Morning Church. Today's scripture reading is going to be in the book of John chapter 2 verses 1 through 11. If you have never opened a Bible, the book of John is found towards the end of the book and if you are looking at the pew bibles there are two page numbers. One would be on page 1511 and in the large print bibles it'll be found on page 1615. On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee.
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. Woman, why do you involve me? Jesus replied. My hour has not yet come.
His mother said to the 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. 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. They did so.
and the master of the banquet tasted the 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. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, 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 till now. What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory. and his disciples believed in him.
Thanks, Messiah. Two quick pastoral announcements here. The Joseph Jipp Seminar on Hospitality is going to be this Saturday, I believe it is.
And I really just want to encourage you to come to that. I mean, it's seminary-level stuff that's super understandable, the level it'll be taught at. to do that, get to do that for free is just an incredible privilege for us, and I just hope you'll avail yourself of that opportunity. The second thing is this. Okay, this is going to be uncomfortable for some of us.
I've waited a year to say anything about this, because I knew that some people would be really emotionally hurt by me saying this, feeling like I was spiking the football in their face. This is exactly one year from the publishing of the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court. which determined in the United States legally that abortion would no longer be considered a constitutional right and therefore recognized as a kind of human right. I prepared some comments on this.
They're in excess of seven minutes, and so I'm not going to give them all today. I will give them at the next time I'm available for the pastoral prayer and pastoral moment. But I think Christians should be unequivocally clear that from the earliest moments of the Christian church, the procurement of medicalized or procedural abortion has been considered a form of infanticide, and the destruction of the gift of fertility, children, and human life in the most unequivocal manner throughout the entire history of the church without exception.
Even church fathers who believed that humanity did not fully enter a child until breath at a certain quickening point, somewhere around 12 to 15 weeks or whatever, depending on the church father, they still outright condemned all forms of abortion, even before that time. There was no disagreement at any moment in the history of the church or the Judeo-Christian tradition on this point. I will make some other comments, but I just want to be unequivocally clear as the people of God.
Some of you may think that that means I think that we should support Republicans or something. I do not think that it means that. And I will be clearer when I get to that, the comments that I will make on this. However, I think that we want to be a church that seeks to participate in the undermining of all human injustice and to participate in the movement towards all human justice. And if we find racism in our midst, then we want to do something about that.
I don't care which party sounds like they support it. And if there is economic injustice towards the poor in our midst, we want to move towards justice and healing in that area, no matter which political party seems to be for it. And if we find another injustice in our midst, which is as bad or worse, that the wrong party in our community supports, it does not matter to us as Christians, because we're Christians first, and in some sense, only. And whatever party we think we belong to, Our fundamental job is to reform the integrity and character of that party.
The main job of a Christian who considers himself a Democrat is to reform the soul of that party. And if they consider themselves a Republican, their goal as a Christian is to reform the soul of that party. Because we will never get rid of distinctions and emphases among people's personalities and hearts and how they want to engage with the world positively. Does that make sense? Okay.
So maybe I said too much, but if that, just that what I've said is difficult for you, I just want you to know, I waited 52 weeks to say it just because I do care about your feelings, and God does too, okay? But also, as Mother said, the only— value of a soldier is what they do at the sticking point of the center of the battle, not what they do everywhere else. And so when these things have to be spoken about, they just do.
Okay, so let's move to something directly related to fertility and life together and natural human biological life is a wedding that happened in a very small town in Israel among two people whose names we will maybe never know, in which Jesus did his first sign, which may have been his first miracle period. but it was at least the first of the signs that John records. In John's gospel, there are six things Jesus does that are called signs, and there is the seventh sign. I'll talk about that the next time I preach.
One of the things I think we need to understand to get into this is that you are a sign creature. You may not think of yourself that way, but if you think about what distinguishes you from the other creatures in the world, one of the main things that distinguishes you from the other creatures in the world is that you create, give, and receive signs. There's whole systems within linguistics of semiotics. How human beings create and signify things to one another, how they find meaning in things, and how those meanings are encoded. We do that.
We don't know of any other creature that does that. It makes us fundamentally distinct from all other creatures, and it seems to be part of what God means when he says that he makes us in his image, our capacity for this. What do things mean? What is signified by what we do?
Right? And in John's gospel, what we're told is that the fundamental importance of this event is that this was the first of Jesus'signs. And so one of the fundamental questions we have to ask is, where did I put that clicker?
