Kaleo San Diego Church > Sermons > The Transfiguration

The Transfiguration

David Fairchild
Apr 20, 2008
Series: Jesus – Portraits, Parables, and Parties

Luke 9:18-20: "Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?' 19 And they answered, ‘John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.' 20 Then he said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?' And Peter answered, ‘The Christ of God.'"

Luke 9:28-35: "Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. 30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah'--not knowing what he said. 34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!'"

INTRODUCTION

The Transfiguration of Jesus is an incredibly important event in the history of Jesus. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the transfiguration is the authoritative answer to the question, "Who is this man? Who is this that commands the wind and waves and they obey Him? Who is this that even forgives sins?" These are the kinds of questions asked in the first three Gospels and are answered at the transfiguration. After the transfiguration, the hinge of the first three Gospels is swung and Jesus begins His move towards Jerusalem to eventually face betrayal, false trials, and His death as a criminal on a Roman cross. It is the climax of the first portion of the Gospels.

Since we've been looking at the Gospels over the last several weeks so that we can see Jesus more clearly, it makes sense that we come to the place in Scripture where God chose to show Jesus' closest disciples who He is, what He came to do, and why all this matters.

That's what we'll be looking at today:

1-Who Jesus is

2-What Jesus came to do

3-Why it matters to us

The Transfiguration shows us:

I. Who Jesus is

a.      Jesus is God's visible glory (Heb. 1:3)

The first thing we should recognize is the similarity of this scene with the imagery of the exodus where God lead His people out of slavery to come to Mt. Sinai and worship and hear from God. At the transfiguration you have glory, clouds, power, and the voice of God speaking. At Sinai, where Moses went up to receive the Law from God, you have the same: glory, clouds, power, and the voice of God. This scene is a recapitulation of Sinai.

God led His children out of Egypt and led them away from slavery by a glory cloud, by His glory. In the day it looked like a column of a white cloud but at night it glowed in glory from the inside and illuminated their path. The glory cloud led them to Sinai away from Pharaoh's army and when it brought them to Mt. Sinai it came down in power with clouds and God's voice speaking.

The glory cloud was a representation of God's power, transcendence, worth and majesty. When Moses came down from Sinai and survived the mountain encounter, his face was glowing with a brilliant radiance which had to be covered when he wasn't speaking so that he didn't frighten people away. Moses' face was shining but it was a reflective glow, like the way the moon shines and reflects the light of the sun.

What the transfiguration is showing us is that Jesus is the sun. The glory isn't coming down upon Him as He reflects it; it is coming out of Him like the very glory cloud. It is burning brightly and radiating out of His very person. Jesus is the source of glory. This isn't a quick flash, this was a sustained glowing of glory that caused not only His face but His clothing to glow with such radiance that the other Gospel writers say His clothes where whiter than any bleach could make them (Mark 9:3), they were "gleaming as lightning" (Mark 9:29), and that "his face shone like the sun" (Matthew 17:2). This must have been in incredible scene before the disciples and one that made them shake with fear as Jesus' glory was revealed.

The burning bush and the glory cloud that led the Israelites and came down upon Mt. Sinai were incredible and awesome representations of God's transcendent glory, but Jesus is the glory of God! This is what it says in Hebrews 1:3:

Hebrews 1:3: "He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high"

This passage is saying that Jesus Christ is the exact representation of God and the very radiance of the glory of God. He is the unique, final revelation of the glory of God in a way that nothing else can be. The stars, the world, and all creation tells us of the glory of God, but nothing else is the exact representation of God's nature and the very radiance of God's glory except Jesus.

b.      Jesus is more than another prophet (John 1:14)

Jesus is not another prophet and teacher in a line of prophets and teachers trying to get near to God. He is the God that all the prophets and teachers are trying to get near.

Peter wants to put up three shelters (tabernacles) to commemorate the moment and keep them there in a place of worship, each with their own tent (v. 33).   The text said Peter had no clue what he was saying. Peter thinks we have the Biblical hall of fame-Moses, Elijah, and Jesus-all together! Perhaps Peter was still a little groggy, but what immediately happens is that a cloud envelops them and God speaks while Peter is still talking and says, "This is my Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him!" (v. 35).

