Jesus and the Wedding Sign

A wedding saw the start of His ministry. A wedding will mark the end of our history.

When Jesus was 12 years old, He went with His family from Nazareth to Jerusalem for Passover. When the feast was over, His parents, Mary and Joseph, started the journey home. They were likely traveling as a large family unit, with plenty of other families and friends on the road with them. They didn’t know Jesus wasn’t with them. He had stayed behind at the Temple.

By that point, they were a full day’s journey away from Jerusalem.

When Mary and Joseph realized Jesus was not in their traveling party, they began to search frantically for Him. They went back to Jerusalem and it took them another three days to find Jesus. He was in the temple, sitting among the religious teachers of the day, listening to them and asking questions.

He explained to them why he’d been missing: “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49).

Jesus returned home to Nazareth with His parents. He wasn’t yet ready to embark on His public ministry. Presumably, Mary understood this, as she “kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).

The Wedding at Cana

Seventeen years later, however, God used Mary to deliver a different message about the public ministry of Jesus. Along with His disciples, He was a wedding in Cana, a city in Galilee, and the host ran out of wine.

Weddings were major community celebrations. Running out of wine at a wedding would have dishonored the family hosting the event. People would have looked down on the host for such an oversight. When she mentioned this problem to Jesus, turned to the servants and said, “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2:5).

Mary may have been acting with compassion toward the host. Regardless of the thinking behind it, with this simple instruction she affirmed Jesus’s authority and signaled the start of His public ministry.

This is what happened next:

Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it. 9 When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom. 10 And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”

11 This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.—John 2:6-11

Take a look at the words John used to describe this event. It was the “beginning of signs” in the ministry of Jesus.

The language is important here. There are important distinctions between miracles, signs, and wonders. Miracles happen when God does something supernaturally that only He can do. Wonders fill those who witness them with awe and amazement. Signs, however, point to something other than themselves for meaning.

While this act by Jesus was miraculous and wonderful, the meaning was much deeper. This was the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and God was revealing an important sign. Here, at the beginning, He was declaring the end.

Take note of how the public ministry of Jesus began. He was at a wedding, serving Heaven’s wine.

What will Jesus do at the end of His ministry, when He comes again to take us to be with Him? He will take us to a wedding—the Marriage Supper of the Lamb—and He will again be serving Heaven’s wine.

Drinking Heaven’s Wine

Jesus himself knew of the significance of these signs. We see this in Matthew 26, at the Last Supper with His disciples:

Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. 29 But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”—Matthew 26:27-29

Jesus began His ministry with wine at a wedding, a miracle that didn’t just reveal His divinity, but pointed to a future reality.

Among Jesus’s last words to His disciples was a promise that He wouldn’t drink wine again until He drank it in God’s kingdom.

All of human history will end with believers at a wedding banquet, drinking Heaven’s wine together with Jesus.

The signs are all there. In fact, some Bible prophecy commentators have pointed out that the “six waterpots of stone” at the Wedding at Cana—the six pots of water which Jesus transformed into wine—represent the 6,000 years of human history.

Preparing a Place

The final wedding in human history will be the marriage between God and His people. It will take place in the New Jerusalem, where “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Like a 1st-century Bridegroom who would leave his bride at her home in order to prepare a dwelling place for the new couple at his father’s house, Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us:

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”—John 14:1-3

Jesus has departed to prepare a place for us at His Father’s house. As we watch and wait for His return, remember that everything that happens has been part of God’s plan from the beginning. He started the public ministry of Jesus at a wedding. He will conclude human history at a wedding. He uses wine as a sign that Jesus is the Son of God and a sign that He is coming again, to “drink it new” with us at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

What a glorious day that will be!