Word of Salvation – Vol. 13 No.14 – April 1967

 

Jesus At The Wedding In Cana

 

Sermon by Rev. C. J. Reitsma on John 2:1-11

Scripture Reading: John 2:1-11

Psalter Hymnal: 434; 335; 147; 375

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

One important purpose of the Gospel of John is to persuade men that Jesus is the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.   At the conclusion of the book he puts it this way, “But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”  The Apostle wants his readers to see that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah.  He is the fulfiller of the hopes and promises of Israel, the fulfilment of all the types and shadows, priests and sacrifices.  Before he came, all that the Old Testament believers had were pictures of him, but now, he himself has arrived upon the scene.

For this reason the Apostle John includes the account of Jesus’ first miracle.  For, it is when the disciples see this water turned into wine that they perceive that Jesus is indeed the Messiah.  They suddenly realize that the Old Testament is past and that the New Testament has begun.  They begin to understand that the time of ceremonies is over and that now, for a man to have Jesus is all that is necessary for both time and eternity.

Our text is John 2:1-11 and the theme of these verses may be summarized in the words:

JESUS INTRODUCES HIMSELF AS THE MESSIAH AT THE WEDDING IN CANA.

Let us consider:
1.  Mary’s request;
2.  Jesus’ Reply; and the
3.  Pharisees’ Rebuke.

I.  MARY’S REQUEST.

In the time of our Lord, weddings lasted several days.  They were gay and happy occasions.  There was feasting and wine drinking within wholesome limits and the gladness of the young couple shared by all the guests.  Life here was at its centre.  Life together and with God is good, and Jesus came to extend his congratulations.  No doubt, he had been invited, not as the Messiah, but as a close friend of the family or as a relative.  There is no mention made of Joseph and it is safe to assume that he had died some time earlier.

We should also note that this is the first miracle that Jesus performed in his life-time.  Some non-biblical accounts of Jesus’ childhood claim that he performed miracles as a boy.  It is alleged that Jesus was making figures out of mud and that on one occasion he made a dove that turned white and flew away.  But, stories like this one are contradicted by verse 11 which says, “This beginning of miracles did Jesus…!”  Except for the fact that he was sinless and except for his unusual experience in the temple at the age of 12, his growing up had been quite normal.  He never used his divinity for his own personal comfort; nor did he ever resort to it to get out of some predicament.

It may seem strange therefore, that Mary would even think of bothering Jesus with an embarrassing household problem like a shortage of wine and expect him to do something miraculous about it.

And, it is a request that she makes in spite of the fact that she makes it in the form of a statement rather than a question.  She says, “They have no wine.”  The fact that she mentions it to Jesus and tells the servants to do what Jesus says, makes it clear that she is asking a favour of her son.  And it is also plain from Jesus’ reply later on that what Mary has in mind is a supernatural act of help.  Mary is asking Jesus to perform a miracle.

Now, what made Mary do this?  Why does she involve Jesus in this problem of insufficient wine?  To answer this question we must put ourselves in Mary’s place for a moment.  She would never forget Jesus’ birth.  She remembered how the angel came to her and said, “Fear not Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.  And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”  What great expectations Mary had for her son!  How she longed to see him recognized to be the one he really was.  How she wished to see him crowned and then all the world would know the secret that for already 30 years had burned within her breast.  And now… it seemed to Mary that the time had come.  Jesus had been away from home for 40 days and nights.  Furthermore, he began to gather a following of eager disciples.  This is it, she thought – the time I have been waiting for.  Now it is going to happen.  My son will become king.  Not that she wanted honour for herself necessarily, but at least she wanted recognition for Jesus.

And so, she presses him.  Do a miracle now!  Show the people who you really are.  Help us out of this situation and at the same time introduce yourself as the Messiah.  Accept your crown…. begin your reign…. show your power.  This was Mary’s request.

Ah, what a temptation this involved for our Saviour.  Surely he deserved the attention his mother wanted for him.  But, should he accept her suggestion?  Should he put on his crown?  Should he do it Mary’s way?  And, should he do it now?

