Jesus Turns Water Into Wine | Week 5

You are my living hope. In a world where we are experiencing what feels like a drought of hope, we have in Jesus not only a hope that survived for a moment in time, but a hope that lasts forevermore, it is a living hope. This is why we can be confident when the Bible says this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. And we can be glad in it because God has given us hope that whatever your frustrations are, whatever your fears are, whatever your disappointment is, the things that drown you in sorrow and pain and all of that, you can still wake up again.

You can breathe again. You can have a new morning because God has given us a new hope. And so let’s praise God for that this morning and then let’s go to God in prayer. Father, we lift our voice to you, Lord. We know that you are good, that you are powerful, that you are strong.

God, we ask you today that you would just help our hearts to be connected with yours. Lord, help our affection to grow for you. God, there are so many distractions, Lord, in this room, all of us have come in with we talk about pre existing conditions. All of us have pre existing conditions of sin or disappointment or sadness or whatever it is or situations with our family or situations with our finances or whatever the situations are. Lord, we have so many things that we come into this gathering with, Lord.

And I just ask you that you would just shower us with Grace, that you would remind us of your hope, that you would remind us of your peace, that you would remind us that there is a way out. God. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for this time of prayer.

Thank you for this Church. Thank you for this family. We love you, dad, in Christ, and we pray Amen. Amen. Yes, I’m wearing winter boots, and the reason I’m wearing them.

Thank you, worship team. The reason I’m wearing them is because it’s the only time I can wear them. So there you go. That’s it. You just throw it on, I guess.

Today we’re continuing our series through the Life of Jesus and the Ministry of Jesus. We’re in a series called The Ministry of Jesus, where we are looking at everything Jesus ever did, every interaction he ever had, and every word he ever spoke. And it’s going to take us a long time to finish it again because of the amount that we’re studying. But we’re committed to this study because we believe that the highest calling of a disciple is to be like Jesus, to learn from him and to learn to be with him and to learn what it is for us every single moment of every single day, to ponder and consider what would Jesus do if he were me. Today we continue in that series.

We have come through a lot so far. We started with Jesus at his baptism at the Jordan River. Then we walked through the story of Jesus temptation in the wilderness. And then we came back out as Jesus gathered his first disciples, those first five guys, John the Baptist declares, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the Earth. And today or last week, we ended up in Galilee.

And today we continue there. And I want to unpack the story that we’re going to read today in John chapter two. Today and for the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be in John chapter two. You can go ahead and turn your Bible over there. And the reason we’re going to be in John’s Gospel for the majority of these early sermons is because John’s Gospel has the majority of these early accounts of Jesus Ministry.

I want to tell you why that is. Well, John’s Gospel was written as a collection of evidences. John declares himself, this is the reason why he wrote the gospel. He’s trying to prove to you and to me both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. At the end of the Gospel of John, John the Apostle will say, these are written, these words, all these stories, everything you’ve read so far are written that you may believe and that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.

So that’s what John is after. He’s trying to help us believe. So throughout the gospel, the author, the Apostle John, is just going to line up supporting proofs so that as we read this gospel, we will be sort of overwhelmed with the proof that Jesus is both man and God. This is why if you’re trying to just dip your toe into the Christian worldview, I always encourage people start with the Gospel of John. Begin by reading this because it was written so that you would believe.

So the mechanism John the Apostle uses is both word and works. And the gospel is filled with not only what Jesus did, but also what other people said about Jesus and what Jesus said. And really, that’s what we’ve been after. So far from the very first chapter, we have seen just this almost unsurmountable evidence of who Christ is. From the very first word of the first chapter.

The very first verse is about Jesus. Look what it says. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And he was with God in the beginning. And the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things it’s all about Jesus. Through Jesus, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was the life and the life was the light of mankind.

The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but it did not receive him.

Yes, to all who did receive him. To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or of husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh, and he made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of Grace and truth. You open up the pages of John and right away, the Apostle John wants you to stop and go.

I want to tell you what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the Logos, the Word of God who became flesh. And then shortly thereafter, we meet John the Baptist. And John sees Jesus walking by the Basin there of the River Jordan. And he says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the Earth.

And then we have testimony of those five followers of John the Baptist who left John the Baptist and started following Jesus. And what do they say? Well, we read this last week, right? We have found the Messiah that is the Christ. All of this is in chapter one.

And in chapter one, we learn the words we listen to the words of people talking about Jesus, people who walked with Jesus, who learned from Jesus. And what do they say about him? Well, they say he is God. He was with God, that everything was made through him that has ever been made, that he is the light and the light and the life, that he is God in human flesh, that he is the Lamb of God, that he is the Messiah, that he is the one spoken about during the Old Testament, that he is the King of the Jews, that he is the Son of God, the King of Israel. And all of these confessions happened just in the very first chapter of the book of John.

There’s incredible grandeur, right? Let’s set up who Jesus is. God made man. Its this awesome picture. And then you turn to chapter two. And the very first scene is Jesus at a party.

It’s a little bit strange, right? Here is the Son of God who made all things. In the next verse, he’s dancing, he’s hanging out with some friends. And it’s in this party that we see the very first works of Jesus. There are eight signs in the Gospel of John.

Jesus turns water to wine in John chapter two. Jesus heals the dying man, john, chapter four. He heals the paralyzed man, john, chapter five. He creates food out of nothing, john, chapter six.

And he walks on water at the end of John chapter six. John chapter eight. John chapter nine. I’m sorry. He heals a blind man.

John, chapter eleven. He raises Lazarus from the dead. John, chapter 21, he makes food for his disciples, and obviously there’s also the miracle of him raising from the dead. But this is the very first miracle we see.

This is the first moment of his public Ministry. And so we’re going to read it together, then we’re going to pick it apart, and then I’ll come back and give you some relevant application. Are you guys with me? Yeah. All right, here we go.

John, chapter two will start in verse one. It says, on the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’s mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’s mother said to him, they have no more wine. Woman, why do you involve me? Jesus replied, My hour has not yet come.

His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, Fill the jars with water. So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted. And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had turned into wine. He did not realize where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, Everyone brings out the choice wine first, and then the cheaper wine after the guests that had too much to drink. But you have saved the best till now.

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him. There’s that word again. This is a miracle, but it’s totally understated. I think it’s because this story is actually more than just a miracle. And in this story, as we will discover, there is a universal truth that we can get from it.

And I don’t want to get ahead of myself too much. But as we unwind the story, I think that you will see that though this miracle may look at first glance like just some sort of trivial act, this miracle is actually going to give you some vital spiritual instruction about the way you’re supposed to relate to Jesus. So let me break it down. And then we’ll come back to that. Verse one. On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

Last week we talked about Jesus. This is our map again of Israel. Last week we had Jesus moving from sort of the Dead Sea all the way up to Bethsaida there. And now we have him moving into Cana. Remember last week we had the Joe give us sort of a National Geographic topical geography class.

It was awesome. I loved the picture. I was like, this is great. I so much appreciate Joe’s scholarship, don’t you? It’s just amazing.

Again, we went from the Dead Sea all the way up to Bethsaida, and then Bethsaida, and now we’re in Cana. Now we’re in Cana. And the Bible tells us it’s the third day. Well, the third day of what? Well, this is a good indication, again, that John the Apostle is there.

He’s amongst the crowd. This is the third day after the previous meeting that Philip Nathaniel had, which we looked at last week. It’s the third day after that meeting. Again, this is an indication, as I mentioned before, that John the Apostle is there. But what a jampacked week that must have been.

Jesus goes from the Dead Sea, where he’s like, he gets all these followers all the way up here. He walks that long distance on that River Basin there, and then he’s crossed over. And this is all in the same week. And we have these five or four disciples gathered, depending on what you think about Nathaniel. But we have Andrew and Peter and Philip and John, and Jesus is in Cana.

The village of Cana is about 9 miles to the northwest of Nazareth. You can kind of see it. I don’t know if you can see on this map, but let’s see, this is Nazareth up there. Do you see that? And that’s Cana, boom.

So it’s about 9 miles to the northwest. This is a super small place, just anecdotally it’s Nathaniel’s hometown. We learned that in John, chapter 21, verse two. But Cana is remarkably small. Nazareth, for example, I read a number that some commentators put the population at about 500 total people.

500 people. That’s less than the membership of this Church. Nazareth. That’s Nazareth. It was a small place.

