You know, marriage and family, the blessings that they are, they're falling by the wayside in our culture. It's increasingly common, for instance, they see young couples who are living together, having children together, without exchanging any marital vows. There's no sense of a covenant between each other before God. I mean, after all, folks falsely believe it's far less stressful to do it this way. We don't have to have a wedding. We don't have to have a marriage document. We don't have to worry about a divorce if the time comes. We'll just live together. Isn't that so much more stress-free? And no, no, it's not. No, it's not. But in many areas, they're not even living together. Man can simply leave. It's been a few years now. What we're seeing is pretty consistent over time, relatively around this number. About 40% of babies are born to unwed mothers now. Our culture is doing this because it doesn't see the value anymore of marriage. It doesn't see the beauty anymore of marriage. That's why there's an increasing number of young people who would just rather stay single and perhaps, you know, live their lives single or child free if they do happen to shack up with someone will just remain child free. Like you're trying to remain pet-free or you're trying to remain, I don't know, hormone-free in your food or something like that, you know, it's a bragging right for some people now. We'll just have pets instead and we'll call them our babies. This is not a good sign for our society now. I'm not saying that pets aren't good. We have pets. But we have to, as a society, ask ourselves, what's going on that we don't value marriage and family and children anymore? What's going on? We mustn't forget that marriage is a creation of God, our good God. He created it. He created it for the flourishing of human beings. People made in his image. It's a beautiful expression when done rightly. It's a beautiful and proper expression of the love between a man and a woman. And it objectively provides more protection for women. It makes men better. As they learn to grow up and to provide and to lead in their home, it's good for all involved. Can it be twisted by sin? Obviously, obviously. But when it's done well, it's the perfect environment, not only for relationships, but also for raising children. It's an institution that God created and blessed even in that perfect order before the fall when he brought Adam and Eve together. They understood that. Well, here we see the Creator incarnate. And where does he go here in John? One of the first things that John says that our Lord did was he attended a wedding. He attended a wedding. While he was walking on earth, it shouldn't be a surprise to see him celebrating the union of this unnamed couple here in the text. See, he doesn't remain aloof from us. He values where we are in life and the relationships that we're in. And he even, we see him bringing his disciples in to this. John the Baptist, he had the task. For some introverts, you might say this was the better task of staying out in the wilderness and just preaching repentance and not really having to mingle with the people, but Jesus did. He came in and he dwelt among us, scripture says, and we see that he did that in every way. And he even blesses this wedding party as a result of his presence. And y'all, weddings should definitely have the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in it. Even with all that said, we have to note that this marriage, this wedding, it's simply a backdrop. for the bigger part of the story. And that's in revealing who Jesus is and manifesting His glory. Sometimes we see the glory of God most manifested with the sins of others against the backdrop of the darkness of human depravity. But here we see it against the backdrop of something that's blessed. And He is yet more glorious. And of course, according to verse 11, this is a demonstration of His glory. The sign that He performs there is to manifest just who He is so that people would know. We're not called in this text then to think so much about the blushing bride or the husband that is trying to handle all the arrangements. In this text, we are seeing Jesus revealed as the Lord creator. And we see first in the first five verses, at least, the authority of Christ, the authority of Christ. And then in the remaining verses, we'll talk about the transformation of Christ, the transformation of Christ. Let's first think about his authority, his authority. Verses one through five. And I'll read that again. I like to read the text a lot. I do it a lot during study, and it's a good practice for all of us to keep reading it and rereading it. On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. And Jesus said to her, woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, whatever he says to you, do it. You know, there's a good deal of discussion on so many aspects of this text and starting right here in the first verse. There's discussion on the third day. Well, what does that mean? Because if you're keeping count, I don't know if you've been counting since since say John 119. That was the first time we see John the Baptist ministering out in the wilderness. If you're keeping count of the days and you get to this point, We're actually four days in, not three. And so you may be saying, wait a minute, something's amiss here. What's going on? Well, several commentaries, like for instance, D.A. Carson's commentary notes that this is the third day from the last interaction with Nathaniel. In