Behold His Glory, Be Transfigured (Matthew 17:1-9)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and David and his brother, and led them up behind 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 are here.

If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses, and 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 am 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.

And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

And 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.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise you, Christ.

The appearance of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people.

Let's pray.

Glorious Lord Jesus, meek and majestic, would you draw near to us so that we can behold your glory again by faith?

Transform us through your grace and through your Holy Spirit.

That we would bear your likeness more and more from one degree of glory to another and find rest for our souls.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So the story goes something like this it's uh Easter Sunday.

And the Sunday school teacher is kind of desperately pulling teeth from the kids to get them to respond to the lesson.

The lesson is on the resurrection of Jesus.

On the third day he rose again.

And so the teacher is trying to lob out questions to get the children at all interested in what's going on.

And questions like, well, how long did it take Jesus to rise from the dead after he died?

And there's silence in the classroom.

Well, okay, what was rolled away from the tomb when he rose from the dead?

And again, there's silence in the classroom.

Okay, Mary came to visit Jesus at the tomb and he speaks with Mary.

What does he say?

There's silence until one brave little girl puts up her hand and says, I think Jesus said, ta-da! I really like that story.

I don't think it's true, but I'd like to think it is.

It makes me think of some of the um some of the highlights, let's, so to speak, of the gospels, some of the highlights of the life of Jesus.

They can take on the sort of characteristic of these tada moments, right?

Kind of like Jesus meekly still can't help but show off from time to time, right?

The resurrection can kind of feel like that.

The resurrection can kind of feel like, bam, there it is, in all dazzling splendor, Jesus just did something, you know, pretty improbable.

And it can leave us feeling awestruck, it can leave us feeling dazzled, and all those things are probably the right things to be feeling.

It can leave us kind of thinking, boy, that's a neat thing that Jesus did, I guess.

Ta-da! What we know as Christians to be true of the resurrection is not that that's just something neat that Jesus did, but that what Jesus has done is accomplished on our behalf.

Jesus' resurrection is the hope of our own resurrection.

Jesus' everlasting life is the hope of our everlasting life if we're found in Christ.

The hope of the resurrection, the significance of the resurrection is this glorious exchange that takes place.

Jesus shares in what's ours so that we can share in what's his.

And this is our hope.

A divine exchange, so to speak.

One person who understood this really well was a man named Athanasius.

And Athanasius lived, let's see, in the fourth century?

Yeah.

He was a deacon at the Council of Nicaea, and we say the Nician Creed every Sunday.

So here's Athanasius involved in the church's debates about how do we speak rightly about God based on what Scripture has told us about him.

So Athanasius later becomes a bishop, and he offers some of the most important teaching on who Jesus is in the history of the church.

One of the most famous things that Athanasius says is this He says, the Son of God became man so that we might become God.

Let me repeat that.

Now, before we accuse Athanasius of polytheism or some kind of, I don't know, weird anthropology, let's understand what he means when he says that.

No, he's not saying that we become God in the exact same way that God is God.

Athanasius is taking very seriously the biblical promise that we are made to be participants, partakers, sharers by grace in what belongs to God.

Maybe another way of putting what Athanasius has to say is this: In his incarnation, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, becomes as we are by nature.

He becomes human so that we human beings may participate in his divine nature by grace.

Is that making sense?

Do we see that exchange?

Jesus becomes what we are so that we can share in what he is.

I think what resurrection, this isn't just a ta-da moment, but this is our very hope as Christians to share in what is Christ's.

That's Paul's hope, by the way, in our reading in Philippians 3.

Did you notice that?

He wants to attain the resurrection.

I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

This is the hope of the Christian life, that Jesus has gone before this, before us, and we get to participate in what he's done on our behalf.

Here's what I want to suggest, friends.

Track with me on this.

What is true of the resurrection is true of the transfiguration.

Because I think if there's a close second in terms of a ta-da moment in Jesus' life, I suspect it would be the transfiguration.

Would you agree?

I mean, here's Jesus in all dazzling splendor on the mountaintop, just absolutely flooring Peter, James, and John.

And we can read this story and we can go, wow, that is a really neat thing that Jesus did.

Ta-da! Or we can consider what Athanasius has to say: that the whole purpose of Jesus' life and ministry is to invite us to participate in the divine life and love that belongs to him, in the very glory that belongs to him.

I think the transfiguration of Jesus is a Christian's hope of transformation by Jesus.

The transfiguration of Jesus is a Christian's hope of transformation by Jesus.

So I want us to dive into this story of the transfiguration with eyes to see what's going on, and eyes to see what's going on for our sake.