And by comparison, Cana is even smaller. The same commentator speculated that there would be about 100 people living in Cana. We can’t be sure, but we know that it’s super small. It’s an agricultural village, not very many people. And that means that this wedding would have been a huge deal.

Everybody in the towns and the surrounding towns would have been there. That’s why we get the indication that Jesus and his disciples were invited. But we would imagine that for the most people around the village, this would have been the celebration. All these families would have known each other. They would have lived there for generations.

These people weren’t very mobile. It wasn’t like they moved from place to place to place. So everyone had grown up there. Everyone had grown up together. They had known each other.

So here is this wedding, and it’s like the community is marrying this couple. It would have been a huge event. What I imagine, I’m Puerto Rican, so what I imagine is sort of like a Puerto Rican or if you’re an islander an island wedding. It’s like, hey, everybody, this is cousin Carlos.

And you’re like, how are we related? He’s your aunt’s, brothers, neighbors, sisters, best friend’s. Aunt. You’re like, sounds good. Just call him Carlos.

Everyone knows him. He knew you when you were a baby. All right, that sounds good. So this is what I imagine this is this wedding to be like, every aunt, every uncle, every friend of an aunt or friend of an uncle would have been there for this major wedding event. And the wedding wasn’t like a one night thing.

Weddings were a huge deal. One writer said that they would start early in the week, normally on the day after Sabbath, and they would go all week long, seven days of partying. And the reason it was such a huge celebration was not only because they were getting married, but because of all that it took to be engaged. See, the marriage wasn’t just a celebration. It was a celebration of something that had been initiated about a year before.

So think about this. You’re getting married to or you’re being betrothed to your spouse. But the way that relationship would have started is your parents and their parents would have gotten together. Should have made a deal. Hey, is your son any good for my daughter?

Maybe not. They are a little on the whatever. They made a deal. They exchanged some vows. And at that point, when you were betrothed or when you were engaged, it was a legal binding contract.

An engagement could only be broken by a divorce. It wasn’t like today. You’re like, I’m sick of them. It’s like, no, you have to go through the courts. To be engaged was to be legally promised to somebody.

But again, it wasn’t consummated until the very end of this party because there was a lot of work to be done if you were going to get married. The party, again, wasn’t just a celebration of the wedding. It was a celebration of the engagement because during that year, the husband had to get to work. The bridegroom had to prepare a place for his bride.

This will be important later on. So just follow me. And by the way, if you’re a dad, you’re like, this is exactly what I’ve been telling to my daughters. The husband has to build a house for his wife. I mean, I’m not talking about, like, build a house.

I’m talking about build a house. It could be putting an extension to the family house or the father’s house, but you’re going to build a house. It was the groom’s responsibility to do that to be sure this wedding wouldn’t happen until that house was built. And the father got a chance to look around the house. Like the father of the bride, yeah I don’t like this. But the work had to be done.

And think about what it takes to build a house. Some of you guys have tried to redo your kitchens and the nightmare that causes. Just imagine building a house, laying a foundation, building up the walls, laying a roof, building your furniture, building the food storage and filling the food storage and laying the foundations. And on and on and on and on and on. This was all the man’s responsibility and it had to be done before the party began.

Oh, and by the way, it was also the man’s responsibility to he had the full costs of the wedding. Think about that. I have a new tradition we’re going to bring to this Church.

Everything. Every food, every bit of food, all the drinks, the DJ, those overpriced boutonnieres, all that stuff, photographer, all that stuff. It’s his responsibility. And when all of that was finally prepared and it was checked off by the father of the bride, they could have the party. You might wonder, well, why that is.

Well, it’s because this was a test, of course. Can this guy take care of my daughter? He had to demonstrate that he could provide for this woman. And if he could provide for her and he could prove himself, then they would have the wedding. So of course we get to the wedding.

So that means he built the house. He did everything. They get to the celebration. It’s finally time and everyone’s there. And by the way, Jesus uses this illustration of the wedding feast of the wedding banquet throughout his Ministry.

Luke, chapter 14, Matthew, chapter 22, Matthew, chapter 25, with the story of the ten virgins right there’s a Virgin waiting. That’s that same illustration of waiting for the husband to prepare the place. And then maybe the most famous one, Jesus says in John, chapter 14, My father’s house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have not told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I’m going to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may also be where I am.

