Invite, Obey, and be Amazed

Invite, Obey, and be Amazed
John 2:1-10
May 19, 2024

     In John we read this wonderful story about Jesus being invited to a wedding with his mother and his disciples. Jewish weddings were a little bit different than the weddings we have today. Their wedding celebrations were more than an hour. It could last a few days.

     We see that as the wedding festivity was going on, the wine at the wedding ran out. This could be quite an embarrassment for the bridal party, as, in those days, the rabbis associated wine with joy. So, in the eyes of the people, this could cast a shadow over the future of their marriage. It could be seen as a sign that they don’t care and that they’re not joyfully entering into this covenant well prepared.

     Mary then came to Jesus and asked Him for help. Jesus has an interesting response. He said, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour is not yet come.” Some scholars say that this signified that He, by not calling her mother in this instance, showed that the dynamics of the relationship had changed.

     Mary did not get special favors because she was a blood relative of Jesus.

     Jesus stated in Matthew 12:49, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

     He also said that His time has not yet come. What does that mean? We will delve deeper into this.

     Jesus ends up doing His first miracle at this wedding. It turned out to be quite a significant event showing us facets of who Jesus was and is.

     This gives us confidence in His faithfulness. It stirs faith for when we go through unforeseen setbacks and unexpected things that happen in life.

     We do see that the ones involved in this wedding also had their part to play. Some had to obey, believe, stand in faith, and ultimately be blessed by this miracle.     

     God is always growing our faith as He reveals facets Himself, His amazing faithfulness, and goodness. We will see, for us to see change, we need to invite, obey, and then we will stand amazed at what God can do.

I. Invite Jesus into Your Life

• The first principle to see God being active in your life seem so obvious, yet many don’t do it. If you would ask people if they would want God to do amazing things in their lives, I’m sure most people would excitedly want this.
• Yet, for Jesus to be active in your life, He needs to be invited into your life.

A. Invite Jesus into everything

• We need to understand what this invitation looks like. Many think they can ask Jesus to be their savior, but they want to stay lord of their own lives. They want to make all the choices and shut God out of their lives. But when things go wrong, they blame God.
• When we are true followers of Jesus, He is part of everything in our lives. Not only as a minority stake holder, He becomes our lives.

Gal 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;

• It is a wonderful privilege to have Jesus as the captain of your ship. Without Him, one soon realizes that life can get very messy if we are in control. He knows best and knows the best for us.
• But it is a choice. He does not crash the party uninvited. He needs to be invited.
• If this couple did not invite Jesus to the wedding, this miracle would’ve never happened. Them inviting Jesus became the precursor to something amazing happening.
• This has a very practical application. Have you invited Jesus into everything? Is He invited into your marriage. Not as a one-time witness when you stood before the altar with a pastor on your wedding day, but is He invited into every day. Is He invited into your fun times, sad times, intimate times, even times when you disagree.
• Is your marriage, husbands, built on His example of love as He loved the church and, wives, are you responding as the church does to the love of Christ?
• Is he invited into how you raise your kids? Are you following the principles of the word, or do you see the words of God as archaic and irrelevant, rather trusting the humanistic modern new age way of letting them have free reign?
• Is He invited into your work? Do you lean on Him for wisdom in difficult decisions?
• How about relaxation? Do you take a break from “Jesus stuff’ when you are on vacation?
• The truth is that His presence makes EVERYTHING beautiful.

Ecclesiastes 3:11, He has made everything beautiful in its time.

• Even if it takes us through ups and downs, we can still say, it is good, because Jesus is in it.
• Do you acknowledge Him and trust in Him in all of your ways?

Proverbs 3:5, Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.

B. You are important to Jesus

• Here we also get a glimpse into what was important to Jesus. Just the fact that Jesus was there says something about who He was. We need to see this in context.
• Jesus was just confirmed as the son of God by John the Baptist. The most crucial life-changing movement of all eternity was about to start.
• If this was driven from a human election campaign viewpoint, it would’ve looked very different. The campaign manager would’ve scoped out where the most influential people were. He would’ve made appointments and set up photo opportunities with all the important people.
• He would’ve gathered the crowd and determined by polling what the most effective miracle would be to set his candidate on the center stage.
• If you were the son of God that came to change the world, you might have been tempted to do it this way. Thank God that His ways are higher than ours.
• Jesus shows His heart by choosing to spend His time being personally engaged with the common people.
• This became the pattern for His time here on earth. On the eve of the start of His ministry here on earth, He spends time at a wedding.
• Why? Because people are important to Jesus. What is important to them, is important to Him. You are important to Jesus.
• Many people say that they don’t want to bother God with their lives. They think God is too busy. They think He doesn’t have time for them.
• They make assumptions of God viewed from a human perspective that is unfounded. God is never too busy for you.
• God doesn’t have limited resources and limited time and limited power that He needs to spread thin to get everything done. He loves you and you are the apple of his eye. He loves spending time with you.
• Jesus also told Mary that this was not His time. What does that mean? This was not the setting to declare His glory.
• In the following days many miracles would come. Jesus would cleanse the temple, make profound statements, heal the sick, cast out demons. He would demonstrate that the kingdom of God was at hand that He was the King of that kingdom.
• But this evening was a time for fellowship with friends, family, intimate quality time sharing in the joy of the people. He was just being with people for the sake of being with them, not for what they needed or what He could do for them.
• This was the whole purpose from the beginning with Adam and Eve.

Illus – I am sure that you might’ve seen a movie with the following plot before. The multimillionaire meets a girl who doesn’t know that he’s a millionaire. He keeps a secret from her as he starts to date her, sharing with her the simple things in life. She falls in love with him for who he is, and then after this, he reveals the full scope of who and what he is. The reason is this: it is difficult for a millionaire to know if someone loves him for who he is or if it is for his bank account and what that entails.

