006 - Waterpots

When you pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.

Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, do you ever feel like the questions you ask are just stupid?

Yeah, but you know what? There really are no stupid questions. There are no stupid questions. As long as they make you think. If you don't know what's going on, ask a question. Ask a question. So when we read the Bible, we need to do exactly the same thing.

Yeah. So today, as we take a look at John 2, we're going to ask some questions. And it'll make us think on More Than Ink. Hi, welcome. I'm Dorothy.

This is More Than Ink. And I'm Jim. We're glad you're back with us and I hope you took our challenge last week to read John 2 because we're going through John together. And we hope you read the end of John 1 first.

That's right. Read the end of John 1. You get John the Baptist. You get a handful of disciples. And Jesus doesn't have his full complement of disciples when we get to chapter 2 today. And you get that hugely important statement by the witness, John the Baptist, saying, there's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Right. He says that twice. And by the way, if you're confused about who John the Baptist was, he was mentioned in the Old Testament as a forerunner.

The forerunner. To come before. So he's like, if you ever watch a live TV show when they record, they always have a comedian come out before they actually take the show. Yeah, a warm-up guy.

Warms up the audience. Well, John the Baptist is the warm-up guy. He's there to give you an understanding of this guy who's coming. But he's not the guy. Jesus is the guy.

Right. Yeah, so that's what we're going to look at today. So we actually start his public ministry with five disciples. And I'll pick up some more as we go on.

So we're going to look at John 2 today. And we're at a wedding. Who doesn't love a wedding?

Weddings are great. Yeah. So this is a fascinating passage for one thing because you just read this and you read through it and you go, okay, that was kind of crazy.

But then you ask yourself, why is it here? So what? Yeah. So do you want to read some of the passage? Do you have it there? Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. We can just get us into it. Okay. So I'll start reading at the beginning of John 2.

There you go. On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also was invited and his disciples to the wedding. So he already had disciples at this point. He had some guys. Yeah, but they were identified as his followers.

They were identified with him. Yeah. And when the wine gave out, oh no, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. That's interesting in itself. Keep reading. Okay. And Jesus said to her, woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, whatever he says to you, do it.

Do it. Now there were six stone water pots set there for the Jewish custom of purification containing 20 or 30 gallons each. Jesus said to them, fill the water pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, draw out some now and take it to the head waiter.

And they took it. And when the head waiter tasted the water, which had become wine, and didn't know where it had come from, but the servants who'd drawn the water knew, the head waiter called the bridegroom and said to him, every man serves the good wine first. And when men have drunk freely, then that which is poorer. But you have kept the good wine until now. This, the beginning of his signs, Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested his glory.

And his disciples believed in him. Bingo. A great story. Yeah. But isn't it odd? Yeah, what's odd about it? I mean, because if you characterize this against all the other miracles he does and the rest of John or the other gospels, they're mostly all about healing people.

And this is like almost all, almost all healing people. Maybe. There's a few others. But I mean, to start off, I mean, if I was going to write the Bible myself as a fiction piece, I wouldn't start with this. This is an odd story. But it does attract your attention.

It does attract your attention. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't explain itself. No, and so the study skill we're going to talk about today is asking questions.

Ask a question. How to ask a good question of the text because the writer has included details for a particular reason. He could have told us how many people were at the wedding. He could have told us who's wedding it was.

Who's wedding it was. He could have told us a lot of other details. But we know where it was.

We know the mother of Jesus was there. But how do we ask a good question of the text that will cause us to think about it in a way that will lead us in a fruitful direction? Yeah, so this is one of the wonderfully fun things to do when you're exploring the Bible is if you're reading it and you've got a piece of paper by your side and a pencil, you can just write down questions like, well, wait a second.

And it's not irreverent. I know a lot of people think, well, if I just read the Bible and say, well, it's what's there. So I just accept what's there because it is the Bible after all.

Well, yeah, it is. But you have to realize, remember last week we said that John's writing with a purpose. So he included the story with that purpose. He's intending to provoke a question.

