"Three Mystified Persons" Matthew 17:4-8 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 17, verse 1.

Matthew 17:1

After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.

And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with him.

And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it's good that we're here.

If you wish, I'll make three tents here: one for you and one for Moses, one for Elijah.

He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them.

A voice from the cloud said, This is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased.

Listen to him.

When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified.

Jesus came and touched them, saying, Rise, have no fear.

When they lifted their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, Tell no one the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.

And the disciples asked him, Then why did the scribes say that first Elijah must come?

He answered, Elijah does come, and he will restore all things.

But I tell you that Elijah has already come.

They did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased, so also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.

And the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.

The previous decade, one of the more popular CCM artists was a man named John Mark Macmillan, CCM being contemporary Christian music, by the way.

John Mark McMillan wrote many well-known songs.

He wrote one song, How He Loves, that didn't catch on initially.

It languished in obscurity, played only by college Bible studies in the back hallways at university campuses, until David Crowder discovered the song and made a cover of it, which immediately took on Christian radio and CCLI Success.

That's the company that tracks how many uh churches play your music.

Became one of the top songs of the year in CCLI and on Christian radio after David Crowder covered it and became to this day probably Crowder's most well-known song.

Why was it not popular with John Mark McMillan, but did become popular with Crowder?

And it's a very simple answer.

In John Mark McMillan's version, there is one line.

I'll read it to you.

He writes, If his grace is an ocean, we're all sinking, and heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss.

So you can see why some churches would have a hard time using that song.

We use a lot of music at Emanuel, but Jesus, I don't recall the sloppy wet kiss line.

No, no, okay.

Although, first hour, JJ confessed to it in middle school.

David Crowder changed the line to heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss.

I won't make fun of it because I know a lot of you like the song.

God's purpose of creation is for the glory of God to dwell with mankind.

When God makes the world, the very beginning of theology, the very beginning of the Bible is this creator-creature distinction.

God is not like us.

Everything we have is on loan from God.

Our life, our breath, and all things we have.

That's Paul's language in Acts 17.

Our life, our breath, and all things are gifts to us from God.

We are not like God.

He is who he is independently of us.

This is why the beginning of creation, God who is light in and of himself.

God is radiating, he is revealing, he is luminosity, he is always and eternally power and light and life and energy and light for sure.

And so when he creates the universe, for the first time, he creates, there's now something outside of himself.

And so the first thing he does, day one of creation, he separates light from darkness.

That's the creator-creature distinction.

Light is from God.

And there's everything else.

We get confused by that sometimes and wonder why was light on day one?

Couldn't earth have been day one, or the ocean day one, or the stars day one?

No.

Light and darkness.

That's the foundation of creation.

We are not like God.

Everything we have is borrowed from Him.

This is God God rebukes David.

David's wondering why his prayer requests, and the people are wondering why their prayers are not being answered the way they thought they'd be answered.

And God says, Well, your problem is that you thought I was just like you.

We're not like God.

That being said, if if the creator creature distinction is theology 101, anthropology 101 teaches the very beginning way to understand mankind is that we are made in the image of God.

So you see a little bit of a contradiction here, don't you?

We are made in the image of God.

Now that means at least 20 different things that were in the image of God.

It's not one thing, it's a whole bunch of things.

But one of the implications of us being made in the image of God is that we have the capacity to magnify God's glory, to receive and delight in and magnify God's glory in a way that angels and animals don't.

We can marvel at the glory of God and display it by enjoying it, receiving it, magnifying it, not multiplying it, but magnifying it in a way that's comprehensible for the world to see, in a way that gives God the glory.

And so while we are not like God, we are nothing like him, he is independent of us, we are his creation, we're dependent upon him.

That being said, we're also in his image.

And his glory is at a home in human beings.

That is the collision of worldviews.

And while I wouldn't call it any kind of kiss, I understand what that those lyrics are going for: that the glory of heaven collides with earth, and it doesn't just bounce back up into the sky.

The glory of heaven collides with earth and finds a home there, and its home is in a human being.

In the Old Testament, God's glory dwelled in, you know, a superficial way, a symbolic way more than anything, inside the temple or the tabernacle.