other words, there are three days between chapters one and two. You say, well, why is that important? Well, D.A. Carson, he goes on to note that if we add that together, and the kids could help me out, four plus three, seven, how many days are there in a week? Seven. Okay. And so it's been a full week that we've been talking or that we're reading about Jesus here. I guess it's been a little bit longer. I've been talking about him up here. It's been a week. Okay. Well, what does that reflect? That reflects the fact that he's the creator. How many days did he create the world? That's seven. Ah, six days. He rested the seventh, right? Ah, that's a trick question. You can stump someone with that later. After a week, he starts his miracles. I think there's something there. D. Carson, I'm glad he pointed that out. He's creating. wine and this is a picture of the new creation that would be coming in Jesus Christ. He's the creator who's come down. He is in dwelling with mankind and he is going to create a new creation. In fact, when we get to chapter three, we're going to talk about the new birth in Christ. The fact that we can be born again that we can be new creatures in Christ. And so there is definitely a direction that this text is moving. But here we are at Cana where the wedding is. It's a small town in Galilee. It's a town where Nathanael is from. But he's not the connection there. Mary's the connection because we read that the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus and his disciples were invited. And so Mary is apparently the connection there. In fact, that she was there implies that maybe she knew the family or that she was somehow friends with them or maybe even related in some way to them. She is helping the newlyweds there as they are planning this big feast. And they invite Jesus to the wedding. And again, there's no better idea than to have Jesus at your wedding. So many weddings are not about Jesus. We got it. We got to think about that. This is part of the reason why we we dress up weddings. I was asked once if I would be willing to do a do a Klingon wedding or do a Star Trek wedding. I would have to do the invocations and everything in Klingon. I said, well, my Klingon is a little rusty. I'm not sure I could do that. Sometimes we dress up weddings because it's not interesting how and how it already is we make it about the bride and Then the bride knows it's about her and sometimes it becomes a big deal and sometimes so you can have that bridezilla Kind of situation where it's making everybody's lives miserable Jesus it's not the center of that wedding obviously The wedding is not the end-all be-all. I mean, think about it. It's about the marriage. Why do we have the wedding? It's to celebrate the union. The wedding adorns the marriage. Christ adorns the wedding. Christ adorns the wedding. Weddings, Back then, though, they were a big deal. They were a big deal. This could be a week-long celebration. Think about that. We worry about catering for a single event. Think about catering for a week-long feast and celebration, and all the town is gonna be there. Everybody's coming out, friends, relatives, neighbors, they're all coming to this feast. There's a celebration. Why are they celebrating? Because they understood this is a beautiful thing. Can marriages go wrong today? Yes. Guess what? They could go wrong back then, too. People back then were sinners, too, but they still understood this is something to be celebrated because when it goes right, there is beauty and there is joy in marriage. And so everyone would come out, everyone would celebrate. Of course, for some people, I'm sure the prospect of free food was also a little bit enticing. Today we put marriage off, we devalue it. These were probably a young couple that were getting married. We tell our young people today, oh no, wait, wait, Wait until you have money. You know what, you're never gonna have enough money. You're never gonna have enough money. Wait until after you graduated high school. Wait until after you graduated college. Then, you know what, you need to finish that grad degree. At some point, you're 30-something and you're thinking, well, maybe I should get married one day. Say, yeah, well, you want to be mature before you get married. It used to be that young people would mature through the process of marriage. You would have two young people, after they get married, they learn how to become mature adults together. That's how it used to be. Now I'm not saying that it has to be young people all the time. People get married older and that's fine too. But we should think through, why is it that we always want to push off marriage? What message are we unintentionally sending? But that's a message for another day. Sermon for another day. With all these festivities, the groom's family would have been expected to fit the bill. I'm glad I don't live back then. I've got, I've got several daughters. But they, or no, no, that wouldn't be me. I would only have to worry about Jake. I'm, I got that backwards. That's better back then. I got that backwards. They would also ask, as they were preparing the wedding, one of the guests would, perhaps someone with a little bit of knowledge and know-how, they would say, listen, we need a governor of the feast. We need a ruler of the feast. This is probably not a servant. This is probably one of the guests. And say, yeah, we need someone who can help us ensure that things are running smoothly. And so one of the folks