Oh, it's right here. One of the fundamental signs, things we have to ask is, what does this sign signify? Okay.
just to be very clear to start with, is we need to be clear on what a sign is. Okay, so a sign, we use that word fairly broadly, but the way it's defined in the gospel of John is something that manifests God's glory, that is, displays like a shining light, that which was darkened is enlightened. You can see clearly what it is, right?
So there's a manifestation of God's glory, which John tells us in chapter one, is mainly— a demonstration of the inner workings of his grace and truth. He is being kind and generous and gracious and good and caring and nurturing and providing, and he is being truthful. He is telling the truth.
And he's doing them both at the same time, perfectly mixed, so that it should display how good he is and therefore how glorious he is, right? And that creates a moment where human beings who do not recognize what God is really like, recognize it and have the opportunity to believe, to put our faith in him. So it says, this is the first of Jesus'signs, and his disciples put their faith in him.
Because, remember, some of these people have literally become Jesus'disciples 20 minutes before this happens, right? The first line is on the third day, right? On the second day, Nathanael becomes a disciple. we find out at the very end of John's gospel that Nathanael is the one of Jesus'disciples who literally is from Cana. So it may be that Jesus walks up to Nathanael, or Nathanael walks up to Jesus, and Jesus is like, look, I saw you when you went under the fig tree.
And he's like, oh my gosh, you're the son of God. He's like, well, yes. And like the next day, Nathanael's like, hey, my family is going to this wedding. Do you and your mom want to come?
Right? No. Probably not.
Probably Mary knew somebody here. That's one of the reasons why she cares so much about this particular thing and seeks to intervene. But anyway, the point is this.
What Jesus does is he's trying to give us a sign, a signal, a definition. He's trying to manifest who he is so that we have the opportunity to believe. But not just sort of in Jesus, but the question is, what about Jesus?
You see, Nathanael already thinks he's the son of God or something, right? And so the question is, okay, great. Fantastic.
It's fantastic. Fantastic you like Jesus. Okay, there's lots of people who like Jesus.
The question is, what does it mean that he is the Son of Man and the Son of God? What does it mean? What is he trying to make manifest?
Right? Now, the way we're gonna go through this is I'm gonna tell you two things that this does not prove, right? That he is not signaling, and two things that he is signaling, okay?
And it basically revolves around this. God is not the slightest bit bound by our sense of his obligations. God is not in the slightest bit bound by our sense of his obligations. An enormous amount of human rejection of God, human anger with God, human dissatisfaction with God, human dismissal of God, is wrapped up in our judgment of God.
especially whenever there's any kind of difficulty or suffering. You see this in the book of John, for example, which may be the oldest book in the Bible. In chapter 9, John says, right, he says, how can I not justify myself? Right? How can I not accuse God in justifying myself?
And there's a whole section about how he's struggling with this idea, how he wants God to answer for himself, because he feels like... God is obligated to not treat him with this amount of suffering, and so he doesn't know what to do even as a righteous man. But then to like argue with God at the very end of the book when God finally speaks, one of the first lines out of God's mouth is, will you condemn me in order to justify yourself? Right?
Like in the difficulty of like our expectations, what we think should happen, how we understand and how we justify ourselves, when that comes in contact with how we think God should be behaving, and when there's a gap between those two things, they don't seem to be working out the way we think they should work out, the question is, who gets justified? Who do we assume is right, and who do we assume is wrong? That is, like, the most fundamental human question there could possibly be in our relationship with the universe, with God, and therefore ourselves, and therefore with everybody else, and therefore in everything in our lives. Right?
And the answer is, Will you condemn God to justify yourself? That's the fundamental question that every human being has to answer basically at every moment, that you're dissatisfied with anything. And it will determine the foundational stasis attitude of your heart as to whether or not you'll be a complainer and a resentful person and a person who is nitpicking and finding things wrong with everything outside of yourself and constantly justifying everything inside of yourself, feeding a certain damnation of arrogance, or whether you're the sort of person who— is always gobstrucked at the incredible generosity and beauty flowing all around you. God is not the slightest bit bound by our sense of what he should be obligated to do for us or for the world. And Jesus is claiming this.
He's giving a sign of this at this wedding. Now, the positive side of that is this. You will be amazed at his generosity through faith.
When you let go of trying to work God over for what you want Him to do, and you just trust Him, and you base what you think you're going to get, not on what you can, like, say He you deserve or He ought to do if He was good, or if He's there, or if you, like, give Him the privilege of believing in Him, but if you just are like, look, I'm just going to ask you. You don't have to do anything. You're not obligated in the slightest sense, but I'm just going to ask for help.
