The Good Wine Kept Until Now

Everybody knows what it is to run out. You have run out of gas before, run out of money because you ran out of month, run out of patience with your kids. If we are honest, they have run out of patience with you too. Running out is the story of life in this world.

Some people have run out of bigger things than gas and money. Health, for one. Some have gotten to the point where they dread going to the doctor because there is no cure, just a diagnosis and maybe another pill or another test. Some have quietly run out of reasons to keep going, and nobody around them knows it.

Two thousand years ago, at a wedding in a little village called Cana, the wine ran out. That sounds like a small problem to us. It was not, at least not back then. In that culture it meant public shame for the family, a celebration dying right in the middle of the feast. The joy ran dry. Jesus of Nazareth was in the room when it happened, and what He did next is the reason this account is in your Bible.

Here it is in one sentence: everything this world pours out eventually runs dry, but Jesus Christ turned water into wine to show you He is the Son of God, and what He gives never runs out.

The Joy That Ran Out

Look at verse 3. Four words carry the whole weight of it: they have no wine. In first-century Galilee a wedding feast could run seven days, and wine was the sign of joy at the table. Running out meant disgrace, the kind of failure a family in a small village never lived down. People would remember. The celebration was collapsing in real time, and the guests did not even know it yet. Mary did.

I want you to understand something. The wine always runs out. Not sometimes, not most of the time. Always. Every earthly joy has a bottom to the barrel. The party ends and the paycheck gets spent. Summer turns to winter, the flower fades and withers and is gone, and the people you love get older, but so do you. This world serves its best up front and lets you drink your way down to the dregs.

Notice what Mary does with the emptiness. She does not organize a wine run to the next village or take up a collection. She goes straight to Jesus and lays it in front of Him: they have no wine.

Then Jesus answers her in verse 4 with words that sound strange to our ears: “Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” That may sound cold to some people, but He was not being unkind, and Mary did not get her feelings hurt. Jesus was drawing a line. From this moment forward He does not act on family requests or human schedules. He acts on His Father’s timetable, moving toward an hour that was fixed before the world was even created. Keep that word “hour” in your pocket. It is going to matter at the end of this article.

Mary got the message. Look at what she tells the servants in verse 5: “Whatever He says to you, do it.” As far as I can tell, those are the last recorded words of Mary in all of Scripture, and they might be the best human counsel ever given. She did not say do what seems reasonable, or do what the crowd does. Whatever He says to you, do it.

Why is it that we have people who call themselves Christians and treat the Bible as if it were multiple choice? They open it up and decide for themselves what to obey. This command they will take, that one they skip, and the preacher had better not ever preach about it. That is not the way it ought to be. Judgment day is coming, folks. Jesus said, if you love Me, keep My commandments. He speaks to us through His Word, so get in there and listen to Him, and do not be a hearer only. Be a doer. James has something to say about that.

So let me ask you: where has the wine run out for you? Maybe it is a bank account. Maybe it is a diagnosis, or twenty or thirty years of trying to fill yourself with things that keep emptying out. Here is the question this text puts to you. When you hit the bottom of the barrel, where do you take the emptiness? Most people take it to the same well that ran dry in the first place. Mark it down: Mary took it to Jesus. There were plenty of other people in that crowd, but she went straight to the One she knew could help. When you are at the end of your rope, you had better be running to Jesus, because there is nowhere else to go.

The Water That Became Wine

Verse 6 tells us there were six stone water jars set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing two or three measures each. That is twenty to thirty gallons apiece, somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons total.

Do not rush past what those jars were for. They held water for ceremonial washing, the endless rinsing of hands and cups that Jewish tradition required. Religious water. Water that could clean the outside of a man and never do a thing for his heart. A person could wash at those pots every day from his youth up to the grave and still die in his sins. Religion will not save a person. It cannot. I believe that is why it was not just any old water Jesus used that day. He used the religious water.

Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars, and verse 7 says they filled them up to the brim. No room was left for a parlor trick, no space to slip anything in. Then He says draw some out and take it to the headwaiter.

Somewhere between the jar and the taster’s cup, the miracle happened. There was no incantation and no dramatic gesture. John does not even record the moment itself. Jesus willed it, and 120 gallons of wash water became the finest wine that feast ever saw. The One who spoke the vineyards of the earth into existence in Genesis 1 did not need a growing season. Creation simply obeys its Creator. This is the Word who was in the beginning with God, through whom all things came into being, walking among the wedding guests in sandals.

