Dennis Tuuri

John 2:1–11. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

On the third day, a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’s mother was there and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’s mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time 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 twenty to thirty 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.” This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your Spirit. We pray that this Spirit that brings us the joy of your scriptures would do so with this text. Open our hearts, Lord God, and our ears to hear wondrous things from your word that we may open our mouths in joyful praise to you in Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. In 1 John 5:8 we read, “He who does what is sinful is of the devil because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s works. The reason why the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”

We’re reading in the Gospel of John of the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we read in chapter 2 of the first miracle or sign that he wrought. The word used for “first” here does not simply mean first in number. It implies first in significance. It’s the Greek word from which our word archetype is taken. It’s the archetypical miracle. One could say first in sequence in terms of miracles that Jesus would do, but also first in primacy. It has wondrous truths to tell us about this new creation that we’ve been considering based on John’s gospel. It has wondrous things to tell us about what life is like in this new creation that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to make manifest.

The purpose of today’s text, the mission from this text for us today on this particular Lord’s day is to be joyful. Quite simply put, I do not intend today to remind you of your sins save for the one sin that we have of not entering into the full joy of the Lord Jesus Christ all too often in the context of our lives. The good news is that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to remove from off the face of his world the works of the devil.

I suppose that when we speak of the suppression of the truth of God in unrighteousness that fallen man engages in and that we in our Adamic nature engage in, I suppose that includes the idea of the suppression of the truth of the joy of the new creation that our Savior has affected. We all too often allow Satan’s work of depression to enter into our lives. Our job is to be joyful. Our job is to recognize the importance of joy at the center of the new creation, at the center of our lives, and at the center of this text.

You know, good news is kind of hard to hear. It’s the propensity of mankind to write science fiction novels that are typically Armageddon and apocalyptic sort of events as opposed to paradise events. It’s our belief that there’s always something sinister crouching behind the details of life. We look for conspiracy plots. We look for the other shoe to drop, the shoe that we know is coming to us because of our sins.

But for those of us who are in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who have come to saving faith in him, the other shoe to drop is not a shoe of curse. It’s not a shoe of chastisement. It’s a shoe of joy. We go, as the prologue told us, from grace to grace. That’s what our life is—one beautiful vista after another.

Now, there are difficult times that come in the context of that, but pervading through the life of the Christian should be joy at the center. And that’s what this text reminds us of. Why did Jesus appear? He appeared to destroy the devil’s work. The devil’s purpose was to create suspicion in men’s minds toward God and toward one another. The devil appears in the garden. Jesus appears here and in the context of his appearance brings about a joyful wedding.

Satan came to effect suspicion, distrust, and disruption of marital bliss. Jesus comes and in his first miracle restores the joy of the wedding.

I want to talk in terms of this text first on joy found throughout the text. There are at least five joys in this text that we can touch on briefly.

The first joy is the joy of the wedding. This is a wedding event and throughout the scriptures when joy is going to be described by God, it’s described in terms of a wedding event. In Jeremiah 7:34, when joy is removed from a people, he puts it in the context of the removal of the joy of bride and bridegroom. We read, “I’ll bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah in the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate.”

The removal of joy is characterized by the removal of the sounds of joy and gladness from bride and bridegroom. Again, in the restoration of things in Jeremiah 33, the Lord says, “Again there shall be heard in this place, of which you say it is desolate without man or without beast, in the cities of Judah in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate without man and without inhabitant and without beast, what will be characterizing this joy? The voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. The voice of those who will say, ‘Praise the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his mercy endures forever,’ and of those who will bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. For I will cause the captives of the land to return as at the first, says the Lord.”

The Lord Jesus Christ comes to bring joy to a real, live wedding involving real people. Typologically, this speaks volumes to us, but we don’t want to miss the fact that the joy of the wedding is one of the simple yet profound joys found in this text and also found in the context of our lives as well.

