1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. 3 And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” 4 Jesus said to her, “Woman,what does your concern have to do with me?My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”
John 2:1-5 (NKJV)
“Whatever He says to you, do it” and that is our definition of instruction this morning, Mary the mother of Jesus gave us the working definition of instruction in the kingdom, “Whatever He says to you do it”. So instruction is whatever God says to you. Instruction is whateverJesus says to you. If she has just said whatever He says to you and she paused, it would have been confusing but she said Whatever He says to you comma, Do it! That’s when it becomes an instruction.
When it’s an advice, she can say ‘whatever it is He wants to say’ but then you are not compelled to obey, then it is not an instruction. An instruction is whatever He says to youthat you are compelled to obey. And that’s why Mary said in this verse whatever He says to you, do it.So what was she saying to them there? Follow His instruction, do His bidding. So our definition of instruction this morning is whatever He says to you, do it, whatever God says to you’. So instruction, as we have observed this morning is whatever God says to you or whatever Jesus says to you, whatever the Holy Spirit says to you, do it. That is when you have received an instruction.
Let’s go on with John 2 verse 6;
6 Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece.
Now this is where the instruction is coming,
7Jesus said to them “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.
That was the instruction, don’t fill it with soap, don’t fill it with kerosene, fill the waterpot with water. That simple sentence was the instruction. So instructions do not come in a chapter of a book, they come simple as what Jesus said here- that was God’s instruction, ‘Fill the water pot with water’.
Many of us are waiting for God’s instruction to come in the breeze or in an earthquake, ‘that when I want to receive instruction from God, there would be effizy around the instruction. The instruction has to have some level of fearfulness, since God is a fearful God, it has to fearful. The place I am staying has to shake for me to receive God’s instruction’. The instruction is simple and if you count it, it’s in 6 words but that was the instruction.
“Fill the water pot with water”, many of us have journeyed in life neglecting and ignoring the instructions of God because they have come to us in simple forms like this and we feel what is God asking me to do? What is this all about? But the Holy Spirit wants to demystify it to us this morning, making us know that, the instructions of God are not fearful, you don’t have to necessarily hear an earth quake for it to happen. It comes as simple as what Jesus said to the servants here. “fill the water pots with water”
And the Bible says “and they filled them up to the brim” what happened? They obeyed what He asked them to do, they did it. So you could have been given instructions, an instruction could have come your way, what did you do with the instruction? For these servants, they obeyed it. “Fill the water pot with water” and they filled the water pot with water. Simple!
And in verse 8,
8 “And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it.”
So instructions come sequentially, don’t say because God has given me one instruction, that’s it. There is always a follow up on the instruction that God gives you. You will not experience the miracle that God is going to produce if you don’t obey the follow up instruction. You don’t say “all He asked me to do is fill the water pot, and I have filled it, whatever wants to happen after, I don’t want to hear again’. You must be willing to hear Him closely because there is something else He is going to say.
Many of us when we hear the first instruction and we do it, we give up. God said ‘I should do this, I have done it’. We don’t listen, we don’t pay attention and we are not quiet in our hearts to hear the follow up on the instruction. Because God asked you to do A does not mean only A will produce what God intends. There is a B part of that instruction; you need to be careful not to miss it. Listen to God; listen to what He has to say next.
Many of us don’t want to hear what God has to say next, we come to the place of prayer and we hear God say one thing and we jump out and we start running. We are not patient to hear what God has to say next. Instructions does not just come once and for all, there is something we call follow- up instruction.
And God now gave them follow up instruction, Jesus said to them. “Draw some out now” not later, now! “And take it to the master of the feast”. Specific instruction! God will give you a general instruction and a specific instruction. When God gives you a general instruction, don’t stay there, be careful to listen to the specific instruction, because it is the specific instruction that makes the general instruction make sense. They did not know why they were putting water into the water pot, they didn’t understand why they had to fill the water pot with water but they drew out some of it, and they took it.
You will see that every instruction Jesus gave, the Bible made us to understand how they were also responding. So God will not give you an instruction and you will sit down and expect the miraculous, it can’t work. You need to make sure you obey.
John 2 verse 9;
9When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom.
The Bible didn’t say “if” it said “when,” so it was a function of time. For every instruction God gives you, there is always a time between when the instruction is obeyed and when the result materializes, when your miracle actually comes. It said “when the master of the feasthad tasted,” ‘when’ talks about the duration, it talks about the time. It said “When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom.”
10And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”
The miracle that happened at Cana of Galilee happened on the premise of instruction. The miraculous was opened up on the premise of instruction. Jesus said “my time is not yet” but when His instructions were followed the miraculous happened”. Many of us are fasting and praying, many of us are trusting God for one thing or the other, but God is giving us instructions that we are not following and we are praying for miracles. God is not a magician. He is a God of order, He is a God of principles; if you break the principles of God, you will not enjoy the miracles of God. When you obey the principles of God, you will enjoy the miracles of God.
