“The Wedding, Wine, Woman, and Wonder” Part I

On Mondays after my morning devotion and breakfast, I begin my exegesis on my text for the next Lord’s Day bible lesson for my adult class called the Sojourners. God has given me a great opportunity with a group of wonderful people who love the Lord and love His Word. More importantly, they love the word explained expositorily built from solid exegesis.

I normally begin reading the text numerous times in at least seven English translations until I can grasp the overall proposition of the text. Then of course begins the real “work” and that is translating the Greek into the English and developing a working text. Then arduous work follows developing the subject, proposition, and skeletal outline in order to eventually come to a finished lesson for Sunday.

I mention this because we finally come to the second chapter in the gospel of John. In particular we will be dealing with verses one through eleven. This is the first of seven “signs” or miracles that Jesus performs to reveal Himself to His disciples and the nation of Israel that He is the Messiah, the Promised Coming One of whom Moses spoke in the law and the prophets wrote about.

It is a heart breaking shame that often times the real meaning of this passage is lost due to being “drowned” in the controversy of the sign itself, the creation of wine. This is an extremely important event and has magnificent ramifactions. It's meaning and place cannot be missed. As you can imagine, as much as I am looking forward to dealing with this passage in conjunction with John’s purpose of writing this gospel (John 20:30-31) and the gospel’s place within the New Testament, I approach this “assignment” with some fear and trepidation.

This amuses our pastor. He asked me at lunch yesterday if I had reached John, chapter two yet? I informed him that we will be teaching it this coming Lord’s Day. He laughed. First of all, it is comforting to know that he and I are on the same page when it comes to this passage and every other passage that deals with wine and “strong drink.” It amuses him because he is secondly, aware that our church has had a “fundamental” background with certain “pre-conceived” notions about this subject. The majority of our class is going to have some “heartburn” over the actual product that Christ did in fact create.

Stay tune, next Monday, we will share how the class reacted. Don’t you just love the Word!