Northwest Community Evangelical Free Church
(March 1, 2015)
Dave Smith
Sermon Series: THIS Jesus!
Water to WineStudy #1
(John 2:1-11)
Introduction: Searching for the REAL Jesus…
In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey describes an oil-based painting that hung in the church of his youth. It depicted Jesus with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Jesus is drawn as a shepherd with milky white skin gently holding a small lamb.
Yancey remembers that when he was a child he felt comforted by that image of Jesus. He liked to think of himself as that little lamb, cradled in Jesus’ arms.
From the perspective of adulthood, however, Yancey has come to have a very different “take” on that image. He now refers to it as a “Mister Rogers Jesus,” a Jesus with no hard edges. And, in retrospect, he recognizes that it is neither a very compelling nor a very biblical picture of Jesus.
There are lots of other images of Jesus out there.
A variety of Jesus’...
Some today view Him as a Che Guevara figure who is out to overturn the world’s governments by revolution.
Others see him as less aggressive. In one famous painting, Jesus is pictured knocking on the United Nations building, the Answer to international tensions, if anyone would just let Him in.
Modern opinions of Jesus hold Him to be a either a Galilean charismatic or an unorthodox rabbi, a Pharisee or an anti-Pharisee, an unkempt, radical, counter-cultural misfit or an hallucinogenic leader of a sacred mushroom cult.
There is truly no shortage of ways to view Jesus.
Near the end of John’s Gospel, we read that if all the things that Jesus did were written down, even the world itself would not be able to contain the books (John 21:25). Thousands of books have been written about Jesus - many of them very good books.
But except for a few scant references from the secular writings of His day, we all rely on the same basic source material. And the best and most reliable source material for learning about Jesus remain the four Gospel accounts found in the New Testament.
And frankly, we wish the Gospels gave us more.
About THIS Jesus...
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John give us very few details about His family life, childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood.
We don’t have a clue as to His physical appearance - except that He certainly was not a blue-eyed, blonde-haired male with milky white skin. We don’t know His height, weight, or muscularity.
In His lifetime, Jesus spoke to fewer people than have been in any of hundreds of stadiums Billy Graham has filled to preach about Him. And yet, today history divides by “before Christ” and “in the year of our Lord.” Today, people worship and curse in the Name of Jesus.
If you can gauge the size of a ship that has passed by the wake it leaves behind, then the ship of Jesus’ life was, without question, the largest ship in history.
Looking for THIS Jesus...
For every reason we could list, it is worth our while, every once in a while, to clear away the fog, do away with that Jesus and that Jesus and that Jesus and investigate THIS Jesus, the Jesus of the New Testament.
That’s because, of all the reasons to believe in Christianity, He is the most compelling.
It is not evidence for creation. It’s not the increasing archaeological evidence for Noah’s Ark or for Moses’ Exodus or for the downed walls of Jericho that drives us to embrace the Christian way.
It is the Person of Jesus.
A right understanding of Jesus draws us to faith, while the biggest show-stopper to faith is a faulty view of Jesus.
So, I propose that over the next several Sundays we allow the Apostle John to lead us into the understanding of Jesus he obtained via firsthand exposure. From now through the Sunday after Easter, we’ll be looking for evidence of what Jesus was really like from John’s Gospel.
John’s record of Jesus begins differently from the other three.
Matthew and Luke give us genealogies and birth narratives and the launch of Jesus’ ministry with temptations in the wilderness. Mark skips the birth stories and goes right to the temptations.
The other Gospels give us the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration, and parables. John gives us none of that.
What John does do, however, is give us a very tightly focused picture of Jesus, and He begins at the beginning, the very beginning.
Listen closely to John’s opening. His first words have more in common with Genesis 1 than they do with Matthew 1 or Mark 1 or Luke 1.
Prologue to Consideration of a Saving Lord (John 1:1-51)
The Prologue (vv. 1-18)
Meet “the Word” (vv. 1-5)
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was in the beginning with God.[3] All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. [4] In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. [5] And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
You and I hear the word “Word” and think, “A word.” Big deal.
