Jesus is The Giver of Joy
Patrick Edwards
John 2:1-11
Introduction
As I shared with you all a couple of weeks ago, we've been teaching my son Aiden how to read a little. Of course, just getting him to sit still and just work on sight words can be a challenge, though, and so one of the things that I've tried to do to make reading a bit more fun is creating treasure hunts for him, where I'll write out words on index cards, placing them throughout the house, and then Aiden will go following the various clues back and forth and around the house until he finally gets to the end and finds the 'treasure,' which is just a bunch of fake money and maybe some candy in there. Aiden loves it. Now, it takes a lot of time coming up with those clues and then dispersing them over the house, but it's worth it of how much fun he has doing it.
I share this with you this morning because John's gospel is organized a lot like a treasure hunt. He purposefully organizes his gospel around seven ''signs'' that Jesus performed during his ministry, which are designed to show us how Jesus is the Christ and what kind of Christ He is. In other words, these miracles are intentional moments where Jesus is revealing to those around Him and to us who He is. As John will tell us at the end of this gospel, ''Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; ... were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. ... [B]ut these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.'' (John 20:30; 21:25b; 20:31)
In other words, John is not just casually recording the signs that Jesus did. No, there is a very intentional choice here in recording these specific signs, because these signs help us to see who Jesus really and fully is. I love the way N. T. Wright describes these signs; he says, ''They ar ...
Patrick Edwards
John 2:1-11
Introduction
As I shared with you all a couple of weeks ago, we've been teaching my son Aiden how to read a little. Of course, just getting him to sit still and just work on sight words can be a challenge, though, and so one of the things that I've tried to do to make reading a bit more fun is creating treasure hunts for him, where I'll write out words on index cards, placing them throughout the house, and then Aiden will go following the various clues back and forth and around the house until he finally gets to the end and finds the 'treasure,' which is just a bunch of fake money and maybe some candy in there. Aiden loves it. Now, it takes a lot of time coming up with those clues and then dispersing them over the house, but it's worth it of how much fun he has doing it.
I share this with you this morning because John's gospel is organized a lot like a treasure hunt. He purposefully organizes his gospel around seven ''signs'' that Jesus performed during his ministry, which are designed to show us how Jesus is the Christ and what kind of Christ He is. In other words, these miracles are intentional moments where Jesus is revealing to those around Him and to us who He is. As John will tell us at the end of this gospel, ''Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; ... were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. ... [B]ut these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.'' (John 20:30; 21:25b; 20:31)
In other words, John is not just casually recording the signs that Jesus did. No, there is a very intentional choice here in recording these specific signs, because these signs help us to see who Jesus really and fully is. I love the way N. T. Wright describes these signs; he says, ''They ar ...
There are 21614 characters in the full content. This excerpt only shows a 2000 character sample of the full content.
Price: $5.99 or 1 credit
