Spectacular Sunday to each of you on this beautiful day that El Elyon, God Most High, has made. I praise God for each of you this morning and for a testimony of being COVID free, bullet free and debt free. Christ Jesus paid it all and all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain but He washed it white as snow. Have you been washed this morning in the blood of the crucified one? We are a week away from Resurrection Sunday and we have indeed an awesome reason to give a shout out to the Lord Jesus for his life redeeming, lifesaving, life changing work on the rugged cross. For my military folks, the Calvary is coming.
Thank you again for each of you and your prayers for me and my family in the transition of my uncle, Elder Charles Alexander McKnight, we speak his name and recognize his awesome presence as a loving husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, masterful preacher, and gifted pastor. He is one of my and shall forever be one of my heroes along with his beloved bride who is also is in the presence of the Lord, Mother Georgia McKnight. Please continue to lift up my family as we adjust and readjust to a new reality in Christ.
I would like for us to renew and open our minds and our hearts to the Logos, the Word of Truth. As I believe in having a dialogue, which is the pattern, practice and manner in which Our Lord and Savior shared, you are always invited and indeed encouraged to ask me any questions you may have at any time as I share the Word. It is not my goal to get to any particular point but to share on this blessed occasion with an eye toward the future and a view to seek the Truth which is in Christ Jesus. I believe in the Truth who is risen and sitting on the right hand of the Father. It is the Truth who had has made me free and I declare that I am free indeed. Are you free indeed this morning?
Let’s go to the text sent to us long time ago by the Father, indeed more than two millenniums ago. We share again from the written account of the beloved disciple in John 2:1 – 11. Thank God for sharing with us the Text of all Texts for God so loved us that He gave us the Text, His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever (that’s me and you) believes on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. We have life this morning. We have abundant life this morning. We have a blessed life this morning. But faith without works is dead. So I encourage you to think it, speak it, live it and bask in it to anoint and change the very environment which surrounds you right now.
As we reflect upon the first miracle covertly performed by Jesus Christ, a miracle that those who benefitted the most did not know about as reflected in verse 9, we see here an oxymoron. An oxymoron is a self-contradicting statement of affairs, and a circumstance of life that all of us may have experienced already in our own lives. The oxymoron that I see here specifically in the text is what I can only simply describe as the predicament of the party.
During an occasion where there should be continued joy, robust laughter and cheerful feasting, a time of festive celebration of holy matrimony between the groom and the bride, there is all at the same time a predicament of lack. It is a predicament that Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus, delicately informs him about. She didn’t put anybody on blast she just talked to Jesus. Hear verse 3 with me:
3 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
Based upon the custom and law of the Hebrews, running out of the party goods, the wine or the food, is not simply something that can be dismissed with some nonchalant attitude or statements like “oh well or they’ll just have to get over it or I didn’t even invite them anyway or that’s your family, not my family drinking up all the wine.” The Hebrews understood etiquette, which is a fancy way of saying that they were aware and were to practice the customary code of polite behavior in society or among members of a particular profession or group. They understood that protocol was to be practiced at home. Not just at a church service. Not just at a tent meeting. Not just at a homegoing celebration. In fact, we read in Hebrews 13: 1 – 2:
1 Let brotherly love continue.
2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Some of us to need to take it to the next level and change our so-called cultural practices and adopt the rules of etiquette and demonstrate in our own lives courteous and polite behavior towards each other. My grandfather, Elder H.A. McKnight, says that its just nice to be nice. We should exemplify that in our own lives.
Now during the time of our text, the wedding celebration was not just some 4 hours or so event in a rented banquet room that we are accustomed too after people normally get married. The wedding celebration was for the entire week with the groom’s family. So based on Hebrew etiquette running out of food or wine at the wedding celebration was a very serious matter that not only brought about a major social embarrassment but also invited an opportunity to be fined. As a guest, you could sue the groom and have him pay you for his “false advertisement” by failing to have the adequate party provisions in place at the wedding celebration for the entire week.
Since protocol has been established, you don’t invite someone to your house and don’t have any food or drink to share. You don’t invite someone out to lunch and don’t pay. That’s not an invitation, that’s a meeting and it ain’t love. And if it ain’t love, it ain’t God. He (or she) that has friends must first show himself (or herself) friendly. So how do you define first?
