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Peter was still speaking, when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, as we hear the account of the transfiguration, it should occur to us, especially as we begin to meditate on it, all the Old Testament connections. In fact, in some way this text is the Old Testament sort of all piled into one. We have the fact that Jesus takes the disciples up on the mountain. This reminds us of Mount Sinai where God called Moses and the people to come and hear His Word.
And Moses and Elijah appear there talking with Jesus, the chief prophets of the Old Testament: the deliverer, Moses, and the preacher, Elijah. We remember also from the Old Testament this major feature of the cloud that followed, that led the people as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and it rested on the mountain and then led the people through the wilderness, and this cloud also comes and envelops the mountain.
Or we hear the voice of God the Father. Only three times in the Gospels do we hear the voice of God the Father, and He preaches almost the same sermon every time. It’s here and it’s at the baptism of Jesus and at the end of the Gospel of John where Jesus is praying. So remember the baptism of Jesus where God speaks and says, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and then remember in Holy Week when Jesus is praying, “Father, glorify Your name?” And God responds, “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.” And now this text, where the voice comes from the cloud and says, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, listen to Him.”
And the disciples heard the voice and they saw the glory and they were terrified. This also reminds us of the Old Testament. In fact, it should remind us very specifically of Exodus chapter 19, when the people were gathered to Mount Sinai, and the mountain was covered with this pillar of smoke and fire and lightning, and the Lord said, “Make a fence around the mountain, don’t dare touch the mountain. If anyone touches it, a person or even an animal, they are to be stoned to death,” and then God spoke and preached from this cloud the Ten Commandments.
The people backed up terrified, and they said, “Moses, you go and talk to God for us, we can’t stand to hear His voice.” So we see the glory, and Peter and James and John are also terrified.
And there’s some hidden connections too. We didn’t hear it in the account from Matthew, but if you read about the transfiguration in Luke, he adds this little detail. He tells us what Jesus was talking about with Moses and Elijah. It says that they were talking about His departure, which must soon take place in Jerusalem. The Greek word, this is really nice, the Greek word for departure is simply the word exodus.
So they were talking about Jesus’ own exodus, His death and His delivery of the people. In fact, to see this conversation between Jesus and Moses and Elijah and God the Father is to get a glimpse into the heavenly throne room. We’ve spoken of this a few times, but how the central location for theological activity in all of the universe is that throne room of God in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in conversation with one another, and the prophets go to that place, and they make known the things that they hear there.
Well this heavenly throne room that all the prophets were entering into, that’s where Peter, James, and John are now. And one other little hint to connect this to the Old Testament, Peter says, “Let us make three tents.” The Greek word there is the word tabernacle. It reminds us of the instructions that God had given to Moses to make the tabernacle. “Let us make three tabernacles,” Peter says, “one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Peter, you have to think about how Peter was—he was sleepy on the mountain and he wakes up, the other disciples with him, they wake up to see Jesus glowing in this bright light talking with Moses and Elijah. And you just have to think to yourself that Peter says, “Now this is more like it.”
And remember six days earlier, the text started which says, “After six days.” Well, what happened six days before? Well, six days before Jesus had asked the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” And they answered, “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And then Jesus said to Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” And then he took them aside and began to teach them that he had to suffer and die before he went into his glory.
And Peter hears that and says, “It can’t be.” And he pulls Jesus aside and he says, “Now, now, let’s not have any of this dying talk. After all, you’re the Christ of God. After all, you’re the Son of God. After all, you’re very God of very God. Let’s talk about the kingdom. Let’s talk about victory. Let’s not talk about death and suffering.”
And Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan, for your mind is on things of men and not things of God.” But here, six days later, is Jesus radiating with divine glory. And Peter says, “This is how it should be. Let’s bottle this up. Let’s capture it. Let’s stay here. Here, three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
So we see all of these connections in the text, all of these similarities, all of these reflections between this incident and the Old Testament, but, but, and here’s where I want to push us a little bit this morning, the more we look at these similarities between the transfiguration of Jesus and between the events of the Old Testament, the more that these similarities and disparities start to show differences.
For example, we remember in the Old Testament another man whose face glowed, right? Moses, who came out of the glory cloud with a glowing face. He didn’t even know his face was glowing, so when he came down the mountain, all the people were afraid, and he had to wear a veil over his face. Every time he would go into the tabernacle and come out, his face would glow again, so he had to wear a veil so he wouldn’t frighten the people. That’s why, by the way, this is an aside, but you know, the Vulgate translated the rays as horns.
And so oftentimes, when you see old paintings and there’s a man with horns, you say, “Who is that?” Well, that’s Moses. That’s why, because of the mistranslation of the text. In fact, the sign name for Moses is like this, like the guy with horns. It should be something like this, the guy with a glowing face.
But remember that Paul tells us that he had to have a veil covering his face because that glory was fading. That glory was diminishing. The glory of Moses was a reflected glory. It was like the light of the moon, simply reflecting the light of the sun. But Jesus’ face, it says, glowed like the sun itself. It came from Him. It was inside of Him. It was His own divine nature. He was not reflecting the glory of God. He is the glory of God in human flesh.
Now Peter probably misses this point, and this is the main point that we want to take away from the transfiguration, that Jesus is God in the flesh, and it’s made visible on this day. Peter, remember, wants to make three tabernacles, one for Jesus, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and when Peter says that is when the cloud covers the mountain and you get this sermon from God the Father, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.” In other words, Peter, you don’t need three tabernacles; Jesus alone is to be worshipped, and Peter, you don’t need a tabernacle at all; the flesh of Jesus is the tabernacle, and Peter, you’re not going to stay here; you’re going to head for Jerusalem.
Another contrast between the Old Testament and this particular incident is we want to compare how God spoke with Moses for 40 days on the tabernacle to give him all of the instructions that he was supposed to bring to the people, but God preaches to Peter and to James and to John one simple sermon. Everything that God spoke to Moses, everything that He instituted with the tabernacle and the priesthood and the temple and the worship and the feasts of the Old Testament, everything He put in place in the old covenant can rightly be condensed into this, “Listen to Jesus.”
And there’s another difference. We made the point earlier that when God spoke the Ten Commandments from the cloud of glory, the people were rightly afraid and they backed away. But look at the joyful and peaceful sermon that the Lord speaks now. “This is Jesus. This is the one. This is the one you’re waiting for. Listen to Him.”
That “listen to Him” by the way, is the fulfillment of the promise that the Lord spoke through Moses in Deuteronomy 18:18. He said this, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him.”
I mean, consider the simplicity of this sermon, the simplicity of the preaching, like John the Baptist who pointed at Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” So God the Father simply points to Jesus and says to us, “Listen to Him.”
So Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, Jesus is the thing that the Old Testament was pointing to, and Jesus is our access to God. This account of the transfiguration is a hinge in every one of the Gospels. If you just read, kind of sit down and read straight through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you realize that there’s kind of two major movements in the text, or maybe we could say it like this, there’s something that changes at this point, at the point of the transfiguration.
Jesus is revealing His glory, that’s true, but it’s from this point on that Jesus is headed directly to Jerusalem and directly towards His suffering on the cross. So this text is a revealing of the glory of God. It is a text about His exaltation. In fact, it’s something that preaches to us every Sunday because we have it on the windows. You know, the triptych of the windows here with Christ and the sinner has on the left the humility of our Lord Jesus in His birth, in His baptism, and in His crucifixion.
And then on the right, His glory, where we see at the top the transfiguration and Moses and Elijah standing there, and the cloud around them, and then His resurrection, and then His ascension. So this text is a picture of the revealing of the glory of Jesus in our flesh.
But notice a few things about it. Where does this take place? Jesus reveals His glory in the farthest location He ever traveled from Jerusalem. He’s way up north, north of Caesarea Philippi, up, and it’s not even just far north; it’s way on the top of a mountain away from any other people. And in fact, who does He reveal His glory to? Not even all of the disciples. He takes three of them apart to reveal Himself only to Peter and James and John.
