Alright, turn with me to John
chapter 2. John chapter 2. I want us probably over the next
several weeks to look at these first 11 verses. I don't want to be in a hurry
as we go through here. We've got no set goals. We just
want to go through here what the Lord will teach us from these
things. And there are several things that he sets forth in
this, the first of his miracles that the Lord did by him for
us to see. And one of them is the event
itself, which is a marriage and why his presence, what his presence
had to do with a marriage. then there's something else that
took place that day. He turned the water into wine,
and that in itself is something for us to consider and has some
things to be taught from it. So I don't want to set any time
limits on how long we're going to look at these things. I'll
just try to find what the Spirit of God is willing to teach me
and able to teach me, and then that's how we'll approach these
things. But as I read these first 11
verses, and we're going to read through them here in just a minute,
I want you to think about these three things. The time of this
celebration. Evidently, that's important.
I don't believe the Holy Spirit puts anything in the Scriptures
that's unimportant. And He begins this first verse
with, "...and the third day." You see it there? The third day. And then I want to look at the
reason for the celebration. And then I want to talk a little
bit about the place where they were gathered. So let's read
through these verses now and ask God to uncover His hidden
treasure of Christ and raise up our hearts to worship Him. And the third day there was a
marriage in Cana of Galilee. And the mother of Jesus was there.
And both Jesus was called and his disciples to the marriage.
And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him,
They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman,
what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants,
whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.' And there were set there
six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of
the Jews, containing two or three perkins apiece. And Jesus saith
unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them
up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw
out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast, and they bared. And when the ruler of the feast
had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not which
it was, but the servants which drew the water knew, the governor
of the feast called for the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man
at the beginning doth set forth good wine, And when men have
well drunk, then that which is worse. But thou hast kept the
good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did
Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory, and
his disciples believed on him." Now, there's just a multitude
of instructions in these verses and pictures, and there are some
warnings here. There are some warnings. There
are some rebukes here. There are some promises here. There
are some pictures in here. There is just an untold amount
of instruction in these verses. But today, I just want us to
look and focus our thoughts, just kind of isolate your thoughts
on the three things that I mentioned to you from the beginning. And the first thing is this,
is the time of this marriage. Let me read for you the last
two verses. Well, I want to read the last
verse in chapter 1, and let's look at it in relationship with
the first verse of chapter 2. It says in verse 51 of chapter
1, And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter
you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of Man." He's declaring to Nathanael the
eternality of Christ and the glory of Christ. He said, you
believe because I said I saw you under a fig tree. That was
an indication of the glory of Christ. But he said, you're going
to see greater than that. You're going to see heaven. One
day you're going to see heaven opened up, and you're going to
see the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
Now watch this. And the third day there was a
marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Eighteen times in these preceding verses, he begins the verse with
the word, and, and, and, and. Several times he uses it. Let's
look up here in chapter 1 and verse 1. In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You see that? And then all down
through these chapters, you just keep seeing that word, and. And
it's a common word in the Scriptures, and the Word is joining what
has just been said to what he's about to say. And then he joins
that to the next thing. And so as you go through the
Scripture, you begin to understand that there's nothing in this
Bible that's not connected. It's all connected. It's all
saying the same thing, Jesse. It's just a part. We're going
to talk about election over here, but you can't talk about election
without talking about the One who elects. And you can't talk
about the One who elects without talking about His purpose of
grace, which is the reason why He elects. And you just go on
and on. And then you come to see that
the whole thing is connected. It's all connected. Every bit
of it. I used to tell the folks up in
Danville, I'd go through my Bible and I'd see something that the
Lord opens up to me and I'd take a highlighter and highlight it.
