This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida, where Reverend Kevin Labby is our senior pastor, that his message is part 6 in a series on the Gospel of John titled, Abide. This sermon is taken from John chapter 2 verses 1 through 12. Now here's today's message. Please listen as we continue our worship in the reading of God's Word. This is from John 2 verses 1 through 12. On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. When 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. And Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rights of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. 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. So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine, and did not know where it had come 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 the people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now. The first of his signs that Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. After this, he went down to Cropurnum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples. And they stayed there for a few days. This is God's Word. At this time, children can go ahead and meet Drew Taylor back there for a time of children's worship. If you their parents would like, they're always more than welcome to stay here too, if that's what you prefer. And if you're brand new to Willow Creek and your children are attending children's worship for the first time, I see Drew giving them high fives back there. Be sure to go back and introduce yourself to Drew so we can make sure that when we return your kids, we can do so safely at the end of the service, the kids will be gathered together in the gymnasium. And I ask you to open up in your Bibles if you've not done so already to John, chapter two. And as you're there, I just want to let you know our women's retreat adventure is a cruise. The lady is pulled in to port this morning and they're on their way home now, so we pray for them safe travels. But while they've been away, I've been flying solo. My wife's been gone. And we also moved. We moved from rental home to a home that we purchased. And I've been flying solo with the four kids with boxes everywhere. I can't find anything. And it came time for my younger two children to attend their new elementary school. They're going to Red Bug now. And the morning they woke up to go to school that first day, I could not find a comb anywhere for my youngest son who's got longer hair. He looked like a drowned rat. He's here just hanging after he had taken a shower. Looking all over for a comb couldn't find one anywhere. And I was trying to think like, oh, Lord, I want to get this kid to school, his brand new school on time. But I don't want him there on time. I want him looking okay. And I pray that the Lord would reveal a comb or a brush. And I'm not calling this a miracle or anything, but I think it's pretty close. I looked out in our kitchen and I saw the cabinet drawer open and I saw the forts and knives and the spoons. And I looked at the fork and I thought, that looks a lot like a comb. And it's going to be a comb this morning. So I meticulously combed my son's hair with a fork. And why am I mentioning that to you? Well, because it just illustrates how awesome Willow Creek is. I made a Facebook post about that in this morning, somebody brought me a comb too. So given a bald guy a comb, you got to love a church like that. So John, chapter 2, verses 1 through 12 this morning, again, let me plug what we are going to be celebrating tonight. And that is the ordination of Kent Suits as our assistant pastor of youth ministry. Let's give him a round of applause. And we would love for you to come up tonight. The service is going to be a wonderful time of celebration. You'll actually see Kent ordained and that's not an act of the local church. That's an act of our Presbytery that reviewed him, examined him, approved him for ordination. So we'll have pastors from our Presbytery coming here to participate in that service. It should be a great time, I want to encourage you to come out, time to fellowship afterward. And we'll have you home in time to enjoy time with your family as well as the work week starts again. So let me pitch that to you. And this morning, let me remind you, as we go into the gospel of John, chapter 2, that during the first few messages, we were careful to show that Jesus Christ had left heaven, come down to earth, and took on flesh. He was incarnate. And the glory of God, in some sense, has been veiled by that incarnation. The glory of God has been a little shrouded in the fact that Jesus has taken on flesh, a humanity in which we share together with him. There was nothing in him in his humanity that would draw us especially to him, no incredible appearance, nothing that made him seem otherworldly, but now is he's moving toward his public ministry in John, chapter 2. He is going to more visibly display and reveal his glory in his words, as well as in his works. And the more he displays his glory, the more he's going to display it to an ever widening circle of disciples. You remember in chapter 1 that Jesus, with the encouragement of John the Baptist, ministers to Andrew, and to another disciple that John simply refers to as another disciple, but which we believe, according to John's practice in other places, is him. So Jesus has appeared to Andrew in John, Andrew in turn, widened into the circle a little bit more, sharing the good news of Jesus with his brother, Simon Peter, and now Philip in Nathaniel. Nathaniel, you might know in other places in the scripture, is Bartholomew. They've been called into the circle and spent time with