John 2.1-12
August 26, 2007
Sam Ford @ Damascus Road Church
A TRUE FOLLOWER OF CHRIST….
Open your Bibles to the book of Mark, chapter 8. We are still studying the book of John, but I am compelled to revisit what I shared last week simply because the Lord has been pressing upon me my own need of him. He usually does this by revealing how selfish I am, but by His grace he also reminds me that despite my sin, he loved me enough to die for me. Last week, I tried to impress upon those that were here that there is a difference between being labeled a Christian and actually living a life where you follow Christ. One is much easier than the other; that there are a lot of Christians out there and not enough Christ-followers.
So, all of this week I’ve been struggling to figure out what following Jesus looks like in my life. Even when you say “follow of Jesus”, I can find myself conjuring up images of the stereotypical Christian label. To some, a Christian is identified by how they dress, others how they talk, others what they do on Sunday mornings, others by how much they pray, how many bumper sticker’s they have on their car, how they vote, or just how nice they are. I guess it really depends on who you ask.
It’s really hard. I don’t mean to follow Jesus, although that is, but more so not to become a CHRISTIAN in the sense of separating from the world and building your own Christian club outside of it with special handshakes, clothes, etc. It’s just so much easier to put my life into these categories—THIS IS MY SPIRITUAL LIFE this is my REAL LIFE. But the beauty and mystery of the incarnation of Jesus shows us that it is possible for a man to live in and among a culture steeped in sin and remain sinless; not compromise the truth.
That is the tension that I believe Jesus has sent us to live in—to walk that line where you live in the world but yet, not become part of it. I have two fears.
1. That we’ll walk too close to the fire and get burned.
2. We won’t walk close enough and be cold.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a Christian. My desire, as a pastor, as an English teacher, as a man who says he loves Jesus, to recapture the meaning that word once had. My hope is that Damascus Road Church become known for is not being people fearful of and separated from the culture that has been created all around us, but as a people living differently within the culture we find ourselves in. There is nothing wrong with being identified with a culture (Christianity) within culture. But I don’t want to be known as a Christian if that is different than someone who actually follows Jesus Christ.
But even IN CULTURE, what does a true follower of Christ? - READ MARK 8.34-38
Mark 8:34-38 (ESV)
34 And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? 37 For what can a man give in return for his life? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
A call to discipleship is a call to abandon our natural desire to seek for ourselves, fame, comfort, wealth, or power. It is a new way of doing life, modeled by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit, where our personal preferences, our own emotional needs, even our intellectual difficulties, become secondary to the will of God in every aspect of your life.
It is easy to follow Jesus into Sunday morning service, but we are called to follow Jesus into our homes, follow Jesus in our relationships, follow Jesus in our marriages, follow Jesus in our parenting, follow Jesus in our finances, follow Jesus into our jobs, follow Jesus in the places we recreate, and even follow Jesus in the daily minutia of life…there is no place that we are not to follow Jesus.
Not called to new way of doing things but to a way of living
Sometimes we read an Old Testament book like Deuteronomy that lists all of these little laws that makes God look like some sort of nit-picky, anal retentive deity who has control issues. The truth of the matter is that God is attempting to draw a picture of a life where we bring everything into under the authority of Christ. So much so, that like the apostle Paul we can proclaim, “Whether we eat or drink, let us do it unto the Lord.”
Will the Real Jesus please stand up so I can follow you?
So how does this all connect with John 2? John 2 records Jesus very first miracle. It is the first time that, beyond words, he shows his disciples WHO HE IS. If we are going to follow Jesus, we need to know WHO or WHAT this guy like.
Let us not forget what we’ve been told already. In his sermon on John 1, John Piper makes the point that the beauty of the incarnation is in its specificity. Jesus lived as a man, in a particular time, within a particular culture, coming from a particular family, in a particular city called Nazareth. Jesus is not an idea. There is little ambiguity about what he did or who he said he was.
In the 1st chapter of John, the apostle told us that this Jewish man, this guy from a nobody family, in a nowhere town, Jesus was 100% God and that He created the world. But John also made sure that they knew Jesus was also 100% man which is so incredibly difficult, no, impossible to comprehend. Yet, it is the most amazing thing imaginable and for me, the most magnetic truth about our God. In a later epistle, 1John, he wrote of Jesus “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands…” If he was just God, it seems like it might be difficult to relate with him. But because he’s 100% man, he experiences the complete pain and joys of human existence—what we call life. At the same time, he is entirely different than me. Not the idea of Jesus. If Jesus says it, God himself says it. If Jesus does it, God himself does it.
Following Jesus means denying the self and following JESUS
· It is not denying the self and living by men’s approval, friends, co-workers, etc.
· It is not denying the self and joining a monastery
· It is not denying the self and following traditions
· It is not denying the self and following the church
· It is denying the self and following Jesus as portrayed in Scripture
No More than Jesus no less than Jesus – trouble with John 2
But WHO IS THIS JESUS? See, if you haven’t denied yourself, then when you get to passages like John 2 that throw a curve ball at who Jesus is “supposed” to be; when Jesus doesn’t do stuff that we feel “acceptable”, suddenly we don’t want Jesus to be who he is.