Again, Jesus is using that illustration. I am preparing a place for you. He has gone away. He is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride. He is going to prepare a place for us.

And then he will come back and take us to be with him. It’s pretty cool, right? It’s amazing. Anyway, this man has been working all year, preparing, gathering, organizing, making sure everything’s in perfect position and everyone’s there and they’re celebrating. And then when the wine ran out.

Now this is a huge problem. This is a colossal embarrassment. Why? Because they were all drunks. I’m just kidding.

That’s not why. The reason why you’re like, why don’t they make it a dry wedding? No, you actually need wine because you can’t drink water. Because water is dangerous. There’s no way to purify water at the time.

So the way you purified water is by drinking wine. They needed something to drink I read one place that they would cut it. They would cut the wine by one part wine, three parts water, or one part wine, ten parts water. But you had to have the wine mixed in because there was no way to just drink water and assume that you would be fine. Anyway, this groom had spent a year preparing for his marriage, and he gets to the party and he’s actually ill prepared.

It’s the day of reckoning, and it’s become totally obvious that he has made a miscalculation. This is a major problem. I read one place that this could have been grounds for divorce. The husband or the father of the bride could have looked at it and gone, you don’t know how to take care of my daughter and just taken her away. Think of how intense that would be.

And by the way, single brothers, this is what the fathers in this Church are looking for when you think about marrying our daughters. It’s like, I’m not saying, Go build a house, but you better lay a spiritual foundation.

All right, that was all for free. It’s not even in my notes. This is a colossal disaster. So verse three, when the wine was gone, Jesus mother said to Jesus, they have no more wine. We don’t know what Mary’s role is, but we assume that she’s like helping out in the wedding ceremony somehow we don’t exactly know.

But Mary realizes there’s a problem. Maybe everyone knows there’s a problem, or maybe it’s just a handful of people, but she comes to Jesus and some people ask, well, why did she come to Jesus? Well, some people say, well, she’s asking for a miracle. And that may be true, but I don’t think it’s that. I think there’s actually something more obvious than that.

Why would Mary go to Jesus? Well, let me ask in a different way. What do you think she did when she had any problem ever? She went to the God man that was living in her house. Jesus has never had a bad idea in his whole life.

The wisest man who has ever lived, he never set her in the wrong direction. He never had a wrong solution. If something went wrong, he knew exactly why it went wrong. So, of course, Jesus’s mom would go to Jesus and go, hey, could you help out? Because I don’t know what to do here.

The other thing that I know Mary knew about Jesus is that Jesus loved people, and he also understood what a colossal disaster this would have been for that bridegroom. And so she’s just appealing, hey, Christ, Jesus, can you help out? It’s going to be humiliating for him.

You could think about it like this. This culture was a culture that was okay. And I would say more comfortable with shame than maybe we are. Shame was a way of sort of telling people, you’re not doing things right. So if this man would have gotten divorced from his wife because he couldn’t provide.

It’s likely that he may have never been even be able to get married. Like, we have like Twitter mobs. This would have been like actual mobs. You, you know, know what I’m talking about. So it’s intense.

And so Jesus mom’s like, hey, can you help? Can you help? And Jesus responds, Woman, why do you involve me? Woman? It’s not a harsh woman.

It sounds like it’s harsh, but it’s not. It’s more like the expression ma’am. By the way, it’s the same word Jesus uses in John, chapter 19 when Jesus is on the cross and he gives his mother to John the Apostle. Ma’am, it’s not mean. It’s not woman, it’s woman when he says, Behold your son or whatever.

So anyway, he’s saying, hey, my time has not yet come. I’m not sure what you want me to do here. That’s basically what he’s saying. There’s something else happening here and I just want to touch it for a second. In this little dialogue, there’s also a sense of Jesus, like, acknowledging that he is no longer under the authority of his mom and he’s now under the authority of his father.

My time has not yet come as a way of saying, like, hey, I have to wait for God to tell me what to do. Like, I lived in your household for a long time and submitted to your ways for a long time, but now I submit to my father’s business. So I believe this is why Jesus adds, My hour has not yet come. And Jesus actually uses this line, My hour has not yet come or My hour has come throughout the Gospel of John, chapter seven, chapter eight, chapter twelve, chapter 13, chapter 17. But anyway, but then, strange enough, Jesus just does it anyway.