This theme of wedding at the center of the new creation that Christ is affecting is found not just here but in other places in these first four chapters as well. Remember, one way to outline the Gospel of John is that there’s the revelation of Christ, the rejection of Christ, and then the reception of Christ. Christ’s revelation is found in chapters 2 through 4. His rejection begins with the lame man being healed on the Sabbath and plots to kill him in chapter 5, and that goes through 12. In chapter 13, Jesus picks up the meal in the context of his disciples at the last supper.

Well, this opening section, the revelation of what this new creation is all about—the revelation of Jesus at the center of this—is a revelation that has repeated references to marriage. This one is obvious here. The very first, or archetypical, miracle brings more or increased joy to a wedding. But later, in chapter 3, John’s disciples will have a debate with Jews about purification. And in the discussion that we’ll come to at the second half of John chapter 3, what we hear is that John says that Jesus is the bridegroom, that he has the bride.

And that sets us up for chapter 4 and the great story of the woman at Jacob’s well in Sychar in Samaria. Jesus goes to a far land away from Jerusalem, goes to Jacob’s well specifically designated as such. He meets a woman at a well, gets a drink from the woman, offers a drink to her. We have all those Old Testament well romance stories coming back to life in the person and work of the Savior as he is seeking true worshippers, as he’s seeking members of his bride.

And it isn’t just the woman. All the men of the village convert. And in that great closing scene to that discussion, that event that happens, the men say that Jesus is the Savior of the world.

So marriage, the joy of the wedding, is central to this new creation being revealed by our Savior in these first few chapters of John’s gospel. So we have this joy of the wedding given to us here in this text.

Secondly, we have the joy of the feast itself. This isn’t just a wedding—it’s a festival in the context of the wedding. And these festivals were very important in the context of Jewish life. Now remember that at this time the Romans are oppressing the Jewish people. Starvation is not untypical. Difficulties abound and yet still, in the midst of a foreign nation invading them and having dominion over them, in the midst of economic difficulties, still couples would get together for wedding feasts. It was that central of an institution to the people of God and should be to us as well.

The joy of the wedding is seen in the context of the joy of the festival, and Jesus brings wine so that the wedding could be more joyful and the wedding feast could be more joyful as well. Typically these wedding festivals would happen after the wedding takes place. The couple would go to their new home. People would follow them to their new home and the next day would begin a feast. And the couple wouldn’t go away on a honeymoon. They’d spend a week rejoicing in the context of community by hosting this wedding feast.

And so that’s what’s going on here. Now in Genesis 29, Laban brings together all the people of the place as Jacob is going to marry one of his daughters and Laban gives a feast. And we read in verse 27 that Laban tells Jacob to finish the daughter’s bridal week. So we have this idea that there are seven days to these wedding feasts. And this was typical in Old Testament culture.

In the book of Tobit, an apocryphal book, not inspired, but nonetheless giving us customs of the day, the wedding feast was said to last for two weeks, a full fourteen days. In Samson’s wedding feast, he had riddles for three days, and then on the seventh day, he’s betrayed. So again, there the wedding feast is seen as a long, very important event.

We’ll have a joyous wedding feast, two of them this fall—one in August, one in November. And there’ll be a picture of this, but it’s just, I guess it’s a little sad that we don’t do these things for a week at a time, but that’s how important it was—this joy of the wedding and the joy of the wedding festival that our Savior graces with his appearance and first miracle.

I suppose we might be able to see a little correlation between these typical week-long wedding ceremonies and the creation week. This was imagery that was quite common in Judaism—that the marriage was really a picture of the coming marriage, or the marriage of God to his creation. And so the seven days seems to have some degree of correlation to the seven days of creation and the joy of creation as well.

So Jacob’s wedding feast went on for seven days. This was a party that Jesus added joy to.

The third joy of this text is the joy of wine. And there are many verses we can talk about. We’ll be talking about more next week about this particular joy. But in Amos 9:13–14, we read that the days are coming when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, the treader of grapes, him who sows seed. The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with wine.