would be identified and would be promoted as such to the governor or the ruler of the feast. He would help ensure that everything was running rightly. But unfortunately, everything was not running smoothly at this feast. Perhaps it was the generosity of the hosts. Maybe he invited too many people. We see that he also invited Jesus and his disciples or five disciples. So that's six people, right, that are coming that maybe were not originally on the docket. Maybe that pushed the limits of the wine supplies. Yes, Jesus and his disciples did drink. Could also be that more wine was consumed by the people than was expected. Or maybe it's just God simply willed for the wine to run out. It wasn't necessarily a fault of someone's inattention to detail. It just simply was the will of God that the wine would run out suddenly. Why? So that the miracle could occur. Well, whatever the case, the well was running dry, as it were, and Mary comes to Jesus and she says, Hey, they're out of line. And that could be a major embarrassment for the family. I read several people mentioning that there could possibly even be a lawsuit involved for such an occasion. Why would she come to Jesus with this at all? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, we don't read about Joseph at all in this, do we? And a lot of folks think, well, maybe that's because he was already dead. At some point between Jesus's 12th birthday and this point in his life, Joseph had died. And what would happen at that point is that the oldest son, which would have been Jesus. And yes, Mary did have other sons and daughters. We read in the text later on in verse 12, we read that he had brothers there as well as disciples. So yes, he did have brothers and sisters. But Jesus was the oldest and so he would have been expected to to take on the financial responsibilities of the family. You remember Jesus was called the carpenter son, but in but in Mark 6 3, he's called the carpenter. He's called the carpenter. because he was having to handle things for a while. That suggests that he was carrying the family's financial burden. And so it may be that Jesus thought, or excuse me, Mary thought that Jesus could do something about this. Maybe he could buy something more. It's not like they had a lot of money, but maybe he could do something. Maybe he could help in some other way. Maybe he could speak to the people, keep them calm, maybe give them a very good, Pastoral kind of comfort and and and they would they would feel fine about the fact that they've run out of wine Some think well, maybe she expected a miracle maybe but again verse 11 says that this was his first sign. This was his first sign and She may have suspected his origins as a Messiah, but he had not worked any miracles before this. There were some apocryphal accounts of Jesus's childhood that go all the way back to the second century. So, the very old accounts. Folks who are saying, well, we know what Jesus was doing during his childhood. You know, Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, they didn't tell you what Jesus was doing during childhood, but we can tell you. Now, if you want to make some money publishing some books, that's a good way to make some money. Things that the Bible doesn't tell you. There are people still doing that today. Lost secrets of the Bible, things that your pastor doesn't want you to know, that kind of stuff. You can make a lot of money by publishing that kind of stuff, and that was a very early enterprise, and it was something that was universally rejected by the church. But it was kept alive with some Gnostic heretical groups. And one of these groups, Mohammed eventually met. And so he preserved some of these stories in the Quran. And so you can read about some of these stories about Jesus, you know, being able to curse people or being able to take a clay pigeon and turn it into a real bird. You know, that kind of you say, where is that in the Bible? It's not in the Bible. You say, where'd they get that from? They got it from the Gnostics and from Islam. They got it from a lot of different places. Like I said, it's a big money-making industry. There's a woman who wrote a bunch of books, who you're probably familiar with, Anne Rice. wrote about the life of Jesus, and she included a lot of these stories. And some of her works were adapted to television and to film. And you may have even seen some of that stuff. There was that Young Messiah series that was on a while back. I don't know if that's still on. But that was that was presenting a lot of the Gnostic heretical views and and showing us that that view of Jesus There's also a TV movie that I watched I guess it was a TV movie a couple decades ago that you might remember and that also had some of the same effects in it some of the same storylines You know, when you look at such adaptations, I know this is a little bit of a rabbit trail, but bear with me for a moment. When you look at some of these adaptations, they are dangerous. They import ideas into the narrative. And you may not always realize it as you're reading the text, but you may be bringing those ideas to the text, which are false ideas. There are a lot of things. How many times do we think about Cain killing his brother Abel with a rock? Well, that's what we've always heard, right? But that's not what the Bible says. It never says it was a rock. In fact, I can make a better case that he actually used a knife. Because we read about the blood being spilled in first John. It was the same