His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. And this is interesting to hear a couple of things. I wonder. Maybe it’s the boldness of Jesus or Jesus mom that makes Jesus do it. Maybe it’s like the persistent widow we don’t really know, but maybe he checked in with his father and his father’s like, go for it. By the way, the story moves very quick from there nearby, so you can imagine the wedding. Jesus has been pulled aside. I like the chosen. The chosen has a little indication of if you’ve ever watched that.

Like, Jesus has pulled over to a corner room. I like that picture. So Jesus is pulled over to the corner room and there all the jars are there. And he looks over to the servants and he says, hey, fill them to the brim. About 25 gallons, let’s call it.

We have 150 gallons of water and they fill it to the brim. They did so. And then what they did is they filled to the brim. And then they told them, now draw some out. So the servants are there.

They fill it to the brim. They draw some of the water out, and he tells them, hey, take it to the master of the banquet. Take it to, like, the lead chef, and then says, they did so. And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.

When did the water turn to wine? In between verses eight and verse nine right there. It’s so understated, but it’s a miracle. Let me ask you a question. This is not rhetorical.

How do you get wine? Grapes, great. How do you get grapes? Vines.

How do you get vines? Seeds. How do you get seeds? Other vines. How do you get vines to grow? Sunlight, water, Earth.

How do you get the grapes to become wine? You crush them, then you strain them, and then you let them sit for two to three weeks.

How did Jesus do this? There are no grapes. There are no vines. There are no seeds. There are no other seeds.

There is no Earth. There’s no two or three weeks between this line. It’s not like comma. Three weeks later. Jesus creates wine out of nothing. And he doesn’t even make it sound magical.

Like he’s not like wingardium Leviosa or something like that. It’s just a miracle in order to save a man from shame. A miracle.

The banquet master did not realize where it had come from. I love this little line. Though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Of course they knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside, and it was a panic a minute ago, he says, Everyone brings out the choice wine or the best wines first and then the cheaper stuff later on, after the guests have had too much to drink. But you have saved the best for last. The waiter doesn’t know where it comes from. Jesus didn’t need Earth. He didn’t need vines.

He didn’t need seeds. He just makes the best wine. The Screaming Eagle Cabernet. 1992. I have to look that up. I don’t know anything about wine.

This is Eden kind of wine. It’s perfect. And then he explains it. He’s like, Normally, people don’t do that. They wait until later on in the party, and then they bring the worst stuff.

But you brought the best stuff first. And this is Axiomatic. Everyone does this. This is obvious. What do you do when company comes over?

You give them the stuff you prepared for them, and if they’re just hanging out and you’re like, I also have some pizza from yesterday. You’re, like, digging through your fridge. There are some grapes. I think they’re still good. That’s just what it does.

And so that’s what happens after they ran through everything. Then you bring out the bad stuff. And the banquet host says, you brought out the best stuff. You brought out the best stuff at the very end. Again, Jesus did all of this to save a man from shame.

What Jesus did there in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory. And again, his disciples believed in him because they had a front row. They saw what Jesus did for a man at Cana. And here I’d like to lean a little bit into an application for you. Let’s, for a moment take this account and look at it through the lens of a parable, just for a second.

And I know that’s not proper hermeneutics, but just bear with me. If this was a parable, do you know who the characters would be? You would be the bridegroom. The party would be an illustration of the way you worked to build a life for yourself or the way that we work to make things perfect, to make things awesome. And just like this story, when you do that, you quickly realize you aren’t as prepared as you thought you were.

We think we’re prepared for our kids and setting up their future. We think we’re preparing our finances for a rainy day. We think we know what we’re doing. But all of us along the way, typically, it’s when life punches you in the face. You find out that you’re not as prepared as you thought you were.

Your preparation runs dry. All of our passions have a tendency to fade, our abilities to inspire ourselves or motivate ourselves. All of that has an expiration date. This story is so familiar to most of us. We worked, we worked.

