They get to the base of Sinai. Have you ever seen Mount Sinai? It's quite large. God calls Moses up the mountain. It's about a three and a half, four hour walk. God calls Moses up the mountain. Moses walks up there; God says: oh, I forgot to tell you to bring Aaron, go back down and get him - which that would have been an interesting conversation. Moses could have said: You're God, can't You like, you know, beam him up here? Can you pull some Obi-Wan Kenobi thing and just - I mean that's a long walk. Anyway, so he walks back down to get Aaron, and what does he find? He finds that they have already made a gold cow; and he gets so angry, he beats the gold cow into powder. He takes the gold powder, and he throws it into the water coming out of the rock, and what does he make them do? He makes them drink it for the remission of their sins. When he put the gold into the water, what happened? It turned red - hope flows through suffering.
Think about when a baby is born. A woman goes into labour, into suffering, and what mixes together? Blood and water. When blood and water mix together, no matter how bad the suffering is, there is a bundle of joy at the end of it. The imagery is endless. Later there's a rabbi comes along. People are wondering if he's the one. People are wondering: wait a minute, is this the one? He shows up - now there's a law in Hebrew Hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is just a way of interpreting literature, a way of interpreting life, so there's a law and it's called the Law of First Mention. What it simply says is that the first time something's mentioned, defines all other mentions of it; and so it says that He shows up at a wedding to perform His first miracle. So His first miracle is going to define the purpose of all the other miracles. He shows up to do His first miracle; what was His first miracle? He turned all the water into wine. What was His purpose? What was His point? Was His main point to provide adult beverages for the party? No! His main point was to say to a group of people: you were living in suffering, hope is on the way, I am here now. Hope flows through suffering.
Three years later, they kill Him! They kill Him, and at the end of His life they stick a spear in His side. Why? Because He was the Passover lamb, but what came out? Blood and water; so at the foot of the cross is a steady flow of blood and water. What does that mean? At the foot of the cross, it's more than about going to heaven one day. It's also about hope flowing through whatever suffering you're going through. If you're in the wilderness, hope flows through suffering. If you're being rejected, hope flows through suffering. If you're going through a divorce, hope flows through suffering, at the foot of the cross. If everything in your life seems to be in turmoil, hope flows through suffering. If you don't know what the next assignment from God holds, hope flows through suffering. If you don't know where you're at, if you're completely lost inside, hope flows through suffering.
One of the messages of the cross is this: you don't have to wait to go to heaven one day. The message of the cross is that wherever you are, the water's turning red - hope flows through suffering. Bring yourself to the foot of the cross, and hope can flow in whatever situation you have.
The next image is this. It's called the Folded Napkin. Let me read this from John 20:6-7. They had buried Him in a tomb, and so people came to check on Him. John 20:6-7 it says: then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb, and he saw the strips of linen lying there. Then it makes an extra point: as well as the face cloth that had been around His head, and the cloth was folded by itself, separate from the linen. Now this is huge imagery, huge Hebrew imagery.
In First Century Hebrew culture, if you invited me to your house for dinner and I came there, at the end of our night you would know whether I wanted to come back or not, based on this. At the end of our night, when I'm done, I would take my facecloth, and I would scrunch it. I would fold it up, scrunch it like this, and then I would place it on top of the plate; so that when you came around and collected the plates, you would see a scrunched napkin. It would say: hey, he wants to come back, he enjoyed his time here. He wants to continue business with us, whatever your purpose was. But if I did not want to have any more business with you, I would actually take the time to neatly crease and fold my napkin, and I would lay it to the side of the plate, separate from everything else; so that when you came around and picked up the plates, you would see the folded napkin, and you would know he has no interest in ever doing business with us ever again. His business with us is now done, and it was my way of telling you that, without being confrontational - without being confrontational.