He's intending for you to go, well, who is this guy? And like in a good storytelling fashion, you never give all the details as you go. You leave some open holes, which draws the listener to think more critically about what's going on. I mean, that's just how you do it. So if you were doing this and you had a piece of paper next to you, feel free to write down questions. Like, I don't get it. I hope you did.

Yeah, because that would help. I mean, even something just as simple, observational questions like, well, whose wedding is this? Because he doesn't tell us that. Whose wedding is this? And you know, a lot of false religions will claim, well, it was Jesus' wedding. Well, now, no, wait, no, no, it doesn't say. If it was Jesus' wedding, I think he would have said something. So, but anyway, and is that a relevant question?

I don't know, but just put the question down. So, you know, one of the first times I read this story, I wrote down a bunch of questions and let me just share some of the questions I had and this will lead you into a fascinating discovery process if you ask questions and scratch your head and wonder. That's why exploring the Bible is just a blast to do. So, like, for instance, one of the first questions that came to my mind was, why didn't he just refill the wine skins? Because if you know the ancient culture, they had wine skins, they were animal skins, and you'd put the wine in that and you'd pour out of them and, you know, it's out of town. I mean, why didn't Jesus say, hey, bring me all the empty wine skins and I'll just fill them up.

Poof, just like that. So, why the water pots is your question? Why the water pots? Why the water pots? Why not just fill up the wine skins? That would be a really natural thing.

And so, from someone in that culture, they would see that that was a very deliberate action, a really strangely deliberate action. And we even know the number of the water pots. Why are we told there were six? Yeah, so that brings up a question, why six water pots? And we know that it's near the end of the wedding party, so the need for the wine is still there, but it's probably not as large as it was at the beginning. So, you know, you might make a lot of wine at the beginning, but at the end, you don't even make a lot of wine. But now, come on, these water pots are huge, you know.

They hold twenty gallons a piece and there's six of them. Right, and even the head waiter in the story says, you know, well, usually you save the good stuff first when people can still taste it. And then later when they're drunk, because when you bring out the cheap stuff.

When they're not discerning, give them the cheap stuff, they won't be able to tell. But you have brought the best stuff out at the end. What the heck?

What's going on? So, why do really good wine, for one thing, and why make so much at the end? I mean, it's like almost two hundred gallons. It's a lot of wine.

It's a lot of wine. So, why do that? I mean, why top off the water pots? Remember he says, fill them up. Fill them up. Now, they're not filling them with wine, they're filling them with water. Because they had used some out of them in order to wash their hands.

Right, so he says, before I'm going to do what I'm going to do, psst, go over there. Fill them up. Fill them up. Yeah.

Why do that? I don't know. But write down your question. Here's another question.

There's this fascinating interaction between Jesus and his mother. Yes. She seems to assume that he's going to do something about it and that he can do something about it.

Right, do something about it. And he does. Yeah, and why would she think he could? Because we know that his training growing up was as a carpenter.

It's not like he's going to build a table. Yeah, but she knew who he was. She knew more than that.

So, she's telling us she knows more about who Jesus is than we know so far. So, she presumes he can do something about it. And his response is interesting. He doesn't do anything. At least he gives her the impression he's not going to do anything.

He responds to her in a really interesting way. Women, what have you to do with me? What have I to do with you? Right. And says my time hasn't come yet. So, golly, what does that mean? Yeah, you're pulling me into this, but it's premature.

Premature in what way? Is it? What? So, you know, you wonder in a sense, is this his mom giving him permission to actually take a step into ministry? Yes, in a public way. In a public way. In a visible way, yeah. Okay, so we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves there.

But those are, I mean, something you should be asking yourself, you know. And why is it near the end of this that the true source of the wine is kind of kept secret? Well, the disciples know. The disciples know and as a result they believe. And the servants know. The guys who are handling the pots know and stuff like that. So, it's, yeah, but clearly at the end of the story, again, if I was writing a fictional Bible at the very end of the story, I'd have Jesus hop up on the table and say, okay everybody, I've made all this extra wine for you and I'm the one that did that, so have a great party, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You do something with a really big splash, flights and lights and fireworks to start your ministry with. Yeah. But this is not that.