It dwelled in an obscure way in the pillar of smoke and the cloud of fire and whatnot in the Old Testament wilderness wanderings, but it dwells in a personal, real, and eternal way in a human being.

Not like a temple and not like a cloud or fire or smoke or anything like that.

God's glory dwells in a human being.

And not just any human being, because you can go too far with this.

There are those that say God's glory dwells in human beings.

Therefore, all human beings have some element of God's glory, and that kind of thinking leads you to annihilationism, to denial of hell, or universalism, that as long as you're sincere in your own beliefs, you go to heaven, and that's not what the scripture teaches.

Scripture teaches that God's glory is at home in a human being, but singularly in the human being, the man Christ Jesus.

And then, by extension, all those who are in Christ.

That's what the story of the transfiguration is about.

That's what Matthew 17 is about.

That God's glory comes from heaven to earth and finds its home in Jesus Christ.

Christ is unveiled.

The glory of God radiates from inside of him.

He is transfigured.

The bright lights, the face that's shining like the sun, his clothes white as light, that is a glory that is then received by the glorified Moses and Elijah, and then by extension becomes ours as we come to faith in Christ.

We don't receive the glorified vision, the beatific vision in this life, but in the next life.

The point of this transfiguration narrative in Matthew 17 is to compel us to long for the day where we will be glorified like Christ.

But that's not all this story does.

It doesn't just tell you that one day you're going to get this too.

It does something even more personal.

It shows you that that glory comes to you through Christ, and what that means to Christ, not just to the person of Jesus Christ, but through his method of glorification, namely through suffering.

This whole narrative is bracketed with Jesus saying, I'm going to the cross, Peter forbidding it, and Jesus saying, No, it's going to happen.

And then afterwards, Jesus saying, I'm going to go die and then be glorified.

In the middle, the text we just read, Jesus says, Don't tell anybody about this until I rise from the dead.

You can't understand the glory of Christ without his death and resurrection.

And the most practical application of that is that God's glory is at home in human beings that come to him through Christ and experience that progressive glory through suffering.

It's so difficult because when you're going through suffering, you think if God was good, I wouldn't be experiencing this.

But the opposite is true.

Because of the goodness of God, he sanctifies us with trials.

And those trials reveal his glory in a transcendent way.

We've been looking at the transfiguration last few weeks, so I'm not going to go through the whole passage this week, but I will give you a high-level overview.

There's much in this passage we've looked at the last two weeks I won't repeat, but here's your big headings.

We've seen in the transfiguration, the what I've called the transfigurations triple triad, three groups of three.

You have your three Trinitarian persons, your three divine persons, the Father, Son, and Spirit are all here, with the voice of the Father, the cloud of the Spirit, the person of the Son.

You have the three glorified persons, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.

And you have your three mystified persons, Peter, James, and John.

And if you recall from a kind of high-level view here, the three divine persons, the three Trinitarian persons are here to demonstrate that the Trinity is behind the plan of salvation.

The Father, Son, and Spirit have designed salvation, planned salvation, sent the Son in the person of Jesus Christ to be the Redeemer.

And all three persons testify to the messianic mission of the Son, that He is the Savior.

No one can come to the Father except through Him.

We've seen the three glorified persons.

Moses representing the law.

And remember, Moses gave you the law and himself was a lawbreaker, and now we've seen him glorified.

And that should put to death this idea that you can earn your salvation through law-keeping.

Moses gave the law, broke the law, and is glorified.

So, I mean, where does that leave you?

That glorification is a gift of God that he gives to those who have faith in Christ.

Moses' law is fulfilled in Christ.

He keeps the law in your place.

Elijah glorified because the prophets are fulfilled in Christ.

Elijah, who left the world with everything broken, becomes a symbol that things will be made right before the kingdom, that it'll come before the Savior.

And Elijah's glorified before Jesus is even crucified.

So glory comes even in a broken world.

All the prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself says, the prophets prophesied until John.

John was the last prophet, so to speak.

He was the greatest person who ever lived because he introduced Christ.

Yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than John.

And so Jesus fulfills all prophecies.

Elijah himself is glorified.

