Wedding at Cana

During the worship services until Easter we are looking at the Gospel of John. Our series is entitled: Following the Great I AM. We will be focused on understanding more of who Jesus is, and also thinking about what it means to be his disciple, or one who follows him. Because I’ve studied the Gospel of John more than any other book of the Bible, I have a feeling there will always be more that I want to share than I can fit into the sermons. This means I’ll likely be sharing a bit extra in these E-Grams each week during this series.

I mentioned in my sermon the stone water jars that are mentioned in this account (John 2:6). Stone jars would not have been convenient to use, and they would have been expensive to make. The only reason stone would have been used was because this was what the Jewish teachers said. In the past, even 20 years ago, some would have said that this detail in John’s Gospel would have been false because Galilean Jews were not as interested in following the specifics of ceremonial cleansing. That’s before fragments of stone jars of this type were found in the historical site of Cana! This discovery was made in 2004 (I said 2007 in the sermon), and you can read about the original story from NBC News by clicking here.

Since that time archaeologists have discovered an entire industry near Nazareth where these stone jars were made and then shipped throughout the entire region of Galilee. You can read more about these discoveries here. I believe the Bible to be the Word of God and I believe it is reliable because its authors were guided by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21). Discoveries such as this show us our confidence in Scripture is well-founded. It also gives us a fuller perspective on daily life within First-Century Galilee.

Our recent trip to Israel helped us in this way as well. Several of you have asked, and we do plan on soon having an afternoon to show some pictures and talk about our trip. Thanks for your interest and stayed tuned to find out more.

I wanted to remind you all that Jim Hubbard will be working with Seeds of Hope Outreach in their building on Saturday at 8am. If you are able to help out, contact him for more details. Also remember the upcoming Uno Tournament. It’s a great time to invite friends and people from the community to fellowship with us.

God bless, Brian