He doesn't do it. So already John's telling us something about this one who came. Yeah, so interestingly enough, all the other miracles that Jesus does in the Gospels, it says that he does them so it'll kind of give him credibility, give him credit for the people who see him. And so they'll say, well yeah, okay, you know, judge me based on what I do.

You know, I raise people from the dead, I heal people. So they're meant to be very public. They're meant to be demonstrations. But here it's not really a public event, but some private people like his disciples.

But it's a party. Yeah. It's a celebration of a new life beginning, really. When people get married, they're declaring publicly I'm entering a new way of life. Yeah. So it's really interesting that the Lord would do this. Yeah. First miracle at a wedding.

At a wedding. Yeah, exactly. So if you make a list of these questions, I guess the issue is if you're learning how to study the Bible, so how do you chase them down? You know, how do you find out what goes on with these things? How do you do this? And you could actually just go to a commentary. Don't do that.

Commentaries will try and answer all the questions for you. But yeah, we recommend you don't do that first. Don't do that first because then you don't take the time to explore your own thinking and give the spirit time to direct your thinking.

Right. You just automatically jump to what somebody else has thought. And I'm not saying that that's wrong, but it's better if you regard... It can be a good check. It's better if you regard a commentary as a check later, like have I wandered into something weird to check yourself against the thinking of those who've been studying longer and processing more deeply, perhaps. But save that. Don't immediately go to the commentary. Just linger in your own questions and ask the Lord and begin to kind of put two and two together because that's what John intended for you to do. Yeah, yeah. And many times your questions come from the fact that you are not living in the skin of people that live in first century. So one of the first steps you can do is say, well, what about this whole event is something that they would understand that I don't understand. So for instance, one of them is the water pots.

Okay. And so there's these six water pots. By the way, it says specifically they're stone water pots. And John's drawing your attention to something specific that everyone seemed to know at the time was that households had these stone water pots. Now they had vessels that held stuff.

They used animal skins for wine, but they also had ceramic pottery pots that held stuff too. We see those, amphoras and stuff like that. So these stone water jars are a great curiosity to us. Why would they have gigantic...

I mean, they're big. Big jars made out of stone. And so if you have a way of researching into that and finding out why would they have these gigantic jars? Why don't they have clay jars?

What are these there for? And they hold water. We know they hold water. Well, and water for a specific purpose.

Water for a specific purpose. The Jewish right of purification, which is a specific way of washing. Washing your hands. Right. And we often miss it because in modern times we wash our hands before we eat. So what's the big deal with that? This season we wash our hands a million times a day. But this is for ceremonial reasons as well.

And it did coincide with meals and stuff like that. The stone jars, when you go and you read up about those, the stone jars, the belief in the early first century was the fact that stone was a special material that was kind of impenetrable to bad things. So if you had to have pure water, and pure water is important for the ceremonial stuff coming up, if you have pure water, you don't want to put it in icky things like ceramic jars. You want to put it in a pure container. We would put it in a pure glass container or something. So for them the pure container was stone.

And there was a whole industry in Jerusalem and throughout Israel at the time where these guys would carve out these gigantic chunks of limestone. I mean big. Like two by four feet cubic. I mean big chunks. And they'd rack them up on this big lathe and they would cut this big jar out of them.

I mean it was a huge effort to do this kind of thing. Just so you could guarantee that this water that's used ceremonially was in a pure container. Would stay clean.

A container that didn't absorb impurities. Exactly. So it's really a big deal. So there really is no question when someone hears this story in the first century they say, oh well that's the water pots that hold the ceremonial water which is the purest water that we use for cleaning blah blah blah blah blah. So Jesus decides to wreck the rhythm of their lives by replacing that water with wine. Now that's very disruptive.

I mean it seems deliberately disruptive don't you think? Well for one thing you're not going to wash your hands with wine. No.

No. And so I mean it's a nice alternative place to put wine for the wedding. I get that. But clearly they're not going to drink that much wine before the end of the wedding. But it is very disruptive. It would be least disruptive if he just had put the wine back in the wine skins and just forget about the ceremonial water. But he deliberately basically gets rid of all the ceremonial water in the house by giving them a tremendous gift. By replacing it with wine.

