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Our text in John related the first miracle that Jesus Christ ever did during His earthly ministry. It was a wedding of some friends of the family and it was to be a grand affair; Jesus attended with His disciples and His mother was there also. Most of you know the story fairly well, how that the tragedies of all tragedies happened at the feast and they ran out of the common drink of the day: grape wine. And when they ran out, Jesus' mother came and informed Him of the situation and although He gave no hint as to desiring to do anything miraculous, Mary's faith brought on the miracle and turning to the servants of the feast, said, "Whatever He commands you to do, do it."

It is sad that any preacher desiring to draw a text from this great story has to always preface his remarks against sots that would try to twist the text to justify their alcoholic habits. The drink is not the point of the story, rather the miracle power of God; so I will not delve into some great teaching on alcoholic beverages or their dangers or what they do to the soul and spirit of man, but suffice it to say that if you are using this text to justify getting drunk, then you are on shaky ground at best. You are ignoring hundreds of other scriptures that warn against the dangers of strong drink and Jesus' commandment to avoid drunkenness. The wine of Jesus' day that was commonly drank was so far removed from today's alcoholic beverages that it wouldn't have even been considered intoxicating today. The reason that water was readily available for this miracle was because the wine of the day -- in it's base form not being as nearly alcoholic as the stuff of modern times -- was always further diluted with water before being served. And for the record: the scriptures do not say that Jesus made a more heavily intoxicating beverage, but rather a better tasting beverage. If you really have questions about what God thinks about alcoholic beverages, I have a Bible study that covers a hundred or so scriptures on the subject and presents it thoroughly, and if you are interested, I will sit down with you and patiently teach it to you verse by verse until there is no doubt in your mind that God abhors drunkenness and the very appearance of it, but for this sermon, let's get beyond such subjects!

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This story ought to grab our attention because of the "law of first mention" in the Bible. As you read your Bible, you will notice that the first mention of anything tends to give us all of the basic principles that we need to know for that subject. The story of the first sin of Eve, teaches us exactly the process that all of us go through when we sin (She hung around the forbidden; she began to look at the forbidden; she began to focus on what she couldn't have rather than what she could; she listened to the voice that questioned the validity of God's Word; she desired the fruit; she touched the fruit; she partook of the fruit; and then she caused someone else to fall). The first mention of worship of Jesus in the New Testament is the wise men coming to Bethlehem and it teaches all the basic principles of worship (Worship arises from the knowledge of who He really is; worship involves sacrifice; to worship Him, we must come into His presence; in our worship, we must give the best that we have; if you have truly worshipped, you will leave differently than when you came). The first sermon in the Era of Grace was Peter's recorded in the 2nd chapter of Acts and it gives us the basics of salvation (Believe that Jesus is the Messiah, Repentance, Water Baptism in Jesus' name, Receiving the Holy Ghost, and changing our lifestyle so that we pull ourselves out of the generation that is "untoward" the things of God, Continue in the Apostle's doctrine). I could go on and on, but what this means is that since this miracle is the first supernatural act that Jesus did in ministering to men, it contains all the basic principles of how Jesus wants to do the miraculous in our life, today.

We often preach this story from the viewpoint of Mary and certainly it was her faith in Jesus that made the miracle possible in the first place. But I do not think Mary is the main ordinary character of the story. We also tend to sometimes mention it from the viewpoint of those who were putting on the wedding feast, and that is a great thought, but I do not think that the fathers of the bride and groom were really the main characters of the story. The ones who are really brought from the background and into the light for just a moment in this story are the ordinary servants working in the kitchen. We forget about them, but had they not done the Master's bidding, there would have been no wine and no miracle. And so for this message, let's look at this miracle through the eyes of those workers in the background and draw out the principles that it teaches the servants of God today. I think you will find that this story is truly the Bible's "Servant's Guide to the Miraculous."

The first thing that our story teaches is that:

We have in our minds that when the miraculous is needed and we need God to do something awesome that we have never seen before, that we need to bring in somebody: a "specialist," if you will. Somebody that has seen God do those things before. Somebody who has experience with getting God to move in supernatural areas. Somebody who has known Jesus a little longer than we have. Somebody who has had the Holy Ghost for eighty years and can quote the New Testament backwards with one leg in the air! In our minds, we tend to think that to get somewhere we have never been in God, we must have someone who had been there help us across.

