The hour of God's power

When Jesus changed water into wine at Cana's wedding (John 2), He gave His disciples - to His Church to come - an illustrated sermon. Our Lord never does anything and utters no word that has no eternal meaning. All that Scripture tells us about Him points to His nature and His works that do not change.

The "hour" of Jesus (John 2: 4) concerned something that was happening during the feast. The hour of His power came when there was no more wine in the bottles. It happens to us when we have no solutions, when all our human efforts are in vain - and only a miracle can solve our problem.

We see this principle at work throughout the Bible : it is in the darkest hours of human history that we see the Lord manifesting His power. When we have come to the end of all that we could do, God has already prepared a great work of deliverance for us.

Scripture gives us examples of this principle. Chapter 6 of the Book of Judges is a period of terrible poverty. Year after year, the people of God were powerless before the intrusions of an enemy: the vicious Madianites. When this enemy arrived, the people of God fled in the hills for their salvation, hiding in caves. Meanwhile, their enemy stole their crops and their herds and destroyed everything they had built, leaving Israel "without subsistence" or in a spiritual state of death.

This situation of poverty has continued for Israel year after year. But it was in this dark hour that God manifested His power for His people. Indeed, the Lord has fulfilled His deliverance by choosing the poorest man, from the poorest family, in the poorest tribe of Israel : Gideon. His cry reflected the suffering of the people of Israel : "Ah! My lord, if the LORD is with us, why have all these things happened to us ? And where are all these prodigies that our fathers have told us ?" (Judges 6:13)

You certainly know the rest of this story. God sent an angel to Gideon and, with three hundred men, using only trumpets and torches, these men broke the power of the Madianites and Israel was miraculously delivered !

Their dark hour has become the hour of the power of God !

David Wikerson