Welcome to Leading the Way with pastor and author of more than 50 books, including his newest, God's Final Call, Dr. Michael Yusset. Imagine living in Israel when Jesus first began his earthly ministry. Stories about miracles were the talk of the marketplace. Buying food for the family would quickly become a discussion about the meaning of amazing things happening in the region. Well, today on Leading the Way, Dr. Yusset begins a series of messages unpacking powerful truths contained in these miracles, looking at what they reveal about Jesus and the kingdom of God.
Let's listen. You know, when it comes to the subject of miracles, you have some people who use the term very frivolously, lose something, and then they find it, oh, it's a miracle. This is a miracle. It's a miracle.
It's very frivolously used. And on the other extreme, of course, you have skeptical, cynical, unbelieving people in the supernatural intervention of God and the power of God, and they rationalize everything. And so that I'm commencing today a series of seven messages on the evidence of the exclusivity of Jesus. You know, the apostle John obviously was one of the last people to write the gospel according to John. By the way, it is not the gospel of John or gospel of Mark or gospel. No, no, it's the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark. It's the gospel of Jesus Christ according to John. John just recorded the gospel. And so he was the last one of the four gospel writers to record his evidence or his recollection and his understanding, guided by the Holy Spirit, of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. And obviously, he's been familiar with the other three, Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
But in his desire to give us a complete account, he lived to be in his 90s, in order to give us a complete picture as to the place of the miracles in the life of Jesus. He provided them in context that the others might call miracles, but he does not. He calls them simion. Can you say that word with me? Simeon.
Simeon. I'm going to explain that in a minute. Why did he call it simion and not miracle as the other gospel writers? Because John providing us with the fact that Jesus, who is no other than the great I Am, his signs, his evidence that he is the great I Am is those miracles that we talk about in the New Testament. So he gives us seven evidence of his exclusivity prior to the death and the resurrection of Jesus.
Seven. The biblical definition of a miracle or a sign or supernatural is God's intervening in the natural realm using his supernatural power to change things. That's the definition of biblical miracles. And Jesus, who is God in human body, demonstrated his supernatural power again and again and again. Hemorrhage, please. This is not a circus show of somebody who's calling himself a miracle worker or a faith healer or a magic trickster or a bait and switch. No, no, no, no, no.
Why not? The simions of Jesus are the absolute proof that he and he alone is the exclusive Savior and Lord. All of the others who come before him or after him are hypnotizers and mesmerizers. When Jesus demonstrated his supernatural power, it was to prove that he is none other than the expected Messiah. And that is why he had to demonstrate his power as God's anointed Savior. And he demonstrated his power over nature, over demons, over death, and over disease.
All of these were signs. That's what the word simion means, sign, evidence, that he not a way, he is the way. That he is not a truth, he is the truth.
He is not a life, he is the only one who's a giver of eternal life. And that is why John repeatedly, and you read it in his gospel again and again and again, the disciples saw and believed. The crowd was amazed and believed. He said that these signs or evidence were given to you so that you may believe. That is the importance of the signs. It is important for us, therefore, to understand that Jesus' supernatural act was not a sideshow. It was not a sideshow, but it has a definitive purpose.
What is it? That you may believe and believing in him, you further surrender your life to him and worship him alone. Can I get an amen? Turn with me, please, to John chapter 2, the first of these simions or evidence of the exclusivity of Jesus.
John chapter 2, the first 11 verses. This was the third days into his public ministry. Just been commissioned by the Father.
This is my beloved son. And on that third day of his commissioning, he was invited to this family wedding. This wedding presumably was one of some of a relative of Mary, his mother.
I'm going to explain that to you. In fact, some traditions say that the mother of the groom was Mary's sister. There's some old traditions that say that.
In any case, in any case, it has to be somebody related to Mary because that would explain the intensity by which she was trying to save face. That's a big word in the East, in the Orient, saving face. It's huge.
It's very, very important. And she's trying to save embarrassment of the family. You say, why should the groom's family would be embarrassed about this?
Well, what's this got to do with them? Time for cultural instruction here. Cultural explanation, OK?
Back to the time of Jesus. You have to understand this. Depending on the groom's father's financial ability, his son's wedding celebration festivities could go on from day or two to a week or two. If the groom's father does not provide adequately for this wedding festivities, it would be a scandal in the whole village, in the whole neighborhood, everybody around within miles. It's a scandal.
