Earthen Vessels

In John 2:1-11, we read the account of Jesus turning water into wine while at a wedding.  It was known as the first miracle Jesus performed.  The servants wereinstructed to take six stone jars, each able to hold 20-30 gallons, normally used for ceremonial cleaning and fill them to the brim with water.  Jesus then turns that water into wine and instructs the servants to serve it to the Master of the Ceremonies who was astonished that the best wine was saved for last.

When wine was made by human hands, grapes were picked and placed in a vat where they were pressed repeatedly under the weight of human feet.  The liquid ran from the grapes into other vats for fermenting, careful not to allow seeds or skin to get in.  Once the grapes had been fully crushed, the skins were taken and pressed for any remaining liquid and that was used to make the cheaper wine, which was usually what the guest were served at the end of a gathering when lowerquality wouldn’t be noticed as much.

Water was not always safe to drink at that time.  Tomake it safer, they would often add goats’ milk or wine to purify it.  But Jesus doesn’t just mix water with wine, he turns water into wine.  He takes a substance that was one thing and turns it into something completely different.  It wasn’t a substitute; it was a total replacement (transformation).  It wasn’t made from grapes picked by human hands or crushed by human feet.  It wasn’t made from grapes that were ripened by the sun or fermented in vats with additives.  It was something completely different.  It was the best wine! 

How could the master of ceremonies have recognizedquality wine?  What was his understanding or his gauge for what was best?  Could it be that he had tasted the inferior enough times in his life that he could tell quality when he tasted it, even when he didn’t know where it came from?  Could it be that the very vessels that held water every day now held wine that could not be compared to even the best wine he had ever tasted?

Jesus had done what no man could ever do.  Man could never take a bucket of plain water and add anything to it to make wine.  Man could add wine to water to help purify it, but water added to anything just dilutes it.  

Could it be said that Jesus continues to perform that same miracle repeatedly throughout the ages in the life of every new believer?  It’s our first miracle, when we give our lives to Christ.  We are earthen vessels in the hands of the Potter.  Before Christ we hold nothing more than a useless infilling of manmade attempts at fulfillment.  No matter what ingredients we add to our life, attempting to make our contents an acceptable offering, it always falls short or runs dry.  Others can see we have nothing truly unique.  We come off like cheap wine at the end of a party.  The world has tasted the inferior, and knows the cheap from the best, even if they don’t understand where it came from.  It can never be the best until Jesus touches our life and replaces the plain with the new.  The old self dead and buried and the new raised with Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit!

Even now, old wine skins cannot hold new wine.  We must allow God to strip away the old and pour in the new every day.  Will we allow ourselves to be led by our flesh, which only produces cheap returns or daily give Jesus our whole self to transform us, renew us, refine us and refire us with passion for Him every moment of every day!  Paul said he dies daily and we should too.  My struggle is not always the death to self; it’s the struggle in trying to resurrect the old self later.  The enemy wants us to question the choice we make to lay our life down in service to others, by posing the question of, “What about you and your needs?”.  I guess that is the reason why Paul said, “I die daily”!