And then after a while, there are very few spaces that aren't
highlighted. And pretty soon, if you keep
reading this book, the whole thing will be highlighted. And
we'll come to understand. But it's all connected. Every
subject has a bearing on another subject, and it's a dangerous
thing. Know this. It's a dangerous thing to go
over here somewhere and single something out and then try to
build a doctrine on it. Don't ever do that. Over in the
book of Peter, he says, knowing this first, that no Scripture,
no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. And he's not talking about you
as an individual interpreting that, although I suppose that
could be included. But he's talking about isolating
the Scripture and then trying to form some kind of an interpretation
about it. You never want to go over and
just single something out. Men have built churches. on single
doctrines like Acts 2.38. They take this thing and build
an entire church on it, an entire belief on one passage of Scripture. Don't ever do that. The Word
of God is connected. If you would have the understanding
of God about what this book is about, you'll buy the whole field. You're going to buy the whole
book. Then you'll see the treasure. God's book is so interwoven that all these men who wrote in all
these different times, just think of the different eras. I was
just talking to Walter about a book I have that an English
professor gave me one time. It's called an Oxford English
Dictionary. And the book has been valuable
to me because it takes the word that you're reading here in the
King James Bible and it will take it back a hundred years
at a time, back in time, until finally it goes all the way back
to the time that the Bible was written. And then they take that
word off of things that was commonly used, either transcribed or printed
in that era. And they'll show you the common
use of that word in that day. You see what I'm saying? So if
you run on to a word that we no longer use, like over there
in Hebrews chapter 1, when he talks about divers times, we
don't even use that word divers anymore, but it was a common
word back when the Bible was written. It means various. And
then they use that word sundry a lot. And they used other words
that we're not familiar with in our day. Well, this book,
I can get in this book and go back and I can see just what
the common language had to do with that word. And God's book
was written. These men, I mean, think about
it. Think about how long ago Moses lived. We're going way
back past the time that the complete canon of Scripture was published.
We're going way back before that. And think about Abraham and Job
and all these men from different times. These men were from different
cultures, completely different cultures. They had different
backgrounds. Luke was a doctor. Peter was
a fisherman. You can just go on and on. Moses
was raised in Egypt, right along beside Pharaoh. He knew all there
was to know about Egyptian life. And you can just go on and on
and on. And yet, this book tells one story. It's connected in
such a way that their backgrounds and eras and ages made no difference
whatsoever. It's all connected. We see things
isolated in time and put them into categories. And, you know,
we put them up here, this is important and this is really
important. And this over here, we can take
it or leave it. We just put things in categories.
God just has one category, very, very important, all of it, front
to back. And then I know this, and this
is what we're talking about. We're talking about this time,
this time. Well, something I've learned,
and this book gives examples of over and over and over, and
that is this, that everything that takes place in time has
a purpose and an object and a beginning in eternity. Nothing is going
to happen in time that wasn't purposed in eternity. No surprises
with God. Everything surprises me, but
no surprises with Him. Nothing is going to happen in
time. The providential workings of God are very significant.
And these things are owing to the very salvation of God's elect
and the glory of Christ seen on this earth. Now, let's just take a look at
these on the third day. Well, what's so significant about
that? Well, on the third day of creation, what happened? Do
you recall? On the third day of creation,
He created all the grass and all the fruit trees that produced
fruit and the herb that bore its own seed and produced after
its kind. What was He doing? He was making
provision to sustain all the life that He would create and
put on this earth. That's what He did on the third
day. Well, what was taking place on this third day in Cana of
Galilee at the beginning of these miracles? God was saying, here
is the sustenance right here of every living thing that I
put on this earth. Here is its life right here in
Christ. In Christ. All life. Here is
the sustenance right here. In Him was life. And that life
was the light of men. On the third day, I don't know, maybe that's why
Nebuchadnezzar, maybe that's why God, when He brought Nebuchadnezzar
down, made him go out and eat grass like an oxen, to learn
that. Maybe that's why, I don't know. But listen to this. On the third
day, there was a prophet named Jonah. You remember the story
of Jonah. And the Lord sent him down to
Nineveh. Nineveh was a city of the Gentiles. The prophet of
Israel didn't want to go down there. He despised Gentiles.
