"The Mystery of Elijah's Death" Matthew 17:9-13 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 17, verse 1.

Matthew 17:1

After six days, Jesus took with him Peter and 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 is 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, and 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.

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

When they lifted up 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.

The disciples asked him, Why then do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?

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

But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased, so the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.

It was then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.

God has designed every human being to live for his glory.

Generically, generally speaking, every human being was made with the capacity to glorify God in their lives, to live for God's glory, to make choices that magnify the glory of God, to desire God in your heart, to say no to the things of the world in a way that exalts the glory and the value and the worth of God.

That's how every human being was made, generally speaking.

It's one of the many ways we are made in the image of God, is we have the capacity to glorify God in a way that animals and angels don't.

But God also makes every individual specifically with that purpose, to live a life that glorifies God.

To live a life where God is magnified in you in your own ways, like differently than your husband or your wife or your kids or your parents.

You were made differently, distinctly by God.

And the distinct way that He made you allows you to magnify and glorify and delight in God in your own life.

That's why you're made.

The transfiguration shows us that God's glory is at home in a human being, in Jesus.

And then Peter, we talked about this last week, takes that and brings it into present day that we are all participants in the divine nature.

If God can be glorified in Christ, He can be glorified in you.

That's the great hope.

There are dangers to that purpose.

You know, compromise, sin, harboring sin in your life erodes and destroys your capacity to magnify God.

When I think of high school students, as I mentioned earlier, I was at their camp the last few days, I see some particular dangers in the lives of high school students when it comes to living for God's glory.

One is the kind of student that has his relationship with the Lord tethered in his own mind to how well he's obeying the Lord.

When he is managing his time well and not looking at inappropriate things on his phone, and you know, getting up early and reading his Bible and respecting his parents and doing his homework, he feels like he's walking in the light and his relationship with the Lord is strong.

But then next week rolls around and he's being lazy or sleeping in or looks at something inappropriate on the phone or doesn't obey his parents or is not taking care of responsibilities and he craters spiritually speaking.

Don't get me wrong, of course, sin erodes joy, and of course, obedience magnifies joy.

I mean, that's always true.

But in high school kids in particular, you can start to see this oscillation in someone's life that's very unhealthy, where when they're doing, when they're doing well in obedience, they have such joy of the Lord in them, and when they're struggling, they are just cratering.

It's just up and down and up and down.

And that is not a sustainable way to live your life, spiritually speaking.

Sometimes it's fed by well-meaning parents that are saying, like, hey, if you're saying you're a Christian, then should you be talking like that?

Or if you're saying you're a Christian, shouldn't you be reading your Bible more?

Like those kind of questions, which are, again, have their purpose.

The Bible commends introspection.

You should examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

Of course, I'm not knocking that, but over time, that can fuel the kind of person whose relationship to the Lord is only as strong as his own obediences.

And so it's up and down.

There's another kind of danger to living out God's purposes for your life, and that's the danger of, I guess I would call it this way, misreading providence.

If I was talking to a high school kid, I would say that when things are going well for you, you're you love the Lord, and when things are struggling with your life, you don't love the Lord.

The spiritual way to say that is misreading providence.

When your family is healthy and your parents are married and your grandparents are alive, and your brothers and sisters like you, and you're getting playing time on the soccer team and all that, then you then praise Jesus.

He's resurrected from the grave and he is my king.

Amen.

You know, I thought God was supposed to be good.

It's hard for me to believe in the Lord when I get diagnosed with cancer, or when my brother, who is godlier and nicer than I am, dies in a car accident, or something like that.

Now, those two different people, the one who's living by works and the one who's living by sight, I would say, those two different people, they have it's the same illness.

Like in both persons, their spiritual health is tethered to something that is not Christ in his gospel.

Their spiritual health is contingent upon them living well, or their spiritual health is contingent upon them perceiving their life going well.

It's it's in a sense about them, not about Jesus.

So it's the same disease.

It manifests itself differently, of course.

I'm so glad those illnesses are only seen in high school students, and we've all outgrown them.

If you're ailed by that kind of spiritual sickness, the transfiguration is a story that should help you.

Transfiguration counters the kind of spirituality that is only as strong as your obedience or is only as strong as your perception of God's providence.

We looked at the transfiguration last week.

If you recall, I broke it into three groups of three.

You have three Trinitarian, three divine persons in this.

You see the Father, Son, and Spirit together.

You have three glorified persons in this, namely Moses and Elijah and Jesus.

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

All three of those people give us different lessons.

This is at a high level.

At a high level, this transfiguration teaches you that the whole Trinity is involved in salvation.

