January 17 Sermon: And His Disciples Believed in Him
Think about these questions as you listen to this message from Isaiah 62:1-5 and John 2:1-12:
1. How does the concept of God's grace being surprising and not earned relate to the stories of the faithful Hebrews in exile and Jesus turning water into wine?
2. In the Old Testament lesson, what significance does God's declaration of a new name hold for the people of Israel, and how does this relate to the concept of God's grace?
3. Why did Jesus choose to perform his first miracle at a wedding feast by turning water into wine, and how does this act reveal God's glory in ordinary things?
Transcript:
The grace of God is amazing. It is vast and rich but it is also surprising. The way that God shows us grace is not really what we expect. We haven't earned it. It isn't what we deserve and yet God shows up and does something new in us. In both our Old and New Testament lessons this morning we see God’s mercy and love shown to us and we see how Jesus works to bring us new life.
As we dig into our Old Testament Lesson this morning we come to a people who are in exile. The prophet Isaiah is speaking to a people who have been displaced. They are not in the land that God had promised to them. The people had abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Through the Babylonians armies God came in judgment on the people and they were ripped from their homes. Their land was taken from them and they had been dispersed throughout the Babylonian Empire. These are the people of God. His chosen ones. These are the people through whom the promises of God were to be delivered. God had promised all the way back in Genesis that a redeemer would come and through this seed of the woman the work of the serpent would be destroyed. God had told them of the Promised Land that they were supposed to live in but now that land belonged to another people. People who were not God’s chosen people.
Even though Israel had forsaken the Lord and gone after other gods there were those who were faithful. Imagine being a faithful Hebrew who was in exile in the Babylonian Empire. You know the stories of God's promises in the Garden, his covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham, and God's promise to David that his descendants would sit on the throne forever. Envision yourself as one of these faithful who believes these promises and you tell these stories of God's promise to your children. It would be difficult to continue to believe that these promises of God would ever come to pass. The God that you serve and proclaim is the one true God who made heaven and earth and he is now being mocked among the nations because it would seem that he has given up and has forgotten his people…his chosen people….in exile. The God who spoke eternal promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has suddenly become silent.
But now the Word of the LORD is coming to the people through the words of the prophet Isaiah. In judgment God has been silent but now from Isaiah we are hearing that for the sake of Zion he will not be silent. God has not forgotten his promises. There will no longer be silence. This word will be spoken until the righteousness of Zion shines like the dawn and her salvation is like a blazing torch. In verse two here in Isaiah 62 we see that the nations will see their righteousness and their glory. Now for us we are surely proud of our nation but this is a different category than our national pride. The Hebrew word there for nations is "goyim". In some older English translations it is translated as Gentiles. For the Hebrews there is much larger sense of we vs they. The Hebrews are Gods chosen….the Gentile nations are not. The Hebrews are clean……the nations are not. Their righteousness and their salvation shining out to the Gentile nations is a very big deal.
This is an amazing thing that is going on. We see that God is going to give them a new name. That name isn't going to come from them but instead it is being bestowed by God. It is coming from the mouth of God….the same mouth that spoke the universe into existence and spoke the promises through the ages to their ancestors. This people who are in exile will now be a crown of splendor and a royal diadem. This new name is going to change the way things are seen. Their name was Deserted and their land was known as Desolate but now something new is happening.
In our NIV translation we read that they will be called Hephzibah and their land will be called Beulah. Maybe you know what these names mean but I had to look them up in my Bible dictionary. Hephzibah means "My delight is in her" and Beulah means "married". This is important because earlier in the book of Isaiah we read about how God had brought judgment on Israel because they had been an unfaithful wife. Even though Israel had been unfaithful God had not divorced Israel but instead remained faithful. From the silence God is now declaring a new name to Israel. From the silence of exile to salvation and God reconciling his people to himself.
This theme continues in our New Testament lesson this morning in John chapter 2. In John chapter 1, Jesus, the Word made flesh, was clearly presented before us as God himself coming to the earth to reconcile his people to himself. The Israel that Jesus stepped into had much in common with what was going on in Isaiah's time. The people had been scattered and they were occupied by a foreign presence. In the first century it was not Babylon but the Roman Empire. For the last several hundred years God had been silent. The silence was deafening and they wanted to know when they were going to get their nation back. When would this be over. When would the silence break?
As the gospel of John opens we see that the silence IS being broken. The Word of God has come into the world in human flesh. The silence is over and as we saw last week the ministry of Jesus is inaugurated in his baptism. As we see the ministry of Jesus begin to unfold we see him at a wedding feast in Cana. Jesus has gotten himself a few disciples and they are all at this feast together. Wedding feasts in those days lasted for several day and were quite the celebration. As the festivities progress on we discover that they have run out of wine. Mary, the mother of Jesus, approaches him and asks him to do something about the problem. Jesus wonders why she is involving him. Mary is clearly upset about the embarrassment that running out of wine would bring upon the hosts. To run out of wine at a celebration such as this was unthinkable and would have been a dark blot on the reputation of the wedding hosts. In contrast, Jesus is concerned with his earthly mission. He refers to his time not being at hand. Usually when Jesus talks of his time or his hour he is referring to the time of his suffering. Jesus is pointing to his ultimate mission and that it is dictated on the timing of the Father. The mission of Jesus was not about doing miracles to help people avoid embarrassment or to go around fixing every little problem. His mission was deeper and wider than what most people want.