In the next chapter, Jesus makes an outrageous claim. In Luke 10 we're told that Jesus said:

Luke 10:18: "And he said to them, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.'"

Jesus is saying that before everything was created He was there and saw Satan cast from God's presence. In John 8 we're told:

John 8:58: "Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.'"

If we take Jesus' words seriously, we're left with only one of three conclusions; either Jesus is a liar, for which He rightfully died because He blasphemed, He is a lunatic, or He is in fact Lord.

If He is who He claims to be, then He is infinitely superior to all other prophets that have ever come. If He's not who He claims to be, then He's completely inferior to any prophet of God. He is either wicked or insane or Lord. He can't ever be just one among many. He disqualifies Himself from that by His very claims.

N.T. Wright says this about Jesus in his book For All God's Worth:

"How can you cope with the end of a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or it's a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between."

Do you hear what he's saying? He's saying that most people really don't understand what Jesus was saying, what God is declaring, what the Scriptures teach. Either Jesus is who He claimed to be, or He is something terrible and we should reject Him outright. But you can't deny His claims and still think He's a decent chap!

Most people are unable to see Him for who He really is and are condemned to live in the shallow world in between. Either we reject Him or we have to fall on our faces before Him in worship and give over everything to Him so that this Lord can have His way with us. We must pick either one-all or nothing.

c. Jesus is God's very own Son (v. 35)

When God speaks to the disciples, He says "This is my Son" (v. 35). The only other time God speaks like this from heaven in the NT is at Jesus' baptism where He says the same thing, "This is my Son, whom I love..." (Matthew 3:17).

His relationship to Jesus and Jesus' relationship to Him is far more than just a prophet/God relationship. God shuts Peter up by saying, "This is My Son!" Hebrews 1 again says something to us about this incredible status:

Hebrews 1:1-2: "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world."

He spoke to us in times past through Moses, through Elijah, but now God is speaking to us through His Son, the very One who created the world!

John 1:14-18: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, "He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me."') 16 And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known."

If we take out these incredible truths, we have really weak tea. We have to come to grips with what this means. We have to think through these claims or our life will be a life lived in the shallows. The transfiguration shows us who Jesus is.

The transfiguration not only shows us who Jesus is-the very glory of God, His Son, far beyond all the prophets-but it also shows us what He came to do. Let's look back at the Mt. Sinai scene with Moses.

II. What Jesus came to do

In the Matthew of account of the transfiguration, we're given a glimpse of the reaction from the disciples. It says:

Matthew 17:6: "When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified."

They knew that to be on a holy mountain where God's glory came down meant their death.

Let's look back at the Sinai scene with Moses in Exodus 34:5-8:

Exodus 34:5-8: "The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.' 8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped."

How can this be? God claims in this scene that He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgressions and sin, but who will not clear the guilty!??? How can you on the one hand have a gracious and merciful God who says forgive the guilty and yet at the same time say that he won't clear the guilty?

This is the mystery of the cross. This is the pivot point in the Gospels that show us that God has come, that all should repent, that the King, the Lord has arrived and that all are guilty before Him. Yet this King, this Lord, the glory of God, the Son of God, sets His face towards Jerusalem to be handed over and killed. The One who is judge comes to be condemned. The only One who can bring the sword of God's justice comes to bear the sword.

Look at verses 34 and 35 again:

Verses 34-35: "As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!'"

It says that the disciples were afraid as they entered the cloud. Of course they were. As I said, they knew this meant their very life. You can't just casually stroll into God's presence and live. This is what most western Americans think. We think we can just casually come into God's presence without thought and that God should not only accept us when we want Him to, but also do what we ask, and when He doesn't, we get mad at Him and say, "I was in trouble once and came to God and asked Him to do something and He didn't, so forget Him." We think this is easy and simple. We should be able to just drop by when we want. This is because we don't understand who we're dealing with.

