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Y'all remember Mikhail Gorbachev? He was the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to probably the late 80s, somewhere in there, early 90s. And let me tell you, that guy loved communism. He was always, as a young man, like communism is great. Everybody should be communist. And people who already are communist should be more communist. Communism's the best idea. That's what he thought. And he rose in the ranks saying that. But then one day he changed his mind and was like, maybe communism isn't so great. Maybe we should do things different around here. And that was a pretty big deal that he changed his mind. Likewise, and at nearly the same level of significance, I have changed my mind. That's right. End of last week, I thought, you know, maybe we should do one more week on background John stuff. In fact, I'm going to tell everybody that's what we're going to do. But then I thought about it over the weekend and I was like, I don't wanna. Maybe we'll do more of that between chapter two and chapter three. I don't know. I just really want to talk about the wedding at Cana. So we're not gonna do what I said. We're just gonna move forward with the book of John into chapter two. See, I changed my mind, just like Mikhail Gorbachev. John 2 1 says, On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Okay, on the third day. Well, scholarly types get interested in this for a couple of different reasons. Some scholarly types listen to that and they're like, on the third day, what else happened on the third day? Wait a minute, Jesus rose from the dead. Somehow, John here at the beginning of John chapter 2 is presupposing or pointing toward the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Could be. I have heard people say that before, I've heard it in sermons, I've seen it in books and stuff, maybe heard it in a class here and there. But for the life of me, I just don't see what the connection would be. I mean, I you could make the argument that it kind of bookends that maybe the miracle we're about to see here in Cana, which is the very famous miracle of turning the water into wine, for those of you who are you know new to the Bible. This is one of the beloved miracles of Jesus, one of the beloved signs of Jesus. This is one of the ones a lot of people remember. This is a particularly popular wedding among groups that very, very highly emphasize and feature Mary, mother of Jesus, and sort of their cosmology, because Mary plays an important role in the story, though she is just described by her relationship to Jesus, not by name. More on that in a minute. So it's a very famous miracle, and some scholars look at it and they're like, okay, on the third day. Well, that is to create a bookend because biblical authors like to bookend. So what they're bookending then in this theory would be Jesus' first miracle that's about to happen here, the changing of the water into wine, with kind of his last miracle, which would be the resurrection itself. The problem with that is there is other miraculous stuff that happens after the resurrection with Jesus. So you know, there's like a miraculous catch of fish that still happens here. And I mean, the ascension, I think that counts as miraculous. Most people can't fly to heaven to the right hand of the Father. So I don't know, man. I don't really see it on that one. Yes, it happens to be the third day, third day I get it, but I think the stronger case for why John is hung up on days here is what you and I and Rebecca Black have been talking about for the last little while, which is just the days of the week thing. Look, I don't know why I picked Tuesday for the first day of the week on the list, but we that's what we picked. So we traced through the days of this first week of Jesus through John chapter one. And how do we break it down? Day one is the religious leaders coming and being confused about who John the Baptist is, which uh I was talking with a friend today. I mean, that continues to be a point of confusion for a very long time throughout the Gospels. You know, I get it. John was a kind of enigmatic figure, and unless you were really paying attention to Jesus and really thinking about what the Old Testament said, you could get confused by it. So day one is the religious leaders and John the Baptist. Then it says in verse 29, the next day. So we're treating that as Wednesday. John saw Jesus coming, and this is where he says the famous look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So that would be day two. And then where's the next one? Is it not until 35? Maybe it's not until 35. Then verse 35 says, Then the next day John was there again with two of his disciples, and he says, Again, look, the Lamb of God. And now the disciples catch on. This is probably Andrew, Peter's brother, and probably, well, this is definitely Andrew, Peter's brother, and it's probably also John, the unnamed disciple. So then this is the first disciples who follow Jesus. That's very exciting. And then uh Simon Peter comes into play there, and then verse 43. So what are we on now? The first day was Tuesday. Behold the Lamb of God was Wednesday. Behold the Lamb of God, even harder was Thursday, and now it's Friday. The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. That's 43. So somewhere in here, we've got we've got movement north. It's a little bit confusing as to when exactly Jesus set out from the baptism site, which we don't know for sure where it is, but we talked about some of the guesses. So now we're on to Friday, and then Nathaniel jumps in there on Friday, and Nathaniel is a dude from Cana. So that is an interesting detail because we're just about to turn the page and go to Cana. So by my count, we are three named days in. And if we just count the first day, even it doesn't, though it doesn't say like the next day, because it was the first day of all of the book of John. If we count that as the first day, then we're four days in. So then we turn the page and says to Nathaniel and the others, you're gonna see greater things than this. I'll tell you the truth, you're gonna see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. So I mean that piques the curiosity of you and me, the reader, right? The original audience, right? They're like, well, dang, I mean, it looks like you have prophetic abilities to know things you shouldn't be able to know. You understand the Bible and prophecy really well. We're gonna see greater things than that. Uh, okay, I'm here for it. You know, you picture the meme of Danny McBride snapping out his lawn chair to pull up a seat to watch this. I mean, so okay, what's gonna be the next thing? Well, then we get a three-day jump. On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana. So by my count, and I fully acknowledge that the way I count days might be different than how the Jewish people rendered days back in the day. We broke down the rendering of days and when it turns over to a new day in great detail during the resurrection sequence in Matthew a few years back. I'm not gonna do it here, but by my simplistic rendering, that takes us up to six named accounted for days and a seventh, you know, that was just the day that was going on when we all get started. Okay, so why does this matter? Well, we're talking about two different theories of why on the third day matters. I mean, John is ruthlessly efficient. There aren't a lot of throwaway lines in this book. If there's something on the page of your Bible in the Gospel of John, it's probably pretty intentional. Whereas I'm not gonna lie, if you go over to Mark, I see, despite Mark being the shortest gospel, I see more things that are just kind of literally colorful details, like we sat down on the grass, the green grass. I'm not sure you needed to know that it was green. I'm not sure that Mark, who was working with Peter to relay all the details about Jesus, was like, there's huge theological meaning to the grass being green. We should take a five-week arc and explore the significance of green in the Old Testament and how the original audience would have understood it. Like, I just think Peter was an old dude remembering what things were like when he was a young man with Jesus in Mark, and he throws out some details here and there. Whereas John, it seems like everything on the page matters, and you can be the judge of that as we go along. Maybe you'll think I'm reading between the lines too much on some of this stuff, but John he isn't just telling the story again. That's my argument. The story had already been really well told by Matthew and Mark and Luke. I think John is addressing questions that had developed after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. And I think John was addressing some theological questions, and I think John was trying to make this particularly make sense to an ever-evolving world and Jews whose compass were spinning after the destruction of the temple a few years earlier, and Jews who were scattered around the world, and everybody who'd been influenced by Greek thought and Jewish thought. Like, I really think he's trying to do something theological here. That's why I think the third day thing matters. That's why we're talking about it. Theory number one, once again, is third day here. Well, third day like the resurrection. I don't see the connection very well. However, I do see a connection between the Genesis account and how it opens with a series of days. I'm just I don't do I really need to turn over there. Oh, I've got my old Bible. I don't think I have Genesis one in this Bible. Some of you are gonna be like, why do you have Genesis one? Is that kind some kind of statement about your theology? What do you believe about the beginning of the Bible? Sorry about the way I just impersonated your voice. I made you sound dumb. I don't think you're dumb. No, it's just this is a really old Bible. My uncle gave it to me. He died a long time ago. It's just a very old Bible that's seen a lot of abuse. No, I do have Genesis one. Okay, I'm missing some other stuff, but I got Genesis one. Wait, nope, I'm gonna read you a lot of Genesis one, which means I don't want to I don't want to split the Bible over two episodes here. Okay, I'm gonna read you the Genesis one stuff and we're gonna break it down tomorrow. In doing so, the one that we got to keep an eye out for is you know the third day of creation, because third day, third day, see what's going on there. So we'll pick up with that tomorrow. We'll see what goes on in the first day, the second day, the third day, and we'll see what, if anything, we think John might be nodding to here in John 2.1 when he says, on the third day a wedding took place in Cana. Maybe, you know, we're maybe we're just chasing after nothing here. And maybe John didn't mean anything by it. And I'm overestimating how precise this gospel is. But even if he didn't mean anything by it, and it's just like, no, this is just the timeline. Settle down, Whitman. Even if that's the case, John is still so precise everywhere else that it's worth such little rabbit trails to go and figure out for ourselves whether there's something that we're supposed to be catching here to make sure that we're getting all the richness out of the thing. So we're gonna follow the breadcrumbs to where they lead, which is back to Genesis one, which again is fortunately physically in my Bible. So I'm able to read it to you tomorrow and we'll process it through. All right, sounds good. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.