I have diverted a little the last few weeks to some other topics but that isn’t the way to study the Bible. It is God’s word all 66 books and as such should be studied in it’s entirety. That is the reason for Dr. J. Vernon McGee’s success was he taught the whole word and stayed in context. I will try to do this. These notes are from a Bible study that Kathy and I taught in the early 1990’s but God’s word is just as up to date as if she had taught it today. So let’s get started – John Chapter 2
Verses 1-10:
On the third day, there is a wedding feast at Cana. Jesus and the disciples are invited. It’s a two day walk from Galilee and five of his disciples accompany him. And Mary is there also. The third day has significance here because it is a reference to the resurrection. All of the gospels are written long after the crucifixion so John has plenty of points of memory to tie things together with now.
Weddings in this time were a big thing. The whole thing pretty much revolved around the bride groom, and he paid for the wedding feast which could last from 3 to 5 days. Usually the whole town was invited.
Calamity: the wine gave out! Embarrassing to say the least. Weddings were important and to run out of wine was to cause a loss of face in the community
Mary tells Jesus, “They have no wine.”
Jesus’ reply is one of great respect, not like today if we call someone “Woman!” He’s really saying, ‘What is that to us?’ Jesus understands that Mary knows who he is. When he was found in the temple, it says she kept all these things in her heart and pondered them. Maybe she thought it was time for his ministry to begin, or his announcement that He is Messiah. He merely smiles and chides, “Not yet, dear woman, not yet.”
So she goes to the servants and tells them to do whatever he tells them. She refers them to Christ. This takes away the Catholic belief that Mary is an intercessor, she defers at all times to Jesus.
I like the way Ray Stedman describes the incident.
As always, Jesus begins with whatever is at hand.
Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” So they took it. {John 2:6-8 RSV}
Notice the simplicity of this account, how easily, how quietly, with such dignity this was done. He says simply, “‘Fill the jars with water.’” And they filled them to the brim — not with decaffeinated coffee, but with 120 to 180 gallons of plain, pure water. Then Jesus said, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” There was no prayer, no word of command, no hysterical shouting, no pleading with screwed-up face, no laying on of hands, no binding of Satan, no hocus-pocus or mumbo-jumbo — nothing. He did not even touch the water. He did not even taste it afterward to see if it had happened. He simply said, “Take it to the governor of the feast.” What a beautiful, simple dignity! The water simply became wine.
Yet this happened within the limits of a natural process. It is very important to see this. The water did not become milk, nor did it change into Coca-Cola. What happened was something that happens also in nature. Water is being changed into wine in every vineyard in Northern California right now! It involves a long process of growth, of gathering and crushing; it involves the activity of men and the process of fermentation. But it is a natural process. This is characteristic of the miracles of Jesus.
In his very helpful book Miracles, C. S. Lewis has pointed out that every miracle of Jesus is simply a kind of short-circuiting of a natural process; a doing instantly something which in general takes a longer period of time. Lewis says, “Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of nature.” That is what Jesus is doing: he is overleaping the elements of time, of growth, gathering, crushing and fermenting. He takes water — an inorganic, non-living, commonplace substance — and without a word, without a gesture, without any laying on of hands, in utter simplicity, the water becomes wine, an organic liquid, a product of fermentation, belonging to the realm of life. Thus he demonstrated his marvelous ability to master the processes of nature.
Every wedding feast had a guest who was appointed ruler of the feast. He made sure things went smoothly. The wine is brought to him, but he doesn’t know what Jesus has done. However, the servants did.
The good wine is for the last. Every Bible commentator says this shows that Christ blesses the sanctity of human marriage, and that’s true, but I think there is something else present here. This wedding and the presence of good wine is a picture of the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven. Remember, Christ said to his disciples during the Last Supper, I will not drink the fruit of the vine again until we are together in heaven. And that will be perfect wine indeed. It is the best wine saved for the last. In this earth we drink inferior wine, trials, tribulations, heartaches, just as the wine they gave Christ on the Cross was bitter, so often is the wine we drink here, and life is compared to taking up our Cross and following Him.