We strive. We strove to do something great. And eventually we realize, man, I’m running on empty. It’s familiar for you, I bet, but it’s also really familiar with me. I want to share with you something that’s really personal. During the pandemic or the first day of the pandemic, I don’t know if you guys remember this, but the Wednesday before the beginning of COVID-19, we announced that we’re not going to pass trays anymore. That was our big revelation. No more tray passing because there was a virus and who knows? And there are five people who have it and blah, blah, blah.

And so that was a Wednesday. By Friday, I believe that was March 13. By Friday, we had gotten word, I was on this call, a bunch of pastors in the area. On Friday, we got word that all the schools in Broward County were shutting down on that Monday.

And I remember thinking, I think that means we’re going to have to cancel Church. We were like, well, 50 people were allowed in a room at the same time. Do you guys remember that? I don’t know how that works, but whatever.

That was the rule. So we were like, OK, let’s pivot. And we did almost immediately. We had a digital team at the time. I appreciate so much.

Our digital team for that moment, they shifted. And yes, they were amazing. But I was like, let’s do this. There’s a crisis. Let’s fix it. So we shifted digital team.

That Saturday, we had our first live stream service. We showed it on Sunday. We were high fiving, and we were like, let’s do it. We can do this. Like, six months into that.

It was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. And it’s like, eight months into that. Like, oh, Lord, please let us go back to in-person services. And then we had our first in person service, and it was like, oh, okay. There’s like, seven people at Church on Sunday morning.

And then it was, what, a year? We put everything on our backs. Like, let’s go. I remember even thinking that, like, let’s go. I’m going to fight to make sure this Church survives this season.

And in this season, we had conversations about politics. I do not want to go back to November 2020. Conversations about race, fights, about masks, like, conversations about vaccines. And we read all the books and doing all the study and trying to carry me personally, trying to carry the Church on my back. And eventually I looked around and I had nothing left.

I was like, I think I’m just going to be an accountant. Like, I don’t know what’s the most opposite of a Minister job you can have. I don’t know how to lead in a pandemic. I don’t know how to help people who are politically so divided as they are. I don’t know what to do when people don’t want to come to the building, but I don’t know what to do about any of that.

I don’t know how to inspire a staff. And waves of this. But, man, it really hit me a couple of weeks ago. I don’t have anything left. And, you know, when you think you ought to be doing better, what happens? And you’re like, Man, I think I should be fighting more, and I should be pushing more, and I should have new initiatives, and I should have more inspiration.

You know, what comes in eventually is just shame. I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough. This will never work. And you just doubt disappointment.

And I’m not trying to project my insecurity on you. I’m just trying to be vulnerable. But it’s just like this, man. I felt the sense of utter failure was on the horizon for me. But you know what’s actually been remarkably helpful?

Studying Jesus and realizing not having our situation change at all, but realizing that, and this is the thing I want you to capture, that I can invite Jesus to fill in the areas where I’m empty.

And if I don’t, I’ll burn out and run dry. But if I do, man, Jesus just kind of takes over. I’ve had some people email going, like, these last couple of services have been so incredible. And I’m like, great. I’ve been totally uninspired.

It’s like, just because it’s all about Jesus, Jesus fills up in the areas where you’re lacking. Like, this is what I found out, Lord. I need your inspiration. I need your guidance. I need your passion.

I need some courage, and I want to carry it all on my back. But the longer I carry it on the back, the more I feel crushed. And when I feel crushed, that’s when God really does his work, it’s like, oh, now you realize you can’t do it. Let me help you out. And I just love the fact that Jesus is willing to come in and fill the life of men and women who are willing to invite him in.

Here’s just a couple of warnings for you. What you build will collapse, will ultimately come to ruin if you don’t invite Jesus to make a way and to fill you up and to do what’s right and to guide you through the situations. And I know it’s our cultural norm, right? And it’s become a norm the idea that I don’t need anybody else to help me. I’m a self made man.

And certainly in that description, self has become the new God and the new spiritual authority and the new spiritual morality. But here’s the problem. It puts a crushing weight on you, one that you were never actually designed to carry. There’s so much in this world, right? You’re supposed to discover yourself and be true to yourself and justify yourself and make yourself happy and perform and defend yourself.

