Son, Where is the Wine? (The Wine Fails)
John 2:3
And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
Let’s spend a moment reviewing. There was no New Testament Church at this point. The system in place was still that of the Old Testament, and we are introduced to Jesus, whom heaven and John the Baptizer have introduced or given testimony, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus is thirty years old, and it has been about two months since he last saw his mother. Jesus is invited to a wedding, and he brings six disciples with him. We are unsure if the disciples are indeed invited, having known this couple, or if they are invited because they are disciples of Jesus.
Perhaps the extra quests have caused the groom’s carefully laid plans to fall short. Suddenly, they are found to be out of wine. The Greek makes an interesting statement when it reads, “The wine failed.” I do not want this post to become a breeding ground for debate on whether this wine is fermented or not. But I will make this short statement. There are three words used in the Bible to describe wine. One means fermented. The second means unfermented, while the third can mean either, depending on the context. One other important detail. Wine that is fermented or the process of fermentation is associated with sin within the Bible. Except for one instance, yeast is stated or has the same meaning as fermentation to represent sin.
And since Jesus is sinless and lived a life free of sin, then I’ll let you draw your own conclusion. But the the statement was made by Jesus’s mother: “The wine failed.” It was a social disgrace for the groom and his family to run out of wine or anything else at the wedding feast. So the mother of Jesus comes to Him and says, “Son, the wine failed.”
“The wine failed.” What a statement Mary made to her son. Please hang on for the ride as I go through this explanation. Israel, as in the nation established by God at Mount Sinai, is God’s church of the Old Testament. Their purpose was to attract people by their lifestyle and blessing received from God, attract other people and nations to want to know more about the God of heaven. In 931 BCE (BC), Solomon died, and in his place, his son Rehoboam became king. While Saul, David and Solomon ruled as kings, Israel as a 12-tribe nation remained intact. But under Rehoboam, ten tribes, the northern tribes split away to form their own nation of Israel. This left a remnant made up of the tribe of Simeon, a small part of Benjamin and Judah. The small group made up of Judah, Simeon, and part of Benjamin became known as Judah, the ones the promised messiah was to be born from (see Genesis 49:8-12). What this split between the ten tribes and Judah (Judah, Simeon, and a small part of Benjamin) amounted to was a divorce. These ten tribes divorced themselves from the God of Israel. Thus, it is fitting that the wedding described in John chapter 2 takes place in the region once part of the Northern Kingdom (The name made up of the ten tribes) of Israel.
But the wine had failed. The divorce had resulted in the majority of the people bowing to other gods and not honoring the God in heaven. Now, the God in heaven had come down as a man to bring new wine and bring the divorced back together again. No, I am not talking about physically reuniting the old Northern and Southern Kingdoms into the united nation of Israel. I am talking about reuniting to form a spiritual Israel. A new church that would be the basis of the New Testament Church, which was to include all of Israel and the world’s nations.
But for this to happen, the “wine that failed” needed to be replaced by new, pure, sparkling wine that was untouched by sin to represent the pure teachings of the gospel message as fulfilled in and through Christ. A message or wine that would bring the nations together into one name. Therefore, the mother of Jesus, remembering the words spoken to her by the angel in the gospel of Luke, comes to her son and says, “The wine failed.”
The author of John’s Gospel is asking us this. Israel and Judah have divorced, and all the nations have failed to achieve anything by their own works. Trying to appease God or the gods does not work. The wine of works has failed. The intoxicating wine of self has not worked. What, then, is the solution? Let’s see the answer in our next post as we see what transpires at the wedding in Cana.
The Bible In Your Hand 