"The Wine Sign" (John 2: 1-12)

Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus. Celebration is wonderful! It's a core need of the human soul. But if we're honest, we're all a little disappointed when seasons of celebration end, summer vacation wraps up, the concert ends, and we have to get back to "normal" life. In Jesus's first miraculous sign in the Gospel of John, he challenges our assumption that all good things must come to an end. By extending a wedding celebration way beyond it's normal, reasonable end point, he shows us the joy at the heart of God and the glorious future that he brings through his Kingdom. The sign isn’t just about the miraculous power of Jesus— although the fact that he is able to bend the normal rules of nature is important! What John wants us to see is something more than Jesus' power. John wants us to look at his personality, at his character. And how this sign reveals the heart of God toward needy people who are longing for glory. People who, like us, are hungry for wholeness, beauty, and joy. QUOTES: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”― C.S. Lewis  
 "The two events in chapter 2, the changing of the water into wine at Cana, and the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem, establish the terms of Jesus' ministry. They also anticipate Christ's future work. To attend a marriage feast and to cleanse the temple were among the first acts of our Lord's ministry at his first coming. To purify the whole visible Church and hold a marriage supper will be among his first acts, when he comes again.'" --Bruce Milne “The condition ... throughout the Gospel for all of Jesus' divine interventions is exquisitely simple — trust by doing something simple — and the promised results throughout, as we know, are extraordinary. We have no required absolutes in our story, like, "Please completely surrender to me and do these exceptional obediences." Rather, "Fill... draw... take" ordinary water from ordinary jars and then bring what you have across the room … We do simple things like trustingly obey; he does saving things like rescuing a wedding party from shame or like multiplying loaves for hungry pilgrims.”— F. Dale Bruner