Water to Wine

Well, as we dig into this series on the seven signs, we did an overview last week and we're digging into the first sign today. For most of my time today, what I wanna do is tell you a story. That's all I'm gonna do for like 80% of my time. It is one of my personal favorite stories about Jesus. Like the rest of the stories we're gonna be telling in this series, it's found in the Gospel of John.

But when I was growing up, I would say some of the pastors, maybe even most of the pastors of the church that I went to, often sort of glossed over this story because there were some details about Jesus in the story that were kind of embarrassing and confusing for some of the people in the church. And so what I wanna do this morning is look at precisely those potentially uncomfortable and surprising details. Because it's in those sometimes side-stepped around details in this story that you begin to see the answer to a very, very important question begin to take shape. And it's this, what did Jesus come to do?

This was the question that the earliest disciples had about Jesus. They really didn't know anything about him and say with like, what is this guy here to do? Why did Jesus even come to earth primarily? Did Jesus come primarily to be a great teacher or to start a religion or to overthrow the Romans and stop their oppression? How would you answer that question? What did Jesus come to do?

Now, probably most of you have grown up in church, you're thinking, well, Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins and to rise again, to give us new life. That is what Jesus did. But what I'm asking is why? Why did he do what he did when he came to earth? Why did he do any of it? I think that the answer might blow your mind or at least might blow your preconceived notions of Jesus just out of the water.

And if you came to church today thinking to yourself, you know, I'm feeling a little dry, a little worn out. If I'm honest with myself, I feel like my joy is gone. I want a better connection to God. You cannot find a better story in the gospels than this story. This surprising story is in the Bible in the Gospel of John chapter two, verses one through 11. If you have your Bibles with you or a Bible app on your phone, open it up to that.

What I want to do today is to just tell you the story by walking through these 11 verses, verse by verse, with just a little bit of commentary to fill in the historical context. You got to really get the story that John is telling us here. 2000 years later, you might miss some of the cultural clues. And then I'm just going to end with a couple of observations for you to take this home and for you to just kind of, kind of medicate, kind of cogitate on this miracle all week long today.

And the story starts like this. In fact, let's read this first sentence out loud together. Would you read this with me? On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Press pause because already in this opening sentence, this is kind of like the opening scroll to a Star Wars movie. John is already revealing to you a lot of details that are important to understand what is about to happen.

The first phrase, on the third day, the third day since what? The third day since Jesus called his first disciples. Just a few verses earlier in John 1. This was that soon after the first fishermen, he hasn't even completed putting together a little group yet. This is his first disciples. It's like he called them Wednesday. This is Friday. And that's important because as we'll see later, they're not even what we would call believers yet. They're just tagging along. They don't really know all that much about Jesus.

And he says a wedding took place. Now in those days, weddings were even a bigger deal than they are in typically in our Western culture. In those days, first of all, weddings took place over many days, at least three days, sometimes even as long as a week. It's like this is a three-day weekend. That's what a wedding was like. It was like a three-day weekend, at least for the whole village. Everybody got several days off and they all got invited to this elaborate feast.

And the wedding feast was often the thing for which that particular family would be remembered in sort of the lore of the village. And so what's about to happen here in this story is kind of a minor social disaster and we'll get to that. But the next thing this opening scroll tells us is that it's at Cana in Galilee. Now, why do you think he specifies that and doesn't just say, "It was just a wedding someplace?" Very important detail.

Let me show you exactly where this happened so you can picture this. And I'll go to a pastor's preferred resource for this sort of deep theological research, Google Maps. Let's go there right now. This is modern Israel. This is the Sea of Galilee shaped just like Tahoe, isn't it? It's a big freshwater lake there. Capernaum, that's where Jesus made his headquarters. Nazareth, where Jesus was born. This is all just, you know, maybe 15 miles from here to there, pretty close.

And then you've got two potential places where the story takes place. They both still have the name Cana, Cana in their language, in their names, Kirbet Cana and Kafrakana. All the historians say, "Yeah, it was in one of these two villages." Now here's a couple of reasons that that's important. In both places, archeologists have found the foundations of very nice homes from Jesus' day. These weren't poor villages. These were kind of like upper middle-class villages.

They found ranch-style homes with nice tiled central courtyards. And above these big ranch-style houses, the ruins of terraced vineyards with water systems and so on that would have been all beautiful and lush in Jesus' day. In other words, this was wine country. These villages were on the two slopes of a narrow valley that was wine country for the region of Galilee. Think Passarobles, because that is still to this day what this region looks like in the wine industry is starting to come back in this area.