Now, this is talking about the future, the coming of Messiah, the blessings of Messiah. But it’s pictured by using the joy of wine, an overabundance of wine—mountains dripping with wine, hills flowing with wine. You know, there’s an old W.C. Fields movie and he talked about how he wanted to buy this place in California by an orange grove with a river of beer flowing through his house. Well, you know, that’s biblical imagery in a sense. We have rivers of wine that flow in the promised land when Messiah comes.

Wine is a joyful thing, certainly not to be abused. Drunkenness is a great sin, but wine is joy. And that’s how God wants us to see it.

Ecclesiastes 9:7 says, “Eat your bread with joy.” Now, this is a command to people that may not understand what’s going on in their lives. Ecclesiastes says, you can’t figure out a lot of things. It’s kind of the analog to Proverbs. Proverbs, you can figure things out. Ecclesiastes, a lot of things you can’t figure out. But in the midst of your not being able to figure it out, you know certain things.

What you know is according to Ecclesiastes 9:7 that God has accepted your works in Christ, you know your salvation is complete, and that your works are being done for the purpose of God and they’re accepted through the person and work of Jesus. And as a result of that knowledge, even in the midst of difficult times, we are to eat our bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart.

Now, that’s the normal Christian life. And that’s the normal Christian life in the midst of difficulties. We can grieve. Grieving is proper. But we’re never to grieve as the Gentiles who have no hope in the world. We grieve with great hope because we know that all things are working together for the establishment of the elect, the glory of God, and the good of his people.

Genesis 27:28 says, “May God give you of the dew of heaven, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine.” You know, I’ve said before that we should be using our voices to bless one another the way Boaz blessed his reapers. And they said, “The Lord bless you.” Well, one of these blessings we ought to say to each other is, “May God give you lots of bread and lots of wine.” Blessing statements of blessing one to the other.

Zechariah 10:6–7 says God, when he brings back the people of God, he’ll have mercy on them. Then verse 7, “Those of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man and their heart shall rejoice as if with wine.” So we’ve got joy related to weddings, joy related to wine in the inspired word of God. “Yes, their children shall see it and be glad. Their hearts shall rejoice in the Lord.” The Lord is the wine of joy. Wine is a picture of the greatness and joy of the Lord.

Isaiah 25 says God will give them a feast of rich food and well-refined wine on this mountain, indeed, of well-refined wine on the leaves. The blessing of God to us, his people, God’s peace, his blessing, and prosperity to us, is pictured as the joy of well-refined, the best of wines. And that’s what Jesus brings to the wedding feast at Cana.

Joel 2:19 says, “I’ll send you grain and new wine and oil.”

Verse 24 of chapter 2, “The threshing floor shall be full of wheat. The vat shall overflow with new wine and oil. It will come to pass in that day that the mountain shall drip with new wine. A fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord and water the valley of Acacia.”

So a water or wine river flowing from the temple of God to his people.

Psalm 104 tells us this is the very reason why God gave wine to men. We read that he made grass grow for the cattle, plants for man to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth, wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, bread that sustains his heart. Why did God give us wine? He gave us wine to make men’s hearts glad, to make men joyful.

We have the joy of the wedding, the joy of the feast, and the joy of wonderful, excellent, alcoholic, good-tasting, mature wine developed in this text.

Now, if you want to make, you know, if you want to say some may tell you this isn’t really wine, it’s grape juice. But see, the master of the feast here was the head waiter. He was the one that was supposed to take care of things for the bridegroom. The bridegroom supplied the wine. The head waiter, to make sure everything’s organized correctly, tells the bridegroom that you know, usually at these things, after people have had too much to drink (and that’s what the phrase means—when they become intoxicated or drunk), that’s when you bring out the cheaper wine because you had the good wine at first. But you left the good wine till the end of the feast when men were capable of being intoxicated.

