Jesus offers inexhaustible joys: We don’t know what if anything Jesus said as He walked around that site of His 1st sign miracle but since He has a pattern of expounding on these sign miracles, He likely would have told the people that the world’s joy always runs out and cannot be regained, but the joy He gives is ever new and ever satisfying. (In the Scriptures, wine is a symbol of joy. See Jud. 9:13 and Ps. 104:15.) So Jesus compares His eternal life to an ever-flowing river of life-giving water. He also says that His eternal life is more abundant than anything else in the Universe! That is quite an offer.
Jesus offers INDESCRIBABLE DELIGHTS: Anyone who is honest and has looked at life apart from God soon realizes that the world’s pleasures only offer the best at the first, and then, once you are “hooked,” things start to get worse.
This week as I tuned to ABC news at the top of the hour I was a couple minutes early and there in my car came the voice of Roy Clark singing his 1969 hit “Yesterday”, the words from, his beautiful singing voice, exactly captured the fleeting pleasures of anyone who lives apart from Jesus. Listen to these piercing words and think of any relative, neighbor, or friend you have that has never found the water of life Jesus offers:
Yesterday when I was young,
the taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue.
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game.
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame.
The thousand dreams I dreamed; the splendid things I planned.
I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand.
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day,
and only now I see how the years ran away.
Unlike anything this world offers, Jesus continues to offer that which is best until we one day enjoy the finest blessings in the eternal kingdom (Luke 22:18).
Jesus offers INESCAPABLE PEACE: Finally our Lord would certainly have had a special message here for His people, Israel. In the Old Testament, the nation is pictured as “married” to God and unfaithful to her marriage covenant (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 31:32; Hosea 2:2ff). The wine ran out, and all Israel had left were six empty water pots! They held water for external washings, but they could provide nothing for internal cleaning and joy. In this miracle, our Lord brought fullness where there was emptiness, joy where there was disappointment, and something internal for that which was only external (water for ceremonial washings).
How do we get all this? Jesus explains it by His Sign Sermon.
Jesus can see our Emptiness: First, we see the condition of the natural man before he is born again: Jesus draws our attention to some silent objects sitting in the shadows of the wedding feast and by allusion points out that apart from Jesus any of us are like an empty water pot of stone-cold, lifeless, useless.
Jesus can remove our Worthlessness: Second, we see the worthlessness of man’s religion to help the sinner. Those water pots were set apart “after the manner of the purifying of the Jews” -they were designed for ceremonial purgation, but their valuelessness was shown by their emptiness. Jesus uses the cold, empty, lifeless water pots to become conduits for His wondrous, life giving power. Like the blind and lame and deaf whom Christ touched would run, and hear, and see, thus declaring His goodness and grace, so we are rescued from our pitiful estate and raised to His fullness, His matchlessness, and His delights!
Jesus can offer his Fullness: Note that at the command of Christ they were filled with water, and water is one of the emblems of the written Word: it is the Word which God uses in quickening dead should into newness of life. Observe, too, these water pots were filled “up to the brim” -God always gives good measure; with no grudging hand does He minister. John commanded that the jars should be filled to the brim. John mentions that point to make it clear that nothing else but the water was put into them.