way that animals were sacrificed. We take these ideas that we kind of unknowingly pick up and we import them into the text. And with that one, that's not such a big deal. But it is also dangerous because some of these depictions are possible second commandment violations, which tells us, of course, don't make any engraven image and don't bow down and worship it. Of course, we all have family members who may be part of the Catholic community who have pictures of Jesus in their house. And sometimes they even kiss the painting or they go to mass and they put clothing on the statues or they kiss the feet of the statues. And we would recognize that as idolatry, but we also have to be warned of the fact that sometimes when we close our eyes and we pray, we might bring in some of these images into our minds. And we might unknowingly begin praying to some actor because that's the image of Jesus that we have in our mind. You know, like Jim Caviezel, you know, playing Jesus in The Passion. You know, that's that's something that, you know, we have to wrestle with. Why do I bring all this up? I. I don't bring it up to embarrass anyone. I don't bring it up to. to hurt anyone's feelings, but I know that there are many of you, and of course we had the flyer this morning about the Chosen. We've gotta practice some discernment with this. This is a series that I will say from all accounts that I've read and I haven't watched the series because again, I don't want certain things in my mind as I'm praying and reading. But the series has been more focused on the biblical accounts of Jesus. But it's also taken a great deal of artistic license. You know, I've read interviews with the show creator, Dallas Jenkins, the son of Jerry Jenkins, of course. He's proud about some of the background information that they've added to the characters to make them more interesting, to give them more color. For instance, Matthew, they made him autistic, or at least put him on the spectrum there. You know, little things like that to try to give a little depth to the story, they aren't really based in Biblical reality. Another liberty that was taken was to present Jesus as sometimes being anxious with his words and not really always confident in how he would address the crowds. At one scene, I read about his mother He's there and he's about to address the crowds in the Sermon on the Mount and he's worried that he might say the wrong words or the people might not accept him or that kind of thing. And Mary has to give him comfort and she has to encourage him. Guys, that's the opposite of what we read in this account and in others. Jesus knew what he was about. Jesus knew what he needed to say because he was God. Jesus always spoke the right words. And here we see him even rebuffing his mother. I would caution you with such shows. some of the unbiblical ideas not only come from the various consultants on the shows, bless you, a Catholic consultant and a rabbi, different consultants that are there, but also unofficially there are a lot of Mormon consultants. that Dallas Jenkins has brought in on the show. And of course, the show on its Twitter account has advertised this big mic drop moment with Jesus where he tells the Pharisees, I am the law of Moses. Well, that's not an I am statement that's in the Bible. That's an I am statement that's in the Book of Mormon. So we need to be careful with that. We need to be very, very careful with that. And so what do we see with the Jesus that's actually here? Well, again, he seems to actually rebuke Mary. Now, it's not that he his his word woman is as offensive as it sounds in English. I would have definitely got smacked by my mom if I addressed her that way. But it is a subtle reminder of who she is before him. She is but a woman. He is the creator. And he can speak to her in this way. It's not that he's being disrespectful. He's not going to violate his own word, but he is telling her, what does this have to do with us? Or if we were to translate this a little bit more literally, and this is going to be a really wooden translation. What, to me, to you? You say, okay, that didn't make sense at all. What, to me, to you? Well, what does that mean? That's actually a Hebrew idiom. And what it's intended to do is create distance between two people. It marks disagreement. What is this between us? Would be another way to render this. What is this between us? It's a point of stress between two parties. What's the stress? Well, Mary is speaking to Jesus like a mother directing a son. Of course, she believed he could do something to help, but that's not her role. And understand, he's not at her beck and call. He's the Lord, he's the authority. And if she thinks he can do something because he's the Messiah, well, then she needs to start thinking of him like the Messiah. There is evidence in scripture that she did struggle with these ideas. She did struggle with this. Now, he would honor her as his mother and kids. Yes, honor your father and your mother. Yes, that is what God has called us to do. But as mother and his father, not Joseph, who's probably dead now. It's Heavenly Father. It's Heavenly Father. He's the Messiah. He's the Son of God. He is going to be operating according to the will of God, and he's going to have a different set of priorities than his mother is going to have. She's going to have to learn to bring those priorities into alignment with his. And so he continues, my hour has not yet come. He has his own timetable. He's established it before