Pastor Ralph Douglas West - Walk with John to Cana of Galilee | John 2:1-11

0:04 The Lord has wrought since Jesus came into my heart. While you're standing, take God's word, open it to the Gospel of John, chapter 2. While you're doing that, I want to thank our team for teaching on Tuesdays and Wednesdays through the Gospel of John, the I Am statements. And here again, we return to John's Gospel.

0:45 Matthew focuses on that which is kingly, Mark on humanity, Luke on the universality of Christ. But John raises our gaze to a high Christology. And with that said, I want us to journey. We're a few weeks away from Ash Wednesday and then a few more weeks away from Resurrection Sunday and then the post-resurrection appearances. And because of that, let's let John take us on his journey. And we'll stop and pay attention to signs and we'll walk through avenues and listen to different speeches and conversations that our Lord has along the way. John 2, beginning at verse 1, says something else. On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee.

1:48 Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding when the wine was gone. Jesus' mother said to him, They have no more wine. I'm warmer Why do you involve me?

2:16 Jesus replied, my hour has not yet come. His mother said to his servants, do whatever he tells you. nearby stood six stone water jars the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing each holding from 20 to 30 gallons and 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.

3:01 They did so. And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, Everyone brings out the came us first. And then the Mad Dog 2020. After the guests have been and had too much to drink, but you saved the best till now. What Jesus did here in Cain of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him.

4:31 This is the word of God. Let me see. a taste of new wine. I suppose the most famous wedding in our lifetime that has taken place took place in July of 1981. the wedding between princes, Prince Charles and Lady Diana. It's the most watched wedding, 74 countries, almost a billion viewers. People got up around the world at different times to lay sight on this wedding event that would change the venerated monarch forever.

5:41 People watched it in the same way that they have been asked about other historic events. Were you there when or did you see the wedding of Charles and later Diana Spencer? 32 year old Charles, 20 year old Diana. Changed everything. Big wedding.

6:14 Magisterial, ceremonial, ritual, in the cathedral, people invited. It was beautiful. and yet there's another wedding that's greater than that wedding that's talked about more and has meaning and significance and for 2,000 years that wedding has been preserved by the church and periodically people will stop in the Gospel of John chapter 2 and talk about this most famous wedding and its meaning because it reminds us or it tells us that what Jesus did that day is that he can look at a life that is stagnant and take it and turn it into something exhilarating.

7:12 He can give meaning and purpose to life. That's what this text is tailored to teachers. And it took place at a wedding with a Lord who is interested in personal concerns and knows how to share in the occasions of joy that we schedule. Listen to how it goes.

7:49 On the third day of the week, Jesus had just finished doing battle with Satan on his own turf. Before that, baptized. Before that, John the baptizer announcing his speech as a voice crying in the wilderness. coming out of the wilderness to the hills of Galilee he now makes his way to a neighboring town not far from Nazareth with his mother and his disciples in Cana a common town with common people a common place Cana away from Jerusalem out of the eye publicity no fanfare Cana Thank you. Jesus goes to a wedding in a common place with everyday people in Cana of Galilee.

8:53 Gotta win. a ceremony, a place of celebration. not a wedding like we planned for three years for one hour Not a 20 minute ceremony. This is a village occasion. It's a big event. Everybody in town is involved in it.

9:34 Several years ago, I had been invited to speak at West African Theological Seminary. And each day when I passed, we would see this house and we would see this modest little house from the hotel to the campus. One night coming back, things had changed. That little modest house was run over with people and music and dance and festivity and celebration. and you didn't have to guess, you knew that they were having a party.

10:14 This was a long celebration. Everybody involved in it, in Cana, at a wedding. And one of the invited guests was Mary. and Jesus. and Jesus is always a good somebody to invite if planted on having anything It's not surprising that they wouldn't invite John the Baptist.

10:51 That bizarre Baptist out there preaching in the wilderness, crying out, repent. And then when he gets the attention of all the people, he calls the guests, you brood of vipers. so it's no wonder that John wouldn't get invited to the wedding and he was a recluse anyway he probably would not have come and if he did he probably would have got himself in the same situation that he did at Herod's party But not Jesus. He always enjoyed a good party. He was involved with everyday life And the everyday occasions of people When they would invite him He would go to them he would go to houses and go to different places and he would go sometimes where people had not the best reputation and they even said of him on an occasion or two, he drinks a lot.