The headwaiter, who has no idea what happened, tastes it and calls the bridegroom over in verse 10: “Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then the inferior wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” He meant it as a compliment to the groom. God meant it as a sermon.

Hear it. Sin works exactly the way the world serves wine: the best first, the dregs last. The first drink is sweet and the first lie is easy. The first compromise costs you nothing you can feel. Then the quality drops, and drops, and drops, until you are drinking bitterness and cannot remember when it changed.

God does the opposite. He kept the good wine until now. Fifteen hundred years of law and sacrifice, of priests and stone jars full of water that could never take away sin, and then, in the fullness of time, God brought out His best: His own Son.

Let me ask you plainly, whoever you may be. Which direction is your life running? Is it the world’s direction, where the best is behind you and every year tastes a little thinner than the last? Or do you belong to the God who saves His best for last? There is a way to know, and it has everything to do with what you have done with Jesus Christ. Church membership is important, and I believe every saved person ought to be baptized scripturally, but neither one will settle it. We do not have ceremonial washings like the Jews did, but I have known plenty of folks who splashed around in religious water, got good and wet, and never met the Lord of the feast. Have you met Him? Without Him, none of the rest will matter.

The Glory That Demands a Verdict

A wedding was rescued and a headwaiter was impressed. But John did not record this story so you would admire a catering miracle, and it is not here so Baptists can squabble over whether to have wine at weddings. Yes, it was real wine. If that is all you get out of this text, you have missed the point. Verse 11 tells you why it is here, and it puts a question directly to you.

Notice that John does not call this a miracle. He calls it a sign, and a sign points past itself to something greater. A road sign that says Brunswick is not Brunswick; it points you there. This wine pointed past the feast to the glory of the One who made it. For a moment in that village, the veil slipped, and the men standing closest to Jesus saw who He really was: the Word made flesh, God the Son standing at a country wedding.

Notice the result too. His disciples believed in Him. That is the whole aim of the sign. Faith, not applause. Get in the Book and be in awe of Christ.

Near the end of his Gospel, John comes right out and tells us why he wrote every page of it.

These signs were written down so that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you would have life in His name. That verse is the reason this story exists, and it is the reason I keep preaching week after week, whether in a living room or in a park, even when people imply I ought to just give up. John wrote for you. God preserved this account for two thousand years for you, reading it right now.

So the sign has been set in front of you, and a sign demands a response. Nobody stares at a road sign forever. Either Jesus of Nazareth turned water into wine and is exactly who this Book says He is, or Christianity is a lie you can walk away from. There is no polite middle ground where He is just a good teacher. Good teachers do not manifest the glory of God. Eternity is at stake, and one of these days you will come to the end of your life. Where will you be?

The Bitter Cup and the Good Wine

That brings us back to the strange sentence Jesus spoke to His mother, the one I told you to keep in your pocket. “My hour has not yet come.” His hour did come. What happened when it came is the best news you will ever hear.

In John’s Gospel, His hour always means one thing: the cross. The hour when the Son of God would be lifted up and glorified, not by turning water into wine, but by pouring out His own blood for sinners. Jesus was on a schedule that day at Cana, and through His whole ministry, a schedule decreed by God before the foundation of the world.

Here is why He had to keep it. The Bible says God is holy, and you and I are not. We have lied, lusted, hated, and loved ourselves above the God who made us, and all the religious water in the world cannot wash that off. Those six stone jars at Cana are a picture of every self-improvement plan and every church ritual man has ever tried: gallons and gallons of washing that never reaches the heart.

So God did what the water could not. At the cross, Jesus Christ, who never sinned once, took the sins of His people on Himself and drank the cup of God’s wrath down to the dregs. He drank the bitter cup so you could drink the good wine. Three days later He walked out of the tomb alive, and He is alive today.

Hear both sides of this, because the text has a warning and a promise.

The warning is for you if you are outside of Christ. The wine is going to run out. Your health, your money, your years, all of it. When your last supply runs dry and you stand before a holy God, what will you have? If your answer is your own goodness, you are standing next to six stone jars of water that cannot save you. That is a fearful place to be.

The promise is this: whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. Not improved. Saved. Forgiven of every sin and clothed in His righteousness, with a joy that does not run out when the feast ends. Mary’s counsel to the servants is my counsel to you: whatever He says to you, do it. What He says to sinners is simple. Repent, and believe the gospel. Turn from your sin and trust the Son of God who died and rose again. You do not need to clean yourself up first. Those servants brought Him nothing but plain water, and He made it the best in the house. Bring Him your empty jars. Bring Him your wasted years. He has kept the good wine until now, and now is the day of salvation.