by Beth Moore
When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine." (John 2:3)
Jesus loves weddings. No doubt about it. The preexistent eternal Word began His divine thesis with the first one in Genesis 2 and consummates it with the last one in Revelation 19. Who can count how many weddings He'll attend in between? Jesus is always the officiating preacher and the one who signs the license whether or not we asked Him to be. After all, marriage was His idea. All His excitement over a simple wedding is because His heart is flooded with anticipation over His own. With us, His bride.
Just take a good look at Ephesians 5:25-32:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church.
As I write to you from the throes of middle age, am I ever glad to know we're presented without wrinkles! Incidentally, I'm almost positive that Ephesians 5:29 implies husbands are supposed to do the cooking. One thing is certain, we're not going to have to do the cooking at our own marriage supper with the Lamb. Until then, every wedding He attends is a blessed rehearsal for the big one. For now, we have a wedding to attend in Cana, and I'd hate to walk in late.
John tells the story in 2:1-11. Jesus attended a wedding feast, and the wine ran out. Such an occurrence would have been a great embarrassment to the host. Mary brought it to Jesus' attention, but He seemed to snub her request. His mother just told the servants to do Jesus' bidding. Jesus turned six stone jars of washing water into wine.
We can readily assume the families involved in the wedding were people Jesus knew well. Don't miss the fact that Jesus was invited. We ordinarily don't invite strangers to our weddings. Furthermore, the wedding date caught Jesus at a critically busy time, just as His Father was launching His ministry. For Him to be intentional enough to attend this wedding tells us He had relationships and divine purpose there. The hosts were probably good family friends since Mary obviously helped with the wedding.
I believe Jesus had another reason why He didn't have to have His arm twisted to attend the wedding. I happen to think He loved a good party. Still does. I am convinced Jesus' basic personality in His brief walk in human flesh was delightful and refreshingly relational.
Jesus made the disciples allow children to come to Him (Matt. 19:14). His critics complained about Jesus eating with tax collectors and "sinners" (Luke 5:30) and partying rather than fasting (Matt. 9:14). Do those examples surprise you? Did you catch the similarity to John 2?
For starters, children aren't drawn to cranky people. They are very good judges of character and like people who are fun. The other references imply that Jesus in our midst is reason enough to celebrate. Why in the world have we let "partying" become associated with licentiousness? God created man and formed within him an authentic soul-need to feast and celebrate. In fact, God deemed celebration so vital, He commanded His people to celebrate at frequent intervals throughout the calendar year (Lev. 23). Let me say that again: He commands that we celebrate His goodness and His greatness!
I say it's time we take the whole idea of partying back. I'm always mystified that many nonbelievers think Christians must be dull, bored, and wouldn't know a good time if it socked them in the noggin. Boy, do we have a secret! No one laughs like a bunch of Christians! My staff and I roll with laughter together at times.
They aren't my only fellow partyers. A week or so ago three of my dearest friends and I scrunched on one couch together all holding hands. One of us had lost a daughter several days earlier to a drunk driver. As we held on to one another for dear life, God gave us the sudden gift of the hardest belly laugh any of us have had in a long time. Unbelievers might be insulted to know that when we go to their parties, we wonder why they think they're having such a good time. Lean over here closely so I can whisper: I think they're boring.
The primary reason why celebrations around Christ's presence are so wonderful is because they are the kind intended to be sparkling refreshment to a world-worn soul. We get to attend Christ's kind of parties without taking home a lot of baggage. We don't have a hangover later or a guilty conscience. Christ-centered celebrations are all the fun without all the guilt. That's real partying.
Throughout these chapters we are studying the concepts of more, fullness, and abundance in John's overflowing Gospel. How fitting that the writer who had more to say about abundant life and effervescent living than any other Gospel penman was also the only one inspired to tell us about the wedding in Cana: an event where more became the very issue at hand: They have no more wine. And, Son, You're the only one who can give them what they need-more.
One reason for John's unique insight into the wedding in Cana is that he was the only Gospel writer in attendance. Matching the chronologies of the Gospels suggests that Matthew hadn't been called yet and Luke and Mark didn't come into the picture until much later. Many scholars believe John was an adolescent when he followed Christ-a partying age if you'll ever find one! The last statement in John 2:11 intimates the wedding at Cana had a tremendous impact on him: "He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him."
It's one thing to follow Christ around the countryside. It's another thing to put your faith in Him. Never lose sight of the fact that Judas followed Jesus. Jesus is looking for true disciples who really place their faith-their trust in Him. We can follow Jesus to Christian conferences all over the nation or down the aisles of every church in America but never put our faith in Him. John, the one who wrote the Gospel of belief, officially began his own great adventure of believing right there in Cana.
