We are studying John's account of the wedding at Cana not only because it is a record of a historical event but because it is a miracle. The Son of God here on earth worked miracles. It was one of his ways, as John puts it, of showing us, of giving a sign, that He is indeed the Son of God. But we are interested in this incident primarily because it is at the same time a parable. John's theme in his Gospel is that our Lord came to give us life which is life indeed, and this incident shows us how this fullness, this 'grace upon grace', is to be received.

We have seen negative instructions - what we are not to do - and we have looked at what we must do. Now we are examining the character, or the nature, of the blessing. We have shown that it is a blessing that always comes in response to a condition of desperation and that when our Lord acts He changes the entire situation. That is what He does here. From need He provides satisfaction. And that is what He always does. And then we went on to show how that when our Lord acts, it is always clear and evident.

But now I want to show you something of the fullness of the satisfaction that our Lord gives. This comes out so clearly here. He does not merely turn just a little water into wine, there is a sufficiency, a superabundance. We find many illustrations of that. It is so typical of our Lord that when he fed the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish, at the end of the meal, the disciples collected twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over and above what was needed (Matthew 14.15-21). That is His method. It is always this overflowing sufficiency. This is emphasised right through the New Testament and that is why it is so important for us. If we receive of his fullness, then there is this element of superabundance.

We see adumbrations and foreshadowings of this in the Old Testament. By the eye of faith the psalmist is able to see something of it, and he puts it like this, 'My cup runs over' (Psalm 23.5). It is not merely just full, it is 'running over', filled to the brim and overflowing. That is the characteristic of God's grace, not only its freedom but its fullness, its abundance, its all-sufficiency.

The Song of Solomon is undoubtedly a picture and a prophecy of the relationship between Christ and his church. Written in a poetic, dramatic form, it is a perfect representation of the church as the bride of Christ. This is a New Testament term but the Song of Solomon sees it long before it came to pass. This is how Solomon describes God's overflowing love: 'He brought me to the banqueting house. . .' and that is where He always brings us. It is not to some kind of 'soup kitchen', or to some temporary place where we can be given just a little food to keep us from starvation. No, no! It is a 'banqueting house'! . . . and His banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick with love' (Song of Solomon 2.4-5). There is so much love that it is almost overwhelming me.

This is brought out equally in verses 11-13 of the same chapter. 'For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.' That is the test that we apply to ourselves: Are we living in a kind of spiritual winter? We are not meant to be like that. What is the condition of our soul? Is it like a day which is overcast, cloudy, drizzling, foggy, 'neither hot nor cold' (Revelation 3.15)? No! When He visits the heart, when He exerts the glory of His power, when He grants us the fullness of His Spirit, He says to us, 'The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.'

In other places in the Old Testament we find the same suggestion of overflowing abundance. Isaiah writes, 'The wilderness' - the desolate place - 'shall be glad ... The parched ground shall become a pool' (Isaiah 35.1, 7). 'Then shall the lame man leap as an hart' (Isaiah 35.6). That is the language and imagery of the Old Testament, as it puts this teaching so plainly to us. It can all be summed up in the sixteenth verse of that second chapter of the Song of Solomon. The effect of this love is to make us say, 'My beloved is mine, and I am his.'

But when we come to the New Testament, of course, the richness of God's blessing, seen in a pictorial form in Cana of Galilee, is made much more explicit. Our Lord says it clearly many times. There is no more beautiful illustration than his conversation with the woman of Samaria. There she is at a well where she has come to draw water. One of the hard tasks of her life is having to go to the well to draw water. In the middle of the day - when Jesus speaks to her - the heat is terrible, and drawing water is an awful burden. So there she is at the well, and our Lord asks her for a drink of water.

Then He says, 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me to drink; thou would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water' (John 4.10). The woman does not understand this, so our Lord expounds it to her. He says, 'Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again' (verse 13). Now that is life in this world, is it not? Permanent satisfaction? Never! There will be a thirst and a need to come again. You have to keep on going back to the well to get a little more water, just to keep you going.