And here's why this detail is important, why John brings this up. Do people in a place like Passarobles or Sonoma or Napa, do they know wine? The bar for wine and food is pretty high in places like that, right? And this is why John brings this up. This becomes a major plot point in this story. Let's go on.

The Bible says, Jesus' mother Mary was there at the wedding and Jesus and his disciples, these brand new friends of his had also been invited to the wedding. And these next two verses to me are kind of humorous. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, did they have no more wine? This is all she says. She doesn't say, and could you make some more wine? She's just, I love how kind of almost passive-aggressive, I don't know what the word I'm trying to look for this is. Son, wine's out, just saying.

And Jesus knows exactly what she is implying. He answers, woman, why do you involve me? And by the way, this is not rude, like he's not going, woman, like we would say in English, this is in the original, this would be more like my lady. Why do you involve me? Jesus replied, my hour has not yet come. Say that sentence out loud with me. My hour has not yet come. Remember that because that's gonna be important later on when we look back at this miracle.

And here's what I love. This is the whole conversation with his mom. He says this to her, she doesn't even reply to him. She turns aside to one of the servants and says, just do whatever he tells you. And she walks away. This is that classic mom right there. Uh-huh, do whatever he tells you. And what this implies to me too, is that she knew what he was capable of, right? Maybe there'd be in a time when he was a little kid and they ran out of milk and he was just like pointed his finger at the glass. There it went, she's like, they're out of wine. Do whatever he says.

So what does Jesus do? Nearby stood six stone water jars, very important detail, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons. Now again, John does not include any extraneous details. These were not the kinds of jars that would ever be used for serving wine. For wine, they would have used ceramic jars like these. These were found by archeologists in the ruins of a wine shop in Israel from Jesus' era.

In those days, every little village had its own wine shop, including local and imported wines. It was a big deal, especially up in Galilee. But it says Jesus looked around and noticed stone water jars. And here are five stone water jars. These are in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. And these are from the first century in Israel. This is exactly the kind of thing that Jesus looked around and saw.

These were not made out of clay, like spun on a potter's wheel. These were made out of solid blocks of stone. The solid blocks of stone would be put on a lathe and they would be carved out like this. So this was expensive. This was time-consuming. These were heavy. And there is only one reason that a family would go to the expense of having this kind of stone water jar in a house in the first century. What do you think that reason was? Not for water to drink, not for bathing or washing.

It was for, or at least not commonplace washing. This was for religious ritual, for religiously observant Jewish people at the time. Clay was seen as corruptible, as potentially unclean, stainable. But stone was seen as pure. And so stone jars like this were only used for one purpose, to hold what you could call holy water. Judaism and Jesus' day had a huge number of religious rituals and each ritual required a new bout of ritual cleansing to make you pure before God, your body and soul pure before God.

And these jars are huge. It says each one held from 20 to 30 gallons. Again, John is a great storyteller and he never puts in any extraneous details. So remember that one too, verse seven. Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water. So they filled them to the brim. And then he told them, now, draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.

In verse nine, let's see that verse on the screen. The master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into what? 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. Now it's important, the master of the banquet, this guy was like a combination MC, caterer, sommelier and wedding DJ in one. He was your friend who's all about the wine. He was your friend who sips wine and goes, swirls it around in his mouth. (sniffs) Teasing notes of forest floor and mushroom. This was that guy, all right? He knew wine.

And then he called the bridegroom aside and he said, wow. Everyone brings out the choice wine first. And then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink. But you have saved the best until now. Now you might think, oh, well, these were simple people and sophisticated, easy to impress. Again, wine was a major industry right there in Cana of Galilee.

In fact, there's an ancient winery I was able to visit. Years ago, I traveled with a guy who knew the archeologist and we went down into this ancient winery. Listen to this. This place had five wine presses. Just imagine how much wine they were producing to need five wine presses operating at the same time. Even today, a lot of modern wineries only have one. That five, that's a lot of volume. They had not one, not two, not three, but four warehouses to store all the wine that they were producing.

They found in the ruins, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of broken bottles and jars of wine. Even by modern standards, this was a huge commercial operation that was right there in that region. And the Jewish people at the time imported a lot of wine to get different flavors. In fact, in shipwrecks that they find off the coast of Israel and the Mediterranean, they almost always find hundreds of jugs, amphora, they call them, of wine.

What I'm getting at is this was a culture that knew wine, good wine. And the leading expert in the neighborhood gave this a wine spectator rating of 100. This wasn't just wine, this was great wine. Now, how much great wine? Remember that detail. It says there were six stone water jars, each held 20 to 30 gallons of water per jar. So six times 20 to 30, that's 120 to 180 gallons of good wine that Jesus made.

