Somehow the Lord has wine on his mind,
wineskin and now the wine, and I've been
a recipient of something precious this morning, but
it's a remarkable phenomenon that several hours later
you look at the same text and you
wonder if you were ever inspired.
Where did it go?
So may the Lord restore what was given
earlier today, not only restore it, but give
added dimensions that waits for the corporate examination
of this text and theme.
So Lord, we ask your remarkable supervision and
also provocation and stimulation to inspire questions, comments,
not to show ourselves off, but to bring
a fuller examination and a drawing out of
the riches and the deeps of this text
and the episode described therein.
So grant us, my God, that precious sovereignty
of your Spirit, and I'm not ashamed to
pray that what will take place this morning
over these tables and in this room will
be historic for all the Church.
A note struck of uttermost significance that has
waited for this hour, for this moment, and
dovetails and brings in all of the elements
of things that we have been discussing and
the things to which my own life is
being led has become a key of interpretation
of this text.
And that's characteristically prophetic.
So even as you're unfolding things, you're at
the same time giving us opportunity to glimpse
the prophetic thing in its operation, the very
phenomenon itself is being exhibited before us, even
as you lead us, my God, through these
remarkable themes and things that have been touched
and quickened.
Give us an avid ability to hang on
to every word and to see what it
is that is actually being performed in these
days before our very eyes, not just as
observers but equally as participants for the entire
Church is a prophetic phenomenon.
So we bless you, Lord.
And all of this requires such grace, such
mercy, such enablement that issues my God from
the throne of heaven and the very life
of God, resurrected, glorified, ascended, without which, Lord,
we would be as looking through that glass
darkly.
So come, Lord, grace upon grace.
You came full of grace and truth, for
you knew that without grace, the truth would
be impossible to discern, to recognize, to assimilate,
to take in.
Truth is requiring.
It takes grace of comparable measure with the
truth in your coming and even now in
your coming this morning.
And what we're asking is nothing less than
divine visitation.
And you're giving us the encouragement and the
courage to pray madly like that.
What, that you could take an ordinary morning
session and convert that into a visitation?
Not only can you, but you desire that
every session be that.
Nothing less.
So thank you, my God, for the expansive
prayers that we find ourselves praying that we
have to suspect are your own.
So if they're your prayers, you can equally
fulfill them.
And for that, we give you now the
praise, the glory, and the honor in Jesus'
name.
And all of God's people said, Amen.
On the third day, there was a wedding
in Cana of Galilee, obscure, nothing, little outpost
of all Israel.
And the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus and his disciples had also been invited
to the wedding.
Remarkable that he would condescend to come.
When the wine gave out, the mother of
Jesus said to him, They have no wine.
And Jesus said to her, Woman, what is
that to me?
What is your concern to me?
My hour has not yet come.
His mother said to the servants, Do whatever
he tells you.
How does it say in the King James?
Whatsoever he sayeth unto you, do it.
So precious Mary, Miriam, acting out of turn,
asserting her Jewish motherhood, trying to manipulate, trying
to extract something from her son, is chastened
by a son who is not afraid to
give her a stern reprimand of the kind
that Hamlet gave his mother, when she cried
out, Hamlet, no more.
If you know the play, and you should
know the play.
When she was wearing the locket, with on
the one side the picture of the husband
that was, and the other side, the husband
who now is, was the murderer.
The brother who murdered his brother in order
to obtain his throne and obtain his wife.
Hamlet, coming back from school, sees a vision
of his father as ghost, saying, I've been
murdered.
And so the whole play is the unfolding
of God's requitement and judgment and vengeance on
the perpetrator.
But there's a scene in which Hamlet confronts
his mother.
She's a sensual woman.
He accuses her of lying betwixt incestuous sheets.
Only Shakespeare could coin that.
And then she cries, as she begins to
get the point and can't take the truth,
it's too painful.
She cries out, Hamlet, no more.
You know, a mother's appeal, sentiment.
And he says, sometimes one must be cruel
in order to be kind.
Isn't that remarkable?
That almost deserves a place in scripture.
So we see Jesus very much in that
same mood and mentality.
Yes, there's a place for the respect for
mothers, but not the place where it touches
the holy things of God.