See, men are not capable of being intoxicated by grape juice. So we know right from the internal evidence of this text itself that this is good, strong, alcoholic, good-tasting wine.

There’s the joy of wine. But as we’ve just seen, this joy of wine given to us in all these prophetic texts of the Old Testament really are talking about the coming joy of Messiah. When will the hills drip with fatness and the rivers run with wine? When will there be this great abundance of good, well-refined wine that God will provide to his people? It’ll come about when Messiah comes.

This is the first of the signs that Jesus is the Son of God. He has inaugurated the messianic kingdom. He is Messiah. Now is the time when Israel, the true Israel of God, will experience these great blessings that are pictured with the joy of wine.

So, you know, again, two ditches. We don’t want to ignore the joy of real wine and real wedding and real festival, but we want to understand that all that is a picture of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So we enter into these joyous events, but we enter into them in the kingdom, in the messianic kingdom inaugurated by our Savior.

All these great things will happen when Messiah comes. And so this is indicated here that this is the preeminent of signs revealing that Jesus Christ is Messiah, and as a result his disciples believe on him. The Lord Jesus Christ and his work gives us all these wonderful things.

You know, the idea then is that for the contemporary readers of this text who lived in the context of waiting for these great hopes to come, they taste this wonderful wine and they see that Jesus brought it forth in quantity and quality. Wonderful wine, somewhere around 150 gallons of wine. And they are reminded of all those texts. They’ve accustomed themselves to really like wine like some wine aficionado would today. And to them, drinking that wine at the wedding feast, rejoicing with the joy of the married couple, this is a slice of heaven. This is what it’s all about.

I’ve had moments in my life where you can have these foretastes of heaven, you know, events that continue with you for years to come and they’re little snapshots of what eternity will be like in the direct presence of our Savior.

Now, for some of us, maybe many of us, a good wine is not that appealing. Maybe we’re not used to wine. It’s not a particular cup of tea. But that’s the associations that are supposed to be brought to mind. And I would ask you to think of whatever associations of miraculous, wonderful, heavenly joy that God may have brought into your life.

I’ll give you a couple of mine. The day I was married, when Christine came up the aisle and then the veil was taken off her face, I don’t know what it was, but I was almost transported to heaven. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful as my wife at that moment, at the wedding. Now, that’s an image to me of heaven—beautiful, joy, rapture. My love for my bride, her beauty in her wedding gown—that’ll stay with me all of my life. It’s a picture of heaven to me.

Another was the birth of my first child. Absolutely astonishing. No words can describe it. And every birth of Christine’s and my children have been surreal. I’ve said I suppose it’s a bad term to use, but they’re not normal. Something happens when a new person comes into the world and it’s completely different. It’s a foretaste again of that great joy that we’ll experience in the consummation in heaven.

There are other times as well. I’ll use one since I’m going to talk about Christian liberty next week. Several years ago, we were in Florida and we’d rented a little place in St. Petersburg for a couple of days. And right outside the room of the motel there was a little walkway and then we were right on a lake and there was a moon out. There were big exotic birds flying across the moon. It was a beautiful evening. Of course, it’s about 11:00 at night. Christine’s sleeping. I’m having a cigar. A cigar slows one down—contemplation, meditation—and I thought about my lovely wife, our wedding day. And I made some resolutions in my mind to try to be a better husband, to try to embrace my wife in better ways. That’s a moment that’ll stay with me. It’s a foretaste of what heaven is—this great joy of weddings and our commitment to our spouses and a sense of peacefulness knowing that God forgives us our sins and his intention is to bring joy into the context of our lives.

I know for my daughter Lana, at least when she was young, she was quite young. We didn’t let her and Joanna listen to music with lyrics. Well, I could talk about parenting but I won’t. So we didn’t. And so Lana heard I don’t know how old she was, not that old, a piece of music written by Ralph Vaughan Williams on the radio and she was just enraptured by it. It was like she said she had seen heaven by listening to this beautiful piece of Vaughan Williams orchestral music.

