening, right? So she finds out about this. We ran out of wine. And I don't, we, the Bible doesn't tell us if she went and found Jesus or she saw Jesus walking by. And then here we see though what she says to Jesus in verse three. They've run out of wine. And then Jesus replies with a reply that honestly none of us would ever expect to hear if we were to pray and ask Jesus, tell Jesus one of our problems, right? I mean, wouldn't that be frustrating? Jesus, I have a problem as we Christians pray today and you hear a voice from heaven and says this, "What is that to do with me?" Wouldn't that be frustrating? That would be so frustrating for us as believers today. And luckily we're not in that place. But here we see that's Jesus's reply to his mom. And really what it says here, and we look at this again, at first glance we're like, "That doesn't seem very nice of him." First off the word woman. He doesn't say mom. He doesn't say Mary. He simply says woman. And that seems to at least initially seem, is that rude of him or is he communicating distance? And I would say perhaps not more so. It's a term of respect for his mother. And also he's an adult man. He's not saying mommy, right? 'Cause that would be strange. He's a 30-some-year-old guy talking to his mother. He says woman. And then you're like, well, really? Is that really a term of respect? Remember what he says to his mom, how he references her as he's hanging on the cross. He looks down and he says, "Woman, behold your son." Now that wasn't rude of him, was it? We don't look at that as he's hanging on the cross and he's saying some derogatory, or he's speaking negatively or distancing himself from his mother in that regard. Again, we see term of respect, but also I am not a little boy who needs to do exactly what you want me to do. So she comes to him, woman. What does that have to do with his reply? What does that have to do with me? This statement of Jesus in the original language and elsewhere in scripture shows that Jesus is basically saying this. And this is my problem because how does this relate to me? As some have interpreted this, it's there's you and there's me and how are these two things connected? How are these two things married together here? And then he clarifies this even further and says this, "My hour has not yet come." What are we talking about here? Jesus, ultimately throughout his ministry, he want honors his mother, yes, but also he's clear on something. His role when his ministry begins is to honor first and foremost his father. The timing of what he does is to honor God first, not to listen to the voice of other people. There's plenty of times when people said, "We want to crown you king, "we want you to do this, we want you to do this." And Jesus says, "No, no, no, it's gonna be "when God wants me to do that." Jesus did not fall prey to other people's suggestions of what he should do if first and foremost he hadn't checked with God. Isn't that a great lesson for us as well? Just because somebody else says, "Here is my problem." Jesus demonstrates, "I'm first gonna check to make sure, "is this what God has called me to do?" And perhaps Mary doesn't say this, but perhaps Mary wants him to be obvious in this miracle because when we read this at first, he says, "My hour has not yet come." But notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, "No, I'm not gonna help." He clarifies, "I'm not going to make a thing of this "because I don't want people to see me "as this super, in this case, in this particular time, "someone who's gonna be able to make more wine "for them any time." Remember when he fed the 5,000? Remember the response to that? Let's make him king. Now, Jesus is not ready for that here. And so he says, "My hour has not yet come." And yet, we see, and again, we're not there, but I just kind of invite myself into this situation, put myself in these shoes here. Mary approaches Jesus, says, "Mary, Jesus, we're out of wine." He says, "Woman, what does that to do with me? "My hour hasn't come." And I don't know if they had a pause there where they looked at each other. We can check when we get to heaven. And looked at each other, and perhaps Mary looks at him knowingly, and Jesus looks at her knowingly. And maybe there's a nod, I don't know. Maybe he kind of nods at her, and then Mary, her next words are this, as she's talking to Jesus, do whatever he says, speaking to the servants. It's like she knew he was going to do something, but didn't really know what. This should cause us to pause. There's not many times actually that Mary speaks through the gospels. Not a whole lot of things that she says. Depending on what denomination, or what church or religion we're talking about, Mary is esteemed as someone incredibly significant in our relationship with God and with Jesus, but in reality, she was someone who listened to Jesus. And here in this case, when she speaks, she says something all of us should hear as well. Do you see what her words are in verse five? Do whatever he tells you? Two questions we have to consider. Maybe write these down. Do I present Jesus with my problems, or do I ask him for help or for a solution? Sometimes we can come to Jesus as Mary did and say, here's