(John 2:2)
�And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.�
One of my nephews was married just last month. We got the invitation a few months before this. Part of the wedding celebration was a catered dinner. The caterer had to know how many people were going to attend this portion of the festivities so there was included in the invitation a small card that said an �RSVP� would be needed.
Now, RSVP is an anagram for a French phrase that means, �Let me know if�n y�all gonna be a� coming!�
I don�t know if that was part of the ceremony mentioned in our text or not. But, I do know that Jesus and His disciples were invited.
Isn�t that a good idea!
Wouldn�t it be a good idea if Jesus were an invited Guest to the festivities of our lives? I�d say that this would be a bad idea. Jesus should be considered as an attendee even at the mundane of our lives, not just the celebrations.
But, consider that this couple had invited the Savior. They probably didn�t understand just how great an honor it was that Jesus graced the celebration. This was probably a family type celebration; after all, the mother of Jesus was also in attendance. Perhaps this was the wedding festival of one of Jesus� younger half sisters. Jesus was about 30 at this point, just beginning His public ministry. In this culture the younger half sisters of Jesus would be well into the �marrying age.� Perhaps the groom was a cousin, as was John the Baptist. Perhaps these were family friends of Mary and Joseph. We don�t know. We do know that Jesus worked a miracle on this occasion.
Quite often we, especially those of us involved in �the ministry,� are too caught up in our own supposed importance. We step into the pulpit and think that others have come to hear us preach. Such arrogance! The sad fact of the matter is that this is, far too often, the truth. We have done such a good job of self promotion that the people are coming to hear us.
If this be the case, there is a fault somewhere. The purpose of the public proclamation of Jesus is that Jesus be magnified. People should come to see and hear of Him as He is the only One of importance.
The wedding couple from our narrative have seen their nuptials immortalized throughout the ageless ages of eternity as their story has become part of the eternal record of God�s Word. But, we don�t even know the name of either of this couple. What is important is that the Master was exalted.
We do know that Jesus was an invited guest. May we take a moment and see just what this invitation involved.
The first thing we notice, the important thing, is the Guest. �And both Jesus was called��
In inviting Jesus to the wedding party, the couple had invited a man of respectability.
I was out at a store yesterday. While watching my two year old grandson, he took off running toward another area. I tried to go after him but a young lady (I use the term in the generic sense!) was standing alongside a rail, blocking my access to catch him.
I finally did catch him. I mentioned to this person that it would have been easier had she stepped aside and let me pass when I was obviously chasing a toddler. Her response was to unleash a stream of profanity.
I would guess that her upbringing and value system dictated that her right to block an aisle trumped my right to protect my grandson.
Whatever. I would not call this a person of respectability.
Christian, we need to be respectful in our dealings with others. My feelings toward this person were ones of disgust. Anything that she might have said to me about eternal values, or even about her own value system, would not have been well accepted.
Now, extrapolate the feelings that she engendered in me and fit them into your own interpersonal dealings with others. What is the manner in which you treat others, even strangers? Is it with a polite demeanor? Or, is it with a brusque manner that betrays a superiority of attitude toward others?
Is it any wonder that many have said, �If that person is an advertisement for Christianity, I don�t want any of it!�
You see, respectability is not your �credit score.� Respectability is the manner with which you treat others.
Jesus understood this because He was also a man of responsibility.
Responsible, the root word of responsibility, is often a strange word.
The story is told of a little second grade boy who would just not keep his room cleaned to his mother�s satisfaction. His mother told this little boy that he needed to be �more responsible.� The little boy shot back that he was responsible. �My teacher says that I�m responsible for almost any disturbance we have in our class at school!�
The meaning of responsibility in our message of today is that we exhibit a responsible attitude toward others. I was listening to a T.V. show last night. A man was asked how he liked being a father. His son had been born just a few months previous. His reply was, �It is awesome. I�d dive in front of a moving truck if it would help that little boy!�
That is responsibility. When we care for the welfare of another so much that we cease to be worried about our own �rights� and �privileges,� we are acting in a responsible manner toward society.
We have an obligation to do one of the hardest tasks in the world. We are to relate the message that Jesus died in time so that others might live in eternity. This must be one of the hardest tasks in the world because we are so prone to shirk this duty.
That duty remains our responsibility!
Jesus is responsible for creation. He is the First Cause of all things. Jesus is responsible for creation. He is the Sustaining Cause of the entire cosmos! Jesus is responsible for creation. He came to die an atoning death to redeem that which was lost in the fall of Eden.
Jesus fulfills His duties and responsibilities. May each of us be responsible for those duties which he has entrusted us.
In the fulfilling of His responsibilities we see that Jesus is also the God of Redemption.
All of religion is an attempt on the part of man to placate a deity, or deities, who is ruthlessly demanding of respect and adoration. Christianity stands in counterpoint to this view. Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the realization, and acceptance, that God is a loving Being Who sent His Own Son to take away our sins because we were incapable of that task.
