In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At the end of the parable about the workers in the vineyard, Jesus summarizes it by saying that “many are called, but few are chosen.” This is a mysterious verse from God’s Word, which introduces to us an even more mysterious topic. And that is the so-called doctrine of election, also known as predestination. In several places in the Bible, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that even before God created the heavens and the earth, He elected or chose all those who would be saved. As Saint Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 1, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.” Similarly, the apostle Paul also writes in Romans chapter 8, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son… and those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.” From these few passages alone, we can easily see just how impossible it is for someone to reject this particular teaching, without doing serious injury to their faith. God gave us everything in the Bible for the purpose of saving our souls. Nothing is intended to hurt us, but all of it is supposed to help us. And that includes the doctrine of predestination.

So, in this morning’s sermon, what I’m going to do is simply walk through some of things that we need to keep in mind if we want to get this teaching right. Lots of times I think that the reason why people don’t want to talk about predestination, or even think about it, is because they don’t really understand it. Instead of considering it in light of God’s Word, they come to conclusions based off of their own reason. But’s that not how we do theology! We don’t think our way to the correct beliefs, we listen to Scriptures, and we let them do the thinking for us.

The first thing that we need to remember if we want to get the doctrine of predestination right is that God truly does want everyone to be saved. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, the Bible literally tells us, “This is good, and it pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” Likewise, in 2 Peter chapter 3 we read this: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

And, that, of course, is exactly what we see taking place in the parable of the workers in the vineyard too, isn’t it? On the one hand, the owner of the vineyard, who obviously represents God, goes out of his way to invite people to come and work for him. Despite the fact that many of them are standing idle in the marketplace, and definitely don’t deserve to be there, he still compels them to come in. He offers them a place in his vineyard, just like God offers all men a place in His kingdom. Again, what does Jesus say in our text today? He says, “Many are called.” That means that God’s call is universal. His grace is for everyone. The Lord wants all people to be saved.  

Even at the end of the parable, when some of the workers are mad at the master, and stubbornly walk away from him, what does the master still call them? He calls them his “friends.” He says, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.” This shows us that even when a person rejects God’s grace, and dies and goes to hell, that was never God’s desire for them. It wasn’t because He hated them, or wanted them to be lost from the beginning. They might not have wanted to stay with the Lord, but the Lord always wanted to be with them.

The monstrous idea that is taught in some churches that God has predetermined to send certain individuals to hell from eternity, and that those who end up there, He must have never actually wanted to save, is completely contractionary to the Scriptural witness. Yes, the Bible does tell us that God has absolutely elected some to salvation, and that He knows what will happen to all people, but it never says that He has elected others to damnation. The true application of this teaching only goes in one direction. It only applies to Christians.

And that leads me to the second thing that we need to remember if we want to get predestination right, and that is that the reason why some people are lost is not because of God’s fault, but their own. Remember what Saint Stephen once said in the book of Acts. Right before the people picked up rocks to kill him, he said, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” That’s very similar to what Jesus once said about the people of Jerusalem in Matthew chapter 23, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” He cried, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” From these verses we learn that the cause of someone’s damnation is not located in the heart of God, but in the heart of man. The reason why some people don’t go to heaven is not because God doesn’t want them to, but because they resist the means that God uses to bring them there.

Yes, God desires that all people would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. But how do we come to that knowledge? We come to it through the preaching of God’s Word. That’s how the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith. That’s how He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ. He does it through the proclamation of the Gospel. So, when someone refuses to listen to the Gospel, or ignores it and plugs their ears to it, even though God wants to save them, their salvation isn’t possible. 

Again, think about the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The owner of the vineyard repeatedly called people to come and work for him and promised them a certain amount of money. He went out at the first, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and even the eleventh hour. But what would have happened if someone didn’t listen to that invitation? They wouldn’t have gotten the denarius. Even though it would have been there waiting for them, they wouldn’t have got to receive it, because they refused to have it. That’s how it works when a person goes to hell. It isn’t God’s fault when that happens. It’s their own. 

