[Machine transcription]
And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Evelyn, you are clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness that covers all
your sins.
You are ready for the wedding feast of the Lamb that has no end.
You’re ready to stand before the Lord on the day of judgment because Christ and all that
He has done, all that He suffered, all that He is and was and will be forever, all of
this now belongs to you together with all of us who are baptized.
We stand now ready to live and to die in the Lord’s name, not because of our own works
and efforts but because of the gifts that Christ gives.
He is the one who is and was and is coming.
In His name, Amen.
On the stained glass windows behind me, we have the picture of Jesus in the middle, and
then the two parts of the ministry of Jesus, pictured on either side.
On your left is the humiliation of Jesus, which has His birth, His baptism, His crucifixion,
And then the exaltation of Jesus on the right, which has his resurrection and his ascension.
But on the top, this text that we had today, the picture of the transfiguration, there’s
Jesus with Moses and Elijah on the mountain.
If we were playing one of those games, you remember those games you used to play as a
kid where you have to make someone guess something without saying what it is?
If we were playing that guessing game and I was just giving you all of these things,
How would you answer this question?
I mean, this is pretty an amazing thing about the Transfiguration.
If I said, Moses, Elijah, a mountain covered with the cloud, and the voice of God the Father,
and the tabernacle, you would say, oh, that’s easy.
We got that, no problem.
The Old Testament.
In fact, it’s an amazing thing that all of these Old Testament things, people and events
and all of the Old Testament stuff is gathered there on the Mount of Transfiguration.
And Peter tells us, this is one of the reasons, one of the things that Peter learned from
the Transfiguration, is that in the Transfiguration, when Jesus is standing there with Moses and
Elijah, he confirms all of the Old Testament.
In fact, he tells us what the Old Testament was really about.
The Old Testament was this conversation between the Father and the Son about the redemption
that Jesus was going to win.
We have the prophetic word confirmed.
Now this is maybe just the first thing that we want to make sure that we pin down, but
there’s a way that we can be tempted to think that the Old Testament is different than the
New Testament, that the prophets are different than the apostles, that in the first part
of the Bible, God was mean, and in the last part of the Bible, He’s nice.
No, beginning to end, God is the same.
It’s the same God, the same Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the same plan of redemption,
the same graciousness of God forgiving sinners, the same preaching of the blood that will
overcome death and the devil.
It’s all the same goodness.
The prophets and the apostles sing in the same choir.
They hit the same notes.
They confess the same thing.
And all of it is about Jesus and the work that he does.
That’s really the point of the Transfiguration and I want to hone in on this a little bit
because not only does the Transfiguration kind of grab all of these Old Testament things
and bring them right to our attention, but the Transfiguration also, it plays an important
role in the conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples.
We were reading in Matthew 17, we’ll remember what happened in Matthew 16.
Jesus took his disciples up to Caesarea Philippi, it may be as far away as Jesus ever went with
his disciples.
They’re off by themselves out in the wilderness kind of there by Dan or somewhere up there.
And Jesus asks the disciples,
who do people say that I am?
And they say, well, some say that you’re
John the Baptist, risen from the dead,
or Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets.
And then Jesus says, but who then do you say that I am?
And remember how wonderfully this goes.
Peter answers, you are the Christ,
the Son of the living God.
And Jesus says, blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood hasn’t revealed
this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
And on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against
it.
It’s an amazing thing that Peter rightly confesses that Jesus is the Christ.
But it turns out that Peter and the other disciples did not understand what it meant
to be the Christ.
Christ, because Jesus immediately takes them aside and begins to teach them what it means
that he is the Christ.
And he says this, it’s necessary for the Son of Man to go to Jerusalem, to be rejected,
to be beaten, to be killed, and on the third day rise again.
And Peter hears that and he says, Lord, it can’t be.
It can’t be.
To be the Christ means to rule.
To be the Christ means to reign.
To be the Christ means to overthrow the Romans.
To be the Christ means to sit on the throne.
To be the Christ means to judge, not to be whipped and beaten.
To be the Christ means to conquer, not to be killed.
So that Peter takes Jesus aside, it’s quite amazing really, Peter takes Jesus aside and
And he begins to, the text says, he begins to rebuke him,
oh Peter, but Jesus turns around and says to Peter,
who he just, remember, just commended with such high words,
he turns around and he says to Peter,
get behind me Satan, because your mind is on the things
of men, not on the things of God.
It is a human way to think of the Christ
as one who rules and reigns with power and authority.
It is a human sort of, it’s a human error
or to think of the Christ like a king
who’s gonna have an earthly kingdom.
That’s a human way of thinking.
Jesus is saying, to be the Christ means to suffer.
