Transfiguration: The Intersection of Glory and Mission

There is significance in their appearance, because Moses, as the mediator of the old covenant, is most famous for, and noted for, the giving of what? The giving of the Law. Whenever we see portraits of Moses, or sculpture, we usually see him holding the tablets of stone, he's the law giver of the Old Testament. [00:01:37]

And the role of Elijah in the Old Testament is to stand at the front of a long line of men who are called of God and endowed charismatically with the gift and the calling of that of a prophet. And the Scriptures so frequently say, in summarizing all of the testimony of the Old Testament, the reference will be to what? To the Law and to the prophets. [00:02:12]

With the appearance of Moses and Elijah in the New Testament, we see the appearance, the confluence, the coming together of the Old Testament Law and of the prophets of the Old Testament with the Messiah who was to come, whose coming is foreshadowed and promised both in the Law and in the prophets. [00:02:46]

Jesus had carried on a public ministry for quite some time, and he had ridden the waves of popularity where he ascended like a meteor to tremendous fame and popularity in the land, but there was an increasing, growing hostility emerging at this time. And near the end of his ministry, in a sense Jesus and his disciples went on a retreat. [00:04:30]

How like it is of God in the midst of that kind of moment to burst through the veil of humiliation, and give his people a taste of glory. The record of the transfiguration, frankly, is one of my favorite passages in all of the New Testament. A few years ago I wrote a book called "The Glory of Christ." [00:07:18]

Normally, Jesus traveled incognito, willingly embracing his role as the Suffering Servant in this mist of humiliation, hiding his glory from the naked vision of mortal men, but on rare occasions, the glory would break through. And it was a delightful experience for me to write a whole book just focusing on those moments where the glory broke through. [00:07:56]

Now, that word "transfigured" is not a word that is commonplace in our vocabulary. In fact, the Greek word would probably be more communicable to us than the English word, because the Greek word is the word from which we get the English word "metamorphosis." And the word "metamorphosis" I think is more familiar to us than the word "transfigured." [00:08:56]

His figure changes into what? His clothes became shining, exceedingly white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. Wow. The first appearance here is of a transformation in Jesus' physical appearance in his clothes and in his face. We are told that now, suddenly, the refulgent glory of God begins to shine. [00:10:25]

Whenever Scripture speaks of the glory of God, it speaks of that glory in terms of a shining. And it speaks of it in terms of a dazzling blazing light that is so bright it would hurt the eyes to look at it directly. And here, as the author of the New Testament seeks to somehow find in his finite arsenal of vocabulary words a way to describe this ineffable experience of glory. [00:11:06]

I want you to understand that the light that the disciples see in Christ is not a reflection; it is a light that is coming from inside of him, bursting through the shell of his body and of his garments, as the glory of his deity now explodes on the scene. And when they see this, what is their reaction? It's the same reaction all of us would have. They were terrified. [00:16:09]

And now, to make matters worse, what happens? A cloud came and overshadowed them. And a voice came out of the clouds saying, "This is my beloved son, hear him.” Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no one any more, but only Jesus with themselves. What kind of a cloud was this? What kind of a cloud do we always associate with the presence of God, but the Shekinah glory. [00:18:11]

Have you ever had a mountaintop experience where you didn't want to leave it? It was such a spiritual high, you just wanted to tarry, enjoy it, revel in it. Peter had that experience on the Mount of Transfiguration. He says, this is time for a celebration. Let's make a booth and we're going to make a house, little house for Elijah, little house for Moses, little house for Jesus. [00:21:28]