My hour has not yet come.
Don't make of me an accessory to your
motherly demand.
I'm not here for that purpose.
And then the remarkable thing is, he is
here, and he accommodates that purpose.
Isn't that just like the Lord?
But see whether she understood what she was
saying.
She said much.
Chasten, you know, sometimes the best things come
out of us in that condition.
Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.
That whatsoever is going to be a key
word in our understanding and interpretation of this
text.
For what does he then do?
Well, standing there with six stone water jars.
The third day, six water jars.
Don't miss the significance of numbers.
Third day, rising again.
Already a premonition and a foreshadowing of that
great third day.
Six is the number of men.
Six stone water jars for the Jewish rites
of purification.
Each holding 20 or 30 gallons, but not
full.
Only partial.
Jesus said to them, fill the jars with
water.
And they filled them up to the brim.
He said to them, now draw some out
and take it to the chief steward.
So they took it.
And when the steward tasted the water that
had become wine, he did not know where
it came from.
Though the servants who had drawn the water
knew, the steward called the bridegroom and said
to him, everyone serves the good wine first,
and then the inferior wine after the guests
have drunk their fill.
But you have kept the best wine until
now.
Jesus did this, the first of his signs
in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.
What will it be when he repeats this
as a final miracle?
The first is always a premonition and a
foreshadowing of the last.
And his disciples believed in him.
Maybe we can even say, and the world
believed in him.
When they shall see the reoccurrence and the
fulfillment of what is presaged and hinted at
here, they will become disciples and believe in
him.
And after this he went down to Capernaum
with his mother, his brothers as disciples and
so on.
So what do you make of that?
Miracle.
Huh?
A miracle.
Miracle, but what are the elements?
Why the remarkable thing that they had to
draw water out of a well and fill
up these six pots.
There's something melancholy about these six stone pots
for purification in keeping with Jewish practice, some
resonance of the law and of tradition.
And he employed that.
Why couldn't the water have been drawn right
from the well, right to the table?
No, the water had to fill up what
was only partial and incomplete.
And when it reached the brim, then they
would have drawn off and that became the
water turned to wine.
Good thing that those servants didn't ask any
questions because there's nothing to commend what they
were told to do logically.
Whatever he says unto you, do it.
He says go to New York, do it.
He doesn't have to explain himself, but in
the doing of it, something is set in
motion of the miracle of the last days,
like unto the first.
But the water pots have to be filled
up.
And the water is not wine, but it's
good for purification, serves the purpose of the
Jews at a certain level in their religious
practice and understanding.
But somehow, unless that is filled up to
the brim with water drawn out of the
well of salvation, it will not be turned
to wine.
And maybe, as I was sitting in the
little prayer circle that I thought still dwelling
on this, the water filling up maybe could
be something like they themselves don't realize the
implications and the significance of that measure of
things they now possess.
And something must come to them as increase
of that which they already have till it
reaches the brim.
There needs to be a fullness in what
they understand as Jews that comes from something
drawn out from the well of salvation and
added to what they already have.
He did not remove these stone things.
He did not supersede them.
He did not put it aside as no
longer necessary or finished in its purpose and
now something new in its place is to
come.
He used what was existing.
He only added to it.
But that addition transforms the whole substance of
what was within from water unto wine.
He's taking what is existing that had a
limited ceremonial and legal use but transforming it
into something utterly new by an addition.
And that addition is performed by servants who
will obey him without question and without asking
what does it mean or what sense does
it make.
Unless he has those servants at his disposal,
the miracle itself cannot take place.
And he's there but he's not a conspicuously
seen presence.
The steward who's overseeing the whole wedding doesn't
realize what the source of the new wine
is.
Doesn't realize that Jesus has set it in
motion.
He's just astonished to find that it's not
only wine but it's better than the wine
with which the marriage began.
And according to custom, and it has become
a proverb, the best wine is served first
and after people have drunk sufficiently and come
into a kind of stupor, then you can
serve an inferior brand and it's okay to
continue the party.
Remembering that these weddings ran for a week.
This is not just a one-nighter.
It had to sustain an entire company for
a length of time that required much wine.
What astonished the steward was that the last
one was better than the first.