No mere man could have done this. Each and every individual has his own sin which needs atonement. Since man is in this state of sin he cannot approach the Holy God to seek absolution. But, God could reach out to man and offer an atonement. God could make the necessary sacrifice. God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, did what no mere man could do: He, who knew no sin of His Own, was able to accept the full wrath of God in order to effect atonement for others. Jesus did not have to pay for any sin on His Own part. So, He paid for ours!
Jesus is the God of Redemption because no created being; each of us obviously included, could ever approach God. Even if we were able to approach God, we would only be capable of accepting His just wrath for our sin. Jesus, the God / Man was able, as God to offer a holy and acceptable sacrifice. Jesus, the God / Man is able to effect this sacrifice, as a human man, and procure forgiveness, on the part of all who would accept His sacrifice.
To seek to �earn� our salvation is a strategic impossibility. The only salvation from sin which is available is that which Jesus, the God of Redemption, offers to us.
We should also consider the gathering of the disciples at this time. ��and his disciples��
The disciples were invited to a gathering. This was not a religious assembly. This was not a meeting set apart for the study or worship of the things of God. This was not a spiritual convocation in the sense of drawing either the participants or any others to a closer walk with God. This was a celebration of human life and existence. The purpose was to honor, and to sanctify of course, a wedding between a man and a woman.
Far too often we, as Christians and as churches, exhibit a �bunker mentality.� We see ourselves as a besieged minority who must band only together. We feel that not only are we not part of society. We act as though it were an evil to go out into the crush of human existence and mingle with the �unwashed� majority. We feel that the only way to maintain a pure life is to eschew life outside of the small confines of our own churches and brotherhoods.
Nothing could be further from the Biblical pattern. Once again we look to the example of the Savior. He was often in the company of the outcast and sinner. Jesus was as likely to break bread with the publican and sinner as he was with the priest and scribe. Probably more likely, in point of fact. Jesus never partook of the sin of those publicans and sinners, nor did He join in their manner of life. But He went where they were.
Why would Jesus have done such a thing? It�s simple. I am not a fisherman. My wife, on the other hand, had a knack for this endeavor. I could use the best bait and equipment and find my only contribution was a sunburn, a wet fishing line, and drowned worms! Linda, on the other hand, could be driving past a pond; the fish would jump out of the lake and stop our car to ask if she�d brought a rod and reel.
Fundamentalism, with its �them against us� social philosophy is one of the biggest offenders in this area. Fundamentalism, in its zeal to promote religious �separatism,� will impose a social restriction upon her adherents. Not only is the �world� against us, constantly seeking to sully our spiritual doctrine, it is also so perverted that not even the Holy Spirit would be able to keep us pure if we venture from the safe cradle of the cathedral.
So we are cautioned!
Folks, we are called to be soul winners. We are called to call the lost to a saving knowledge of the Savior. Most of our field is outside the church doors. We can cast our line out from the boat and hold it six feet above the water; a few fish might jump up and take our bait. But, the vast majority of the fish are in the water. That is where we must place our line if we are to be honest and effective fishermen!
Preaching to, and praying with, the choir might make some harmony. But, if we really do want to find that second tenor we are going to have to go looking for him!
The purpose of the church is not to simply be a warm cover against the storms of life. The purpose of the church is to be a training camp to prepare us to enter into the field of combat for our Lord. While we are marching to our own �different drummer� of attitude and lifestyle, may we remember that the purpose of those drums to which we ought to march is so that we would step forward and out into the fray.
We are left here on this earth, after our salvation, so that we can seek out others to like precious faith. That is going to be done in the highways and hedges of the world; it isn�t going to happen, for the most part, in the nursery room or the fourth grade beginners� class at Sunday School! The sad fact is that those fourth grade beginners are more useful in bringing in new members to the Kingdom than are several generations of the men�s senior class! �or, in most cases, even the pastor!
Notice, also, that these disciples were gathered as a group. Jesus was invited and, �Don�t forget those disciples!�
If we are really worried about the �world� tainting our �little flock,� it might be a good idea to feed that flock on the Words of God. I don�t mean the same little Sunday School lessons and preachy pabulum of pontification that we receive from the pulpit and the commentaries of he who stands in that pulpit. I mean a Biblical reliance upon the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scripture.
The Children of Israel were delivered when they first stepped over the border and left Egypt. Then they spent forty years in the wilderness. Then they were finally allowed to enter the land. Most of the preachers, and I did it too!, would preach that the progression was sin in Egypt, salvation in the wandering, and Heaven when they entered the land.
Look a little closer at the record. The real battles began when they entered the land. Heaven is not a place of battle. Heaven is a place of rest. The true spiritual picture in the Exodus is sin in Egypt, salvation and training in the wandering, and a useful Christian life in the land.
The churches are to be training her membership to move out into the world of men, not to shun that world. The churches are to be sending soldiers of the Cross into the world of sin so that souls would be added to the Kingdom - and, of course, so that those souls would be saved from that world of sin. The churches are to be recruiting in the world, as did Jesus, so that new trainees would be in training to continue the task.