He didn't want to go down there. He didn't want to get infected.
He didn't want to go down there. That's kind of the way we look
at it. We don't like to get mixed around folks where, you know,
I don't want to go down there. Those old Pharisees looked at
Christ and they said if he knew that woman, who it was, it was
washing his feet with her hair, he wouldn't be allowing this.
You know, we don't want to get infected. We don't want to get
around sinners. We don't want to do that. Jonah didn't want
to go down there. He went the other direction on the ship.
He went down to Joppa and got on the ship going to Tarsus,
and away he went. And he got out there, and God
caused his judgment to stir the waters, and that old ship was
getting tossed to and fro, was about to go under. And the Lord
came along and began to trouble the hearts of those men, and
they began to inquire among them why this judgment was coming
out of nowhere. And there was old Jonah asleep,
and they went and woke him up. And he said, I'm the cause. I'm
the problem. So they threw him overboard.
God swallowed him up with a great fish, a fish that God prepared
to take him down and teach him who he was. And he carried him
down into the depths of that sea until he cried, Salvation
is of the Lord. And that prophet whom God took down, who experienced
the curse of God in the depth of the sea, he spit him up on
the bank. And here's this prophet covered
in whale vomit and seaweed going into Nineveh. to deliver the
message of God. And God saved that whole city
of Nineveh. And you remember in the New Testament
when He was down in Capernaum talking to them and He began
to curse the cities. And He said, an evil and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign. There's no sign going to be given
you except that of the prophet Jonah who was three days and
three nights in the belly of hell in that well. And he said,
so shall the Son of Man be three nights, three days and three
nights in the heart of the earth. No other sign is going to be
given on the third day. You see that? Here's the prophet
of God going to be made a curse for us, coming down. Nobody else is for us. Here's this prophet. And God
sends him down, and now he begins to declare who he is. Here's
the prophet. And he's coming to a people that God has determined
to save. despised of men, despised of
religion, but God is going to take that prophet and He is going
to teach him something about His deliverance and then He is
going to send him. And here is Christ. Here is Christ. And what was the message he bore?
Salvation is of the Lord on the third day. On the third day. And then listen to this. You
can take that prophet, and he's kind of a sign of all the prophets
that's going to come, all the preachers of the gospel that's
going to come after him in this respect. Paul said, I delivered
unto you, first of all, the gospel. Now he said, I delivered to you
the gospel. which I also received myself,
how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
and that he was buried and rose again the third day according
to the scriptures." So this third day is a very significant thing.
Actually, without the third day, there could be no opening up
of the heavens and no seeing of the angels ministering to
the Son of God. There's a third day ordained
in the providence of God that's going to come to pass. And everything
that's done before that, I could go through the Scriptures, there's
just multitudes of things that happen on the third day. And
then here's the second thing I want to talk to you about,
and that is the reason for the wedding. And the reason for the
wedding was Christ. It was Christ. Now, I want you
to think about what I just said. Here was a wedding. If it happened
today, Russell, they wouldn't even put it in the paper. We're
talking about a very, very poor family. Mary couldn't even bring
a lamb to offer it for her cleansing after the birth of Jesus. She
had to bring a dove. She was very poor. And most probably,
since Mary is officiating this wedding, it was either one of
her children that was being married, or what most of the old writers
believe, it was her sister that was being married, because she
was officiating. She would have no reason to officiate
at anybody's wedding unless they were very, very close to that
family. And so here she is, and she's officiating over this wedding.
Very poor. Very poor. But here's this wedding. Why?
Why this wedding? Well, the reason why God ordained
marriage, first of all, is its usefulness to communicate to
us Our relationship with God. All these worldly relationships
that we have. We've got fathers and sons. We've got friends. We've got
brothers and sisters. You've got husbands and wives.
