GOD’S HOUR OF POWER

When Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2), He was giving His disciples — and His Church to come — an illustrated sermon. Our Lord never did anything or spoke any word that wasn’t eternally significant. Everything that Scripture records about Him points to the unchanging nature and workings of God.

Jesus’ “hour” (John 2:4) had to do with something that was happening at the feast. That is, His hour of power came when there was no wine left in the bottles. This happens to us when we are empty of solutions, when all our human efforts are in vain — and only a miracle can solve our problem.

We find this principle at work throughout the Bible: In man’s darkest hour, the Lord has a history of manifesting His power. When we come to our wits’ end, God has already prepared a great work of deliverance on our behalf.

Scripture gives us examples of this principle. Judges 6 finds Israel in a period of awful impoverishment. Year after year, God’s people were rendered helpless by a marauding enemy: the vicious Midianites. When this enemy arrived, God’s people fled to the hills for safety, hiding in caves. Meanwhile their enemy stole their crops and herds and destroyed everything they’d built, leaving Israel completely “without sustenance” or in a spiritual death.

Israel’s impoverished condition continued year after year. Yet it was in this dark hour that God manifested His power on behalf of His people. Indeed, the Lord performed His deliverance by choosing the poorest man from the poorest family in the poorest tribe in Israel: Gideon. His cry reflected the pain of the people of Israel. “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles?” (Judges 6:13).

You are probably familiar with his story. God sent an angel to Gideon and along with three hundred other men, using only trumpets and torches, the men broke the power of the Midianites and Israel was miraculously delivered!

Their hour of darkness became God’s hour of power!