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Jesus changed water into wine at a wedding party
1-2 Later on, after 2 days, Jesus went to a wedding party, where a man and a woman got married. It was in a town called Cana, in Galilee country. And Jesus’s mother and his followers went with him.
3 There was always weak wine to drink at a wedding party, but they used up all that wine. So Jesus’s mother said to him, “They have run out of wine. Can you help them?”
4 Jesus said to her, “Why are you asking me to do that? It is not the right time yet for me to show everyone who I am.”
5 But his mother went to the workers there and said, “Do whatever he tells you to do.”
6 In that place there were 6 stone pots for water. The Jewish people used those pots for their washing ceremonies. Each pot held about 100 litres of water.
7 Jesus said to the workers, “See those pots. Go and fill them up with water.” So they filled them right up to the top with water.
8 Then Jesus told them, “Now put some of it in a cup, and give it to the boss of the party.” So they did what Jesus said.
9 The boss man drank some of it, but it was not water, it was very good wine. He didn’t know where that wine came from, but the workers knew.
Then the boss of the party talked to the man getting married.
10 The boss man said, “At wedding parties, the family usually gives people the best wine first. Then, after they get a bit drunk, the family gives them cheap wine. But you are different. You are giving out the best wine now, at the end of the party.”
11 This was the first powerful thing Jesus did. He did it in Cana, in Galilee country. He did it to show that his power came from God, and his followers believed in him. They believed that he came from God.
12 Then Jesus, and his mother, and his brothers, and his followers, they all left Cana and went down to a town called Capernium, and they stayed there for a few days.
Jesus stopped people selling things in God’s ceremony house
13 Later on, it was nearly time for the Jewish ceremony called Passover, so Jesus and his followers went to Jerusalem city for that ceremony.
14 God’s ceremony house was in Jerusalem, and people had to kill animals there and burn them to show respect to God, and they had to pay tax money to the men that look after God’s house. Jesus went into the yard of God’s ceremony house, and he found men there selling cows, and bulls, and sheep, and pigeons. And there were men there that changed the money of other countries into Jewish money so that people could pay that tax. You see, those men that sold things and changed money, they did that to get some money for themselves.
15 Jesus saw them doing that. So he made a whip out of some rope and used it to hunt those men and animals out of the yard. He went to the men that changed the money and pushed their tables over. All their money went everywhere on the ground.
16 And Jesus went to the men that sold pigeons, and he shouted, “Get those birds out of here. This is my father’s house. Stop turning it into a shop.”
17 Jesus’s followers saw him do that, and they remembered that a long time ago God told one of his men to write this in God’s book,
“I really love God’s house. I love it so much that I will do anything to look after it.”
Then they knew that God’s man wrote that about Jesus.
18 But the Jewish leaders got angry. They said to Jesus, “Hey, you can’t do that. If you think you can, then do something powerful, to show us that God told you to hunt those men out of God’s ceremony house.”
19 Jesus said to them, “If you knock down this house of God, I will build it again in 3 days.”
20 The Jewish leaders said, “What? It took a lot of people 46 years to build this ceremony house. Do you think you can build it again in 3 days?”
21 But Jesus wasn’t talking about God’s ceremony house. He was talking about his own body.
22 Later on, Jesus died, and he was dead for 2 nights, then on the 3rd day he came alive again. Then his followers remembered those words that Jesus said. And they believed his words and the messages in God’s book about him.
Jesus knows what people are like
23 While Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover ceremony, the people there saw him do powerful things, and lots of them believed in him.
24-25 But Jesus knew everything about all people. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what people are like. And he knew that those people only believed in him after they saw him do powerful things, and that they might stop believing in him soon. So Jesus didn’t trust them.