I'm just going to ask for you to do something. I'm just going to ask, and let's just see. you'll actually be kind of amazed at how willing God is to act. And actually, you guys, listen. When it comes to prayer and turning to God and asking Him for stuff, having any sense that He is obligated to you seems to be the most obvious and direct means to make sure He does nothing.
If you want to make sure God does nothing for you, expect Him to do something for you. I don't mean that in the— faith expecting kind of way. Like, God's really generous. Maybe he'll do something.
That kind of expectancy is fine. Though like, God should do this for me. I deserve it.
I shouldn't suffer. He should have created the world better. I've served him so well.
Whatever version of entitlement you want to create for yourself, that expectancy is the surest possible means to make sure he doesn't do it for you. Right? Because like, Luke says, right? God is like a good father. Won't he give the Holy Spirit those lessons?
Yes, he's also a good father, and he doesn't give spoiled kids crap that they demand. Right? Alright. I'm going to do this in two ways. We'll do two, yes, it doesn't mean this, it doesn't mean this, and they'll relate to that thing.
The first is that Jesus is not obligated to solve human problems. Jesus is not obligated to solve human problems. Representation of the Godhead among human beings. God is not obligated to solve human problems.
We think that God must be obligated to solve human problems, because if he's the creator, he should take responsibility for whatever happens in his creation. He's the supreme executive officer, right? Everything's his fault.
Ultimately, otherwise, he should be fired. We should get somebody else approved by Congress. And the answer is not really.
Not really. One of the reasons God spoke and showed himself in the narration of the early chapters of Genesis is to demonstrate the decisive human willfulness in the break from God's sovereign authority, in sin and the fall, in our constant affirmation of our participation in the fall, rather than our participation in the undoing of the fall. We have moved— out from under his authority.
We are like a kid that emancipated ourselves at 16, and now has wrecked our car, has no money left, has gotten evicted from our apartment, and so on. And nobody wants to relate to us because we're jerks. And we're like, it's our parents'job to take care of us. It's like, nope.
No, it isn't. And sin is a form of rebellion that moves us away from the authority of God and completely ends our claim. that he should be solving our problems. The Bible could not be clearer that that's the case.
Now, what this passage does teach is that Jesus'generosity infinitely outdoes our sense of false obligation. In God's generosity, he wants and freely does for us more than we can ask or imagine. His desire for us is way greater than what we can demand. We can like try to work God to give us stuff that we want, and half of that stuff is poison for us, and will ruin our lives, and is idiotic, and will hurt other people, and is unjust, and is untruthful, and will not allow us to become who we were meant to be.
And God's going to give us that stuff. But the stuff he wants to give us, the good, beautiful, and also natural, and creational, and human things he wants to give us, is incredibly generous. He way overdoes it.
Every time in John's gospel where Jesus creates something natural to provide for the needs of other people, there is always leftovers. Feeding of the 5,000, they pick up basketfuls of extra bread. Feeding of the 4,000. John's gospel is the only one where it records two different times Jesus miraculously provides just bread for people. And in that one, they pick up lots of extra.
And Jesus is like, Do you remember how much we picked up? Later he makes a point of it. Do you remember how much we picked up? And they were like, a lot.
He's like, yes. Right? Now, let's walk through this a little bit, relative to the text.
There's a sense in which it feels like Jesus is obligated to help these poor people. Okay? There's a wedding. There's these two young people getting married. I'm making an assumption they're young.
There's a festival. Sometimes marriage festivals in this context, we go on for five to seven days. They're having a party.
It's assumed there's going to be wine. There is always wine at good religious people's weddings in the Bible, okay? You need to understand that. And if you're from a fundamentalist background and you believe that this wine was diluted to 10 parts, like water in one part, wine, that's just false, okay?
It is true that spirits or alcohol was used to purify water when there could be bacteria in it and make people sick. It's sometimes diluted. Alcohol was used to purify water in the ancient world.
That was not done at weddings, friends. Okay, the point of drinking wine at weddings was to get happy. Okay, you may be like, Nick, careful now, because the Bible says not to get drunk.
The Bible does say not to get drunk. That is true. However, the word used in this passage is literally drunk. Okay, the word in Ephesians where it says don't get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Same word that's used here.