But notice what Jesus did not do when He decided to do the miraculous here: He did not go bring in "water to wine specialists" who had been holding "water to wine" crusades all across the country and blowing on people's water bottles and having them turn to wine. For that matter, He did not even ask the disciples who had already believed in Him and who were present, to get involved. Mary, whose faith began the whole thing, fades from the scene and is not mentioned again. Jesus instead, turns to the ordinary servants, the one who were facing the dilemma and instructs them and through them brings forth the miracle. They had never seen such a thing before. They had no idea what to expect. They probably weren't even believers! (They weren't believers, yet!) They were not strangers called into the situation, but were just ordinary servants drawing ordinary water! And yet they were the chosen servants that Jesus used to bring the miraculous to Cana!

Let me say this: A supernatural move of God depends more upon a great need being present and less on the identity of the servants. There is one prerequisite to putting yourself into position for a miracle: be willing to obey Him when faced with a daunting dilemma! When you are faced with crisis, understand that you are closer to the supernatural and miraculous power of God than you were on the sunny days when everything was going right. When you are faced with a crisis, you have been set up to trust God and thus see the power of God displayed in your life!

And so I'm preaching to you today that there is no crisis in your life that is greater than the crisis of the lost souls of our area. The people around us are empty spiritually and don't even know it. The wine of their hope is gone and their joy is running out. Their party will not last for forever because the future holds a lack of refreshing. But God is the answer for their problems! He can do the miraculous and fill their pots with Holy Ghost wine! And it is His desire for a Holy Ghost revival that shakes this community to the very core of it's being to spread from this church and from this town all throughout this region. But listen to this preacher: God will do it when we get a revelation that He wants to use us who are here already! We are just ordinary servants, going about ordinary tasks, but we serve an extraordinary God and if we are the servants that are here, then we are the servants that Jesus wants to use to manifest His power!

Revival will not come in a suitcase from a stranger evangelist that comes in from out of town. Our harvest will not be spurred on by someone moving here that has had the Holy Ghost longer than you or who knows more scripture or who has seen such a move of God before. The need is here, and we are the ones who are facing it, therefore we must realize that God wants to use us! In the spirit, He's motioning us towards the empty souls in this area and saying "fill them up with whatever you have!" If anybody, God will use us to usher in the miraculous! It doesn't matter if you've never seen it before, just do what HE says! It's time to stop waiting on somebody else to come and ignite, and realize God is waiting on us!

And it's also time to stop telling God how empty and void the waterpots are. These are the waterpots that were on hand, therefore these are the waterpots that Jesus chose to use. It matters not how much in sin or spiritually empty the people of this community is or is not. They are the ones that God wants to fill. They are the ones that are on hand. They are the ones that are available. Where you see sin, God sees a place where salvation is possible. Where you see a void, God sees a vessel that can be filled. I was somewhere the other day with our evangelist and a guy was cussing God and everybody around him and the minister looked at me and smiled and says, "there's a good candidate for Jesus!" It's time to realize that God wants to use the local waterpots to usher in the Holy Ghost wine!

The second principle in our guide to the miraculous is that

Jesus wants to do a great work here so He first commands, "Fill the waterpots with water." The blessing begins first with a command. He does not say -- although He could have -- "Let wine come forth abundantly." But rather He first gives a commandment for men to follow. Think with me in your memories and you will realize the truth of this statement in many other miraculous works. The blind man is before Jesus and the Master is about to give him sight, but He gives a command "go wash in the pool of Siloam." The man has clay on his eyes, he is blind, and yet Jesus commands him to feel his way through the busy city to find a particular pool to wash! There is a man who has a withered hand, and Jesus intends to heal him, but Jesus first says, "stretch forth your hand."

And the principle holds true even when it almost seems ridiculous what Jesus commands. Here is Jarius' daughter dead in the house and Jesus says to the dead child, "little girl, rise up!" In the same way, Lazarus has been dead for four days, but Jesus does not send someone in to get him, but rather commands the dead man, "Lazarus, come forth!" And this principle is found even today. There is no greater miraculous work than salvation, and yet to the sinner, Jesus commands, "Repent of your sins and die out to your old man." And then to the spiritually dead man, He says, "Believe and be baptized." Ask not how that a dead man can believe, just do it! The commandment is the vehicle that brings the blessing.

