John 2:1-12 | The Wedding at Cana

Let’s open the Bible now to John 2:1-12.

We come to a section of John’s gospel now that stretches to chapter 12, known as “the book of signs,” where John focuses on the revelation of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. John wants us to see the glory of Jesus in these chapters and, through them, to place our faith in Jesus as Savior. In fact, that’s the purpose of the whole book. We know that because John said so. If you flip to the end of the book, in 20:30-31, you can see this. “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” 

The whole point is to give you good reasons to believe in Jesus. These stories aren’t just neat little tricks Jesus performed. What John tells us in the coming pages is how Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament scriptures and how Jesus is the Messiah who is the answer to God’s promises. John wants you to see how wonderful Jesus is. How capable Jesus is. How worthy Jesus is. How loving and kind and mighty and glorious Jesus is. He wants you to believe in Jesus. And I want you to as well.

So let’s read 2:1-12 now.

The Wedding at Cana

2 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. 9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

Introduction

We find ourselves peeking into a little slice of history that, on one level, is not all that remarkable. A young couple is getting married. But on another level, Jesus is there to transform that little Galilean wedding into a revelation of God’s glory. That’s the difference Jesus makes. He turns weddings into foretastes of heaven. He turns a party into a mega party. He turns bad news into good news. He turns water into wine. He turns the law of the Old Testament into the grace of the New Testament. He turns ceremonial jars into vats of celebratory wine. He does this because he’s thinking about something much bigger than this little wedding at Cana in Galilee.

So let’s look at this in two headings: the story and the sign. Let’s consider the story’s details and then consider what those details tell us about the sign.

So, first, the story.

The Story

 Look at verse 1. “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.” John orients us to the time and place. He did this throughout chapter 1 as well. In 1:19, the chronology began. The Jews came to John asking about his baptism. The next day, 1:29, John proclaimed Jesus as the Lamb of God. On the third day, 1:39, Jesus took his new disciples home. On the fourth day, 1:43, Jesus met Nathaniel. Now, here in 2:1, John says it’s the third day. He means it’s the third day after his encounter with Nathaniel. So this is the seventh day since John started recounting Jesus’s acts.

Now, who cares what day it is? Well, normally, John doesn’t care at all, which makes this so interesting to me. When Jesus is resurrected, for example, he doesn’t even mention that it’s the third day. Throughout the rest of John’s writings, he is totally ambivalent about days. But not here in the first two chapters of his gospel. Why is that?

Remember John 1:1. “In the beginning…” Remember how it reminded us of Genesis 1? That’s intentional. As we meet Jesus in his public ministry, John is taking us on a journey of seven days that correspond in some way to the seven days of creation. But instead of focusing on the creating power of Jesus, John focuses on the recreating power of Jesus. By the seventh day, Jesus had already, in a sense, recreated the Messianic hopes and realizations. He had recreated the purpose of baptism. He had recreated the hearts of his disciples. And now, at a wedding, he recreated water into wine. John presents to us the One who was there in Genesis 1 and the One who will do even more than Genesis had time to tell us. John is preparing us for something magnificent. The story is really about to take off.

Verse 1 again. “The mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with his disciples.” We don’t know how Jesus knew the couple getting married. Perhaps they were friends of Nathaniel. He was from Cana. Maybe they were old family friends. But based on what happens next, we can assume that Mary had a significant role to play in the wedding. When a problem arose, Mary was the one who took some responsibility for solving it. Look at verse 3. “When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’”

That was a big deal. The groom was charged with providing enough wine for the wedding party, which lasted about a week. It was as if the wedding planner came to you at your reception and said, “Well, we made it halfway, but the food’s all gone.” You’d have some disappointed guests, and you’d be so embarrassed. But for this young couple, it was more than just an embarrassment. In those days, this was grounds for a lawsuit from the wedding guests. It was that big of a deal. Their new life together was threatened. Instead of entering into it with joy, they might now enter into it with a great burden. Mary did not come to Jesus with a minor inconvenience; she came with a crisis.

But why did Mary go to Jesus at all? Well, Jesus wanted to know that too. Verse 4, “And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’”

Jesus’s response is really interesting. The translation you have will determine the level of confusion you have over the way Jesus responds. The New Living Translation and the older version of the NIV, for example, say Jesus responded with something like, “Dear woman.” The ESV and others, however, puts it more accurately. “Woman.” Now, I don’t know where you came from, but if I spoke to my mother like that, I might not speak again. If my kids spoke to my wife like that, no more YouTube time for a good, long while. So what’s the deal here? Was Jesus disrespectful? We know Jesus never sinned, so we need to understand his response.

The way he says it is not as bad as it sounds to our ears. This is how Jesus speaks to Mary later in John’s gospel when he’s hanging on the cross, and there was nothing but love from Jesus on the cross. We know that.