Well, you probably have moments like that in your life, and that’s the kind of moment this is intended to represent to us—this picture of the full consummation of joy pictured to us.

Now, another moment for me was sitting in the backyard of, and this actually have several moments like this, but the Lord’s day sometimes, again sitting in the backyard of somebody’s house, summertime, not too hot and nice in community with one another, maybe having something to drink, maybe having a cigar, a relaxed state of mind, knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished all things for us. And this day, this Sabbath day, can sometimes for me be an incredible foretaste of what eternity will be like in the presence of God and in the presence of each of you. All of our problems and conflicts moved away and resolved. Finally, the Lord Jesus Christ drying every tear.

This is the joy of this wedding feast in Cana. This is the joy of the Messiah’s coming and beginning to inaugurate what we’ll find its great joy at the consummation. This is the joy of this text—the joy of believing.

Belief is a verb here. The disciples see this. They enter into these moments of anticipation realized in the coming of Messiah and the wine flowing. And they know that Joel is happening and Isaiah is happening and this is the man. And now the wine of heaven has come to men, and from now on joy will be at the center of the world once more. And those joyless, pathetic, distrusting works of the devil will be pushed further and further away from the earth through the proclamation of this Messiah.

The disciples believe in that. They decide, they make a choice to continue to follow and believe that this is Messiah. And that’s what we’re to enter into today as well—the joy of believing these things about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Joy is found throughout this text. I’ve mentioned at least five. There are probably others. Joy is also at the height of the development of what we’ve seen from chapter 1, verse one to chapter 2:11.

On your outline here under point two, I’ve given you a series of events with what happens in the creation week and then a column showing the seven feasts of Leviticus 23 and then the events of John chapter 1–21. And what I try to demonstrate to you here is, remember, we’ve talked about the sequence of days. And the sequence of days—this is my best approximation as I try to seek out this thing that God has hidden for his glory and that he expects us as kings to pull out and understand for our joy.

I’ve tried to understand how these things correlate. In the beginning of creation, God says, “Let there be light,” on the first day. The Sabbath day is the first festival in Leviticus 23—the day when light comes to us, the light of the word, the light of the sacrament. And the Lord Jesus Christ is declared to be light. In him is life and his life was the light of men. And so it seems that the prologue, the beginning before the actual days begin, represents that first day of the creation week.

Second day of creation week, a firmament is created. And there’s division—waters above, waters below. And the second festival in Leviticus 23 is a distinction made between God’s people and not God’s people at Passover. Some die, some are saved. There’s division that begins to occur—this firmament between heavenly people and earthly people. And so in the second day of this week of days in Genesis, in John chapter 1, John the Baptist is examined and attacked by those Jews who will end up crucifying the Savior. Two kinds of people—those who deny themselves, follow the Lord Jesus Christ, who recognize who they really are. They find their voice in Christ as John did. Christ is the Word. We’re the voices. As opposed to those who want to be the word in every area, whether it’s judicial, priestly, or prophetic. A division happens. And so it seems like those correlate.

On the third day, land and water separate. And then the first of plants come up. Not all plants—grain plants and fruit plants come up on the third day. And the third festival in Leviticus 23 is First Fruits, the beginning of the harvest, correlating to that. And after the day in which John is attacked by the Jews, he describes what happened when he baptized Jesus.

Jesus came up out of the water. He’s in the river Jordan. He comes away from the water. Jesus is the Holy Land. Jesus is the first of what will be many baptized in the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus is the First Fruits and Jesus is the Holy Land.

On the fourth day, the sun, moon, and stars are made to be rulers in the context of their spheres. And the fourth feast in Leviticus 23, the fourth feast rather, is Pentecost—the word of God is given. The word of God is the means by which the world is governed by the lights. They replace, or not replace, but are picturing the true light, which is God. “Let there be light.” But now we have specific individual lights.