the problem. Notice what she didn't say, Jesus, can you fix it? It's assumed, but sometimes we can come to Jesus and just complain about our situation rather than say, Jesus, what do you want me to do right now? Who do you want me to be right now? Who do you want me to listen to right now? And then the second question is this. Will we do whatever he tells us regardless of how crazy it sounds? And you're gonna see that, right? We're gonna see that in just a few more verses. Well, I do whatever he tells me regardless of how crazy it sounds. If he says, I would like you to sell all of your belongings and move to a different country, will we go? If he says, I would like you to make some cookies and go to the person next door and give it to them and sit down and invite them to coffee with you and have a conversation and get to know them, will we do that? If he says, I would like you to forgive someone who's wronged you because I've forgiven you, will we do that? If Jesus tells us to do something that causes us to be uncomfortable, will we do that? Jesus, it doesn't make sense. Jesus, if you had the whole story, then whatever our excuses might be, but here's the reality, Mary's words here are important for every one of us today to think about, to ask ourselves, will we do whatever he tells us no matter how crazy or uncomfortable or frustrating it might seem. Jesus then moves on to verse six. We see that Jesus then engages with the problem. You could write this down. Jesus's solution involves servants. Jesus's solution involves servants. Look what it says in verse six. And so now it's almost like maybe we may have walked to a different room, maybe Mary's walked away here. Now there's Jesus standing there with these servants. By the way, these servants, the Greek word here is not the word that we see later on in Paul's letters, like slave. This is the word deacons actually. So these are just volunteers. These are not slaves in the household of the groom. These are probably just friends or perhaps relatives of the bride and groom who are literally just there because someone said, "Hey, can you come help at my wedding?" Have any of you been asked before? "Hey, can you come help at my wedding?" That's these people who are the servants. And Mary, who is in charge, has just said, we don't know if these servants know Jesus or not, but we know that Mary knows them. They seem to trust Mary. Mary says, "Do whatever he tells you." And they say, "Okay, Mary presumably walks away." And now we have, on this side over here, we have six stone jars. And it says that these jars, as you see there in the text, that these jars are there for the Jewish rites of purification. And what that is is simply water that's held there in order to clean or to cleanse utensils or to wash hands of those who are there. And we don't know how much water is currently in these either, but notice it's a lot that they have there, probably somewhere between, from what you see here, 120 to 180 gallons worth of what would have been water. That's a decent amount of water that could have been in these jars. And Jesus now engages with the problem. He doesn't say this isn't my wedding, it's not my problem. He doesn't say that I want them to just figure it out. The groom should have planned better next time. Not that there should be a next time, but the groom should have planned better. He doesn't say any of those things, but he steps in, as we saw at the beginning, Jesus steps in and says, "I'm about to engage heavenly power with earthly problems." He cares about what this means for the bride and for the groom. And so here's what he does. He says, "Will you fill these jars with water?" That's what he tells them to do, right? And then one of them says, "Sure, no problem. "Hurries out the door, grabs the garden hose, "runs it back inside, and turns on the spigot." That's what they do, right? 'Cause that's the easiest way to fill up 180 gallons worth of jars. Do they have a garden hose right around the corner? No, no they don't. This jumps right over how significant really this is. He says, "Will you fill up?" Again, we don't know how empty these jars are. He says, "Will you go fill these jars up?" And they, perhaps, stand in there, look back at each other, whoever knows how many of them there are, and think, "Does he know how long that's gonna take? "Does he know how far away the well is "that we have to go to to get the water "to fill up these jars, but what do they do?" They obey. And they obey all the way. They don't obey partially. They obey completely. It says that they filled them up to the brim, to the top. No matter how much time that took, how absurd that may sound, is there probably carrying buckets of water, thinking, "Does he know what the problem actually is?" Isn't Jesus, sometimes he tells us to do something, and we're like, "Jesus, do you know what the real problem is?" The problem is, in this case, we have no wine, and here we are getting a bunch of water ready for everyone here. They don't want water. They want wine. Now, again, we could look a little deeper into this, and we could ask some questions like this. Why didn't Jesus just fill the pots of water, fill the pots up with water like that? Could he do