"Who are you, Lord? Why does
God love even me? Why does Grace seem so arbitrary in that some are healed and
some are not? Why Is There Suffering? Just What Is Servant Leadership Anyway?
God's Timing! Why Does He Make Us Wait? These
are questions we have dealt with in the last several weeks. Along the way we
have been helped to answer these questions or at least talk about them through
encounters with Jesus and the people who encountered him as recorded in the
Bible. In today’s encounter, Jesus has apparently planned a very special
encounter between him and his disciples and Moses and Elijah. This gives us
another look at just who Jesus is and helps us believe that we should trust
what we have been learning about in the Bible. So we return to the question, “Who
are you Lord?” for another perspective.
As we begin I want to share a smaller question with you. The Transfiguration
event is one of the five great milestones noted in the life of Christ, along
with Baptism, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. So, why are there so
few hymns about the Transfiguration? I found only three or four in our red
hymnal. Even in the topical indexes of other hymnals there is often no topic
for transfiguration. And if you look at the table of contents in the front of
our red hymnal, you can see that the transfiguration is not even mentioned.
It’s just included under “Life and Ministry of Jesus.” That’s where we find
hymn #172. It seems like the Transfiguration is not getting enough credit for
being one the big events. But I think it should! God made sure it was mentioned
in three out of four gospels! And Peter mentioned it again in one of his
epistles. So it must be important!
So I wonder why the church has paid so little attention to the transfiguration.
Is it just because it was really a private meeting between Jesus, Moses, Elijah
and Jesus’ three favorite disciples? It may have been private at the time, but
a meeting with two important figures from Israel’s past, met as real people and
not as ghosts, seen by the disciples to be alive and recognizable, is no small
matter at all! But even the amazing appearance of Moses and Elijah pales in comparison
to the glorification of Jesus. As he is robed in light, it is as if he steps
for a moment back into his royal vestments of the heavenly kingdom from whence
he came. This event gives us an important glimpse into the true identity of
Jesus!
To set the scene, he takes three of his disciples up a mountain for a prayer
meeting. Apparently Jesus did all the praying, because our text says that the
disciples were very sleepy. And let’s be honest, I don’t know for sure how the
disciples prayed, but in our day we all bow our heads and close our eyes. Isn’t
that just what happens naturally anyway when you are sleepy? Isn’t that exactly
what you would do if you wanted to
fall asleep in your chair? I will say this. Paying is hard. It is work, and
many people fall asleep when they are trying to pray. Don’t deny it! Jesus must
have prayed for quite a while before Moses and Elijah appeared. It takes at
least a little time to nod off, especially when you’re trying to stay awake.
These are Jesus’ top three guys and they can’t hang in there while Jesus prays.
Was he boring? I can’t imagine that! But then again these guys were with Jesus
24/7. Maybe they knew all his prayers. Maybe they were exhausted from the
rigors of ministry and the long climb up this mountain. Whatever the real
explanation, they slept through half of a beautiful mountain top experience!
Our text says that as Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed,
and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. This mountain became
the meeting place for the temporal and the eternal, with Jesus himself as the
bridge. I know I would have stayed awake if that happened before I fell asleep!
I would have been staring! And squinting! And definitely wondering what was
happening to Jesus! Maybe I would have looked around for a fire extinguisher! But
the disciples were sleeping at the time.
Next two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with
Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to
fulfillment at Jerusalem. Why these two men. Who are they compared to Jesus?
And how does their appearance help us know who Jesus really is? Moses as you all
know, was a great leader in Israel. He is the one to whom God talked at the
burning bush. He is the one God sent back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and let
him in on God’s plan to show the world who’s the boss. That word for departure,
speaking of Jesus’ departure, is the same Greek word used for Exodus. Moses led
the Exodus out of Egypt, and now Jesus was about to lead all his followers in
an exodus out of sin and darkness!
Moses is the one who went up the fiery mountain to talk with God and receive
the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Covenant that would establish God’s
rule over his chosen people. He is the prophet who stands for the Law of God
that Jesus has come to fulfill. He was a very important prophet indeed and
stands in, not just for himself, but also represents the earliest stages of
Israel’s history.
Notice too that now, with Jesus, Moses is standing in the Promised Land, the
place he was not allowed to enter after the 40 years in the wilderness because
of his own disobedience. God, in his grace is now gracious to Moses and honors
him by sending him to speak with Jesus about the ultimate plan of deliverance.
Moses is the one who taught the people about the Passover Lamb and Jesus IS the
Passover Lamb!