By something very precious. So you know that ritual of purification was to clean the dirt off the outside. Yes. Right? Oh I hope that now that that two and two is beginning to fit together in your mind. Didn't Jesus talk about being clean on the outside but not clean on the inside.

Not clean on the inside. So we begin to wonder now if this passage is really telling us something about the nature of purification. Right. Right. And Jesus doing it kind of under cover a little bit. So and you know so if you run the story out it's okay so what. So they're pulling wine out of these stone jars.

What a crazy thing that is. But there's no one in the story that says that at the end of the at the end of the entire party that it reverted back to water. So our presumption is that at the end of the day and you know they're cleaning up the house and everyone's gone home. And they look in there and go man there's a lot of wine in here and who's going to drink all this wine for one thing. But worse than that the next time we have a meal we have to do ceremonial washing according to the elders. And the question arises do we do we wash our hands? Do we dump out Kings ransom in wine and refill it with water and will the jars be clean enough after wine's been in it?

Do we have to get new jars? I mean we're not going to throw away all that wine but we can't drink that much wine fast enough to fill it. I mean ah so all of a sudden these consequences show up the next day.

Now we're we are making a lot of ask a lot of questions that are off the page here. John doesn't tell us but we're left to puzzle over it and think about it and say that because of this thing that he did those five first disciples believed in him. Right right. So it's extending the passage a little bit it's fair to say we're speculating but but actually Jesus has done a deliberate disruption in their lives that's not speculation.

No. Because the next time they needed to do something ceremony cleansing they're not going to have water in the house and and they're not going to dump this wine out. I mean I'm not going to dump it out. They would be thinking about this for a long time. They would probably I've figured this out once if you do the math they would be drinking this wine for almost nine months if it's a if it's a small family. I mean it's a long time to drink this.

Or not a very big wedding party. Exactly. I mean they would they would every day be reminded of the fact remember that wedding we had months ago and Jesus came and he turned our water into wine and we're still having to deal with drinking this wine which is really good wine and the wine actually ages well in these but still. Let me tell you what they would have done with the water that was there because we find out again the culture there if if you read Mark's gospel Mark 7 verse 1 it says now when the Pharisees gathered to him and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem they saw that some of his disciples Jesus disciples ate with hands that were defiled that is they were unwatched and then Mark writes for us a parenthetical thought he says in verse 3 of Mark 7 for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly holding to the tradition of the elders and when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash and there are many other traditions that they observe such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches and the Pharisees and the scribes asked him why do you disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands.

Well and you can read the rest of that account Mark 7 but you can see this is the role of this water it was actually to satisfy the tradition of the elders. Right. It didn't have a direct connection to God's commandments to them it was a tradition of the elders.

Right. So could it be that Jesus' disruption is to deliberately disrupt something about obeying the tradition of the elders? Maybe and to replace that water that was used for external ritual purpose with something that's taken internally as a means of celebration. Right and if you read the other gospels Jesus takes the Pharisees to task later on saying you're like cups man where you clean the outside but the inside of the cup is dirty your insides are dirty. Well maybe that's what he's connecting to here too.

So you can write that down as a question on the side of the page and say I wonder if we'll get a little you know confirmation of that later on as we go down the pike. Well and something to think about is we know you know everybody knows that Jesus did stuff with water and said things about water. So in a couple of weeks we're going to come to John 4 where he says to that woman at the well if you had asked me I would give you living water. Real water. That wells up later on in John 7 he says I'll give you living water that wells up like a well inside you. So John in his very careful writing is he's setting that up right now.

Right. In the turning of the water into wine. So on your page say water so there's something specific about water and keep watching as it comes up.

And the difference between washing something externally and taking it internally. Now if you want to extend you know I'm going to keep watching for water what happens if we start keep watching for wine? Where does that show up? That will show up later.

It does show up later so just keep your eyes out for that. And for now all you have to remember is the fact that wine was an extraordinarily luxurious drink and to have nearly two hundred gallons of it is I mean that's like that's a lot of wine. So what Jesus does for this family he gives them a gift of extraordinary value. And wine speaks of celebration.