that? Jesus literally could be like empty pots, full pots. He could do that, right? Fill them up with water, or even more so, he could snap his fingers, and they're full of wine. He could do that, right? But he doesn't do that. Why doesn't he do that? He's a God who creates. He literally spoke the world into existence. He could speak and say, "Wine," and then there's wine, but he doesn't do that. For some reason, Jesus delights to invite humans into this miracle. He delights to bring humans into, in these servants, to participate in what he is about to do. The servants couldn't do, and they didn't do the miracle, but by combining their work with Jesus, we see something amazing. They could have been slacking servants who said, "You know what, Jesus, this doesn't make any sense. "We're gonna go back to the party. "You know what, you can figure it out yourself. "Mary gave you the job of fixing the problem. "Good luck," and they could have left. They could have said, "You know what, "after five or six trips to the well and back, "this is a lot of work, Jesus. "This doesn't even make sense. "I'm not gonna obey anymore." They could have stopped, in any portion of that, their obedience, but they listened to what Mary had said, "Do whatever he tells you." And so here, we see that they were willing to be obedient, obedient servants. How many times do we not obey all the way, and that leads us to not experiencing the full blessing of what Jesus has for us? This might be in relationships that we aren't humble in or quick to forgive in. Jesus says, "I bless you with this great relationship. "Maybe it's a marital relationship. "Maybe it's a family relationship. "Maybe it's a friend relationship." And here's what I've called you to do. Here's the instructions. Love them, forgive them, be a part of their life. Do life with, then encourage them, and then you're gonna experience great blessing. And then they're like, "But yeah, Jesus, "but they wronged me. "They did something wrong to me, "and so because of that, I shouldn't have to. "Are we not robbing ourselves of the blessing "of that relationship by being disobedient to Jesus?" The same thing these servants literally could have done. This doesn't make sense, I don't want to. And Jesus went like, "You're missing out "on the blessings that I have for you." Witnessing to other people. Jesus says, "Go into all the world and make disciples. "Yeah, but that's hard. "I don't want to do that, "and your way of doing that doesn't really make sense. "It's uncomfortable for me." And so if we decide to say, "I'm gonna be a disobedient servant in that regard, "are we not missing out on the blessings "that Jesus has for us?" The blessing of being able to sit down with somebody else and say, "Here's the gospel. "Let me invite you into relationship with Jesus." If any of you have said to somebody else, "Let me invite you into relationship with Jesus." And been able to lead someone to the Lord, is that not a blessing? But that blessing is only experienced if we are obedient servants. Jesus says, "Spend time alone with me." God calls us into relationship with Him. And time and again, we can say, "I'm too busy for that. "I'm too busy for that." And Jesus is like, "Yeah, but if you obey in this, "you can experience great blessing in this." And oftentimes we can sit in disobedience even in our time with God. And we wonder why we feel distant. We wonder why we don't understand. We wonder why we don't know the Lord, the way we want to. Many times, we don't obey all the way. That leads us to not experiencing the blessing that Jesus has for us. There are places that Jesus wants you and I to experience blessing. I am sure of that. But that blessing so many times is based on our obedience to Him. We see that here as well. Let's look at point four on your outline. Jesus desires to prove His power. Now this is so neat. Verse eight, "And He said to them," that is to the servants, so they have now filled up these six jars, 120, 180 gallons or so of what they poured in as water. Look what it says, "And then He said to them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast." So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine and did not know where it came from, wait a minute, when did the miracle happen? When did that happen? Jesus didn't go wine. Like when did that occur? He didn't say, "And now we thank you, Father, "for all of this wine." And then suddenly it turned into wine. We don't see even the significance of this miracle. We don't see when it happened. Did it happen as they were pouring the water in? Did it happen when they said, "All right, it's all full of water." Jesus is full of water. And then they looked back and then it was wine. Did it turn into wine as they scooped out with a cup to bring it to the master of the feast? When did that happen? The text doesn't even say. And this points again to Jesus' area of, like he's almost being secretive. It's almost a private little miracle. He's no fanfare going on here. It's done so quickly. And then they bring it to the master of the feast and the servants. They act in faith. They take the water, which has been changed, and they bring it to him. And he tastes this. Somewhere in all of that, it