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Alright.
Looking for my voice man. There he is.
Alright.
I'm ready now, lets go
Hello everyone. My name is Darren, and I'm involved in setting up the Deaf group here at church at North Rocks
Tonight, I need your help. I need you all to focus, and watch really carefully,
so you can learn the truths of this passage, and remember them
Alright let's pray
Dear heavenly father. Please help us to understand this passage. Amen
Today, the bible passage is about these events.
But, these 3 events, are they about different things, or do they point to the same thing?
Lets have a look at the first event, and that happens at a wedding
So, there was a wedding in Galilee.
Jesus’ mother was there and Jesus and disciples were invited, which is nice.
Before we continue, it is important to understand a Jewish wedding was BIG! A huge feast with lots and lots of wine.
Not the same as the little half day pathetic wedding events we have today.
Oh no no. This was huge festival that ran over many days. If the wine ever ran out, it would be terribly embarrassing.
But, at this particular wedding, the wine did run out. Mary was concerned about it. She tells Jesus.
Why? Well perhaps because Jesus was the miracle baby
Or perhaps it's just the typical mother response. There is a problem, who do you tell? Your son. Yup.
The same has happen to me. My mother would tell me about all sorts of problems.
Some of them I could fix, I could resolve. But some I could not.
Anyway, Mary tells Jesus, and Jesus answers "WOMAN" this is not my problem, it's not my responsibility.
You might think that was terribly rude, but Mary is not offended, she's not shocked.
She just leaves her request with Jesus
There is a bit of a side lesson here: This is a good model for prayer.
Mary asks for something. Jesus gives a strange response. Mary leaves the situation in Jesus’ hands.
She doesn't negotiate, or try and persuade him, or beg for a yes. She leaves it with Jesus, and trusts him.
And we should do the same when we're praying.
Now think about Jesus answer, “it’s not my time”. What does he mean by that?
Well it means his time to be fully glorified. The time for his work on earth to be done.
It means the time for Jesus to be crucified
Alright so Mary left him. Yet he still does something. It's not his time, not his time to be glorified, but he still helps
Jesus Orders the servants to fill the water jars to the brim. And they do. Then straight away Jesus orders them
to serve the very same water to master of the feast.
There is a side lesson here too, about obedience. Imagine the servant's reaction. “Are you joking??”
"Give the boss this plain water??" But.. they obey. It sounded crazy, sounded stupid, but they obey.
We also need to obey Jesus, even the crazy things he tells us to do.
like perhaps “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”
or “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
or “forgive, and you will be forgiven”
alright so back to the bible passage
Now these water jars were not just normal any day water jars. They were the type used for ceremonial washing.
So the obvious next question is, what is ceremonial washing?
Mark 7:3-5
'For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders,
and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe,
such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.)'
So ceremonial washing was an external ritual, it was an attempt to try and make people clean, and holy,
and basically good enough for God. But this external ceremony could never remove a person’s sin,
and hence could never make a person’s heart clean before God.
You know what, we are just as bad at trying to be pure for God. We don't use ceremonial washing.
But we do lots of different external activities to try and be clean.
And we actually really want to be clean, and good enough for God. Because if we are honest with ourselves, we're really not
Take this container. It is just like me, or you, or anyone. It's dirty on the outside, and dirty on the inside.
So How do we try to be clean enough for God? Doing external things like...
Being a nice person. You know a nice person, a good friend. If we think we're nice person, and good to people,
then we think it makes us a good person, and we become that little bit more clean,
and a little bit closer to being good enough for God
Yeah a little bit more clean there.
Well, how else do we do it?
We give to the poor. So giving to the poor, our hard earned money, the money that we think is rightfully ours.
If we decide to give that away, that must mean we are good. It must mean that we are a bit closer to God, a bit cleaner.
Yup a little bit cleaner
What about something else?
Going to church perhaps?
Now if we regularly go to church. I think sometimes we feel if we regularly come, then God will think we are really good,
and we'll think that we are just that little bit more clean, and a bit closer to being good enough for heaven.
Yeah improving just a bit
Yup pretty much improved
And sometimes we can be guilty of doing all these things to try and feel good enough, clean enough, holy enough to be with God.
And they make us look good on the outside. But there is a problem. No matter how hard I scrub the outside,
the inside just won't become clean!!
Nope. Complete fail.