There’s no such thing as a perfect wedding. Something always, inevitably, goes wrong. Most of the time it’s not anything major. At the first wedding I officiated, I dismissed the congregation to the reception in the middle of the recessional. Oops. Somehow the marriage survived. Nowadays if the imperfection is entertaining enough, you can look forward to seeing it preserved forever on YouTube.
At the marriage in Cana, either someone miscalculated what was needed, or the caterers missed a couple of cases when they unloaded their van, or the drunk uncle imbibed more than was expected, but somehow, they ran out of wine. Jesus was not there to perform a miracle. He was simply attending the wedding. But when the need arose, Mary knew who to call on. And the Lord not only made more wine, he made the very best wine, and an abundance of it.
This isn’t the place to expound the significance of this manifestation of the Lord’s glory in the first wonder our Savior performed, but it is an appropriate time and place to point out the importance of Christ’s presence and participation at that wedding. When Jesus came into the Temple, he rebuked that he saw. He flipped over tables, cursed the moneychangers, and made quite a scene driving out the animals. But he didn’t do that at this wedding. Instead, he gave it his blessing, he exercised his power to enlarge and improve the provisions for it. Rather than promoting asceticism, he increased the celebration. Those who went to the Temple ought to have mourned in repentance over the evil found there, but those who came to the wedding were to rejoice and give thanks for the blessing of God on this new household.
A marriage is an occasion of celebration, a time for giving thanks and rejoicing in God’s goodness. But there will be no rejoicing in the wedding or in the home that results from it unless Jesus is present and also provides his blessing. We have seen the sad result when one or both parties in a marriage exclude the Lord and his counsel. They insist that it is their marriage, their life, their happiness, and their right to seek it however and wherever it may be found. Rather than turning to the Lord for help that all of us need, they rely on themselves, and inevitably, they run out of wine. The joy is gone and so too are the means of rejoicing.
Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. So says the Spirit in Psalm 127, and it is true. If you build a marriage on anything other than the Lord, if you decide that you are able to create and sustain it on your own by your own strength and wisdom, then you will inevitably fail. Eventually, you will run out of wine. Over time, love and desires change, satisfaction and shared interests deteriorate, the things that were once cute and attractive are now aggravating and repulsive, and no one is having any fun anymore.
I don’t remember much of what was said at my wedding 23 years ago, and in many ways I am not the same man that stood there holding his bride’s hand and making vows before the Lord. I have changed in a lot of ways, and so has my wife, but what has not changed is the presence of Christ in our marriage. In fact, he is not only still present, he plays a much, much larger role than he ever did before. We’ve run out of wine many times in the last quarter century, and it wasn’t any fun. The party seemed to be over. And every time, when we looked to the Lord, he not only provided what was lacking, he gave us more and better than anything we’d had before.
Ben and Ellen Beth, both of you have grown up in Christian families. You’ve heard sermons every week for your whole life. You’ve attended Sunday School and participated in Bible studies. You’ve memorized verses of Scripture. You’ve learned to pray and sing and been taught to live a godly, moral life. But you are about to embark on the most challenging exercise in sanctification either of you have ever experienced. You’re about to have to apply the Christianity you’ve learned and grown up with in a way you never had to before. Sure you’ve been tested in various ways. You have suffered and been tempted. But marriage is a laboratory for sanctification. It challenges, stretches, encourages, and exasperates. It will test your limits. It will expose sin that you never knew was there. Marriage will place constraints on you that you’ve never known, and when you get squeezed, you find out what is inside. What you discover isn’t always what you expected or as pretty as you hoped it would be.
Marriage is also the place where you will see Christ’s glory and goodness in a way you’ve never yet known it. Your relationship is already a picture of grace—we’ve all seen it—and we all are looking forward to seeing how you will grow in that grace and love in the years and decades to come. We all are praying for you, and for your children, and we are excited about what the Lord has in store for you. The fact that it will be hard sometimes is a good thing. If we never ran out of wine, we would never get to see the glory of the Lord when he replenishes it or taste the goodness which he provides.
You can be sure that in twenty years both of you will have changed in a number of ways, and you may not remember much of what was said here today. But you should resolve now that whenever you run out of wine, you will look to Christ. You will desire, welcome, and plead for his presence and blessing, not just at your wedding but in your life together, in your home, and every day from this day forward so long as you both shall live. So long as Christ is there, there will be reason for rejoicing. You will see his glory and taste his goodness in ways that surpass anything you have ever known or ever could know outside of your marriage.
The Lord has called you both to marriage. Here it is. There’s no turning back now. You can’t say this was a mistake. You can’t decide you’ve changed your mind. You can’t return or replace what you’ve now signed up for. The Lord has called you into covenant, and not just with one another but also with him. And in calling you to marriage, he has called you to joy. We do not fast at a wedding; we feast. We do not mourn; we rejoice. We do not joke about balls and chains; we shout and sing about blessed intimacy and beautiful children. God did not give you to each other in order to make you miserable. He gave you to each other in order to make you more like Jesus and to help you see his glory and taste his goodness. Never despair. Always rejoice. Jesus makes more and better wine than you ever had before. Amen.