People bring out the worst wine when people are drunk. It's just assumed people are going to get drunk. Inebriated? Buzzed? Like, here's the thing, like, look, Wisconsin is the most alcoholic state in America, apparently, okay?
So, and listen, I've talked to counselors who said that they believe that something that almost half of the students at UW are functional alcoholics for the four years they go there. Listen, alcohol can be a terrible, life-wrecking thing. And all the sexual assault, more than 80% of them are alcohol-driven or alcohol-derived.
Okay, the reason people in those situations are doing those things is because of alcohol. So let's not pretend that I can just pretend like alcohol is always fantastic. Okay, it is not.
It has ruined so many lives and wrecked so many people's lives and traumatized so many people that it was involved in their self traumatization or harm or victimization. It is almost uncountable. Okay, but like sex, there are these incredibly intoxicating potent goods that God generously gives human beings to enjoy, that we then sinfully take to the nth degree and screw up because of all kinds of infirmities and brokenness and sin and insecurities and so on. Alcohol is in itself a good, according to the Bible. It is treated in the Old Testament treatments as a good that can easily be used for bad.
But when Proverbs says the purpose of wine is to make the heart glad, that is not a reference to hydration. The idea is that when you get together with some friends and you're playing games and you have two glasses of wine and everybody laughs a little easier, but nobody is drunk and everybody is godly enough that even if they lose 20% of their inhibitions, they still behave well, that is good. That is a celebration of a creational reality that is inherently good. Do you understand? That without self-control, without clarity, without understanding the divine purpose of such things, can easily go sideways.
Do you understand? And that's why freedom has to have maturity and virtue empowering it. Virtuous people cannot be free because we will misuse all the goods that we take hold of. Okay, I need to keep going.
That was not meant to be in the sermon. Okay, so Jesus'mother comes to him. It does not, never calls her Mary.
Now, we know her name is Mary, but actually, the book of John never says the name of Jesus'mother. It refers to a number of times, she's always the mother of Jesus. Okay? So, that does not bode well for Catholic theology on Mary, but I won't go deeply into that right now.
The point is, Jesus'mother comes to him and says, they have no more wine. Now, it's hard to imagine how Jesus, that could be framed any more as though Jesus is obligated, without Mary directly saying it. Okay?
Now, some of you may think, Okay. that when your mother comes to you when you're an adult child and clearly insinuates they want you to do something without directly commanding you to do it, you would think this is when you, like, don't text them or call them or talk to them ever again, that that's the proper way to handle that, okay? That's the way a lot of modern adult children treat their parents, okay?
That's called wickedness. And that is not how you're supposed to treat your parents even if you don't like everything about them, okay? Most of us have issues with our parents. That's normal, okay? The debt you owe them of social gratitude for them caring for you for decades of your life is not expunged when you turn 18, and it is not completely taken care of if you provide for them grandchildren and utilize your life to care for another generation.
You are to honor your parents throughout your whole life. Now, that doesn't always mean obey them after you're an adult, but it does mean that you honor them. And so, in the ancient world, the context of this is much stronger than anything you feel right now.
So the idea that Jesus'mother insinuates as his mother that maybe he could do something about the fact that this family doesn't have any more wine could not be more obligating. Do you understand? Especially if Joseph is an older man, which church history teaches that maybe have passed away by this time. And so Jesus is her firstborn, the man she turns to for issues of provision that she might have as a widow.
Okay? We don't know how close they are with this family. But they're close enough that Mary personally involves herself, right? Secondly, these poor kids, right, were getting married.
It's like literally their wedding feast, and they're out of wine. This is very embarrassing. Very embarrassing, okay?
It's kind of a social catastrophe. Now, it's not like a death catastrophe, but it's very, like, it's shaming. Like, you'd feel terrible, especially if, like, this is day two of the festival. It's supposed to go for four days. Listen, people just start evaporating when the wine is gone.
You know what I mean? And so, like, you feel for these people. Empathy kind of demands something be done here, right? And Jesus'response—people have mulled over this for a while because some people say that Jesus'response is disrespectful, which you could argue for that. In all of the Greek literature of the entire ancient world, there is no other example of a son referring to his mother as woman.
None. Anyway. Which means it's hard to figure out how this would be used. Because there aren't other examples of other sons referring to their mothers that way, where we can be like, oh, this is clearly disrespectful, or this is endearing. Okay?