The Father, Son, and Spirit planned salvation.

They together send the Son to be the Redeemer.

They together testify that the Son is God in human flesh.

You see that.

And we looked at that last week.

Next week, we'll look at the three mystified persons.

And maybe next week or two weeks from now, I'm still working with that in my mind.

But we'll look at the three mystified persons, Peter, James, and John.

They come down from the mountain, kind of unsure what just happened, but with confidence that the Lord is going to build a new temple and a new people through them.

But this morning we're looking at the middle group, the three glorified persons.

Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.

Moses representing the law, Elijah, the prophets, and Jesus, the fulfillment of both.

Now, Moses and Elijah have a lot in common with Jesus, more than might initially meet the eye.

These are not three strangers that have met on the mountain here with the transfiguration.

All three of them were called by God to bring deliverance to their people.

All three of them immediately met conflict and rejection.

The Israelites ran Moses off and then rebelled against him when he came back.

The Israelites treated Elijah like a spectacle.

They cheered for him sometimes.

They sought to put him to death at other times.

At his highest moment of victory with the prophet of Baal, they conspired against him to kill him.

And like Moses, they drove Elijah away.

Moses and Elijah, when they were driven away, do you remember where they went?

Up a mountain.

And they begged God and said, Listen, if you want me to bring deliverance to this disobedient people, you need to show me your glory.

I need something more than this.

And both Moses and Elijah were told no, albeit slightly differently.

Moses' face radiated with glory.

He had to put a veil over it, but Moses was told he can't see God face to face.

In some sense, Moses did see God face to face.

Moses' face shone with glory.

But in another sense, God made it clear to Moses, you do not get to see me glorified yet.

Elijah, meanwhile, was hidden in a cleft in the rock, and the Lord passed him by, and the whirlwind, and the tempest, and the earthquake and the fire.

Elijah got a vision of God's glory, albeit faintly.

Bottom line, the both, was the answer.

No.

Jesus now, his point, he also has been run out of Israel, if you recall.

He's re-entered now, and he's taken his disciples from the very northern border of Israel.

And he too has gone up a mountain.

He too is climbing the mountain with his friends.

Remember, Moses climbed up the mountain with Nadab, Nabihu, and Aaron.

Jesus brings three friends as well.

And is transfigured.

Let's look at these people one at a time.

They're outlined this morning, three glorified persons.

And what they mean to you, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.

I don't want these to be abstract people from Bible past for you.

I want you to understand the message they have for you this morning through the transfiguration.

The first up is Moses.

Moses, as you remember, was called up Mount Sinai by God to receive the law.

Moses was tasked with leading Israel.

He was like Jesus, had an unusual birth.

Remember, like Jesus, Moses was condemned to die at birth by the king.

All the Hebrew babies were to be put to death.

Like Jesus, he had a miraculous escape.

It was somewhat ironic.

It was the king's own command that led to his escape and his provision.

Moses was fetched from the water, raised in the king's house, his true identity veiled until it was no longer veiled.

And when he outed himself as a Hebrew, the Jews rejected him, and he had to run into the wilderness.

He came back to deliver Israel, and they followed him reluctantly.

They grumbled.

They were eventually led across the Red Sea, gathered in the wilderness.

The Lord was going to speak to them, and you remember, darkness fell upon the Israelites.

There was a cloud of covering them.

There was tornadoes and tempests and lightning.

There was a deafening cry.

There was the sound of a trumpet that was so loud, the Israelites plugged their ears and begged God that no further word be spoken to them because it couldn't endure what the sound was.

That's when they finally grabbed Moses and put Moses forward and said, God, speak to Moses, not us.

And God said he would six days from then, but they had to sanctify the mountain.

No living person could touch the mountain.

If even so much as an animal touches the mountain, it should be put to death.

The Israelites recoiled.

Moses went up the mountain six days later and had his vision from the Lord.

He comes down with the law, which tells the Israelites how to live.

He ascended the mountain other times throughout his life, bringing with him, as I mentioned, Aaron, Nadab, and Nabihu.

The end of his life, he writes the book of Deuteronomy.

Kind of D-Day instructions for Israel.

He says in Deuteronomy 18, I'm sending you into a country that doesn't live like you do.

They have different sexual ethics than you do.

Don't be like them.

That's the first part of Deuteronomy 18.

They worship idols.

Don't do that.

That's the middle part of Deuteronomy 18.

And at the end of it, Moses says, God told me he's going to raise up another prophet like me, who's going to see him face to face, and you're to wait for that prophet and listen to that man.