Some people have a tainted view of God's Word commanding them to do anything. They view such commandments as rules and restrictions, but I don't see it that way. If you look closely at our text and indeed every other story that I've mentioned, you will find that the commandment was always given to those whom God desired to bless. Let me say that again: When God gives a commandment to you, it is a sign that He desires to bless you extravagantly! Because the commandment is just the avenue through which God will give you the miraculous! Perhaps now you can realize that when I read where God says "you must do this" I get excited rather than down about it. Because I have found that when God issues a commandment, He is preparing me for a blessing that is beyond anything that I have ever established. You ought to rejoice when God's Word hits close to home. You ought to be glad when the scriptures identify something that you can do; that you can change. Because that means that God is desiring to bless you with the supernatural in a way that you have never experienced before! Never forget that the commandment is the avenue through which God brings the blessings!

The third principle in our guide to the miraculous is that:

Don't question God's methods, just do what He says! To get water, they would have to go the well and draw it up and it would take many trips to fill the waterpots again. And it was a well that they had gone to many times and they knew that there was no wine to be found there.

If some modern day church goers would have been there, they would have responded with something like, "Water? You want us to go put water in the pots? We don't need water, but we need wine! We don't see how that water is going to help us. The wedding guests don't want any water. It's a lot of work to draw more water out and it's not going to do us any good. Why would Jesus command such a ridiculous thing? Better that we go ask to borrow some wine from our friends and neighbors or perhaps to purchase some wine somewhere else, but water?"

I say that is how some church goers would have responded because it is how they respond to the Master's commands even now. "Do that and change that? But God I did not ask for you to touch that area, but rather asked you to fix this other problem. I came to you asking you to forgive me for my sin, what does whether or not I forgive others have to do with it? I came to ask you to forgive my past, why do I have obey the scripture in the way I live now?" or "I don't fully understand why God would ask that and to do it would mean much sacrifice and effort, so I don't think that I'm going to do it because I don't really see what water has to do with getting wine." But the advice of Mary to the servants then, should ring in your ears: "whatever He tells you to do, do it!" Your job as a servant is to the do the Lord's command, not question it. It's not your job to figure it out, it's your job to obey! Or have we forgotten that we are the servants and He is the master?

And let me point this out, also, Jesus' command seemed all the more ridiculous because it was a very natural and ordinary thing to fill the water pots with water. God chooses to use the ordinary course of nature as much as possible to do the supernatural. He could have called a buffet table from out of the air to feed the five thousand, but He chose to bless and multiply a little boy's sack lunch. He could have reached down and grabbed Jonah by his big toe and held him up in the air until Jonah had a change of heart, but God chose to use a big fish that was already roaming the depths of the sea.

If it would have been us performing the miracle at Cana, we would have wanted to make it very dramatic. Possibly interrupt the feast and like some illusionist place a large pot of water upon a table and pour the water from several bowls so that all could see that it was water and then build the act into a big crescendo where pouring water turns red. Maybe add a few smoke machines and a strobe light -- that's how we think of the miraculous. But Jesus tends to work in the background. The miracle was done not in front of the crowd at the feast but in the presence of only the servants and His disciples. In the same way, Jesus first sent the crowd out before healing Jarius' daughter. In the same way, He many times led a blind man out of the city away from the crowds to heal him. And it is the same in this story: there was no dramatics, just after the servants dipped into the water, they discovered it was no longer water!

Many people today think that God doesn't do miraculous and supernatural things often, because they do not recognize it when it happens. They are expecting thunder and lightening and fire falling from heaven, but God is doing the miraculous quietly behind the scenes. It is interesting that after the days of Elijah, we don't find God sending fire down again and in the end times it will be the false prophet and the Antichrist that deceive the people with such a show. I think back to the blind guy that God healed at last year's Family Camp: he wasn't healed in front of the crowd during the preaching with the spotlight on him, but rather at the end of the altar service when most of the crowd had already returned home. God often prefers to just simply do the supernatural in the quietest possible way. It took a moment after the fact for the servants to realize that something great had happened. They didn't really notice during the event, but only after it had happened did the realization dawn on them what had happened; such is how God works.