Now this morning, the three mystified persons, high level, these three people come back down the mountain.

They go back into the world.

They go back into the world without Moses with them, without Elijah with them.

They're going to go into the world without Jesus with them.

And they're going to build a new temple.

The body of Christ will be present on earth.

Not in a, Jesus says, tear down this temple in John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

Tear this thing down, I'll build it back up again in three days.

He was talking about his own body, that he'll be crucified, he'll be resurrected.

The temple itself was torn down in 70 AD, more or less.

And now there's a new body of Christ on earth, namely the church, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with their teaching.

Jesus himself being the cornerstone in every believer built into the body of Christ brick by brick.

That's a lesson from the three mystified persons.

They don't get all the pieces together yet, but you know, this is a carry-on from Matthew 16.

Matthew 16, Jesus says, I'm going to build my church.

Matthew 18, he talks about purifying his church.

Matthew 17 is the vision of glory given to the agents of that church growth.

Those three apostles that kind of be the chiefs here, and we'll talk what I mean by that this morning.

In fact, let's look at an outline we'll gather.

Three mystified persons.

Peter, James, and John here are three mystified persons and what they teach us about Jesus.

Now, these the setting of the story is important.

It's happening on the northern border of Israel, the mountain here.

We don't know where on the mountain this took place.

It's a big mountain.

Today, the political boundary of Israel runs through this mountain, so we don't even know if Jesus was in geographic Israel when this transfiguration took place, or political Israel.

That border more or less fixes where Israel was in the days of the kings as well.

This is where the idol to Baal was erected at the north side, Dan of Israel.

That's where the transfiguration took place.

It wasn't with random people, but three specific strategic individuals.

Jesus had just told them that he's going to go be crucified, and then he's going to come back in glory.

And then he says in Matthew 16, verse 28, that some people who are alive, namely Peter, James, and John, are going to see that glory.

Matthew 16:28

That glorified Jesus Christ are going to see it as a vision of it, and that will sustain them through their own trials and their own building of the body of Christ on earth.

And so he takes those three.

Now, these three individuals understand that they are in a tailspin of bewilderment.

They do not know what's happening.

They believe in Christ.

Peter just is coming off of his high point of his life, remember?

Jesus said, Who am I?

And Peter got the answer right.

You're the Son of God.

And Jesus says, You know, you did not figure that in your own.

The Trinity revealed that to you.

My Father who's in heaven revealed that to you.

You're speaking the truth of the Holy Spirit.

That's Peter.

That's as high as it gets.

And do you remember Jesus then says, and I'm going to go die on the cross and be crucified?

And Peter says, No way.

And now he goes to as low as it gets.

Jesus tells him, You're speaking like the devil.

So he went from you're speaking like the Trinity to you're speaking like the devil.

That's a pretty big oscillation here.

They're confused.

They're confused.

And Jesus doesn't leave them in their bewilderment.

He doesn't just tell them, you know, these people love Jesus.

And he doesn't just tell them, I'm going to start a church and it's going to take over the world and I'm also going to die.

Good luck out there figuring that out and push them off in their life raft.

He takes three of them aside.

And he's unveiling the mystery of this.

You know, Peter, of course, is mystified.

He says some silly things in this exchange, but you know, Christians spend their whole Christian life trying to navigate through how can the glory of God can be seen in the cross of Christ.

Like, if God is good, why didn't he keep sin from coming in the world?

Why does Jesus have to be crucified so that he can be resurrected, so that God's glory can be seen in a fallen world?

Like, aren't there other ways to do this?

I would like to figure this out a better way.

Blah, blah, blah.

We spend our whole life wrestling through the reality of the glory of the cross.

Peter has had six days.

That's what verse one says.

It was six days since Jesus said that I'm going to be crucified and I'm going to come back in glory.

Six days later is when Peter gets brought up the mountain of transfiguration.

I mean, he's just working through this for the first time.

How kind of the Lord to give all three of these men this vision of transfiguration.

The first we'll look at is John.

We're going to go in the opposite order.

You'll see why.

The reverse order that's listed here in verse 1.

We'll start with John.

John, of course, is the disciple whom Jesus loved.

He's James's younger brother.