Listen to that prophet.

Wait for him and do what he says.

And then Moses dies.

That's the story of Moses.

He had divine privileges.

His face shone with glory, but he could not be transfigured.

God's glory could not permanently dwell in him.

His glory was fading.

And yet he warned the Israelites: don't live like the nations and wait for a prophet like me who sees God face to face.

Moses goes on for our purposes this morning to represent the dangers of living by the law.

Moses is the law, so much so that in much of the Old Testament and the New Testament, the word Moses is even used interchangeably with the concept of law.

God gave the law to Israel through Moses.

Do this and live, the law says.

Now we understand that God gave the law for lots of reasons.

Namely, to guard Israel, to protect Israel, to isolate them, make them distinct from the nations until the Savior would come up through Israel.

The Savior would be born to Israel.

The law isolated them to produce Christ.

But what happens if you take 600 plus commands and you give them to people and you say, do this and live, and then wait for a prophet like this person to come, put that in the oven for a couple hundred years and see what kind of person comes out?

The response is people that very much live according to works.

They love the law.

And again, faithfulness in the Old Testament, of course, looked like obedience to God's law.

Of course it did.

But when you let that you know you mix that into the recipe, it starts to produce people that rely on works for salvation, and their relationship with God is as strong as their obedience.

Or a flip side of that is they become proud and arrogant.

They think that they have a right relationship with God because of their obedience.

Again, that's not what the law was designed to do.

God did not give them the law to make them tepid or to make them lukewarm, and God did not give them the law to make them proud and arrogant.

God gave them the law to produce Christ and to break them so that they would see they can't keep it.

The law says, do this and live.

Be holy as I'm holy.

The law was supposed to teach them that they cannot do that.

So they have to wait for the prophet like Moses.

That's what was supposed to happen.

But instead, they took the law and said, if I do this, I will live, and I can't actually do it.

So let me downgrade it and make more rules to cover it and scaffolding around the law that I can climb it.

And then you develop this false, arrogant confidence of your relationship with God based upon your ability to keep the deluded version of the law that you contrived.

And that's works righteousness.

That's legalism.

And I don't often use the phrase works righteousness or legalism because I don't like how they're abused today.

I mean, today, if you tell somebody, you know, you shouldn't be sleeping with your girlfriend before you're married, they're like, whoa, what are you some kind of works righteous Pharisee?

I don't mean it like that.

Of course, if you love the Lord, you repent from your sin.

Of course.

But authentic works righteousness is it's not a person who refuses to repent from sin.

Authentic works righteousness is somebody who thinks their relationship with the Lord is as strong as their obedience is, and it is a huge danger.

I'm in a good spot with the Lord because I haven't done this or that in a week.

That person's life is always in flux, always disoriented.

He's always he has no spiritual footing to stand on.

He's always getting tossed back and forth by every wave of doubt.

He's not stable.

He's not stable because he is perceiving a spiritual life based upon his own obedience.

That's Moses.

Moses gave the law to produce an expectation for the Savior, but is often misunderstood, misapplied by people who think keeping the law will lead them to life.

The second person will look at Elijah.

Elijah, if Moses represents the law, Elijah represents the prophets.

He was the best prophet in the Old Testament.

In the fantasy prophet league, he would draft Elijah first.

I know Elisha has twice as many miracles as Elijah, but those stats are unreliable.

Elijah started the school of prophets.

He raised up prophets like himself.

Elijah also represents the brokenness of the world.

Elijah fought against idolatry and Baal worship and his whole life.

And there's a sensing in which he had success.

You know, the fire came from heaven on the altar of Baal, consumed all of that, vindicating Elijah as the true God.

I mean, God is the true God through Elijah's ministry.

God vindicated himself through Elijah.

And yet, immediately after that happened, the Israelites turned again on Elijah.

They ran him away.

So when Elijah, remember, he tries to quit, and God sends him back to Elisha, and things just keep going bad for Elijah.

When he dies, things are not put right.

That's the point.

When Elijah is caught up in the whirlwind, he goes to heaven, things are still wrong and still broken on the earth.

And other prophets come to put things right and to tell people to repent, and they're all put to death as well.

This is why the Old Testament ends with the prophecy that before the Savior comes, Elijah will come first to make things straight, to put them in order.

And so when Jesus is born, there's this messianic expectation, but people are still looking for Elijah.

Do you remember when Jesus asks, Who do people say that I am?

Everybody says, Well, people think you're Elijah.

Herod thought Jesus was Elijah.

This isn't something like man on the street.

The king thought Jesus was Elijah.