And celebration yeah yeah extraordinary value extraordinary celebration extraordinary joy and he gives it to him almost under the table. He does it so as not to cause a gigantic ruckus in all of this. So only a few people know. And yet you know anybody who was there at the wedding who was in the know is going to remember this event. Right. As things unfold later and this was right in his own neighborhood.

Cana is just up the hill from Galilee or it's in Galilee but just up the hill from Capernaum next to Nazareth. And a lot of relatives lived in the area maybe it was a relatives wedding. Yeah. So you know this was among the people who knew him. Right. So now that you're equipped as a first century person thinking about this you like the people in the story ask yourself the question that you're going to actually another question that you're going to try and answer as we go on in John which is is Jesus actually replacing a way of life we had with something that is much more joyful that's much more celebratory that's much more rich that's much more party like? I mean something that's just really great news.

And it's a great cost. I mean is he doing something he's radically shifting who we are and what we've done and replacing with something much much better. Is that what he's all about in his life? And if you remember back to John's introduction he said the law was given through Moses but grace and truth were realized brought into our real experience through Jesus Christ. And actually when you start to figure out what grace is what Jesus did by replacing that water with wine is tremendous grace. So this should raise a ton of good questions a lot of good who is this Jesus guy and why did he do this and is he trying to tell us something more than just the fact that we had a social problem when we ran out of wine. So turn on your mind when you're reading and ask these questions of the text John is telling us this story with these details for a reason and we have to actually stop and think about it. And for some of us these stories are so familiar we don't even see those details anymore. No.

So that's why I encourage you. And it doesn't evoke the question. Read it out loud read it slowly and then ask yourself hmm why that detail? Yeah yeah.

Why is that there? And is this more than just saying this is Jesus first miracle and we just need a miracle to establish who he is. Well that's true but the way this miracle is done is so deliberate and remember that everything Jesus does is extraordinarily deliberate. He's communicating something. He's communicating something because he is the word.

That's right. He's trying to tell us something and I think as I look at this that's what I'm struck by is the fact that he's taking an old life of obeying the tradition to the elders and he's replacing it with something that's very joyful, very celebratory, very costly, very luxurious and much much better than we could ever imagine. And he's doing it in such a way as to bless us in the process. How about that?

Yeah. It's just it's extraordinary. Every time I think about the beginning of John 2 I go back and I rerun this whole story in my head and I see other things about this is this is a very particular miracle that's not just needed to kind of underscore who Jesus is but to tell us something much much deeper about what he's all about. He came, John already told us, he became flesh and dwelt among us so we could behold his glory.

We could see who he is, his distinctive message that only he could speak. And so this is one, this is where John begins the story. It's interesting that no other of the Gospel writers include this. This is John telling us you know you need to know this is how it all began with this implanting this idea that that old way of cleaning the outside of the jar traditionally can be completely blown out of the water by an encounter with this one who will give you something celebratory to replace it.

A very welcome change of pace that's telling me something. In fact we don't think the apostles really caught all the import of what we're talking about here at the beginning. They believed so the miracle did that.

But did they actually catch what was in this message? And interestingly enough nowhere else in the New Testament does anyone try and explain the other meanings in this. It's as though John says you know wink wink if you lived in the first century you know what this means.

So it just takes us a little bit more time to ask these questions and chase down some of these questions and see where it takes us so we can put ourselves in the flesh of the people in the first century and go oh I think I see it. So next we come back with this we're going to go into John 3 and we want you to be with us in John 3. Very very famous chapter. Oh boy John 3. Yeah this guy who comes to Jesus in the middle of the night so no one can spot him and they have one of the most remarkable conversations in the entire Bible. Born again.

You must be born again. So we're going to take a look at that. So read John 3. So again take out your piece of paper read into John 3 act like you've never read it before because there's so much of it that you'll recognize and ask yourself questions about the text like we did with this wedding and then we'll just kind of jump on those ourselves as we come back next week.

Okay and don't skip over the part that comes after the wedding at Cana right before chapter 3 because John tells us that Jesus went straight from the wedding into the temple and cleansed the temple. So you know we may talk about that next week. Yeah. Come back. So we'll see you next week on More Than Ink. Bye. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments just go to our website morethanink.org. We'll see you next week.