To be the Christ means to bear the sins of the world.
To be the Christ means to be rejected.
So that Jesus begins, and it’s just the beginning,
he’s gonna tell them two more times,
he’s gonna lean into this doctrine
because it’s the doctrine that they have to know,
it’s the doctrine that we have to know,
that to be the Christ is to be
the one who suffers in our place.
This is so important.
But here’s what happens, I think, is that as Peter and the other disciples are trying
to figure out what it means that the Christ is going to be rejected and killed, they have
to think, well maybe the Christ is not all that we thought he was.
Maybe the Christ isn’t as impressive a figure as we had imagined.
Maybe all of these visions of glory and of triumph and of thrones and of scepters and
of sitting on the throne and maybe all of these visions
that we had of the Christ are just totally wrong.
Maybe he’s just a normal, in fact,
maybe he’s less than just a normal person.
Maybe he’s just a character who’s come around
just to be tossed off the stage,
just to suffer and to die.
And I think as these thoughts about what the Christ is,
as Peter and the other apostles are wrestling
with what it means that the Christ is the one to suffer,
where Jesus says, okay, let’s go up the mountain.
I need to show you, says Jesus,
who it is who will suffer and die.
I need to show you who it is who will be handed over
to the Pharisees and to the Gentiles
to be spit on and mocked and have my beard pulled out
and to be hung up naked, bleeding before all the world.
world, I need to show you who I am before you see what I suffer.”
And so he takes him up the mountain and he prays to God the Father and he’s transfigured
before them.
His divinity shines through his human nature so that his face, the text says, is as bright
as the sun and his clothes are pure white with light and the disciples fall on their
face, afraid for the vision that they’re seeing, there’s Moses and Elijah and
Jesus in his glory and the glory of God surrounds them. I am the Christ, and this
is what Jesus is saying, I am the Christ who will suffer, but the Christ who will
suffer is God of God, very God of very God, begotten not made, the eternal one,
eternally powerful, eternally wise, eternally existing in the glory of God.
God, this is the one who will suffer.
The blood that’s shed on the cross is nothing else than the blood of God.
The death that happens on the cross is nothing other than the death of God.
The suffering that happens in Jesus’ trial and crucifixion is nothing other than the suffering
of God the Son who does all of these things for us.
So don’t think for one moment that when I go to Jerusalem to be handed over and afflicted
and all of this, that it is because I’m not strong enough.
No.
The eternal one is the one who suffers.
And this, dear saints, I think is the amazing thing.
Because if I were Jesus, and this is how I think
I would’ve managed the transfiguration,
I would’ve waited a couple of more months.
I would’ve waited for the transfiguration
until I was standing before Pontius Pilate.
And Pilate asked me, so you’re a king?
and I would have turned on the lights and Pilate, can you imagine how it would
have been? Pilate would have fallen on his face, the soldiers would have fallen
on his face, the Pharisees and all the accusers would have fallen on their
faces, the whole world would have fallen down to to worship before the glory of
the Son of God manifested in the flesh. And that’s the amazing thing about the
transfiguration. It’s not just that Jesus was transfigured, but that most of the
time he wasn’t. Most of the time he hid his glory. Most of the time he concealed
his radiance. Most of the time he came humble, not shining, but suffering. And all
that for us. I mean imagine, imagine as the soldiers are there and they’ve tied
the arms of Jesus to the cross and one of them is holding the nail on his hand
and then the other one’s ready to hammer that hand into the wood, imagine that for the time
for the transfiguration.
They would have dropped the hammer and the nails and they would have run for the hills
or bowed down to worship Him, but Jesus hides His glory.
Jesus conceals His majesty and He does it for us.
Jesus is, right now, this very moment sitting on the throne with God the Father in glory
and He is radiating as He was in the transfiguration, but He’s concealed this from us as well.
I wonder what would happen if Jesus decided to turn on the transfiguration glory one day
when we were having the Lord’s Supper and this brightness would come from the altar,
from the table and it would shine like the sun and we would see the glory there.
But here’s the problem, if it happened we would run for it or we would duck and we would
hide our eyes like Peter, James and John did on that day covering their faces and we would
be afraid.
This is why he hides his glory so that we can come to him unafraid, so that he can touch
us like he did to Peter, James and John and say, stand up, fear not because he comes not
God in terror as the King of kings, but kind and good with healing in His wings.
He comes to suffer and to die for us.
And dear saints, this really is His glory.
That He humbled Himself so that He might be our friend and our Savior.
So may God grant us His Holy Spirit so that meditating on the hidden glory of Jesus, we
would delight in his revealed humility until we see that glory one day soon.
May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. The peace of God which passes all
understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