We've got to probe this.
This is more than just the convenience of
a conveyance.
The use of what he employed is altogether
significant.
It has to do with Jewish, ceremonial, legal,
and traditional requirement, which we as Christians would
say is finished in the New Testament dispensation
and God has gone on to something new
and something other.
No, the new comes out of the old.
The new comes out of the existing.
What transforms water to wine is what has
been added into those stone pots, which we
would look upon with a certain amount of
disdain and maybe even disrespect.
He honored them, so to speak.
There's a place for it, but it's stale.
The water in there is stale.
It's inadequate.
It needs to be brought to the brim
by water that comes out of the wells
of our salvation and are added.
And then when it reaches the brim and
then is drawn off, it becomes the wine.
This is a miracle of a remarkable kind.
There's portent here.
We've got to probe and understand if the
first is an indicator of the last, what
will be the last day's miracle if the
Lord in his wisdom chose this as his
first, having to do with this traditional Jewish
setting and in the context of a wedding,
a celebration of rejoicing.
Wine is joy.
We're talking about a wedding last night, the
wedding feast of the bride, so something goes
together.
And yet the Lord, present but not conspicuous,
working through servants whose obedience is implicit.
He has only to say in order for
them to do.
And that's what his mother said.
Whatsoever he sayeth unto you, do it, even
if it contradicts all your categories, makes no
sense at all.
It seems unnecessary.
And why would he employ that?
And why doesn't he just directly turn the
wine right into the pitchers?
Why does he have to go through that
existing arrangement?
Every one of these things is enormously significant.
That's why I'm using the phrase, the well
of our salvation.
The water that's being added is something that
will come from us as servants.
It's not just water, water.
It's the water out of the wells of
salvation that transforms the existing stale, stagnant water
into something that becomes a life-giving source
as wine.
Something has got to come from us, from
what only we have access to.
And if we will draw it out and
invest it into the existing stone pot, most
of us would think that that's a waste
of time to have anything to do with
the existing stone pot.
After all, it's finished.
There's a New Testament that has replaced the
old, and these are just forms that need
to die away.
But no, the Lord is saying, take the
precious water of life, which has come to
you through your salvation, and add it to
what they already have.
For the adding that you will bring will
not only fill it to the brim, but
transform the substance of it into a new
substance called wine.
And unless you add it and use their
conveyance, the whole miracle has lost its foundations,
its possibility for fulfillment.
If you despise those stone jars, if you
want to pass them by and go directly
to a pitch or a casket or whatever,
it'll not be.
You've got to employ what is looked upon
by the Jews as legally and morally and
traditionally necessary waters of purification.
Only the Lord has gone far beyond their
understanding and their use to bring them into
another dimension in which there will be joy,
unspeakable and full of glory, a celebration to
end all celebrations.
Another thought is, water is often a symbol
of affliction and persecution.
Remember when the woman flees into the wilderness,
the dragon, in his frustration, pours out water,
a flood, that he could not devour her,
now he seeks to drown her.
And water is always a symbol of persecution,
and maybe what needs to be filled up
in Jewish experience to the brim are waters
of affliction.
And out of that will be drawn out
the wine of life.
So that's another possibility.
One of the commentators reminds us that this
is Mary's first contact or Miriam's first contact
with her son after his return from his
baptism in the Jordan and the Holy Spirit
coming upon him and the Father saying, this
is my beloved son in whom I'm most
pleased.
It's interesting, if this means anything to anybody,
that Inger is saying to me, something has
happened to you.
I can't put my finger on it, but
you're different.
I don't know when she came to that,
but I think there's a corollary.
Something happened to Jesus that was different that
his mother did not recognize until that moment.
Until that moment, he was still her boy
and ready to run an errand.
But when he said, my time is not
yet, woman, it's a very curt, always impolite
address.
The authority that was expressed and the sense
that must have come to her.
Oh, this is not the son that I
remember.
Something has happened to him.
He's speaking and giving evidence of an authority.
And I don't want to stretch this, but
maybe the church itself, if this miracle is
to take place, needs to come to a
comparable recognition.
Jesus has become only too familiar to us
and has become a kind of errand boy
to run our errands and do our bidding.