The only two times a son in the entire history of the literature of all of the ancient world refers to his mom as woman is Jesus twice in John's gospel. Once here, and once on the cross, where he says, woman. behold your son, to the apostle John, and son, behold your mother. That's clearly not derogatory or disrespectful.
What it is is distancing. Right? John says she comes as who? Mother.
He determines her standing as woman. In relationship to this request, see he's distancing himself. You're standing, yes, you're my mother, but you're standing here as woman. And then he says, what does this have to do with you and me? Now, in the most of the translation, he says, what does it have to do with me?
The Greek is very clear. It's you and me. What do we have to do with this? Now, one of the reasons that's interesting is because that phrase shows up a number of times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament whenever somebody says, I don't have any responsibility here. There's many times where like leaders and people in the Old Testament says, what is this between you and me?
And the purpose of that idiom is to say, I'm not obligated here socially or morally. There's no reason I need to do anything. I could choose to do something out of sheer generosity, but I have no responsibility here. So when Jesus says, woman, what does this have to do with you and me?
He's saying, I know you're coming as my mother, but you're standing here as a woman. And relative to our responsibility here, what does this have to do with you and me? I.e., we don't have any responsibility here. And then he says, my hour is now yet come.
Which, we'll get back to how that's a little bit of a cryptic thing to say, which is on purpose. But, if his hour refers to his... divinely appointed activity, what he's saying is, this is not one of them. So if he died and rose from the dead, it says in 1 Corinthians 15, according to the scriptures, there's nothing according to the scriptures about this.
The Messiah, who was to come, didn't have to make any wine for anybody. He's not fulfilling Isaiah 46 or something. You understand?
Like there's no predetermined statement about what the anointed one would do. That he'd like go around making wine at weddings. This will be fantastic. You understand?
He doesn't have to do it. It's not his job. There's no reason he's obligated here. Not by providential promise. He's not obligated himself.
It's not his job to make wine for everybody. What is this between you and me? And even his mother's clear, insinuated obligation, he says, woman? Probably not like that.
Woman? Woman? I don't even know how to say it in a way. That my wife would approve of. Woman.
Woman. Woman. Right? Okay, so my youngest daughter is 10. The is adorable and a little sassy.
Sometimes, you know. And one of the things, because she's the youngest and everybody tells her no. And everybody tells her what she can't do and what she can't have.
What she can't and what she can't and what she can't. And that's the youngest. You can imagine. The's like, this sucks. So.
The has gotten really good at negotiating, right? And one of the ways she negotiates sometimes with me— we're working on this because I have all the power, I'm dad, right? — is she'll work me over. And the best way to work me over is to make me feel morally obligated because she has observed that I'm a very like morally focused person because I don't have good emotions.
So the only way I can care about you is if I know what my obligations ought to be because I don't have the right feelings, okay? So— And she's like understood this from her earliest moments And so she realizes if she can make me feel like I morally should have done something And then I'll feel bad and I'll want to make up for it And then I'm like I'm putting her hands, right? So she'll come to me and she'll be like Dad, you know, I really wanted to go to the dollar store after school And mom said we were gonna go And then you had to do something at work You know, and here we are But You know, maybe we could, maybe you could take me to the dollar store, you know. You see that? There's versions of that.
Some are more subtle than others, right? And don't feel bad for every time one of my kids gets mentioned by name or clearly enough that they're designated, they get five dollars, okay? So, just so you know, it's a policy we came up some time ago.
Inflation has not yet changed the number, though I'm sure after this sermon when she hears it she'll be like, dad, let's do some math. Because you said that number in 2006, okay? And I was going to make a president joke, but okay.
So what I've said to her is I said, listen, darling. You need to stop trying to work me over. Okay, it's disrespectful to talk to your dad that way.
I don't respond too well to it. It makes me angry, is what it does. And I do not want you to speak to me this way.
Okay, what you're going to have to do is just make a request and trust in my goodness towards you. If I can give you what you want and it's good for you, I want to give you good gifts. I want to do good things for you. If I give you $2, I'll just take you.
You don't have to work me over for it. just ask me, and then I'll answer. And you're just gonna have to trust in me and my goodness.
See, when we, whenever we try to morally work somebody over, we do not trust their generosity. And so every time we pray or behave or think or act or do things in certain ways in which we think we are making an argument toward God that he should behave differently towards us, we are doing that to God. And And the way he behaves is he does what Jesus does.
See, Jesus is giving a sign of what God is like. You come to me and say, you know, you're really obligated to do this. The first thing you say is, no, I'm not.