This is the beginning of his signs, it manifested his glory and his disciples believe in him. A miracle works in hungry hearts to bring about faith, a miracle can harden the heart of those who do not want faith; they either reject it by explaining it away, or they want more as though God is the entertainment for their evening’s pleasure. It’s rather a capstone for these 5 men. They really believe in him now. Miracles are only done to point people to Christ and give him glory.
Verse 12:
Then the whole group goes to Capernaum. His mother, his brothers and his disciples. Our Catholic friends want to believe that Mary remained a virgin all her life, but there are too many references trashing that theory. And James and Jude, two later NT writers were half brothers of Christ. Check out Matt. 13:55,56
Verse 13:
Passover is at hand in Jerusalem, and Jesus goes there. As he enters the temple area he finds a thriving business in a place where it shouldn’t be.
I’m using Ray Stedman’s notes again about this event because he recounts so accurately the historic implications along with the cultural ones.
Not only was he angry at the confusion, the clutter, the noise and the smells, but primarily he was angry at the extortion and racketeering that was going on. Once a year, every Jewish male had to go to the temple and pay a temple tax. (It may be encouraging to us to realize that taxation is nothing new.) There was no escape; every male Jew was required to pay a half-shekel tax at the Passover season.
Further, that tax could not be paid in Roman or Greek coin but had to be paid in a special temple coin. So it was necessary to change the Roman or Greek coins that were commonly employed into this special temple tax. That in itself was fine; money-changers were required for that. Having them available for the people was a convenience that was right and proper. But what was wrong was that there was an exorbitant price being extorted for making this exchange, so that sometimes almost as much as half of the value of the money being exchanged was paid to the money-changers for their service. The temple was making enormous revenues from this practice.
At Passover season sometimes as many as two million people were in the city of Jerusalem, so there was a tremendous racket going on.
Furthermore, a sacrifice offered at the Passover season was to be an animal free of blemish or imperfection. If, for instance, the animal was blind in one eye, if it had a tear in the skin, whatever, it was to be rejected. Scholars have discovered that in those days if someone brought an animal of his own to offer it had to be examined by the priests and it would almost certainly be rejected; the priests would find something wrong with it. This meant that the only animals that could be offered were those which were bought from the temple herd that was kept in an open courtyard in the court of the Gentiles. These animals had already been approved by the priests.
But again, a tremendously inflated price was demanded for those animals. In fact, a bird could be brought outside the temple for the equivalent of 15 cents of our money, but the same bird, bought within the temple from the authorized purveyors of animals, would cost as high as $15! This barefaced extortion, this demand for money from even the poorest of the poor was what aroused the flaming anger of our Lord.
Do not diminish or minimize the anger and the violence which Jesus manifested at this time. This is a different Jesus than many people imagine him to be. Oftentimes we think of him as so loving and understanding that he lets you get by with anything; that seeing your evil he puts his hand upon your shoulder and says, “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.” Many people think of him that way. But this action clearly indicates that our Lord was angry. He drove these people out of the temple.
Yet his anger was under control. He wasn’t raging furiously, striking out against everybody around him. In fact, he did not actually deprive anybody of anything. The animals he drove out could easily be collected again; the money he poured out on the temple floor could be gathered up and recounted; he did not open the cages of the birds and let them loose, but ordered them to be taken away. But he made his point, which was clearly: do not turn a place which is devoted to the worship of God and the cleansing of people, into a flea market. The word John employs is, literally, “emporium,” a place where people are concerned about making a fast buck. The temple rather was the place where human values were to be considered supreme.
The climax of his action comes in what the disciples learned from it. Three lessons burned themselves unforgettably into the disciples’ minds as they watched our Lord. The first was an immediate impression.