On the other side of the coin, though, the third thing that we need to remember if we want to get predestination right is that no one is allowed to take any credit for his or her salvation. Sometimes the fact that the Bible says that individuals are responsible for their own damnation, makes people assume that they must at least have some role to play in their salvation too. “If I can do things to dam myself,” the argument goes, “then certainly I must be able to do things to save myself as well.” But that’s not what the Word of God teaches us either.

All throughout the Scriptures we learn over and over again that a person is saved solely through God’s grace alone. It isn’t the result of anything that we do, but purely the work of our merciful Lord. For example, in Titus chapter 3 we read, “God saved not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy.” And as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Literally, the entire point of the parable about the workers in the vineyard is that salvation is not a reward for our good works, but a gracious gift of God. Some people in the parable worked all day long. Other people in the parable only worked for an hour. But at the end of the day, everyone got the same thing. That shows us that we don’t get into heaven by the things that we do. We get there through what God does for us. 

One popular way that people have tried to solve the mystery of predestination in the past is by suggesting that God must have elected certain individuals to salvation in view of their future faith. He must have looked ahead in advance to see who would “make a decision for Christ” and then He made His decision based off that. But the problem with that explanation is that that’s not how faith actually works. We don’t come to faith by a decision of our own free will. Our will is bound in sin apart from Lord. We are spiritually dead prior to our conversion and can’t do anything to bring ourselves to faith at all. Rather, faith is gift that God gives as a result of His own gracious will. It isn’t something that we cause to happen, it’s something that the Holy Spirit causes to happen to us. As Jesus says in John chapter 15, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” And as He tells us in John chapter 6, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent me draws Him.” God doesn’t elect people to be saved because He saw that they would one day decide to accept His grace. His election is what lead to them receiving His grace to begin with. 

Nothing highlights the truth that we are saved by grace alone more than the doctrine of predestination. When did God choose to save us? When did He determine to call us to faith and preserve us to the very end? The Bible says that it happened even before we were born. As Saint Paul writes, “He chose us, in Christ, before the foundation of the world.” 

And finally, then, the last thing that we need to remember if we want to get the doctrine of predestination right is that the only purpose of this teaching is to comfort Christians who are sorry for their sins. It’s to humble those who think that their salvation is caused by their own good works, and console those who are looking to Christ for salvation because they know that their works haven’t been good enough. What does Jesus say right before He says, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” in our text? He says “the last will be first, and the first last.” That’s a summary of how things work in God’s kingdom. Those who consider themselves worthy of a place in it because of themselves will not enter it. But those who know that they should be outside of it, and yet trust in the Lord to be merciful to them and let them in anyway on account of Christ, will stay in it forever.

If you’re thinking about predestination in such a way where gives the impression that you can do sinful things on purpose and it won’t make any difference because you’re one of God’s elect, then you’re not thinking about it in the right way. You aren’t using it to comfort sinners; you’re using it to harden them. And if you’re thinking about predestination in such a way where it makes you terrified that you might not go to heaven, regardless if you repentant of your sins, and look to Jesus for forgiveness, then you aren’t thinking about it correctly either. What you’re thinking about isn’t even the real doctrine of predestination. It’s something else entirely. 

We seek out the answer to our election always, and only, in Jesus Christ alone. As our Lutheran Confessions point out, He is the Book of Life in whom all the names of the saved are written. That means that you don’t figure out if you are one of God’s elect simply by sitting in the corner of a room and wondering if God chose you. You look to His Son Jesus, who died for the sins of the whole world, meaning He died for you sins too. You look to the promises that God made to you in your Baptism, where the Bible says that He called you by name into His kingdom, just like the master in the parable called the workers into His vineyard. You listen to the word of the Gospel, which assure you of everlasting life for all believers. And after all that, then you marvel at the mystery that God planned your salvation and chose you for it even before the world began. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Transfiguration of Jesus is one of those events from the life of Christ that doesn’t always get talked about nearly as much as it probably should. Lots of people remember how our Lord healed the sick, raised the dead, and walked on water, but my guess is that not too many of them could tell you about the time when He was transfigured in front of His disciples and what that was even about. And yet, Saint Peter, who was there and saw it happen, tells us that this was a pivotal moment in Jesus’ earthly ministry and a basic building block of our Christian faith. As he writes in our Epistle lesson today from 2 Peter chapter 2, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitness of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘this is my believed Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.” According to Saint Peter, the Transfiguration of Jesus was a very big deal.

