The New Wine, Part II (John 2:1-11)

This miracle sign also symbolizes abundance. Here was a new living, unending source. The other day I had a most wonderful experience. I went over a mountain or two past Dayton and got over into what’s called Cane Creek Valley. If you haven’t been there, don’t take a vacation and go to the Smokies or way off someplace else. Just go sixty-six miles right over here to the prettiest valley and the prettiest creek where rainbow trout run and you can see them flash in the sun, and all that.
You know what I did? We fished for a while and then long about lunchtime I had a big sack of sandwiches and stuff. My wife accuses me when I go off on a day like that. She says you just go to eat. You just pack up stuff to go to eat. She’s about right too. But anyway, we took our lunch and we went around the side of the road and there coming out from under the mountain was a spring like you have never seen. A stream of water that was so cold it would hurt your teeth. We drank from that spring and I thought, “Oh my How many people there are in this world who are really dry and shriveled and thirsty and if they could just somehow come to the fountain of living waters and drink then they would find joy and peace for which their life is longing!”
You here me now. Here’s an abundance of God’s grace and power. Jesus, drawing from a living source, turns water into wine. I declare to you there’s a whole river of this water of life that you can drink from. It is an inexhaustible source of supply.
Joel talks about it and how that in the days to come there would be times of great abundance and harvest and the fields would be great and just wine everywhere. He said, “In the last days God is going to pour out of His Spirit.” Not just some little sprinkling. He is going to pour it out.
Amos got so carried away when he prophesied and talked about it he said why the time will come when even the mountains will drip down sweet wine. What he is saying is that the grapes will just grow so big and great that they’ll burst with their luscious goodness and just drip, drip and pretty soon there is little rivulets of fresh new wine running down the hillside.
Abundance! What I want you to understand is that God has an unending source for whatever you need. He has an abundant supply. There is no limitation on the supply. The only limitation is on the receptivity. That’s all, because His supply is abundant.
I say to you that’s the way it is now. That’s the way it is now for you if you’ll just simply go to the right place and if you’ll drink from the Master’s hand and let Him hand you whatever realities of life that may be around you, He can turn it into something beautiful and glorious. He can take the plainness of water and He can turn it into the redness of wine with its sparkle and its beauty and its taste. And, oh, life can be beautiful and filled with blessing.

Then finally, wine is a symbol of suffering and death. Red like blood! Wine testifies of the blood that was shed. In Isaiah, in that beautiful poem of the winepress in Chapter 63, it says, “Who is this that cometh from Edom with his garments dipped in blood? …He has trod the winepress alone.” Here is the picture and here is the vision – the winepress.
You see, it is in the winepress where people place the fruit of the vine, the grapes, and put it under pressure. The grapes themselves, the fruit, lose their identity and they’re turned into something else – into the very essence of what it is to become. It drains into the wine vat and goes through fermentation processes and all kinds of processes and becomes the liquid that brings the celebration of joy.
That’s the way of salvation. It took the blood of Jesus Christ and His treading the winepress alone and walking through until His whole life was crushed. But even when all the weight of the whole world and the weight of all the sins of the world put Him in that winepress of Calvary, from Him flowed water and blood and it gives life and cleansing to every man and every woman that looks to Him and believes.
This is what Jesus wants to do with us, the church. He wants to take your life and the fruit you bear and put that and you in the winepress. He would even like to walk on you with His feet, so to speak, until in humility and love and surrender you’re crushed – until your will is crushed, your life is crushed, and you look up to Him and say, “Lord, be the Lord of life, I surrender it all. I give everything to you. Make any demand on me you want to, Lord, I’ll comply.” That’s how He turns the church into the wine of joy and cleansing that reaches out to bless the world.
One reason why the church has seen difficult days is because we are not taking that cup of salvation and calling upon the name of the Lord and offering drink of the wine of God’s love and grace to those that are about us. We’re not taking that cup of the wine of God’s cleansing blood and power and pouring it in where there is hurt and contamination and sin and iniquity and evil. God help us to get drunk on the wine of the Holy Spirit of grace and go share!
Did you ever see anybody drunk that didn’t want you to take part with them? That’s one of the odd things about people who become intoxicated. I used to have a very good friend that I worked with. He got drunk every Friday evening after he got off from work. He was a building contractor. The n on Saturday night about midnight when I needed to be getting sleep and getting ready for Sunday morning, here he came. He wanted me to pray for him. That went on for months. Finally, one time I told him, “Glen, when you quit drinking it’s going to be when we roll you down the isle of a church with your toes sticking up.” He said, “Oh, brother, don’t talk like that. If the Lord will just help me, which I know He ain’t, I’ll never drink another drop.”
He was never satisfied to be by himself because when he was out partying, he wanted to include a lot of the others. When that was over, he wanted the prayers of the pastor. Oh he finally got saved, thank God, and delivered. It took a long time.
I wish today that somehow the church could once again climb to the upper room and be touched of the Holy Spirit, get drunk in the Spirit of God, intoxicated with living joy and flooded with great peace and glorious outpourings of God’s praise and power. Let us just take us as drink in His hand and say, “Here’s where you can find joy, here’s where you can find cleansing, here’s where you can find a satisfying cup to meet your need.”
That’s what He wants with a church – to put us in His winepress and turn us into the new wine. If Jesus can take the water from a well in Judea and turn it into the best wine people ever tasted, He can take your life regardless of what it’s like now – He can take it and touch it and perform a miracle in your life and turn you into a source of blessing. You want Him to do it? If He does, it will mean first of all, getting happy, full of joy in your own heart.
Let us together join in a prayer. Don’t pray, “Lord take away my burden or help me overcome this trouble or Lord open this door or that.” Rather, pray a kind of a prayer that just says, “Lord, give me a taste of the new wine of God’s love and grace and let me
be blessed that I may have joy.”
I’ve seen it happen – the miraculous. I remember the night when I was in a revival meeting in Mississippi and Cecil Guiles’ father came into a little country church with his overalls on and when he got saved. The man’s extremely emotional and he didn’t know how to contain himself because all of a sudden the burden was gone and he was so happy and delighted he was completely beside himself.
Yes, he got drunk in the Spirit of love. Just let the Lord give you to drink. Let Him fill you with joy. It might cure your nervous condition. It might give you a bright optimistic outlook on life, to be touched with holy joy. Oh, the Bible says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” Let Him pour His joy in your heart.