That's why, by the way, James is always listed first in the list of the twelve.

John's James's younger brother.

But John is the disciple whom Jesus loved.

You know, it's not guys don't usually have best friends, you know.

But John is Jesus' best friend.

I know Jesus loves all of his apostles.

You know, of course, like if you're a school teacher, you love all 24 or 25 of your students the same way, right?

Yes, of course.

You would tell any parent that.

I love them all.

But you recognize there are those that sit at the front row of the class, and of those that sit at the front row of the class, there's some that bug you.

But there's a couple that you really like.

And that was John.

John was in the front row of the class, and Jesus had a special relationship with him.

John's the one that lays down on Jesus' chest.

We've talked about this at dinner a lot.

That's how the Jews ate.

It was a longer meal, and you would lay down on your friend's chest.

Your friends were there around the table, but you would put your head on the chest of your closest friend that was there.

And that that was John and Jesus.

John's the disciple whom Jesus loved.

He's a little bit faster than Peter.

We learn that.

John goes on to write five books of the New Testament.

And he makes the same point over and over again.

He's writing these books so that you would believe what John himself has seen and heard and touched.

Speaking of his head on the chest of Jesus.

He laid down on Jesus.

He saw Jesus.

He touched Jesus.

He heard Jesus.

He heard the voice from heaven.

He wants you to believe that.

In this sense, John is the prophet.

He reveals to us that Jesus is the prophet, but John of these three is the prophet.

As I mentioned, he writes five books of the New Testament.

Pleading with people to turn from their sins and be saved.

He tells you why he's writing these books.

In 1 John chapter 1, I'm writing to these to bear witness to you of what I've seen and heard.

1 John 1 · chapter mention

He says in John chapter 3, that the light came into the darkness, but the darkness did not perceive it or understand it.

John 3 · chapter mention

Darkness didn't want to come to the light for fear that their evil deeds would be exposed.

And then John pleads with you: come to the light, have your evil deeds exposed.

Repent and be saved.

Look up at the Jesus, lifted up high on the cross.

Look at him and have your sins forgiven.

That's the message of John.

Light came to the darkness and the darkness rejected it.

The Son of Man came to his own, his own did not receive him.

But to all those who did receive him, he gave them the right to be called children of God.

Children not born of flesh or of an act of human will or a human decision, but born of God.

That's John.

He chooses events from Jesus' life to persuade you to believe the word of God.

That's why it's right to see John as representing the prophetic ministry of Jesus.

I mean, if you're so skeptical about that connection, really the final prophetic work in the scriptures is the book of Revelation.

The prophecy that completes all prophecies.

Jesus fulfills all prophecies, but Revelation is the last word of prophecy, and it was written by John.

Pleading with you to listen to the voice of the Father.

Listen to him.

I don't have scripture that says this, but I like to imagine John connecting it to Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

This is where the ancient of days, the Son of Man, opens the books to judge the nations in accordance with the Word of God.

That's a prophetic vision.

Daniel being a prophet.

John represents the prophetic office of Jesus Christ, that Jesus is the final and true prophet.

Second James.

James is John's older brother.

You don't get to know a lot about James.

He doesn't speak a lot.

Some people I think have determined from that that James had a softer personality or a quieter personality.

I don't think so because of his nickname.

He's a son of thunder.

And the few times his words are recorded, maybe he doesn't have a lot of words recorded as a mercy towards him.

But the few that are recorded, you remember what he's asking for?

Like one time he asked for Jesus to call fire down from heaven to burn the Samaritans who were trying to worship Jesus but without going through the apostles.

So James is like, Jesus, just a small favor, can you smoke them real quick?

So maybe not the softest personality in the world.

He also asked Jesus, can I sit at your right hand in glory?

Just a little bit above my younger brother, probably.

Definitely a couple rungs above Peter.

It's not a soft person that asks for that.

Do you remember how Jesus responds to James when he asks that?

Are you able to be baptized with the fire in which I'm going to be baptized?

And Jesus says, you don't even know what you're talking about, by the way.

You don't even know what you're asking.

Are you able to endure what it would take to get to that level of glory?

And James, in a bewildering fashion, says, Yes, I am.