The miracles in the kingdom are embedded in instructions. Many people come into the kingdom, they become born again and they are excited about it and for those who come from the background of traditional medicine and they come into Christ with the mindset of where they are coming from; and they come into Christ and expect the pastor to give them handkerchief, soap, anointing oil, to give them something to apply that will bring about the miracle they used to experience from where they are coming from but that is not so in the kingdom, God produced the miraculous on the premise of instruction. You miss out on instruction, you miss the miraculous.
Don’t say something amazing happened in the life of Mr. Abiola, and you say wow! Mr. Abiola, what did you do, did you get coconut? He said ‘no! I just prayed and God said to me Go now! And I went and it happened’. Many of us find it difficult to understand, you say “you just prayed and God said go and you went and you got it just like that?”And the Bible says “the things of the kingdom, they are foolishness to the people of theworld” because they can’t understand how God will just give you an instruction, and you will obey it and the miraculous happens but that is the way of the kingdom.
God is not a magician, if you are a citizen of this kingdom, you must understand the way of the kingdom to benefit from the kingdom. Here, we don’t use soap, we don’t go and bath, what we hear is the voice of God saying “this is the way, walk in it” and we walk in it and we enter into the miraculous. An instruction obeyed opens the gate to the miraculous. When the servants of Jesus; the disciples, obeyed that simple instruction, the miracle of water turned to wine. Water turned to wine, not because Jesus did abracadabra or placed his hand on anything. He simply gave instruction and it was obeyed and the miracle was birthed.
I want us to see 2 Kings 5, I am sure we are familiar with this, the story of Naaman but I will start from verse 8.
“So it was, when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, "Why have you torn your clothes? Please let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel." Verse 9 Then Naaman went with his horses and chariot, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house. Verse 10 – And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you, and you shall be clean."
2 Kings 5:8-10 (NKJV)
In verse 11, see the reaction of Naaman: “But Naaman became furious, and went away and said, "Indeed, I said to myself, "He will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy”.
Let’s just pause a little bit there. Naaman had a background, we know where he was coming from, he wanted Elisha to come and perform magic, and he didn’t want to obey an instruction. He came with his mindset, with his belief system and he came to meet the man of God; ‘Man of God, I am a General, this is the situation, now I need restoration’.
The funny thing is that Elisha didn’t come to meet Naaman, he sent a messenger and he didn’t send a messenger with a pleasant message, he sent a messenger with an unpleasant message, “Go to the river Jordan and bath seven times”. And Naaman exposed the state of His heart, “I thought he would come down to me and call upon the name of his God and he will do some effizy and then wave his hand and say leprosy disappear and it would disappear”. But what did God instruct Elisha? ‘Anyone that cannot obey an instruction in the kingdom cannot benefit from the kingdom’. That is why the kingdom of God is always likened; the best example is to liken it to how a child receives something.
When you look at children, when you speak to them, when you instruct them, they don’t have a mindset of their own. They believe what you say hook, line and sinker. So you tell them jump up, they don’t ask you why am I jumping up, why do you want me to jump up, except you are having children that have grown away from being toddlers, they are becoming young teenagers, like my daughter she will ask you, why should I jump up? But before then, I know when you tell her to jump up, without thinking twice she starts jumping because of the innocence of her mind. She believes in your authority and she knows you know what you are doing. So if you tell her to jump she will gladly jump. But now she questions everybody’s authority, ‘I am not sure you know what you are saying, why? Tell me first’, that’s what we do to God.
God ask you to do something and we are always questioning. ‘God, why should I wake up by 5:00am, can’t I just wake up by 7:00am? It’s still waking up in the morning’ but there is something about that hour. There is something about that time, there is something about the discipline God wants you to get from that process. But we argue, we don’t want instructions and a child in the kingdom that does not obey or receive instructions is a rebellious child. A rebellious person cannot partake of anything in the kingdom. So it’s either you are an obedient child of God or a rebellious child of God and those that walk in rebellion cannot enter into the miraculous.
Let’s go further from there to verse 12 of 2 Kings 5; it says “Are not the Abanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage”.
He even had problem with the fact that it was river Jordan, that if it was another river, maybe he would have obeyed, but why river Jordan? He said ‘could I not wash in them andbe cleaned?’ So, he turned away and went in rage. What happened to him when he turned away and went in rage, did the leprosy leave him? No! It remained with Him. When we turn away from the instructions of God, our problems remain with us, our challenges remain with us. It’s when we choose to walk on the path of obedience, walk on the path of obeying that instruction, that we step into the miraculous.
How many times have you walked away from God’s instruction? Has it changed your status? Has it changed your life? Enough of refusing to obey! Obey so that you can start walking on the path of the miraculous.
2 Kings 5 verses 13, “And his servants came near and spoke to him, and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, "Wash, and be clean'?" –Thank God he had a wise counselor,
And verse 14, “So he went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean”.
Until he obeyed the instruction that he was given, he remained with his leprosy. Many of us, you have been struggling with God since when you are a child, you think you can argue, you are a lawyer, God will say something, you say your own. Check your life, how has it changed? When you check your life, how many times have you experienced the miraculous? The Bible says “God is not a man that He will lie nor the son of man that He will repent”. When God says something, He sticks to it. Until you do it, He doesn’t change His mind and say okay you know what? Since you have a problem with river Jordan, maybe you should go to river Samaria. No! He will stick to it. You will be the one to bend to His will. He won’t bend for you.