12:07 They called him a wine divper. Whatever was going on in those events, this much we know that Jesus, when he left, always made the place better than the way that he found it. And then the people that were there would always follow after him as he was announcing in the words of Tony Campolo that the kingdom of God is a party. they didn't invite John, the Baptist, I mean that preacher that's out in the wilderness in that bizarre costume that he would wear when he would preach.

12:53 John did ministry on one level, Jesus did ministry on another level and Jesus made up a story about them one day of how people respond to the different ways that they go about bringing men and women to God. He says, you know, some of you, you sing a dirge for a funeral and you won't cry, and others of you, you play a flute and you won't dance. You're just chronically dissatisfied. John's disciples said it this way. We fast, but these disciples over here, like their Lord, they're always celebrating. I can't stay there much longer, but you get the idea that wherever Jesus shows up, things always happen differently.

13:56 They always do. In Cana, at a wedding, and Jesus is invited. Have you noticed that in these personal concerns of our Lord, how people respond to him when he arrives. Matthew, the tax collector, I don't think he was too good of a preacher.

14:25 But he knew how to do this. Throw a party and invite Jesus. And because of the work that he used to do, he was able to attract people from the margins and they would come to this party and Jesus would be there and when Christ was finished, something good always happened. I'm convinced that wherever Jesus shows up, something ought to happen. Lives ought to change whenever our Lord shows up.

15:03 Something ought to happen. And Jesus didn't make a separation here either between the sacred and the secular. He didn't do that. When he showed up, things happened. You remember when we were children in those science classes and they were always showing us something about these different chemicals. And so you would get a glass of oxygen and a burning stick. And you remember you put this burning stick in the oxygen and something happened. It burned, but it burned brighter. And that's what happens whenever we invite Christ into our situation. Our ordinary lives began to burn brighter and brighter. Always. Argonne and Swinburne made the comment, thou hast conquered old pale Galilean, the world has grown great. It was another way of the poet just simply saying, God's a killjoy.

16:13 You think? Do you really believe that? Do you really believe, as people will say, I won't invite God into my life because I don't want to give up my good way of living. I won't invite him into my job, into my family. You know, D. Elton True Blood, he was a philosopher of another day. And True Blood wrote this book in 1949 entitled The Common Ventures of Life. And in that book, he just simply said that God involves himself through Jesus Christ at the common ventures, the intersections of life. marriage, birth, work, death. And what he gets to is to say that when Christ is invited into your life, he stands with you at the momentous moments that you will experience. You will experience relationship and loss, birth and death, joy and sadness. Christ will be in that with us.

17:33 One last thing, when the Augustinian monk Martin Luther was doing his best to work his way into God's good grace. He discovered you can work, work, work, and still make no ground with God. and then he opened his heart and received God's grace and the first thing he went to was the convent to set the nuns free and in his journal he wrote when he found the last standing nun and married her he said how good it is to wake up with pigtails on your pillow next to you It's a true story. And the point is, is that when Christ enters in, he always changes your human situation.

18:35 It never is the same, and it's always better. And then something happens in the story. Mary is there.

18:56 Maybe she has some insight on it. I don't know. But whatever happened in verse 3, the wine is gone. and Jesus said and Mary said to Jesus they have no more wine I was thinking on my way in I wonder what tone Mary said that in Third day, Canaan, wedding, Mary, Jesus, the disciples, there in the celebration, wine runs out, and the culture would have been concerned about this. This would not be the equivalent of you running out of punching cake at your wedding.

19:52 The rabbis could turn this into a legal offense It would be an embarrassment It would be something besmirching on the couple It would be a stain upon their memory The wine ran out for our invited guests So I wonder what tone she said it in.

20:20 I mean, it doesn't change. I just wonder how she said it. Was it one of those remarks like, mothers have a way of doing? The wine ran out. You know, you just wonder, is it on that order? Or is it just an observation? The wine ran out. and yet when she said that they have no they have no more wine yeah they have no more wine she didn't say Jesus they have no more wine and yet she knew who was in that room with her because her mind goes back to a statement that he said, and she'd been waiting to bring this back up. At 12 in Jerusalem, when he stayed behind, and Joseph and she went back to go get him, and he's having a conversation with the theologians, talking about the law and Moses, and talking about health and healing and deliverance, and she said, boy, we got the golden.

