The Gospel of John

The Beginning of Miracles

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 6- 70

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Track: 0

Dictation Name: RR197C6

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Blessed is the man who Thou choosest and causes to approach unto Thee that he may dwell in Thy courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy houses, even of Thy holy temple. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee that all things in heaven and earth move according to Thy holy purpose. That the very hairs of our head are all numbered and all our days, all our thoughts, all our hopes, fears and joys are known to Thee and are a part of Thy holy purpose for Thou dost make all things work together for good for them that love Thee, for them that are the called according to Thy purpose. Oh Lord our God how great Thou art and we praise Thee and rejoice in Thy grace. Teach us this day those things Thou wouldst have us to know, give us grace to fix our hearts firmly upon Thee knowing that our true joy is in Thee. Bless us by Thy word and by Thy spirit. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is the Gospel of John, the second chapter, verses one through eleven. John 2:1-11, our subject: The Beginning of Miracles.

“And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:

2 And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

3 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.

4 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

6 And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.

7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.

9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

11 This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.”

The beginning of miracles, the first and the most prophetic. It is used here by John to set forth the meaning of the whole gospel. We miss the point of our Lord’s life and ministry if we miss the point of this gospel. This is the beginning of miracles; it sets forth the meaning of all of them and of the life of our Lord. This is followed by the first cleansing of the temple and the talk to Nicodemus on rebirth. To understand this whole miracle we have to understand the meaning of marriage to the Hebrews. It was regarded as a truly blessed estate. The importance of marriage to manhood was extremely great, no elder, no ruler could actually be single. They were then without glory and without dominion and could not have any respect in Israel. They could not hold any office. Moreover the Hebrews very early developed a considerable typology with regard to marriage. The bridal pair on their marriage day symbolized the union of God with Israel, they felt so strongly that very extravagant notions arose and the pious fasted before marriage, confessing their sins, since they now entered into what was essentially a holy relationship, setting forth the heart of the divine typology. They even went so far as to believe, of course again without warrant in scripture, that entrance into marriage meant the forgiveness of past sins. There was an ardent insistence on marriage, the first prayer on the circumcision of a child and from then on looked to marriage and it was held to honor marriage was to honor God.

Even a funeral procession had to give way to a wedding procession and every man whom met one had to turn and follow for a short distance the wedding procession to do it honor. Paul warned Timothy against heretics forbidding marrying: that from God’s standpoint was evil. Sad to say the Canons of the Church of Rome for a time forbade the clergy from attending marriage celebrations because it was regarded as a polluting atmosphere. That was because they were so heavily influenced by neo-platonic thought. It is Ephesians 5 that reflects the essence of biblical thinking, old testament thinking, on the subject. Jesus and His disciples attended this wedding. Now a wedding in Israel was a great celebration, it took at least three days for the poorer families and up to a week for wealthier families so that you celebrated from morning to late at night, went home, returned the next day and the next day or for a wealthy family’s wedding, for a week. It was in other words one of the most joyful celebrations in all of Israel. It may well have been that this wedding was of a family related to Mary, therefore related to our Lord, because Mary was helping in the kitchen and knew when there was a shortage of wine. She obviously was one of those who was helping as a member of the family with the celebration. She appealed to Jesus. What she in effect said was, there is no wine.

Why tell Jesus that? He was not a wine merchant. But she knew who He was, show Thyself as the Messiah, make wine, the emblem of joy in scripture. Psalm 104:15 speaks of wine that maketh glad the heart of man. Judges 9:13:

“And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?”

Here is an appropriate setting, Mary said, you are the Messiah, the great bridegroom, the bridegroom of God’s people, show Thyself. When our Lord said ‘woman what have I to do with thee, my hour is not yet come’, now this seems in translation a rather curt statement but first of all the word translated as woman is perhaps more appropriately rendered lady, not mother, but lady, a title which in the Greek was used for queens. So He was showing a distance, no longer mother, but lady, a very important person, a queen. And he said my hour is not yet come, you want the full revelation of myself but this is not the time nor the place. So in His calling, in His divine and messianic rule our Lord acknowledged no earthly relatives, neither mother nor brother, sisters, only the believing as we read in Matthew 12:46-50. His hour for the full revelation had not yet come. In the eighth chapter of John we have a sentence: “And no man took Him because His hour had not yet come” and John 13: “Knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of the world and on the cross” and John 17: “Father the hour is come”, His hour was the passion and the resurrection, His hour was the beginning of the new creation with His own resurrection. Mary understood. The miracle was not refused but neither was self-revelation, only the fullness is not yet to be manifested.

