Let's open our Bibles this evening to Luke chapter nine. Luke gives the most full account of what will occupy our attention tonight, mainly the witnesses to the transfiguration. There were witnesses on earth—Peter, James, and John—and witnesses from heaven—Moses and Elijah. In the way that Luke counts it, it was eight days prior that Peter had confessed that Jesus was the Christ, and Jesus had spoken that benediction upon him: "Blessed are you, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." And it was at that time that Jesus began to unmistakably teach them about his pending death, and it was so plain that there was no sidestepping it, no putting it off until later. Peter was convinced that Jesus was.
Wrong about what Jesus had said was going to happen, and so Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. And Jesus administered a harsh rebuke to Peter. Get behind me, Satan!
Now you're not talking like someone who has been taught by God. Then he turns. And he says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." And he went on with some teaching that was surely discomfortable to those who heard it. That the kingdom that he was describing was so different than the kingdom that they had been expecting. The Messiah that he was turning out to be was so different from the Messiah that they had thought that he was going to be, and so I think that there were six days of confused contemplation that followed, when no doubt more than once.
The thought occurred to the disciples: This is not what I expected. This is not what I expected. And then, after that period of confused contemplation, he takes Peter and James and John with him, and. And in essence, he reveals his glory to them in a way that says, "No, men, it's not what you expected. It's far better than you could have imagined." And so, with that introduction, let's read what it says here in Luke chapter nine, verse twenty-eight.
Now it came to pass about eight days after these sayings that he took Peter, John, and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. As he prayed, the appearance of his face was altered, and his robe became white and glistening. This is the description where it was like lightning. And behold, two men talked with him. Who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory?
Luke is the only one who who includes that description. Who appeared in glory, and spoke of his decease. And if you're reading from the New King James Version, as I am, then you have a little footnote there by the word "decease," and it will say literally his departure. You actually would recognize the Greek word. It's the Greek word that we get our word "exodus" from.
They spoke of his exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. I don't think that it's just merely a synonym for leaving this world. I do think that when they're talking about his exodus, they're not only talking about his death, but the whole series of events that were associated with his leaving this world, and the benefits that were going along with it. Like the exodus from Israel of Israel from Egypt, meant the liberation of the people of God, and Christ's exodus from this world, which included not just his death, but his burial, his resurrection. And his ascension, also was an exodus leading enslaved persons to freedom.
But I want us to focus our attention tonight just on these two things: the the witnesses. That's the title of the sermon: the witnesses of the transfiguration. And we have witnesses from earth: Peter, James, and John. And we have witnesses from heaven: Moses and Elijah. And I might be tempted to include the Father Himself in that because He speaks out of the cloud.
But Lord willing, we'll save that for tomorrow night. We'll just focus on these two witnesses tonight and what we might learn from them.
So let's first of all think about Peter, James, and John, and let's consider them as a group, and then much more briefly, we'll consider them individually. And why it may be, we'll speculate why it may be that Jesus chose Peter, James, and John, each one, in view of what what lay ahead of them, and how it may be relevant for us, as well. And so, let's first of all consider these earthly witnesses as a group. And this is not the only time that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him. I had, I asked the pastor to read the other two instances and.
I think that all three of these instances have something in common, but let's just save that for a few minutes. What I want to recognize now and make something out of is: Did this make the other disciples jealous that Peter, James, and John got to go on these special trips and to see these special things? The first lesson that I want to Bring out, is that God is sovereign not only in salvation, He is also sovereign in how He uses His servants, how He chooses to use His servants and the various assignments that He gives to them. There are probably everyone in here who has been a Christian for any amount of time feels like at some time he has not been with Peter James and John, but he's been with the other nine who have been left behind, and thought, "Why did I get passed over for that privilege? Why did I get passed over for that responsibility?" Um.
So it's a good word for us to remember that God chooses who He is going to use, and God uses God chooses the assignments that He is going to give to us. And the Bible is full of illustrations like this.
So let's consider that King David. Says one day to the prophet Nathan, "Why is it that I dwell in such a nice house and God's ark still is in a tent? I'd like to build him a temple." And Nathan said, "Do whatever's in your heart." And then that night the Lord appears to Nathan and says, "Tell David he's not the one to build the temple." He's a man of blood. I, I'm not going to let him build the temple. I will allow his son to build the temple.
