November 20, 2016 A.D., by Pastor Ben Willis

Introduction
Our Scripture this morning is from Mark 9:1-13. The Lord Jesus has just been teaching His disciples about self-sacrifice, the importance of living according to the Father’s will and not their own, and telling them about His return, saying, “If anyone is ashamed of Me and My message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when He returns in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

Mark 9:1-13 [NLTse]
Jesus went on to say, “I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Kingdom of God arrive in great power!”

2 Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed, 3 and His clothes became dazzling white, far whiter than any earthly bleach could ever make them. 4 Then Elijah and Moses appeared and began talking with Jesus.

5 Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here! Let’s make three shelters as memorials—one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He said this because he didn’t really know what else to say, for they were all terrified.
7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is My dearly loved Son. Listen to Him.” 8 Suddenly, when they looked around, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they saw only Jesus with them.
9 As they went back down the mountain, He told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 So they kept it to themselves, but they often asked each other what He meant by “rising from the dead.”

11 Then they asked Him, “Why do the teachers of religious law insist that Elijah must return before the Messiah comes?”
12 Jesus responded, “Elijah is indeed coming first to get everything ready. Yet why do the Scriptures say that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be treated with utter contempt? 13 But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they chose to abuse him, just as the Scriptures predicted.”

Sermon
With all of the busy-ness of life in the first-century world, and with all of the busy-ness that surrounded Him on account of people wanting to hear Him teach and come to Him for healing, the Lord Jesus valued time alone with His Father in Heaven. In our reading, the Lord Jesus has taken three of His closest disciples – Peter, James, and John – and hiked up a mountain to get away from the crowds and activity and the pressures and demands of the world to be alone together.

Luke tells us that the four men were praying, but that Peter, James, and John had fallen asleep. When they woke up they saw the Lord transfigured, as Mark describes Him: His clothes dazzling-white, and that looking at His face was like looking into the sun at its brightest!

Mark tells us that Moses and Elijah were there talking with the Lord Jesus when they awoke. (How they knew the two to be Moses and Elijah – if they heard the Lord call them by name, or if the Holy Spirit gave them this knowledge – we don’t know.) But Luke tells us that they were talking with the Lord about His soon-coming death and resurrection from the dead.

Mark tells us that all of the sudden they were enveloped by a cloud, but Matthew’s account makes clear that it was not a dark storm cloud or even a misty, foggy cloud. Matthew says it was a “bright” cloud, the shekinah of God – the cloud of His glory! The cloud that led Israel through the desert to the Promised Land. The cloud that rested on the Mercy Seat beneath the golden cherubim in the Temple’s Holy of Holies. When you see a halo around someone’s head, that symbolizes the shekinah of God. The Lord Jesus’ dazzling appearance here on the mountain is the shekinah of God showing the disciples His true nature! And Peter, James, and John heard God’s voice around them in the cloud, saying, “This is My Son Whom I dearly love. Listen to Him!” (But, “listen to Him” came with the nuance of not just always hearing what Jesus had to say but also always doing and acting on whatever it was He said.)

I quickly mentioned above that the Lord Jesus’ dazzling clothes and flashing, blinding face was the shekinah of God showing the watching disciples His true nature. This word “transfigure” that we use to describe the change in Jesus that took place on the mountain, comes from the Greek word metamorphoo, where we get our word “metamorphosis”.

Metamorphoo speaks of someone or something’s inner characteristics being made visible. When referring to a person, metamorphoo is describing how one’s outer appearance begins to more truly represent that person’s inner nature.

For instance, people who receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and who seek to follow Him daily as their Lord often become more joyful and peaceful inside. That inside joy and peace is often noticed by those around them in the ways these new believers handle difficult situations, and because they can tend to smile more and seem more relaxed. You can often hear of people asking new Christians, “It seems like there’s something different about you.” That is metamorphoo: There is an outside difference that is reflecting their new inside nature.

And the Lord Jesus was metamorphoo’d in front of Peter, James, and John.
The Lord Jesus’ outward appearance was that of the Man of Sorrows, the One acquainted with bitterest grief (Isaiah wrote of Him). To the world, the Lord Jesus was a travel-stained itinerant preacher claiming to be the Jewish Messiah. What the world saw was a peasant from Galilee, wearing homespun clothes, the son of a carpenter.

But in His metamorpho-sis, Peter, James, and John saw His true inner nature exposed: God the Son; the dazzling glory of the essence of His deity that He possesses co-eternally with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit! The Lord of Glory! It shone through His humanity and even out through the clothing He wore!

So, what are some ways that this touches us and our lives here today?
Well, first of all, the apostle Paul writes to the Colossians that each one of us who have given ourselves to Jesus Christ by trusting in Him to save us has Jesus’ nature inside of us, our “hope of glory” in this life; our “hope of glory” in the life to come! (1:27) The Lord Jesus told His disciples to expect Him to begin living in us – and to expect His glory to shine from us. He told them this on the night before He was crucified, when He prayed to the Father, “I have given them the glory You gave Me, so they may be one as We are one. I am in them [Father] and You are in Me.” (17:22-23) And as John wrote to the church in his first letter, “Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but He has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He really is.” (3:2) So, there is an aspect of us, Christians, that is glorious right now, and yet an aspect of us that will not be fully glorious until Christ appears.

Now, we are not God, so we can not and should not expect the unbridled manifestation of the Lord Jesus’ metamorphoo, but Luke does add the detail that both Moses and Elijah were “glorious”, perhaps not to the same degree the Lord Jesus was blindingly glorious, but glorious nonetheless. And so – Christ in us and us in Christ – we, too, can expect the metamorpho¬-sis of gloriousness to shine forth from us – and more and more – as we live for Jesus and grow in Him daily.

And we do that, as the Father called Peter, James, and John to in the shekinah-cloud, by “listening to Jesus.”
As I quickly mentioned earlier, this phrase, “listen to Him” most literally conveys the idea of always listening to Him. And yet, it is not just the idea of always merely hearing what the Lord Jesus says to us in His Word or by the Spirit, but of, always doing and acting upon what He says.

Too often we, Christians, second-guess Jesus. “I know You’ve told me to forgive the person, Lord, but…” “I know You’ve told me to give generously to all those who ask, Lord, but…” “I know You’ve told me to bless those who curse me, and to pray for my enemies, and to do good to those who’ve harmed me, but…” “I know You’ve told me to stop getting drunk, but…” “I know You’ve told me to stop making work a priority over You and my spouse and my family, but…” “I know You’ve told me to never worry and to never fear this world, but…”

We know what He’s said to us across the Scriptures, but we make our excuses for not always doing and acting upon what He’s said. But all that keeps His glory from shining forth from us.

Of course, we can do the same thing throughout each and every day when the Holy Spirit prompts us to stop and pray for someone or to stop and pray with someone or to go here or to do that. Too often we can object, “But, Lord..!” ? We must not…

Jesus says, “Anyone who listens to My teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds [of life] beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears My teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods [of life] come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

Let’s listen and follow.

Let’s be glorious!