They would never live it down. Now, you need to understand the intensity of this situation here of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. There was not just, oh, isn't that a nice thing of Jesus to do? I heard a preacher one time say, isn't that a kind thing for Jesus to do? No, no, no, no. It's a whole lot more than that.
It's a whole lot more than that. Many of you have heard me teach through the years about Jewish weddings to understand the process. While the children are children, the parents of the boy and the girl get together and they said, well, when our children grow up, they will marry each other. Boy, sure takes a lot of pressure off. Our son will marry your daughter.
That was it. They're spoken for. They can't date. Actually, they didn't date. Then comes the abiding betrothal. When they're older, the betrothal is agreement, it's an engagement, but it's a lot more binding than just our engagement. And while during that betrothal time, the groom is busy building an addition in his father's house, an addition to the home so that he can bring his bride to it. And so when everything is ready, when the addition is finished being built, the bridegroom marches down Main Street and goes to the bride's father's home and he escorts her with a big celebration, music, and they walk to the father's house. And when they get to the father's house, he presents his bride to his father and she occupies the new addition and the celebration begin, the festivities begin. Sometime before the end of this festivities of this particular wedding in Cana, the wine run out. Running out of beverage in the Middle East festivities means the father of the groom is too poor to provide adequately for his son's wedding.
But that's not all. Goodness, if that happened, the gossip and the rumor mill just start going full blast all over the village. Did you hear what happened? Did you hear what happened?
Did you hear what happened? Everybody will be talking about it. And that's not going to be just an incident that's forgotten, you know, taken place and few weeks later it's forgotten. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This family shame will be talked about all the way to the next generation.
Are you with me? Mid-generations to come, this would be a scar on that family's name for years to come. Thirty or forty years later they will be saying, you remember what happened in the house of Shmuel or Yoseh, which you say in Hebrew. Remember what happened there? You say, but that was forty years ago. To them it happened yesterday. To understand Mary's intensity about this situation, the bride's father could sue the groom's father.
I'm getting into legal stuff now. In the West, we're too polite for this shenanigans, right? Am I right? We're too polite for that.
We just leave the wedding and get in our cars and we talk about how cheap the bride's father was. But a week later we forget it. But not so back then. Listen to me. I'm building this up for a reason. I'm building it up so you can comprehend the significance of the desperation of this need. It's not just, well, it's just an incident.
No. But before I get there and get to the evidence of the supernatural, the great I am, I want to stop for a moment and I want to clear some important observation, okay? I lived in three continents, actually four, but one was not for very long. And I ministered and I have seen. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard an excuse for consuming an inordinate amount of alcohol than a person literally half drunk says, oh, Jesus turned water into wine. I need to put something out to understand. I'm a teetotaler. You got that?
You got it? So I have no emotional involvement in what I'm going to say. I have no subjective involvement because I'm going to tell you what the scripture says, what the scholars have studied this have said. Those who have looked seriously into this issue have concluded that wine back then was three percent alcohol. Are you with me?
Three percent. In fact, Leviticus chapter 10 verse 9 makes a distinction between wine and strong drink throughout the scripture, but that's the beginning when God was giving his laws to Moses. In other words, 22 glasses of that wine will be equal to two martinis. Not out of experience. I'm just telling you that because that's what the scholars have said. I have health and other reasons why I'm a teetotaler.
But that's beside the issue. I'm just putting it out there so nobody will arrive like, Michael was rationalizing his drinking. I don't have drinking problem. I don't drink. Okay, you got that?
I know some people out there in hinterland going to be very sending some interesting notes. So when you hear somebody say, oh Jesus changed water into wine, therefore I can drink all the… No. No. Back to the first Simeon, now that I got this out of the way. Mary knew that her virgin born son is the Messiah. Mary knew what the angel told her when she was supernaturally fell pregnant as a virgin.
She remembered. Mary knew for the first 30 years of his life growing up that Jesus was God in human flesh. And Mary knew that he's the only one at this point who could save the family from shame and degradation and misery for years to come. Mary knew that Jesus is the only one who could deliver this family from a lifetime of being scarred and horror. Even though Jesus was reluctant to act because his acting might not be what Mary was expecting and for every reason to believe that she did not know what he's going to do. By the way, when Jesus addressed his mother Mary woman, some translation tried to be nice in English and said, dear woman.