So, Mary obviously is a woman, like my mother, Momma Delia, who is keenly astute when it comes to matters of social etiquette, and is completely aware of the magnitude of the social, legal and financial implications to bear upon the groom because she says to Jesus, they have no wine. It is clear here that Mary is wholly aware of the oxymoron. She knows about the predicament of the party but again she doesn’t go and put a blast out on Instagram. She doesn’t upload the video for the world to see. She doesn’t become a whistleblower. She like a good neighbor talks to the Lord because love covers a multitude of sin.
Despite what was said and should not be misread as a flippant response (Woman, what have I to do with you), the Lord Jesus showed himself friendly and he willed water into wine in a moment in time. It reminds me of all the times in my own life (do I have a witness with me on this call who can share in this testimony along with me) of all the times that Lord Jesus first showed himself friendly to me first! Not last, not next to last, not in the middle, not close to the middle, not second but He showed himself friendly to me first!
Have you ever been in a similar situation, when you were having a good time in life, the party of life was going on real good, you hadn’t done nothing wrong, and all of a sudden the reality of lack hit you in the face, the reality of sickness hit you in the face, the reality of just loss my job hit you in the face, the reality of your son or your daughter just disrespected you to your face? And in that moment and time, when nothing else could help, love lifted you. Love came to your rescue. Love began to intercede for you and your family, and your neighbors, and your coworkers. Love cried out on your behalf to the Father and said hook my friend up. Thank God for those who intercede spiritually and intervene materially (faith without works is dead, faith without love is dead). Thank God for those who have come to our rescue time and time again and even at times to save us from ourselves.
Hear me this morning we don’t need more law. I said that a couple of Sundays ago prophetically but now in real time for those who may be on the call from Georgia we see it in real time today. So, I declare it again we don’t need more law. The law won’t make you free and it can’t make you whole. We need the intervention of Jesus Christ, our advocate and High Priest, who is sitting on the right hand of the Father who has full supreme authority to intercede for us and petition for us that all things work out for our good and the glory of God.
When we have neglected to prepare adequately for what is purposed to be a wedding celebration (remember that the ekklesia is the bride of Christ right) and are about to become more of a social embarrassment to ourselves and we are just about to create even more financial obligations that we can’t afford, its Jesus, our friend, who sticks closer than a brother, sister, mother and father. Its Jesus, our friend, who intercedes for us so that we may have a life more abundantly on earth as it shall also be in heaven. As I put my lawyer cap on, let me remind you that Jesus had legal standing to sue if they ran out of wine. However, he didn’t come to condemn them then and he ain’t here to condemn us now. Our Lord Jesus is not present with us on this glorious morning to talk down to us or to criticize us. He knows our faults but thank God He sees our needs and is lifting us up in prayer. It’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
In Isaiah 50:8a, the prophet, wrote: The One who vindicates me is near. Who will dare to contend with me? Jesus could have played the victim role. He could have asked for justice. He could have demanded wine reparations. But he first showed himself friendly and rose to the occasion as a shield and a buckler to come to the groom’s rescue and defended him from the social, the legal and the financial condemnation of the world. He came to subdue the predicament of the party.
As written in Romans 5:6:
For at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
The Lord Jesus is still coming at the right time. It may not be on my schedule or my electronic calendar of events but Jesus always comes at just the right time. The Calvary is coming! I know him this morning as my shield and my buckler, my double armor of protection. I know him this morning as my ever present and eternal security. I am under his protection. I got my under armor all around me this morning. I have to come to experience for my own self, that when you let Him into your life more intimately and completely, you will find a better life, a more abundant life. I have come to know him as my blessed assurance and my pre-paid insurance. To me, He’s better than Allstate. To me, He’s better than State Farm. If you let Him come in I believe you will come to say along with me: That you’re in good hands with All Jesus. Just like a good neighbor Jesus is always there. Do you know Jesus from Grace Farm?
As we shift our focus from the predicament of the party to the Prince of Peace, let me leave you with what is written in Romans 8:31 – 39:
31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
33 Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies.
34 Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yes rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.