So, why did it even happen, and what was the point of Him even doing it? I think our hymn of the day sums it up for us really well: “O wonderous type! O vision fair of glory that the Church may share, which Christ upon the mountain shows where brighter than the sun He glows.” When Jesus transfigured Himself in front of His disciples, He did it to show us the future glory that awaits us as God’s people. He changed His appearance and gave us a glimpse of His majesty in order to remind us of what is waiting for us in heaven and how it is that we get there.

People speculate all of the time about what heaven is like. But we don’t figure any of that out through speculation, we do it by paying close attention to the written Word of God. And in the account of the Transfiguration, God’s Word gives us several important details.

First, it reminds us that in heaven our bodies will be glorified. What happened to the body of Jesus when He went up on the mount of transfiguration? Our text tells us that His face shined like the sun, and that His clothes became white as light.  If you remember, that’s the exact imagery that the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation use to describe the saints of God in heaven. They stand before the throne of the Lord clothed in white robes and shine like the brightness of the stars forever and ever. Saint John even tells us explicitly that on the Last Day, when Christ returns in glory, we will be like Him. He writes in 1 John chapter 3, “What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” 

Jesus showed Himself “as He is” for a brief moment during His Transfiguration. For just a split second He didn’t hide any of His glory, but revealed all of it completely to His disciples. And when Jesus did that, He showed us the glory that awaits us too.

Eternal life in heaven will not be just a spiritual existence. We won’t float around on the clouds in some dismembered reality like a phantom or a ghost. Rather, the same bodies that God gave us in this life, He will raise again to new life. The only difference is that He will restore our bodies and make them entirely new. God will glorify our bodies just like He glorified the body of Jesus.

Think about what that means for your body. Are there things that you suffer from in this life that make it very difficult on you? Do you have high blood pressure, diabetes, or cancer? Do your knees and joints not work the way that they used to, and do you pretty much hurt all of the time? Do you struggle with depression, anxiety, or feelings of loneliness and despair. Whatever causes you pain in your body or mind, Jesus will take away from you, when He restores your body and mind in heaven. That’s what He showed you when He transfigured Himself in front of His disciples. When He changed His body, He was making a promise about what He would one day do for your body too.

Another thing that the Transfiguration of Jesus reminds us about heaven is who will be there with us. We won’t just be there by ourselves, but we will enjoy the full company of God’s elect. In the Creed, that’s what we call the “communion of saints.” It goes hand in hand with the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body. Peter, James, and John, weren’t the only ones with Jesus on the mount of His Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah were there too. Besides demonstrating to us that everything in the Law and the Prophets points us Christ, their presence also showed us what it would be like for us when we are with Christ in eternity. We will know one another and they will know us. We will be able to recognize each other and tell exactly who everyone is. Not only will that be the case for our own loved ones who died in the faith a long time ago, but also for other Christians that we’ve never even met before. 

The apostle Peter had never seen Moses and Elijah before in his life. He had no idea what they looked like. But at the Transfiguration of Jesus, he was able to tell who they were immediately. That’s how it will be for us too. When we are raised from the dead, and experience the fullness of the communion of the saints, we will be united with all those who died in Christ in such a way where we will have perfect knowledge of who they are. The same people that we have fellowship with now through faith, we will see face to face. We will meet Abraham and his son Isaac. We will greet Mary and her husband Joseph. We will visit with King David and get to talk with Saint Paul. There will be a happy reunion for us with every believer whom we’ve ever known and loved. From our parents and grandparents who first taught us the faith, to those little children that we committed to the Lord through prayer and lost before we could ever watch them grow in their faith. The full family of God will be present. And we will be able to tell who everyone is. Just like Peter, James, and John knew Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration, Jesus promises that we will know one another in the Resurrection.

And lastly, everything that we need to know about heaven is summed up for us in the words that God the Father spoke to Jesus from the cloud. He said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” There are lots of things about eternal life that we don’t know, because God hasn’t revealed them to us. But what we do know is that we will have God’s never-ending blessing and favor. The Lord will look at us, and we will look at Him, and both us will be happy with what we see.