That may have been a disappointment to David because it was in his heart. The Lord says something to David that I think can be a comfort to us when we have failed, although we had good intentions. The Lord said to David, "Because it was in your heart to, I'm not going to let you do it. But because it was in your heart to do this, then I'm going to pour out these blessings upon you." And I think that there are times when. We we attempt to do something, and it doesn't turn out the way that we expected.
But our intentions really were good. We we really did want to honor the Lord in that, and I think the Lord says to us, like He said to David, because it was in your heart to do this. There are times, perhaps, when we have given help to someone, intending that it was going to be used to feed their family, and they took the money and did something else with it. I think that you get rewarded, just the same. As if that person had used the contribution that you made to them responsibly, because it was in your heart.
Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. But still, it can be disappointing when there's something that we wanted to do and a privilege that we wanted to enjoy, and it was not granted to us. When Jesus had risen from the dead. He appears to his disciples on the on the shores of Galilee, and they have a breakfast. And after that, the Lord says to Peter, "Follow me." And so Peter starts following after Jesus.
And he turns around and he sees John, and he says, "What about him?" And Jesus says, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." I've called you to come. You leave. You leave in my hands what I do with others of who belong to my household. I will give them the assignment that I think is good, and you must learn to quietly accept whatever position it is that I have assigned to you, and it may not be glorious.
But if you are doing it for my sake, there is nothing that is small when it is done for my sake. God is sovereign not just over salvation; He's also sovereign over those that He chooses to use. There are times when I. Am acquainted with some very talented, very diligent, very godly preacher, who's pastor of some little small church that no one ever hears of, and no one ever hears of him. And then, on the other hand, someone who is preaching a false gospel gets thousands of people to come and hear him, and he becomes famous.
and And I just have a tendency to think, well, why why is it like that? Why is this one so hidden?
Sometimes the Lord blesses people in secret in a way that the people who are living. In the public and the public spotlight, never know. The Old Testament says that the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and the Lord, the Lord delights in those who are following after Him, even if it is just something small. When I was a young man, I often would hear sung as a special that song.
Some of you will remember it. I traveled down a lonely road. No one seemed to care. The burden on my weary back had bowed me to despair. I often complained to Jesus how folks were treating me.
These are the words I heard Him say to me. My feet were also weary upon the Calvary road; the cross became so heavy, I fell beneath the load. Be faithful, weary pilgrim; the morning I can see. Just lift your cross, and follow close to me. The second stanza is also lovely, but I want to move on to the third.
It says, "O Jesus, if I die upon some foreign field some day." T'would be no more than love demands; no less could I repay. No greater love hath mortal man than for a friend to die.
So you see, the songwriter is saying, "I aspire to do something great for you. I'm willing to go to a foreign field and and die for you. And and of course, that that would not be too great a sacrifice. You've done so much, and so the the poet is saying, "I'm ready to do great, great things for you, Lord." And then, this comes next. These are the words I heard him say to me.
If but a cup of water I place within your hands, then just a cup of water is all that I demand. John Milton was a great, talented man, most famous for having written *Paradise Lost*. When he was still a fairly young man, he became completely blind. We surmise that he probably read himself blind, but and then he wrote a sonnet on his blindness. When I consider how my life is spent, ere half my years in this dark world and wide.
When I consider that I'm blind and I'm such a young man, I ask myself, "Does God expect the same service of me now that He expected from me when I had my sight?" And it's just a sonnet—only 14 lines—and the sonnet concludes, "Thousands wait on His command." But they also serve who only stand and wait. If that's what God has for you, then that's the way that you're going to glorify God. The Lord is sovereign over the servants that He chooses to use, and the way that He chooses to use them. Carol and I, in recent days, were talking about.
Some ministries whose whose procedures and emphases are far different than the procedures and emphases of my ministry. And but I believe the men that we were talking about to be orthodox men. And I reminded her and myself. She wasn't arguing with me for once, but just kidding. We she was not arguing with me, and but I reminded us of what Jesus said after after criticism had been leveled towards him, in contrast to John the Baptist.
