Brown's Daily Word 2-12-09

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord. The Lord gave us a very spring-like day yesterday. The snow has almost melted. I can see that some daffodils and crocus by the foundation of parsonage are popping up.
I performed two funeral services last few days. It is a great blessing to proclaim the "the sure and the certain hope of Resurrection". It is a great blessing to participate in baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Funerals are, in fact, celebrations of death and resurrection.
In the Gospel according to John, our Lord performed His first, miracle in a wedding ceremony. We read about this in John 2. This was the first sign of the Messiah in the adult life of Jesus. A person’s wedding is one of the three most significant days in his or her life, along with the days of birth and death. Of the three, it is the only one that we can remember. We know that God attaches tremendous importance to it since He bracketed Scripture with it. Genesis begins with the wedding of Adam and Eve, and Revelation ends with the great wedding feast of Jesus Christ and His bride. Jesus, His mother, and His disciples were all invited to a wedding party. It was close to His home town of Capernaum so the bride and groom were probably personal friends of the family. What better way could there be to start a marriage than to invite the Lord of marriage to its very inception? Jesus, by His very presence, honors all wedding parties and tells us that this is good and acceptable in His Father’s eyes. We do not get very far into the story when we notice that a problem had arisen - the host ran out of wine. This may seem of small consequence to us today since wedding receptions are not very long, and this can signal the end of the reception. However, in the time of our Lord’s incarnation, a wedding party was much more elaborate, important, and lengthy than now. Consequently, the lack of appropriate foodstuffs or wine, carried greater significance.
Mary, always full of grace, noticed the need and conversed with Jesus concerning the dilemma. The first word of Jesus’ reply is quite curious. He calls Mary, "Woman". The rest of Jesus’ reply to His mother is quite distressing, "what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour is not yet come." Have you ever prayed for something, and gotten only silence - or worse, a rebuke - in exchange? Think about Mary’s meek response, "Whatever He says to you, do it". Mary exhibited her faith, trusting her son - God's Son - to come to the rescue. This is where faith stands in the heat of battle. This is the essence of Godly faith - trusting God to be gracious even when circumstances seem to tell you it is folly. Jesus, in His own time, ordered the water pots to be filled with water and He transformed them into wine. This was a miracle, but it was even more than that. It was, as John called it, a sign - a miracle with a message. Many Old Testament prophecies about the Messianic age spoke of a time when wine would flow liberally. In Isaiah 55:1 the prophet declared, “everyone who thirst come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price”. He indicated a time when everyone would see the glory of the Lord. Amos repeated this in the words, “the time is surely coming, says the Lord, when the one who ploughs shall overtake the one who reaps, and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit”.
So, in a sense, Jesus’ miracle was an announcement of the coming of the Messianic age. It also signified that the responsibility for providing the wine belonged to the bridegroom and Christ is the Bridegroom, announcing the birth of the Messianic age. Jesus used the occasion of the wine shortage to reveal God’s plan of salvation and redemption to the world. The servants who knew what happened were witnesses of the birth of this new age. The result, as we see in verse 11, was "His disciples believed in Him." That is the greatest effect of this sign. God grants us favor with Him, and with that favor He offers the forgiveness of sins, restoration of relationship, sanctification, and glorification through faith alone. It is therefore meaningful and appropriate that this sign, along with many others, was an occasion of faith. God came down and touched us. This sign effected what it showed. It accomplished that which the Lord set out for it to do - His disciples believed. What Jesus our Lord did for them, He also does for us.
In Him,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMrAafe7Mns