We need to recognize him in a new
kind of an awareness that releases him to
command those servants.
And so that also needs to be factored
into our appreciation.
When we had a little Shabbat communion with
the group that preceded you on a Friday
night, the Shabbat, and I told them as
I poured the wine into the little chalice
with a saucer that in orthodox practice, unless
the wine overflows the cup, it's not considered
a valid Kirush.
If it just comes to the brim, it's
not enough.
It's got to overflow.
What?
Yeah.
And so there's a remarkable sense of something
that goes back into the history and tradition
that is more indicative of our faith than
we know.
And they have retained it in their tradition.
See why there's so much treasure there for
us that will enhance our own comprehension of
our faith and then be able to explain
to them their own practices that they don't
understand.
And maybe this is part of the thing
of filling up those stone pots to add
more water.
There's water there, but it's limited, it's stale,
it's stagnant.
It's sufficient for the minimal ceremonial purpose, but
in order for it to be converted to
wine, something has to be added to what
they already have by servants who will obey
the Lord without hesitation and turn their own
water into a wine.
And maybe that's the purpose of our coming
to New York.
The Lord will give us a grace to
add anything out of the well of our
salvation, an interpretation of things of which they
already have, to add and to underline for
them the implication of that which they already
have in part until the full meaning will
reach the brim and flow over, they will
fall short of the revelation of the Lord
and the joy that comes with the new
wine.
And it goes back to the question of
what is Jesus even doing there?
This celebration is going to run a whole
week long.
Has he got that kind of time to
waste and to invest in just the kind
of, you know...
So unless the Lord is present at places
and times that we ourselves would question and
not ourselves be present, this whole thing would
not have taken place.
So he's in the ordinary aspects of life
and plays a role of such an inconspicuous
kind that no one really knew except the
servants what was the source of that miracle.
And I think all of these elements need
to be factored in as being indicative of
how the Lord is going to act in
the last days.
He'll be present.
And I hope you guys are reading me
right and not misunderstanding about this call to
New York as if I'm blowing it out
of all proportion.
But if it's not the Lord's coming, I
had best stay home.
So if the Lord is willing to come
into the traditional everyday life of that people
in order to factor in the miracle that
takes place, he's performing again now what he
performed again at the first.
And they will not recognize that he's the
source of their blessing.
Every element of this speaks volumes and I
think the Lord wants us to draw out
that understanding in the context of what is
now presently before us.
This thing of going to New York, this
orthodox Jewry, representative of Jewry by and large
in the world, ourselves as representative of the
Lord and of the kingdom, bringing the access
to the well of our salvation, adding something
to what already is, but not despising what
already is, for the container which are the
pitiful melancholy stone vessels and six of them,
the number of men.
And yet out of that framework comes this
remarkable last days miracle.
The disciples, when they saw that, they gloried
at the miracle.
They gloried at the Lord.
They believed in him.
It's indicative of the kind of faith and
belief that will come when the world sees
that these Jews have moved from ceremonial cleansing
into a wine that is the joy of
life because the Lord, whom they do not
yet understand, is present and has compassion upon
them and is willing to invest his time
and presence all week long in order to
set in motion this miracle of a transforming
kind.
The commentators say that Miriam's presence with Jesus
indicates it was a family affair and that
Jesus would come out of a politeness and
respect for the family.
They were his kin.
And maybe that's the only recognition that will
be necessary in my being accepted into their
feast is that we're kin.
That whatever it is I believe, of course
Jews can believe in Mahatma Gandhi and yoga
and God knows what else, any weird thing,
but they're still Jews.
They're still kin and therefore accepted.
You know the story of how my contact
with the ultra-orthodox community in Brooklyn began
when I was at an airport in Kansas
City waiting for two friends flying at an
airport in New Jersey, Newark Airport, waiting for
the arrival of two brothers from Kansas and
there was a terrible blizzard and the plane
did not come in until about midnight.
The crowd was milling around and a young
chassid with side curls, came up to me
and he said, Mister, can you tell me
how to get to, I forgot the town
in New Jersey.
I said, well, there's the limousine service, why
don't you inquire?
So he came back two minutes later, they're
closed.
Can you take me?