And so she said ‘whatsoever he tells you to do, do it’. She addressed this as verse six tells us to the servants, or more literally, the deacons. Not servants but friends helping. And there were there a number of water pots, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Now these jars therefore had considerable capacity, two or three firkins, that is, each being eight and a half gallons, each jar therefore could hold between seventeen and twenty five gallons of water. Six jars had therefore the total capacity of between one hundred and one hundred and fifty gallons of wine. We are told this to emphasize the greatness of our Lord’s miracle. Fill the jars, He told them, to the brim, make it apparent as it is filled to the very brim that it is only water. Now it was routine in Israel to cut wine with water, fifty percent, this is an interesting fact because this custom continued by the Jews over the centuries and by many churches in communion by cutting the wine with water, fifty percent, has behind it an amazing awareness of a hygienically fact. The water in antiquity was commonly polluted, it was therefore a health hazard to drink it, but the Jews always cut it fifty percent with wine which rendered it very difficult to get intoxicated in Israel on wine and it rendered the water safe to drink. This was a habit, as I say, that continued over the centuries, which combined with their dietary laws, which of course are still binding, meant that over the centuries the Hebrews and then the Jews have had a remarkable immunity to diseases.

And this created a problem in the Middle Ages in the times of the black death because everyone was dying of the plague and the Jews were not. They got blamed for supposedly poisoning the wells and that sort of thing but it was their dietary laws and their habit of drinking wine cut fifty percent by water as their water and their wine. It gave them a tremendous health advantage. And our Lord then said after they filled the water pots ‘draw out now and bear unto the governor of the feast’, the master of ceremonies at the wedding and they bear it.

“9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.”

This, the first miracle of the new covenant, had a tremendous inner meaning. Do you remember the first miracle of Moses, he turned the water of Egypt into blood, an administration of death. But our Lord comes as the dispenser of the true wine which makes glad the heart of man, which here symbolizes the whole work of our Lord: making heaven out of earth. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, exactly the same: a new paradise of God to be created by His followers out of the old wilderness of the world.

It was a prophesy of the world’s regeneration by our Lord and through the ministry of His servants. And when His hour shall have come indeed who is Himself the true bridegroom and the true vine, I am the vine, ye are the branches, He said, even as His church is declared by Paul to be His bride. This is the calling of the Christian community. Christ is here revealed as the one who honors the bond of holy marriage and the whole of the natural life, both because He created it and blessed it and because it sets forth His own relationship to His people. He is celebrated in this miracle as the giver who gives lavishly, both of things spiritual and things material, both to fulfill our needs and to crown our joys. How wrong it is that people pray to God as though He were stingy. Dorothy found years ago that it was like having someone scratch on a blackboard and create a sickening squeal or squeak to hear someone pray at a prayer meeting as though God were stingy, saying Oh Lord, would you just give us this little thing, just give us that, as though God were stingy. What a horrible way to approach God. Christ is here revealed as the one whose infinite love is backed by His infinite power and as the one who is full of grace and glory, as the renewer of all things, the beginning of the regeneration of all things. We have here set forth the glorification of the world in His new creation and He is the first fruits of the new creation, we are members, citizens, of the new creation with our rebirth and we have a calling to bring all things and put them under the dominion of Christ our King.