But after Jesus’s baptism is described, the next day disciples start to become added to him. They attach themselves to Jesus. They spend the day with him. The disciples will rule the church. They’ll be the sun, moon, and stars ruling for the true light, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.

On the fifth day in creation, heaven is filled and the sea is filled with swarming things—masses that are then commanded by God to be fruitful. The first command is given. And so what happens on the fifth day is that Peter becomes a disciple. The first thing, the next day, the next sequence of days, Peter becomes a disciple, and he’s going to bring in the Gentiles. The last thing that happens in the book of John is that Peter is going to become a fisher of men and bring in the Gentile nations, be used by God. That way, Peter’s adding to the number of the disciples, and he will trumpet forth the word of God and begin to bring in the flock of the Gentiles, the fish in the sea. And Trumpets is the fifth feast in Leviticus 23, the gospel proclaimed and the nations assemble.

Sixth day, of course, is the creation of man. Man falls on the sixth day. Atonement is the sixth festival in Leviticus 23. Man’s sins must be atoned for. On the sixth day, we see Jesus calling Philip and Nathaniel. Nathaniel is a true Israelite indeed. He’s real man again. He’s the new Adam, as it were, in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the great Adam.

Nathaniel is found under a fig tree. Fig tree is related in the book of Revelation to that firmament. There’s an eschatological nature to some of these things. It relates back to that firmamental structure. But Nathaniel is the true Israelite in whom is no guile. And people will see the Son of God ascending, or angels ascending and descending. A unity now between earth and heaven because of the work of the Savior in the lives of men.

So men will come to their fullness because of the ministration of the Lord Jesus Christ. The great last feast from Leviticus 23 is Tabernacles—joy, the end of the season. The wine’s ready. The bread’s ready. Everything’s ready. We’re commanded to go and buy whatever our hearts desire and go to the feast of booths at the end of Leviticus 23. The Sabbath rest is made full. Enthronement happens.

But there’s a skip of days here. Apparently here, this wedding feast is on the third day, the third after he moved to Galilee. So he begins to go to Galilee. He finds Philip and Nathaniel. Then there’s an empty day. And then on the third day, we have this wedding feast.

So it is that eighth day—third day, the new creation—being affected through the person and work of the Savior. So that we find at the culmination of the new creation being pictured for us at the beginning of John’s gospel, we see at the height of that new creation, the archetypical miracle is the bringing of joy by Messiah to his people.

Tremendous significance—joy at the height. We talked about those days of discipleship, the need to deny yourself to follow Jesus, the need to seek him, the need to think about your motivations. What is it you seek? The need to be men without guile. All of these things are brought to pass in the context of the pursuit of joy—the joy of Messiah. That is ultimately the goal of the disciples of Christ. They enter into this great joy.

You know, the Gospel of John begins with “In the beginning,” right? It’s about a new creation. And I’ve listed some references for you there at the end. At the end of the Gospel of John, chapter 18, our Savior is going to go to the cross for sinners. And that whole passion narrative begins with them crossing a river, the brook Kidron, and going into a garden. He’s arrested and betrayed in the garden. And then we read later in chapter 19 that the place where he was crucified there was a garden. He’s executed in the garden. He’s naked in the garden, the way that Adam had become aware of his nakedness. He takes upon himself the sins of Adam and he’s raised up.

His tomb is in a garden. And then when Mary sees him on the resurrection Sunday, Lord’s day, she thinks he’s the gardener because he’s in the garden and he is the gardener. He is the greater gardener, as it were, who calls each of his plants by name and makes them into joyful creatures of his.

And after that in chapter 20, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Ghost.” Can we possibly miss these associations? How could we? Garden, garden, garden. A woman and a man in a garden. He’s the gardener. He breathes on his disciples. Receive the breath of life, the breath, receive the Holy Ghost. This book, this entire book, is about the new creation affected by our Savior in which we live.

