Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
083020
When the LORD blesses us, HE loves to save the best for last.
This was manifested in GEN 22:8, when Abraham told his son Isaac concerning the burnt offering that they did not have an offering to offer God but, as the name means, “Jehovah Jireh” or “the Lord would provide the offering as He always does.
Now, our Lord saved the good wine until the end and gave the lesser wine in the beginning of the wedding illustrating that when the Lord blesses us, He loves to save the best for last.
So, our Lord takes water, (a common substance), and without a word, without a gesture, without any laying on of hands, in utter simplicity, He turns the water into wine.
And by that, I mean the finest wine that only the Lord could provide.
It was the type of wine that makes man’s heart glad as stated in PSA 104:15 Wine which makes man's heart glad, So that he may make {his} face glisten with oil, And food which sustains man's heart.
Now, in this first miracle, the Lord doesn’t add anything to His commands, He just fulfills them according to His Word.
Notice also that the writer says in HEB 11:3 that “the worlds or the ages were prepared by the word of God.”
Now, in this wedding miracle, the Lord is now willing to use His deity to reveal both the deity of Christ and the humanity of our Lord, working together to perform a miracle that would draw a crowd so that people would hear the message.
In fact, what is even greater than the water being turned to fine wine is that it would be an even greater miracle if the believers and the unbelievers who heard and saw the miracle responded with their faith and worked together by believing what our Lord said.
So, notice that the Lord does not show us a law of nature concerning the fermentation of the wine that comes from the Creator, who is in the midst of performing a miracle right in front of all who were there.
Anyway you cut it, He can do it because He is sovereign and He wants to do it because He knows the wedding and He knows why He came and He knows it is the Father’s will for Him to do it; 2Pe 3:9.
The significance to the Jewish audience back in Cana of Galilee will be there because passages in the Old Testament that have a symbolism between wine and the presence of the Messiah work together with God the Holy Spirit.
Now, you have heard this passage many times before and perhaps more importantly, those Jews who were guests at the first wedding were basically familiar with the Jewish Wedding customs and knew the customs that the pots were to be used only for water to cleanse them in ceremony.
What our Lord seems to be doing is to reveal to everyone that He is the One who creates the past, the present and even the future because all things are controlled and managed by Him.
There is another very important principle that we also have learned and that is the fact that we should value the time that we wait upon the Lord and His Timing.
Our Lord’s will is that His Word does not demand that God meet our schedule or our desires in our timing but always “in His Time.”
He will do what He wants, when He wants, all in His perfect timing and His perfect sovereignty.
So, notice that even the first miracle has the purpose of building faith in the Gospel, whether faith in the Gospel or faith in our Lord’s doctrine…..they both are the same because their source is the same.
The invisible God means that He cannot be seen by others like He can be seen by us, especially by those who have PVTD.
The phrase “the first-born of all creation” is actually the privileges that were given to the “first-born son” which all belong to Him.
- Rulership of the family.
- The privilege of the priesthood and the Lord Jesus Christ is a royal priest after the order of Melchizedek which means that there is a priesthood that has no beginning and no end, and our Lord is a priest forever.
- The privilege of receiving a double portion.
TLJC has two rulerships, Israel and the church.
In the Old Testament, the firstborn son was the one who normally received a double inheritance and was the one who would inherit his father’s role as head of the family.
Now, back in Joh 2, all of our Lord’s miracles build up to what is the most important glorious work of Christ – especially His work and death on the Cross that has the following doctrines which describe that work.
- His spiritual and physical death;
- His burial;
- His victorious proclamation;
- His resurrection;
- His ascension,
- His session.
It is also remarkably interesting that our Lord and the bride and the groom, the servants and the guests, the wedding party, the family, and the disciples of our Lord as well as the disciples of John the Baptist were all there at the Wedding of Cana.
Yet, we are not told if anyone became saved or followers of our Lord Jesus Christ even though they all saw it from different vantage points.
There is really no record of them believing, maybe they did or maybe they did not, because it is always true that:
Many individuals will see the works of God and hear the word of God, and yet, they still will not respond in faith even though they all heard the same Gospel and the same doctrine.
First of all, His spiritual and physical death refers to the fact that our Lord died twice on the cross; one was a spiritual death or being separated from God, while the other is physical death which we all die with the exception of the Rapture generation.
But the death that He died for us had to be a spiritual death because we all still die physically but we will never die spiritually or be separated from God because Christ died for all or everyone.
Physical death still exists among the human race but for believers they all will still die physically with the exception of those alive at the Rapture o the Church.
But, there is one death that believers will never die and that is spiritual death or being separated from God forever.
It was our Lord’s spiritual death which was being separated from God the Father on the cross which our Lord died for us and allows us to accept in our position, union with the death and burial of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So far then that we have two deaths, spiritual and physical, and we have been buried and resurrected with Him, all having to do with our positional truth which He accomplished and our union with the Lord.
This was all involved by the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the word baptisma meaning identification.
This means that when He was buried, we were buried or identified with Him as well. Col 2:12.
This is what the apostle Paul also said in 2CO 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
So, first of all, the physical death is the reason why all of us still die physically and why we need to be born-again spiritually.
Also, having “the new thoughts that come from having a new life” through the divine thoughts our Lord possessed is having a life changing attitude.
It is these divine thoughts that give us the power to fulfill passages like the Apostle Paul said in PHI 2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
The attitude our Lord had as Phi 2:3 begins to describe to us.
Phi 2:3 Do nothing motivated by contentiousness or ambitious pride, but with humility of mind [by means of grace orientation] let each of you keep on considering one another as more important than himself;
PHI 2:4 do not merely be regarding your own personal interests, but also for the personal interests of others.
PHI 2:5 "Keep on thinking this [doctrine] within yourselves which was also resident in Christ Jesus,"
PHI 2:6 who, although He preexisted in the essence of God, did not think equality with God a gain to be seized,
Phi 2:7 "but He deprived Himself of the proper function of deity when He had received the form of a servant and was born in the likeness of men."
PHI 2:8 In fact, although having been discovered in outward appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of spiritual death, that is the death of the cross.
Now, all of these principles I have given to you so far is based upon what our Lord said to us, spiritually and physically, as in JOH 19:30, When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.
Now, when He said, “it was finished,” He was talking about the work that God the Father accomplished on the cross that motivated what the Lord had done by that one word, Tetelestai which means, “It is finished in the past with the result that it goes on being finished forever.
The next work from the cross is our identification with Him through His Resurrection; Rom 6:5.
Our Lord has been to heaven and back to earth in His ascension and is the only one that has ever done so; Joh 3:13.
Joh 3:13 "And no one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven, {even} the Son of Man.
Finally, He is seated in the doctrine of the session, the highest place of promotion for any member of the human race and He is waiting for the Father to tell Him, “Go back and get your bride and bring her back to heaven to be with You forever.
The final work of the cross is after our Lord died, He went to Hades and taught the Old Testament saints a message that we call His Victorious Proclamation and at the same time He spoke to the fallen angels who had been thrown down to Hades for breaking the rules of the angelic Conflict.