Verse 17:
His disciples were familiar with this passage from the Psalms and while this was taking place they remembered it. We already see the work of the Spirit. What is it that he brings to our minds at the right time: the Word. These men knew the OT writings well.
I think there’s a spiritual implication here for us too. The Body of Christ, which now houses the Holy Spirit, should consume us too. We are to pray for each other fervently, instead we often judge, condemn and dismiss those who displease us. We are to be especially kind to the household of faith. We too should have zeal for our Father’s house-the living organism known as the Church.
Verse 18:
18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign do you show us as your authority for doing these things?” [The Jews felt that only a divinely commissioned person could thus interfere with the ordering of God's house. They therefore called upon Jesus to give them a sign as an evidence that he possessed such divine commission. The manner in which he had cleansed the house of its traffickers was of itself a sign, if they had only had eyes to see it. Jesus could not have thus cleansed the temple unaided had he been a mere man. The power which he showed in the temple was much like that which he manifested in Gethsemane--John 18:6.] 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. [John here records this saying, and Matthew (26:61) and Mark (14:58) tells us how at the trial it was twisted into a charge against Christ; thus the Evangelists supplement each other. For the temple in this sentence uses the word "naos," or sanctuary, the structure which was peculiarly the seat of God's presence. The sanctuary was a figure or symbol of the body of Christ, and the words of Jesus were a covert prediction that as they were desecrating the symbol so would they destroy his body, which it symbolized. They reverenced the Spirit of God neither as it dwelt in the sanctuary nor as it dwelt in the body of Christ. The body of Jesus was a temple (Col. 2:9), and Christians and the church are also temples. (I. Cor. 3:16, 17; 6:19; II Cor. 5: 1; II Peter 1:13).
God's temples cannot be permanently destroyed. They are "raised up."] 20 The Jews therefore said, Forty and six years was this temple in building [The temple which then stood upon Mt. Moriah was the third structure which had occupied that site. The first temple, built by Solomon (B. C. 1012-1005), was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The second temple, built by Zerubbabel and Jeshua (B. C. 520), had been torn down and rebuilt by Herod the Great, but in such a manner as not to interfere with the temple service.
The sanctuary was completed in one year and a half, while the courts required eight years. Josephus says eighteen thousand workmen were employed in its erection. Additional outbuildings and other work had been carried on from that time, and the whole was not completed until A. D. 64], and will you raise it up in three days? [To put before him the difficulty of what he apparently proposed to do, they merely mention one item--time. They say nothing of the army of workmen, nothing of a variety and cost of material, nothing of the skill required in the process of construction. How impossible seemed his offer! Yet by no means so impossible as that real offer which they misunderstood. A man might rear a temple in three days, but, apart from Christ Jesus, self-resurrection is unknown to history.]
21 But he spoke of the temple of his body [John differs from the other three Evangelists, in that he frequently comments upon the facts, which he records. Both history and commentary are inspired.] 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he spoke this [It was three years before they understood this saying. Thus truth often lies dormant for years before it springs up in the heart and bears fruit--I. Cor. 15:58; Eccles. 11:1]; and they believed the scripture [several passages foretell the resurrection--Ps. 16:9, 10;], and the word which Jesus had said. [They believed that Jesus had meant to predict that the Jews would kill him, and that he would rise again on the third day.] 23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast [the seven days' feast of unleavened bread--Lev. 23:5, 6], many believed on his name, beholding his signs which he did. 24 But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men. The word here translated “trust” is the same as that translated “believe” in the preceding verse. They trusted him, but he did not trust them, for he knew them. He did not tell them anything of his plans and purposes, and the conversation with Nicodemus which follows is a sample of this reticence, 25 and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man. John gives us many examples of this supernatural knowledge that Jesus possessed.
Verses 23-25:
Many came to know him because of his signs, but Jesus didn’t take men into his confidence or feel that he had to explain himself to them. He didn’t have to figure anyone out, he knew them because He had created them.