I said, "Well." John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and you say, he has a demon. The Son of Man comes eating and drinking, and you say, he's a drunkard and a friend of sinners. The wisdom is proved right by all her children. You you people are like pouty spoiled children in the marketplace, saying, we played funeral and you didn't cry. We played wedding and you didn't laugh.
You people are not satisfied with anything. Jesus is saying to them. Then he concludes that by saying, "But wisdom is proved right by all her children." God gives various giftings to various ones of His servants, and one of our main jobs is to be happy with the gifting and the place that He has assigned to us. And to do it well. God is sovereign, not just at salvation.
He is sovereign over those that He chooses. He chose Peter, James, and John to go with Him. And then here's something else: God is sovereign over the ups and downs of your spiritual life.
Now the downs are not always his fault. We can't always blame them. The psalmist says, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why so disquieted within me?" And the answer that he gives is not, "Well, God just put you down here for a while." No, the answer that he's is is, "Pluck up. Trust in the Lord. Look to Him.
He's, He's able." But God is sovereign over the ups and downs of your spiritual life. And eight days before this, Peter and James and John were all three badly perplexed and badly confused. And God was sovereign over that day. And now, six or eight days later, they are. Seeing something that no human on earth has ever seen before, they are filled with these wonderful, exhilarating thoughts about Jesus.
They see Moses and Elijah, people that they've only read about their whole life, and of course they were thrilled. And God was sovereign that day too. In the Christian life, there are happy days. In the Christian life, there are sad days. God's sovereign over all of it.
I may have mentioned to you, surely sometime in the past, maybe not this week, that my favorite poet is George Herbert. And C.S. Lewis said concerning George Herbert that there was no one who wrote about the Christian life as we actually experience it, moment by moment, in the way that George Herbert did. George Herbert lived in the late 1600s, or I mean the early 1600s. He died in 1633, and he was an Anglican clergyman.
He had he had occupied the most prestigious academic position in England. He was Latin orator at Cambridge. You can't get any higher than that in the academic world at that time. But he gave it all. He gave it all up so that he he could become a country parson.
Several years ago, Carol and I visited the town where he ministered, Bemerton. His chapel is still there, and I believe that if Bob Latour and I touched fingers in the middle, that we could touch the each each wall with the other hand. It's probably not more than twelve feet wide, and not much farther than that deep. I don't think you could get more than sixty people in that little space if you packed them in there. And that's where this great towering genius of a man spent the last years of his life ministering to the flock at Bemerton.
And one of the ways that he communed with the Lord was by was by writing poetry, and he writes about that. But one of his poems describes this thing that I'm talking about: this, these sometimes wild vicissitudes of spiritual experience. In his poem "The Temper," he says, "How should I praise the Lord?" How should I gladly grave thy love in steel? If what my soul doth feel sometimes, my soul might ever feel. If you were just to take heavenly glories and stack them one on top of another, in the next stanza he says, although there were some forty heavens or more, sometimes I peer above them all.
Sometimes I hardly reach a score, twenty.
Sometimes to hell I fall.
Now, the a medieval instrument of torture was the rack, whereby a person's hands would be tied to one winch, his ankles would be tied to another winch, and then they would crank them in opposite directions and stretch the person out until they were torn in two. That's the rack. And in the next stanza, George Herbert says, "O rack me not to such vast extents. Those distances belong to thee. The world's too little for thy tent.
A grave's too big for me. Are you going to treat me like some kind of measuring tape? Will the Almighty measure with a wretch?" So he's complaining. Lord, why, why don't you?
Well, he puts it this way: Oh, let me, when Thy roof my soul hath hid, oh, let me roost and nestle there, oh, in that place where it's so comfortable, where I feel so near to You, where. Where sin is not raging in my heart, like a storm. Oh, let me, when Thy roof my soul hath hid. Oh, let me roost and nestle there. Then, of a sinner, Thou art rid.
It would be so great for You not to have to deal with me and my sin all the time. And it would be so great for me not to have to always cope with these, these. Disturbing vacillations in my spiritual state. I'll be rid of hope and fear. But then he comes to his senses, and he says, "Yet take thy way.
For sure, thy way is best. Stretch or contract me, thy poor debtor. This is but the tuning of my breast." To make the music better, the way that someone would stretch the strings to give them a higher pitch or loosen the strings to give them a lower pitch, he says, "I know that's what you're doing with me. Whether I fly with angels way up there, forty heavens or more, or fall with dust, thy hands made both. You made the high places." You made the low places, and I am there.
