Bible Text: John 2:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Epiphany 2022 | Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding. This wasn’t an accident. God doesn’t do things on accident. This is what we prayed in our collect this morning, ‘Almighty and everlasting God, who governs all things in heaven and on earth.’ That’s our God. He’s in control. He’s not like us, we do things on accident all the time, He has a purpose for everything He does. In my house, “It was an accident” gets said just about every day. It’s the default excuse of a kid who just broke your stuff or just hurt his brother or sister. “It was an accident.” And it’s never really a comfort – my TV screen is still smashed by the light saber you threw, regardless of whether you tried to hit it, and your sister’s eye is still black regardless of whether you meant to elbow her in the face. The point here is that God never says that. When bad things happen to you, God doesn’t say, woops, it was an accident. And this is very comforting for us, if, that is, we know and trust His promises. It means that even when bad things happen in our lives, our God is still in control and will, as He promises, use the bad things, even sin and the devil himself, for our good. And we see this at the wedding in Cana. The couple ran out of wine. That’s a bad thing. And then Mary asks Jesus to help, and he responds, seemingly, with a No. Again, a bad thing. But Jesus works it all for good. He turns water into wine, and not only saves the wedding, but makes it better than it had been, gives better wine. And more than this, He shows his disciples who He is and causes them to believe in Him. It’s a beautiful thing. Jesus takes the bad, the painful, and turns it for good.
Now, we’re in the season of Epiphany. That means we’re concentrating on Jesus revealing Himself as God. And this miracle obviously does this. Only God can turn water into wine. But as with Jesus’ other miracles, this one doesn’t just show that He’s God, that He’s powerful, that He’s some Supreme Being out there. It shows what kind of God He is.
First, and unmistakably, He’s the God who loves and blesses marriage. That’s because He’s the God who created marriage. Not only is it not an accident that He performed His first miracle at a wedding. It’s not an accident that He turned water into wine at this wedding. Turning water into wine is a creative act. What wasn’t there before is there now. Just as God spoke in the beginning, “Let there be” and there was, so God speaks here, and there is. So Jesus is asserting Himself not simply as God here, but as the Creator. And what else did God create in the beginning? He created marriage. He made man and woman in his own image and joined them as one flesh. God did that. And God still cares for His creation, he still cares for marriage. That’s what Jesus is showing here.
And it’s absolutely essential for us to remember this in our day. Marriage is no social construct. People didn’t make it up. They didn’t just say, “You know what, it would be a good idea if a man and a woman promised to remain faithful to one another till they die, so they can have children and the children can grow up with a mom and a dad and become good members of the community.” That’s not what happened. God made marriage. And that means marriage doesn’t change. What we hear, or what we should hear, at every wedding, “Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder,” this is unalterably true. And this means that since man, since government, didn’t come up with marriage, it has no right to change it. If we had created marriage, we could make our own rules, we could change the rules. Just like in football. Every year the NFL comes out with new rules. They can do that. We made the game, we can change it. And this is how our government and our society has treated marriage. As if it’s ours. We made it, we can change it. So now marriage can mean a man and a man promising to remain with each other. Or a woman and a woman. People can put an end to marriage for any reason whatsoever. “We’re just not getting along anymore, the old thrill is gone, she’s mean, he’s a jerk,” and the list goes on, what our society has nonsensically called “no fault” divorce, when in fact there’s always fault and a whole lot of it to go around. And look at the results! We thought we could act like marriage belonged to us, play with it and change the rules, and no one has benefitted, children are robbed of stability, wives and husbands are robbed of trust, homosexuals are lied to and confirmed in their sin, young people are terrified of marriage and just live together instead. This is what happens when you mess with marriage.
So Jesus comes on the scene and He asserts, as His very first public act on this earth, that He is the Creator and Blesser of marriage. There is no picking and choosing here. You want Jesus as God, as Savior, as Friend, then you have Him also as the Creator and protector of marriage. And that means marriage is not ours to mess with. It belongs to Jesus. He’s still in control. Jesus created marriage for our good. And what we’ve messed up, He’s here to fix. And make no mistake about it, He’s the only one who can fix marriage.
Now He does this in two ways.
First, He teaches us what it is. And this is a relief. A clear definition! Thank God! In our age of uncertainty, where everyone chooses what’s right or wrong for himself, where our society has decided and our government has decreed that a man can become a woman and a woman a man, where the basics of common sense are in total confusion, just to hear God say, ‘This is the way it is,’ it’s such a relief. It’s what we need. We need to know that water is wet, fire is hot, a man is a man, a woman is a woman. And we need to know what marriage is. It’s God joining one man and one woman for life. And it’s beautiful. When God created man in the beginning, he made them male and female. He joined the two together till death parted them. The two shall become one flesh, God said. And what God joins together, let no man put asunder.