Then Elijah. He was also familiar with God’s holy fire. He was taken up into
heaven in a chariot of fire at the end of a long and distinguished career as
God’s prophet near the end of Israel’s existence as an independent nation. So
now Elijah has come, as the prophecy said he would come before the Messiah
begins his reign. Elijah stands for all the prophets whose prophetic words are
fulfilled in Jesus. The Law and The Prophets are personified in these two great
men who have come to speak with him who is the fulfillment of everything they
had ever been inspired to say or hope for. It is a glorious moment for Jesus,
and a thrilling honor for them, these mere men, to be standing there with
Jesus, the Son of God, the incarnate deity!
The sleepy disciples begin to awake and realize what they are looking at. What
a sight it must have been! They recognized two people they had never met
before. They knew Moses and Elijah, on sight apparently, and that says
something about how we shall all be perfectly known when we are living in our
resurrection bodies. All three of them were glowing with the holy light that
shone around them, or came from them, all radiant with the glory of God. We get
a glimpse into the glories in which we will live in our resurrection bodies. We
also see that God is indeed the God of the living. Moses and Elijah are alive
and well even though they passed from this earth centuries before! This was a
momentous occasion indeed worthy of remembrance, worthy of permanence.
And the disciples had almost missed it. According to Luke they were very
sleepy. They became fully awake just in time to see that the two famous men
were leaving Jesus. Peter, always the quick thinker tried to stall for time. He
said, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one
for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He tried to keep them from leaving!
But this was more than mere hospitality. He wanted to put up booths to enshrine
them all. Luke comments, “He did not know what he was saying.” This should not
puzzle us. We just have to ask, did Peter ever really check on what he was
about to say before it spilled out?
But it wasn’t totally meaningless. The word for booths, or shelters, that Peter
used was from the feast of booths, the little tabernacles that were put up
annually to commemorate the Israelites’ wilderness journey and God’s miraculous
provision through it all. It is also the same word used for the tabernacle of
the wilderness. Peter saw these glorious historical figures and Jesus standing
with them, his ministry and authority validated by this marvelous appearance, a
sign that God was truly with them in a way that he hadn’t been since the days
of Moses and Peter simply wanted to capture and keep it that way.
Just one problem. He was treating all three men as equals. God himself
immediately intervened to correct Peter. While he was speaking, a cloud
appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A
voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen
to him.”
In Deuteronomy 18:15 Moses had said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a
prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to
him.” Jesus is that prophet and in our text today God himself confirms it when
he repeats those words here: “Listen to him.” These are also the same words
that God spoke on the day that Jesus was baptized, “Listen to Him!” Listen to
Jesus rather than Moses! Moses was the most important spokesman for God in
Israel’s history. He was, that is, until Jesus came along. Naturally and
appropriately it would take a lot for anyone in Israel to become more important
than Moses. And that is exactly what God did in Jesus, more than anyone could
ever ask or imagine.
So God himself testifies again here that Jesus is his special Son. And we see
later how it is that this Jesus, the one and only Son of God, died on a cross
to show his love for all of us, and provide for the forgiveness of sins. There
is no one else like him. No other religion has anything that comes even close
to the loving and gracious kind of God who turns out to be the one and only God
of the universe and who has revealed himself perfectly in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
And later on, when in the Holy Spirit Peter was able to talk about this event
correctly he said in his second Epistle: “We did not follow cleverly devised
stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power,
but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God
the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is
my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice
that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”
Who is Jesus? He is God! The God whose radiant glory burns with a fiery brightness
that no one can stand up to without the power of God in him. The fullness of
the brightness of the glory of God is even more brilliant than the sun that
hangs in the center of our solar system. We all know that the sun is a terrific
gift. We love sunny days. We love walking in the sunshine and soaking it up.
But we love the sun at a distance and with protection. Even here, 83 million
miles away, it is possible to get too much sun and get sunburn, skin cancer or
eve die from heat stroke or over exposure. Compare the fiery brilliance of the
sun with the glory of God.
Exodus 24:17 says, “To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a
consuming fire on top of the mountain.” Ex. 33:18-20 says, “Then Moses said,
“Now show me your glory. And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to
pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. But,” he said, “You cannot see my face, for no one may
see me and live.” That was then about a thousand years before, and now here was
Moses, standing face to face with God in Christ!
In Deuteronomy 5:24, the people say, “The Lord our God has shown us his glory
and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen
that a person can live even if God speaks with them.” This clearly implies that
the people believed God’s glory to be something fierce and difficult to
survive, like getting too close to the sun.
I think in many ways we worship God at a distance. We feel it isn’t safe to get
too close. But Jesus has made it possible for us to draw near to God. So near
in fact that salvation is like being able to walk on the surface of the sun in
the sky and enjoy it. We will not be burned up in the fire of God’s holy glory
if we are found in Christ, our shield and defender!
And now folks here he is, the one, the only glorified human being, God in the
flesh, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the
world! Glorious and majestic in all his radiant glory! Believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will be saved!