Jesus, and now that they've spent time with Jesus, they're about to become witnesses to his good works, but they're also going to share in those good works, works that show forth what John has set up to this point, that though we live in a world dark and by sin, Christ's light has entered the world. And the darkness, though it's not understood that light, it can't overcome it. And we said that that is one of the greatest hopes, if not the greatest hope of human history, that God has not left us in the darkness of our sin, in the state of misery and death. He has re-entered the world through his son Jesus. He's drawn near to bring hope and redemption, to bring light into darkness, and the light is about to get a little bit brighter as Jesus manifests his glory in his first public miracle and sign the turning of water into wine. The first thing we see, we see in the first two verses of our passages morning, and that is the place where this miracle occurs, and the place is very, very significant, read along with me. On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee, Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. Now Cana in Galilee is a town that's mentioned a little bit earlier in the gospel of John because it's the birthplace of Nathaniel, one of the now disciples of Christ. And if you remember our message from last week, we said that Nathaniel had been brought to a position of cynicism and pessimism in his faith. We've been looking for Jesus Christ, the Messiah for a while, and perhaps we're starting to give up a little bit of hope so that when Jesus appears through the testimony of Andrew and John, Nathaniel skeptical, and his question is a question that you might have been tempted to ask if you were living back in that time, if you knew anything of the town of Nazareth. He said, could anything good come out of Nazareth? There's a little bit of elitism there, a little bit of, perhaps, bias, prejudice toward that town. And we said that's really a good question, because even though we might not ask it in that same exact way, every one of us asked that question in one form or another, when confronted with the darkness of our world and the darkness that's working our own hearts, is it true that there are some forms of darkness in the world and in your own heart that you wonder could anything good come out of that dark place? Aren't there places in the world where we wonder, is that really something that could be redeemed? Is that some place of evil that could be captivated by the love of God and grace and transformed, or are there some places where God's grace can't touch? What we said last week is God delights to shine his light into the darkest recesses of the human heart and of human history to show that his power is all surpassing and that his hope overcomes all challenges. It's sort of underscore that something good can indeed come out of Nazareth. It seems kind of fitting that Christ's first public display and sign would be in Nathaniel's own hometown. Jesus is about to perform something in Nathaniel's own backyard as it were to show that something indeed can come from Nazareth that is good and encouraging. And what a great thing. On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee, Jesus' mother was there and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. It's a very interesting choice of place for the first miracle of Christ's public ministry. It's a wedding, a marriage. And if you remember anything of what we said before, the gospel of John, is it begins the New Testament, mirrors in many ways, the book of Genesis, as it begins the Old Testament. The gospel of John began with these words and the beginning was the word. And the word was with God and the word was God. Nothing that's been created was created apart from him. It seems that John was creating an intentional parallel with the opening pages of Scripture that just as there was an original act of creation and that creation fell into sin and the state of misery, there is now a new creation in Christ. And it's not fallen, it's being redeemed, rescued and restored. John is outlining a new creation, a new story. God is doing a new thing. If you go back into the Old Testament, you know that as God was creating the world originally, one of his first acts was to call together Adam and Eve as husband and wife to preside over their union, a marriage, a wedding of sorts. God is the one who established the institution of marriage. And here Jesus performs a miraculous sign in wonder at a marriage, perhaps to show in John's thinking that there's a greater union and marriage to which all marriages point. The union of Christ with his church and that as Jesus manifests his glory in the world and calls disciples to himself, he's bringing them back in union with God. Though we fall in and we're divorced from God, we're now being reconciled. The covenants of grace, drawing us into union with God, a marriage, Christ the bridegroom, his church, the bride. There's another thing that I want you to see here that I think is of lesser importance, but still bears greatly on the ultimate point of this morning's message. And that is that Jesus and his disciples took time to attend a wedding. Jesus and his disciples were not ascetics. They were not looking for unnecessary suffering. They were willing to suffer for the cause of God, but they were also willing to celebrate life's choice. It's goodness. Even though the world has fallen, the world not all that it should be, God in his grace has left good here. And Jesus was one to celebrate the good. And we do well to celebrate the good in the world too. Jesus and his disciples were not ascetics. In fact, later on in Matthew, chapter 11, verse 19, they say that Jesus came eating and drinking. And this was a sign that he was unlike many of the other religious leaders around him who thought that the sign of their sobriety and seriousness before the throne of God is that they would never celebrate. But if you have a hope that God's not left the world in darkness, but instead is shining his light into it, that his purpose is not to forget it and cast aside, but to redeem it, to restore it, to renew it, joy springs. And the life of following Christ involves joy. Sometimes that joy is an act of defiance against all of the discouraging circumstances of the world, but it's well placed joy. Be of good cheer, Christ has overcome the world. So in this particular place, Jesus is going to counter a problem. We read it in verse 3. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, they have no more wine. Woman, why have you involved me, Jesus replied, my hour is not yet come. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Now, this is an interesting couple of verses because as you read it, you might initially think that Jesus is being quite disrespectful to his mom. He calls her woman. I'll tell you right now, I call my mom woman, I'm in trouble. When Jesus calls his mom woman, you might be thinking what is with that disrespect, is that an act of aggression? Well, you have to understand that every word that's translated from one language to another might lose a little subtlety of meaning. You need to be careful for the context and other clues. There are verses in the New Testament where this similar term is used and it's not used to be aggressive or disrespectful. It's used as a general term, but your eyes are drawn to it, your ears are drawn to it when you hear it because it does not seem like the speech of a son to his mom. And all we know of Christ is that as he grew in wisdom and stature before men, one of the things that was a ground for that wisdom and stature was his submission to his parents. Why does Jesus now refer to Mary in such a non-maternal way? I think one reason is his position before men and even before his earthly mom is changing. His public ministry is beginning. No longer will Jesus' relationship to Mary be primarily defined as that of mother and son with regard to his humanity. Now it's going to be defined according to his role as even her redeemer. He is Lord and Savior, even of his earthly mom. And so he responds to her in that position changing way of speaking. And it's interesting that she doesn't take it as a rebuke. She doesn't take it as a dead end. In fact, Mary turns to the servants and says, do whatever he tells you, believing that Jesus is going to act. And so we see his action in verse 6. Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons. I wanted to share with you just this little snippet from a book by Michael Card, who's a musician, a great musician, and quite a little theologian. He's written several books. This book is a commentary on the gospel of John. And he comments on this passage. Listen to me, he says, he says, the six water jars are specifically made of stone because stone does not pass on uncleanness. These jars or these stone water jars were used for ceremonial washing, cleansing. The Jews understood that they were defiled before God by their sin. And in a symbolic act of worship, independence of a God, they would purify themselves with water. Now do the water actually remove their sin, of course, not only Christ and this sacrifice can remove sin. But this was an instrument, a means of them, to show their faith in God's promise that one day a Redeemer would come and would redeem them and this stone would not pass on any uncleanness. The water with which they wash have to be clean water. Michael Card goes on to say this, vessels for ritual oblation were always made of stone. Their total capacity is 180 gallons. This equals 900 fifths of wine. If we conservatively value this excellent wine at $30 a bottle, the total comes to $27,000. When Jesus solves a problem, he solves a problem. They were running out of wine. Now they have more wine than they know what to do with and let me make just a brief little note off to the side because some of us may have grown up in faith traditions where we've learned that this was not really wine, it was not a fermented drink. And that's really incorrect. The Greek word used here does describe a fermented drink. It's not a distilled alcohol, the most powerful form of alcohol that it could be, but it was alcoholic in nature. The times where that Greek word is used in the New Testament to describe fermented drink, it does describe the possibility of drunkenness accompanying it and Christians are always commanded to be of sober mind, to avoid drunkenness, to be filled with the Holy Spirit rather than drunken alcohol and these sorts of things, drunkenness should never be the mark of a Christian. But drinking alcoholic beverages is not precluded by the Christian faith and it's not precluded in this passage. In fact, Jesus makes the strongest wine available for the guests of this wedding. It was common for the weaker wine to be served later, but the more potent wine to be served earlier because the palate was not yet corrupted and the freshness and taste of it would be enjoyed by the guests. When Jesus makes this wine, he makes it wonderfully. His provision is powerful. In verse 7, Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. They did so. And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside, not publicly, and said, everyone brings out the choice wine first. Translation, you kind of have a faux pas here, you did it backwards and said, everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink, but you've saved the best until now what Jesus provides is a remarkable provision of grace for these guests. Something that initially was just water in a cleansing jar for ceremonial washing, but in its transport from there to the guests becomes wine, and not only wine, but the best wine. In verse 11, we see the praise, which Jesus did here in Canaan of Galilee, was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him. After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. The band of disciples growing, as people see, the signs, wonders and works, even the words of Christ. Now what does all of this mean? Well, I think when you really get to the passage, it's not so much about Jesus simply performing a miraculous sign of turning water into wine. It's the nature of the water that is so foundational to understanding the miracle of the wine. The water was in ceremonial jars that were designed for cleansing, for purity. And the Jews over many centuries had learned that they could not stand before God in their own merits, in their own works, there was nothing that they could do to purify themselves. It was entirely by God's grace that they would be purified in the way that they showed their trust and faith in God's provision of grace, which to go through these rituals where they confessed in their washing their unworthiness. Now when Christ appears at the wedding and transforms the water into wine, what he's symbolizing is that today is coming and is now here when we will no longer need to aim to bring purity to ourselves because the purity accomplished by Christ will be freely given. As Christ offered his life on the cross, he shed his blood. And as shedding his blood as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, though our sins be like scarlet, the writer of the Old Testament says, they'll be made white as snow. He will come and purify us from all in righteousness. The Gospel of John has told us that he will baptize us with water and with the Holy Spirit, an inward cleansing of the Holy Spirit that will refine us like fire, that will remove the stain of sin and its corruption, replacing that need of purity because we have the purity of Christ graciously reckoned to our account. And what do we find in the place of that ceremonial washing water we find in its place, the wine of celebration? Now we know in the Lord's Supper that the wine is used to symbolize the cleansing blood of Christ. But the cup of Christ at the Lord's Supper is not merely a cup of remembrance, but Jesus has done in the past as he has shed his blood for an atoning sacrifice for our sins. It's also a cup of God's grace in celebration because one day the Church of God, not because of any works it's done, but entirely because of the work Christ has done to the glory of the Father and its behalf will be gathered in to the wedding feast of the Lamb. And we will drink deeply and eat to we are filled and satisfied in the fullness of the kingdom of God. Jesus is prefiguring his coming union with the Church and what that union will make possible and represent. Peace with God, an end to religious toil and striving to achieve what could never be achieved through our efforts, celebration in what Christ is going to do and to make possible redemption, restoration, renewal. We have every reason to celebrate in Christ because he's offered his life an atoning sacrifice for our sins and in that sacrifice he's cleansed us in ways water never could. If his Holy Spirit he's baptized us with fire and is purifying us even now that one day we could be gathered in. The implications of this are obvious. In a world filled with darkness and despair when we're so easily given to lose hope and heart we're reminded that the greatest work is done. The war is over. We've been secured by his blood, we are his. We can be at peace and we can celebrate with joy in every circumstance. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church and said don't lose heart though outwardly you're wasting away. Yet inwardly you're being renewed day by day. For your light and momentary troubles are achieving for you an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So fix your eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal. If we live our lives in view of what is coming what is at work at present will seem light and momentary. What was coming in the world that day and what is coming now is the fullness of the kingdom of God. A true reason to celebrate are union with Christ forever. Let's pray. Father we thank you for your gift of mercy through your son Jesus Christ our Lord. That while for centuries the Jews had engaged in various rituals and some even believing that in so doing they could purify themselves. Lord we know that no purity comes through our own efforts. It comes entirely through your mercy and grace. As your son Jesus offered his life on the cross he took away our sins. He who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God. The cup of your wrath has been turned away from us because Christ drank from it deeply. The cup he now offers us is not a cup filled with water that we might cleanse ourselves but the cup of the new covenant that we might drink deeply of and be reminded that we are purified forever more through his sacrifice. Help us to rejoice and to celebrate in all circumstances finding the secret of contentment and all things that you triumphed in overcome and that in you we will overcome as well. We pray it all in Jesus name a man. Willow Creek Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.Willow Creek Church.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.