And Jesus commands them to keep the secret until He is raised from the dead. Now what kind of revelation is this? If you want to make some sort of important announcement, the last thing you do is go up into a wilderness by yourself and take three people and then tell them not to repeat it. In other words, this transfiguration is a revelation of the glory of Jesus, but it is still concealed and for a purpose.
How do you think Peter reacted? You know, Peter, who’s finally glad that Jesus is getting with the whole glory program. How do you think Peter reacted when they were coming down the mountain and Jesus says, “Don’t tell anyone the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead?” “We got to talk about dying again?” Jesus, we’ve just seen you glowing with divine radiance and now you’re talking about dying again?
And that, dear saints, in a way is the big part of the story or the other half of the miracle. Not that Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, but that most of the time He wasn’t. Most of the time He hid His glory.
Imagine with me, if you would, for just a few minutes, if the transfiguration of Jesus would have been at a different time or a different place. Imagine for example that Jesus is teaching in the temple on Holy Tuesday, and all of the scribes come up to question and test Him, and they say to Him, “Who should we pay taxes to?” And that’s when Jesus is transfigured. He shines with glory, and they fall on their faces, and they give Him His proper place as King and Messiah.
Or imagine this, imagine as Jesus was standing before Pilate, and He’s wearing the crown of thorns and he’s got spit dripping from his face and half his beard has been torn out and he’s been beaten already. He has the purple robes of mockery and the staff in his hand and he brings them out before the people and Pilate says, “Behold the man,” and then Jesus would have been transfigured.
And Pilate and the soldiers and the Sanhedrin and everyone would have fallen on their faces to worship him. Or, imagine this, imagine that Jesus is tied to the cross, and the soldier has the nail pressed into his hand, and the hammer back, and then Jesus was transfigured, and he drops the nail, and he lays aside the hammer, and they lift Jesus up onto a throne, and there’s no more suffering.
I mean, that really is the wonder of the transfiguration, that Jesus goes way up to the top of the mountain, way up north so that nobody sees it and he says, “Don’t say anything to anybody about it so that I can go to Jerusalem and suffer so that I can go to Jerusalem and die so that I could be the Savior for you and for me.”
Now, what do we make of all this? What do we make of the transfiguration of Jesus? Peter tells us, in fact, I think if you want a homework assignment this week, it would be great to go and read 2 Peter, the whole thing, as a reflection of Peter on this event. We had a little bit of it in the epistle text. Peter’s reflecting on all the things that he learned on the Mount of Transfiguration.
He says, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 voice borne from heaven. We were with Him on the holy mountain, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, which you do well to pay attention to, as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
What do we make of this moment of the transfiguration? We know that Jesus, who died for us, continues to work in us. We know that Jesus, who died, was also raised and sits at the right hand of God the Father. Not far away from us, but near to us. We know that we, Christians, are in Christ, and Christ is in us, and this divine power He has given to us.
Jesus is not only the one who teaches us about God and His grace, but He is the one who transforms us. Peter says, if you want to keep this vision in front of you, in your hearts and your minds, it will be great because it will confirm this truth.
And I want to read you a verse from 2 Peter chapter 1, starting with verse 3. Peter says, “His divine power 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 us His precious and very great promises.”
So that all that you need for life, all that you need for godliness, all that you need to navigate these gray and latter days. All that you need to wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night, all that you need to serve your neighbor and to praise God, and to suffer well, and to die, all of this is given to you in Christ who is with you.
Whenever we are tempted to think that God has forgotten us or tempted to think that we’re on our own in this life, or tempted to think that if we’ve got to do something, if you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself, this sort of thing. Whenever you’re tempted, I want you to remember, Peter wants you to remember the transfiguration and remember that this is your Jesus, that God in the flesh is for you and with you, that He strengthens you, and that He carries you through this life until you at last will see Him in glory.
The transfiguration, dear saints, is not just for Jesus. It’s not just for Peter, James, and John. It’s also for you and for me. So may this vision sustain us through the darkness of this life into the light of the world to come. May God grant it for Christ’s sake, amen.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.