God love even me? Why does Grace seem so arbitrary in that some are healed and
some are not? Why Is There Suffering? Just What Is Servant Leadership Anyway?
God's Timing! Why Does He Make Us Wait? These
are questions we have dealt with in the last several weeks. Along the way we
have been helped to answer these questions or at least talk about them through
encounters with Jesus and the people who encountered him as recorded in the
Bible. In today’s encounter, Jesus has apparently planned a very special
encounter between him and his disciples and Moses and Elijah. This gives us
another look at just who Jesus is and helps us believe that we should trust
what we have been learning about in the Bible. So we return to the question, “Who
are you Lord?” for another perspective.
As we begin I want to share a smaller question with you. The Transfiguration
event is one of the five great milestones noted in the life of Christ, along
with Baptism, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. So, why are there so
few hymns about the Transfiguration? I found only three or four in our red
hymnal. Even in the topical indexes of other hymnals there is often no topic
for transfiguration. And if you look at the table of contents in the front of
our red hymnal, you can see that the transfiguration is not even mentioned.
It’s just included under “Life and Ministry of Jesus.” That’s where we find
hymn #172. It seems like the Transfiguration is not getting enough credit for
being one the big events. But I think it should! God made sure it was mentioned
in three out of four gospels! And Peter mentioned it again in one of his
epistles. So it must be important!
So I wonder why the church has paid so little attention to the transfiguration.
Is it just because it was really a private meeting between Jesus, Moses, Elijah
and Jesus’ three favorite disciples? It may have been private at the time, but
a meeting with two important figures from Israel’s past, met as real people and
not as ghosts, seen by the disciples to be alive and recognizable, is no small
matter at all! But even the amazing appearance of Moses and Elijah pales in comparison
to the glorification of Jesus. As he is robed in light, it is as if he steps
for a moment back into his royal vestments of the heavenly kingdom from whence
he came. This event gives us an important glimpse into the true identity of
Jesus!
To set the scene, he takes three of his disciples up a mountain for a prayer
meeting. Apparently Jesus did all the praying, because our text says that the
disciples were very sleepy. And let’s be honest, I don’t know for sure how the
disciples prayed, but in our day we all bow our heads and close our eyes. Isn’t
that just what happens naturally anyway when you are sleepy? Isn’t that exactly
what you would do if you wanted to
fall asleep in your chair? I will say this. Paying is hard. It is work, and
many people fall asleep when they are trying to pray. Don’t deny it! Jesus must
have prayed for quite a while before Moses and Elijah appeared. It takes at
least a little time to nod off, especially when you’re trying to stay awake.
These are Jesus’ top three guys and they can’t hang in there while Jesus prays.
Was he boring? I can’t imagine that! But then again these guys were with Jesus
24/7. Maybe they knew all his prayers. Maybe they were exhausted from the
rigors of ministry and the long climb up this mountain. Whatever the real
explanation, they slept through half of a beautiful mountain top experience!
Our text says that as Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed,
and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. This mountain became
the meeting place for the temporal and the eternal, with Jesus himself as the
bridge. I know I would have stayed awake if that happened before I fell asleep!
I would have been staring! And squinting! And definitely wondering what was
happening to Jesus! Maybe I would have looked around for a fire extinguisher! But
the disciples were sleeping at the time.
Next two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with
Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to
fulfillment at Jerusalem. Why these two men. Who are they compared to Jesus?
And how does their appearance help us know who Jesus really is? Moses as you all
know, was a great leader in Israel. He is the one to whom God talked at the
burning bush. He is the one God sent back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and let
him in on God’s plan to show the world who’s the boss. That word for departure,
speaking of Jesus’ departure, is the same Greek word used for Exodus. Moses led
the Exodus out of Egypt, and now Jesus was about to lead all his followers in
an exodus out of sin and darkness!
Moses is the one who went up the fiery mountain to talk with God and receive
the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Covenant that would establish God’s
rule over his chosen people. He is the prophet who stands for the Law of God
that Jesus has come to fulfill. He was a very important prophet indeed and
stands in, not just for himself, but also represents the earliest stages of
Israel’s history.
Notice too that now, with Jesus, Moses is standing in the Promised Land, the
place he was not allowed to enter after the 40 years in the wilderness because
of his own disobedience. God, in his grace is now gracious to Moses and honors
him by sending him to speak with Jesus about the ultimate plan of deliverance.
Moses is the one who taught the people about the Passover Lamb and Jesus IS the
Passover Lamb!