the foundation of the world. And it's going to happen as he has set it out to happen. He will die when the father has ordained and then he will rise again and he will eventually usher in the physical Kingdom of God. And if Mary's worried about wine, well, we read in places like Joel 3 13 and Amos 9 13 and 14 that there's going to be plenty of wine flowing in the Messianic Kingdom. But this is not his hour yet. So what is it between you and me? He says. He's not rebuking her for bringing a need to him. But he is. He is calling on her to reconsider her priorities. And it's clear that she doesn't see this as a rebuke of necessarily asking him to do something. We are, by the way, called to bring our needs and requests before the Lord Jesus. But she also sees this as, okay, I cannot use this moment to detract from the glory of my Son, who is also the Son of God, who is also the Christ. He wasn't saying he wouldn't help. He was just saying she had overstepped a boundary. And so she, with that in mind, then goes and tells the servants, whatever he says to do or whatever he says to you, do it. Whatever he says to you, do it. He's her Lord. She's not his. He has the authority. And if he has authority over her, he has authority over all the servants there. He has authority over all. He's a king of kings. He's a lord of lords. And He has the authority, if you wanted to, to tell them to do nothing. Or He has the authority to tell them to do something. And that's, of course, what we see next. As we see Him speaking over creation. You know, He has the authority to do that, too. He can speak over matter. He can change the properties of matter. That's what we see next, as we see the transformation of Christ. Verses 6 through 11. Now there were six stone water pots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing 20 or 30 gallons each. Jesus said to them, fill the water pots with water. So they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, draw some out now and take it to the head waiter. So they took it to him. And when the head waiter tasted the water, which had become wine and did not know where it had come from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew the head waiter called to the bridegroom. And said to him, every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine. But you have kept the good wine until now. This beginning of his signs, Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him. Religious rituals accompanied everything in Jewish life. And that's true of marriage. It's true of eating. That's true of everything. This wedding celebration was no exception. They had these six big stone earthenware pots for the purpose of ritual purification. And of course, this is something that we read about in Leviticus 11. And so you say, okay, so they're just keeping the law. somewhat, why is it that they were washing so much though? And that becomes a point later on in Mark 7, for instance, Jesus begins to call out the vain traditions of men where they are adding to the Word of God and adding in all these washings and rituals. He'll later condemn all of this as pretentious displays But for now, he is just simply pointing out these earthenware jars. There's no hint of condemnation. But what he does tell them to do is to fill the pots up. And they might be thinking, okay, well, does this have to do with washing? What's he about to tell us to do? And so they do, and they fill it up to the brim. The brim means the top, right, guys? They fill them all the way to the top. Jesus isn't hiding wine in the bottom. You know, there's not a trick being played. There's no sleight of hand going on. They fill it up to the top. They can see, oh, it's water. Water's in there, okay. And they obey. They obey, and in doing so, they prevent any trickery. And this would be a total, if you're doing the math, and you kids can check me on my math later, this would be somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons, if we multiply out how many gallons this was. That's a lot of wine that's about to be created, right? Up to about 180 gallons of wine. That should be enough. And by the way, it is wine. It's not grape juice. I came, some of you know, I came from a very fundamentalist background. Some of my teetotaling brothers and sisters, and they were brothers and sisters, they told me, no, he only created grape juice. He only created grape juice here, but that's not what the text says. It says wine, and that is the Greek word for wine. There's no real way around that. And it's a high-quality wine that amazes even the governor of the feasts. He's like, whoa! He's not saying that because Welch's has just been invented. He's saying that because this is a good wine. We don't know exactly what the alcohol content was. A lot of times the juice would water down the wine, even up to a hundred, excuse me, a 10th of the value of the proof there, but you could still get drunk off of it if you drank enough of it. You needed it though. You needed it because you didn't have water purification back then. You needed it to kill the bacteria in the water. It kept you alive. And this was definitely some there was definitely some alcoholic content. It probably also refers to the taste. The Greek word is clear in verse 10 that that there is some kind of inebriation that that sometimes happens. So this is this is an alcoholic drink. And so the question is, why would he do this? What possibly could he have in mind for creating? Why not just say, well, just take one