• I think this is one of the times when Jesus was just fellowshipping with people and them being with Him just for who He is. After this evening, many people started following Him for what He could do for them. Primarily His heart is to be in a loving intimate relationship with people.

Illus – “Jesus you don’t owe me anything…”

II. Whatever He Says, do it

     Although Jesus made the statement that it was not his time yet, he still silently impacted the wedding without making a big thing about it. It shows his heart.

     His miracles were not focused on fame, it was to impact the lives of people personally as we saw so many times after this event.

     We do, however, see principles at work even in this first miracle. Jesus challenged those involved with obedience and faith.

A. Fill to the Brim

• Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus would tell them to do. In other words, obey His command whatever He says.

Illus – Sometimes kids just have to trust their parents, knowing that they see the bigger picture…

• Sometimes we don’t understand why God tells us to do something. We are not asked to understand, we are asked to obey and to trust that He knows best. We trust in His love for us and His faithfulness.
• He told the servants to take the water pots used for the Jewish custom of purification and fill them with water. There were six of them containing between 20 and 30 gallons each.
• Then the Bible gives us an interesting fact. It says that they filled them to the brim. This gives us insight into their attitude. They could have done it half-heartedly, just filling it three quarters.
• Now again, you need to put yourself in the middle of the story. Imagine what this looked like to the servants. The wine was finished, and Jesus tells them to fill the pots with water.
• They could’ve thought that this is not the right thing to do. Why fill the water pots used for cleansing? Most of the guests are already there. We don’t need more cleansing water. We need more wine.
• They might’ve thought that they had better ideas on how to fix this problem. Why not quietly go to some of the wealthy people, take up and collection, and go buy some wine at the market?
• How many times do people think that they have better ideas than God? God tells them to do something, and they think they know better.

Illus – We see this in the story of Naaman who was a leper…

2 Kings 5:13, “My father, had the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”

• God doing amazing things in your life might not exactly look the way you planned it or the way you thought it was going to happen.
• These servants didn’t question Jesus. They obeyed, but not only that, they filled it to the brim. It showed their attitude. They didn’t halfheartedly follow the directions of Jesus. They did it wholeheartedly.
• People who do things wholeheartedly show a few characteristics. It shows positivity. It shows energy, pro-activity, a joyous expectant outlook.
• Isn’t this the type of character that God is building in us as we stand in faith? Having joy in the midst of trouble. Staying positive and trusting God. Doing everything we do as unto God with integrity, excellence and a good spirit.

B. Stand in Faith

• Until this moment, all they had to do was obey. But then came the faith challenge.
• Jesus told them to take some of this water from the pot and go serve it to the headwaiter. Now again, let’s step into the story. Can you imagine their confusion? You want us to do what? Take the water from the cleansing pots and serve it to the headwaiter? Are you kidding me Jesus? They are going to laugh at us! We are going to look like fools!
• Remember they had no point of reference that Jesus was able to do miracles. This was the first one! They simply had to trust in His command and follow His directions blindly.
• Have you ever had to follow God in faith without understanding what He was doing? The thoughts might start to creep in: God, are you setting me up to fail?
• The enemy starts to gnaw at your faith, saying: you can’t trust God. He’s going to take you to the edge of the precipice, and then leave you hanging. All the people are going to laugh at you. You are going to be disgraced.

Illus – There is a trust building exercise called a trust fall. It is used in teambuilding exercises to help build trust in your fellow teammates.

• Sometimes God asks us to trust Him and fall into His love and grace. The reason for this is so that He can show you that you can trust Him. He will not leave you to hang out to dry. Our God is faithful.
• We can never grow our faith if we don’t experience challenges. The greater your faith needs to grow, the greater the challenge has to be. The ones in the Bible with the greatest calling, had the greatest faith challenges.
• Faithful you are, faithful forever you will be.

C. From ordinary to spectacular

• Then something amazing happens. The water is turned into wine. And not any wine, but the best wine.
• Nobody knew about this miracle. The only people who knew, was Mary and the servants who followed the directions of Jesus and acted on faith. They received a great blessing. They were part of the first miracle of the Messiah.
• There is a beautiful picture hidden in what Jesus used to perform this miracle.
• The water in the pots were used for purification which was required by the law. It became a mundane, ordinary, commandment that became part of the normal day-to-day routine.
• Nobody came to the feast focused on washing their feet with the water in the pots as the main event.
• Jesus used the mundane, watered-down, most boring thing in the room to do something spectacular.

2 Corinthians 4:7, But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;

• When we give our lives to Christ to use for His glory, He does what He did with these ordinary pots. We become these earthen vessels that carry the glory of God. He brings change on the inside through the power of His Spirit.
• When we offer ourselves to Him, He will do something amazing with us. From our insides will flow streams of living water resulting in the joy of the Lord. From our insides will flow the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit impacting others.
• God wants to write a beautiful story with your life. The challenge you’re facing now, is not the end. It sets the stage for God to do something amazing.
• Remember, God was at work even when the bridal party didn’t see it and even when the rest of the guest didn’t know about it.
• For change to come, we need to change.

Matthew 9:16-17, But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

• Something new cannot come while you are holding on to the old. For change to come you cannot stay in the old status quo of your own lordship. Jesus needs to be invited in.
• You need to obey what he says and believe. This is repentance. Repentance is not a one time event where I turn to Jesus. Repenting means to turn around. What area in your life needs to be turned around to follow Jesus? What do you need to be obedient in and start believing God for?
• Nothing will change if we don’t change. Our expectation needs to change. Maybe God is allowing a situation in your life so that you can surrender it to Him and trust Him, and grow you through it.

 Illus – We are in the middle of our green card process…

• “Even in the Silence…”