John 2 – Devotional & Commentary: Witnessing Water Turning Into Wine0

Devotional Sharing, Submitted by Gina Han, Gracepoint Berkeley

What can I learn about what it means to trust and obey through Jesus’ instructions and the servants’ response?  Was it easy or difficult for the servants to respond this way?  What would I have done?  What did the servants experience as a result of their obedience.  Although the bride and groom experienced this miracle at their wedding, perhaps the most blessed people at the wedding were the servants, who had a front row view of what Jesus was doing. They were servants, so they were well practiced at obeying and at simply acting upon the word of their master. So when Jesus said to do this very strange thing, although they must have felt doubt and disbelief, or fears at what if something went wrong and they got in trouble,  they nevertheless simply obeyed. Even if it was with trembling hands that they filled the stone jars to the brim, one scoop at a time, they did what Jesus had asked them to do. And because they did, without letting their own fears or doubts or disbelief get in the way, Jesus was able to work His miracle. And not only were they able to witness it, they were able to be a part of it through their simple, childlike, servant-hearted obedience. As servants, they didn’t have the luxury of complaining about their situation, or holding on to their own notions of what they should be doing with their lives. They had a simple trust and obedience to the master, and it’s to those that had this kind of heart that Jesus truly revealed himself and his power. Because they knew what had really happened, and had even been involved in Jesus’ miraculous work, they had the chance to intimately and personally experience God working, and grow in their faith.

Devotional Questions:

John 2:1-5

• Consider the irony of wine running out on the wedding day—the most well-prepared and supposedly happiest day of one’s life.  What truth about life and about the limits of human abilities does this scene depict?
• What did Mary do about this problem?  What can I learn from Mary?

John 2:10

• How does the statement “everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine” aptly describe how the world works?  In contrast, how does the statement “you have saved the best till now” aptly describe how God works?

John 2:13-22

• Think about the values represented by a market.  Why was it so offensive to Jesus that they had turned the “Father’s house” into a market?  What values must characterize a church?
• What does Jesus’ response to what was going on in the temple teach me about how I should view sin, in light of my (and the church’s) identity as God’s temple?
• In the face of dead and twisted temple religion, Jesus says: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” What message does Jesus convey here regarding the existing temple religion, about himself as the true temple, and about the movement he will launch with his resurrection?

Additional Questions:

John 2:7-9

• What can I learn about what it means to trust and obey through Jesus’ instructions and the servants’ response?  Was it easy or difficult for the servants to respond this way?  What would I have done?  What did the servants experience as a result of their obedience?

John 2:9-11

• Jesus solved the problem at the wedding by changing water into wine.  Compare and contrast wine and water.  Have I experienced this kind of fundamental change through Jesus?

John 2:18, 23-25

• What do these verses say about misplaced reliance on miracles in our approach to God?  Why would this be the case?

Commentary:

v. 4 “Jesus’ address for his mother, Woman, is an expression of polite distance, as is his question to her. My hour has not yet come. In John, Jesus’ ‘hour’ is the time of his crucifixion, at which time his saving work is accomplished in his atoning death (see 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1; also note on 7:30). At this point in his ministry, because of people’s misconceptions about the coming Messiah, Jesus chooses not to reveal himself openly to Israel (though he does perform numerous messianic ‘signs’; see note on 2:11). Even this miracle is done quietly. Compared to the other Gospels, John places less emphasis on Jesus’ public ministry and more emphasis on his private ministry to specific individuals.”[1]

v. 9 “Every story tells us not of something Jesus did once and never again, but of something which he is forever doing.  John tells us not of things that Jesus once did in Palestine, but of things that he still does today. And what John wants us to see here is not that Jesus once on a day turned some water pots of water into wine; he wants us to see that whenever Jesus comes into a man’s life, there comes a new quality which is like turning water into wine. Without Jesus, life is dull and stale and flat; when Jesus comes into it, life becomes vivid and sparkling and exciting. Without Jesus, life is drab and uninteresting; with him it is thrilling and exhilarating.”^[2]

