So Jesus didn't turn water into wine at a wedding?
We are given drink as a gift. Like other gifts it is up to us to use it responsibly. Abuse of any gift is a sin.
In English, we generally reserve the word "wine" to refer to alcoholic beverage wine. But that constraint is not so in Biblical Hebrew/Aramaic or Greek. There the hebrew word "yayin" = wine (sound it out) refers to pressed grape juice, either fermented or unfermented. The same is so for the Greek word oinos = wine (sounds alike) which could be either.
So when you read of wine in the Bible, you have to look at the context to see if it refers to alcoholic wine. If you can't tell from context, make no assumptions. It could be either.
At Cana, it is difficult to imagine that Jesus would attend an event that would turn out to be a drunken party. Nor would one think that He would hold this out to his disciples to be one which He could approve.
In this case, the banquet ran out of the social beverage, and His mother asked Him to do something about it. Now get this: He asked the servants to fill up some stone containers with water. They were not ceramic pots. Jews used the stone jars for water, because in their rituals, water that was stored in stone would be considered "living water," that is, like rain water or freshly drawn stream waster. Well water was not "living water"--but if it was placed in stone containers, it could then be considered "living water" and fit for religious use. Normally drinking water would be stored in ceramic pots, inasmuch as they were plentiful as compared to vessels created from stone, and used for special purposes.
Therefore, when Jesus transformed this water into grape juice, the wine would then be OK if it was as new wine, unfermented. If he had made it alcoholic wine, it would be in religious vessels not ever used for this purpose!
Now let me tell you this: God never gave us alcoholic drink as a gift. Normally, fresh grape juice (or apple juice or other fruit juice) when left open to the air will quickly start to ferment, and open to the air, it will soon turn to vinegar and taste bad. Wine can only be made by placing the juice in a closed, sealable container, not letting any air come in, and fermenting the juice anaerobically. Thus it is an invention of man, not a process that God ever tells us to conduct. And its product, alcoholic beverage, is a tool of Satan's children, wordlings, and accrues to his purposes, not God's. Read through Proverbs, and see what the Holy Ghost has to say about alcoholic beverages.
As a further note, "strong drink" in the Bible is not brandy or whiskey or cognac. It is beer or mead (made from honey) or some such non-grape or non-fruit fermentations. Egyptians drank a lot of beer, and I suppose Israelites lerned of it in their 430-year stay there. Distillation of alcohol was not discovered until about AD 700-800, and thus whiskey/rum/cognac type fluids were not a part of the Biblical history. Again. distillationof drink products is a devilish man-made invention, and its products are certainly not gifts from God.
Who is it that put it in your head that alcoholic beverages are gifts from God???