No, I'm not obligated to do this. Let's get that straight. I'm not obligated to do anything for you.
If you want to talk about what you deserve, the wages of sin is death. What you deserve is death and wrath, damnation, torture, destruction. non-existence. Okay?
Are we going with that? Is that what we want? Scripture couldn't be clearer about this.
And so what we want from God is not to have an argument about obligation. And his response is, woman, what does this have to do with you and me? My hour is now. I'm not doing this out of obligation.
The moment I do this obligation, I will ruin everything I'm trying to do. I did not come to earth to... bicker with sinful human, selfish human beings who have no idea who I am, who I want to give everything to about what they are owed.
I have come to a humanity that is owed death, hell, destruction, disintegration, nothing but their pain and death, and I want to give them everything. And the first thing that has to be clear for that to be able to take place is they have to know I do nothing out of obligation to them. Nothing.
And once they realize that, I can do everything for them. Right? Because Mary realizes that when Jesus, like, throws the pitch to make her step back in the baggage box, it's because he's going to do something. The knows that. The goes, she turns to the servants and she goes, she goes, message received.
Do whatever he tells you. He's going to do something. Okay?
Let's receive the message and then do whatever he says. Right? Because see, Mary knows what faith looks like. You listen to Jesus. You listen to what he's saying.
You understand the best you can. The probably did not know what hour meant in that context. But she's just like, whatever he tells you, just do it.
Right? And then that's what happens. You see?
Now, one of the things people don't often do in this parable is the math. Okay? Now, normally I would guarantee there will be no math in sermons.
Okay? But this isn't quite calculus. Okay?
John actually pulls it out of leaders for us Americans. John doesn't do that. Actually, the translators do that.
And he says, basically, there are these big stone water jars that hold between 25, 20, and 30 gallons of water. Okay? So we'll just go with a— with an even 25 gallons, since we know they were filled to the very brim.
There are six of them, so six times 25 is how many gallons of wine? 150 gallons of wine, okay? And if you divide that by 750 milliliters, if you do the math, it comes out to about 750 bottles of wine. Okay, if we were one of those like creative churches, I would have had like 750 bottles of wine on the stage. They could have all gone to the staff lounge after the service.
And... And um, that's a lot of flippin'wine, you guys! Alright, and people are already drunk. I mean, they've already drank all the wine.
They've had like a full, reasonable amount of wine already. Okay? And now, he just makes 150 gallons more! 750 wine bottles! I don't know how many, there were like, I don't know, 500 people living in Cana at the time.
It's a lot of wine. And apparently it's really good, which means it was not diluted. And it was good.
Right? Jesus is not obligated to solve or solve. Fix human problems. He could not be more unobligated to solve human problems. This idea that because he created us and he is therefore metaphorically like a father to us and creator, therefore he is infinitely obligated to what we feel we need or desire is false.
Secular people believe that? Well, if God is really the creator and he's really like the father of everybody, he'd be a better father, wouldn't he? He'd be a better runner of his creation, wouldn't he?
Wrong. Wrong. we have chosen curse. We have rejected his authority, and he has withdrawn it, because if he exerted his authority, he would kill us. And so he has done the most gracious thing.
He has said, okay. And we exist in what John calls worldliness, which is existing in God's creation without reference to, without obedience to, without knowledge of the creator. that's how we have chosen to exist. He is not obligated. And we have rejected him as father.
We have to re-receive him as father. We have to reorder ourselves under him as creator. And he will ultimately come back and re-establish himself as king and father and priest and creator over a new creation.
That is what's happening in this process of redemption. And if we will recognize that God is not obligated to us and we can open our arms to receive, you will be astounded at how generous he will be. It's way beyond what you could have dared to even dream to ask if you were trying to concoct a reason why he was obligated to you.
You think they picked up a lot of bread. This is a lot of wine. Okay? Now, my sermon is over. but I still have 60% of it left.
So, we're going to scoot through a few things in for just a couple minutes, okay? Entitlement, this idea that God is obligated to us, takes many forms, okay? And so, if you're in a small group, or if you're going to have quiet time this week, I'd encourage you to kind of run through the different forms of human entitlement, because there's all kinds of different ways we hide how we are obligating God to us.
So, for example, there's ideological entitlement. There are some of you who believe that God should believe like you do, or shouldn't ask you to believe certain things because of the difficulty it brings into your life. And there are lots of young people that just completely reject Christianity because of this ideological entitlement.