The reason why we aren’t always satisfied with what we see in this life is because this life is filled with sin. We do things that hurt one another and ourselves and that causes us pain. Even the way that we think has been distorted by our sinful nature. But when we are with the Lord someday in heavenly bliss all of our sin will gone. The sin that Jesus already forgave, He will remove from us completely. We won’t even be able to fall into sin anymore, because our sinful nature won’t even exist. We will be the way that God intended us to be from the very beginning, the way that He already promises to treat us now because of Jesus. His Divine image, which was lost to us in the Fall, and renewed within us partially at our Baptism, will be restored to us fully, and we will live perfectly as His beloved children with whom He is well pleased. That’s what Jesus showed us on the mount of Transfiguration. When He changed His appearance, and made His face shine as bright as the sun, He gave us a picture of the future glory that awaits His Church. He made a promise to us, and to all believers, of what things would like be for us in heaven. 

But not only did Jesus show us what heaven would be like at His Transfiguration, more importantly, He also showed us how to get there. It wouldn’t do us any good to know what things are like in heaven, if we didn’t know how to get there. Lots of people still don’t. If they even believe in heaven at all, they usually think that getting there is a reward for being a good person. They think that we earn it by the nice things that we do for others. But that’s not how the Bible says you get into heaven. You don’t get there by the good works that you do for God or for other people. You get there by trusting in the perfect work that Jesus Christ did for you.

Again, what did the voice from heaven say at the Transfiguration of Jesus? It didn’t just say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” It said, “listen to Him.” That’s how you get to heaven. That’s how you obtain all of the wonderful things that Jesus showed us at His Transfiguration. You get them by listening to the voice of Jesus and believing His Word. As Jesus Himself tells us in John chapter 10, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them… I give them eternal life and they will never perish.” We receive salvation as free gift of God through faith in what Jesus accomplished on our behalf.

Yes, heaven is wonderful place. But it would not be possible for us to go there, if Jesus did not first go through hell. That’s why our Lord did not let Peter build those tents for Himself, Moses, and Elijah. Even though Peter was right when he said, “Lord, it is good that we are here,” he wasn’t right about how that happens. It doesn’t just happen automatically. People don’t just go to heaven and get to live with God forever just because. In order for us to have the things that Jesus revealed on the mount of His transfiguration, He had to go down from that mountain and carry His cross up another. He had to suffer and die for our sins and make atonement for them. And because Jesus did that, now, we can stay in God’s presence forever. Now, we can go to heaven.

The very last thing that we are told about the Transfiguration is that after it was over the disciples lifted up their eyes and saw Jesus only. That’s the most important detail from our text today. It gives a perfect summary of how we should live our lives on this side of glory, if we want to live someday in the never-ending glory of God. We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. We don’t trust in our own merit. We don’t rely on our own works. We put our faith in Christ. When our sins trouble us, and our consciences accuse us, we look to the Lord for mercy and grace. We bring our guilt and our shame to Jesus, fall down before Him in humble repentance, and He says to us the same thing that He once said to His disciples, “Rise, and have no fear.”

You don’t need to be afraid of whether or not you’ve done enough to go to heaven. You haven’t. But Jesus has. Through His Transfiguration He foreshadowed your salvation. Through His death and resurrection, He accomplished it. And through the preaching of His Word, He promises it. So, keep your eyes fixed on Christ. Keep looking at Jesus only and the glory that He showed will be yours to share one day too. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The first miracle that Jesus ever did was change water into wine. Even though our Lord could have done that miracle anywhere, the place where He chose to do it was at a wedding. That, of course, shows us something about what God thinks of marriage. He loves it. He holds it in the highest regard, and He wants us to do the same thing too. As the author of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 13, “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” So, how exactly do we do that? Well, that’s what I’d like to talk about in the morning’s sermon. Because Jesus honored marriage with His presence and very first miracle at a wedding at Cana in Galilee, let us consider together the different ways that God’s Word teaches us to honor marriage ourselves. 