But still some of you are like, I don't even know what that means because most of you don't drink wine by the gallon. At least I hope you don't. So how many bottles of wine are in a gallon, about six? I actually went to the Barzchetto winery, John Barzchetto comes to church here this week just to do research, you understand. And I asked John some details about this, about six bottles, approximately per gallon. So do the math. This equals 720 to 1080 bottles of great wine. It's astonishing.

I mean, wouldn't it have been a miracle if Jesus had turned like a glass of water into one bottle of like bad wine, you know, two-buck chuck? That would have been a miracle. But instead it's a thousand bottles of the best wine. This was abundant. This was lavish. Jesus had great tastes and he was a lavish host.

Now, listen carefully because here is why you have probably never heard this before in church. I realize and every pastor realizes that in church, including this church, there is a far higher percentage of people in recovery who add so much. People in recovery really understand the gospel of grace so much better, I think, than kind of, so many other people do, they get it. They get hitting bottom and turning to God when you're powerless.

So I am definitely not implying that you should go out and drink wine to be a good follower of Jesus Christ. The last thing I wanna do here, the very last with this teaching is to derail someone's sobriety by giving them a rationalization to drink when they shouldn't be drinking. But here's the thing, that tension between this elaborate amount of great wine that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ made and the very real and serious and heartbreaking problem that people can have with alcohol is I think why pastors out of a pastoral heart, not just legalism, are reluctant to really go into this detail about what really happened at this miracle, how extravagant Jesus was with this gift.

In fact, when I grew up, I heard pastors say, actually say, well, this wasn't wine, this was grape juice. But the whole point of the story is missed when you teach it that way. This is not a culture that would have been fooled by grape Kool-Aid. Jesus was being exquisitely tasteful on a world-class level and lavishly generous here. Okay, but why?

Verse 11 is the key to understanding this whole story. What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee, again, this is like saying what Jesus did here in Napa was the first of the signs through which He revealed His glory and His disciples believed in Him. Remember John, who's writing this was an eyewitness to all this and he's like, yeah, we've been following Him for three days, but that's when we started to get it. This guy's something different. That's when we started understanding His message, His personality.

Remember, John uses the word sign to talk about the miracles of Jesus. This is not the same word that the other gospel writers use. They use a word that's translated wonders. John uses the word sign. He says, I chose seven, that's it, just seven, of the many, many more miracles that Jesus did. Because these seven are signs, I think John is saying, these seven were signs for me. I saw these seven and these were the ones that when I look back, these rose to the top. These changed my mind.

And he says, these were the first of the signs. This means this was the very beginning of Jesus's career or public ministry. So, imagine you are, say, a political candidate kicking off a campaign, or you're a Silicon Valley startup launching a brand, or you're a musical artist releasing your very first single at a launch party event like that. You're gonna wanna make sure that your event conveys who you are, conveys your style, conveys who you are, conveys what you stand for.

Well, look at this as Jesus's launch party. Why in the world would Jesus, as His first sign, use supernatural power to keep a party going? Nobody's dying here. Nobody's demon-possessed here. Nobody has been blind since birth this time. It's just a party. I see two things in this story that tell us some surprising things about Jesus. And listen, again, to make this clear, I don't feel left out if you're a teetotaler for whatever reason.

This miracle is not here to make a point about wine, although that's part of the plot that helps us understand something about Jesus. This is here to make a point about Jesus. This is here to make a point about how Jesus rolls. Still today, number one, Jesus is here to bring you joy. Jesus is here to bring you joy. Say the word joy out loud with me. Joy.

This was a life-altering revelation for me. Some of you have heard me say that when I was a pastor, had been a pastor for about eight years, a youth pastor, then a senior pastor, I one night was reading late at night for a sermon series in the book of Galatians. And I got to Galatians 4:15. And Paul has been critiquing the Galatians for going slightly off track. He's been telling them, you know, you've been keeping all the rules and you've been really studying hard, but something's off. And he asks this question. What has happened to all your joy?

And I just stopped short when I read that sentence 'cause it hit me right between the eyes. 'Cause I was like, that is a good question. I'd started out with so much joy and love for Jesus Christ, except to Christ when I was just a child. But I had slipped away from a focus on Jesus and His grace to more and more to a focus on my own performance for Jesus and working hard for Jesus.

And when you start to slip away from a focus on Jesus to a focus on yourself, even if you're not being selfish, you're still focused on yourself, on your own religious performance. And you become more guilt-oriented and performance-oriented and your joy dries up because as Paul diagnoses the Galatians problem, he says, you have fallen away from grace.