Then Elijah. He was also familiar with God’s holy fire. He was taken up into
heaven in a chariot of fire at the end of a long and distinguished career as
God’s prophet near the end of Israel’s existence as an independent nation. So
now Elijah has come, as the prophecy said he would come before the Messiah
begins his reign. Elijah stands for all the prophets whose prophetic words are
fulfilled in Jesus. The Law and The Prophets are personified in these two great
men who have come to speak with him who is the fulfillment of everything they
had ever been inspired to say or hope for. It is a glorious moment for Jesus,
and a thrilling honor for them, these mere men, to be standing there with
Jesus, the Son of God, the incarnate deity!
The sleepy disciples begin to awake and realize what they are looking at. What
a sight it must have been! They recognized two people they had never met
before. They knew Moses and Elijah, on sight apparently, and that says
something about how we shall all be perfectly known when we are living in our
resurrection bodies. All three of them were glowing with the holy light that
shone around them, or came from them, all radiant with the glory of God. We get
a glimpse into the glories in which we will live in our resurrection bodies. We
also see that God is indeed the God of the living. Moses and Elijah are alive
and well even though they passed from this earth centuries before! This was a
momentous occasion indeed worthy of remembrance, worthy of permanence.
And the disciples had almost missed it. According to Luke they were very
sleepy. They became fully awake just in time to see that the two famous men
were leaving Jesus. Peter, always the quick thinker tried to stall for time. He
said, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one
for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He tried to keep them from leaving!
But this was more than mere hospitality. He wanted to put up booths to enshrine
them all. Luke comments, “He did not know what he was saying.” This should not
puzzle us. We just have to ask, did Peter ever really check on what he was
about to say before it spilled out?
But it wasn’t totally meaningless. The word for booths, or shelters, that Peter
used was from the feast of booths, the little tabernacles that were put up
annually to commemorate the Israelites’ wilderness journey and God’s miraculous
provision through it all. It is also the same word used for the tabernacle of
the wilderness. Peter saw these glorious historical figures and Jesus standing
with them, his ministry and authority validated by this marvelous appearance, a
sign that God was truly with them in a way that he hadn’t been since the days
of Moses and Peter simply wanted to capture and keep it that way.
Just one problem. He was treating all three men as equals. God himself
immediately intervened to correct Peter. While he was speaking, a cloud
appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A
voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen
to him.”
In Deuteronomy 18:15 Moses had said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a
prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to
him.” Jesus is that prophet and in our text today God himself confirms it when
he repeats those words here: “Listen to him.” These are also the same words
that God spoke on the day that Jesus was baptized, “Listen to Him!” Listen to
Jesus rather than Moses! Moses was the most important spokesman for God in
Israel’s history. He was, that is, until Jesus came along. Naturally and
appropriately it would take a lot for anyone in Israel to become more important
than Moses. And that is exactly what God did in Jesus, more than anyone could
ever ask or imagine.
So God himself testifies again here that Jesus is his special Son. And we see
later how it is that this Jesus, the one and only Son of God, died on a cross
to show his love for all of us, and provide for the forgiveness of sins. There
is no one else like him. No other religion has anything that comes even close
to the loving and gracious kind of God who turns out to be the one and only God
of the universe and who has revealed himself perfectly in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
And later on, when in the Holy Spirit Peter was able to talk about this event
correctly he said in his second Epistle: “We did not follow cleverly devised
stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power,
but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God
the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is
my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice
that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”
Who is Jesus? He is God! The God whose radiant glory burns with a fiery brightness
that no one can stand up to without the power of God in him. The fullness of
the brightness of the glory of God is even more brilliant than the sun that
hangs in the center of our solar system. We all know that the sun is a terrific
gift. We love sunny days. We love walking in the sunshine and soaking it up.
But we love the sun at a distance and with protection. Even here, 83 million
miles away, it is possible to get too much sun and get sunburn, skin cancer or
eve die from heat stroke or over exposure. Compare the fiery brilliance of the
sun with the glory of God.
Exodus 24:17 says, “To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a
consuming fire on top of the mountain.” Ex. 33:18-20 says, “Then Moses said,
“Now show me your glory. And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to
pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. But,” he said, “You cannot see my face, for no one may
see me and live.” That was then about a thousand years before, and now here was
Moses, standing face to face with God in Christ!
In Deuteronomy 5:24, the people say, “The Lord our God has shown us his glory
and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen
that a person can live even if God speaks with them.” This clearly implies that
the people believed God’s glory to be something fierce and difficult to
survive, like getting too close to the sun.
I think in many ways we worship God at a distance. We feel it isn’t safe to get
too close. But Jesus has made it possible for us to draw near to God. So near
in fact that salvation is like being able to walk on the surface of the sun in
the sky and enjoy it. We will not be burned up in the fire of God’s holy glory
if we are found in Christ, our shield and defender!
And now folks here he is, the one, the only glorified human being, God in the
flesh, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the
world! Glorious and majestic in all his radiant glory! Believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will be saved!
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