And instead of proclaiming the truth of a Savior who loves us, we slowly begin to chip away at who Jesus is and build up the church we think is full of “little Christs” or Christians. When your standards begin to be higher than those of Jesus, you are at risk of becoming religious, or worse, self-righteous.
Setting the Stage in Cana
Jesus performs what John declares as his very first miracle in a small Galilean town called Cana. It is only a few miles NE of Nazareth. The miracles takes place a wedding. Jesus and his friends (at this point FIVE-,Andrew,John, Peter, Philip, Nathanael) were invited as guests at the wedding reception for a young couple. Wedding parties like this could last for days, sometimes upwards of a week. The bride and groom were treated like royalty, even dressed like a King and a Queen. Some scholars believe, as they have studied extra-biblical materials, that Mary was in fact somehow related to the bride or her mother. This explains how Mary, the mother of Jesus, comes to him and says, “They have no wine.”
Mary is trying to protect the bride or bridegroom from the tremendous amount of shame and embarrassment they would have experienced having run out of wine. Jesus bring his FIVE FISHERMAN buddies probably didn’t help the numbers very well but they couple probably didn’t have enough money to provide sufficient refreshment for the duration of the party. But Jesus has compassion on the young couple and does the impossible. READ CHAPTER 2
2 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. 9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.
What we could talk about
This passage is so rich with symbolism and meaning. We could very easily discuss how this action, that MANIFESTED his glory, was in fact a symbol of the coming new covenant. The fact that they use “jewish purification” jars to put new wine into implies a number of such things as does the quality of the “NEW WINE.” We could go back to talking about the Exodus when, through Moses, God turned the water into blood to indicate God’s judgment. Here, as Jesus turns the water into wine, it signifies new life and joy.
Many of the commentators dance around this passage of scripture because it’s a bit awkward. They’ll discuss very “safe” themes like “Miracles encourage faith”, or “the old life become new,” or “Jesus fill us to the brim.” They all sound quite interesting but I am a bit more simple than that. I just want to talk about what Jesus actually did here on the surface.
Jesus wouldn’t fit with today’s church
If you stop and really take a look at what Jesus did here, it is rather astonishing. Jesus does a miracle which, if he did it today, would cause the religious community to seriously question his correctness, his motivation, even his character. He makes upwards of 180 gallons of wine (12 Kegs of Beer; 900 Bottles of WINE, $45,000) for people who are already a little more than half lit and the Bible says that this action REVEALS his glory and wins his disciple’s faith
The church has a responsibility to proclaim Jesus AS IS
Can you IMAGINE Jesus showing up to a wedding, or maybe the church picnic, with a truck load of alcohol because he knew we would run out?
I do not believe that people want to Jesus to be who he really is. They almost want to protect the “reputation” of Jesus, the image of Jesus, versus proclaiming the REAL and LIVING Jesus Christ. We work hard to protect him from the appearance of doing things that wouldn’t fit into today’s church culture. But let, just for a moment, reflect on this Jesus the God-man making, giving, serving wine to people. How does that change our view of God, our approach to culture, our understanding of sin, and even our image of Jesus?
#1 We need to focus on SIN (GOD-FOCUSED) and not SINS (SELF-FOCUSED)
It just feels like Jesus is a bit off here. He’s not. If we change what Jesus did then we’re a step closer to changing who Jesus is, THE LAMB OF GOD who takes away the sin of the world, then we’re a step close to changing who we are. Suddenly, we’re not that bad of people. Suddenly, our sin becomes manageable and we’re not BAD people, we’re just men and women a bit dysfunctional. AND we’re able to, through a some 5,7,12 step program be healed, medication, a book by Dr. Phil, feel better about who we are because we don’t realize who we are. When we’re not in God’s family, we’re described as dead, fallen, lost, broken, enemies of God, self-seeking, even people whose every intent is evil. I don’t know how many psychology books can fix that.
Seeing Jesus do this beings to make clear how GOD in the flesh can participate in something that might be listed as a “sin” on many of our lists. Granted, there are a lot of bad behaviors, there are a lot of sins. There are a ton of actions, thoughts, and words that manifest disobedience and rebellion to God and his way. We must be careful, however, focusing solely on the sin or the part of creation that is abused as the problem because it makes us miss the real problem. Food is not evil, but people abuse it. Alcohol is not evil, but is abused. The human body is not evil, but it is abused. Films, Tattoos, clothing, Internet, money, these are not evil in themselves, but are used by sinful people for sinful purposes. Once you stop at the behavior, at the appearance, and attempt to stop people from sinning by beating them on the head, or scaring them, or whatever method, you’ve lost. I can get my child to stop sinning by threatening them, but does that really get at the heart of the issue. Our problem has nothing to do with what we can fix and everything to do with what Jesus did to fix us. WE’RE BAD and we take GOOD THINGS and MAKE THEM BAD. Jesus came to REDEEM us AND all of creation. To bring all that we’ve turned BAD and realign with him.