I said, are you willing for a Meshumet
to take you?
And Meshumet is a traitor, an apostate.
He said, a nice man like you?
I said, yes.
He was willing that I should take him.
My two friends arrived.
We got into my old Volvo.
The windshield wipers had not worked for weeks
and months and there was a whiteout, a
blizzard.
I turned on the windshield wipers and they
worked.
And about two o'clock in the morning
we arrived at this town in New Jersey,
Yeshiva, of the Lubavitcher ultra-Orthodox sect.
And it was the one night a month
when they were celebrating Torah.
They were all up, the house was filled
with lights, they were celebrating and dancing around
the table, on the table nuts and fruit
and schnapps and alcohol.
You know the way Jews do?
And within two minutes we were head-on
in a collision of intense conversation.
And who are you?
And da-da-da-da-da-da-da
-da-da.
I remember some of the key statements the
brother was saying to me.
We know you have a spirit, but we
don't know what kind it is.
They recognized something and there was a new
convert who had been converted out of the
Jesus movement.
His name is Ephraim Lehr, L-E-H
-R, you can still pray for him.
He's changed his name now to Richard.
He's gone from Brooklyn to Florida.
But he had an afro, big red-haired
afro, and he knew what I was about.
He went to the rabbi, he said, hey,
there's a guy here who's dangerous.
The rabbi said, get rid of him.
And so he's getting rid of me.
And I happened to have a copy of
Ben Israel with me.
I gave him the book as I was
being thrown out.
About three days later, I get a phone
call.
Aaron?
Yes, who's this?
This is Ephraim.
Ephraim?
That doesn't sound like you.
The last time I heard you, you were
foaming at the mouth.
Well, I read your book and you have
a Yiddish in the Shema.
You have a Jewish soul.
He read that in Ben Israel.
And that was the beginning of a friendship.
He used to visit me in New Jersey
with a Styrofoam cup and a plastic spoon.
He would take nothing else from me but
boiling water.
He would not eat anything because my home
was not kosher.
Wow.
And out of that began a relationship that
has continued through the years.
And I've been to the Brooklyn community of
the Lubavitcher Hasidim, the most powerful and the
most evangelical Orthodox sect in the world.
When we're in Russia, we bump into them.
They have gone where Christians have never thought
to be.
And if you read Chaim Potok's books on
Asher Lev, a Jewish artist out of the
Brooklyn Hasidic community, you get the deepest sense
of that reality.
Make a note of the name.
Chaim, C-H-A-I-M.
Potok, P-O-T-O-K.
He just died about two weeks ago.
A dear man, a rabbi, and a writer.
And I don't know of anyone who has
more caught the flavor and the sense of
this Brooklyn Jewish Orthodoxy than he.
And Asher Lev is the son of one
of the leading rabbis of that community in
fiction, right under the chief rabbi himself, Schneerson,
who has now died, and for whose resurrection
they're waiting.
And this Asher Lev is his son who's
an artist.
And his masterpiece is called The Brooklyn Crucified
Christ.
Of all the masterpieces, that's what it's named.
And because he chose that as his theme,
he is an affront and an embarrassment to
the entire Hasidic community.
And so the whole novel is the conflict
between the son of artistic worth falling upon
Christian themes and celebrating them in his art
out of the bosom of an Orthodox Jewish
community.
So I commend those two books on Asher
Lev.
And he's written about seven or eight books.
Okay, how did I come to that?
The relationship birthed by God on a seeming
accident in a blizzard that remains to this
day.
Remember that I said on Sunday that I've
come to a place now where I read
every episode of the life of Jesus as
being an eschatological sign, something that speaks of
the end.
And here again, we see it in that
first miracle as you have described.
Remarkable that God could balance all these things
because he knows the book of Isaiah, he
knows the end, and the third day and
all of these meanings and bring it to
pass in a seemingly innocuous, ordinary event of
a local wedding in a little nothing town
of Cana in all of Galilee and all
of Israel and somehow fit the whole thing
together in a remarkable consistency that speaks of
the end.
Well, is he still God?
If he's so capable of that kind of
exquisite that that opens a thought.
There's two things that are so close and
so parallel, they're out of line.
Do something about it.