21:33 He said, I must be about my father's business. So here she's saying, here's your business right here. This is your father's business. I don't know. whatever tone doesn't change the intent of the message. For those of you that have those kind of queries when you read the scripture, and Jesus said, woman, I wanted to get to that because I heard how you responded when I said woman. Because we have so degraded that term and reduced it to something misogynistic and patriarchal and that is not what Jesus was doing. And one of the ways you study the scriptures is you follow the characteristics of Christ throughout the scripture and nowhere have you ever seen where Christ has demeaned any woman.

22:31 He always elevates, celebrates, always lifts up to a level of dignity. In that day, woman would have been his way of simply saying, ma'am, and now the relationship is about to change because when she says the wine has run out and he says verse four, woman,

23:02 why do you involve me? things are about to change because at verse 3 we can approach Christ at every level of our human need it doesn't matter what it is and hopefully you will leave here this morning excited about that that there's no level of need that I cannot ask Christ to get involved in and by the way there are no trivial matters to God. Whatever concerns you is a concern of Him. And because of that, the relationship changes now.

23:46 And look how it changes. It changes now from Son and mother The wine They have no more wine Verse 4 A woman Why do you involve me? Jesus replied And then listen to what Mary says To this level of sensitivity And it just reveals once again how sensitive Christ is.

24:19 A friend of mine shared with me a story of One of the professors at Harvard Divinity School that had a practice at the end of his seminars that he would invite the students over for dinner and at the end he would break out his very delicate and expensive china. And one evening, one of the young students mishandled her cup and it broke and everybody was aghast. And under the table, the professor kicked my friend. And he got what was happening. So he stood up and he threw his cup into the flame.

25:21 And everybody else started throwing those expensive cups in the flame. And the professor said, isn't it wonderful that she anticipated that at the end of dinner, we break our cups as a sign that you cannot repeat this event ever again. laughter Jesus had that level of sensitivity that he would never let those young peasant children ever be embarrassed in a situation like that. And I hope again that it's something else, that you'll remember what it means to be in the family of God, that God is very interested in how you see yourself as well as the issues that affect you in life. and he does something here that is sui generis it cannot be repeated can be duplicated this is unique to Christ but he's a sensitive Lord woman why do you involve me and then he just simply says my hour is not coming that's all Jesus was always interested with this business about timing wasn't he my hour is not coming he knew what it meant for his hour to come If Jesus gets involved in this matter, the hourglass is turned upside down and the grains are falling and now we're moving toward Calvary my hour has not come this is not the he said my hour has not come remember they tried to get him to step out of time in chapter 6 and 7 my hour has not come

27:29 chapter 8 My hour has not come And then in chapter 12 He tells them my hour is at hand whatever you do with this story you cannot keep out Calvary and what God is going to do at Calvary for you His hour is at hand. The time is there. And God's timing. And many of us, our struggle is not that we don't believe in God. We just want God to function according to our time. I need you now. But there are no emergencies with God. Whenever he shows up, he's always on time and always in time. The relationship changes.

28:28 Mother and son is now savior and sinner, savior and woman. This whole timeliness of God, God working on his time. You'll see this later in John 11. If you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yes, he would. this has happened that the glory of God will be made known to you that you'll see who's really in control of life. I hope that that's one of the things you leave with today is to remember that God even when he seems silent and acts it is very much in control of the affairs of the world. I'm trying to wrap it up I got 50 seconds to go His timing Is perfect On December the 15th and December 21st, 1984, Russia launched two proton missiles from Central Asia with the purpose, the Terran II, the tale of Haley's Comet.

29:45 And then, June 14th and 18, 1985, those missiles and the comet would pass Venus. March 6, 1986, as the Halen's Comet is moving, those missiles missed by .0035 seconds. that if they would have hit the dust of the trail, it would have been the equivalent of a Mack truck going at 500 miles a minute and running into the station. Zero, zero, three, five. Time.

30:37 You don't get no better than that unless your name is God. because he can do what no other power can do. He can actually show up when they say time is out and he can show up and still be right on time. Don't ask me how to explain that, but somebody's saying it this way, he's an on-time God. Yes, he is. Have a good day. I'm done now. And so here's what happens. My time is out. But here's what happened in short. It sets up for the transforming power of God. And the transforming power of God is simply this. Jesus sees six water jars. These jars that could contain so many gallons.