Here's my game plan for our time.

I want us to understand first and foremost what's going on here in the Transfiguration.

And then I want us to consider what does this mean for our participation in who Christ is and in the glory being revealed.

We're really good, I think, I think at our best, friends, as evangelicals, as reformed Protestants, we're really good, I think, at talking about what we're saved from.

We're saved from sin, and we're saved from death, and we're saved from condemnation and we're saved from guilt and alienation, and all those things are true, but I wonder if we struggle to talk about what we're saved to.

What are we saved to?

We're brought out of sin and death.

What are we brought into?

I wonder if the transfiguration gives us an answer today.

I wonder if it gives you and I a sense of what we've been caught up in by grace through Christ.

Let's have a look at the transfiguration here.

Open up your order of service, open up your Bible to Matthew 17, and we're going to walk through this together.

And then consider what this means for our participation in it.

So after six days it says, six days after Peter's confession, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, six days after Jesus turns around to foretell his death and resurrection, and then call his disciples to take up their cross and follow him.

Six days after this, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, kind of his inner circle, so to speak.

And he led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Now the region they're in, right here, suggests, or at least church tradition suggests, that the mountain he goes up on is Mount Tabor, which would be the same mountain that Moses is descending in our Old Testament reading today.

It's associated with the revelation of God's glory to Moses.

Moses comes down with faith shining because he's reflecting the glory of God.

It's associated with the giving of the law, the commandments.

It's also associated with Elijah's beholding God's glory.

Do you remember that episode?

I think it's in 1 Kings.

I could be wrong about that.

But um but Elijah beholds the glory of God on the mountain, and again, tradition says this is the same mountain we're talking about.

So up they go, this mountain.

And it says Jesus was transfigured before them, which means his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.

This word transfigured is a Greek word metamorphoo, which we can already hear a familiar word probably to us, right?

Metamorphosis.

A change has taken place.

Something new has happened.

Jesus is being transformed before their eyes.

His clothes have become white as light.

They are radiating the glory of God.

And whatever the glory of God means, it sums up his beauty and his holiness and his splendor.

Everything that makes God wonderful is what makes God glorious.

This is all being revealed before their eyes through Jesus.

Jesus' glory is being put on display.

The glory that he's shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit since before the world began.

See this in John 1, John 17, and the glory that will be revealed at the kingdom come.

Revelation 1:16 tells us that Jesus' face was shining like the sun in full strength at his return in glory.

Revelation 1:16

It's as though Jesus, the fullness of who Jesus is, is just being glimpsed.

It's just a glimmer.

Like the like looking through a crack in a wooden barn on a sunny day.

We're just seeing a glimmer of the glory that belongs to Jesus.

And then verse 3 tells us that Moses and Elijah came and they were talking with Jesus.

Now we've already noticed that Moses and Elijah are associated with this mountain.

They appear in this heavenly vision and they appear to symbolize or to represent something just beyond themselves.

I mean, they're pivotal biblical figures, but they're pivotal biblical figures, pivotal biblical figures for a reason.

Moses is the one to whom the law was delivered.

And he gave God's word the law to God's people.

And Elijah was kind of the epitome of what it means to be a prophet who speaks the word of God to God's people.

So here you have the law and the prophets epitomized in Moses and Elijah, and they're talking with Jesus, which I think we're supposed to understand means they are in agreement with Jesus.

The ministry that Jesus is about accords with what the law and the prophets bear witness to.

I mean, in a way, it's as though they're standing on either side of Jesus and pointing to him, saying, everything that we did, everything that we were called to do by God, all of it anticipates him.

Everything we've done leads us to him, the fulfillment of God's promises in Christ.

So here's Moses and Elijah pointing to Jesus.

And if nothing else, I think it suggests to us that, I think it suggests to us the right way to read Scripture, frankly.

All of it points to Jesus.

All of this is a unified story.

All of this culminates in who Jesus is and what he accomplishes on our behalf.

So when we're reading Old Testament passages, we can only read them rightly when we understand how they point us to who Jesus is.

I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, Jesus said, but to fulfill them.

So here he is fulfilling law and prophets, and the law and the prophets are bearing witness to him themselves.

That's how we need to read scripture.

That's why we have so many readings on a Sunday morning, by the way.

Did you notice that?

We could finish church a lot quicker if we had one reading, right?

But that's not the point.

The point is that all of Scripture bears witness to our glorious Lord.

So we're gonna let it.

Okay, we can go on.

I love Peter so much.

Just good-natured Peter.

Let's dive in with both feet here.

Peter says to Jesus, in the midst of all of this glory being revealed, Lord, it is good that we're here.

If you wish, we'll make three tents here.

We'll make a tent for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.

What's Peter saying here with these tents?

Well, one, we need to keep in mind that when God, when God made his presence manifest to his people in their wilderness journey in the Old Testament, he made his glorious presence manifest in the tent of meeting.

I think Peter has this in mind.

God wants to meet with his people, and he's done so in the tent before.

Why not do it again?

Now there's a few different ways, I suppose, to interpret Peter's proposition here, what it is that Peter's proposing.

Maybe part of Peter's offense here is that he's equiv he's he's making Christ the equivalent of Moses and Elijah and not preeminent over Moses and Elijah.

Maybe there is a sense in which Peter's doing that.

Maybe he's missing Christ's sovereign glory in all of this.

But I wonder, if nothing else, what Peter's doing in this moment, in this moment where the splendor of God is on reveal, is being revealed through Christ, what Peter's doing in this moment is making his best plan.

We like to make best plans, don't we?

When God is revealing who he is to us, we kind of go, okay, here's what I want to do with that.

And we've got to be careful when we do that.

Because we can rush ahead and rush in a direction that is not God's will.

We've seen his glory, but we can just as easily turn his glory into something to do with our glory, right?

I wonder if what Peter's got in mind is a great ministry strategy.

Okay, Jesus, here's you, you're just looking dazzling, and here's Moses and Elijah, and we've been talking about Moses and Elijah for centuries.

What if we invited folks to come and not just talk about Moses and Elijah, but talk with them?

And what if in talking with them they told everyone about you?

Wouldn't that be an effective ministry strategy, Jesus?

Let's let's settle this, let's make this a permanent thing, let's get some tents going, and we can we can get folks up the mountain.

You know.

Maybe there's even a salary in that.

That's not what Jesus has in mind.

So here's verse 5.

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

We saw Jesus manifest, or pardon me, God uh manifest his glory to Moses in a cloud on the mountaintop in our Old Testament reading.

This bright cloud is a well it's meant to inspire a sense of awe, isn't it?

It's God's mystery, it's God's, it's God's beauty and holiness rather filling up the space.

This bright cloud descends.

And it says, it it addresses Peter, it addresses the disciples and says, This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

Listen to him.

And it echoes what we've already read in Jesus' baptism in Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Isn't that what the voice says when the heavens are opened up?

It's an affirmation of Jesus' ministry, it's an affirmation of who Jesus is, but it's also an imperative to the disciples.

What is it that this voice tells them to do?

Yeah, go ahead, set up those tents, start charging rent.

Listen to him.

The plan belongs to Jesus.

You need to submit your plans to him.

So verses six to nine.

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

I can't think of what else we would all do.

The voice of Almighty God has just addressed us.

We're falling on our faces.

But this is such a wild moment today, verse 7.

Maybe we expect Jesus to just come and make mincemeat out of his disciples for speaking out of turn in this really holy moment.

That's not what Jesus does.

The same Jesus showing forth the everlasting glory that's belonged to him is the same Jesus that comes over and touches them, saying, Rise and have no fear.

See, sometimes I wonder if we neglect one side of Jesus for another.

It's like we separate his meekness, his humility, his desire to draw near to us in comfort.

We separate it from his majesty, his sovereignty, his holiness.

We split Jesus in half and we say, maybe I'll associate more with one than the other.

Maybe the meekness makes more sense to me because I like Jesus as my buddy.

Or maybe Jesus' majesty makes more sense to me because he's the king, you know, and the king does what he wants.

If we forget that Jesus is meek and majestic, then we miss this moment right here on the mountaintop.

Jesus wants to draw near to us and comfort us as the meek and majestic Lord.

So here he is comforting them.

And as they descend down the mountain, Jesus has something really curious to tell them.

Tell no one, he says, the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from The dead.

Peter, I know you want to go ahead and make some tense, but let me make something clear.

Something needs to happen first before my glory is revealed to all people.

I need to be raised from the dead, which means I have to die.

See, it's the transfiguration here, this revelation of God's glory with two important figures on either side of him being made manifest before his disciples.

It's this important moment of the transfiguration that points forward to another hilltop where Jesus is surrounded by two other important figures with ideas about who Jesus is.

Where he suffers and dies on our behalf.

See, God's glory should lead us towards the cross and not away from it.

I'm not sure Peter has really reckoned with this yet.

I wonder if we struggle to reckon with this.

God's glory should make him immune to something like the cross, right?

He is strong and mighty and majestic, and yet that's exactly where God wants to manifest what makes him so radiant and wonderful and splendid.