Well, he does something about it, but he
does not do it in order to meet
the contingency, the requirement of just finishing out
a party.
He's doing something that has enormous eschatological significance,
and so he can't do it out of
a response from conventional motherly requirement and concern
for the well-being of people.
Though he does act, it does meet that,
but he's not acting out of the sentimental
human context, but out of the divine obedience
to the Father.
And still...
No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Because we can miss it.
The two acts are almost identical, they're parallel,
they run side by side, and we run
the continual danger of more often falling onto
the human sentimental side for expediency's sake and
meeting a requirement of a social kind or
politeness and missing the divine thing.
We mustn't mistake the act.
It changes everything, whether it's an act that
accommodates a mother or an act that accommodates
the father, capital F.
And so much of what we will be
called to in the last days will be
that close parallel.
And we have to consciously turn our back
on the tendency to act sentimentally and humanly
in order to be reserved for the act
that is divine and utterly significant.
The same thing is true of our relationship
with Israel.
They seem to run on a parallel line.
Both Christian Zionists and we are concerned for
the fate of the Jewish people, but if
we lapse over on the sentimental and the
human that they deserve a break and isn't
it about time that they had a homeland,
we miss the entire portent and significance of
what is on the other side of that
line which is divine.
Now here's the thing.
In order to defer to what is divine,
you're going to be misconstrued and seen as
being inconsiderate, lacking proper affection, kindness, you're cold
-hearted, you're indifferent.
Don't you want to see Israel succeed?
Do you mean?
The obedience of his son is classic.
At a crisis moment where he could have
been tempted to be sucked into the vortex
of natural human sentimental response to a need.
Instead he held himself and met that need
not by deferring to that, but by deferring
to the father and thereby exceeding what the
mother herself would ever have desired.
There are classic elements of this that need
to be drawn out and this is one
of them.
One more point about this mother's request as
against the obedience to the father.
I wouldn't put it past Satan to employ
a mother and to use conventional, approved, nice
things, good teacher, good master, good, good, good,
good.
What Satan can accomplish through blatant and apparent
evil, he can also accomplish by playing upon
and employing that which is good, that which
is sentimental, that which is approved.
And so we would more likely be seduced
and drawn off from this absoluteness of obedience
to the Lord by the subtlety of the
enemy who worked for our mothers.
And every Jewish believer has got to step
over the body of his mother.
The first question that came to me aboard
the deck of that Greek cargo ship on
my way to Piraeus, Greece and Athens, the
reading of the New Testament for the first
time and receiving a revelation, the Lord out
of the mouth of Jesus, let him who
is without sin cast the first stone.
That went like a sword through me and
it was a divine revelation.
I knew that I knew.
I was reading God.
My first thought was, what will your mother
say about this?
This will kill her.
And so you have to make a decision
whether you're willing to allow your mother to
be killed for the truth of Christ's sake.
And I would say that probably many of
us are going to fall at this point
where sentiment, conventional obligation, unwillingness to suffer the
reproach of being unkind to our mothers, who
will not have Hamlet's tenacity and who did
not stop when his mother said, Hamlet no
more, he went on.
So there's got to be a ruthlessness, that's
what I'm getting at, for the Lord's sake.
Those who follow the Lamb with us wherever
they go, it's not a snap.
It requires a ruthlessness and an obedience that
will not be distracted or turned away by
appeals to sentiment, to convention, to mothers or
any other kind of thing that the enemy
in his wiles knows how to employ and
has, by such a means, brought many of
God's servants out of the way and out
from the place of immediate and total obedience.
So it's a wonderful warning to us.
Watch out for mother.
And be ruthless against her.
Woman, why didn't he say mother?
Something rose up in him because he knew
that enemy, the enemy was playing upon conventionality
in order to bring him to a line
of conduct that would have completely nullified the
miracle or it would have served the same
end.
Mother, no.
Woman, what have I to do with you
is not so much as what do I
have to do with you as a person.
What have I, the son of God, obedient
to the Father, to do with you and
what you're representing to me now for an
accommodation at the level of what is human
and nice and warm and friendly and maternal
and that has all...
It's the world, the system.
It's playing upon those things that are out
of the wiles of the enemy that are
as ruinous to the purposes of God as
blatant evil.