31:32 And he says, and they've been filled to the brim. And he looks at it and he sees something more than water jars. He sees that these jars that have been set out for ceremonial cleansing have a religiosity attached to it, which simply says that old way of religion will run out. They've done all they can do. They've done everything that they can do. I didn't come to destroy the law. I came to fulfill the law because the law has done all that the law is able to do. I'm here now to come and show you that I didn't come to refuse you or restrict you, but to renew you. I come to show you that when you encounter me, I can make life better than what it is. Name somebody that came to our Lord. He didn't restrict them.

32:26 He didn't refuse them, but he did renew them and release them. I think about that man in Gadara, that man that was not refused. He was not restricted. But when God got through with him, he was renewed and released and became a witness for our Lord. That woman at the well, she was not refused or restricted. But when God got through with her, she was renewed and released. And when you call on him, you are not refuted. You are not refused. You are not restricted. But God will give you a new walk, new talk, new language. You get the idea.

33:06 And so he says, now draw out, draw out. I don't think all six of the containers are filled with wine. Symbolic six. There's a statement of incompleteness there. And yet he says, draw out, draw out. And they draw out and they get what's in there and they bring it to the master ceremony. And he drinks it. And he said, oh my goodness. Oh my, my. And he said, come here. You been holding on? Because normally when you come to this, they bring out the good stuff. And when everybody's a little tipsy and inebriated, they pass by on the cheap stuff. But you, you, oh my goodness, you have saved the best until now.

34:00 Have a good day. May God bless you. when you meet Christ, the best till now. Everything else we try leading up until the day, I'm trying to tell you, everything that you encounter before you meet Christ, it may be good, but once you meet Christ, it is the best, it's the best thing that ever happened to us.

34:27 And why then, and why then do we tell this story? is one reason. One is that the glory of God is magnified through the life of Christ. That we see the glory of God, not an attribute of God, but the attribute, it is the character of God, that the glory, and this is a sign that points to the glory of God in order that you and I might believe. That's what it is. So that you and I might believe. We live in a culture where people are always trying to get the glory. I'm done. Always trying to get the glory. We got shows named that, you know, the glory. We want the glory. And so all through our life, people are trying to get the glory, trying to get the glory. Yeah. And the glory can be gotten like that. If you're trying to compete with God, I'm trying to tell you, you failed at that. And so the glory, how did the glory come and the word became flesh and we beheld all the glory of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth marched around us God's glory God's glory we've seen the glory of God in Habakkuk covering the face of the earth the glory of God in Isaiah 6 this glory is so grand until it makes the doorpost shake glory glory and and and glory and then and then God put glory in Jesus Christ. He lived among us. Here's a sign of his glory. But as soon as man get a hold of glory, they always try to nail it up or lock it up. And they did that on a Friday. They nailed Jesus on the cross trying to get rid of glory. Because you know when glory come in, something will happen.

36:18 Glory will excite a place. Glory will bring life in a place. Glory will put clapping in your hand. Glory will put joy in your feet. And so they nailed glory to the cross and then when glory died, they buried glory. I said, good riddance, we got out of that. Now we can put up our dead religion, our dead idols, our dead demagoguery. We can put all of that up. But there's something about glory that you can't shut it up and you can't lock it up. Three days later, Glory got up With all power in his hand And this morning we ought to say glory glory Hallelujah Since I laid my burdens down I'm going home to live with Jesus Since I laid my burdens down This morning church That whole story If you say, Pastor West, give it to me in a nutshell.

37:27 It's one thing. This story has been preserved in order that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Hallelujah. Now, in believing in him, I want to open the door to church. For those of you who are here saying, that's me today. I came here for a taste of new wine something better better in life that's what I'm looking for that which is good and what is better that which is better Our Father, we thank you for your word.

38:25 now we ask that Christ Jesus It's made anew in us. that we might believe that your glory will be revealed.

38:51 Our city needs your glory. Our communities need your glory. Our homes and our churches need your glory. We need this sign to point us to who Christ is. Thank you for what you have done. Thank you for what you're getting ready to do.

39:19 That old things will pass away. Behold, all things will become new in Christ. Thank you for what you're getting ready to do. in Jesus name and for his sake we pray and all God's people say amen praise God the choir is gonna sing the door to church is open those you that are here I don't want you to leave I saw a couple of people run out you know that's not good you'll miss out on what the Lord have for you and so today I want you to come down the aisle and let the day be your day that you start brand new with Jesus Christ. God bless you. God bless you. All right? Come on, we're waiting for the rest of you. Hallelujah. Yeah.

40:12 Today. Come on. We're waiting on you. This is a good day. I see you coming.