John Chapter 2

I believe it's time to continue the exploration of the Gospel of John. In chapter 1, we see that the Word of God had became flesh and has now come into the world. The Lord Jesus Christ calls His first disciples and they follow Him.

Now in chapter 2, we get to begin to see how Jesus' ministry starts out. The setting is a wedding in a town called Cana. Jesus, His mother, His brothers, and His disciples had all been invited to the wedding. To me it's interesting that the names of the couple who was married was not revealed in this chapter. But regardless, whoever they were, they knew who Jesus and His family and friends were.

As chapter 2 starts to move a little bit, we find that the wedding party has run out of wine during the celebration, which leads Mary to inform Jesus about the wine running out (v.3). It is obvious though that Jesus sees this as Mary requesting that Jesus get more wine for the party, and also that Jesus doesn't appreciate Mary trying to get Jesus to do a miracle (v.4).

Yet Jesus takes heed to the request and tells the servants at the party to take six stone jars and fill them with water (v. 7). Once they had done this, He then tells them to scoop the water out and serve it to the head of the party. The head of the party was amazed at the taste of the fluid (being that it was wine), and explained that he usually gets the best wine first, but this wine was the best and it was saved for last (v. 10). Once the party was over, Jesus, His family, and His disciples went to Capernaum.

In Jerusalem, Jesus finds that the temple of the Lord is being used as a market place, and He is discusted that anyone would have done so. Quickly, Jesus began to displace the market by driving people out with a whip that He had made out of some cords, threw all the money that was there on the ground, and flipped over the tables that were there (v.15). The Jews began to wonder under what authority that Jesus had done this, so they asked Him if Jesus could provide to them a miracle to confirm His authority.

Instead though, what Jesus gave them was His first prophecy. Jesus said that if you knock down the temple, in three days He will raise it up again (v.19). What the Jews didn't realize was that Jesus meant that His own body would be killed and then He would be bodily raised later on. Jesus then begins to perform miracles to different people.

I find it interesting that this chapter has two "firsts" of Jesus in it. The first one is Jesus' first miracle (turning water into wine), and the other first is Jesus' prophecy. Jesus would later on go and perform countless miracles and tell many prophecies, while also telling sermons and parables to those who would listen.

What we need to do is be Jesus' servant. Mary tried to push Her son into doing something that He didn't want to do right away, and because of that Jesus basically told Mary that it wasn't time for a miracle, almost like He's not a circus act. Then in the temple Jesus gives a prophecy about the time when He will be crucified. Wouldn't it be interesting if we could see prophecy this clearly today? But then again, prophecy usually doesn't make sense until after the fact.