You've got all these earthly relationships. All of them are
going to be dissolved after death. Every last one of them. So where
is the value in creating such things? Why do they exist? Well, the value, I'm not saying
there's no value to a relationship between a husband and wife. There's
a lot of value to it. But the real eternal value of
it is how it communicates to us our relationship with God.
Because other than that, we don't have a clue. Now, we don't. We
don't. And we sit around and we speculate
because I know this and he don't know that, then I'm a believer.
And we speculate all these kind of things. But that's not it.
Now, I'm telling you, it's a relationship. That's what it is. And you can
no more explain this relationship between men and God than you
can explain the relationship between a man and a woman. You
can't do it. Men have been trying to do it
for, how many, thousands of years, filled libraries up with volumes
of books written about it, and they're still discussing it,
and they don't know any more now than they knew then. I'll
tell you how you'll understand your relationship to your wife
and have a better relationship to your wife when you understand
that relationship between Christ and His church. When that bond
is formed, that other bond will take on a whole different sense
and meaning. It's a relationship. And we keep
looking for some kind of inward sign and some kind of a written
sign and some point that we can reach Elevation, you know, we're
going to get to this plateau and now, now, I believe, now
it's going to be a relationship. And when my wife and I was first
married, we didn't know anything about each other. And as time
goes on, we begin to know a lot about one another. And that relationship
grows and it becomes stronger and it becomes more meaningful
because the knowledge grows. And it's an experiential knowledge,
and it's a knowledge that comes from a relationship. And when
I try to preach the gospel to you, or teach you the things
of God, I'm always going to go back to Christ, because it's
born out of that relationship. Other than that, you don't know
nothing. It's just words, just like 2 plus 2. 2 plus 2 ain't
going to get you into heaven, and neither is learning a doctrine.
That doctrine has to take on a value. Just because you've
got a marriage license doesn't mean you love one another, does
it? You don't. Now, I'm telling you,
it's a relationship. And we have a beginning with
Christ, and we've got a middle, and then we've got a maturity.
And those things take place in the Kingdom of God. But here's
why this wedding is here, Because God is going to communicate this
relationship. That's what it's all about. The
real value of that wedding, it wouldn't even make today's paper,
but here God has preserved it for eternity. In eternity, long
after this world burned down, they're still going to be talking
about this wedding in Cana. How come? Because Christ was
there. That's why. That's why. And we wonder, you know, these
little mundane events in our life, like what's the big deal? I'll tell you what the big deal
is if the king shows up. That's what makes it a big deal.
Well, what's the big deal about going over there to church? Who's
here? Now, if he ain't here, it's just
another mundane event. That's all it is. But if he's
here, then this thing is eternal. And it's immortal. And these
things that are going on are eternal. You see what I'm saying? And then think about this. If
you're a believer, what is there in your life that he doesn't
accompany? Well, you just thought, boy,
you know, we got up and we sat there and talked for breakfast
and you didn't think anything about it, did you? You will if
you think about his presence there. Everything you do, I don't
care how insignificant it is, has been planned out, mapped
out, preserved and ordained of God. And somehow or another in
the ages to come, you're going to see the glory of it. You're
going to see the benefit of it. You're going to see just how
God snatched you out of the flames of hell and brought you over
here and set you down with a flock. That's what you're going to see.
That's what you're going to see. Every little event. And I'll tell you this, that's
why folks, they come and they hear and then nothing happens.
They don't say anything, they don't feel anything, and they
just go home. Because all they see and all they hear are the
words of a man. That's all they hear. And I can
stand up here and I can preach the gospel and I can do the best
I can with these scripture verses and teaching and so on, and by
God's grace I'll get better at it. But I tell you this, I can't
make you hear His voice. Only He can do that. Only He
can do that. over in 1 Thessalonians 2.13.