The tragedy is that many of us are living that sort of desperate Christian life. Sunday comes and we get some strength, and then we lose some on Monday, a good deal is gone by Tuesday and we wonder whether we have anything left. On Wednesday it has all gone and then we exist. Or perhaps refreshment comes in some other way, some meeting we attend, some friends we meet....

Now that is the old order of things, that is not the new. So our Lord goes on to put it like this. 'Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life' (verses 13-14). He puts a well within us. We are not always drawing from somewhere outside. The well, the spring, goes on springing up from within into everlasting life.

Or listen to Him again - I am just trying to show you that this is the great theme of this Gospel in particular, though it is the theme of the whole of the New Testament. This is true Christianity. 'In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He who believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly [out of his innermost parts] shall flow rivers of living water' (John 7.37-38). Rivers! From inside, from the depth of one's being, there shall flow out - oh, not just a little trickle but 'rivers of living water'. And John explains it. 'This He spoke of the Spirit, which they who believe on him should receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified' (verse 39).

And when we come on to the Book of Acts, we read that the Spirit was poured out on the Day of Pentecost. That is the term that is used - 'poured out'. Nothing is ever said about this except we get this impression of profusion. It is overwhelming. It is a baptism. It is a shower coming upon us and it is unmistakable. So we are told that on the Day of Pentecost the believers were all 'filled with the Holy Spirit' (Acts 2:4). Filled! And we find the same term in Acts 4.31, and in many other places.

And then take the way the apostle Paul puts it in Romans 5.5. 'The love of God,' he says, 'is shed abroad in our hearts.' It is not just a little touch of moisture, but love is poured out, 'shed abroad' in a great profusion - 'shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit Who is given to us'. And all the other terms have the same meaning. 'The fruit of the Spirit,' says Paul, and we think at once of an orchard where the trees are groaning with fruit. 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance' (Galatians 5.22-23). There is great profusion.

And then, of course, the apostle surpasses himself at the end of Ephesians 3. He has already talked about 'the unsearchable riches of Christ' (3.8), he has mentioned 'the exceeding riches of his grace' (2.7). He brings out all his superlatives and still it is not enough. So he can say nothing beyond this, 'that you might be filled with all the fullness of God' (Ephesians 3.19). God is eternal. There is no limit to Him. All His qualities are absolutes, and His fullness is endless. It is eternal.

Then, writing in a very personal and tender manner to the Philippians, though he was in prison, the apostle uses terms which are quite extraordinary when we think of his position. He is in prison. He is suffering in body. He says he has become an old man before his time. Elsewhere he calls himself 'Paul, the aged' (Philemon 9). He is on the verge of death, and it is going to be a very cruel death. Yet he says, 'I have all, and abound. I am full' (Philippians 4.18). Now what more can a man say than that? There is a man who has received of his fullness, and grace upon grace.

John says the same thing. We have life, he says, and this life is in us. There is a seed that remains in us (1 John 3.9). And Peter says we are partakers of the divine nature' (2 Peter 1.4). There is nothing beyond this, and the New Testament writers all vie with one another to try to give some impression of this fullness and superabundance of life that they have received through the Spirit in Christ Jesus. That, then, is what the Bible says - in the Old Testament, giving the preview and in the New Testament, showing the fullness. 'But,' says somebody, 'that's all right; but surely that was only for New Testament times. We must not take New Testament history too literally. That was the beginning of the church, and things like that only happened at the beginning. You don't expect it to continue in that way.'

Well, I would have thought that that view is a great denial of Scripture. The moment you begin to speak like that you are denying the teaching of the New Testament. 'The promise,' says the New Testament, 'is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off' (Acts 2.39). If I believed that what I am told here in the New Testament was only for the first generation of Christians and not for us today, I would not be in this pulpit.