II.  JESUS’ REPLY.

Our Lord’s answer is NO!  He begins by showing how wrong Mary’s request was.  Jesus says, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?  Mine hour is not yet come.”  Notice that Jesus addresses his mother as “woman”.  Ordinarily we would regard this as a lack of respect.  But, as Jesus uses the word it expresses no rudeness at all.  It is necessary to the lesson Jesus wants to teach his mother.  Jesus uses the word “woman” to indicate that as far as his saving work is concerned Mary is in the class of all other women.  And, by the way, this is a good point to remember when you are witnessing to a Roman Catholic.  Mary, like all other human beings, was a sinner who needed to be saved.  And in this sense, she is just a “woman”.

Then Jesus goes on to say, “What have I to do with thee”.  Jesus brings Mary to a halt.  He does not allow her to influence him.  Fleshly ties may not determine his mediatorial work.  When Mary uses her earthly motherhood to pressure Jesus in his Heavenly Father’s work, Jesus resists her.  This is not her business.  It is not for Mary to say when and how Jesus is to conduct his ministry.  Jesus had to say the same thing on an earlier occasion to both his parents when he was found in the temple.  He said to them, “How is it that ye sought me?  Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”

So, the first thing that Jesus criticizes Mary for is her interference with his ministry.  That interference in itself was wrong.  But, what makes it doubly wrong is the fact that Mary is so mistaken as to the nature of Jesus’ work as the Messiah.  She not only interferes, but she is so unqualified to interfere.

This becomes plain from Jesus’ words, “mine hour is not yet come.”  This phrase is used several times in John’s Gospel and it usually refers to the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the climax of our Lord’s mediatorial work.  Thus we read, “These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not come.”  And as Jesus speaks to his disciples and foretells his death, he says to them, “The Hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.”  And as Jesus prays his high priestly prayer just prior to his departure to the Garden of Gethsemane we hear him begin his prayer this way, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”.  From these passages it appears that this phrase, “mine hour”, is a technical term that refers to the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  It refers to the cross of suffering and shame.

With this in mind, we are now ready to grasp the meaning of Jesus’ words to his mother.  Mary wanted recognition for Jesus.  She wanted him to display his power and enjoy the glory of it.  But Jesus replies, “No Mary!  Not Yet!  First my cross, then my glory!  I have not yet gone to the cross.  That is the hour that is coming.  That is the hour I am working toward.  There is no recognition, no glory for me, without that cross, that suffering, that shame.  Mary, the recognition you want for me omits the cross.  You want to make of me a “wonder-worker”.  You are asking me to exert my powers and claim my glory without enduring the burden of sin.  You want me to act for myself and seek myself.  Ah, Mary, I love you too much to grant your request in the way you mean it.  There is no glory for me without my people’s guilt being removed, and that requires that I go to the cross.  I want no crown without my cross.  Glory?  Yes, but only then when I have earned the right for my people to enjoy that glory with me, and that means for the present I must be willing to be despised and rejected of men.”

Do you see now what was at stake in Mary’s request?  It involved turning out of the way that led to the cross.  It meant self-satisfaction rather than self-sacrifice.  It was an opportunity to please his earthly mother at the expense of his Heavenly Father.  It was an invitation to forget the fact of sin for just a moment.

The Devil too had tried to get Jesus to forget the fact of sin when he tempted the Lord in the wilderness.  He suggested, “Kings ought not to be hungry.  Use your power for your own convenience and turn these stones into bread”.  He continued, “Show people how great you are by throwing yourself down from the temple”.  And finally he came right out with it and gave Jesus the chance to avoid the cross and get the world directly from him.  These were all attempts to get Jesus to by-pass the cross.  But our Saviour took no detours.  He accepted the cross in loyalty to the Father and in love toward us.  He set his face like a flint and went up to Jerusalem, and as he explained to his disciples after his resurrection, “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer.”  He knew that it was necessary for our sakes that he suffer and die and he allowed no one to keep him from it – not the Devil in the wilderness, nor Peter who stood in his way and said, “This be far from thee, Lord!”, and not even his mother who hinted, “They have no wine.”

III.  PHARISEES’ REBUKE.

So far then we have seen two things.  The first of these is that Mary’s request for a wine-miracle amounted to interference with our Saviours ministry.  And, the second is that Jesus resisted this interference and insisted on following the road that led to the cross.

And now it is at this point a huge problem as big as a mountain begins to loom up before us.  Here it is.  If, as we have shown, Mary’s request was a wrong request, how then can we explain the fact that Jesus does indeed turn water into wine?  First Jesus objects to his mother’s request and then he turns right around and does the very thing she asks.  How can we explain this?  Why did not Jesus simply say, “No Mary.  What you are asking is wrong and I will not make any wine for you.”?  Why does he do the very thing he criticizes Mary for requesting?