of these? We don't want to be a temptation to anyone. He says, yeah, fill them all up. Why does he create so much? Well, keep in mind. At first, the Bible never calls the consumption of alcohol a sin. It doesn't. In fact, quite the opposite. God designates the availability of wine as a blessing. And as I mentioned earlier, it's a mark of the messianic kingdom, the coming kingdom age. It is a blessing. He would say the absence of wine is a curse. When you look back at Deuteronomy 28, the blessings and cursings passage there, he says, yeah, I will remove your wine. Of course, yes, you needed it for water purification, but he also says it gladdens the heart. And these are things that we do read in scripture. Now, what do we also read in scripture? We also read warnings. And it's interesting that the first time we see wine in the Bible, it's with someone who gets drunk. Noah, right? And so there are warnings and many clear warnings in scripture about drunkenness. Our problem is not the presence of alcohol. Our problem is the lack of self-control. We can apply this to a lot of different areas in our lives. We eat. What do we do? It tastes good. We overeat. As a culture, that's a big problem with us, right? I'm not exempt from that. I try to stand up straight to hide it. I'm not exempt from that. We tend to eat. What do we do? We tend to overeat. Tend to drink. Tend to overdrink. Apply this to other things tend to play games. We over game right and we can just continue to apply it to other areas of our lives and what does it all speak of it speaks of a problem of self-control something that God needs to deal with now, there are others who have similar issues, but but but That may run deeper. It's not just self-control. They may be trying to get an exposure experience that they don't think that they can get from God in their life. They may be trying to fill a void that only God can fill in their lives, right? They may be trying to experience something, some joy that has long departed from them, when instead they need to find the joy of Christ. So, there are a lot of different reasons why people over drink. But the presence of alcohol at the wedding, that's not the problem. And Calvin notes here, when God daily gives us a large supply of wine, it is our own fault if His kindness is an excitement to luxury. And he goes on to note that it's always a test of our sobriety to not overindulge. and you take that drink and be done. If you can't, it's better not to drink. So you have to weigh that out in your own mind. You have to come to your own conclusion before God on that, where you are. But you might still say, yeah, but this is a lot of wine. Well, there were also a lot of people there though, right? And not only does this cover more than cover abundantly more than cover any wine that Jesus and his disciples may have consumed there is also probably provided a very nice wedding present. Whatever was left would have gone to the bride and groom. You know, that makes me think of the story of the poor widow in Second Kings four. Remember her? Her oil had run out. Remember what God did for her where it was just an abundant spring? I'm not saying that these pots were an abundant spring, but it is a picture of the abundance that Christ would bring. And this wine pointed forward to the blessings of Christ. Think about this, he takes these ceremonial jars that were meant for washing, and if you lived under Moses, you would have to wash. And not only that, but the elders had these traditions about all these special washings. It wasn't just about cleaning your hands before you eat. Kids, you should do that. There's nothing wrong with washing your hands before you eat. And some of you might want to learn that that's not a problem. But what was the problem? What was the problem? It was that they were doing all these washings to try to make themselves pleasing to God. They were trying to wash off the scum of the Gentiles. You know, they were afraid that maybe a demon had gotten on their hand and if they don't wash their hand in just the right way, they would eat and it would go inside of them and they would be defiled. And Jesus says, no, no, that's not the way this works. Jesus takes these ceremonial jars and they filled them with water like they would be doing a ritual purification and Jesus transforms it into wine. And he says, the old is gone. The new is come. The old has gone. The new has come. Now, where we used to suffer with our sins before God, we wondered how we would make ourselves pleasing unto the Lord. We see in Christ that he can place joy directly into our hearts, and he can fill us with the new wine of his spirit. And we can have the joy of the Lord. We can have the joy of the Lord and know that we are saved because of the work he does for us, not because of the work that we do for him. And even in the kingdom, we look forward to a time when he will transform us so completely that some of you who have struggled with drunkenness in the past, You say, oh no, if there's wine in the kingdom, that might be a struggle for me. It won't be. It won't be. You will be so transformed that it won't be. That's how powerful the transformation of Christ is. If he can transform the water molecules into wine molecules, then he can transform you. He can transform your hearts. Let's just note a couple more points before we close here. You know, because of the work of Christ, this bridegroom was saved a lot of embarrassment, right? The head waiter calls him over, the governor