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The Wedding At Cana
What The Wedding At Cana Tells
Us About Creation
By ONE FOR ISRAEL (Messianic Jews In
Israel)
by Freeman Chambers
There
is a miraculous event in the New Testament that is as challenging for many as
the creation account in Genesis. And as you will see, the two events are very
much related.
The
event was the making of some very good wine in a small Galilean town called
Cana; wine that was not made in days, but in an infinitesimal fraction of time.
This
wine-making event is a window into the very creation account in Genesis chapter
1.
Wine in the ancient world
In
2011 the archaeological find of a 6000-year-old winery in a cave in southern
Armenia, near the border with Iran, was made known to the world.
From
discoveries like this, and others, it is clear that wine making has been around
for a very, very long time.
Wine,
as you may know, takes at minimum days to make, and at a maximum several
months.
The
passage of time is very much a part of the whole wine making process due to the
slow microbial chemical transformation taking place in the initial liquid of
the crushed grape’s combination of grape juice and grape skins.
The
earliest mention of wine in the Bible is in Genesis 9:19-20, where it says:
“Noah,
a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its
wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.”
It’s
impossible to know the flavor, body, or bouquet of the wine that Noah drank so
long ago, but it is clear that the juice of grapes had fermented, producing
alcohol, which caused Noah to become drunk.
Ripe
organic grapes are full of natural sugars. One sugar is sucrose, which is a
disaccharide made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose.
These
sugars in the grape juice are broken down by the yeast and changed into carbon
dioxide and alcohol (ethanol) during the fermentation process.
The
grapes sugars will determine the final alcohol content of the wine and its
resulting body, the body being the way the wine feels in your mouth.
Witnesses at the second “Genesis” of Yeshua’s ministry
No
one was there to witness it when God said, “Let there be light,” or any
of those six days of
creation, but Yeshua’s very first miracle gave the guests at the
wedding a glimpse into God’s power to create, and the opportunity to be
eyewitnesses to the fact.
The wine-making
event, as recorded by Yeshua’s good friend John, took place somewhere
between the years 30 and 33 CE in Cana, just off route 77, a little north of
Nazareth.
Here’s
what happened:
“On
the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Yeshua
was there. Now both Yeshua and His disciples were invited to the wedding.
“And
when they ran out of wine, the mother of Yeshua said to Him, ‘They have no
wine.’
Yeshua said to her, ‘Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.’
Yeshua said to her, ‘Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.’
“His
mother said to the servants, ‘Whatever He says to you, do it.’
“Now
there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of
purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece.
“Yeshua
said to them, ‘Fill the waterpots with water.’ And they filled them up to the
brim. And He said to them, ‘Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the
feast.’
“And
they took it. When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made
wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the
water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom.
“And
he said to him, ‘Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when
the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine
until now!’
“This
beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and
His disciples believed in Him.” (John 2:1-11)
The
ancient wine-making site in Armenia found residue in clay wine vats, remnants
of grape vines and seeds, but there is no mention of grapes here at all, and
without grapes there are no sugars for yeast to convert to carbon dioxide and
ethanol.
Six stone jars, six days of creation
Now
let’s look at what is there, and how it takes us back to the creation account
given in Genesis 1.
We
are told in Genesis 1 that God made all things in heaven and earth in six days.
In the account at the wedding in Cana of Galilee there were six large
ceremonial jars cut from solid stone.
Why
six stone containers? This was not an accident. Each stone container
represents one day of creation.
These
were not clay jars that had been fired to become hard, no, they were ceremonial
containers which had been cut from solid stone.
Each
stone cut container could hold 20 or 30 gallons of water a piece.
Yeshua told
the servants in the house to fill each stone container, and they did, all the
way to the brim.
This
meant that the water weight alone in each container weighed between 167 pounds
(75.75 kilograms) to 250 pounds (113.4 kilograms), so the servants were likely
taking smaller containers of water and carrying them from the water source to
fill the six jars.
After
they were filled, Yeshua told the servants to draw some out and take it to the
master of the feast.
We
know that the master of the feast was not in the area where the jars were being
filled, as the account tells us:
“When
the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not
know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the
master of the feast called the bridegroom. And he said to him,
“‘Every
man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well
drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!’” (verses
9-10)
The
master of the feast testified to the bridegroom of the wines flavor, body (the
way it feels in the mouth), and its bouquet when he said,
“Every
man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well
drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”
Let there be life!
The
containers were chiseled into pots from stone, but the stone itself was not
made by man.
The
water also was not made by human effort, and we now know that one water
molecule (H2O) is made up of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom
which was the constituent held in the stone containers.
Genesis
1:10 declares that before any lifeforms were made on earth there was only earth
and water.
Now
recall, if you know; what was the first kind of living thing that God made on
the third day right after he gathered the water into one place and the land
appeared? It was plant life.
“Then
God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one
place, and let the dry land appear;’ and it was so. And God called the dry land
Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw
that it was good.
“Then
God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the
fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on
the earth;’ and it was so.
“And
the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind,
and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good”. (Genesis 1:9-12)
On
the day after water was separated from the land, plant life was created. This,
of course, included the grape varieties.
Now
recall the sugar sucrose mentioned earlier, which is in the pulp of the grape.
Sucrose
is common table sugar. It occurs naturally, is a disaccharide molecule composed
of the two monosaccharides glucose and fructose.
Sucrose
is found in all plants and has the chemical formula C12H22O11.
So,
in the molecule of sucrose there are 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms and 11
oxygen atoms.
Since
the servants filled the stone jars with only water, there was no carbon present
of any influential amount.
Without
carbon there could be no sugars and without the sugars there can be no ethanol,
since ethanol has two carbon atoms in its molecular structure.
Yeshua
produced what was effectively the result of plant life – out of thin air.
The order of creation
The water
in the stone containers was not living, nor were the stone containers, which
came from the earth; and so, it was also with the earth, just water and earth
prior to plants being created.
Everything about our world’s creation
was present at the wedding feast:
the water, the earth and the days of creation. The God who created all things was there, in the midst of humans, at an event of marriage, which he instituted on the sixth day.
the water, the earth and the days of creation. The God who created all things was there, in the midst of humans, at an event of marriage, which he instituted on the sixth day.
God
was in the form of human flesh, and he made known his glory, for the writer of
the story stated the following:
“This
beginning of signs Yeshua did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and
His disciples believed in Him.” (John 2:11)
Without
speaking a word to the water in the ceremonial stone containers, Yeshua changed
the molecular structure of the water into the complex molecular structure of
the many different chemical compounds that gives wine its color, its aroma, its
flavor, and yes, its alcohol content.
This
was all done in an instant! It takes days to months for humans to make wine
from grapes.
I
leave you with this question: What is more difficult, making all things in
creation in just six days, or making wine from 150 plus gallons of water,
simultaneously in separate containers, in an instant?
Yeshua
was declaring to those who saw the creative event, and is declaring to us who
read the account of the creative event, that he is God.
John
puts this very plainly in the first chapter of his gospel account:
“In
the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made
through Him, and apart from Him nothing was made that has come into
being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.“
His
disciples believed in him that day, and today he invites us to believe in him.
He is Creator – all things were made through Him, he is our Savior, the light
who has overcome the darkness of sin and death, and he is our only hope for
eternal life.
We are an Israeli ministry composed of Jewish & Arab
followers of Yeshua (Jesus) who are all about blessing Israel through sharing
the gospel online, educating the new generation of born-again believers through
our one and only Hebrew-speaking Bible College in Israel, and helping holocaust
survivors by supplying humanitarian aid.
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