The first and most basic way that we do that is by upholding God’s definition of what marriage actually is. It’s hard to image a worse way to dishonor something than by trying to redefine it, or change it into something that it isn’t. If I gave my kids a brand-new Bible for Christmas and then they turned around and used its pages to start fires, instead of reading it, that wouldn’t be right. It would be a total misuse and abuse of the gift. And sadly, that’s what many people today do with God’s gift of marriage. They don’t use it in the way that God intended. In some cases, they even twist into something completely different than what God designed it to be.

The Bible tells us that God designed marriage to be the lifelong union between one man and woman. Jesus says in Mark chapter 10, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Any definition of marriage that doesn’t agree with that definition is no real marriage at all. It doesn’t matter what the government says. It doesn’t matter what the majority of people on the street say. What matters is what Jesus says. As Mary told to the servants in our Gospel reading today, “Do whatever He tells you.”

And Jesus tells us that marriage is between one man and one woman. That means that there’s no such thing as gay marriage. Even if two individuals say that they are committed to one another that doesn’t make what they’re doing okay. People can commit to sinful things all of the time. For example, two bank robbers can agree with one another to go and rob a bank. Well, so what? It’s still bad. And two men and two women can agree to live together as a couple even though that’s bad too. One time in the Bible God destroyed an entire city because the men of that place engaged in homosexual behavior. He reigned down fire and sulfur from heaven and even turned a woman into a pillar of salt simply because she looked back with longing eyes. Let that be a warning to all of us. This stuff is constantly being put in front of our faces on television shows and in movies. We should not be watching it. We need to tell our children that it’s wrong, and do our best to firmly but lovingly demonstrate to others that Christ doesn’t approve of any of it. That’s one way that we honor God’s gift of marriage.

Another way that we do it is by waiting until we get married to engage in the privileges of marriage. Again, Jesus says that a man leaves his father and mother, holds fast to his wife, and then the two become one flesh. The physical union of marital intimacy is supposed to take place after the public declaration and promise to live together in marriage. It has become very common in our time for couples to move in with each other and share the same home before they share their wedding vows. They test each other out as if they are buying a used car instead of preparing to have a partner for life. But individuals who cohabitate with one another are not getting ready for marriage. They are getting for divorce. They are training themselves to be able to leave the relationship at any time they want if that relationship no longer satisfies their desires. But do you know what the statistics say for how likely a marriage is to end between those who move in together first as opposed to those who wait? It goes up significantly.

And none that is to mention the spiritual consequences of doing it. The Bible says that those who live in unrepentant sexual sin will be judged for it. In the same verse that I read at the beginning of the sermon today from Hebrews 13 it goes on to say, “Let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” God’s judgment against those won’t stop living in sexual sin is that they won’t go to heaven when they die. That’s what Saint Paul writes in Galatians chapter 5. He says that “the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Is it worth it to save few bucks by moving in with your boyfriend or girlfriend, only to lose out on eternal life? Yes, it might be embarrassing to admit that you were wrong and have to move back in with your parents, or get married a lot faster than you originally planned, but a little bit of embarrassment is nothing compared to a clean conscience. Having God’s blessing and approval in your life is infinitely more valuable than having anything else.

Along those same lines then we should also include in this category the sin of lust and for the sake of sensitive ears let’s call it “self-abuse.” It’s possible to commit adultery without ever being in the same room as someone else. Jesus says this exact thing in Matthew chapter five: “You have heard it said, ‘you shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  The widespread access to pornographic content and material has turned this sin into perhaps the greatest spiritual threat of our time. But married men and women who look at porn dishonor their spouse. And unmarried men and women who do it dishonor their future spouse. Other people are never objects for our own personal pleasure and enjoyment. They are God’s creatures, made in His own image and likeness, that He sent His Son Jesus to redeem and save. That’s what we should tell ourselves whenever we are tempted to look at something that we know we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t play with fire thinking that we won’t get burned. Instead, we should be like Joseph who ran away from Potiphar’s wife and even left his cloak behind in her hand. Part of what it means to honor marriage is to flee from sexual immorality and try our best to fight against it.