And by the end of the day, you realize, man, I’m supposed to do all these things for myself, but I’m not actually as great as I thought I was. I can’t even take care of myself. I can’t take care of my family. I have no control of my life. The pressure is exhausting.

And then you can start queuing all the stats about anxiety and burnout and mental health and all those issues. But I just want to tell you, Jesus loves us so much that he wants to come in and be a part of the things that are most important to your life. Jesus wants to help you out if you only just let him in, if you open your heart and your mind and humbly ask him, hey, Lord, would you just come? I have this decision about my job, and I feel like the weight of my family is on my back. Jesus, would you help me make those decisions through your word, through the words of other people?

Lord, help me, because I can’t carry this. Man, god loves to come in and do a little miracle with you. Your marriage looks like it’s on the rocks. Your pace looks like it’s faded because your kids aren’t what you wanted them to be or you’re not married and you’re not even dating. Your joy seems like you can’t hold on to it.

And he wants to just kind of make sweet new wine out of all that stuff. So Church, I just want to encourage you. Will you invite him into the situations that are most important to you? How do you do this? Well, it’s a two step process.

One, admit the places you’re running dry. You’ve got to be honest, I don’t feel like I have it. Admit the places you’re running dry. And the second thing is, let him speak to you through his words, through the words of others, through quiet meditation. Let him speak to you.

You may have to go back ten times before you finally understand what God is trying to do. But man, unless you’re willing to admit it and invite Him in, the things that are most important to you are just going to fall apart. They’re going to fall apart. And when you hear his voice, I encourage you to let him take the lead. He will take all that’s broken and make something beautiful out of you.

I do believe God wants to do a miracle with any of us who are willing to humble out. I want to close with this passage. This is Revelation chapter three. It is the perfect illustration of this. Jesus says, Here I am.

I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens that door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me. This is a painting. It’s called The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt. It was painted, I think, in the 1850s.

It sits right now in Manchester City Art Gallery. It’s actually the most traveled piece of art ever. It’s been all over the world. This is an illustration of Revelation chapter three. Here Jesus stands, a depiction of Jesus stands with the Lantern because he’s the light of the world.

And he stands and he’s knocking at a door. You can’t really make out the door. And that’s part of the reason because it’s overgrown. And if you looked up here, you would realize that the brass handle has been basically shut up by rust. And what the point of this is that Jesus is waiting for you to let him in.

He’s waiting the stuff that’s most debilitating and most frustrating in your soul. He’s just like, Let me have my way, let me in. And so many of us have just instead closed the door on Him and has become overgrown. And we don’t even know where our door is anymore. We don’t even know how to let him in anymore.

But I just let you know. I want to let you know. And it’s been just inspiring for me. If you allow him to come in, Jesus is willing to do a miracle. He may not change your situation, but he will change you.

And that is more than enough. Father, we come before you, and we know that as we take Communion here in just a second, as we take the bread that represents your body and your juice that represents your blood, we also have a moment of remembering just the teachings that you’ve given us. God, that the ways that you are trying to instruct us how to live. Lord. So many people in this room have closed you off, god. We’ve closed you off for a myriad of reasons. We closed you off because we wanted to be self actualizing. We’ve closed you off because we thought we could handle it. We closed you off because we thought you wouldn’t be concerned about it, Lord.

Or maybe we believe that you weren’t loving enough to engage. Or maybe this was beyond what you would want to do. I just want to corporately Lord, ask for your forgiveness that we have no idea what we’re doing. We have prepared our homes. We thought we were making everything right.

We made the wedding great. We did everything. And Lord, quickly we have realized that we have run out of the most important elements of what we need to be successful. God, I just ask you that you would fill our hearts, Lord. Fill this leadership of this Church with inspiration.

God, fill me personally with a passion to lead. Fill the members here with a drive to be committed to your gospel anymore. I pray for all the people who have become complacent over the past two years, Lord and their faith has become a Sunday morning watching it online while doing the dishes type thing. I pray that all of us will repent of that, Lord. That we will instead be filled with your spirit again and filled with enthusiasm again. And filled with passion and filled with love for you, Lord so that we can have the life that you promised.

A life that is full. Dad, as we take this Communion now, I just ask that you would just just listen to our prayer that you will respond and give us the things that we most need in our lives. We love you, dad. We praise you Christ’s name Amen.