The way wine normally is created is that water falls onto the earth in the form of rain and it washed into the soil and absorbs nutrients that it carries into the vine. The vine then transfers these nutrients, with the help of sunlight, into the fruit we call grapes. The grapes are then ripened, picked, trampled, pressed, and the juice is collected and stored. What nature does in a long process, Jesus simply speeded up and did in an instant! He started with water and sped the process up and in a second there was wine.

Hear this preacher: God can step out of the laws of gravity and the universe, if He wants to, but more often He works the supernatural by simply speeding up the process of nature. Eventually the storm would have died down and the wave subsided, but Jesus just sped up the process! Too often, we miss the supernatural because we didn't even notice that it happened. We were looking for smoke and thunder and the still small voice of God was doing something great! The servants are looking at Jesus waiting for Him to say something great or wave His hand or something and they don't even realize that the water that they had poured into the waterpots had already blushed! They are looking around wondering "what happens next" when the miraculous had already taken place and Jesus was just waiting for them to realize it.

So it is with God. Chill bumps and great sensations are not what brings the miraculous. But rather just obeying what He has said even if it sounds ridiculous or pointless. While you are busy obeying the Word of God, you will look down and all of a sudden realize "something great has happened!" You are just busy serving God and all of a sudden you realize, "God has healed my marriage." You are just busy obeying His Word and trying to be all that He can be, when you suddenly realize, "I am a vastly different person than I was a year ago!" You are just obeying the commandments of God and suddenly it dawns on you that the miraculous has taken place in your life. Therefore don't question the commandment of God, just whatever He tells you to do, do it!

Moving forward in our guide, we find another important principle:

Jesus tells the servants, "fill the waterpots," and the scriptures say "they filled them up to the brim." There are two ways to obey His commandment, you can fill the waterpots up, or you can fill them up! The servants did the latter. On the northern Atlantic coast, they have a saying: "chuck-a-brim full." "Chuck-a-brim" is when the glass is so full that it is actually rounded above the rim; it's full to that point that one more drop would cause it to overflow. You can't get any more full than "Chuck-a-brim" full! The servants heard the command to fill the waterpots and responded by filling them "to the brim!"

If you want to see God do the miraculous, then you must be willing to do as these servants did. When God commands something, do it with all of your might and all of your heart and do it as fully as you can. If God commands praise, then praise Him with everything within you! If God desires a cheerful giver, then give with great joy. If God says testify of me, then do so with passion and excitement. If He says "believe," then believe with everything in you! If He says stand, then stand with all your might! If He says pray, then pray effectively and fervently! If He says "search the scriptures" then search them from end to end! God's commandments were never meant to be followed in a half-hearted manner, but rather to be performed with exuberance and enthusiasm! If you are going to fill the waterpots at His bidding, then fill them full -- yea, even chuck-a-brim full!

Too many Christians put very little effort in what they do for God. They will give only a half-hearted effort, or a show of obedience and then they wonder why the miraculous never comes. I've known preachers who gave God part of their energies and wondered why their churches never grew. I've known saints that only made a show of being involved in God's kingdom and wondered why revival never came to their ministry. I have been criticized for -- oh, I could make a long list here -- studying too much, spending too much time preparing, having church too much, preaching too long, preaching too loud, being too excited about the Word of God, being too passionate about my messages, being too extreme. . . I could go on a while! But, you see, I believe that if God told me to preach the Word, that I ought to preach the Word with everything in me! And so I can't just get on the internet and come before you and read a fifteen minute dialog! Whatever God has commanded, I want to do it with all my might! And so I believe that if we are to have church, then let's not just have church, but let's have church!

I challenge you! If God has told you to witness, then study until you are the best witnesser that has ever lived. If you are going to teach or do Sunday School, then do it with all of your might and ability. Don't hold back. Don't just put some water in the buckets, but if you are going to do it, fill them all the way to the brim! If you are going to mow the church grass, then mow it with everything in you! If you are going to clean the church, then clean it as if it were praise to God. If you are going to take out the trash, then do so with a merry skip in your step and a praise on your lips! Don't just fill the waterpots, but fill them to the brim! And then watch God step in and bless it!