So why does he say it this way? What he says next helps us understand. “My hour has not yet come.” Whenever Jesus refers to his “hour,” he means the time of his death. So, Mary says to Jesus, “They have no wine,” and Jesus responds, “It’s not my time to die.”  Isn’t that interesting? What’s going on? Jesus is distancing Mary’s wishes from his mission. Given the misconceptions about the coming Messiah he’s already experienced in his week in public ministry, Jesus knows now is not the time to reveal himself to the world as the Messiah. His hour has not yet come, so he distances himself from her, letting her know what time it really is. Jesus wasn’t Mary’s huckleberry. He wasn’t a mama’s boy, doing whatever she wanted. He answered to God’s plan only, and no one else would be his boss. His mission superseded his familial relationships. The driving force of Jesus’s life was faith, not family.

However, Mary didn’t seem too discouraged. She humbly submitted to Jesus and said to the servants in verse 5, “Do whatever he tells you,” Which, by the way, is the best advice ever given. Mary believed Jesus could and would do something. Mary got the point. She would not push him to the spotlight, but if Jesus would do something, she didn’t want the servants to miss the opportunity. D.A. Carson points out that in these two verses, we see two Marys. The Mary as mother and the Mary as believer. “In 2:3 Mary approaches Jesus as his mother, and is reproached; in 2:5, she responds as a believer, and her faith is honored.” Jesus is not our errand boy. He wasn’t for his mother, and he won’t be for us. But if we come to him by faith, we are rewarded. As Carson says, “These two verses, as difficult as they are, help to shape this account of Jesus’ first miracle, and ensure that the focus is on Jesus’ glory, not Mary’s, and on the disciples’ faith, including Mary’s.”

We now reach the story’s climax, where Jesus’s glory is revealed. The details John includes are important. Verse 6 says, “Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.” These jars were a symbol of the Old Testament law and ritual. They were stone because it was believed stone could not contract uncleanness. These were ceremonial washing jars used by the Jews as they went in to worship. They would symbolically wash with water proclaiming their sinfulness and their need for cleansing. In the story’s context, they represent the old way of Jewish law and ritual that Jesus is about to replace with something else. Everything Jesus does here points beyond the mere facts of the story. Through his actions, he tells the story of the Bible, the Messiah coming to fulfill the law to usher in the new age of grace. As Craig Blomberg says, this is a “vivid illustration of the transformation of the old ‘water’ of Mosaic religion into the new ‘wine’ of the kingdom.”

The jars held a lot of liquid, about twenty or thirty gallons each. That’s anywhere from 120 to 160 gallons. Verse 7 says, “Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim.” There was no room for a magic trick here. It wasn’t as if Jesus would add a little wine to the water and trick the palate. He was going to turn pure water into pure wine. The time for the ceremonial purification is complete. Now, the wine of the new age is beginning, and it comes through Jesus, and it’s not just a little to get us by. It’s overabundant. That’s just like Jesus, isn’t it?

In one of the greatest verses in the Bible, God says through Isaiah in Isaiah 55:1, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” This is what Jesus is doing. He’s taking their nothing and giving his everything. This is what Jesus always does, isn’t it? He says to us, “Bring your dirty purification water to me, and I’ll make it something new. Bring that old-time religion that never got you anywhere, and I’ll give you the new wine of the gospel that changes the heart and saves the soul.” We can fill our spiritual pots to the brim, but until Jesus puts his miraculous touch upon us, all we will ever have is water, but when he touches us, we will have the best wine.

Now, look at verse 8. Jesus said, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” The master of the feast was like the head waiter. When he tasted it, he was amazed. He didn’t know where the wine came from. John is careful to state that. Only the servants, his disciples, and, we presume, Mary knew what happened. This is an undercover miracle. So the master of the feast called the bridegroom—not Jesus—and said in verse 10, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

Apparently, Jesus makes some good-tasting wine. Why? Because this is more than just a small-town miracle to save a wedding. This is a manifestation of glory to reveal the Messianic Age. Like all the best wine, Jesus’s was aged. It had all the Old Testament promises and expectations. It held all the sweetness of joy and hope of the Messiah. It carried the aroma of Christ. It sang of notes of the patriarchs and the prophets. It was aged in the parchments of the Scriptures and poured out of the glory of heaven. It was the wine of the promised age, the wine of the Kingdom of God. And it’s to that Kingdom of God we now look.

That’s the story. Now let’s consider the sign.

The Sign

Verse 11 says, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

Here’s the whole reason John wrote about this. He didn’t write it because it’s a cool little party-trick Jesus of Nazareth performed a long time ago. It’s not a novelty act. It would be a big mistake if we only saw the miracle and not the miracle worker.

Notice that John doesn’t even call this a miracle. It is a miracle, but that’s not how John describes it. He calls it a sign. Why? What does a sign do? It points to something. You see a sign on the road that says Nashville, 20 miles, and you know what’s up ahead. The sign orients you. Or, if you’re Dustin, you see a sign that says, “Vinyls Records for Sale,” and you get giddy with excitement, not over the sign itself but over what the sign signifies.

John is orienting us here. Not only is this a sign, but this is Jesus’s first sign. Kind of an odd first one, right? Turning water into wine. Couldn’t he have raised someone from the dead? Couldn’t he have healed someone? Why this one first?

Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Bible opens with a wedding (Genesis 2) and ends with a wedding (Revelation 19). The wedding theme runs prominently throughout the Bible, and that helps us understand this passage. What was Jesus doing at the wedding? Well, he was performing this miracle, and before that, he was just an invited guest. But what do you think he was thinking about?

Tim Keller asks this question, and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. I’m so indebted to him for these next insights. Well, I’m indebted to him for so much more….

Anyway, have you ever been to a wedding as a young, single adult? What were you thinking about then? You were probably thinking about your future wedding. Maybe you wondered when it would come or if it would ever come. Well, what if Jesus was thinking about his wedding that day? What would that tell us about what he’s doing here?

Here’s what. Throughout the Old Testament, God refers to himself as the Bridegroom of his people. We see this, for example, in Isaiah 62, Hosea 2, Ezekiel 16, and Jeremiah 2. Then, in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the bridegroom in places like Matthew 9, Luke 5, Mark 2, Ephesians 5, and Revelation 21. The image of God as his people’s bridegroom runs the entire length of the Bible.

Think about it. Why was Jesus even there that day at Cana in Galilee? Not because he just happened to be born at that time and around that particular place, and he just happened to get in because of family connections. No, he chose that time and place. He was there because about 30 years earlier, he came down in a deliberate act on a mission to save his people from their sins and to wed them to himself. Jesus performed this sign at this wedding not only because it was a tragedy that he could fix but, more truly,  because it was a foretaste of the kind of wedding he would throw later on. He was thinking about his wedding day with his bride, the Church. He was thinking about the wine on that day, after the last drink at the last supper, when he said he wouldn’t drink it again until he did so with his people in his Father’s kingdom. He was thinking about what it would cost and how it wasn’t too high for him. He was thinking about his death so that he could gain his bride. He was thinking of the wedding supper of the Lamb, where the restored universe would be set right, and he would make his dwelling with his people, and he would wipe every tear from their eye, and there would be no more pain, no more sorrow, and no more death ever again. His bride would never break his heart because, in him, they would now be perfect. And he would never break theirs because his love for them spurred the whole story to start with.

Maybe this sounds like a stretch. It did to me at first, too. But think about it. Everything Jesus did that day pointed to that day later on. Why did he use those ceremonial jars? That’s not a normal place to put wine. Couldn’t he have just refilled the old wineskins? No, because their filling was to say the law was fulfilled, and the new wine was now ready. The saving of the best for last was to say that the marriage of Jesus and his bride would be the best of all things. The belief it gave to his disciples was the gift that brought his people in. Jesus was signifying far more than a neat trick that God can do. He was signifying the gospel story from the days of old that was now at hand with his coming. Here is the true Bridegroom longing for his bride, looking forward to what he would do to set things right, looking forward to his wedding still out ahead, looking forward to the consummation in the age to come.

Jesus was at the wedding thinking of his wedding, and his heart was filled with longing for his bride. He wanted to show her how thoroughly, how completely, how abundantly, how graciously he would fulfill all things.

If you read the Bible, you can’t avoid this kind of martial language between Jesus and his Church. Jesus longs for us and provides for us with the love of a bridegroom. Jesus does not moderately love his bride. He adores her. He longs for her. He cannot wait to finally have her with him forever.

Conclusion

So what does this mean for you? First, if you are a believer, it means that day at Cana in Galilee, Jesus was thinking of you. What he did that day was to show you the kind of groom he is. If you are not a believer, it means that day at Cana in Galilee, Jesus was doing this so that you might come to faith in him. He wants you to see that he is what you’ve been longing for. All your failed attempts at purity can become real in him. All your shame in life can be washed away in his gospel wine. All your desires for a love that will never end, a joy that will never fade, the wine that will never run out, can be yours. At a wedding, where two people become one new family, Jesus takes the Old Covenant law and weds it to himself to make New Testament wine. He does it there at Cana because he will do it one day in heaven. And he wants you to see that.

Jesus is signifying the newness he’s bringing into the world by showing that his newness is good because it’s aged in the oldness of the gospel promises. He is the true bridegroom who has come to wed his sinful people to himself and save his bride by giving her a new name in himself. He will spare no expense. You will not get part of him but all of him. You will not get wine mixed with water in some dirty pot. You will get the Scripture-aged and glory-infused wine of the kingdom of God. You will receive a husband who always saves the best for last, who doesn’t just hope to make a good impression but who will love and care and provide for you for eternity. You will get a new start on a new life that, with him at the center, will never disappoint. You will get the real, 100-proof Jesus. He makes the end of the party better than the beginning. He takes tragedy and turns it into triumph. He takes sorrow and turns it into joy.

How do we know this is true? Because in John 16:20, Jesus told his disciples about his coming death. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament…You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” How will their sorrow turn into joy? Because on the cross, Jesus would give himself up for his people. He would lay his life down for his bride. His blood would become the wine we partake of in Holy Communion, which reminds us of his dying love. His blood is the wine that sustains us, cleanses us, remakes us, and saves us until that day we are with him and sit down at the wedding supper of the lamb to drink the wine of the Father’s kingdom with him.

Let’s pray.