Yet the disciples knew the Hebrew Scriptures and realized that every time the glory of God came in contact with people, it was lethal. When it came down on Mt. Sinai, God commanded the people and their cattle not to touch the mountain, or they would die. And here comes the glory cloud around them on another mountain and they realized what it meant.

You know what is so ironic? When we go to a fancy restaurant, one that is usually out of our financial means, we know that we can't just stroll in as we want. We have to shower, get dressed up, and look decent, like we belong there. When you go on a first date with someone you're interested in, your heart rate is raised, you brush your teeth, wear clean clothes, wash your car, clean your house, etc. You get my point; you know you can't just show up like it's just another day. When we get married, we get a tux, buy a dress, shake and are nervous because of the weight of the day. We have some comprehension of what it means to come into the presence of someone or to go somewhere that is weighty. But with God, in our time, we think we can just stroll in without a thought or care as to our state before Him.

But when we really sense that we're coming closer to the presence of God, there is a sense of not only His glory and majesty, there is also a deep sense of our own inadequacies and flaws and we come to realize the chasm between us and Him. True Christianity abandons all hope that there is anything we can do to bridge that gap. True Christianity realizes that you need another to bring you close to Him.

So what happens to the disciples is what happens to us. We don't die, we live! But why? When Moses asked to see God, God replied, "No one shall see my face and live." Yet here the disciples are looking at Jesus' face and watching it glow from the inside out, the very face of God, and they live!

Jesus is not only the God on the other side of the chasm, He's also the bridge to Him. Every other religion shows you that God is on the other side but then tells you to build a bridge to get to Him. The Gospel tells us that God did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves.

The disciples didn't bring a sacrifice and yet they lived. Why? Because Jesus was the sacrifice in their place. The disciples weren't perfect and yet they lived in God's presence. Why? Because Jesus was perfect for them. The transfiguration shows us that Jesus Christ does for us what every other religion says that you have to do in order to bridge the gap. We trust in His record, in His sacrifice, not ours, in work, not our own.

His departure

Moses and Elijah, we're told, were speaking to Jesus about His departure. You know what the word departure is? It's exodus.

Here is Moses speaking to Jesus about His exodus. This is strange. Moses could only liberate the people from social and economic oppression, but Jesus is about to experience the ultimate exodus through His death and resurrection, through the passing through the stormy waters of His own Red Sea, taking their punishing waves upon Himself, and liberate His people from sin and death itself.

The transfiguration not only shows us who Jesus is and what He's come to do, it also shows us why this should matter to us.

III. Why this matters

We need glory and forgiveness. Every one of us has sought or is seeking something else to give us glory. Everyone has wanted to clear their conscience, to get rid of their shame in one way or another. We know we need glory for joy and we know we need forgiveness for acceptance. Our personal story, each of our narratives is a history of our longing for beauty and glory and trying find ways to receive acceptance and to clear our record.

a.     Jesus' glory satisfies the longing of the human heart for something weighty and significant, for something beautiful to give us meaning and purpose.

The transfiguration is all about transformation from one degree of something to a greater degree. To see the transfiguration is to see the glory of God revealed more intensely in Jesus. This is what our heart needs, to see Jesus' glory. It is what the heart wants. It desires to see God's glory more fully and in Christ we can. When we come to see Jesus for who He really is, we come to see God's glory more intensely. To see Jesus' glory is to be transformed ourselves.

And our entire created universe is all about glory. The deepest, most profound and consistent longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this: the glory of God.

This universe and all in it was made to show it, and we were made to see it and savor it. No saccharin substitute will do. And this is the reason the world and our lives are as broken and dysfunctional as they are. We have "exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image..." (Romans 1:23). We have attempted to trade God's glory for other things.