That's a scripture I quote to you all the time. But Paul thanked
God without ceasing for these people in these churches. He
says it at the beginning of each letter how he thanks God without
ceasing. He prays for them always. He
just talks about it in session because he was persuaded that
these things, that election of God was established through his
ministry. And so he thanked God for every
little part of it that brought him there. If you read through
the books of Thessalonians, you'll see how he suffered and was in
prison and beaten within one stripe of his life. I don't know
how many times, but he was thankful for those things. He was thankful
that he was beaten because if he hadn't gone through those
things, they wouldn't have believed. Those things were just as ordained.
This wedding was ordained for one reason. because Christ was
going to come into that wedding, and He was going to declare Himself
and manifest His glory, and His disciples were going to believe
on it. Actually, I've been working on an article to this effect.
There were two weddings that day. There was a wedding of whoever
it was. It doesn't even give their names, who was married.
It just says there was a wedding. That's how insignificant our
part is. He doesn't even mention their
names. But there was another marriage there that day, Winston.
Those two disciples looked at him and he manifested his glory.
And they were married by faith. They were united in a holy union
of faith right there and right then. That's what it says. Manifested
forth his glory. Alright, let's take a look just
for a few minutes at the place I was looking at Cana of Galilee. Do you all have maps in the back
of your Bible that locates all these old things when you see
them in these towns and stuff? Well, a lot of times those locations
are kind of significant. And Cana, the old writers just
kind of pictured Cana as hanging on the edge. When you left Cana,
you fell off the earth. There just wasn't anything else.
It was as far out in Galilee as you could get, right on the
outskirts. Here's Canaan. You couldn't have
picked a more insignificant place if you tried. Now think about
it. Here's the Messiah, the long-promised
Messiah of Israel. And they looked for Him. Israel
looked for Him, talked about Him, wrote about Him, taught
their children about Him. The Messiah is coming. Here's
Jerusalem, the capital of religion. This is where the Sanhedrin sat.
This is where the priests were. This is where the temple was.
Everything that had to do with religion was in Jerusalem. Now,
the Messiah has come, and he is going to begin his ministry.
Where does he do it? Not in Jerusalem. He goes as
far as he can go from Jerusalem to Canaan. Now, down here in
Jerusalem, I want you to see this now. There is a comparison
here. I am trying to teach you something. Down here in Jerusalem
is all the pomp and the pageantry of the priesthood. Down here
in Jerusalem is the hallowed halls of the temple. The great
temple held in high esteem. Down here in Jerusalem is the
Sanhedrin, the council chosen. Those most learned people in
religion, here they was in a council, going to settle all the disputes.
Their job, one of their jobs was to look for and recognize
the Messiah. But the Messiah, He doesn't even
grace them with His presence. He goes to Canaan. He don't get
into the ceremonies of religion. He goes down here to a social
event. Huh? Now, don't you think about
that. He went down to a social event,
Russell, that they wouldn't even have told anybody about because
they didn't recognize anybody there to be important. The son
of a carpenter went to a city that was just a speck on the
map. to a social event that wouldn't have made news and manifested
His glory. Why? Why did He do that? Well, let me read an old familiar
scripture to you out of 1 Corinthians 1. He said, For you see your
calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after
the flesh, not many mighty, Not many noble are called, but God
hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty, and base things of the world
that the things which are despised hath God chosen. and things which are not, to
bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in
his presence." This glory that he manifested is not a worldly
thing. It's not a worldly thing. It's
a social event. It's a family gathering. This
is the children's bread right here. And his calling is not
to this world. His calling is to his children.
This gospel, though it's preached in all the world, is not directed
to all the world. It's directed to His children.
Paul said to the Galatians, Because ye are sons, God has sent forth
His Spirit into your heart, crying, Abba, Father. Otherwise, you
wouldn't cry. But you were a son. You were
a son when He adopted you before the foundation of the world.
And you were a son when Christ assumed your nature and came
into this world. And you were a son all this time. And then God awakens you to it
and enlightens you to it and sends forth His Spirit into your
heart and then you begin to be a son. And you cry, Abba, Father. Abba, Father.