Here is the answer.  Jesus, when he turns the water into wine, is not doing this in response to Mary’s request.  He has another reason for doing it.  Mary’s request was only the occasion for this miracle and not the reason for it.  The reason why Jesus performs this miracle is to attack the formalism, the external formalism, of the Pharisees.  We can put it this way.  Mary’s request was just a platform that Jesus used to launch his own attack upon the ceremonialism of the Pharisees.  That is why he turned water into wine.  Not to please his mother in her wrong request, but to begin this own conflict with the Jewish leaders that eventually led to his death,-that is the reason for this miracle.  Far from agreeing to avoid the cross, this miracle set the stage for the cross, it evoked the cross, it required the cross.

Well, how did it do that?  What is there about this miracle that makes it an attack upon the Pharisees?

Look at verse six.  There we read, “And there were set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece”.  Our attention is drawn to these containers.  Each of them was able to hold between 17 and 25 gallons of water.  The six jars had a total capacity of between 100 and 150 gallons.  Now that is a lot of water!  What could they have possibly done with all that water?  Mark 7:3-9 gives us the answer.  “For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the traditions of the elders.”  And Jesus goes on to say, “For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups; and many other such like things ye do”.  So, this water was ceremonial water used for purposes of religion as well as sanitation.  It was a sort of “holy water” like you see at the entrances of Roman Catholic churches.  And the fact that there was so much of this water suggests that this was a very orthodox, a very superstitious, a very ceremony-conscious wedding.  And, when we add to this the further consideration that wine was ordinarily kept in wine-sacks and that Jesus did not use the sacks but turned this “holy water” into wine we can feel something of the impact that this miracle must have made.  How the Pharisees were rebuked by it.  Jesus, with one sweep rejects the religious value of this water and turns it all into delicious wine.  It had no spiritual cleansing value as the Jews thought.  It was a man-made external form without any spiritual worth whatsoever.  The cleansing of the soul is not effected by such rituals.  It takes the blood of Jesus to wash a sinner clean.  Away with these man-made forms!  The one and only one we need is Jesus.

And so, we come back to something I said in my introduction, namely, that when the disciples saw this miracle, they began to realize that the Old Testament was past and that the New Testament had begun.  They saw it and the light began to dawn.  Though not very clearly at first, they began to understand that not only the ceremonies invented by the Jews, but all the Old Testament types and shadows, priests and sacrifices were a thing of the past.  In other words, there is something about this miracle that makes it especially New Testamentish.

Take the word “glory” in verse 11.  Verse 11 reads, “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him”.  What does this word “glory” mean?  What did Jesus reveal about himself when he performed this miracle?

Well, look at what is said in John 1:14.  There we are told, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth”.

So, “glory” means “grace and truth”.  But, what does “grace and truth” mean?  And the answer to this is in John 1:17, “For the law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”  Notice that Moses and the law are contrasted with Jesus and grace and truth.  The law and Moses belong together just like grace and truth and Jesus belong together.  The Law and Moses were just pictures whereas Jesus is reality.  Unlike the sacrifices of the Old Testament, Jesus blood actually paid the price of sin.  Animal offerings were just a picture whereas Jesus himself is a real sacrifice.

Thus, when the disciples saw Jesus turn water into wine and beheld his glory it means that they began to understand that the true Saviour of the world had arrived, that Jesus was unlike any prophet of the past, that the Messiah of God had finally come.  No longer would they need the sacrifices, the priests, and certainly not the man-made rituals of the Pharisees.  Jesus!  The one and only one we need is Jesus!  He saves, keeps, and satisfies.

What a discovery!  How happy and blest they must have been, now secure, how complete.  My friend, do you know the love of Jesus?  Has he set you free?  Can you sing:

“O Christ, our hope, our heart’s desire,
redemption’s only spring!
Creator of the world art Thou,
its Saviour and its King.

How vast the mercy and the love,
which laid our sins on Thee,
And led Thee to a cruel death,
to set Thy people free.

But now the bands of death are burst,
the ransom has been paid;
And Thou art on Thy Father’s throne,
in glorious robes arrayed.

O Christ, be Thou our lasting joy,
our ever great reward!
Our only glory may it be,
to glory in the Lord.”                       (Ps.Hymnal No.375)

Amen.