What have I to do with that?
There's an absoluteness in the Lord.
Fierce thing rose up in him, this ruthlessness
against even one's mother, which is really to
say against oneself.
Abraham had the same issue when God said,
Take your son whom you love and bring
him up to the mount of which I
will shew you and make of him a
sacrifice.
The same kind of paternal loyalty, fellowship, friendship,
love, every kind of natural thing that the
world delights in exalting had to be brought
to the place of death.
The issue of Isaac was not Isaac but
Abraham.
The issue of Mary is not Jesus but
Mary.
And what Mary represents, bless her, Miriam, still
a statement of the world who has not
really come to a full recognition though she
kept in her heart the things that were
said about him.
So I'm summing up.
Be on guard that the most dangerous threats
through an absoluteness toward God as a remnant
company of first fruits a bridal company being
fitted for eternal union with him is the
temptation and the seduction that comes not from
that which is blatantly evil but that which
is apparently good.
You have to be as ruthless against that
as you would about that which is blatant.
So let me ask the congregation.
How will you receive rebuke?
Will you smolder with indignation?
Who is he to say that?
And bask in self-pity that you've been
misunderstood and misrepresented and for weeks and months
you'll carry this kind of indulgence.
Will you, like Mary, understanding the rebuke instantly
be changed and then speak rightly?
So this is a great question for the
church because rebukes will necessarily come.
Admonition and correction.
But a wise man can be rebuked, can
be chastened and the fool refuses rebuke and
correction.
So God bless Mary for instantly acting on
the word that came.
He's a master of rebuke.
Get thee behind me, Satan, to his chief
disciple.
The Lord does not withhold.
I love his severity because it's a statement
of God.
And Paul says in Romans consider the severity
and the goodness of God.
We can't just emphasize the goodness and omit
the severity because they are both expressions of
the same God.
But the flesh wants only to dwell upon
the good.
But I love the severity of the Lord,
the sternness.
That's what makes God, God.
And the Son exemplifies the Father in the
same ability to bring a stern word when
it's needed without edging.
What is our capacity as sons?
Do we withhold it?
Because we will offend or we will be
misunderstood?
It says that if you love your son,
you chastise him.
I think we have a whole generation, I've
said this every single time that I'm speaking
before God's people, a whole generation of young
people freaking out and being tattooed and pierced
and every other kind of madcap thing as
a cry of desperation for failed fatherhood.
Because they're not receiving the rebuke and the
chastening of their fathers, which is a statement
of love.
And so they're in defiance and thumbing their
nose at failed fathers and doing every bizarre
thing to aggravate them.
So are we sons that reflect the Father
who chastens Israel, chastens the church, chastens disciples,
chastens his own mother?
And are we willing when the occasion is
right to bring also, to act also in
an appropriate sternness and severity that the moment
may require?
Or do we walk from being like him?
Because we're spoiling the church if we withhold
the kinds of things that the Lord calls
us to express.
Okay.
And we mustn't think that they just turned
on a tap and filled up their buckets
and then filled up the stone pots.
Everything had to be cranked.
You know, there's labor in this, there's effort,
there's application, there's cost, there's sacrifice.
It's not just a cheap obedience.
So we're going to fill those pots up
in the last days.
It will make a requirement of us.
And if we're slothful, lazy, and indifferent and
casual, we'll fail to bring it to the
brim.
Yes.
Okay.
What would be the corollary of cranking the
pump that draws the water up out of
the earth to us?
Would it be diligence to the word?
Would it be showing yourself approved, a worker
not being ashamed?
And how much is that characteristic of the
church presently, who read the scriptures casually, who
do not study?
But where do we see this kind of
application of diligence to the word, hour after
hour, but among the Jews?
The Orthodox, 15 hours a day is considered
the minimal requirement of the study of Torah.
Of course, they substitute Torah for God in
many ways, but they exhibit a diligence that's
lost to us.
We are so casual.
And so I don't think that, I think
this needs to be factored in.
The thing that makes it so graphic for
me is after the Lord, after our first
10 years here, the Lord required a complete
shutting down of the entire community.
We were cast off.
The property was left unattended and open to
the vandals and the weather for three years.
