WEEK THREE
Day One
DAILY SCRIPTURE
John 2:21-22
LEADER GUIDE QUESTIONS
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Know: Read John Chapter 2
Note: Mark keywords, including pronouns and phrases. (sign, believed, key events- Wedding at Cana)
Ask questions: (Use tools such as interlinear bibles to search the original meaning of words- free tool here) For example:
Who saw it?
What was the first sign Jesus performed?
When did He do it?
Where did He do it?
Why did Jesus do it?
How did He do it?
Observation: Read Exodus 16
What: What does today’s study reveal to you about the nature of God? What truth do I need to apply to my life today?
The Table of Shewbread
“You prepare a table before me.” Psalm 23:5
Made of shittim wood and overlaid with gold, just like the Ark, it represents Christ in design and function. When God gave the instructions for constructing it, the word “Table” was first mentioned in the Bible (Ex 25:23). “Table" speaks of grace in redeeming fallen man back into an intimate relationship with God. Shewbread means “to declare.” Jesus declared He was the “Bread of Life” and gave the church the authority to declare His life, death, resurrection, and coming again in the Table of the Lord. ( 1 Corinthians 11:26).
“This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” John 2:11
We enter a new week, having explored the rich Prologue of John. We have come to the living Table of Shewbread. The Shewbread was Jesus’ declaration that He was God. After being delivered from Egypt, the Israelites were fed bread from Heaven. Manna was that bread, a foreshadowing of Jesus. Just as Manna and Quail sustained God’s people for forty years, Jesus came from the Father to sustain all mankind forever.
It was no accident that the first miracle began at a wedding. There is much symbolism here. The Bible begins and ends with a wedding, two becoming one. The first wedding was not Adam and Eve, but God and man. He created man for relationships and partnerships with Himself. When they failed, the plan of redemption (anticipated even before they sinned) was set into motion to redeem what was lost- the oneness between God and man. God would make a way to fill up His bride to the very brim, filled to overflowing, with the purest wine of His love.
“Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece. Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.” John 2:6-7
Jesus told the servants to fill the waterpots to the brim with water. This is a picture of us filling ourselves up with the water of the Word. Wine is also a picture of joy or the power of the Holy Spirit. This signifies how the Lord will release the power of the Holy Spirit and the anointing of God in our lives through the Word- Jesus.
The waterpots were there “according to the manner of purification of the Jews.” This refers to the offering of the red heifer. Hebrews 9:13–14 tells us that: “For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
This shows us that the ritual of the purification of the Jews mentioned in John 2 is the offering of the red heifer, where the unclean is purified using the ashes of the sacrificed heifer.
“This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying: ‘Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come.” Numbers 19:1–2
The red heifer without blemish is a picture of our Jesus, who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Not only that, notice how the law talks about the red heifer having no defect. This symbolizes Jesus, who is without sin. After the red heifer is sacrificed, it is burned with cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, until all that is left is ashes (v. 5–6). The ashes are then put into vessels, which are then filled with running water. The ashes were used to purify people who had come into contact with death. Since the red heifer is a picture of Jesus, its ashes are a picture of His finished work for us at the cross. The running water in this offering refers to the water of His Word.
“Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain by a sword or who has died, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. ‘And for an unclean person, they shall take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for purification from sin, and running water shall be put on them in a vessel. A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, or on the one who touched a bone, the slain, the dead, or a grave.”
Numbers 19:16–18
Hebrews tells us that the blood of the heifer could only cover sin once a year and was unable to clear a guilty conscious. Jesus’ sacrifice removed sin and cleared the guilty conscious.
His sacrifice was much better.
Hebrews also said, “Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14)— Dead works here do not necessarily refer to sin. Instead, they primarily refer to things that we do to try to earn our righteousness before God.
Where once we were empty vessels that could not produce righteousness out of our own efforts, Jesus poured His life into us, making living wine from the life that dwells within us. The Triune God takes what we were not able to produce on our own, void of life and drained of self-effort, and gives us new vessels, filled with living water and made even better when the living water is touched by His life and turned into wine that is meant to be shared and enjoyed by the world we touch. What a way to begin His earthly ministry!
(Immediately after this story, John tells of Jesus’ overturning of the Temple. The other synoptic gospels tell of Jesus' overturning the Temple before His crucifixion. John tells this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. If you recall, John is not synoptic. The other three Gospels begin Jesus’ ministry in his last year. John is the only gospel that tells the whole story- all three years. John tells us that this event happened at the first Passover of Jesus’ ministry. It tells of Him using a whip and being challenged by the religious leaders, to which He replies, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (Referring to His body). Because there is a difference in the gospels concerning this event, the conclusion is that it happened twice. In the other gospels telling, we enter a heated relationship between Jesus and the religious leaders- a strained relationship caused by years of tension. The other gospels don’t speak of a whip, but they tell of Jesus’ commissioning of His disciples, which John does not mention because Jesus had not met the others yet, nor had any healings taken place. This overturning in John 2 may have begun the tumultuous relationship between Jesus and the Leaders. )
Let’s take a minute and meditate on this cleansing and its significance:
Jesus, Son of God, came as man, born under the law. The covenant which enacted the Mosaic law exposed the utter failure of humankind. Since the garden, humankind continually ate from the proverbial Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the failed effort of trying to BE LIKE God apart from God. The irony was that Adam and Eve were already made in His image. When offered a covenant of grace at Mt. Sinai, the Israelites rejected it out of fear and asked for a lesser arrangement, downgrading their blessing from a Grant covenant to a Kinship covenant. “We will do anything the Lord has commanded." (Exodus 19:8) And so, by their rejection and their promise to keep up their end by their effort to obey, a system of “works” was enacted. The law exposed their inability to keep up their end of the arrangement and revealed their sin. It became their babysitter until Jesus would come to an end to that system.
Jesus’ turning over of the Temple was a picture of God’s violent invasion of what the law and religion failed to accomplish. God invaded our failed part of the agreement made by man and God. Man did not keep up their end of the covenant, so God entered it. The New Covenant established by Jesus’ shed blood was a covenant between God and God but which included man vicariously.
Jesus was not passive in that Temple. On the contrary, his wrath toward religion and man’s efforts toward righteousness was on glorious display that day. Jesus had no tolerance for meaningless rituals. Jesus attacked what was happening in the Temple. His coming into humanity was an act of God cleansing the house. He came to take up our failure and remove it.
Jesus became sin and died; three days later, after much work in the depths of the earth and above, He destroyed death and our failure, our inability, and our unfaithfulness, rebellion, and sin. As Jesus was fierce in the Temple, He was fierce with our sin. No longer would a temporary solution cover over sin; instead, He permanently conquered and removed it, enacting a covenant of forgiveness.
Jesus laid hold of that which Elohim, the Triune God, had laid hold of from the foundation of the world, and He won!
Bible Project Video: Why the Temple is so important
DAILY QUESTION