And the height of that first sequence of days, what this new creation is all about, is joy, is wonder, is laughter, his mirth. As the works of Satan are rolled back from the creation, the new creation is the removal of sadness. He’ll wipe every tear from every eye.

Three. Joy at the bookends of the revelation of Christ. I’ve mentioned how this forms a unit—chapters 2 through 4. Wedding feast in Cana of Galilee.

And then after this, Jesus will cleanse the temple. Then in chapter 3, he talks to Nicodemus. And then after Nicodemus, we have this account of John the Baptist discussing the bridegroom, Jesus Christ. Then the Samaritan woman. After the Samaritan woman is healed, at the conclusion of this section before we get to the rejection section of chapter 5, a nobleman’s son is healed by Jesus.

Where does that miracle take place? Well, it actually takes place in two places because he shows his being God over distance as well as nature in this second miracle. But he’s in Cana. That’s where he’s at. And the text tells us that explicitly in chapter 4:6. In chapter 4:6, we read that this is the second miracle. Well, we read that this happened in Cana where he made the water into wine.

So at the end of this section of Jesus’s revelation, a miracle occurs that refers us back or brings us back in the text itself to Cana. So Cana forms an inclusion. These references to the revelation of Christ, and the turning water into wine is mentioned at the end as well. And that last miracle, the resurrection of the nobleman’s son, he’s in Capernaum, but it actually takes place in Cana. And this is the second miracle.

So both the first and second miracles take place at Cana, where this picture of joy is. Why? Why does the text do this? Because this joy that is at the center of the narrative will be accomplished through resurrection. It is the joy of those who are moved from the old creation into the new creation that’s being described at this wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. And that’s pictured by this son.

Joy is throughout the text. Joy is at the height of these sequences of days. Joy forms the bookends to the very section whose intent is to reveal what Jesus is all about. And joy is at the center of our lives and at the center of this text as well.

Roman numeral 4 on your outline. I’ve given you a structure to the narrative. What happens? Well, we read in verses 1 and 2 that there’s a wedding feast and Mary’s going to be there and the disciples are invited, too. It’s like a little prologue or an introduction. Mary then speaks with Jesus. We talked about that last week. Mary then speaks to the servants. She tells them certain things. And then there’s this description of six stone water pots at the center of the text in verse 6.

On the other side of this, Jesus speaks to the servants—tells them what to do, who’s going to do this miracle. Mary speaks to the servants. Stone pots. Jesus speaks to the servants. After the miracle is concluded, the master of ceremonies speaks with the bridegroom.

Mary spoke to Jesus. Now we’ve got the master of ceremonies speaking to the bridegroom. Mary spoke to the servants. Jesus spoke to the servants. And at the center, six stone pots with purification water in them. And then there’s a final conclusion. It says this is the first of signs engendering belief in his disciples.

Introduction and prologue and conclusion at the end—nice structure that shows us that somehow we’re to meditate on these six stone water pots at the center of this text, to think about the joy that comes forth.

Now, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, the glory of a king to reveal it, but he hasn’t concealed this very deep. Has he? What’s going on here? What kind of pots are they? Well, they’re purification water. The Old Testament bride, the master that says to the bridegroom, “You save the best for last.” Jesus is the best. He’s the wine, right? We’re going to drink. Jesus is the wine. He’s the last. He’s the conclusion of the Old Testament purification rites, far superseding them, far exceeding them in value, far exceeding them in taste, far exceeding them in joy-making capability.

He brings the ultimate purification, and the purification is unto joy. He’s the wine. He’s the water of life, right? And he’s water out of stone. Now, the servants had clay pots. Clay pots could be ceremonial unclean. God had figured this out long before we ever thought of it. In the Old Testament, he says, “Well, if you have a clay pot and it gets defiled, you got to break it. If it gets unclean, you can’t put cleansing water in a clay pot that’s been defiled. You got to break it.”