I'm starting to read Galatians and realizing what he's critiquing and then it happened to me, I had fallen into a performance-oriented caricature of Christianity, slipped from grace to works. I thought of Jesus as somebody who showed it to give me more religious stuff to do. I'd forgotten that, listen, I'd forgotten that when Jesus talks about what He has come to do, He says things like, I have come in order that you might have life and life abundantly.

He talks about it in terms of joy and grace. In fact, do you know what metaphor Jesus Christ uses most often to describe the kingdom of God that He has come to invite us into? He describes it most frequently as a feast, a banquet, a party. And specifically, He talks about a wedding party. And I love that because I don't know about you, but when I look back at the parties I've been to, the best parties I've ever been to in my whole life, you know what they were? My grown children's wedding parties.

Just pure love and joy and bliss and contentment. It just overflows at weddings. You just can't keep it in. There's just exaltation and dancing and fun. Weddings are full of great food and feasting and seeing relatives that you haven't seen in a while that you might have nothing in common with, except you're celebrating the bride and the groom.

And Jesus is saying, that's the best picture I can think of of what I've come to bring, of what church is supposed to be like, of what I'm inviting you into with the kingdom of God. It's a party. And when He says it's a party, don't think, you know, out of control frat parties in college. Think wedding parties. We're like, well, I haven't seen them in 20 years. And you give each other hugs and you're toasting the bride and the groom and you're enjoying a lavish feast that just seems like it's never gonna end.

And little kids are dancing with grandma and grandpa. And Jesus is saying, yeah, that's kind of my brand. That's my trademark. That's why I did all of this, to get you at that table, to bring you that kind of joy, because this is a preview of heaven.

You know, the Bible talks so much about this. Look at Isaiah 25. This is about the day Jesus returns. And the Lord makes all things new. And Isaiah says, here's what it's gonna be like. On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats. And it's like Isaiah is so excited about the wine party. God's that he's already said it and he repeats himself. And the finest of wines.

But here's the thing. In heaven, it's like wine with no possibility of alcoholism. It's meat with no possibility of high cholesterol. This is my favorite verse in the whole Bible, right there. But the next verse may even be better. On this mountain, he will destroy, this is so poetic and beautiful, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. He will swallow up death forever.

This thing that's been haunting human beings since time immemorial, our mortality, sin and death, the things that we keep trying to conquer. The thing that, you know, even as we speak, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on hacking. You know, mortality, they'll never do it. But here's how Jesus will do it for us all. He shows up one day and he just goes like, oop. And it's gone. He swallows up death forever. And all that remains is joy and the best of wines and the best of food and a feast that never ends.

And here's why this is so important. That puts everything in perspective that we're going through here on earth. You know, many, many times when I've been grieving a loved one, and we've all been there, but when I grieved my mom's death just a few years ago or my father's death when I was a child, and at times, you know what grief feels like. You're so sad that it feels like the marrow in your bones is sad, and you're missing them so much.

But I'm so comforted by the thought, no, I have not hugged them for the last time. We're gonna be reunited and it's gonna be like that wedding photo, and we're gonna be at the table with, oh, I haven't seen you in like 100 years. And we're gonna toast our savior Jesus with the best pinot noir in the galaxy at the wedding feast of the lamb. And like Mother Teresa said, in light of heaven, all our suffering will feel like one night in a bad hotel. I love that line. And she knew suffering, right?

Remember what the MC said in the story, you have saved the best for last. Say that sentence out loud. You have saved the best for last. You know what, one day you will save this to Jesus. And maybe you feel right now like you ran out, the jars are dry, the wine's run out, your energies run out, your hope has run out, your health has run out, your money's run out, you're running on empty. But don't give up, because one day, if you place your trust in Jesus, you will look around at heaven and you will look up at your savior and you'll say, wow, I thought it was all over, but you, you have saved the best for last.

This is how Jesus rolls, this is part of his glory. And you know, it's not just about hope for tomorrow or seeing your loved ones again, it's about today too. What's this mean for you now? One of the most famous verses in the Bible is Psalm 118:24. Let's read this out loud together. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Joy is part of Jesus brand.

Did you know in the Bible, in the King James Version, which I grew up memorizing, Jesus Christ is called, quote, "A drunkard and a wine bibber." I'm not even sure what a wine bibber is, but I think it means he was so joyful, people thought, is he on something? Our followers of Jesus these days always known as people who are that happy. Sometimes I feel like saying to Christians, you know, if you believe in joy, tell your face.