The next way we honor marriage, which also needs special attention in our time, is by staying married to our spouse and encouraging others to do the same. Besides telling us that marriage should be between one man and one woman, and that we should wait to get married before we sleep with someone, the Bible also tells us that marriage is supposed to be for life. Jesus says, “What God has joined together let not man separate.” The only two explicit reasons given for divorce in sacred Scripture are adultery and abandonment. And even in those instances the goal, whenever possible, is still reconciliation. This modern idea that falling out of love with someone, or no longer sharing the same life goals as they do, constitutes acceptable grounds for divorce is completely contradictory to God’s clear Word. And that’s not even to mention the issue of getting married again after the fact. Listen to what Jesus says about remarriage in Matthew chapter 19, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” As hard as those words may be for us to hear, we need to take them seriously instead of immediately trying to find ways that they don’t apply to us. Our goal as Christian people should never be to try and get away with as much as possible, but to follow God’s Word as closely as possible. And God wants couples to stay married. What He has joined together, He wants no one to put asunder.

One of the reasons why the Bible teaches us to take things like divorce so seriously, and do everything that we possibly can to prevent it from happening, is because it almost never just affects the two people who did it. It almost always has an impact on other people too. Few things are as hard on children as when a husband and wife separate from one other and stop living in the same home. Yes, there are legitimate instances where this might be necessary, especially when people’s lives are in danger, but that doesn’t mean that the situation is ever desirable or ideal. In Malachi chapter 2, God Himself tells us how He feels about divorce. He says that He hates it. Then He says right after that that the reason why is because He wants godly offspring. Our Father in heaven knows that what’s best for children is to have a stable home with a caring mother and father who are devoted to one another and to their wedding vows. When that doesn’t happen, it makes Him sad. It should make us sad too. It should cause us to plead with the Lord for mercy and that He would have compassion on all those who are struggling in their marriage.

These are just a few of the ways that God’s Word teaches us to honor marriage. There a lot more of them that we could talk about, but these are some of the most basic one’s that we learn from the Bible. When Jesus turned water into wine at Cana in Galilee, He did more than just perform a miracle. He showed us what God thinks about the lifelong union between one man and one woman. He loves it. He holds it in the highest regard. And He wants us to do the same thing too.

Part of what it means to be a Christian is to try and do what God’s Word tells us to do. It means following after His laws and honoring what He gives us to honor. And when we don’t do that, or fail to do it in the way that we should, we need to stop and repent. The Bible says that, “if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That’s true for every sin, even for the sins against marriage. If we quit doing them, and ask God to forgive us for them, He promises that He will.  He says that He will wash us clean and make us new as if we’d never done those things to begin with.

Yes, Jesus’ first miracle shows us what God thinks about marriage, but even more than that its shows us what He thinks about our sins. He wants us to have forgiveness for them. Christ didn’t just come down from heaven to encourage us to be faithful towards each other in our marriage vows, He came down from heaven to prove that He is faithful towards us in His. As we read in our Epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 5, marriage is a picture of the love that Christ has for the Church. Jesus is the Bridegroom and we are His Bride. And what does Saint Paul say that Jesus does for His Bride? He writes, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the Church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”

We learn in our Gospel text that Jesus changed water into wine by using the vessels for the Jewish rites of purification. There were six stone jars, each holding 20 to 30 gallons. In a way, that symbolized man’s attempts to purify himself. Six is the number of days of mankind’s creation. It’s one short of seven, the perfect number of God. We can’t make ourselves clean. We can’t fix what we’ve broken before the Lord. We can’t wash away our sins. But Jesus can. And when He turned water into wine, He showed us that that’s exactly what He came to do.

Jesus turned water into wine to remind us of the abundant forgiveness that He comes to bring His church. It was a miracle of excess, because there is no sin which He did not die for and no transgressing that He is unwilling to forgive.  Jesus turned water into wine to remind us of our Baptism, and the washing of regeneration and renewal that we get there which makes us clean and pure. And Jesus turned water into wine to remind us of His holy Supper, the bread and the wine that we eat and drink, which is His true Body and Blood, given and shed for our forgiveness. Christ is our Bridegroom and we are His Bride. He died for us, and He provides for us, so that we can enter into the eternal wedding feast of heaven. 

So, honor marriage according to His design, and thank God that He honors His marriage to you by promising to never leave you or forsake you. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.