JOHN097 - The Third Day

John 2:1

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

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Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And you remember yesterday when we got four whole words into John chapter two, and then I was already immediately like rabbit trail. We have to go chase after something. It's very important. There could be a detail here that we don't want to miss. Yeah, that's what happened yesterday. The four words in question are on the third day, and the words after that are a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Now, my suspicion here is that the phrase on the third day is important and we're supposed to get something out of it. It isn't an accident. It seems like John is really organizing his work by theological themes, not so much tight timeline, but it still seems like everything is on purpose. And I got all excited about it. And so what I remember hearing about John that we talked about yesterday, John 2.1, is that, you know, some people think this third day thing is a nod to the resurrection. I do not see that connection myself. Um, you know, maybe I'll hear from some of you who do see something that I'm missing there. What I do see in the first 52 verses of John, that being all of John 1 and the first verse of John 2, is that it opens within the beginning, and then we get a whole days of the week thing going on. Maybe it's six days, depending on how you count it. Maybe it's seven days. But there's clearly a week, the first week of Jesus in view here. And so the obvious place to go, clearly, the breadcrumb trail that I was referencing yesterday takes us right back to Genesis chapter one. So let's just start from the beginning, in the beginning, and pick it up with Genesis 1, 1, and just see what pops for you here. Okay, uh, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Well, that's just like how John starts. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Okay, so that's interesting. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Already, I think we've got a stronger connection between the very beginning of the book of John and the very beginning of the book of Genesis. I think already there's a stronger case to be made, a more overt case for, oh, these six or seven days that we see here that John is accounting for are going to mirror the days of creation, just because the language is so smoking gun identical. Whatever, let's keep going. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and some other stuff happens, and it says, And there was evening and there was morning the first day. And God said, Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse sky, and there was evening, and there was morning the second day. All right. So this rhythm is obviously going to keep going. And you know how the story works. And then he gets everything wrapped up on the sixth day, and then he rests on the seventh day, and that's kind of the foundation of the idea of the Sabbath throughout the Bible, or one of the foundations of it. But we're about I've read you the first two days. Now we're about to get to the third day. Oh, interesting, because the third day is what's in question here in John 2. So maybe we have a double reference back to Genesis 1. Let's see if we find anything that happened on the third day that looks like it connects directly to specifically the third day of creation. Here we go. Genesis 1 9. And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear, and it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it according to their various kinds, and it was so. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it, according to their kinds, and God saw that it was good, and there was evening, and there was morning, the third day. What do you think? I'm actually asking, I don't know the answer to this. This isn't like some kind of thing where I figured it out, and now I'm like, you know, kind of inching you along toward a conclusion that I've already decided on. I'm trying to make you think it's your idea. No, I'm working it through too here. Yeah, what I was gonna say when we turned over there is it has nothing to do with John 2. Clearly, these six or seven days are just a reference to a new creation. And I still think that's I mean, that's the point, right? It's gotta be. That that to me makes the most sense. John said the opening line of Genesis and the opening line of John. John is making the connection that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament aren't different things. Like they're together, they are one, they are the Father and the Son. He spells that out and emphasizes it through his entire book. So he's trying to demonstrate continuity. It's not an accident that he opens within the beginning. And I think clearly, this it's not like a you know blow-for-blow new six days of creation that we're getting here in John 1 and then the first verse of John 2. I just think it's meant to be evocative of a new creation, a new beginning that is happening in Christ, a new paradigm, a new epoch, something that's as big a deal as existence coming into existence is what's on screen here. I think that's what John is communicating. I told you, and I was like, well, you know, I think I know what's going on here, and now maybe I don't. But then, you know, I went and read about the third day just now, and as I'm going along, I'm like, well, okay, but this is, you know, the water being gathered. This is the beginning of ground, and we have stone jars that are coming up in this miracle. So that's an earth element. The water that's in them is the water element, and then the other element involved in this miracle is what would normally require plants that bear seeds. I mean, it's fermented grapes. That's how you get the wine, right? So all three of the things that get created on the third day are exactly the three things, the three elements that are involved in the miracle that's about to happen here. I've never read that before, I've never thought about that before. It's just kind of crossing my mind as I was reading the third day of Genesis 1 to be make it like just incredibly obvious that that can't be what the third day here in John 2 is referencing. But now maybe I've talked myself into thinking maybe it is actually a little bit of a nod to that as well. Here's the deal. However, you slice it, we are rounding out in John 2 1, the first week of Jesus. And it's very good, it's very impressive. And you look at the thing in review, the most important religious leader of the day is like, Jesus is a big deal. I don't even matter. It doesn't matter how many clicks I get or how famous I am. Jesus is the point. Well, that's a good week for Jesus. Jesus gets called the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world twice. Oh, that's a pretty big deal. It happens off-screen, but there's an acknowledgement of the Trinity showing up to acknowledge Jesus. That's pretty good as well. Then he starts calling disciples and assembling his team. And apparently, what he's saying to them is making a lot of sense to them because they immediately multiply. They go and bring other people to Jesus as well. That's compelling. And well, okay, but you know, lots of things can happen just in one place. You can get on a hot streak or whatever. What happens when you take it on the road? Well, in John 1, during this first week of Jesus, he takes it on the road, and it seems to be really effective there as well. We're getting a little glimpse at the miraculous, and he gets invited to a killer wedding. That's like a multi, like multi-day thing. It's a gigantic affair, it's a really big deal. So, you know, maybe it doesn't seem like that big a deal, but I think I think it's pretty cool. Apparently, he was socially on enough. Like the the whole are you the messiah thing wasn't making him weird and anathema. People were interested in him and attracted to him, and he's you know, he's a part of the world. He's that he came to save, he's involved in this. I think it's a good week when you get invited to a cool wedding, a cool party like this. So it's a great first week of Jesus. All of what we see in that first week seems to point to supporting all of the big grand claims of the prologue that we get at the beginning of John chapter one. And then on top of that, everything is teed up for this amazing miracle that we're about to see that's going to occur with the changing the water into wine. And this is a really public thing. A lot of what people have seen about Jesus that they're excited about in week one has been kind of a zero audience kind of thing. Not a lot of people have seen it or been around, kind of like creation isn't a real big audience in Genesis. It's a, you know, the Trinity is there, but for most of it, there's not really no people around to see it. I mean, the heavenly host, I guess that's pretty cool, but there's no people around to see it. And then the audience starts to gather as you get to the end of it. So I'm probably stretching it a little bit, but week one is pretty small in terms of observers in Genesis. It's pretty small in terms of observers in John, but now the thing is about to turn very public, just like the story of creation turned very public, and God shows up and things that happen in front of everybody start happening. All right. Well, tomorrow we'll start talking about the anatomy of this very important first miracle and who's involved and what the tension is and what it might be pointing toward. We'll talk about all of that, manana. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.