But to John’s audience, the “Word” was a very big deal. The world was created by the Word of God. When the prophets thundered their messages, they would often begin, “The Word of the Lord…”
The Word is the communication and the revelation of God.
But John’s Word is more than that. The Word IS God. Not “godly.” Not “god-like.” Not “a god.” GOD. The Almighty.
And, in the Word was life.
Not dependent life, like ours. Independent life. The Word is the source from which all creation draws life.
And the life within the Word serves as a lighthouse, directing us to God’s life.
So John has introduced us to the Word. The Word is an eternal, creative, cosmic life force.
He now brings us in from eternity and infinity, crashing back in to the flesh and blood world of planet earth.
Meet John (vv. 6-8)
[6] There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. [7] He came as a witness, to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. [8] He was not the light, but came to testify about the light.
This is not John the author, the Apostle John, but the other John - John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a untamed and untamable man who dressed in unclean animal skins and ate locusts and honey. He is among the most intriguing characters in the Bible.
He enters the story of Jesus from the deserts to the east of Palestine, calling people to repentance by baptism in the Jordan River.
John was a no-nonsense ascetic. Leather-skinned from exposure to the wilderness and leather-lunged to condemn sin, he was all zeal and thundering passion for God.
John was a man sent from God, but John was not the star of the show. He was the prequel. He came to bear witness of the light that the Word shines into the darkness.
John, the author, shifts back to a focus on the Word now, emphasizing that the Word is a Person.
Meet the God-Man (vv. 9-18)
The rejection of the true Light (vv. 10-11)
[9] There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. [10] HE was in the world, and the world was made through HIM, and the world did not know HIM. [11] HE came to HIS own, and those who were HIS own did not receive HIM.
The transcendent, eternal, creative Word is a Person. And by the time we come to verse 11, we can’t resist the temptation to draw the line between the Word and Jesus!
Jesus came home to the Jews, His own people, who should have welcomed Him the way we welcome returning heroes. By and large they didn’t.
BUT those who did not reject Him found life, abundant, free, and eternal.
The reception of the true Light (vv. 12-14)
[12] But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, [13] who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. [14] And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Very briefly we’ve traced the Word’s story from creation (“In the beginning was the Word…”), to a birth at Bethlehem when the light first shined (“the Word became flesh”) to Calvary where the light was rejected.
John’s Prologue gives us the heart of the Christian faith, and it is this: That the Word of God took on flesh for our salvation, in the Person of Jesus.
During the three years John spent as an apostle of Jesus, He lived with the Word. He walked the streets of Nazareth with the Word. He watched the Word’s healing hands at work and he heard the Word’s life-giving message.
When we think of seeing God’s glory, we may think of visions and miracles and spectacular shows of power. John says that in all human history, the glory of God was most clearly seen during the thirty three years of Jesus’ life when He lived “in the flesh.”
And THIS that we now read is the vision the Apostle John wants us to take forward into our exploration of Jesus.
Grace upon grace… (vv. 15-18)
[15] John testified about Him, and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.” [16] For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. [17] For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. [18] No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
Anyone who believes in Jesus receives grace upon grace upon grace upon grace, wave upon unending wave of grace, from God.
On the day you trusted in Jesus for your salvation and passed from darkness into light, God gave you the gift of grace. The angels were jumping up and down, shouting, “He is forgiven! He is forgiven!!”
And on every day that follows, when you sin, because you are child of God through faith in Christ, the angels continue to shout, “He is forgiven! He is forgiven!!”
The wonder of grace never fades because we remember the enormous problem that our sin caused and the lengths to which God went to solve our problem.
He sent His only begotten Son, the eternal Word, to earth to be clothed in flesh and to offer Himself as a sacrifice on a Roman cross so that we could become children of God.
That’s John’s opening salvo, his Prologue. He continues the story of Jesus, tracing the most private season of Jesus’ early public life.
After Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, He began to collect disciples.
These first disciples included two from among the ranks of John the Baptist’s disciples, one of whom was Andrew. Then Andrew brought his brother, Simon (Peter), who followed Jesus. Then Jesus found Philip, who followed. Philip brought along Nathanael, who also followed.
So, by the time we come to the end of John’s first chapter, Jesus had five disciples.
The next chapter, where we’ll spend the remainder of our time today, begins with a time stamp (“on the third day” - i.e. the third day after the baptism), a place stamp (“in Cana of Galilee”), and an event stamp (“there was a wedding”).
The action takes place in the northern part of Palestine, in the region of Galilee, at the tiny town of Cana. Cana was a village located a few miles north of Nazareth (the city in which Jesus grew up) out on the plains mid-way between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean.
Transforming Water Into Wine (vv. 1-10)
A Wedding (vv. 1-2)
[1] And on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there, [2] and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding.
Wedding guests
You would not likely have found John the Baptist at a wedding. He was a man more given to fasting than to feasting.
But it’s not strange to find Jesus there. Trace Jesus’ life through the Gospels and you’ll often find Him at parties and celebrations.
I have wondered if Andrew, the former follower of John the Baptist who was now following Jesus, might have had some difficulty with his new Rabbi’s willingness to eat, drink, and party.
John and his disciples would have never been invited to a party or to a wedding. Jesus was, evidently, exactly the kind of guy you would want at a wedding celebration.
Not that Jesus was some wild party animal. Only that nobody would have thought, “Oh, don’t invite Jesus. He’s such a wet blanket.”
Jesus was no grim-faced ascetic. He brought joy and abundant life.
Those who were hosting this wedding feast knew that Jesus and His followers either had family or friendly relations with the bride or the groom, so they invited them.
Weddings
In ancient Israel, weddings generally took place late in the day and often after dark so that the processions through the city streets would be lit by impressive torchlight.
The wedding event itself would begin with a parade of the groom and his friends to the home of the bride.
Once at her home, wedding guests would give speeches and toast the couple. Then the wedding party would walk to the groom’s house.
There, they would hold a brief religious ceremony, to be followed by the reception and a wedding feast.
By the time we are brought into this scene, the wedding is over and the reception is on.
Unlike our wedding receptions, though, which may last for some hours, a Jewish wedding feast might last for up to a week. This one had been going on for some time when a problem - a big problem - hits.
A Wedding Crisis (vv. 3-5)
Mary’s motherly remark to Jesus (v. 3)
[3] When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
In the first century - and actually throughout biblical history - wine was a staple of the Jewish diet.
There have always been warnings against drunkenness, of course. But wine was a welcomed part of any celebration.
The guests at a wedding would taste the wine as they traveled from house to house. Sometimes, the couple would drink wine to seal their vows. And, at the reception (again, sometimes lasting for days), wine was served.
At this wedding in Cana, they have run out of wine. There is no telling WHY they ran out of wine, but THAT they ran out of wine was a serious problem. It was a breach of etiquette to stop serving wine.
When the wine runs out, the party’s over. When the wine runs out, the hosts have egg all over their faces. I read in one source that the couple could have actually been sued over the lack of wine.
So, this was a very sobering situation (sorry), and Mary let her Son, Jesus, know about it. It was, after all, only natural for Mary to look to Jesus at a time like this. She, of all people, knew who He really was and that He could do something about it.
While others may have had their doubts about Jesus’ identity, Mary was the one person who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was the Son of God.
She had given birth to other children after Jesus. Those conceptions were quite normal. Only Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Mary has been waiting a long time, all of Jesus’ life, thirty years by this time, for her Son to reveal His true identity. To this point He has not performed a miracle. This would surely have been a convenient time for Him to do something.
And Jesus had a response to give to His mother.
Jesus: “Lady, I know My business.” (4)
[4] And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.”