And then I was given leave by the
Lord after three years to return.
I and some character that I found locally
was living in a hut with a dog,
two dogs and a pig.
I brought them onto the property and we
began to make some repairs and restore.
We didn't even have a pump.
We had to crank the water out of
the pump house.
And we had seven horses because I felt
that we needed to begin to revive agriculture
without diesel-operated equipment.
We bought harnesses and horses.
Daily I had to pump the water for
the horses.
Those horses can drink a bucket of water.
I won't say they drink it, they inhale
it.
Just like that.
A whole bucket that you have laboriously pumped
goes like nothing.
And there are seven of those animals and
I want to tell you it was exertion
and sweat.
So I'm glad that the thought has come
that this is not some kind of ease
of magical obedience, no sweat, no stoop, no
bother.
If we're going to obey the requirement, it's
going to mean cranking the pump.
Not that we can humanly force anything, but
it's not going to come to us without
a diligence and an application if it's going
to be the water of life, the word
of life that fills up what is stagnant.
And if we're unwilling for that application and
that exertion, the miracle just simply gets stymied
at that point.
So much is required of these servants in
their implicit and immediate obedience, whatever the cost.
Much was required of Jesus in his own
obedience to the Father, whatever the cost.
Even taking the risk of offending Mother, praise
God, Mother was able to receive that and
then acted rightly thereafter.
But there's risk that attends any obedience that
we need to recognize.
Because the water that's added, let's assume that
it's something that can only be brought by
the servants of the Lord and not by
the Jews who were resident there.
Unless we bring it, it doesn't come.
And if it doesn't come, it doesn't turn
to wine and there's no real wedding and
real joy.
So I love the Lord for that, that
we are not just observers, but participants and
not participants only, but the prime movers.
Because they wait.
All they have is the stagnant water, the
six pots, and the limited kind of Judaism
that they're able to affect by that.
But unless someone else makes the provision for
them, which they would not have considered and
are not able to make, they would be
robbed of God's intention.
And so there would be an eternal gratitude
for Gentile servants who have been willing to
labor and to obey the Lord implicitly and
to complete their salvation by what they add
to whatever already exists.
Not a bad statement.
Well, I've got a few things to make
of that and other things that will come
after the break and then I'll share with
you the notes that I made this morning
while you were yet turning over on the
other side.
And then you can respond to that and
see if that witnesses to your heart because
it has everything to do with the New
York Call.
The brother who said, Art's call to New
York is a belt holding for all the
church was true.
It's a sign of the time that the
age of the Gentiles is being fulfilled.
What is turning his attention now to this
ancient people, but more than that, they're going
to them and the bringing of the water
to them to fill up what they had
only in a limited quantity commitment, which can
never be salvational and only be minimal is
a statement for the church.
Someone said it's not art going.
It's been Israel going.
And I think I could say even beyond.
It's not been Israel going.
It's the church going.
This is symptomatic.
This is a minuscule statement of a much
larger intention of God for all the church
toward the Jewish community in the localities where
they are and in the world to fill
up their stone pots in a service that
only we can provide.
So Lord, precious, remarkable, first miracle, so suggestive,
full, redolent with implications for the last.
And we ask my God as grateful as
we are for what we have already enjoyed
in sifting my God through this text that
you'll yet give us a final statement and
define and bring to acute understanding what you
would have us to see from this in
the very context of our own situation and
the hour and time and call that has
come.
So we bless you, Lord.
We're asking for an impartation of uttermost significance,
Lord, and that we're not reading anything into
it.
We're not dramatizing ourselves.
We're not romanticizing.
We're not adding dimensions as if to show
ourselves in any way, but that what you
understand of this call and this invitation will
be registered upon our souls, that we will
be willing for the exertion.
We'll be willing for the sacrifice.
We'll be willing for the diligence.
We'll be willing for the selflessness that will
not even be acknowledged, let alone rewarded, and
yet it matters not to us if it
will affect the great miracle of turning the
water to wine.
Bless us, Lord.
Bring us back to these tables and this
room with expectant hearts, and give us the
fullness of your heart with this text.
We thank and give you praise for the
privilege in Jesus' name.
Amen.