He did it for our happiness. He made man to be the head of his wife and the wife to be the husband’s helper, to be companions one to the other, as the husband loves his wife and serves her, and the wife submits to her husband and respects him. And then beautifully, God creates life through the union of man and woman. God allows a married couple to participate in creation, as new life comes through a husband’s love for his wife and a wife’s giving herself to her husband. This blessing of fertility the Bible stresses constantly. God gives children. Children aren’t choices. They’re gifts from God. When Christians talk about choosing how many children they’re going to have, I don’t think they quite know what they’re saying. Who says children are a choice? The people who advocate killing them in the womb. We should never talk the way they talk. God gives children. It’s a child, not a choice. And since it’s a child, we accept children from God as His blessings, and we raise our children for God, give them Jesus’ word, bring them to church, pray with them. Fathers shouldn’t be obsessed with their careers or their sports, but with raising their children as Christians. Mothers should know there is nothing greater God can give to them than children. And husband and wife need to embrace the great and beautiful responsibility of raising children for eternal life.
But of course, we mess it up. Even when we get it right. Even when we say, yes, only a man and a woman. Yes, for life, till death parts us. Yes, so that we can have children and raise them up together in the fear of the Lord. Still, husband sins against wife and wife against husband and our marriages face problem after problem, and our children are sinners just like us. And this is the second reason we need Jesus to insert Himself into marriage. Not simply to tell us what marriage is, but to care for our marriages in the here and now. We see him do that at Cana. He cares for that marriage. And this sign, the Holy Spirit caused to be recorded so that you know today that Jesus cares for our marriages too.
Jesus cared for the marriage in Cana by giving them wine. He ruined the stone water jugs. They were meant for ritual purification of the body, meant only to carry water, but now they were stained red with wine. Instead of water to cleanse the outside, he gave them wine which entered into them and gave them joy. And this is how Jesus helps our marriages and our lives now. Not with an outward fix. Not with a simple outward cleaning up of our lives. But by changing our hearts. By making us glad in our souls.
And Jesus changes us by loving us, by marrying Himself to us. He makes us His bride. He commits Himself to us. He lays down His life for us, presents us to Himself His beloved without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. He makes Himself one flesh with us, by taking our human nature on Himself. He makes us one flesh with Him, by giving us His own body and blood. And whatever sins we’ve committed against Him, whatever lack of love or failure of respect, He covers it up with His own righteousness. The Song of Solomon describes His love for us perfectly – Love is as strong as death – yes, herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins. He has vowed by this death that He loves you, that you are His, that He won’t hold you guilty for your sins; He has promised you in your Baptism that He has cleansed you and presented you pure before Him as His precious bride.
And our marriages are to be a picture of this. How do you husbands act toward your wives – as Christ acts toward his church. You cover up her faults as your Lord has covered up yours. You love her by serving her, because that’s how Christ loves you. He doesn’t demean you. He doesn’t pick at your faults. He doesn’t lord it over you and demand things from you. He forgives your faults and passes over them and teaches you patiently. And wives, learn to respect your husbands, let them lead, encourage them to be men, not because they’ve deserved this, but because whatever faults they have have been borne away by the Lord to whom you and your husband owe everything. This is what the Church does to Christ, we respect Him, we submit to Him – we wouldn’t dare talk bad about Him, we learn instead to expect everything good from Him and be patient as we wait for Him to serve us.
And this is the second thing Jesus reveals about what kind of a God He is. He is the God who answers our prayers in his own time. He is the God who lets us suffer our crosses, within marriage, outside of marriage, praying for marriage. He waited, on purpose, to turn that water into wine. He let the groom and bride sweat. He told his own mother, his hour had not yet come. But He did answer. In his own time. And so it goes still. Learn from Mary to ask and then wait your God’s good pleasure. He’s in control. He loves you. Don’t doubt this. His hour came. The hour of His death. The hour when He prayed that this cup be taken away, but His Father told Him instead to drink it down to the bitter dregs. The hour of His suffering, of his pain and his death, as He bore your sin and paid its punishment to the throne of God’s justice. He did it for you. And He has claimed you as His own. He has washed and cleansed you in your Baptism. He’s given you His Spirit. He sees and loves you as His own bride, as His own body, and no man fails to care for his own body. He disciplines his body, he allows it to suffer for its own good, for a time, but he cares for it. So Jesus will work your suffering for good when you suffer it as a Christian. Jesus can’t and won’t fail to care for you and answer your prayers.
And finally, Jesus brings pure joy. That’s the kind of God He is. He’s in control, he cares, he answers us, and He gives us joy beyond all gladness. He gives wine at a wedding. Wine isn’t necessary for life. Not at all. It’s not like bread, not like water. It’s there only to give pleasure, to heighten it. That’s why it exists. God does everything on purpose. And in this His Supper, He gives His blood to you in the wine on purpose, because the blood of Jesus gives pure pleasure, more than what we need, not only forgiveness of all our sins, but a union with one another and with God himself, to become partakers of the divine nature, to be exalted with Christ to the joys of heaven, to have the undying affection of our God and our Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus. Amen.