Thankful Thursday

The one thing that I am most thankful for this week is the visit of old friends to our church on Sunday. These "old friends" are actually a young family. We became acquainted in the days before we had a regular man to fill our pulpit each Sunday. This young man, Rich, was one who often came to preach for us. It was great fun to see him and his wife and their little son again and to meet their seven month old daughter for the first time.

Rich is an excellent preacher and I've always enjoyed his sermons but this past Sunday's has had me contemplating it all week. The sermon text was a familiar one, John 2:1-11, the story of the wedding at Cana where Jesus changes water into wine. But Rich compared the wedding described in the gospel of John, the wedding that occurred under the law, with the wedding of the Lamb, the wedding feast yet to come at which Christ takes the church as His bride, the wedding described in Revelation 19. He compared the water that was in the stone jars to be used for purification under Jewish law with the wine that replaced it, the wine of the gospel. He pointed out that there were six stone jars, one short of the perfect number 7, just as the Mosaic economy is one removed from the New Covenant that replaced it. The act of Jesus in changing the purification water into wine, about 125 gallons of the "best wine", reveals His abundant grace as well as the inadequacy of the Mosaic economy in cleansing us from sin. Only the person and work of Jesus Christ can atone for our filthy sins and make us righteous and clean before God. And Jesus points to that future time, the time mentioned in Revelation 19, when we as His bride will wear the clean linen of righteousness as we are fully united with Him, by saying "My time has not yet come" in John 2:4.

I've been studying the book of Revelation in depth this year, for the first time. Revelation 1:3 says "Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near." God's blessings to me have been abundant throughout the study. A perfect example is having this sermon of Rich's fall in the week of my study of Revelation 19. As Rich commented when I told him of this timing, "We know the Spirit is always at work and sometimes we get to see it." I am overflowing with thankfulness this week!

I'm joining with Kim of the Upward Call and several other bloggers in posting my gratitude to God for His goodness to me each Thursday in 2010. Won't you join us?