For example, it is a huge problem to live in the culture that we live in and to believe, for example, that abortion in almost all cases is not just not great, but it's a profound moral wrong. Further than that. The idea that God can tell us to do something with our sexuality.
To give us a single—it's only two options. Celibate singleness or capacious, covenantal, monogamous, heterosexual, intentioned-to-be-fertile marriage. And that's it. And that the other things we want to create in there, whether those are heterosexual in nature or— non-heterosexual nature are not offered to us as ethical and natural human options for us no matter how much our natural sexual urges are disordered towards those ends.
Okay? So to not—let me just put it straight forward—to not be affirming of the claims of the LGBTQ plus movement, to not be affirming of those, is a horror. to many people in this culture, especially young people, who need doors to be opened to them.
They're hardwired psychologically to be accepted by their peers. It is a horrific thing to ask of somebody to hold a view like that. The sense that God cannot be reasonable.
If he asks me to believe things that he directly claims in his revealed word, it just can't be. Listen, God is not obligated to do what you want. He states what he says is true.
He claims it in the face of all humanity and creation. He demands that those who belong to him to do everything he tells them and to fill to the brim their willingness to do it. Even in issues of ideological disjointedness. And that may mean, for those of you who are more conservative, that we stand in the face of the rich and say, take no comfort in your riches.
and give away, like thrown seed, the superfluousness of your wealth to those in need and show the generosity of God by impoverishing yourself if necessary to give to the true needs of the misfortune of others in this world. or burn to the ground your good name and go to foreign lands and serve people who might kill you in return, or whatever. We have this ideological entitlement that God should never be asking us to believe such things. Listen, friends, if God the Son himself faced his own murder for his unwillingness to adopt the ideologies of the world that would save him, but spoke the truth in their face, knowing they would beat, spit on, dismember, and kill him. How do we believe that we have such rights before God?
That the Holy One was utterly rejected by all men. We should be saved from positioning ourselves where we could be rejected. And you can go through all of these this way.
I encourage you, like, in your small group, like, discuss, like, which of these is your go-to? Which of these is your heart one? I just went over the one that I think isn't obvious, right? We also need to recognize that thankfulness, the alternative of entitlement, is an act.
You do it. Thankfulness is something you do. Praise is something you do.
Worship is something you do. Getting around with other people, like Tony said, and praising God together and feeding off of one another in that affirmation is something you do. You put aside entitlement as an act of the will, and you open up yourself positively and openheartedly to be amazed at the graciousness of God all around you and to thank him rather than murmur and complain about him.
You have to actually pick up the wine and drink it, or it does no good that it's the best. We're going to do this quick, and this is a shame, because this is the best part, okay? So, whatever. God's providence cannot be changed by human will, right?
But what we do know is that Jesus is everything in light of his hour. One of the things I thought when I was a young— when I first read this as a younger Christian, when he says, my hour hasn't yet come, and this is the first of the signs, I thought what it meant was this. He wasn't—it wasn't time for him to start doing miracles yet.
And Mary says, hey, why don't you do this? Why don't you do something miraculous here? Because she knows he can because she's the mother of God. And— He goes, well, I'm not really supposed to, but okay.
Right? Dad's not for it, but all right, Mom. You know what I mean? And you could see, if that's the right interpretation, why Roman Catholics would believe what they do about Mary. If her, like, just a little insinuation, like an Italian mother, that he ought to maybe do something about this.
He'll make 150 gallons of the best wine, even though his dad, you know, God the Father is against it. Like, you're just like, we should pray to her, you know? Like, I mean, like, if that's the right interpretation, I'm on board with, like, venerating Mary. Let's start right now. We'll get a big statue.
Okay, I think it's wrong, though. Here's why. Before you all go, what? What are we doing?
Every time Jesus refers to his hour in the Gospel of John, he means his crucifixion, his sufferings. Every time. Now, we don't know that yet when we read this the first time.
So we don't know what this means. It's supposed to be cryptic the first time we read through it. Why is our?
What does that even mean? My hour hasn't come. And Mary's like, okay, I don't know what that means, but just do whatever he tells you, okay? There's three hints.
My hour in John is always Jesus'crucifixion. Two, there were wine vats in the servants'quarters that had just been emptied. Do you understand that? Why does he have these stone jars filled? Now, it could just be it was the highest amount of volume available.
Right? It may be that in the servant's quarters, the wine vats, that there was only like 20 gallons to begin with just to start with the wedding. And so the only way to get that kind of volume was to use the stone jars.