He wants to accomplish the atonement of our sins.

So his glory brings us to the cross.

One person who understood this just so well was a fellow named Martin Luther.

And it was Martin Luther's commemoration yesterday, so he's a little bit on my mind.

He's a bit of a hero of mine.

Martin Luther says that it does no one good to recognize God in his glory and majesty until one recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross.

So how does that land on you?

Jesus wants us to behold his glory, the glory that leads us to the cross, not away from it.

And maybe understanding Jesus' glory in this way makes us a little bit more ready to take up our cross to follow him.

To listen to him in the way he's calling us to follow him.

See, Jesus' transfiguration is the revelation of his glory, eternity, past, and future, and it is our hope of transformation.

Here's where I want us to land.

I want us to talk about our participation and what's happening here because if we stop right here, we risk turning this into a big ta-da moment.

Jesus just showing off.

But I don't think that's why Jesus made his glory manifest.

He wants Peter and James and John, he wants us, his disciples, to behold something of his glory so that we can be drawn further up and further into the mystery of who he is for our sake.

The question is, we're saved, but what are we saved to?

And I think this is what we want to take away.

We are saved to partake and participate and share in God's divine life and glory through Christ.

Here's what Peter has to say, 2 Peter chapter 1.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Same Peter on the mountaintop, by the way, who witnessed God's glory made manifest in Christ.

Here's what Peter has to say as he reflects back on what's happened here.

He writes that Christ's divine power has granted us, pardon me, has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that the purpose for which is that through them you may become partakers, koinonos, participants, sharers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

What's Peter saying?

We are saved to participate in the life and love and glory of God by grace.

I wonder if this is why we are so dissatisfied as individuals and as a society.

We set our hopes on so many things that we think will give us happiness, and nothing seems to deliver the lasting happiness and contentment that we're looking for.

Do you feel that?

Maybe it's because we were created in God's image to participate in his life and love and glory forever.

And anything short of that will not satisfy us.

So here's Peter saying that Christ's divine power has granted us to become partakers in the divine nature.

God has become human so that we humans can share in who God is.

He wants us to meet with him, get captured and raptured up with him in glory and in love and in life forever.

The transfiguration is just a taste.

And Jesus has said earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 13, 43, speaking of the parable of the weeds, he says that the righteous will shine like stars in the kingdom of the Father.

That's a promise.

And that's a pretty remarkable thing to say because how does Matthew go on to describe the transfiguration?

Jesus' face shines like the sun.

Jesus wants you to share in his life and love and glory, to shine like the sun, from one degree of glory to another.

Peter goes on to say that we don't follow cleverly devised myths.

We're not just making this up, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

We're not making this up.

God really wants us to behold his son and become partakers in the glory that belongs to him.

This is what God has done for us in Christ.

This is so much more than a tadah moment.

This is God drawing us up into ourselves into himself.

And that's why Paul can go on to write in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 that all we with unveiled face, hey, he's talking about Moses, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed, metamorphoed, into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

We're being drawn up in God's glory.

And then he'll say in Romans chapter 12, verse 2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, metamorphoed by the renewal of your mind, that by the testing, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:2

These two verses, I think, point us to an eternal and everlasting heavenly hope.

That we will share in a greater and greater and greater glory in Christ as he shares more and more of himself with us, and as we partake more and more and more in his divine life.

But he also gives us very present marching orders.

Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world which lead us away from the glory of God in Christ, but instead be metamorphoed by the life of God in you through the Spirit, that you may discern what God's will is.

Friends, the Lord wants to share who He is with you today.

He wants you to get caught up in His glory and life and love because that is the reason for which we were created.

That is the reason for the cross.

That is the reason for the resurrection.

This is what we've been saved to.

We have been called into transformation.

So the way I see it, we've got two options.

We can build tents, so to speak.

We can go about our program and our very best intention and our best understanding of how things need to be moving forward, which really has more to do with our glory and not Christ's, or we can decide to listen to our Lord.

Our Lord promises us rest, so we come to Him.

And our Lord tells us to take up your cross and follow him.

Are we willing to do that, saints?

If we believe that God's glory is made manifest in the cross, are we willing to go there to be partakers and participants in that glory?

There is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.

That's true for Jesus.

That's true for us as well.

So, friends, this is the hope of our transformation.

Jesus' transfiguration is the Christian's hope of transformation.

So, what can we do but come behold the wondrous mystery?

Come behold Christ by faith.

Just a glimpse of him revealed, it compels us to sing.

Let's come partake in his glory all over again.

I want to close with our call today, because I think it's worth meditating on.

Grant that we, beholding by faith, the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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