Well, that's just interpretation. But that would be, just think with me, the term that he used and he used again at the cross is like we in the south would say, ma'am. It's a term of respect.
Term of respect. And yet Mary turned to the servants and says, do whatever he asks you to. She did not know. She most likely did not know what he will do.
But she told the servants to act at his command. Now, when you pray to Mary, let me tell you first of all, she can't hear you. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes your prayers and bring them out to the throne of God and in due course he brings the answer back. But even so, even so, it's a fact that the saints and Mary cannot hear us. They are in heaven. But even if you press me hard, what did Mary do?
What did she do? She told the servants to do whatever Jesus asked them to do. If this is an example of Mary's intercession, so instead of praying to Mary and to the saints who cannot hear you, you need to do what Jesus says to do. Don't try to go around the word of God. Don't try to go around God to the saints and to Mary. Don't try to go around the plan of God for your life. Don't try to go around the command of God in the word of God. Do what he tells you.
Do what he says. Do whatever he commands in his word. For that's where the answer to your prayer lies.
Obedience. Mary exercised confidence in her Savior that he will not let his children down, that he will spare them the scarring and the barring. And Jesus promised that never to leave us nor forsake us, and you need to take that to the bank that he will never leave you nor forsake you.
You can be confidence, and where your confidence will be is in the promises of Jesus. So Jesus tells the servants to fill those six jars to the brim. And these were used for purification.
That's for washing as you come in. And these were, as I said, six, probably 20 to 30 gallons, and that's a lot of beverage. So they filled them to the brim. And to the absolute astonishment of the emcee of the wedding, he's never tasted anything like this. He did not know what to make of it.
Listen to me. Not only were they spared the shame and the scar and the degradation, but they received the best of the best. And so the emcees gets the groom out and take him aside, and he asks the groom.
The groom really did not know, but probably was very happy to take credit for it. Beloved, don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever forget that here in this evidence, Jesus brought joy out of shame. Jesus literally pulled them back from the brink. Jesus saved them from shame and ruin of their reputation.
How did this happen? The exclusive Jesus went against nature as evidence of his exclusivity. He went against nature. C. S. Lewis, in his book of miracles, he said, in this particular miracle, he said Jesus simply short-circuited the natural process.
He short-circuited. And that is why in Cana of Galilee, the Lord of creation, for whom and through whom the world was created, the Lord of all nature, overleaped the elements of time and growth and harvesting and crushing and fermenting all in matter of seconds. Oh, beloved, only God in human body could have done this. Not the founder of a religion, not just a good teacher, not just a great ethicist as Richard Dawkins calls Jesus.
No. Only the master of creation could have accelerated nature. Our master, the master of creation, accelerated nature. Beloved, hear me right. Please hear me right. Only the exclusive Jesus can redeem you from shame to joy. Only the exclusive Jesus can redeem you from degradation to celebration. Only the exclusive Jesus can redeem you from the dumps to the highest heights.
Only he can exchange your drug jury for true happiness. Can I get an amen? I don't think I would be straining the application here of this miracle. I'm very careful of what I say, but I don't think I'm straining the application when I say that figuratively speaking, we all face times in our lives when we run out of the wine of life. The monotony of a housewife work, the burdens of a father's paying of bills, the disappointments in life, the hurts of life, the grief of life, the fear of criticism and rejection in life. But like Mary, listen to me, like Mary, do not run away from your circumstances.
Don't run away from the situation. But rather with confidence, allow the power of God to turn your stumbling blocks into stones of obedience. With confidence in God's supernatural power, we can turn our fear of shame and guilt into the sweet comfort of rejoicing in his plan.
In confidence in the power of God, we can turn our disappointment into his appointments. Almighty and glorious King can reverse whatever tragic trajectory that you might find yourself on right now. He can reverse that.
He can reverse that. Every almighty and powerful Savior can reverse what Satan intends for evil and bring good for you and good out of it. Thank you for making Leading the Way part of your day. And if you'd like to spend time with a Leading the Way pastor or counselor talking about what you heard today, or any other day, reach out to ltw.org slash Jesus. We stand at a crossroad of history, and we can walk through these doors of opportunities that God has opened for us, or we can do nothing.
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