The wine supplied was m ACCORDANCE WITH THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. The produce probably of their own industry in the vineyards around. Wine in Bible lands was not an occasional luxury as with us, but a part of the daily food of the people. A simple, natural beverage, very different to the branded wines of this country, but intoxicating, nevertheless. Such wine was among the first oblations to the Divinity Gen_14:18). Wine and bread, in conformity with this principle, are the essential elements of the Holy Supper, because they are the essential elements in the support of life in the East.
II. THERE IS A NATURAL HARMONY BETWEEN THE FRUIT OF THE VINE AND THE BRIDAL FESTIVITY. The richest juices of the vine plant are prepared and stored up in those parts which are specially associated with the propagation of the species. For aught we know, the reproduction of the vine might be accomplished without the exquisite goblets of the grape cluster; and so the marriage rite can take place without any festivity. But God loves not a mere utilitarianism; and it is as natural that wine should form part of the festivities of marriage as that beauty and gladness should crown the accomplishment of the common purposes of the world.
III. Understanding the importance attached to wine on such an occasion, we can realize THE CALAMITY OF ITS FAILURE. “Without wine there is no joy,” a common Jewish saying. It may have been caused by the poverty of the host, or through the unexpected arrival of Jesus and His disciples. Anyhow it was an intense mortification. Why? Because we all desire to appear prosperous. Poverty is hard to bear; but its disclosure is a thousand times worse. Not because poverty is a disgrace; but because man was made for happiness, and without it he feels that he has fallen from his natural place. This is owing to sin. There was no scarcity in Eden.
IV. Viewed in this light, it is a most striking coincidence that OUR LORD’S FIRST MIRACLE SHOULD BE WROUGHT TO RELIEVE WANT. The kingdom of heaven meets humanity where the law has left it stripped and destitute.
V. This failure teaches us THE FAILURE OF THE WORLD’S JOY. It was the highest and happiest occasion on which want intruded itself. What a testimony to the insufficiency of even the richest feast of worldly attainment or experience. Marriage, the crowning bliss of life, with all its dear ties and affections, comes to a close.
VI. JESUS COMES TO US AT EVERY CRISIS OF WANT, and provides for us what we ourselves cannot supply. Christ, received as guest, becomes host, and out of His fulness supplies all our need. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
What kind of wine was it?
The miracle took place a few days before the Passover, and this festival usually fell on the 30th of March. The wine that was drunk at the feast must therefore have been kept for six or seven months from the previous vintage. It must, in consequence, have undergone the process of fermentation, for, without this, no organic juice could have been preserved for such a length of time. Fermentation is a natural process, which takes place in all watery solutions of vegetable substances containing saccharine matters; and depends entirely upon the growth of a microscopic fungus called the yeast-plant, which develops with extreme rapidity into myriads of minute ceils or vesicles, and while doing so resolves the sugar in solution into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. The spores, or seeds, of this fungus exist in enormous quantities everywhere; and no vegetable juice can be exposed to the air for however short a time without receiving some of them; and if the temperature and other conditions be suitable, they begin at once to grow and multiply, thereby producing fermentation and liberating alcohol. Even in ripe grapes, while they are hanging on the vine, this yeast-fungus is often developed, causing vinous fermentation. It is impossible, therefore, to produce an infusion of grapes from which these ubiquitous germs are absent--unless the juice is boiled and the vessel hermetically sealed; and even then, so tenacious are they of life, we cannot be sure that we have got rid of them, as Pasteur’s recent researches abundantly testify. And wherever these germs are present, the process of fermentation begins, and is carried on with greater or less rapidity according to the temperature. In a warm climate it goes on with extraordinary vigour. There is no such thing, therefore, as unfermented wine. The juice of the grape when immediately squeezed out may be so called; but if it is kept for a few days under ordinary conditions it inevitably undergoes the vinous fermentation. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
God honours our leaning upon Him
A circumstance happened to me yesterday. I cannot help telling it to you. I received a note from one of the trustees of the Orphanage to say that the running account was so low that, when the cheques were paid on Friday morning, we should have overdrawn our banking account. I did not like that state of things; but I did not fret about it. I breathed a prayer to God that He would send money to put into the bank to keep the account right. Last night, at nearly ten o’clock, I opened a letter that came from Belfast, and it had in it a cheque for £200, being the amount left as a legacy. I wrote across my acknowledgment, “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together!” That amount put the account square for the time being; and although the Orphanage has no ready money to go on with, still that does not matter, God will send more means during the week, and at all other times when the expenditure calls for it. At the moment when I opened the letter, and found the £200, I felt as if my hair stood on end, because of the conscious nearness of the Lord my God. My brother, Hugh Hanna, when he sent that cheque, and sent it on that particular day, did not know that it would coma just when I was praying to God for help in a time of trouble; yet it came exactly when it was sought for. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Trouble carried to Christ
“What do you do without a mother to tell all your troubles to?” asked a child who had a mother of one who had none. “Mother told me whom to go to before she died,” answered the little orphan. “I go to the Lord Jesus; He was mother’s friend, and He’s mine.” “Jesus Christ is in the sky; He is a way off, and He has a great many things to attend to in heaven, it is not likely He can stop to mind you.” “I do not know anything about that,” said the orphan; “all I know, He says He will; and that’s enough for me.”