This is why God created us, that He might "make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy" (Romans 9:23). The ache we feel in our hearts, that hollow despair and gnawing despondency, is an ache for this. All of creation has fallen into disorder: our sexual lives, our relationships, our jobs, our homes, are all disordered when we exchange the glory of God for lesser things like them. We're starved for glory as John Piper says:

"We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for our soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self... The point is this: We were made to know and treasure the glory of God above all things; and when we trade that treasure for images, everything is disordered. The sun of God's glory was made to shine at the center of the solar system of our soul. And when it does, all the planets of our life are held in their proper orbit. But when the sun is displaced, everything flies apart. The healing of the soul begins by restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attractive place at the center."

When we consider a God that not only desires, but commands us to glorify Him, we can quickly slip into confusion. How can God on the one hand command us to delight ourselves in Him and on the other command us to glorify Him? Aren't these two things at odds? Is God being egotistical in calling us to glorify Him? CS Lewis says this:

"When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some time after, I found a stumbling block in the demand that we should ‘praise' God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue...but the most obvious fact about praise-whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me. I never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise-lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game... praise almost seems to be inner health made audible...

"Men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Wasn't in glorious? Don't you think that was magnificent?' Indeed we can't help doing it...because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment...To understand what heaven means we must imagine ourselves in perfect love with God-drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves...flows out from us again in effortless and perfect expression...The Scots catechism says man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But then we know these are the same thing. To fully enjoy is to glorify-in commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him."

Would it be egotistical if I approached someone and asked them to tell me where I can find the best Irish stout in San Diego if their response was, "Well, I'm from Dublin and I own a pub that serves the best Irish stouts in all of San Diego?" It would only be arrogant if it wasn't true! But what I'm really saying to this person is that I want to enjoy a stout that's the best in San Diego. If the owner were to point me anywhere else, he really wouldn't be helping me if he knew that all the other places were second rate.

So it is with God. We come to Him wanting our deepest joys and longings of our hearts to be met. We come to Him to find this. If He were to point us to anything other than Himself, if He were to commend us to anyone other than Himself, if He were to ask us to bask in the glory of anything else but Himself, not only would He be an idolater but also a liar. I don't want God for fear of not seeming humble to ask me to find my greatest joy in something else if it can only be found in Him. Please don't do me that favor! God can't commend us to any other glory than His own because it is in His glory that we find our greatest delight reach its climax.

This kind of glory bears you and helps you to deal with the weight of this life.

Before we turned from ourselves as our own lords and saviors and came to believe in what Jesus did for us (the Gospel), we were blinded by Satan to keep us from seeing God's glory. Seeing Jesus' glory is so important that Satan spends himself an all his might to keep us from seeing it:

2 Corinthians 4:3-4: "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

But now that we've come to Jesus in faith, we can see Him. The more we believe in what Jesus has done for us (not what we do for Him or for ourselves) the more we will see the radiance of His glory and become transformed:

2 Corinthians 3:16-18: "But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."

This is a declaration that we have had the veil removed, the blindness is gone, and now we can have the freedom of the Spirit to behold the glory of the Lord and be transformed into Jesus' image. This is a call to have joy in Jesus for who He is.

Therefore, the reason God seeks our praise is not because He won't be complete until He gets it. He is seeking our praise because we won't be happy until we give it. This is not arrogance. It is love.

b.     Jesus' work satisfies our need for forgiveness and acceptance

Because of Jesus' exodus, His departure, and because Jesus went to Jerusalem to the cross for us, we no longer have to fear being rejected by God. We can come in to Him and have what we long for, peace with Him. He goes to the cross and receives what we deserve, and then gives to us the status that only He deserved. He makes us sons and daughters. The Son of God is treated like an orphan and rejected for us so that we can look to our God as Father and never fear being rejected by Him again.

Don't you see that because of what Jesus has done, God finds you a complete joy? Don't you see that because of what Jesus has done that you are now made beautiful by His own glory and beauty?

God's glory, the weightiness of God, is far more significant, more permanent, and more real than anything you can imagine, and certainly far more weighty than any pain, any disappointment, any fear, any rejection, and any guilty conscience that any of us may feel. His work brings us joy because we not only see His glory but now have access to Him face to face!