What is Jesus to you? It’s an honest question. A recent online poll found that 37% said Jesus may or may not have even existed and that there is no way to know for sure, 23% said that the gospels are a bunch of fictional tales, 16% say that he may have existed but so many myths have grown up around him that we can’t know what he was really like. Only 18% say he came just like in the gospel accounts.
For some people, Jesus was a good man who had some good advice and would have had a talk show and written lots of books and done very well in the seminar circuit with his good advice. For some he is a talisman against bad things happening. Others think he is the secret to success, like a fuel injector for life here on earth-a genie in a Jesus bottle. For others he is like a good buddy to have along when you need him, but to be ignored when you are good to go. The list goes on and on.
When Jesus came to the earth people had expectations for him-his family did, his friends did, even his enemies had ideas about what he was and was not supposed to be like and what he was and wasn’t supposed to do. Well, Jesus set about to crush all those expectations-and most of ours as well. Just what did Jesus come to do? We get a glimpse from three episodes found in John 2.
1 - 5
Jesus may have known the bride and/or groom. In those days the entire town was invited to a wedding. Jesus was from that region-Cana is only a few miles from Nazareth. Mary may have been the hostess and she would have been the first to know the wine had run out.
So what’s the deal with His words to His mom? One - it might have been improper for Jesus to call his mother by a more familiar term in public so he calls her "woman" - a term of respect. Another way to translate this phrase is: "Madam, that concerns you, not me. My hour has not yet come." Some have suggested that Mary was asking Jesus to reveal himself as the Messiah and perform the miracle.
We really don’t know if she was just asking for help, or if she was expecting a miracle, but we do see that she has reached a difficult place and so places her trust in Jesus. Would we have such full and simple faith! Jesus also makes it clear that His timetable is more important than hers. He is on the way to the cross and will not be sidetracked by anything. But no matter what was going on between them I love Mary’s response: "Do whatever he tells you."
6 - 10
The water jars normally held twenty to thirty gallons. The Jews would use them to pour water over their hands to ritually cleanse themselves from touching everyday objects prior to eating. They were not cleaning germs off-they had no concept of that. But it is interesting that Jesus chose this symbol of Jewish ceremonial cleansing to show that how much more He can do to cleanse a life when He touches it. Jesus fulfills the Jewish Law. In Him all the filth of the world clinging to us is washed away forever.
Also of course, it symbolizes that the life in Jesus Christ is so much better than life trying to please God through the Law.
11-12
Turning water into wine was the first of 35 miracles recorded in this gospel. It was a private miracle-not designed to alleviate a need but avert social embarrassment. But it shows the character of Jesus: he really does care about us and our individual situation. It also strengthened the faith of a group who had really just met this Man.
13 - 17
What happens at the Temple is very significant. All Jewish males were to come to Jerusalem to present a sacrifice at Passover, the Jewish celebration of freedom from Egypt. It was to be a time of cleansing-they were to remove all leaven from their homes. Jesus would later use leaven (yeast) as a symbol for sin and false doctrine (Matthew 16:16).
They were to remember that though they deserved death, God spared them when they appropriated the blood of a spotless lamb over their homes: a time of introspection and celebration.
But it had been turned into an opportunity for exploitation by the religious establishment. Transporting an animal over long distances was hard, so the Pharisees and Priests offered a service of providing animals for sale near the Temple, at a fair markup, of course. Taxes to the Temple had to be paid (could be referenced in Exodus 30:12-16). They tax had to be paid in Temple Shekels and since people came from many countries, the religious leaders set up a money exchange service and charged a fee for the service. These two things grew and grew and moved closer and closer to the Temple until they actually filled the Court of the Gentiles, a large court that surrounded the Temple itself.
It was so bad that you ended up with a bunch of crooks ripping off the people and keeping them from approaching the Lord. What started out as a way to make worship easier ended up making it impossible. We should watch out for that too. Sometimes we make it so convenient for people that they never even have to get up out of their chair or actually work at worship. Then we subtly put these barriers in their way-insisting on tithes and offerings in order to get God’s blessing.
Entering God’s presence should cost us something in terms of personal commitment, but nothing in terms of barriers. God’s gift of salvation is free, all it costs is your life.
Jesus came to a Temple that was supposed to house the glory of God, but it was an empty tomb. The glory of God was now housed in the person of Jesus Christ. It was veiled, like the Temple, but that veil would be torn away when He was crucified. Jesus knew that only by driving these people out would the way to God be cleared.
Another thing here-Jesus was clearly angry, but was this sinful? Did He lose control? No. Ephesians 4:26 says "be angry and do not sin." There is such a thing as righteous anger. Jesus was not the victim of His emotions. When God gets angry it is a correct anger. How about ours? Be angry at sin and its effect on people, but make sure it is anger under God’s control.
18 - 22
The Jews were continually asking Jesus to show them a sign. He correctly points to the only sign that mattered: His death, burial, and resurrection. In Matthew 12 Jesus would tell them that the only sign He would give was that of Jonah who was three days in the big fish. Oddly, this mistaken threat to destroy the physical Temple would come back as one of the accusations used to condemn Jesus to death. It’s ironic: Jesus would indeed destroy the Temple: that dead religious system it represented. It was the Romans, though, who would physically destroy the Temple about a generation later-precisely because the Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah.
23 - 25
There’s a bit of word play in these verses. The word for "believe" and "trust" are related. You could say it this way: "they trusted in Him but he didn’t trust them because he knew what man was really like."
The people wanted to make Him king as long as He fit their mold. People will attach themselves to Jesus as long as He fits their expectations. Jesus didn’t need us to bring about His kingdom. He didn’t need our support or our vote or our money or political power.
He offered to create the whole thing on His own and then give it to us, if we will do but one thing: create a relationship with Him where we acknowledge that He did it all, we don’t deserve any of it, but receive it from Him and give ourselves to Him.
Conclusions
What is Jesus to you? He isn’t a genie, he isn’t a capitalist, and he isn’t a showman. So what is He?
Jesus is transformer
Notice His first miracle-seeing a need, using something everyday and turning it into something wonderful. That’s what He does. Jesus knows our need of a Savior so he comes into our lives and takes us ordinary water people and turns us into wine-and not just any ordinary wine but the "best" wine.
Jesus is a restorer
God had created something that was supposed to bring people to a relationship with Him so He could show them to the Messiah. Through expediency and greed the keepers of that system had so corrupted it that the very purpose (being a light to the gentiles) was defeated. A place that was supposed to connect man with God ("house of prayer") ended up connecting man with his sin nature ("den of thieves"). Jesus came to restore the relationship that man corrupted.
And in fact He came to do this by first allowing man in his hatred to destroy God’s Temple: Jesus Christ. Then the restoration would happen first through the resurrection of Jesus and we would be restored through Him, not through the old system God intended as a pointer to Jesus.
Jesus is in the salvation business, not in the show business
We all like to be impressed. It’s no different today. What impresses us is a show of power. We like success (our image of it anyway) and so we are attracted to those that we deem successful and powerful. The people "believed in his name" which I guess would be sort of like saying they "joined His movement" but they did not either know or understand what He was really saying for them to do: that is to die to themselves and live to and in Him. It is the words, not the miracles that are important. You can be fooled by "miracles" but you cannot be fooled when you examine the words, weigh the evidence, and believe.
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