Jesus, when he's on the cross, calls out, Eloy, Eloh, Lama Sabakhtani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Eloy being my God here.

But you can hear how if that's yelled, that could sound like Elijah.

The crowd thought that's what he was saying.

They thought he was desperately looking for Elijah to make things right before he died.

That's Elijah.

Moses represents the law, Elijah represents the prophets, Moses represents the danger of living by your own obedience.

Elijah represents the danger of living by sight, is the way I'll put it.

That you trust the Lord when as far as you can perceive it, things are going well for you.

And when you say it that way, it sounds like a very me-centered world because it is.

You know, if my family is well, if my marriage is well, if my kids are well, then Jesus reigns.

And the second you tinker with something in my orbit, I question the goodness of God.

This is why the disciples were confused about seeing Elijah on the mountain.

Do you remember in the running narrative here of Matthew 16 and 17, Jesus is telling the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and die.

And the disciples keep saying, No, you're not.

Remember, Peter said, We forbid it.

Lord, we've looked at the plan, it does not involve you dying.

Jesus says, Get behind me, Satan.

B R B gonna go die on the cross.

Now he goes up.

The Mount of Transfiguration, they're still wrestling with this.

They see the glorified Elijah.

The disciples see the glorified Elijah.

And they're wondering, does this count?

Does that count?

Elijah's gonna come first.

We just saw him.

Does that check the box?

That's what they ask.

Remember, they start down the mountain and that's what they ask.

Verse 10, why did the scribes say that Elijah must first come?

Notice what they're asking.

Jesus says, Don't tell anyone about what you saw.

Don't tell anybody you saw Elijah until I'm risen from the dead.

That is super confusing to the disciples because in their minds, Elijah comes and fixes everything.

If Elijah comes and fixes everything, why is Jesus going to die?

And they're thinking, we just saw Elijah, that means no more dying Jesus.

And Jesus says, okay, don't tell anybody you saw Elijah until I'm resurrected from the dead.

And then the disciples immediately ask, What?

How come Elijah will come first to restore all things if you're now telling us you're still going to go die?

And Jesus says, Well, I mean, to be quite honest, Elijah did come already, not the mountain thing earlier, and they murdered him.

So if you think that's not cool, if you think murdering Elijah is not the way I was supposed to go, wait until you see what they do to me.

Not exactly the uplifting words the disciples were looking for.

Nevertheless, Elijah represents the danger of living by sight.

Jesus is the third glorified person.

He, Elijah, and Moses are not a triumvirate of equals here.

Jesus is glorified.

It's a passive verb even for Jesus.

God is glorifying Jesus.

God's acting on Jesus.

But Jesus is glorified differently than Moses and Elijah.

Moses and Elijah are glorified from the outside, Jesus is glorified from the inside.

The glory is coming from Jesus.

Jesus' true identity is in a sense unmasked, and the light from his own being goes, radiates, illuminates onto Moses and Elijah.

So Moses and Elijah are also glorified, but they're glorified because of their proximity to Christ.

The glory belongs to Jesus.

Moses and Elijah are standing in it.

You can say it that way.

And the fact that all three are together and all three are glorified is why Peter calls it the holy mountain in 2 Peter 1.

This takes place on the mountain, like I said earlier.

Moses and Elijah both climbed a mountain wanting to see God's glory and were told no.

And now prayer request answered.

Now they are there with Jesus.

They're having a conversation with him face to face.

This is as good as it gets.

The disciples see it and are astonished.

Remember, they fall down.

They don't know what to make of this.

Jesus lifts them back up in verse 7 and says, Don't have any fear, verse 7.

Rise, don't have any fear.

When they finally got their eyes back into focus, verse 8, oh, it was only Jesus.

Moses and Elijah are gone.

Only Jesus remains.

How does this affect us?

Well, Jesus reveals to us the rescue of glory and the reality of faith.

The rescue of glory and the reality of faith.

That Jesus rescues his people from living according to the law by fulfilling the law.

Do you remember the other prophecy in Deuteronomy 18?

Moses gives them the law and says, Do this, but then tells them there is a prophet coming like me.

He will see God face to face.

Listen to him.

So now what did God say from heaven to everybody?

This is my son.

Listen to him.

This is that prophecy fulfilled.

Jesus is fulfilling Moses' charge.

Moses gave them the law to isolate Israel until Jesus came.

Now Jesus has come and has fulfilled that.

He brings the law to completion.

He doesn't only bring it to completion by being born the prophet in the line of Moses, he brings it to completion by actually obeying the law.

The very things that we cannot do, he did perfectly.

So he obeys the law in our place and he brings the ministry of Moses to a close.

So for the person who says, who thinks that their relationship with the Lord is only as strong as their obedience, they need a glimpse of the glorified Moses and the glorified Jesus.

To understand that Jesus and Moses entered glory before you were even born.

God's glory is at home in a human being with the law fulfilled.

You don't have to keep the law to be transformed out of love for the Lord.

Your spiritual life is as secure as Jesus' glory, not as secure as your obedience.

That's not a license to sin, of course not.

When you love the Lord, you reject things that he hates that killed him.

But it is a plea for you to get your eyes off of the mirror when you're judging how you're doing spiritually.

Look to the Lord for strength, not yourself.

And when you look to the Lord, don't look at just look at any Lord.

When you look to the Lord, look at the glorified Lord standing next to the glorified Moses.

The law is completed through Christ.

Moses didn't keep the law.

Moses gave the law, struck the rock, and was condemned by God as a lawbreaker.

So if your spiritual strength is coming from your own obedience to the law, you have to keep it better than the lawgiver himself.

No can-do.

And yet Moses was glorified anyway.

Mount Sinai reveals that God is invisible and impossible to approach through obedience.

The Mount of Transfiguration reveals that God is visible and is approachable by anyone who comes through Christ.

Nadab and Abihu didn't make it up the mountains, but Peter, James, and John did.

And they saw the Lord transfigured in front of them.

Elijah is transfigured.

Elijah has glory.

He's glorified along with the Lord.

And this happens before all things are made right.

That's the appeal for Elijah.

So if you're stuck in a tailspin of thinking, why are bad things happening?

Why is the world like this?

How can God be good if this, that, and the other thing?

Cast your eyes on Elijah for a second.

He's glorified when the world is a wreck.

And then cast your eyes from Elijah to Jesus.

God's glory dwells on earth in the person of Christ, even before John the Baptist made all things right.

John the Baptist told people to repent and got killed.

The disciples so badly wanted it to be John the Baptist makes things right, the Savior doesn't have to die.

Jesus reverses those.

John the Baptist comes to make things right.

Things are not made right.

John the Baptist is killed.

Jesus is there, he is also killed, he will rise from the dead, and then the gospel will be preached.

That's what you see in verse 9.

Tell no one this vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.

That's the preaching then.

Jesus raises from the dead, you preach that message, you let everybody know the law is fulfilled in Christ.

The prophets are fulfilled in Christ.

That's your message.

And then the prophet, then the disciples say, Why would you die if Elijah came?

And then he says, There is lots of suffering between now and glory.

That's the best way to understand verse 12.

Lots of other people are going to die too.

Again, you are having a hard time with Elijah being John the Baptist and him dying.

Wait until you see what they do to Jesus.

Wait until you see what they do to believers throughout the church age.

Just because there's martyrs doesn't mean that Elijah wasn't glorified.

Just because there's martyrs doesn't mean Jesus wasn't transfigured.

We like to think that the suffering is done away with by the crown of glory.

But Jesus says you can't see the crown of glory unless you go through the cross.

The transfiguration is the means by which we see the face of God.

And it cannot be separated from the cross.

You cannot remove the cross from seeing God's glory.

That's the transfiguration.

You have to look at it through the lens of the cross.

Jesus goes up the mountain telling his disciples, I'm going to come down and die.

It's not a coincidence that going up the mountain, they're looking at glory and going down.

It's kind of a sad turn of phrase here, verse 9, as they were going down the mountain.

They had to go back to the world.

And that the world they're going down to is the world in which Jesus dies, verse 9 says.

Verse 13, the disciples understood he was talking about John the Baptist, of course.

They don't quite understand what he's talking about as it relates to himself yet.

He too is going to die.

The lesson of the transfiguration is even though Jesus dies and rises from the dead and ascends to heaven, God's glory is at home in the world because it was at home in Jesus' body, and it can be at home in your body as well, even through suffering.

When you understand that Jesus fulfilled the law by keeping it and fulfills the prophets, you can find glory as you turn your eyes to Him.

Lord, we're thankful for the rescue you offer us from living by works and living by sight.

You offer us a faith that is more secure than works and is more secure than sight.

We don't want our lives to ebb and flow based upon obedience or based upon providence.

We want our lives to be strengthened by the glory of Jesus Christ, who dwells among us.

He's ascended to heaven, his spirit kneels and knits our hearts together.

We are in that sense as a body.

Your glory dwells on earth, in us, and through us.

We pray that we would have an increasing understanding of your glory.

We ask this in Christ's 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.

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

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