v. 11 “signs. Miracles that attest to Jesus’ identity as Messiah and Son of God and lead unbelievers to faith. John specifies that after this sign, Jesus’ disciples believed in him (cf. v. 23) […]  In each of the signs that John includes, the emphasis is on the way in which the “sign” reveals Jesus’ messianic character (cf. 12:37–40; 20:30–31) and on the exceptional and striking nature of the feat accomplished by Jesus—such as the large quantity and high quality of wine (2:6, 10), the fact that the official’s son is healed a long distance away by the sheer power of Jesus’ word (4:47, 49–50), the invalid’s recovery from a 38-year-long ordeal (5:5), the large quantity of food produced by Jesus (6:13), the man’s recovery from lifelong blindness (9:1–2), and the raising of Lazarus after four days in the tomb (11:17, 39).”[3]

vv. 13-17 “(Jesus) acted as he did because God’s house was being desecrated. In the Temple there was worship without reverence […] Worship without reverence can be a terrible thing. It may be worship which is formalized and pushed through anyhow; the most dignified prayers on earth can be read like a passage from an auctioneer’s catalogue. It may be worship which does not realize the holiness of God […] It may be the use of the house of God for purposes and in a way where reverence and the true function of God’s house are forgotten. In that court of God’s house at Jerusalem there would be arguments about prices, disputes about coins that were worn and thin, the clatter of the market place. That particular form of irreverence may not be common now, but there are other ways of offering an irreverent worship to God. […] The Temple consisted of a series of courts leading into the Temple proper and to the Holy Place. There was first the Court of the Gentiles, then the Court of the Women, then the Court of the Israelites, then the Court of the Priests. All this buying and selling was going on in the Court of the Gentiles which was the only place into which a Gentile might come. Beyond that point, access to him was barred. So then if there was a Gentile whose heart God had touched, he might come into the Court of the Gentiles to mediate and pray and distantly touch God. The Court of the Gentiles was the only place of prayer he knew. The Temple authorities and the Jewish traders were making the Court of the Gentiles into an uproar and a rabble where no man could pray […] Is there anything in our church life—a snobbishness, an exclusiveness, a coldness, a lack of welcome, a tendency to make the congregation into a closed club, an arrogance, a fastidiousness—which keeps the seeking stranger out? Let us remember the wrath of Jesus against those who made it difficult and even impossible for the seeking stranger to make contact with God.”^[4]

vv. 18-22 “[…] Jesus certainly never said he would destroy the material Temple and then rebuild it. Jesus in fact looked for the end of the Temple. He said to the woman of Samaria that the day was coming when men would worship God neither in Mount Gerizim, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth (?John 4:21?).  Second, the cleansing of the Temple, as we have seen, was a dramatic way of showing that the whole Temple worship with its ritual and its sacrifice was irrelevant and could do nothing to lead men to God. It is clear that Jesus did expect that the Temple would pass away; that he had come to render its worship unnecessary and obsolete; and that therefore he would never suggest that he would rebuild it. […] As Mark relates the charge against Jesus, it ran: ‘?I will destroy this Temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands?’ (?Mark 14:58?). What Jesus really meant was that his coming had put an end to all this man-made, man-arranged way of worshipping God and put in its place a spiritual worship; that he put an end to all this business of animal sacrifice and priestly ritual and put in its place a direct approach to the Spirit of God which did not need an elaborate man-made Temple and a ritual of incense and sacrifice offered by the hands of men. The threat of Jesus was: ‘?Your Temple worship, your elaborate ritual, your lavish animal sacrifices are at an end, because I have come.?’ The promise of Jesus was: ‘?I will give you a way to come to God without all this human elaboration and human ritual. I have come to destroy this Temple in Jerusalem and to make the whole earth the Temple where men can know the presence of the living God.’ ”^[5]

^[2]William Barclay, “The Gospel of John,” The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 122.

[3] ESV Study Bible, Notes for Galatians (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008) 2023.

^[4]William Barclay, “The Gospel of John,” The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 122.

^[5]William Barclay, “The Gospel of John,” The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 135-36.