Jesus does do something here though and in doing so points out how he provides. He did not need to do anything……..the hosts of the wedding feast would not even have known any different had he refused. In doing this miracle Jesus gives us a foretaste of what his ministry is and gives us a glimpse of the great messianic feast that is to come. Our text tells us that near them that day were six jars that were used for the Jewish ceremonial washing. These were not tiny jars as each one of them held up to twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus has the servants fill the jars with water and then tells them to draw from it. From those stone jars comes a wine that impresses the master of the banquet because it is not the usual cheap wine that was given to the guests when they wouldn't know any better but instead was the best wine of the entire feast.
Now this is the first miracle of Jesus recorded for us and it really isn't anything all that impressive when we stack it up against other miracles. Turning water into wine seems pretty insignificant compared to raising the dead, feeding the 5000, or giving sight to the blind. Why did John put this miracle into his gospel account? Because it was pointing to something greater. It was doing the same thing that we saw happening in our Isaiah passage. It is pointing us to the fact that something new is happening.
At the end of the 20th chapter we read why John’s gospel was written. It tells us that Jesus did many more things that were not written down in John's gospel but what was written down was written so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and and by believing we might have life in His name. John wrote down this miracle for us because Jesus was showing us that something new was going on. The jars which Jesus selected were the kind that were used for ceremonial washing. Those jars point us to God's law. God had provided the law as a means by which his chosen people were set apart and sanctified from the other nations but as Paul tells us in Romans the law was powerless to save us because it was weakened by our flesh. No matter how much we try to clean ourselves by keeping the law it does not save us because it doesn’t get down to the heart of the matter of our sin. Dead in sin we cannot revive ourselves by any amount of law keeping. Into those jars that day went water and out came wine. This points us to the fact that something new is coming. The law is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ and through the work of Christ alone we receive the gospel. The new wine of the gospel is rich and flavorful and the greatest thing we could possibly imagine. But the gospel isn't what we expect. We expect that it is our outward keeping of the law that will save us but God comes with the gospel and creates faith in our hearts and makes us new on the inside. Jesus, having taken on God's wrath for our sin, comes to our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh that are new creations in him. This is what Jesus is showing us in this miracle as his ministry begins. This is what Jesus came to do.
We too are the people of God and in our exile of sin and unbelief God comes to us and does not remain silent. His Word goes forth and we hear and believe by faith. This faith that God gives us is a righteousness that shines out like the dawn and a salvation like a blazing torch. It is the righteousness of Christ that is given to us. We are declared righteous on account of Christ. We have a new name and in Christ, like Israel before us, we are named Hephzibah. God delights in us because of Christ.
This is the good news that we proclaim and confess. This is also the good news that directs our lives. As our New Testament lesson concludes we read this "He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him". This is where we apply this passage this morning. He thus revealed his glory. Really? Glory? Let's look at what Jesus did. It was an amazing miracle, no doubt, but some servants filled jars with water and then they dipped wine out of it. On a showmanship scale of one to ten…..that's a zero. I think our idea of glory is usually quite flashy but John is clear that the glory of God was revealed in this miracle and his disciples believed. Where was God's glory? It was in ordinary things. God took ordinary stone jars and ordinary water and created rich flavorful wine…….and his disciples believed in him.
Often, we are prone to expecting the glory of God in the extraordinary. We think that if God is going to show up it would have to loud and spectacular. Turn on your TV, flip through the channels for a while, and you are bound to come across a gathering of thousands who are gathered to see the latest preacher who is promising miraculous signs and wonders. We so quickly forget that God's greatest signs and wonders are right here in the ordinary. God comes to us through ordinary means and does amazing things. At this font we receive the sign and seal of God's covenant of grace, at this table we receive a foretaste of the feast to come that God uses to sustain us to life everlasting, and from the pulpit God uses ordinary language where you hear and believe the good news. A bath, a meal, and ordinary words. Three things that cross boundaries created by ethnicity, skin color, gender, and age. Everyone gets the same portion of these gifts from God and he uses these things to make the spiritually dead come to life. We often crave signs and wonders but the greatest sign and wonder that we can see is God taking us, broken, sinful people and giving us new hearts and making us his covenant people. It is amazing that God takes ordinary things and reveals his glory to us and just like his disciples we believe in him.
In Christ, God has done a new thing. No longer are we deserted and desolate but God has come near to us in Christ and because of his perfect righteousness, God delights in you. Come to the waters knowing you have been made clean, be fed at his table, and hear and believe the good news that your sins are forgiven. And now may the peace, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