has become wine. Jesus, though, what we see here was willing to have his miracle tested by the authority of the person at the feast. He didn't say, "Well, all right, give it out to people "and hopefully no one will notice." That's not what he did. He was willing to have his miracle tested. And this is a good lesson for us today, especially as we watch things on TV. We read books about all sorts of miracle things happening. And is this real or is this not real? True miracles are something that we can actually prove to be the case. There's all sorts of fraud around miracles. And people were saying, "Look, I healed this person "or look, what kind of power I have." Jesus was willing to say, "I did something significant. "I did something powerful. "I did some miraculous work "and I'm willing to have it proven "by the master of the feast." And notice what he says. Not, "Pleh, this is terrible water." He says, "This is so good." And what's also, I think, so fascinating is he calls the groom over. And then look what he says. "Everyone serves the good wine first, "and then when people have drunk freely, "then the poor wine." But you've kept the good wine until now. It's like the master of the feast is putting this responsibility on the groom. Imagine what the groom might be thinking right now. I have no idea what you're talking about. (audience laughs) I mean, I asked somebody sometime to bring wine. I don't know how much they brought. I don't know what quality they brought. But okay, cool, I'm glad. I'm glad that you're happy with the wine. He has no idea about what just happened. But the master of the feast, who also has no idea about what happened, applauds him in this wine that has been made, this water that has been turned into wine. And imagine the servants as well in the midst of this who have watched this. And maybe they hand it to the master of the feast, probably hoping maybe just to smell it on the way. And they give it to him, wondering, what's going to happen when we give it to him? And they listen to his response and he says, this is the best I have tasted. Doesn't Jesus create the best? What's interesting is this doesn't seem to bolster or create a significant amount of faith in the servants. Later on, we see that Jesus goes back to Nazareth in Luke four and they actually reject him when he says that I am the son of God. We can look that in Luke four. They reject him. We see here, even though Jesus did this miraculous work, he proved his power. People did not receive him. Now, before we go on to point five, I think it's necessary that we just spend about two and a half minutes or less talking about wine because we have to, because it's here. First off, what do we know about wine and alcohol just for the sake of talking about this? Jesus drank wine. Okay, we're just putting that out there. In our culture and in church today, there's all sorts of opinions, about alcohol and about wine, and should we drink or should we not drink, or all of that. Jesus drank wine. In this culture, in this area, in this location, wine was healthier than water. Wine was not anywhere close, and we can dig all sorts of details, we won't, anywhere close to as alcoholic as our wine is today. Just, you could do your own research on that. Drunkenness in the culture in this time was frowned upon. So it was not something that like today, oh, I got wasted last night. That was not something that one Jew shared with another Jew. He was like, yeah, man, go you. Like that was not, that was not a thing. Drunkenness was frowned upon throughout. You can read through, as you read through the scriptures, you'll see that. And then fourthly, just four things about this, and then four things about, for us as Christians, Jesus making wine does not mean that Jesus thinks Christians should drink wine or drink alcohol. Okay, there's just four facts. And then four things to consider. If what you're consuming impairs your judgment, avoid it. If alcohol is hurting or hindering the quality of your relationships, stop. Drunkenness, according to the Bible, is wrong. Secondly, thirdly, be a brother approach. Your witness to other people matters. And fourthly, love other people. Be considerate of their views, of their pasts, and of their convictions. You can literally spend an entire sermon on those things. We won't. But there's a great lesson here, even if not intended for us, in what the Master of the Feast says. When we've done all that we can to enjoy our life here, the best is yet to come. And it comes because of Jesus. Let's look at point five. Jesus' works tell us he is worthy. This is the first, verse 11 in your Bibles, this is the first of his signs. You see that Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him. After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. Now, if you have spent any time reading through John, what you'll see is there are seven signs that Jesus does before his death in crucifixion, and then one of them after his resurrection. So seven signs that we see before the crucifixion, what they are, we are watering the wine as we see here today. The second one was healing the nobleman's son, healing the pool of Bethsaida, feeding the 5,000, Jesus walking on water, healing the