So that’s why they had stone pots. Stone pots couldn’t get defiled through a mouse falling in it or something. A clay pot could—you just clean out the stone pot. But God was setting it up so that we’d recognize that this is the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the stone from which flows the water. Yeah. Isn’t that what Exodus 17:6 says? “Strike the stone, water will come out.” Isn’t that what 1 Corinthians 10 says? “They all drank from that rock and that rock was Christ.”

The stone is Jesus. The water is Jesus. The wine is Jesus. At the center of the joy of this text are those six stone water pots that reveal to us the great joy that we’ve talked about here comes, of course, from Messiah and is Messiah himself who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross.

God hasn’t hidden this very deep. Now there may be other significations to these six. I mean, it isn’t just one stone pot. It’s six. Some people have seen in this, again, references to the six days of creation. The work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The work of the Savior is what will bring joy at the center of our lives. When we come to the table, we come to the centrality of the work of the Savior on the cross for us to bring about the new creation that we enter into and we are reinvigorated with through the sacrament, through the preaching of the word and ingestion of the sacrifice. The work of the Lord Jesus Christ is that great joy-making capability.

And so six could refer to these days of creation again. But I think there’s another reference here. I think that there are six because Jesus has a band of five men and there are six now to this group. I base this because of what the gospel continues to talk about. I mentioned that the great feast in Leviticus 23, the great concluding feast, the great joyful feast at the end is Tabernacles or Booths.

Well, you get around down to about chapter 7 in John, chapter 7, Jesus says, “On the last great day of the feast, come drink from me and I’ll cause water to flow from the inmost parts of your being.” And he spoke this of the Spirit which had not yet been given because Christ had not yet been glorified. And in the context in John chapter 7, that means Jesus hadn’t died on the cross yet. That’s the hour of his glorification in John’s gospel, linked to the work of the Savior. The coming glorification would be the transformation of people to be able to, through union with the Lord Jesus Christ, we are those stone pots now out of which flow joy into the world.

Those disciples are pictured here as well as the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter was a rock. The disciples are all rocks, as it were. They’re made of the same substance of Christ. And we’re now the stone pots from which water flows.

You know, it’s significant because it says on the last great day of the feast in John chapter 7, Jesus talked about him being the water of life. And there’s a special significance to that. It didn’t just, you know, Pentecost went on, or Tabernacles went on for a week or eight days. And it’s the eighth day that’s being referred to, the great last day of the feast. But there’s a sense in which it is the great last day of that feast because after this, before another Tabernacles comes, the Lord Jesus will go to the cross at Passover season next, and he’ll die for his people and put the whole ceremonial calendar out of joint.

The height of Leviticus 23 is portrayed for us in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ at the feast of Tabernacles. And he sums up what his work is all about—when he’ll be glorified—is to make stone pots, as it were, out of you, to turn you into a source of life-giving work in the context of this world. You’re a stone pot. Your job is not just to rejoice in Christ with the wine. Your job is to bring joy as dispensers of the water into wine that our Savior affected with his work on the cross.

The joy at the center of this text means the joy must be at the center of our text. We’re little books of Jesus. At the center of our text is the joy of the Savior in our innermost being, and we are to be dispensers of that joy. At the center of our ministry should be joy, the bringing of joy to people. That’s what we’re all about. We’re part of this rolling back the works of the devil through bringing works of joy into people’s lives through the proclamation of the wonderful joy-bringing news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this happens through the work of the Savior. I’ve made references to this, but quite emphatically, this text draws our attention to his coming work on the cross for his people. Joy. This joy that we’re talking about here is joy through self-giving. Save the best for last. And the last great miracle that happens in the Gospel of John is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember, we said that he called his mother a woman, dear lady. The next time he calls his mother that is from the cross in John’s gospel, reminding us that what’s going on here in Cana is directly related to what’s going on on the cross.