Yes, it was a big day for John. It was also a big day on the kingdom calendar. Any first in Scripture is huge. How Jesus chose to perform His first miracle cannot be overestimated. The scene contains more applications than we have space to discuss. Since it's just the two of us, however, let's dip the ladle into the stone water jar and draw forth two cups of wine to share:
1. God ordained that Christ's first earthbound miracle would be filling empty jars. Praise God! Does any pain rival that of emptiness? Don't miss the significance of the kinds of jars these were. They were stone jars.
I think this first miracle reveals a vivid picture of the condition God's chosen people were in at that time. Legalism had soared during the four hundred years without a fresh word from God. As we discussed in the very beginning of our study, the kind of Pharisaism Jesus found so revolting developed during the latter part of the intertestamental silence. We, too, can substitute legalism for our lack of fresh involvement with God. All the Jews' ceremonial rituals and washings had done was leave them as empty as those oversized jars and as cold as stone. Religious observances mean nothing apart from God.
Meaningless ritual and all the self-helps of personal cleansings are not the only things that leave us empty. A few chapters later Jesus ran into a woman at Sychar's well who was as empty as the stone water jars ever thought about being. She had tried to fill her empty life with five husbands (John 4:17-18).
Beloved, you can take this one to the spiritual bank: any compulsion for too much of anything is symptomatic of the horror and urgency of emptiness. Far too many people think that the "good Christian thing to do" about our gnawing emptiness is get a grip, stop whining, and live without for the rest of our lives. If that's what we do, we miss the very first miracle Jesus came to perform! John's Gospel came along to give us the best of good news. We were never meant to live with emptiness! We were meant t
o be full; His children were all meant to receive His fullness in one blessing after another!
Let me echo a precept underscored continually through this look at abundance. We were created to be full. When we're not filled with the good things Christ came to bring us, we will grasp at anything as a substitute. An unsatisfied soul is an accident waiting to happen.
We also see a second aspect of the first miracle. It brought new wine. To the woman at the well, He brought the living water. To the guests at the wedding, He brought new wine. He gives us what we need. And what most of us need is some new wine!
John 2:11 contains another detail we need to recognize. Through His first miracle Jesus revealed His glory. In other words, the miracle performed in the physical realm was meant to reveal something far more glorious in the spiritual realm. Though Jesus certainly met an immediate need at the wedding, the wine represented something of far greater significance.
Psalm 104:15, Judges 9:13, and Psalm 4:7 identify wine as gladdening the heart and bringing cheer. Remember the "Hmmm" passage in Matthew 9:14-17? The Pharisees blamed Jesus for partying instead of fasting, and Jesus responded with the word that one does not pour new wine into old wineskins. One reason Christ came was to fill the emptiness created by the letter of the Law, ritual religion, or any earthly substitute.
I believe that new wine is beautifully implied in Ephesians 5:18. Paul wrote, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit." The passage implies that the filling of the Holy Spirit does in full measure what we try to accomplish when we desire to be drunk with wine.
You see, one reason people drink too much wine is because it changes the way they feel and the way they behave. So does the "new wine" of Christ, but His effects are always good. Jesus came to bring the new wine of the Spirit! Something we can drink our fill of without all the negative side effects of wine and the emptiness it leaves behind in the wake of the temporary fix.
You see, throughout the Old Testament, only handfuls of people had the Holy Spirit in them or upon them because under the old covenant God gave the Spirit for empowerment more than fulfillment. John's Gospel will reveal later that one of Christ's primary purposes for coming and laying down His life was to send the Holy Spirit to us-not just to walk beside us but to dwell in us. At the first revelation of Christ's glory in Cana, they had no idea that the true New Wine was on its way! The Master of our banquet saved the best of the wine for last.
Beloved, do you realize that joy and gladness are among the many gifts and services Christ brought His Holy Spirit to grant? Check it out for yourself "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law" (Gal. 5:22-23).
Just think! No matter how much you drink of His Spirit, against such things there is no law. Further, the more you drink, the more fully satisfied you are with love, joy, peace, and all sorts of side effects we're so desperate to achieve. To top off the goblet, instead of losing self-control, we gain it. You can't beat a drink like that!
When Melissa was a toddler, she was never satisfied with a little of anything. Every time I offered her a treat, she'd cup her plump little hand, thrust it forward and say, "Can me have a bawnch [bunch] of it?" The way she saw life, why bother with a little if you can have a bunch of it. Indeed! John would agree! Dear one, how tragic for us to continue with pangs of emptiness. What a waste! Christ came to bring us a bawnch of it! Stop feeling guilty because you crave lots of joy in your life. You were made for joy! You are a jar of clay just waiting to be filled (2 Cor. 4:7). May this lesson end with the clink of our cups as we toast to a life overflowing with New Wine!