man born blind, and Lazarus being raised from the dead. All of these are signs that John communicates and says, this is proving that Jesus is worth believing in. And it says this, this sign manifested his glory. We ask the question, how? The glory of Jesus, in this case, I think is found, I believe is found in his demonstration of compassion. This was a miracle full of compassion. The wine was not absolutely necessary. No one would die at this point in time drinking water. All risk that we see here was embarrassment to the groom. His reputation, people looking back and remembering the wedding as the wedding that ran out of wine and Jesus, in an attitude of compassion, with a heart of compassion, says, I am going to help. And compassion isn't a trait that only God has. But in this situation, this compassion leads to a miraculous work. And then it says that Jesus, that his disciples believed more in him, or believed in him. What's interesting is that it doesn't say his brothers believed in him. They were there, it doesn't say the servants believed in him. It doesn't say the master of the feasts believed in him. It doesn't say the bridegroom believed in him, even though they all enjoyed the wine that Jesus made, which gives us this other important truth here. Jesus' blessings are often received by those who reject him. We see that all over the world that we live in. God made this, you're enjoying it, but you're still rejecting the creator of what you are enjoying. And then we see after this happens, they go off to Capernaum, which is northeast or so, from their location, which is down by the Sea of Galilee, and we'll pick up what happens there later. They spend a few days there. Notice also, Joseph isn't a part of this. Joseph has presumably died. We don't know, but what we do know here is this is the first step that says, Jesus cares. Jesus cares. He sees the problems that you and I might be going through, and he has compassion. Listen in here before we close. This sign shows us something that we can't forget. Jesus has the power to transform something normal, slightly dirty, and unsanitary, into something very good, so good that people will tell others about it. Jesus transformed you, and he's still transforming you and me. To see this transformation, we have to be like those servants who were willing to obey Jesus. This transformation may not be flashy, and it may not draw lots of attention to us, but we can be sure of this. If we're willing to obey Jesus, he will transform us into people who manifest his glory. In this case, we see he changes, he transforms, water, to wine, and manifests his glory, because we see also, and we see also, there was obedience of the servants that brought about this miracle. The same is true for us, as servants of God. In this case, though, not servants like deacons, but servants like slaves of God. People who are saying, you are the master, I am here to obey you, and if I do that, I can know, you can know, friends, that one thing is sure, God will be glorified in our obedience of him. Jesus is willing to demonstrate heavenly power to help us with our earthly problems. And if we truly believe this, it will not only cause us to come to Jesus more frequently, but to come to him with more faith as well. And I pray that be true for us as a church, as living hope church, that we would be people who come to Jesus frequently, and come to Jesus with faith, saying, I believe that you care about what's going on in my life, and that you have compassion about what's happening for me. I believe that. You demonstrated that here in this wedding, but also he demonstrates that regularly for you and I in our life, doesn't he? And we can praise him for that. And maybe the first step for you in this area of belief, or an area of obedience, I should say, is this. Jesus, I'm gonna submit to you as one that I need to listen to. First is my Lord and Savior, because I've been resisting you and learning about you, but never really willing to say, transform my heart. And maybe for us who are following Jesus, it's us asking the question, what part of my life do I need to surrender to you, so that you can transform, miraculously transform, so that I can glorify you better? What part of my heart have I not given over to you? And Jesus, we come before you, as a people who desperately need your transformation in our hearts. Help us not to be a church. It looks at even a text like this, a passage like this, a story like this, and says that's cool, look what Jesus did for them. But rather, we would say this, that Jesus who did that is the same Jesus we worship today. The same Jesus who cared about this problem is the same Jesus who cares about the problems that we have. That we would be a people that come to you with faith, believing that you have the power to help us when we need help. Help us to be a people as well, who are willing to do whatever you call us, anything that it might be, whatever it may be, how far it may take us, or how close to home it might be, that we would be willing to do whatever you tell us to do. And that as we do that, we know, Lord, that you will be glorified, and that is good for us, and we know it's good, good for you. In Jesus' name, amen.