And Jesus tells him, okay, you will be then.

Now, of course, James is not processing what's happening here, but we, with the advantage of retrospection here, can look back at this and say, James is asking to be glorified like Jesus.

And what remember I told you the main lesson of transfiguration is here?

You're not going to get to that kind of glory without severe suffering.

And that's what Jesus tells him.

You want that level of glory.

Are you able to deal with the baptism of fire that is going to come, that's going to be necessary to burn you up to have that kind of glory?

And he says, Yes.

And Jesus tells him, Okay then, you'll get it.

What happened to James?

Do you remember?

He was the first of the twelve to be martyred.

That's what happened to him.

The first to be martyred.

Killed by Herod Agrippa.

Herod Agrippa is not often in the New Testament.

He was in jail during most of the ministry of Christ.

He was one of the heirs of Herod the Great.

I won't drag you through all the Herods again.

But he went to Rome where he ran up a massive gambling debt, owed to Tiberius, the emperor, by the way.

He threw him in jail.

When Tiberius died, he was released.

I guess that's the way debtor's prison works.

Caligula was only holding on by a thread.

Herod Agrippa used his name and recognition and all that to establish Caligula as the emperor.

And as a reward was sent back to Jerusalem, where he became the, he took over from Pilate.

The Jews were hating Pilate, and Herod Agrippa comes back, takes over from Pilate.

First thing he wants to do is satisfy the Jews so they don't rebel against him, which ultimately doesn't end up working, but that was his goal.

And so what does he do?

He starts persecuting Christians.

First up, the Apostle James.

He has him drugged to the temple and killed in the temple.

James, in this sense, represents that Jesus is the priest.

That Jesus is the priest.

James prefigures here or demonstrates or lives out the priestly work of Christ.

He gives his life as a sacrifice in the temple to help build God's new people.

And that's what a priest does.

Of course, Jesus is the priest, he is our high priest.

We're saved through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus, not through the sacrifice of James, so don't mishear me.

Jesus' sacrifice alone is sufficient.

Nevertheless, James is living out that sacrifice.

He lays down his life for the birth and the growth of the church in the temple of all places, demonstrating he is able to bear the fire of the baptism that Jesus had prophesied to him.

He does lay his life down in a way that communicates God's presence to God's people and ultimately to all those who will be part of God's new house.

He's not building the old temple back, he's building a new temple.

Remember, Jesus tells them that you apostles, you're going to be the foundation of this place.

Jesus the cornerstone, every believer a brick.

There's the priesthood of all believers.

Every believer is a priest in some sense.

We minister to one another.

We're all ministers of the gospel.

We don't all lay our lives down in the temple to build God's new people.

And that's what James does.

There's obviously a mystery in this, and this mystery is two-directional.

How can James be a priest in that sense, and yet Jesus be the high priest?

That's the same tension that's in the transfiguration, isn't it?

How can glory that dwells with God be with man?

And we realize that it will be our story.

Jesus is our priest.

This connects our glorious future with Jesus' shameful past.

It is through suffering and the crucifixion of Christ that He's resurrected and we can become partakers of the divine nature.

It is also through James's suffering and martyrdom that the church is built.

Our destiny is to experience the glory of God revealed to us, ultimately the beatific vision when we look at God face to face, but in real time, we are changed from one degree of glory to another as we are sanctified.

And that sanctification happens through suffering.

The transfiguration doesn't put suffering and glory in opposition to each other, but joins them together, and nobody understands that better than James.

You understand the book of Isaiah describes this servant of God who is God's son, but he's God's servant.

And he's going to suffer by his stripes, he will be healed, he will be killed, he will be buried, he will be pierced.

Yet when he acts, God acts.

That's the crazy thing with the suffering servant in Isaiah.

When the suffering servant acts, it is God acting through him, and yet he's killed.

That's the great tension in the book of Isaiah.

How can that be?

He's going to sprinkle people with his blood to purify them.

That is priestly work.

Obviously, Jesus is the great high priest.

Third, Peter.

I'm sure you figured out where I'm going with this.

Peter is the leader of the twelve.

If you don't believe that, you can just ask him.