Chapter 24
MORE ABOUT THE WORLD
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (john 3:16)
One of the most astonishing statistical comparisons between the Gospel of John and the three synoptics is how much more God inspired him to tell us about the world. Based on an NN word count comparison, Matthew mentions the world ten times, Mark five times, and Luke seven times. The Gospel of John? A whopping seventy-three times! In fact, the totality of John's New Testament contributions informing us about the world constitutes almost half the mentions in the entire New Testament. Obviously we will miss a very important concept in John's Gospel if we overlook what he tells us about the world.
Perhaps the most overwhelming is a concept to which we've grown inordinately casual: Jesus was sent by God to the world. Let's try to get our arms stretched a little further around this fact for a moment. John 17 tells us that the Father and Son had fellowship and shared glory before the world even existed. Jesus said, "Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" (John 17:5). In fact, I am absolutely convinced that mankind exists out of the holy passion of the Trinity to draw others into their fellowship.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, complete in themselves, desired the overflowing and exceeding joy of additional relationship so "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Although distinctions exist between the words earth and world they are intertwined and virtually interchangeable where creation is concerned. Genesis 1:1 says that God created the earth, and John 1:10 tells us the world was made through Christ. Earth tends to encompass the physical properties of our planet while world encases more of the system, social and otherwise, on it and around it. You might think of the distinction this way: Our world exists on this earth.
Every time the word world is used in the NN translation of John's Gospel, the Greek word is kosmos. The word means "world, with its primary meaning being order, regular disposition and arrangement.... The earth, this lower world as the abode of man."
Now try to grasp this: God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit desired the existence of humanity for fellowship. They wanted humans to have a will of their own because they wanted to be chosen. Not commanded. They knew that equipping humanity with a will would necessitate a plan for redemption because we would ultimately make some very poor choices. Thus, the plan of salvation was already completely intact before the creation of the world. When the Holy Trinity was ready, each member participated in the creation.
Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Stay with me here. The Word of God delineates between one little planet He called the earth and the entire rest of the universe. We have no idea what is out there. What little science documents and hypothesizes makes Genesis 1:1 inconceivably impressive.
Our solar system is in a galaxy called the Milky Way. Scientists estimate that more than 100 billion galaxies are scattered throughout the visible universe. Astronomers have photographed millions of them through telescopes. The most distant galaxies ever photographed are as far as 10 billion to 13 billion light-years away. The Milky Way's diameter is about 100,000 light-years. The solar system lies about 25,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way.2 Imagine, 100 billion stars estimated in our galaxy alone, and Psalm 147:4 tells us God "determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name."
Impressive, isn't it? But this gets even more impressive: In the beginning God created the sun, the moon, every star, all their surrounding planets, and the earth. You and I have no idea what God's activities may have been elsewhere in the universe, but according to the Bible and as far as He wanted us to know, He picked out one tiny speck upon which to build a world. Our world. And He picked it out so that when the time had fully come, He could send His Son (Gal. 4:4).
Can you imagine the fellowship of the Trinity on the seventh day? As they rested and looked upon the very good work they had accomplished, one planet had been tended like no other to our knowledge. Perfectly placed in the universe with adequate distance from sun, moon, and stars to sustain human life, it was chosen for divine infiltration.
&n
bsp; "For God so loved the world." Scripture doesn't tell us He loved the sun, and it is the most impressive among the heavenly bodies we can see. Nor are we told He loved the stars even though He knows every one of them by name. John goes out of his way, however, to tell us-not just that God loved the world-but that He so loved the world.
In a universe so vast, so incomprehensible, why does God single out one little planet to so love? Beloved, absorb this into the marrow of your bones: because we are on it. As despicable as humanity can be, God loves us. Inconceivably, we are His treasures, His prize creation. He can't help it. He just loves us. So much, in fact, that He did something I, with my comparatively pitiful love for my children, would not do for anyone. He "gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Dear one, let it fall afresh. I am overcome with emotion. Elohim is so huge. We are so small. Yet the vastness of His love-so high, so wide, so deep, so long-envelops us like the endless universe envelops a crude little planet God first called Earth.
Not long ago Keith had a bench with a simple covering placed in the corner of our small backyard. Almost every morning I light a candle and head out to that bench for a predawn worship service and quiet time. Sometimes I have to pull a big blanket out of a warm dryer to wrap around me in the cold. At that time in the morning the heavens are still as dark as the blackest night, and the stars look like God lit ten thousand candles of His own. In that morning hour, I feel like He lit them just for the two of us. (And for the two of you.) I feel a million miles from the freeways of Houston.
Blessed man that he was, David the psalmist was a million miles from a freeway when he was besieged by the sight. He wrote, "When I consider your heavens, / the work of your fingers, / the moon and the stars, / which you have set in place, / what is man that you are mindful of him, / the son of man that you care for him?" (Ps. 8:3-4).