However, John says it was the kind of stone jars that the Jews used for their purification washings. So it was the purifying—these were the purifying, the jars of purifying water that people, in order to enter into the wedding feast, washed themselves as a mark of their religious entrance into the good recreation that happens in marriage. Right?
And he says, fill those. And then he says, take it to the master of the banquet and see what happens. Okay, so it's an illustration, right? They take it out and they go.
Now, in one sense, it's an act of faith, right? draw it out and take it and just see, like, we don't even know. Is it still? Because, you know, they don't have glass cups, right?
They've got like earthen vessels or wood or something. So you scoop it out. You're just hoping it's dark enough that it's changed before you give it to the master of the feast. And he goes, Why—this is water.
Why are you giving me water? Right? He's like, he's like, oh, this is—and they're like, oh, phew.
You know, it's like, this is incredible. But then what does he do? He doesn't call for Jesus. Who does he call for?
He calls for the groom. This is the groom's feast. The groom is the provider.
He pulls this guy up. He says, listen, I don't think you understand how this works. You bring out the best first, and when people are kind of lost their discerning capacity, then you bring out the other stuff.
The best is now. And you see, Jesus is saying, don't, listen, you see, his mind is somewhere else. Like, they're like, yeah, let's, yeah, fill up the water jars. But his mind is on his hour.
It's on, it's on his cleansing of his people. His, the feast he provides, how he provides it in their purification, and how he will provide a, in the end, last. after they thought they've drunk everything that was available, this huge effluence of absolute blessing over all the new fertility of the new creation and the new life that comes through redemption. In his mind, it's all, oh, this thing right here in this wedding, at this moment, this thing with this wine, this is what I am.
I'm going to have a wedding one day, a feast where I am the groom. where people are going to think all the best that they could have ever—they've already had, and they're going to come in through a certain kind of purification. They come to these jars, and this one blood-red liquid is going to be their entrance purification and the wine of their enjoyment forever. And it's going to be my wedding of covenant, which will be everlasting, and they will celebrate, and they will drink, and they will live in a physical recreated creation, which we will enjoy with our— our tongues and our eyes and our mouths and music forever, the goodness of a recreated life.
This is a sign of everything I am and everything I've come to be. And when his disciples believed in him, I don't think that they knew that yet. The John at the end of John's gospel, the John in Ephesus that wrote this, with Andrew at his side, was looking all the way back through all of it. And he knew at that first moment, remember? You remember at that first moment we knew there was something special about a man who could make 150 gallons of wine without even doing anything.
But later they understood that the sign was so much more. It was a symbol of everything. We're going to do communion of the Lord's Supper now, and we're going to do it in what's called, we do call it stations. during the next two worship songs, you'll come up and take the elements. You can receive them right there or take them back and receive them individually.
The Lord's Supper in this time of worship that we have is an opportunity for you to repent of any entitlement towards God you have been feeling and thinking. Just offer it to him and repent of it. Just say, this is wrong.
I thought it was right. It felt right. At some level, it still feels right.
But based on the sign of what you're speaking, showing about yourself, God, I repent of it. I'm going to put it away, and I'm going to turn to you in thankfulness. I'm going to start with the thankfulness of the new wine that was poured out, and the purification of my sins, and the death and resurrection of Christ in your hour.
And I'm going to start there again. And I want to open myself to you helping me see all of the beauty of the wedding I'm headed for, and the wine I'm going to drink. Let's pray together. Lord, we recognize that this ritual is one in which we proclaim your death until you come, that it is both a symbolizing of your body broken and blood, and it is simultaneously representative of the rejoicing of the drinking of wine of the new heavens of the new earth.
It is a celebration of your resurrection and future redemption, and in your death, and what it costs for our purification. And I pray that everyone here would be able to get a sense of our worth and our unworthiness, our... the work that you have done for us, and our standing in you, and the promise that you've given.
The generosity that made that wine is the generosity that hangs over all of us. We pray that as we take this bread and take this drink, that our hearts would proclaim you with joy and thankfulness until you come, and that in the action it would eliminate and destroy every choking entitlement. Us knowing that the good— The good plant of salvation and thankfulness cannot long grow in the choking presence of the growing weeds of entitlement. Free us, Lord.
Help us to weed the soul. Help us to do the work of filling the pot so that you can turn it into wine. Help us to be willing to do everything you ask us to do, starting with this ritual, we pray in Jesus'name.