- Series:History, Transcript English
John 2:11
“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.”
John records in his Gospel that the first miracle of Jesus was performed at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. During the course of the celebrations, they were found to have run out of wine. Jesus instructed the servants to fill six 20-gallon stone jars with water, and He turned this 120 gallons of water into wine.
I have watched people carry out conjuring tricks, where a glass of water is stirred with a wand, on which has been glued a crystal of potassium permanganate, which colors the water a deep red. Jesus did not do anything like this, because the wine was tasted, and found to be just that – wine.
Today’s wines might be just over 10% ethanol. Even if we allow that wines in biblical times were weaker, we can still assume that more than 5% of the water was turned into ethanol. That would be 6 gallons of ethanol.
Molecules of water are very different from molecules of the alcohol ethanol. Jesus had turned H2O into C2H5OH. This shows Jesus’ creative power. He must have made the carbon atoms in the wine from nothing. But then, He did create the whole universe at the beginning!
But there is more. The master of the feast declared that this was good wine. Good wine is that which has aged. The aging process involves some ethanol reacting with organic acids from the fruit to form delicately flavored and fragrant compounds called esters. But this process of esterification takes time; often several years. So Jesus was also showing that He is in control of the timing of things as well as their actual creation.
We know that all things were created by Jesus, through Jesus, for Jesus. We praise You for Your great creative power – that You are in control of everything. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible, , accessed 10/31/2017. Image: Public Domain drawing.
