The Life-Renewing Words of Jesus by Adam RamseySample

“My hour has not yet come”

When Jesus said to Mary, “My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4), it was the first of over a dozen times in John’s Gospel that Jesus would mention “his hour.” The hour on his mind was the hour of his sacrifice. And the closer he moved towards this sacred hour—the hour when he would die as a willing substitute, the innocent one in place of the guilty in order to reconcile us to God—the more he spoke of it. In other words, Jesus knew exactly why he had come. He lived with intense intentionality towards his final hour. He obeyed the Father perfectly. He walked unwaveringly towards the cross.

Towards the hour of atonement.

Towards the hour of your justification.

Towards the hour of your forgiveness.

Have you ever considered that the hour Jesus thought of the most was the hour when he would bring you home?

Perhaps at the wedding of an anonymous couple in Cana, as Jesus thought of “his hour,” he thought of what lay in the future on the other side of his sacrifice: his own wedding—what John would later describe in Revelation 19:9 as “the marriage supper of the Lamb,” the wedding that every human wedding points to, in the same way, that a shadow points to the reality. You see, the climax of human history is a wedding. The greatest celebration that all of heaven and earth will behold is still ahead of us when the redeemed people of God—the bride of Christ—are eternally united with him. Where the shame of sin is forever in the rear-view mirror, and joy, like new wine, flows in abundance.

Quote for Reflection:

“There is joy in heaven in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents; but when all these repenting sinners are gathered into one perfected body, and married to the Lamb, what will be the infinite gladness? … On that day … a measureless flood of delight shall overflow the souls of all glorified spirits as they perceive that the consummation of love’s great design is come—‘The marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready’! We do not know yet, beloved, of what happiness we are capable.”

Charles Spurgeon, “The Marriage of the Lamb,” Sermon 2096