I'll be honest, I was looking around during that first song today. You bring me joy, come on! Because Jesus came to bring you joy. You know what? He gave these people abundant wine. He is giving you abundantly too. Look around this week and go, what is Jesus lavishing on me abundantly? You know, his love, but what else? I mean, that's huge, but what other blessings is he just lavishing on me and give thanks for that?

And if the seeds of joy aren't sprouting in you because your focus on Jesus is off, you gotta correct that and refocus because maybe your religion is turning into, like it had been for me, a religion of self-oriented performance. Maybe you are living under a cloud of guilt and that's robbing you of joy. And that really brings me to the second thing I see in this story, and we'll talk about this very quickly.

Jesus is here to make you clean, to wash you clean so that you can experience this joy. You know, as a pastor, I've heard many times people say things like this to me, René, I feel like I just wanna take a shower spiritually, either because of something they did, sinful, that is making them feel dirty, or because of something that's been done to them. Ever feel like my soul just needs cleansing? If we're honest, we've all felt like this from time to time, accurately. We've all felt dirty and unclean and sinful.

And most religions try to help with this. Here's how to be clean. You can have your sins forgiven, your bad karma balance. The red in your ledger worked off, as they say in the Marvel movies. And the advice they usually give is something like this, do some good deeds to offset the bad deeds, good karma to offset the bad karma. The problem is religious ritual or good deeds are never enough because we always do more dirty stuff. And so there's always more cleansing to be done.

And this is why in Jesus' day, these elaborate cleansing rituals with water just kept accelerating, washing in pools, washing hands with ritual water from the stone jars. It was never-ending. It was never enough to get rid of the stain of sin. And so Jesus is doing something symbolic and poetic here when he makes wine, not just with water from like a river or a well, but water from the stone jars used for ceremonial cleansing. It's poetry.

It's as if he's saying, you know what? Now that I'm here, you're not really gonna need that water very much longer. 'Cause I'm gonna make your soul clean. 100%. Why does snow clean? Now, how is Jesus going to do that? Let's go back to the detail. When Mary says to Jesus, well, son, they've run out of wine. Jesus says, my hour has not yet come. What's he mean by my hour? He says this phrase other times of the gospel of John, each time it refers to the hour of his death. It's like he's looking into the future thinking, yes, I am here to wash you clean so you can have joy, but I am going to have to die to do it.

See, Jesus didn't come to teach us how to cleanse ourselves through good deeds or religious ritual. If he did that, he'd be like the founder of every other religion. Jesus came to cleanse us himself. How is Jesus going to bring us to joy by on the cross, losing all of his for the joy set before him? How will he cleanse us of sin by taking all of our uncleanness on himself so that this can happen? 1 John 1:9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And to what? Cleanse us from all unrighteousness, all of that uncleanness that maybe still haunts you and robs you of joy. He came to wash it all away, not so that you can be clean and sterile or clean and antiseptically religious, but so that you can be clean and joyful.

So don't you love this story? It's poetry with a miracle. I look at it this way. Our whole world right now is kind of a dying party. The wine's running out. And Jesus comes to the dying party not to deliver a lecture, not to start a religion. He's here to invite you to the ultimate party where the wine never runs out and never causes problems. And in fact, the Bible has this invitation and I love this from the message translation. Hey there, all who are thirsty come to the water. Are you penniless? Come anyway, buy and eat, come. Buy your drinks, buy wine and milk, buy without money. Everything's free.

Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy? Listen to me. Listen well. Eat only the best. Fill yourself with only the finest. The Bible urges us to turn away from the things that can never satisfy you anyway, from the wine that just runs out. In other words, the pleasures of this world. Not the pleasures that are given us by God to enjoy innocently and righteously, but from the pleasures of this world that people often settle for.

What that verse is saying is why settle for Twinkies when Jesus just showed up with an unlimited gift card for Shatterbrook. So if you're feeling a little empty on your joy meter, what will you do with this invitation right now? Would you pray with me? Let's bow our heads together. And with our heads bowed and with your eyes closed, you know there's two groups of people here, one group that was like me when I was a pastor for eight years, and you're kind of doing all the religious things, but you're running dry, your joy's gone.

Here's a chance to refocus on Jehovah Jireh, Jesus who's more than enough for you. Lavishly gracious. And maybe for the first time, this is making sense for some of you. You thought of Jesus as a killjoy, as dour and sour, but now you're saying in this moment, Lord, I wanna be part of the joy and the cleansing that you came to bring. Wash me, cleanse me, fill me. I don't understand it all, but I wanna follow you, the joy bringer. Thank you for this feast you've invited us to that came at great cost to you, this banquet of riches that you've provided freely to us. In Jesus' name, amen.