of the feast calls him over. He probably was aware of the wine situation. He's like, oh boy, here it comes. And instead of a rebuke, he receives a blessing. He receives, instead of condemnation, he receives a commendation, right? Because the head waiter doesn't know anything about what just took place. I doubt the bridegroom knows what just took place. He's like, what are you talking about? The best wine. Yeah, people usually serve that first, and then after people have drunk for a little while, their senses are dull. They're not gonna be quite so appreciative. Their palates are not as appreciative of a fine wine. And so you serve that first, and then you give them the inferior stuff as the feast goes on. But you've served the best last. Like, this is the note you're ending the wedding on. This is incredible. This is the best-tasting stuff. And I imagine it was the best-tasting stuff, because the grapes that were used to make this wine, they didn't grow up out of the cursed earth. They weren't touched by human hands as they were crushed. They didn't go through the same sinful process as fermentation set in. It was just created, and it was created perfectly, just created perfectly. It was the best stuff. You know, like when Jesus feeds the 5,000 with loaves and fishes, that's got to be some good stuff right there. And this is good stuff. And the head waiter recognizes it, and the bridegroom's probably very confused as to what's happening here. Someone brought in some good wine. He's probably very thankful. He's probably praising God. Note something else. As they draw out the water, it's transformed too, right? Jesus doesn't just transform it right there. He says, draw out the water and take it to the head master of the feast. That would have taken some faith. Supposed to take some water to you. Water from these earthenware jars, which by the way, you weren't supposed to drink from. They were for ritual purification. You're not supposed to drink from these things. But Jesus's wine is clean. You can drink it and as they serve it, it's thin wine. It's thin wine. See, Jesus is sovereign over the process. And by the way, as I think about that, I don't know if you guys have ever struggled with this. Why did God create a mature universe? You know, some of you, some of you kids, you know, you may go to school and you may see, you know, all these presentations about how old the earth is and everything like that. Think about this. Jesus made wine in that moment. That implies that a vine grew up. Several months go by and grapes are coming on. And I'm not an expert. I don't know anything about wine or, you know, exactly the process here that takes place. But I imagine that it has to be a certain age before they can pluck the grapes. The vine must be a certain age. And then when they pluck the grapes, there's this whole process where they crush the grapes. into the wine press and it runs down. They store it. It has to ferment for a few months. It has to go through this whole process, but Jesus just made it. Now, let me ask you, is Jesus lying when he made the wine? I'm seeing some confused faces. Why would he be lying when he made the wine? Well, because it implies that there is this whole process and that process didn't happen. There's just mature wine there. Let me ask you, is Jesus lying when he made our universe mature? It may look older than it is, but he made it ready to live in, right? There's no deception on the part of God here. He just made it this way. He just made it this way. And He can make us the way He wants us to be made, too. Now some of us, we wish we would be like the one, you know, where we were one thing and now suddenly we're just this mature other thing. He doesn't always work that way with us. Sometimes we have to go through a process. Sometimes the maturing process is a long process. And we just wish that we could get to the end of it already. But he says, no, wait, be patient. I'm doing something in you. Let me have my perfect work done in you. And it takes time. It takes time. But this is what he does. And he can take a person who perhaps, maybe you did struggle with alcohol. He can cause that person not only to fully repent, but he can put the Holy Spirit of God within that person. And the Holy Spirit, what is the fruit of the Spirit? One of the fruits of the Spirit, as you list them off? What? Self-control. Self-control. What did I say our problem was? Self-control, right? He can put His Spirit within us, and He can begin producing that spirit of self-control within us. This is what He does. He transforms not just water into wine, He transforms sinners into saints every day. Every day. And those saints, they're not always perfect in how they live. They have to grow up like these kids. They have to grow up. Guess what? The adults aren't always adults, right? The adults have to grow up, too. And He does all of that work within us. And in Christ, we can say, you know, I look back on my life, and I can truly say the old has passed away and the new has come. I'm still waiting for more transformation. I'm still waiting for one form of glory to be turned into another. I'm still waiting for that glorious day when our faith will be sight. Christ is the glory behind that day. And we see it beginning right here. That's what verse 11 says. That's what verse 11 says. He was beginning to show His glory. He was manifesting His glory. You want to see the glory of God? Get to know Jesus Christ. Get to know Jesus Christ. He will transform you too.