By those words, Jesus made a dramatic turn in His relationship with His mother. No longer is she the one to whom He submits. He’s not her “little boy.” Now, He is in control, and He’s not taking orders from Mom.
His message is, “My timetable is My own. I’ll handle this. I don’t need your wisdom, your prompting, your suggestions or your nudges.”
When Jesus said these things, Mary graciously accepted her new role in her Son’s life. He is now her Lord - and she promptly spoke to the servants at the wedding.
Mary: “Servants - do His bidding!” (5)
[5] His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”
Now it might have appeared to us that when Jesus said, “My hour has not yet come” He was refusing to take action. Not so.
He was simply refusing to act on anyone’s timetable but His own. He will perform His first miracle when He has decided that it is time.
My own sense is that Jesus had not gone to the wedding intending to identify Himself as the miracle-working Son of God. But He chose to do what He will now do in response to a need - and it won’t be the last time that Jesus alters His plans to meet someone else’s pressing need.
Mary seemed to know her Son well enough to know that He was going to do something and so she put the servants on notice that Jesus is, now, in charge. He is going to be giving them orders.
A Wedding Miracle (vv. 6-10)
The vessels for the miracle (v. 6)
[6] Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each.
In the home where the wedding reception was being held there were six stone waterpots holding a total of at least one hundred and twenty gallons of water.
These were very large and heavy containers, not the kinds of pitchers that people would carry around. They were kept out of view of the guests and held water that was used for ceremonial hand-washing.
The Jews of Jesus’ day took great pains to avoid ritual uncleanness. One rabbinic book of the first century has multiple chapters on how and when a person was to wash his or her hands.
Seeing these large containers, Jesus spoke to the servants.
Jesus’ really unappetizing instructions (vv. 7-8)
Fill the waterpots (v. 7)
[7] Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” So they filled them up to the brim.
So, quick. What do you think was going through the minds of the servants when they heard this command?
I suspect that they were confused. They were wondering what in the world this Jesus guy has in mind.
It was their job to keep the waterpots sufficiently filled for various hand-washings, but now they have to fill them, and that’s going to be a job.
If you’ve ever had to haul water, you know that this would have taken some time and some effort. But they did what Jesus commanded and filled them all up to the brim.
Then, He gave His next command, which probably caused the servants to turn queasy.
Present it to the headwaiter (v. 8)
[8] And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the headwaiter.”
The headwaiter at this wedding was the one responsible for tasting the wine before it was served. So why in the world would Jesus want the servers to take the hand-washing water to him?
That water was fine for washing hands, but it wasn’t suitable for drinking. It wasn’t potable.
When I went camping to West Texas a couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law and I were hiking up a stream bed in a canyon. The canyon actually had flowing water that looked crystal clear, like you could just kneel down and drink.
We knew better. On a previous trip up this same canyon we had found that some wild donkeys (donkeys, by the way, who had a very diminished sense of personal hygiene) had made a filthy mess of the creek just upstream. The water wasn’t potable and we weren’t about to drink without treating or boiling it.
Of course first century Jews didn’t know about microscopic pathogens in water, but they did know that there was drinkable water and there was undrinkable water.
The water in the stone pots was not suitable for drinking - but Jesus had just told them to serve some of it to the headwaiter.
They must have thought, “I know what Mary said, but this Guy can’t be serious! When the headwaiter finds out it is only water - and that it is THAT water, he’ll have our jobs, or worse.”
Not one of the servants had a clue as to what Jesus was up to. He didn’t wave His arms over the waterpots. He didn’t issue a command to the water to turn into wine. He never touched the water or the pots. As far as they know, Jesus was instructing them to serve hand-washing water to the boss.
But, obey Jesus they did. They filled the waterpots. They dipped pitchers into the water. They walked over to their boss, dreading what was going to happen when he took a drink.
But as they poured from the pitcher to his drinking goblet, he and the servants saw not the dirty water they had poured in, but the deep blush of aged wine!
The headwaiter is impressed (vv. 9-10)
[9] When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom [10] and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.”