Our next principle in our guide and one of the last is:

Never forget that it is God that brings the supernatural finish to our efforts. Filling the waterpots by themselves is not solving anything. Only when Jesus Christ has turned the water into wine has something great happened. Hear this preacher: never forget our efforts are futile unless we allow God to finish the work! Even the great sacrifice of drawing the water from the well means nothing until Jesus does the divine!

In our text, Paul was writing to the church in Corinth and trying to iron out some of their issues. Paul had founded the church, but Apollos had preached later and seen a great revival, and then other ministers had come through and preached and so the people were arguing over "whose church it was." Was it "Paul's church?" or one of the other ministers who had helped them greatly and Paul wrote back that they were missing the point:

The danger in working for God and doing His will is that we can begin to think that it is us that is doing the work. Paul said, "I want to set the record straight: I planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the increase." I have seen singers be used mightily of God and give their talents to God and yet they grow to a place where they forget that it is God whose Spirit blessed through the song and not their talent making it happen. I have known saints that became great at working for God and then forgot that all of their sacrifice and effort was futile if God did not step in and finish the work. Never forget that we are just the servants and even when we have sacrificed the greatest, our efforts are for naught until God steps in with His power!

On the flip side, however, nothing will happen until someone is willing to sacrifice. God will do what we can't, but only after we have done all that we can. Let me say that again: God will step in and pick up the slack in the areas that we cannot do, but only after we have done everything that is in our power to do. How foolish would it have been for the servants to say "oh Jesus, we think that you can make wine appear in these pots without any water, so we are not going to draw as you said and just believe?" There profession of faith that refused to do what He had said would really be a profession of disbelief in His Words! If you believe, you will obey and I could stay on that a while!

It's foolish to think that we just believe our sins away when God's Word has commanded us to do some things like repent and be baptized. But let me get to where you and I live: it is foolish to think that we can just have good church and people will just miraculously flock to our doors and our altars when Jesus commanded us to go and teach and preach and go and "compel them to come." We forget that if we are the servants of God, then that commandment is to us: "go into the highways and the byways and compel whosoever will to come!" Some would say "we'll get on fire and pray and fast and invite and praise and obey after we see a great move of God" and yet God is saying, "I'm waiting on you to do what you can do, before I come in and do what only I can do!" When you have exhausted your efforts in doing everything that you can do to obey His Word, then He steps in and performs the supernatural! But only when you have done all that you can do!

And our last principle from the Servant's Guide to the Miraculous in John chapter 2, is this:

Listen carefully: the attendees and even the people in charge of the wedding never knew about the dilemma and never knew about the miracle. Only the servants who did the work and the disciples knew what had really happened! Ask yourself, "what was more important to Jesus, saving the wedding celebration from ending early, or that the servants and disciples might receive a revelation of who He was and of His mighty power?" The point of the miracle was to reveal Himself and to transform the disciples and servants into believers and mighty men of God!

It is the will of God for us to have a new church building that seats several hundred and to see it filled with the finest music and the finest preaching and multitudes of people praising God. It is the will of God that we have a church that draws people from miles around and that is admired for it's spirit and truth. But understand something: the new church is not the point in God's mind. The new building and the crowds are not the point in God's eyes. What matters more to Him is the people whose life's are transformed as they work toward that goal. As people join together and do fundraisers and grow spiritually and win others to God to see the dream of a new church happen, understand that the transformation in your and my lives -- the servants -- is what matters most to God. There will people one day come and admire our new facility and the crowds and say "what a pretty wedding feast." But the real story will be in you and I who did everything we could for God and then saw Him perform the miraculous to make it happen. The process of working and setting up the miracle will be the main point in our life, because it will bring us to a place of faith where we will one day spend eternity with Him! And long after the building and the church site that we worked for is gone, we will be eternally alive with our Savior! The point is not the wedding feast, but rather the process by which the wedding feast is being saved, because the lessons being learned in building it are what it's all about to God!

May we act as these humble servants did and simply do "whatever He asks us to do!" Let us do it with all our might, and after we have done it give Him the glory and expect Him to do something even greater than we have ever seen! If we will do our part, then know that He certainly will show up to perform His!