It is a truism that Christianity is always just one generation from extinction. The fact that has kept that from happening is those churches which have had a soul winning zeal have gone into the world of men and wept tears over souls, gathering into salvation such as the Lord would call.
The important thing about these disciples, as a group, is that they were the disciples of Jesus. They were not just any disciples. They were gathered in the Name of Jesus.
I have sat in the pew of more than a few churches in my time. I have been in services that were solidly Christian in their preaching. I have been in the pew in churches that were Christian in name and doctrine but had no idea what it was to actually follow Jesus. I have sat, a few times, in sanctuaries where the preaching was, from a religious standpoint, completely apostate.
I�ll tell you the truth, you will probably get more from an apostate church than you will from a nominally �Christian� church. The nominally Christian church will normally give you this �bunker� talk of �everyone�s against us.� They will probably tell you who you need to vote for to change society. But, they will rarely send you forth in the Holy Name of Jesus to change society one soul at a time as the Bible has instructed. They�ll lull you to spiritual sleep and never charge your soul to follow the Master!
At least the apostate church will give some real good advice on how to live among your fellow man and have some nice chili suppers.
If you�re not going to get your soul fed with the call to service which Jesus has given, you might as well get some nice chili to put you to sleep. Spiritually, that�s where you�re going to be in any case!
Wake up! If you are claiming to gather in the Name of Jesus you need to act like Jesus. Jesus said, look it up in Luke 19:10 that His purpose during His ministry was to seek and save the lost. He did not intend to send His followers to a peaceful slumber.
Notice, finally, the fact of the gala. ��to the wedding.�
The wedding was a time of celebration. The celebration was that these two persons, the bride and the groom, where to enter into a union in which �the twain would become one.� In the normal course of events, this �oneness� would produce many offspring.
When my grandmother died, nearly thirty years ago, I marveled at how many traced their lineage back to her and my grandfather. I later joked that there were so many relatives at that funeral that we all had to wear nametags! It seemed like there were that many!
My wife�s family, brothers and sisters, still gather for family time at Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. My wife was the oldest of eleven children. These family gatherings have grown so large that the village hall in a town near here is now rented out for these occasions. But, each of these children, and their children, and even the children of those �second generation� children, can trace their familial lineage back to two people, Linda�s mother and father.
That is also our purpose as Christians. We are to work to see others born into the Kingdom. Our churches can trace their lineage back to that first group who gathered in prayer waiting for the Spirit to fall upon them at the Day of Pentecost.
That is history. That is also reality.
That same Spirit Who fell upon those first believers is available to us in this day only, humanly speaking, because those early Christians followed the Lord�s command to make disciples, and those disciples made more disciples. This process has followed it down to this day and has been, again humanly speaking, the force behind our own salvation!
We truly celebrate the Christian faith when we seek out souls for the harvest. Christianity is not a process; it is a faith. But, Christianity is a faith which will produce the process of proclamation and multiplication. Churches which have failed on this point will wither and die as the Spirit raises up other churches which are faithful to His calling and leading.
This wedding was also a gala of congregation.
I�ve spoken much about churches in this message. There is a simple reason. When I was in seminary we were often reminded of two things: First, �God don�t got no Lone Rangers.� Second, �Even the Lone Ranger has Tonto.�
The truth related by these references to old time Saturday morning T.V., is that no Christian is in the faith by himself. We are to gather together in assemblies of persons who have received the same salvation from the same Savior. Go to church. It is God�s plan. If you do not, then you are out of God�s plan.
To those who would argue that they can worship just as well in �The Cathedral of the Pines� as they can in the brick and mortar of a church, have a view of the churches much short of that of Christ. May we remember that Jesus established His churches on this earth. To call ourselves �super religious� (And most of those who make the �Cathedral of the Pines� statement are speaking from that prideful situation!) are actually claiming that they do not need that which Jesus has supplied.
This is more than a simple statement of pride. It is a statement of non-understanding of the Bible and the message of Jesus. It is a statement which is out of the will of the Spirit, Whose will is revealed in the Scripture which records the establishment of the churches. And, most damningly, as a statement which ignores the Spirit, the Scripture, and the teachings of Jesus, it is a statement made outside of faith.
I missed the airplane which was to bring me home from my tour of duty in Viet Nam. I had to spend an extra day. Most people will laugh at my misfortune of stupidity! But, the army did not. The army gets real upset when people are not where they are told to be when they are told to be there.
Folks, Jesus is our Heavenly Commander. Don�t be AWOL from the churches He has established and consider yourself to be a good Christian!
Finally, the gala of this wedding was a time of cementing the relationship of the bride and groom. From this time forth they were no longer just two people walking this earth. They were now one united in the family of marriage. They each had a new relationship at the end of this wedding day than they had previously.
Jesus asks that of us, also. He wants each of us to become followers of Him.
Christian, follow.
To the unsaved, you need to go through the ceremony are you are not part of the party. You cannot walk in newness of life until your have come into a new life. Accept Jesus as your own Savior. Just trust that the sacrifice He made on the cross of Calvary was made for you. It was!
Trust Him.
Do it today!