John 2:5

John 2:5

We must perceive at once the peculiar appropriateness with which this miracle was chosen as the first to be performed by our Lord, when we bear in mind that the great object of our Lord's incarnation was to reunite, in ties compared to the bonds of marriage, the human nature with the Divine.

I. It was a festal occasion, and how could our gracious Lord but rejoice at the commencement of that stupendous work of Divine mercy which, determined upon before the world began, by the kindness of God the blessed Trinity, He had now come to effect? Yet whilst the Lord Jesus cheered His heart at the commencement of His ministry by adorning the marriage feast with His presence, and so contemplating His own union with His spouse, the Church, there is melancholy in these words, "Mine hour is not yet come," which speaks to the heart of every one who truly weighs their meaning.

II. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." This is our exhortation. Be in the way of duty, and God will be with you. And herein how blessed and how wonderful is the example set us by our Lord Himself! The greatest miracle, as an old writer has observed, is that Christ should have been for thirty years on earth and yet have worked no miracle till now. For thirty years He did not manifest His powers even to His kinsmen; for thirty years He pursued a carpenter's trade in a remote town of Galilee, obscure, despised. For almost His whole life His was a career of obscurity such as the ambitious must despise. His was a life of inactivity such as the active, the zealous, the busybodies must consider useless. His was a life most certainly which no son of man so endowed (looking merely to endowments of our Lord's human nature) could have led without the special and restraining grace of God. Thus Christ teaches us that our perfection and true greatness consist, in the eyes of angels and of those just men made perfect who form the Church invisible and triumphant, in doing God's will, whatever that will may be, in that situation in which He sees fit, by the ordinance of His Providence, to place us.

W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles,vol. i., p. 1.

References: John 2:5. Parker, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 1; Preacher's Monthly,vol. vii., p. 28. John 2:7. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1556. John 2:9; John 2:10. Ibid.,vol. v., Nos. 225, 226. John 2:10. Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 24; J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany,pp. 421, 441; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 345.