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question His justice and righteousness.
God told John the Baptist how he would
recognize the Messiah:
"Upon Whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is
He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost" (1: 33).
In an equivalent but less dramatic way God honours our response in faith by things
that have a personal message to us:
"He that hath received His (Christ's) testimony hath set to his seal that God is true"
(3: 33).
If we see a seal on a document we can identify the one who has authorized the deed.
So God says I will make Myself known to you in apparently small ways that will be
recognized by you who have been seeking Me.
At the end of chapter 1: Philip comes to Nathanael saying they had found Him of
Whom Moses and the prophets had written. They had been seeking and they knew the
Scriptures. Christ saying to Nathanael that He had seen Philip call him under the fig tree
was the seemingly inconsequential happening that sealed Nathanael's faith in the Lord.
To us confirming events can happen in a variety of ways, but most common will be the
passages of Scriptures that will for us stand out in startling clarity and appositeness to
illuminate a problem we have at that moment.
The life of Mary the mother of our Lord must have been full of such incidents
revealing the identity of the Lord Jesus as God's Son. When Mary therefore appeals to
Christ to supply what was lacking on that family occasion, namely wine for a wedding
feast, she is quite prepared to see something supernatural if that is necessary, and warns
the servants accordingly:
"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" (2: 5).
What must have been going through the mind of Christ? In Matt. 22: He reveals
by parable His knowledge of the plans of His Father that the faithful in Israel should
typically become His Bride, but the precise hour of the fulfillment of prophecy has
always in the hand of the Father alone. Rev. 19: 7 refers to this fulfillment. Thoughts
on these happenings may well have been in the mind of Christ when He said the strange
(to us) words:
"Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come" (2: 4).
"The beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His
glory: and His disciples believed on Him" (2: 11).
Here is a definite statement that this was a miracle. Why is it that many leaders of
Christianity think that they must reconcile such happenings with the laws of nature in
order that the gospel shall be acceptable to the youth of today? Moses, that great man of
God, was barred from entering the promised land because he spoilt the typical nature of
the miracle of water coming from the rock by the word only: