The Transfiguration of Jesus

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You know, I was working outside yesterday. I haven’t had to do that that much this summer because, I mean, there’s a bright spot to the no rain. I haven’t had to get out and mow.

But I had to finally yesterday. And when I work outside, when I mow or when I cut brush or whatever, I’ve been hit enough times in the eyes and elsewhere in the face. I got hit with a big rock in the face yesterday.

that I cover up and I’ll wear a hat because pale skin and no hair in Oklahoma sun, it just, you know, you need a hat. And I wear glasses and usually have earbuds in and depending on what I’m doing, I may wear a mask or scarf around my mouth and nose. And every one of the children, when they’ve first been old enough to be aware of their surroundings, but not old enough to have seen that much, it scares the living daylights out of them.

So I was cracking up yesterday with Abigail. She’s seen it, so it didn’t scare her to death, but it’s been so long since she’s seen it with me not having to mow that she was looking at me like, you look familiar, but I can’t quite place you, right? But I remember the first time with her when that happened, or Charlie, or Jojo, Benjamin and Madeline, I remember coming in with the hat on and the glasses and everything else and they would just lose it because they didn’t recognize me.

And then taking all of that disguise stuff off, and as they see this transformation take place, they recognize who I really am, and then they’re happy again because they realize it’s not some big sunglass monster coming to get them. It’s daddy. They see me for who I really am.

There’s this unveiling where they see who I really am. And that’s what we’re going to look at tonight with Jesus as we continue our journey through the book of Mark, we come to this point of the transfiguration. And in all honesty, this is a portion of the Gospels that I was not all that familiar with until fairly recently.

It’s one of those stories that I knew had happened, but I hadn’t spent much time studying it. Couldn’t really tell you in depth what it was about or why it happened. And maybe a year and a half ago, I was assigned to write a paper on it.

I thought, oh, this is going to be fun. Because sometimes you have to write a paper and you know enough about the subject you can just kind of make it up. I wasn’t even there and so I had to do some in-depth study and the transfiguration I don’t know why I missed it for so long because it really is an important stop on our road to the cross as we go through the book of Mark.

So that’s what we’re going to look at tonight this unveiling. You know I talked about the unveiling of myself where the kids could see who I really was. That’s what’s taking place here with Jesus only on a bigger and grander scale than what I described.

It’s this unveiling of the nature of Jesus for His disciples who’ve spent three years with Him day in and day out to get a glimpse of who He really was, to take the veil off and let them see underneath. And so we’re going to be in Mark chapter 9 tonight, and we’re going to start in verse 2. If you turn there with me, if you’re able to in your Bibles, if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find it, it’ll be on the screen for you.

But once you find it, if you’re able without too much difficulty to stand as we read together from God’s Word, stand with me. We’re going to start in verse 2 and go through verse 13. Pick up where we left off last week.

It says, Now after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining exceedingly white like snow such as no launderer on earth can whiten them.

I love that phrase. I love that little added detail in there that just makes it even more real and makes it even more authentic as the eyewitness account of somebody who was there. You know, it doesn’t sound like somebody’s making this up.

It sounds like somebody says you’re not going to believe how, he doesn’t skip over that. He says you’re not going to believe how white his clothes were. No launderer on earth could do that.

Verse 4, and Elijah appeared to them with Moses and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here, and let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son.

Hear him. Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves. Now as they came down from the mountain, he commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

So they kept this word to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead meant. And they asked him, saying, Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first? Then he answered and told them, Indeed, Elijah is coming first and restores all things.

And how is it written concerning the Son of Man that he must suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I say to you that Elijah has also come, and they did to him whatever they wished, as it is written of him. And you may be seated.

So the importance of the transfiguration, the importance of this, that honestly I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon about in my life. And maybe that’s why I wasn’t so familiar with it. The importance of the transfiguration is that it announces to everybody who was there, it was not a public announcement, but it was to those who were there, it announces Jesus is who he says he is.

And there was this big controversy, may not be the right word, but that’s the best word that comes to mind at the moment. There was this controversy in the recent days, in the passages we’ve just been studying about who is Jesus. Going back to Peter’s confession, when Jesus says, who do people say that I am?

And they say, well, some people say you’re Elijah, some say you’re Jeremiah, or John the Baptist, or one of the other prophets back from the dead. Which, a lot of that is just crazy talk. But then he zeroes in on the disciples and says, who do you say that I am?

And Peter finally is the one that speaks up and says, you are the Christ. Again, that’s not his name, that’s his title. He’s saying, you are the Messiah. You are the anointed, chosen one of God.

You’re the one that’s been foretold for thousands of years of Hebrew scripture. You are the Messiah, the son of the living God. Both of those are incredible statements.

You’re the Messiah. You’re the fulfillment of all these things. But they were expecting a human Messiah.

And he says, far from that, you’re not only the Messiah, but you’re not even the Messiah we have, by our traditions, trained ourselves to expect. You are the actual Son of God. And Jesus confirms this.

He says, there’s no way you could have known this except the Father revealed it to you. And so there’s this controversy about who do the crowds think he is, who do the disciples understand him to be, but we’ve talked about how even though they understand him to be the Messiah, even though they understand him to be Lord, they’re not quite ready to let him be in the driver’s seat. And that’s why Peter says, no, you’ll never go to the cross.

No, perish the thought. This should never happen to you. And then Jesus says, get behind me, Satan.

Well, we come forward to this and some of those who were in on that discussion, as Jesus has talked to them about, here’s the plan. The Bible tells us that he hid nothing from them. He unveiled the whole plan.

Here’s where we’re going. The rejection of the crowds, the crucifixion, the hopelessness after the crucifixion, the resurrection. Here’s where we’re going.

And that’s where Peter says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You shouldn’t have to go through this. For those who were involved in this discussion, they need to see a glimpse of who he really is to understand the plan. This announces who he really is.

It says after six days. So this is only about a week after Jesus spoke to his disciples about these things, and they were still struggling. Now, one of the gospel accounts, you may see that there should be a note on this on the handout, but one of the gospel accounts says it was eight days, and two of them say six days.

If you look at the way they’re worded, it’s just a difference in the way they’re counting. It’s not a contradiction. One is counting the day the previous event happened and this event, inclusive, and the other two, when they say six days, they’re just talking about the six days in between.

So it’s not a contradiction, it’s a difference in the way they count these things. But the point is, we’re about a week out, they’re still struggling with some of these issues. They were apprehensive, and that’s why Jesus allowed this inner circle to witness the transfiguration.

It’s a reassurance for them. As they’re struggling to come to terms with what he’s just told them, what he’s just revealed, he’s preparing them for what’s about to happen, because there were some difficult things that were about to happen. To go through this humiliation, to go through this rejection, to go through the agony leading up to the cross and the cross itself.

That was going to be hard. And so he prepares them for these things that are about to happen by tying them into the things that are going to happen later and his glory at his return. And that’s what the disciples saw.

They saw a glimpse of his glory. It says, now after six days, Jesus took the three men. He led them up on a high mountain by themselves and he was transfigured before them.

He was changed. His appearance was changed. His clothing was changed.

And it was all just remarkable. He shone with the glory of the Lord. And this description reminds us, as we read it, reminds us of the description of Moses when he came down off the mountain after meeting with the Lord.

That he was shiny, for lack of a better word. It was the glory of the Lord shining from him. The glory of the Lord shows up in this way.

Now the difference here is that Moses was kind of like the moon reflecting the sun’s light. He was reflecting the glory of the Lord that he had kind of absorbed in his presence. But in Jesus’ case, it’s not the glory coming from somewhere else and merely reflecting off of him.

When it comes to Jesus, the light of God’s glory is coming from within him. And for him to show up and I wish, I wish they had given us even more, as detailed as this description is, where Mark is talking about the laundry and the others talk about it as well. As detailed as their descriptions are, I wish there was more detail because I would like to picture what happened.

Really, I want video of this. I want to see this. Not video from the standpoint of video or it didn’t happen, but I want to see what this looks like.

One day I will see him in his glory, but I want to see it now. I don’t want to wait for however long. But he’s given us this picture of his glory, And to see Jesus in this way where he’s shining forth the glory of the Lord and even his clothes are transformed and reflect this.

It foreshadows his glory in the resurrection and in the post-resurrection appearances. When Jesus rose from the dead, the Roman soldiers that were standing nearby shook with fear over the little bit of it that they got to see. When Jesus showed up on each of the occasions, and depending on how you count, there are between 10 and 12 post-resurrection appearances recorded in the New Testament.

We know that there were more, but those are the ones that are recorded there. In many of those instances, Jesus shows up, and they are scared to death. Because he shows up, well, for one thing, he sometimes appears in locked rooms, and that’ll unsettle you real quick.

But in part, they’re seeing the glory of his resurrection body. they’re seeing something incredible and this transfiguration this this transformation of him before their very eyes it foreshadows that it it foreshadows his glory in the ascension after he spent 40 days with them after the resurrection he spent 40 days and and then they they stand there as he’s as he’s teaching to them and he’s giving his farewell and then the heavens open up and he is received up into the presence of the father and they they don’t necessarily see him go and be seated at the right hand of the Father. They watch Him until He’s out of sight.

But imagine the incredible sight of the heavens opening and the Son of God being raised up from the earth and being received up into the clouds. This is a foretaste of that. And it foreshadows His glory in His return as the King in the book of Revelation.

Some of the descriptions of Him in Revelation are similar. Talking about the shining of His glory. Talking about the awesome sight of Him.

And so, in essence, when they’re seeing this transfiguration, when they’re seeing Him in His glory, it gives them a picture of the things that He had spoken to them about. He said, yes, I’m about to go through the cross. I’m about to go through this humiliation and rejection and death, and they can’t understand it.

But He says, it’s going to be okay because then you’re going to see this other. Remember Him telling them last week, or the week before, that some of you right here will not taste death until you see me coming into the kingdom. Some of them were going to see these things.

It was going to be okay. All of the stuff that they were going to walk through with him, as awful as it was going to be at the time, they could look forward to his glory being revealed as they were now getting a glimpse of. So the disciples saw a glimpse of Jesus’ glory.

And on top of that, we have this incredible account where the Father acknowledged Jesus’ status. In verses 7 and 8, it says, cloud came and overshadowed them and a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my beloved son, hear him. And it says they looked around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves.

They realized it wasn’t the voice of some bystander. It wasn’t somebody playing a prank on them. It was the voice of the father.

There was no other person around to have made this statement. It was the voice of the father. This is my beloved son, hear him.

And they see Jesus. They know it’s not Jesus pretending here. And what this does, this echoes the father’s earlier declaration at Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1 11, where he said, you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

And the way Mark records it here, it’s not only an affirmation of Jesus, but it’s also a command, hear him, listen to him, pay attention to him, obey what he says. Because again, they were still wavering on whether or not they wanted to believe that the things he said were going to come to pass were actually going to come to pass. You know, we look at them in hindsight, and we want to judge them a little bit and say shame on them for not listening to Jesus.

But I can guarantee you the overwhelming majority of us, if we had been there in their shoes, would have done the same thing or worse. Because we know much more about what he’s done and how the story ends than they did. And I still find myself going, Lord, can you really handle this?

Can you really do what you say you’re going to do? And so I have less excuse than they do. But he says, hear him, listen, Obey.

When he speaks, don’t question it. Don’t try to figure out for him how it’s going to work. When he speaks, just hear him.

And on top of that, he’s confirming Peter’s confession and Jesus’ response to him. That everything Peter said, that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of the living God, the Father here confirms that and says that’s exactly who he is. But there were a couple of other figures at this event as well.

There was Moses, there was Elijah, And these other figures also confirmed Jesus’ role in the Father’s plans. It says Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. And I don’t know, maybe I’m weird for thinking it’s funny.

But it’s just so understated. Mark says this like it’s just really no further explanation. How did they get there?

What did they look like? Jesus was just hanging out with Moses and Elijah as one does. And yet we know that that’s not a normal thing.