He's the first one to declare that Jesus is the Son of God.

And it is by his preaching in Acts chapter 2 that the Lord builds the church.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And Jesus prophesied that in Acts 16.

You're Peter and upon this rock.

I'll build my church.

That rock, of course, is a confession of faith in Christ, but it is his sermon that literally launches the church.

Peter was a bold leader.

He's mystified.

I mean, you can just look at him here, verse 4.

He's seeing the Moses, verse 3, Moses and Elijah talking with the glorified Jesus.

And Peter says to Jesus, I love that Peter decided to speak.

I mean, I don't think most of us would have spoken at that moment, right?

Like just what Jesus is talking to Elijah and Moses.

Like, can you lean in and listen, please?

Like, just one sentence would be delightful here.

But you can't hear it over Peter.

Peter says to Jesus, Lord, it's good that we're here.

I just always laugh at that.

He's telling Jesus, yeah, good idea to bring us up here.

It wasn't Peter's idea.

Lord, I confirm your choice in this.

If you wish, and I love that he says, if you wish, he's still, you know, he's not confused about the hierarchy here.

If you wish, you're in charge, but this is my idea.

Let's make three tents here.

One for you, and one for Moses, one for Elijah.

So I don't know what Peter is thinking with this idea.

Uh it's, you know, probably around October or so, six months before the cross is probably when this is taking place.

This is the feast of the tabernacles.

Shabbat, the feast of the booths, it's called, where you know, they're supposed to be in tabernacles that have openings so you can see the stars in the sky.

It's supposed to remind you of Abraham's uh the promise to Abraham that the offspring of Abraham would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

It's supposed to remind you of Jonah, who built this tabernacle in the wilderness that the worm ate, and God has uh you know compassion for the Gentiles.

It's supposed to remind you of the light of God to the to the world that and the light is going to shine into the world.

I mean, it has all of that connotation going on there.

Maybe Peter's thinking about that.

Maybe he's thinking about we can't go to the cross until you know if Elijah comes back first and now we've seen Elijah, so that means we don't need the cross anymore?

Maybe he's thinking like it's a delay tactic.

Jesus, you said you're gonna go die, but now I've seen you glorified.

And Elijah's here.

Do you really need to go die, yes?

Like, how about a tabernacle?

We can stay here for a long time.

Forever.

Would be fine with me.

Is that what he's thinking?

I a lot of people argue about this.

I feel like it's hard to know because Luke 9, verse 33 gives you more insight.

Luke 9:33

Luke 9, verse 33 says, Are you ready for this?

Luke 9:33

Peter didn't know what he was talking about.

Don't let that slow down your best theory, though.

While he's talking, the Lord interrupts him from heaven and says, This is my beloved son.

God speaks to the cloud.

Listen to him.

So thanks, Peter, for the suggestions.

When they heard this, all of them fall on their faces terrified, which is a very appropriate response.

Jesus raises them up.

Have no fear, he says.

Moses and Elijah are gone.

They're gonna have to go back down the world only with Jesus, and he's gonna leave them soon also.

And then Jesus says again, Tell no one the vision until I rise from the dead.

And so he's drilling down to them.

The way to glory is through suffering.

You know, they're mystified, of course.

They start asking about Elijah, remember?

We looked at that last week.

If we've seen Elijah, we don't need to have you die.

The lesson from Peter is that Jesus is the king.

Peter, as I mentioned, becomes the leader of the twelve.

And you need a leader, of course.

I mean, all three of these positions, by the way, are still evident in the church.

You need, I mean, we're we all worship the same king.

We're all citizens of the same kingdom.

We're all priests.

There's a priesthood of all believers, of course.

We all have the same voice of God in the scripture.

And yet you recognize there are many gifts that God gives the church.

You need a church with all three of these giftings.

You need a church that is service-oriented, you need a church that is word-oriented, you need a church that has leadership in it.

I mean, if you have a church that is only preaching and no service, that would not be a lovely place to be at all.

If you had a church that was only service and no doctrine, you'd have some kind of liberal congregation or something like that.

If you had a church that had, you know, leadership and service, but nobody with the prophetic voice, you're just walking in circles.

You need all three of these.

So it's interesting to me the Lord brings, they're all fulfilled in Christ, of course, but it's interesting to me the Lord brings all three of these people up there.

They'll go on to represent that kind of influence in the church.

Well, Peter is certainly the leader.

He will be crucified as well.

He denies Jesus, is restored by Jesus, and he is put to death on the cross.

He's the one that says he's not worthy to die like Jesus did, so they crucified him upside down.

Everything Peter did was over the top.

If John hears the voice of Daniel, if James hears the voice of Isaiah, I wonder if Peter doesn't hear Psalm 2, verse 7.

Psalms 2:7

This is my beloved son.

This is the Son unappointed on the holy hill.

God gives the Son the scepter.

God says, I've established my son on my holy mountain.

Kiss the Son lest you perish in his wrath.

Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing?

The one enthroned in heaven laughs and he appoints his Messiah, his eternal son, to reign over the nations as king.

All three of those are true.

Jesus is the eternal son of Psalm 2, he is the suffering servant of Isaiah 42, he is the Son of Man, the ancient of days from Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

He is all of those things.

He is the prophet, he is the priest, and he is the king.

And he is going to build a new people.

These three guys walk down the mountain with Jesus.

Moses gone, Elijah gone, only Jesus.

They're going to build a new temple.

Not one with bricks, but one with people.

They're going to build it in light of the final sacrifice.

Jesus is the great Passover lamb.

They're going to build it with citizens of a new kingdom.

Prophet, priest, and king.

That's the people they're going to build.

A new temple and a new people.

How do they go back down the mountain?

How do you go back to the world after seeing a vision of Christ in glory?

Do you remember what they were doing before they went up?

Just think of Matthew's gospel, for example.

Like, think of the high points in Matthew's gospel, the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus is preaching in the field.

And it ends with people in the crowd going, man, what kind of person is this?

It speaks with such authority.

If you listen carefully, he sounds different than our scribes.

Like that was that was what the best people were saying at the Sermon on the Mount is like, man, this guy can preach.

And then it comes into arguments about, you know, his miracles and can he heal somebody without touching them?

Is he allowed to heal on the Sabbath?

Like these arcane arguments about what the greatest law is, what foods are unclean.

That's their arguments they're having before this point.

Even his miracles have to fade, don't they?

I mean, a month earlier, Jesus multiplying fish and loaves, blew these guys away.

Wow, how could he make fish and loaves by just multiplying it?

That's insane.

How do you go back to that world?

When they've seen him glorified.

All the conversations about, yeah, he's a good preacher kind of fade in the background, don't they?

Is he allowed to heal on Saturday?

Yeah, I've seen him in glory.

But they have to go back to that world.

They're gonna walk down, even the other nine apostles, they're gonna walk down and find the other nine apostles arguing over how come they couldn't heal this kid, and Jesus asked them, Did you pray?

And they're like, Yeah, we forgot to pray.

That's the world they're going back into.

The chapter ends with people confronting Jesus over what tax bracket he's in, honestly.

How do you go back to that world?

And that's part of the message of the transfiguration, is that I think you're supposed to be a little bit transfixed by the transfiguration, compelled by the glory that's unveiled in Christ, and you're supposed to be a little bit bored with the things of this world.

You're supposed to find them uninteresting compared to the beatific vision.

I know we live here.

I know we have human bodies and human existences, and I know God's glory meets us in our human experience.

That said, there's a little bit which you have to find the blasé after seeing Jesus transfigured.

The new creation will be a lot like this, won't it?

White robes, white clouds, white horses, white thrones, iridescent with Jesus' white hot glory.

The foundations adorned with jewels that are translucent, so the light shines through it, the streets translucent gold.

That's where we're headed.

That's the message of transfiguration.

We're headed there, and we can experience now in this life most powerfully through our own suffering.

Lord, we're grateful for transfiguration.

Christ had his glory unveiled and then communicated to us in a way that we can believe, although we can't understand.

Pray that she would take these three messages the past few weeks on this.

You would seal them in our hearts, and that she would use them to motivate us to holy living with an eternal desire to see you in your glory.

We long for that day.

We pray that you would hasten it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now, may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.