The statement made by those people is a lie. And, of course, it is not only wrong as an understanding of the Scriptures, it is falsified completely by the long history of the Christian church.

This is why one sometimes thinks that the best thing for people to do is to read the history of the church and the lives of the saints. There, in almost every century, we see the continuation of what is described here. In the early centuries we read the thrilling account of the first Christians, the confessors and the martyrs - what a glorious body of people they were! We read of how they rejoiced in their sufferings for Christ. The spectators sitting in their comfortable seats in the arena in Rome and looking at 'these unfortunate people, these nobodies' being thrown to the lions, were staggered by the heavenly brightness which they could see shining from the faces of these Christians. It was this 'life', this 'fullness', Christ in them, making them 'more than conquerors' (Romans 8.37) as the New Testament had prophesied they would be.

Then as we move on through the centuries we find exactly the same thing. In all ages, in all countries, continents, climes, it is always the same. Perhaps we see more personal records of this in the eighteenth century than at any other time, although in the seventeenth century we read the amazing testimonies of many of the Puritans. But when we come to the eighteenth century, we read of people like Jonathan Edwards and his wife, and Whitefield, and Howel Harries, and the Wesley brothers, and see how they were overwhelmed by the joy of God's fullness.

Whitefield preached so much - even too much - that he was physically exhausted and could scarcely stand. His friends persuaded him to lie down on his bed and have a rest, but he could not rest. Why? Because Christ was manifesting His love in such profusion and superabundance that he was thrilled by it and sleep was impossible. That is the kind of thing about which we are speaking. That is what is shown us here in this parable, in this miracle that was wrought at Cana in Galilee.

I could go on for a very long time quoting such experiences out of the diaries and journals of these various men, but God forbid that anybody again should say, 'But there you are dealing with very outstanding men.' Well, I agree I am dealing with outstanding and unusually gifted men, but they were human beings like all of us, and there was a time in their lives when, for all their brilliant gifts, they were very unhappy people - as we have already seen.

You do not explain what happened to them in terms of personality or in terms of human abilities or propensities or powers. They were the same before and after. No, this was the gift of God. As I am showing you, this was the action of the Lord Jesus Christ. The situation remained hopeless until He decided to act, then the whole position was entirely changed.

And what is so wonderful, therefore, is that we find this experience of God not only in the lives of outstanding men, great preachers, great thinkers and others, but also in the lives of the most ordinary people. And that is why we should thank God that these greater men have recorded some of the experiences told them by these others whose names are not even remembered. But they participated in the same thing. At every time of revival there is no distinction between great and small. The 'wind blows where it wills' (John 3.8), and the Spirit chooses people of all types. You will find some of the most ordinary people filled until their hearts are overflowing and almost incapable of expressing what has happened to them.

Now that is what we must realise. It is His action, and when He acts, He 'sheds abroad', He 'pours forth', with the result that out of our innermost parts flow 'streams of living water', and it is overwhelming.

John Ryland sums this up so well:

Then:

I am in Christ. He is the Head of the body. There is an intimate organic relationship. So John Ryland puts the logical question, 'While Christ is rich' - He is the Lord of glory, the Lord of everything - 'While Christ is rich, can I be poor?' Beloved Christian people, there is something wrong somewhere, is there not? We are in Him, we belong to Him, He is our Head, we are His people and He is so rich - 'the unsearchable riches of Christ' - so how can we be poor? What is the matter? Why do we not receive of His fullness?

It is all due to our failure to realise the riches that are in Him and our relationship to Him. We listen to the Devil, we listen to our adversary, we listen to our own vain thoughts, instead of believing the Scriptures. And here, in the glory of the wedding of Cana, God, in His infinite tenderness through the Spirit, has even put it for us in a pictorial form. We are like the people in the feast who say, 'There is no more wine.' And we look to Him, and He rises, and He gives the command, and there is a superabundance.

Listen to Anna Laetitia Waring: