One For Israel

Guest (Male): Yeshua chose this place to reveal himself.

Danny Herman: This was discovered. To think that we actually found one of the six pots mentioned in the miracle, amazing.

Dr. Seth Postell: Whatever God did in the past becomes a picture of what God's going to do in the future, but even better.

Guest (Male): There is power in understanding the miracle.

Dr. Erez Soref: I am Dr. Erez Soref. I was born and raised in the heart of Israel, but I never heard the Gospel message until, on a journey abroad, my eyes were opened to the Jewish Messiah.

From that point, my life has been dedicated to bringing this Gospel back to my people Israel, equipping them to reach Israel and the world. Together as Jews and Gentiles, we are one in Messiah, One For Israel.

Guest (Male): This is Kfar Kana, Cana of Galilee, the city where Yeshua performed his first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding. John wrote that what Yeshua did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory.

Yeshua chose this place and this occasion, a wedding, to reveal himself. The foundation of his miraculous ministry started at a wedding, and this beautiful church was dedicated to commemorate that event. But modern excavations have revealed that this church was built on the foundations of an older Jewish synagogue.

Like this church, the bricks of our faith were laid on the floor of the Jewish land and the Jewish faith. As Paul said, the nations are grafted into the olive tree of Israel's promise. The root of our faith is here, in this land, and among my people, Israel.

This church is a powerful image: a Christian church with a Jewish synagogue as the ground floor. And down here, a Jewish man performed a miracle at a Jewish wedding. In the same way, the ground floor of our Christian faith today is the miracle of Israel: the covenants, the Hebrew scriptures, the hope in a Jewish Messiah.

These two structures in one represent two people, Jews and Gentiles, brought together as one in Messiah. This isn't just history. This is our shared inheritance. This isn't just a place. This is the homeland of your faith. And today, God wants to awaken something new inside of you as he is bringing awakening to this land.

I think it's important to ask the question: Why Israel? Why did God choose this land and this people to plant the seed of this faith? Why choose Abraham? Why this land over any other? Why us Jews?

The Bible began in Hebrew. Every writer was Jewish. Yeshua is Jewish. It was Jewish believers that took his good news and the revelation of Israel's God out to the nations. But did God choose Israel because we were better than every other nation?

Isaiah 44:23 says, "The Lord has redeemed Jacob, he displays his glory in Israel." Israel is the display case, the vehicle that God chooses to show his glory, to show what he is doing with the world and with history.

Just as Yeshua chose a wedding to begin displaying his glory, God chose Israel: the nation, the people, and the land. Through Israel, he demonstrates his character, his love, and the redemption story extended to all nations.

We're going to look at how God's grace for Israel is connected to God's eternal plan from ancient times until this day. Join me as we uncover how the very existence of Israel today highlights the endurance of God's faithfulness in your life. How Israel's redemption proves that God is still working in you, in your family, and in your nation.

Why choose Israel? Not because of its greatness, because God chooses the not-great to display his great glory. Just like Yeshua's first miracle at a wedding when he turned water into wine in order to reveal his glory.

Israel's story—exile and return, judgment and mercy—reveals God's covenant love and faithfulness. God likes to use the little to affect the big. He uses the ordinary to do the extraordinary. He uses common water to make the best wine.

That's how you see how powerful he really is. He stands out as the only one that could have done it. It must be a miracle. God delights in doing the impossible, in choosing and using an unlikely nation to build his unshakable kingdom.

Think a minute about Yeshua's groundbreaking wedding miracle. There were six large stone jars used for Jewish ritual cleansing, and Yeshua told the servants to fill them with water. These jars may have been used to fill a mikveh, a Jewish immersion bath for cleansing away ritual impurity.

Even today before a Jewish wedding, the bride is immersed in a mikveh, a symbol of purification, of leaving behind the old life and entering into a new union.

The servants filled the jars with water, but when they drew it out and gave some to the banquet master, it had become wine, very fine wine, and he did not know where it came from. In the same way today, billions around the world have tasted the joy of salvation through Yeshua.

They have come through the waters of baptism and found new birth. They have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Yet many, just like the banquet master, enjoy the wine without realizing the miracle behind it. They don't know where it came from.

Some might say, "Why does it matter where it came from? I know Jesus, that's enough." And yet, to taste the wine is wonderful, but to know where it came from is to understand the depth of the miracle.

If you told me that you've been born again for thirty years, I would praise God. But if you shared your testimony, maybe how God delivered you from addictions or maybe how he restored your marriage, not only would I praise God more, but your story carries power. It gives opportunity for others to believe, to say yes to this Jesus and to drink for themselves.

There is joy in the wine, but there is power in understanding the miracle. So why Israel? Why this little strip of land? Why our people?

Because just like the water to wine, God has worked a miracle through something small and seemingly insignificant, and through it, brought his joy and salvation to the entire world.

Israel is not just part of the story. Israel is at the center of the miracle. And when God does a miracle this big, he invites you not only to taste but to understand. The banquet master enjoyed the wine, but the servants knew where it came from and they witnessed the power of God.

This is how Messiah chose to reveal himself: at a wedding. Jewish weddings in Yeshua's day weren't just a ceremony and a reception with cake. They were full-blown celebrations lasting seven days, complete with food, wine, dancing, and singing—a week-long festival of joy.

A groom would save for years, not just to provide for his bride, but to provide enough for everyone invited to this massive feast. If wine ran out too early, it wasn't just a party foul.

Middle Eastern culture demanded that the host care for every need, every want of their guests during their wedding week. It was an insult if you failed to do this, inexcusable if you didn't save enough or prepare enough for your guests on your wedding week. It would mean public humiliation and lasting shame on the family.

At this wedding in Cana, the wine ran out. What should have been a joyful union turned into shame. But Yeshua's mother, Mary, looked to Yeshua in hope. Maybe somehow he could take away the shame.

There's something powerful here. Mary's name in Hebrew is Miriam, and Cana literally means the place of reeds. Do you remember in the book of Exodus what a different Miriam did among the reeds of the Nile?

She looked after Moses in the midst of Israel's great shame at that time. As slaves in Egypt, there was a hope in Moses. When thousands of Hebrew boys had been killed in the Nile, their blood spilled in the water, Moses rose up, alive, as a deliverer.

When Moses grew up, he came to confront Pharaoh, and he came with his first sign, turning the water of the Nile into blood so that there would be nothing to drink. It was a sign of judgment for the Hebrew blood spilled in the water.

And it was also a sign where God began to remove the shame from Israel and bring them to freedom. Yeshua came as the greater Moses, the greater deliverer. His first sign wasn't water into blood; it was water into wine.

Moses took away the drink; Yeshua provided more to drink, better than before. Through Moses, God brought judgment that was well-deserved. But through Yeshua, he brings joy, restoration, and revival.

The wedding is back on. He has taken away the shame. Through Moses came the judgment on Egypt; through Yeshua comes grace. To get some insight on ancient Cana, we are talking today with archaeologist Danny "the Digger" Herman.

Danny Herman: We are not too far from Nazareth in the Lower Galilee mountains in a site whose Arabic name is Kafr Kanna. And the last part of it seems to be preserving a site mentioned in the New Testament in the Gospel of John, Cana in the Galilee.

That is the site where Jesus performed the first miracle, the first recorded miracle of turning water into wine during a wedding. Behind me is a very impressive church built in the late 19th century. Archaeological digs conducted beneath it have found layers from the Middle Ages, from the Byzantine period, and even from the first century.

The New Testament, sadly, nor the Old Testament, never provide GPS coordinates. We never know 100 percent for sure where those events recorded in the scripture actually took place. But we have science. We have the scientific research of geography, of preservation of place names, and archaeology.

I think this is still the best location. First of all, we are in a site whose name to this day is preserving the name Cana. The text in the Gospel of John says Cana in the Galilee. We are also not too far from Nazareth.

It makes sense that Jesus would have been attending a wedding where there was maybe family ties. Remember, it wasn't just him; it was his mother, it was the disciples. They were all invited. So it must have been in a reasonable proximity.

The excavations uncovered here evidence of an ancient not just church, but also a synagogue, proving Jewish presence. Although that synagogue is not from the first century, it's from a slightly later period, but synagogues tend to be always in the same spot.

One of my favorite parts of visiting the Church of Cana is the fact that beneath this living church, one can see underground here an ancient inscription in Aramaic dated to the fourth century, thanking Yose and his sons for donating money to a synagogue.

Here's the English translation of the Aramaic inscription: "Honored be the memory of Yose, son of Tanhum, son of Buta, and his sons who made this mosaic. May it be a blessing for them. Amen." A clear indication that Jews lived here, had a prospering Jewish village that could donate money to a synagogue 300 years after the time of Jesus.

We are now inside the complex of the church in an area where they deliberately left the archaeological work here exposed so visitors can see what preceded the modern building that exists here today. There was a medieval structure, possibly a church, on top of another building that replaced a fourth-century Jewish synagogue.

Here one can see how a column of that synagogue was later recycled into the medieval structure. In the same way, you could argue that the fourth-century synagogue was replacing a first-century Jewish synagogue or other community center, a place where weddings could have been conducted.

Now it gets even better. This area is right beneath the church, and it was excavated in 1997, and this was discovered. This is a big stone vat. The New Testament tells us that the water that Jesus turned into wine were kept in six big stone jars, and one cannot rule out the possibility that the original use of this very vat was as a water container.

That is mind-boggling to think that we actually found one of the six pots mentioned in the miracle. Amazing. The church today operates mostly as a pilgrimage destination. The church actually offers the service of renewal of the vows, and the local community even conducts actual weddings here.

It's very moving for a Christian to come here and get married at the same village where Jesus performed the miracle, or to just come here as a tourist and renew your vows with your wife where Jesus originally connected two people by vows in a wedding.

Think about this: Jesus turns living water into wine, and here is the site, alive and kicking, and people are still coming here for weddings. The followers of the Messiah are here also 2,000 years later. That sends a message: the faith in the Lord is something that will continue and is alive with us to this day.

Guest (Male): This was the first sign where Yeshua revealed his glory, showing that he had not come only to take away the shame at the wedding, but to take away the shame of Israel and to take away our shame today.

He was bringing about a reversal. And reversals are there to point to Yeshua being revealed. Would you like to know how to pray into this end-time awakening of Yeshua in Israel?

Get our 31-day prayer guide for yourself or for groups by visiting oneforisrael.org/pray. Get an understanding and the information on how to pray in alignment with what God is doing right here, right now.

When Yeshua turned the water to wine, this was not just the first miracle that he performed in his ministry. It was the first public miracle that anyone had performed in Israel for hundreds of years. So what Yeshua does right at the start is key to understanding what Yeshua is doing overall.

This miracle gives us a glimpse into how God is renewing and redeeming the story and purpose of Israel and your life. Why did Yeshua perform this first sign at a wedding? Why not at the Temple or at a prayer meeting? Because the wedding points to God's relentless love for and unyielding faithfulness towards his people. To see what I mean, let's look back at an astounding prophecy.

Hundreds of years before Yeshua, Israel was a much different place. Immorality and idolatry were rampant in the land. Prophets would come with messages from God, preaching repentance or judgment if they refused to repent.

One of those prophets was Jeremiah. A unique phrase Jeremiah often used in his prophecies was that God would bring an end to the voices of the bride and bridegroom. The most joyful moment, a wedding, would disappear from the land of Israel if they didn't repent.

Israel would be taken captive by another nation. One of the times Jeremiah mentioned this, he described God's judgment as the wine of God's wrath that would make first Israel and then the nations stumble and fall in drunkenness.

Israel's captivity, the absence of joy and weddings, and the whole world drunk on the Lord's wrath. But even in Jeremiah's warnings, there was another promise. Not just judgment, but redemption. After silence, joy.

In Jeremiah 33, he reversed his familiar phrase, now proclaiming that at a future time, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom. And these things would be signs of an even greater miracle.

A few verses later he says, "In those days and at that time, I will make a righteous branch sprout from David's line." Jewish teaching has long recognized that the Branch is a title for the Messiah being revealed. And when the voices of the bride and bridegroom are heard once again in the land, that's when the Messiah would be revealed.

Where was Yeshua's first sign? At a wedding, right here in Cana, where he turned water into wine. Not the wine of judgment, but the wine of joy. As John said, this was the first of the signs by which he revealed his glory.

God was showing signs of restoration, of reversal, and this is the moment the Messiah was revealed. Reversals in Israel are signs that point to the revealing of the Messiah.

God has always been in the business of restoring and reversing. We see big reversals in key points of scripture: exile then return, silence then voices. And when these reversals are happening in Israel, they're signs of our Messiah being revealed to his people.

Reversals lead to revelation. And what do we see in Israel in our day? Today we have Dr. Seth Postell to discuss that pattern in scripture and in modern times. Hi Seth, thank you so much for sitting with me today.

We want to talk about reversals and escalations in Israel both in biblical times and today. And I particularly think of the prophet Jeremiah, prophesied for 40 years, and one of the judgment prophecies was there will not be a sound of bridegroom and a bride, but then it changed.

Dr. Seth Postell: I think that the whole theme of reversals goes across the scriptures. Studying the book of Esther, the book of Esther's all about reversals. It's really an amazing story of how God reverses all the plots that Haman had plotted against our people.

Mordecai was supposed to be crucified, but God reversed the story in such a way that the enemy was destroyed, and we go from terrible bitterness to great rejoicing. On the theme of escalation, what's really beautiful is that whatever God did that was really good for us in the past becomes a picture of what God's going to do in the future, but even better.

The Exodus, and so God comes and he fights against the Egyptians, he fights on behalf of our people, and he splits the sea for them. And they come out of Egypt with the riches and the treasures of Egypt.

Well, if you look at Zechariah 14, when the Lord comes to fight for us, the Messiah, and he stands on the Mount of Olives, it says that the Mount of Olives splits in two for the people to part through. So that's a new Exodus, but it's an even greater Exodus because at that point the Messiah establishes his kingdom.

We are a people that God constantly reverses our situation, turns things around, or gives us far better than he already gave us in the past. I think to me one of the greatest modern reversals is three years after the Holocaust.

I mean, how do you explain three years after the Holocaust? We lost six million of our people, we had nothing, and God out of the ashes raises up a nation. It was a resurrection from the dead.

If anybody ever sought evidence that the God of Israel is a real God, the re-establishment of the State of Israel is one of the greatest miracles of all times. But again, it's a reversal. I think about my immigration. I had never been to Israel up until I was 22 years old.

I came to Israel and I'd heard plenty of things. And just to see this incredible thriving country, I couldn't stop weeping. It was just this overwhelming sense that I could be a part of a modern miracle. The thought of even being able to communicate and think and talk in Hebrew, I don't ever take that for granted because I realize it's a gift.

It's something that God gave to our people, and it just again evidenced that the God of Israel is a real God. He's a true God, and he's a faithful God.

Guest (Male): Soon our book "Walking the Walls with Nehemiah" is going to come out. We hope it's going to be a blessing to many. Now among the different things we discuss in the book—leadership lessons and things we can learn in terms of character—we also look at how the exiles that came back from the first temple diaspora in Nehemiah's time had built the wall that was the basis for the population of the city of Jerusalem and ultimately the land of Israel, and eventually became the background for the Messiah's first coming to Jerusalem and the land and the world.

But now we're living in a period where we get to be part of this miracle, as you called it, of God gathering the Jewish people back to this land. The parallel would be, or the escalation would be, a preparation for the return of the Messiah the second time.

Dr. Seth Postell: Actually it's really interesting because if you think about the escalation here, and Paul actually touches on this. He talks about what a blessing to the world that the Messiah came the first time, the first return from exile, and then a couple hundred years later the Messiah was born.

How much greater a blessing will it be after this second return when the Messiah comes again? We're looking at a time of incredible escalation and this expectation of the Lord's return.

I think to the extent that we see that anti-Semitism growing and the hatred growing, I think to that extent our expectation rises that God's going to do something soon and very soon.

Guest (Male): We're waiting for the revealing of the Messiah the second time. We often cry out for God to reverse impossible situations: our finances, our children's hearts, our health. I'm personally crying out to God for my unbelieving family.

God loves to answer these prayers. I encourage you: when he does perform a miracle in your life, let it point you back to Yeshua. Don't just take the blessing and move on. Let the divine reversals actually awaken your heart and reveal Messiah more clearly in your life.

Yeshua's first sign at the wedding also points to the fact that Yeshua himself is the bridegroom. Jeremiah prophesied that the voices of the bride and bridegroom would one day return to Israel.

John the Baptist declared, "I am full of joy when I hear the bridegroom's voice." He heard the voice of Yeshua, Israel's true bridegroom. Next time, we will look at this idea of Israel being married to the Lord himself and how it relates to the way you experience the immeasurable love of God in your life. Join us as we continue to ask the question: Why Israel?