To speak the word of God to all things as prophets in Christ, summoning all things to the obedience to the King of Kings and as His priests, priests of the great high priest to dedicate ourselves, all that we have, the whole of creation, to Him and to His glory. The regeneration of all things is typified in this miracle. It is called the beginning of miracles, the alpha and the omega of miracles, which sets forth all the miracles of Christ culminating in the new creation. And it reveals this that the church in our generation has sadly forgotten that our life in Christ is to be one of joy. In the world ye shall have much tribulation, of course, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world, so in the face of tribulation, much tribulation, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. And as He tells us in John 16:24:

“ Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”

Not simply that your needs may be supplied, that your joy may be full. Ours is not a stingy God. John Newton in one of the greatest, if not the greatest hymn on prayer ever written concluded with these magnificent words:

“Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much, none can ever ask too much.”

Let us pray.

Be merciful unto us oh Lord for we have so often treated Thee as one like as unto ourselves, stingy in giving, withholding of ourselves. But Thou who hast given Thy only begotten son to die for us will do yet more and care for us. And so we beseech Thee our Father to hear the unspoken prayer of everyone here present. Hear and answer our prayers oh Lord that our joy may be full in Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] We are to obey God by believing in Him, by obeying His law and by obeying His summons that we cast all our cares and our needs and our hopes on Him. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] No, yes. It is true that the word for grape juice and wine is one and the same but in antiquity there was no way of creating what we call grape juice. In a matter of hours it would begin turning in that climate to wine. So it was wine almost at once and there was just no escaping that fact. Yes?

[Question] What would pollute the worst in those days?

[Rushdoony] Oh just the same sort of thing that pollutes the waters today, after all, consider the fact that there were cattle, sheep, goats, everything else drinking in the water, standing in the streams and a great many other things that worked to pollute the water. So water drinking was quite risky and this is why of course when armies were on the march in antiquity they carried wine.

We know from historical records that the armies of Cyrus the Great avoided diseases on the march by carrying red wine because red wine in particular has qualities that help kill a variety of bacteria and since most infections come through the digestive system this was all important to armies from the days of Cyrus, the first record we have, and it was an established practice currently even then to our troops in Italy in World War Two. Where they suddenly had to requisition a lot of wine to take care of the some of the sicknesses that began to spread.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes but you see what she in effect was asking was this is a good occasion given what marriage typifies in our faith for you to declare yourself the great bridegroom of God. And He said mine hour is not yet come, He didn’t refuse her in the implied thing we need a miracle here. And she understood that so she told the servants, do as He tells you to do. So this was a relative almost certainly because Mary had some inside knowledge and authority in the kitchen. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes they kept water on hand for a variety of purposes including ritual purification, for example, before they sat down to eat and at one point the disciples were criticized by the Pharisees for failing to wash their hands whenever they sat down so water was always kept handy for a number of things. Water was kept available so that a guest could have a servant come by and take off his sandals, wash and dry his feet. So there were a number of purposes for which great big containers of water were kept available.

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Scripture records it because it tells us that He not only turned water into wine but the very best wine which is all that our Lord could do, anything He did had to be the best. So it in a sense is told to make clear that it was not only a great miracle but a very good one. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good, that’s an echo of Genesis 1, God made all things good and the summation very good. And here the one who John tells us in the first few verses by Him were all things made and without Him was not anything made, well, He turned water into wine and it was good, the very best. Yes?

[Question] Well several times in the gospels Christ would say when He healed someone, now don’t go tell anyone, well in here He didn’t want this to be a big public display of who He was, why was that?

[Rushdoony] Well because He did not want to deflect His work to miracles instead of the message. So that He would have been already He was by too many as the word got around who came to be healed, but the center was to be the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God and the great act of atonement that was to usher in the new world, the new humanity. He was as Paul tells us the new Adam, creating a new humanity for a new creation. He was the beginning of the new creation of God.

[Question] I hadn’t thought of that before, that it’s like the charismatic movement and the evangelical movement, how their big draw is the performing of miracles to pull people in and the word is frequently secondary to them. So it’s really in direct opposition to….

[Rushdoony] Everything is secondary to the recognition of who He was. That was the center. And they both thought He was but they were trying to fit Him into an earthly kingship of Israel over the world. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is almost over so let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father it has been good for us to be here for Thy word is truth and Thy spirit by Thy sovereign grace in dwells within us to lead us to all joy in Christ. Our God we thank Thee and now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.