He is not impressed with the miracle, because he didn’t know that a miracle had taken place. He’s impressed with the quality of the wine.
There is no response recorded from the bride, the groom or the guests because what had really happened wasn’t widely known.
This miracle was like a lot of my jokes. Subtle. My jokes are often so subtle that nobody gets them. And nobody “got” this miracle, either, because Jesus did it under the radar.
He could have been dramatic about it. He could have waved His hands, muttered an incantation, and then presented the headwaiter with the water-turned-wine, Himself.
But He didn’t do that. Jesus minimized the exposure of His power in this first miracle so that the only ones who “got it” were His disciples.
And that explains the punch line, the point, of this water-to-wine event. John doesn’t wrap up with, “And they lived happily ever after”, but this:
[11] This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.
Of all the responses they might have had, they believed.
They certainly might have become afraid of Him. They might have been impressed with Him. They might have sought to use Him (after all, someone who could do magic tricks could come in pretty handy.)
Instead, they believed in Him. They came to trust in Him more than they had before.
The end game of God’s work in the lives of Jesus’ followers is always that we would trust Him and our faith would grow.
So, the bottom line of this episode in the life of Jesus is what it says about Jesus. It is a “sign”, John tells us, pointing to something beyond itself.
It was a sign that shouted, “Trust Jesus! He is more than man. He is the God-man who can do what only God can do.”
Yes, this “sign” signals that Jesus is trustworthy. But as I have thought about the wedding in Cana this week, I have wondered if this sign signaled something else.
Conclusion:
Think of all the miracles Jesus performed and you’ll find that there is more often than not an element of genuine, deep, human need.
A crowd is really, really hungry; a little girl is at the point of death; a blind beggar is desperate to see; a demon-oppressed man needs freedom.
Here, there is none of that. The only pain likely to be caused by the absence of wine at this wedding is the pain of embarrassment. So why do it? Let’s read this sign carefully to see what it says.
Jesus turned hand-washing water into fine wine. He started with a most common element - H2O - made morecommon by its purpose (wash water), and transformed it into something noble.
THAT water was the very picture of drudgery and legalistic formalism. Jesus made it tasty. He took something that symbolized a pain and made it a pleasure.
That’s what Jesus does. He takes the ordinary and makes it shine.
He took plain and common people like Simon Peter, Andrew and Nathanael and Philip and turned them into courageous apostles whose lives were transformed by a transcendent purpose.
He’s doing the same thing today with you and me.
Now, I am a no-big-deal, hand-washing-water kind of a guy. I do very normal things. My job happens to be at a church, but I go to work every day, like you. I love my family, like you. I exercise, read, take out the trash, go camping, do yardwork, drive, eat. Just like you.
But because of Jesus, my everyday, ordinary, H2O life is layered with transcendent meaning and purpose. Same for you.
Jesus infuses every activity with richness. Every interaction with someone holds potential for a God break-through. Every event brings an invitation to pray to Almighty God. All day we are “on mission” for Jesus’ Great Commission.
And our H2O lives have become fine wine, transformed by the same Jesus who built faith into the first disciples at Cana.
And if you are doubtful that Jesus could ever or would ever do this with you, consider this “sign” one final time.
Remember that the headwaiter at the wedding wasn’t impressed that he was tasting wine. He expected to taste wine. He was impressed that the wine was so tasty. He expected poorer quality. Jesus created a better quality of wine than would have been expected at the tail end of a feast.
And how much wine was created? It was between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and eighty gallons. For the end of wedding feast in a tiny village. One hundred and eighty gallons of wine. Really?
That’s waaaay more than would have been required. But Jesus went overboard (just like He went overboard in the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000 by providing more than enough food) to show that it is His desire and plan to bless and to transform extravagantly.
His grand plan is to make of you such a stunning and impactful player in His kingdom that people will look at you and say, “Look at what God has made out of her! Look at how God has used him!”
The same Jesus who turned hand-washing water into fine wine in Cana is actively at work, transforming you.