When we say God is an unchangeable God, we are excited about it. He is also unchangeable with His instructions. If you don’t obey it, you will continue to remain in the same class and you will continue to repeat and He will be giving you provisions to remain in that class, you will be there. That is why the Bible says “God cannot be mocked whatsoever a man sows that will he reap”. So if you sow disobedience you will reap it. If you sow obedience you will reap the miraculous. I pray the Lord will help us in the name of Jesus.
I want us to see Proverbs 5. In the kingdom, the instruction of God is life. If you want to experience the life of the kingdom, you live in obedience to God’s instruction.
12 And say: "How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction! 13 I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!
Proverbs 5: 12-13 (NKJV)
If you read from verse one down, you will realize that this story is a rebellious story, it is about somebody that rebelled. He hated instruction, he hated correction and you will see everything that was spoken about His life.
See Proverbs 5.14 “I was on the verge of total ruin, in the midst of the assembly and congregation." – So a man that hates correction, that hates instruction, is at the verge of total ruin, he is on the road to self destruction.
You know how somebody has set him/her self for self destruction. That’s the state of a man or woman that refuses to obey the instructions of God. It’s just a matter time. I love that word “I was at the verge of total ruin.” Don’t think disobeying God will make your life better. It will make it worse. Why not start obeying today? Those subtle instructions, they are your gateways to the miraculous, not the number of days you fast and pray. If you fast and pray and God gives you instruction after your fasting and your prayer and you refused to obey that instruction. You have just done hunger strike. Take it from me, you have decided on your own that I want to lose weight and I know this is the fastest means to lose weight, 7 days fasting and prayer.
When you fast and pray, what are you praying for? Instruction! That’s how God works. He will not come down and do some magic on your head, He will give you an instruction. Now after the fasting and prayer, He has given you that instruction, the golden instruction you have been waiting for, for seven days and you will now say ‘you know what, I will just rubbish this instructions, how can God say I should go and do this. God can be funny oh, I am praying for this, and He is telling me this’.
The disciples of Jesus would have said ‘it is the wine that finished, it is not water, they still have water, it is wine that finished. Usually, you have to get grape to process it, it is wine. Jesus, you are not familiar with it, let us explain it to you. Wine takes a process, you have to get the grapes, you have to thresh the grapes, you have to do a lot of things’ but they didn’t question. Wine finished! Fill the water pot with water! What’s the correlation? When God gives you instruction, sometimes it doesn’t make sense, you won’t be able to correlate it, but trust him. You can’t obey God if you don’t trust him. You have to trust him. If you don’t trust God, you can’t obey Him and you can’t walk in the miraculous.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV)
When you read a Scripture and a particular verse jumps to you “give and it shall be given unto you good measure pressed down shaken together shall men give to your bosom,” don’t say ‘why out of all the verses I read, why is it this one that is coming to my heart, all this thing about money, let me focus’ and you ignore it, you don’t know what God is planning, what God is brewing for you. And He inspires your heart, ‘give a little token to that sister’ and you will say ‘that sister is looking alright’. Maybe you look at sister Bisi this morning and the Holy Spirit says ‘give’ and you will say ‘look at how she is looking, she is looking better than me. Why should I give to her? That instruction looks foolish to me’ but God knows what he is doing and that is why we have to trust God, for instruction in righteousness. If you will obey it, your life will not remain the same again.
And in verse 17, it says the reason why this instruction for righteousness is important is that-the man of God may be complete in instruction. You are complete in instruction. Instruction makes you complete. When you refuse to obey that instruction you become incomplete. “Thoroughly equipped for every good work” so instruction equips you, make you ready. Very important! We must not forget this.
We are asking for the miraculous, the gateway for it is instruction; the instructions obeyed, the instructions followed. Whatever He ask you to do, do it, if you do it, the gateway is opened automatically for you. God was saying in Malachi “bring the tithes and offerings into the store house”, when you do this, check and see “I will open”. So you don’t have to fast and pray. I will open.
In Deuteronomy 28 “obey the Lord your God. Love the Lord your God with the whole of your heart, obey this instructions I am giving you today and this blessings will overtake you and they will follow you”. They will, it is sure, why? because an instruction has been given, and you have obeyed.
Joshua 1:8 says “let this book of the law not depart out of your mouth, meditate on it day and night, observe to do all that is written there in and your way will be prosperous and you will have good success”. Good success and prosperity is premised on the instruction that was given. This book of the law must not depart out of your mouth, meditate on it day and night observing to do all that is written therein. When you observe to do all, then surely, most assuredly your way will be prosperous and you will have good success.
Instruction is the gate way to the miraculous in this kingdom where God is King and you have come to submit to His rulership. You cannot benefit miracles in this kingdom if you don’t obey instructions. Instruction is key. Obey God, love Him and you will start seeing the miracles of God at work in your life. You will start living daily in miracles, you don’t have to pray, it’s not like you have to belabor yourself and start tearing yourself for it to happen. When you obey, God opens the gate way.