These men are dead. but I guess when you walk with Jesus for three years you see some things and so maybe you’re not as shocked by by some things but there are Moses and Elijah and they’re talking with Jesus Peter said Rabbi it’s good for us to be here let’s make three tabernacles one for you one for Moses and one for Elijah and we know from the account in Luke in Luke 9 31 that when they appeared Moses and Elijah were there with Jesus to discuss what was about to happen I believe Luke it’s his departure that they’re about to talk about. They’re talking about the circumstances that he has been teaching them about.

His humiliation, his rejection, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, the whole package. They’re there to discuss how Jesus is going to step in and fulfill the Father’s plans. How Jesus is going to go forward and be what we talked about this morning out of Hebrews chapter 9.

The sacrifice for sin. The fulfillment of all of these things that God has been preparing the nation of Israel for for thousands of years, how Jesus was going to step in and fulfill all of those things. And they’ve come to talk with him about this.

And, okay, two things can be true at one point at the same time, unless they’re contradictory. I believe this actually happened, but I also believe it’s symbolic. I believe God orchestrates actual events in many cases to be symbolic.

I don’t think it’s by accident that these two men are the ones that show up to visit with Jesus about the crucifixion, about the resurrection. Because we will often hear the Old Testament scriptures divided into two or three sections. Sometimes it’ll be the law, the prophets, and the writings.

When you divide the scriptures into three, the Old Testament into three sections, they were often in the habit of dividing them into two. You’ll hear Jesus refer to the law and the prophets. Who was the respected lawgiver in Judaism that they looked up to over everyone else.

Moses, who was arguably the most respected of the Old Testament prophets, Elijah. And so you have these two men that represent the divisions of the scripture that Jesus had been talking about and had been telling his disciples and telling the Pharisees, you search the scriptures and the scriptures testify of me. Isn’t it interesting that the two men that most symbolize the divisions of scripture, the two men that are probably more respected than anybody else in the history of the nation of Israel at that time are the ones that show up in preparation for Jesus’ crucifixion.

So that’s why I think it’s symbolic. Moses represents the law. Elijah represents the prophets.

And this event represents the fact that the law and the prophets, the entirety of the Scripture at that time, they pointed to the coming of Jesus Christ. Everything they said was leading toward this period of a few weeks that were going to encompass his rejection by the nation of Israel, his humiliation at their hands, his crucifixion, his burial, his resurrection, and his ascension. That was the point of the Scriptures. Jesus even said, the Scriptures testify of me.

He’s the point of all of it. And what he was about to do was the fulfillment of everything that God had been spelling out to the nation of Israel in those Scriptures. And so we have these figures showing up at this event.

We have Moses and Elijah showing up there as a way of confirming that Jesus really is the goal. He’s the aim. The purpose of the Old Testament Scriptures was to bring Israel to this Messiah. And seeing all of this, the plan still didn’t make sense to the disciples.

And again, I don’t want to fault them too much for that. But Jesus tells them in verse 9 not to say anything. And we’ve seen this command before a few times in his dealings with them.

Sometimes it was because it wasn’t time for Israel to realize yet who he was. Jesus is sort of threading the needle here between heading to the cross, not being swept into power, trying to fulfill the plans of his father just perfectly. Here, I think he tells it to them because he knows they’re not going to keep quiet because he knows they’re not going to explain it right.

We don’t do secrets in our house because secrets with kids can just be a breeding ground for trouble. That can lead to a lot of trouble when children are taught, you need to keep this a secret. We don’t do secrets in our house, but we do tell them some things.

You don’t need to tell anybody about this because will you explain it with the proper context? Probably not. I’ll give you an example.

What are you talking about? What kinds of things are you trying to hide? I posted a photo on Facebook months and months ago.

Somebody brought up to me a while back. And it was a photo of the kids. I think Benjamin and Charlie were singing about Veggie Tales in the kitchen.

And if you look in the background, there’s a bottle of margarita mix. We do not drink. I have not ever drank.

But those margarita mixes don’t have alcohol in them. And they don’t have sugar, which is really Weight Watchers friendly. So I buy them when we can find them on sale at TJ Maxx to flavor water.

But I saw that and thought, oh no, people are going to see the margarita mix in the background. And before that, I’d been buying the margarita mix, and Benjamin was telling me, this margarita mix is really good. I said, please, I know he talks a lot to Miss Tammy in Sunday school, please, do not go tell Miss Tammy I gave you margarita mix.

Why not? Because it’s not a secret. I have nothing to hide, but you wouldn’t explain it in the right context.

That kind of thing. I feel like that’s what Jesus is doing here. You’re just going to go back and tell everybody that Moses and Elijah appeared to me on the mountainside, and it was this incredible revival meeting, and they’re going to try to sweep me into power.

You’re not going to explain it right, so just for right now, can we keep that amongst ourselves? He knew they weren’t going to give proper context. And it’s clear they wouldn’t because they still didn’t understand.

They’re still full of questions. They didn’t understand what it meant that he was going to rise from the dead, it tells us in verse 10. And they’re full of questions about how is all of this going to work?

How is it that Elijah has to come back before the Messiah? How is it? And he tells them that Elijah has already come back.

Now, according to Matthew, they recognized, Matthew 17, 13, they recognized that when he’s talking about Elijah, he’s talking about Elijah in a symbolic way, referring to John the Baptist. And he makes the case, you know, you’re so worried, how is Elijah going to come back, and how is this going to work? And you don’t even realize that God’s plans are being fulfilled right in front of your eyes, and they don’t look like what you expect. Because Elijah came back, John the Baptist, and look, you think they can’t kill the Messiah, they killed the messenger.

They killed the one who came to prepare the way. They killed the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. They killed him.

If they could kill the messenger, if they could kill Elijah, why could they not kill the Messiah? And yet it was unbelievable to them still that the Messiah would also be killed. But in this conversation at the end here between verses 12 and 13, Jesus is making a few things clear to them.

He’s making clear throughout all of this that he was the Son of God. He’s making clear to them that even though he was the Son of God, he would be killed. It wasn’t going to exempt him from trouble.

And he was making clear to them, third of all, that because he was the Son of God, he would be back. You see, it wouldn’t spare him from their rejection and their execution of him being the Son of God. But being the Son of God meant that that wouldn’t be the end of it.

It meant that that wasn’t going to be the last that Israel was going to hear from him. And all of this, his conversation with them, the voice of the Father speaking out, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, the glory of Jesus shining around, This whole event tells us that Jesus Christ is the center of God’s plans. He’s not a footnote to it.

And I’ve heard people treat him that way. I spoke to a lady a few years ago who, her belief on the, I mean, she believed in Jesus, but her belief was basically he got himself killed by shooting his mouth off to the wrong people. And after he was killed, God said, I can use this, and raised him from the dead to make a point.

And the way I’m explaining that may be more disrespectful than what she intended. I don’t mean to make her position sound worse than she intended to be. I don’t want to say worse than it was, because untrue is untrue.

But I don’t mean to make her, I’m not trying to portray her in a bad light. But folks, Jesus is not a footnote in anybody’s history. Jesus is not a footnote in the Lord’s plans.

Jesus is the point of all of it. The whole point of the law and the prophets was to point us to Jesus Christ. Galatians tells us the whole point of the law was not, here’s your standard, be this good and you can get in. The point of the law was for us to understand you can never live up to this standard, and so you need Jesus.

Jesus was not plan B. Jesus was not where God said, oh no, they messed up the plan A, so I’ve got to do this. This was God’s plan from before the foundation of the world.

He created us even knowing what trouble we were going to be. Even knowing what a handful we were going to be. Even knowing how we were going to reject Him and wander from Him and rebel against Him at every possible opportunity.

And He created us and loved us anyway, knowing that He was going to have to send His Son. And Jesus knowing that He was going to have to come and be killed for us to be that sacrifice that we talked about this morning. But God’s plan A was for God the Son to come and take on human flesh, take on a human nature without ever giving up a single aspect of His divine nature.

He was entirely God and became entirely human without ceasing to be God. And again, I don’t understand the mechanics of that any more than I did two or three weeks ago when we talked about it. I just believe it’s true, even if I can’t explain how it works.

But God the Son became a man, lived a perfect sinless life so that He could take responsibility for our sins, having none of His own, and then took that responsibility and took the punishment that went along with it. And only because he did that, only because a sinless Savior died, you and I can be forgiven. And that was God’s plan all along.

That’s what all of this has been about.