I'm in your hand. I know that you have the power and you have the love to do what is best for me, and so my responsibility is just to love you, and trust you. And thy power and love and my love and trust make one place everywhere. The apostle Paul said, "Lord, please take away this thorn in my flesh. Please." Moses says, "Lord, please let me go into the promised land." And the Lord says to Paul.
My grace is sufficient for you. The Lord says to Moses, "Don't speak to me again about this. You're not going to get it. I am the Lord. I will say what is best for you." So I think that those are some lessons that we can learn from the Lord's choosing Peter, James, and John, taking them up to this ecstatic experience after they've had this very depressing experience.
Now there's something else while we're considering Peter and James and John as a group, and that is that this is the second of three times that the Lord takes them on a special. Outing, and I asked the pastor to read the other two. The first one was when he took Peter, James, and John with him to the room where that little dead girl, the only daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler, was lying. He took Peter, James, and John with him, and then we have this: the transfiguration. And then the third time is in the Garden of Gethsemane when he takes Peter, James, and John with him.
Now I think that there's something that binds all three of these together, and that is they show us the Lord's relationship to death.
So in the case of Jairus's daughter. He raises her from the dead, and he demonstrates before Peter, James, and John his power over death. He can raise people from the dead. He has power over death. In this experience, he shows Peter and John his superiority over death.
He is showing them by this. Bright effervescence that is radiating from him. I don't have to die. I am not under the curse of sin. I, I, I can leave this world like this.
I can go to heaven right now if I want to. This is what, this is what happens to people eventually who go to heaven. And I, I can go. I'm superior over death. And then, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he takes Peter, James, and John with him, and shows them, "But I am submitting to death.
I have power over death. I'm superior to death. But I'm going to submit to death. Nevertheless, Father, not my will, but yours be done." So I think those are some lessons that we can see from Peter, James, and John as a group.
Now let's briefly consider them individually. And here I'm largely speculating.
So why would he choose Peter to see this?
Well, I think it's because he had chosen Peter to be the rock, the one who is going to open the doors of The understanding on the day that the Holy Spirit is poured out to the Jewish nation, thousands of people are brought into the kingdom through Peter's preaching, and then. Not long after that, he goes to the house of Cornelius, and he is the instrument through whom the Lord opens the floodgates of salvation to the Gentile nations. Peter is going to figure very prominently. Peter was the leader of the group. And understanding the sinlessness of Christ displayed in His sinless radiance, and the divinity of Christ, all mingled in with His bright radiance, it is essential to the the foundation and the building of the church.
Jesus is not just a really good man; He is the divine Savior. And so I think it was important for Peter to see this, and and he tells us later in his book, we saw his glory on the Holy Mount.
Now, what about James? James is not the James who wrote the book of James. James is the James that we read about in the book of Acts, who was the first Christian martyr. And so, I think that as James is facing those moments, those hours prior to his death, when he knows that he is going to die, probably a fairly young man, that he looks back on this and he says, "I know this is not the end. I know that there is a a bright, radiant Savior who lives, who has power over death, and who is superior to death." And there is a promise that is embedded in this vision that he showed me those months ago, that I too shall shine like the sun.
And thoughts like that would steal a person as he goes to face the death of a martyr. And then John. I think that it was important for John to see this because the Holy Spirit of Jesus had a special task for John that he should write the gospel that more clearly than the other synoptic gospels displays the the divinity of Christ. And in the very beginning of his book, John says, "We have seen his glory." The glory of the one and only Son, the only begotten Son, who comes from the Father, full of grace and truth. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Maybe he's just continuing to reflect on, on what happened that day, when he saw Jesus transfigured, and Moses and Elijah coming to speak with him. But now let's turn our attention towards the heavenly visitors, towards Moses and Elijah. And I think it's fairly fun to think. I guess this is the first time Moses has ever been in the Promised Land. Because he he had been denied, he wasn't able to go.
One of the last things that we read about his life, it's actually in Deuteronomy three, but it's near the end of his life. He says, "I, I begged the Lord, let me see that good land." And the Lord says, "Don't speak to me about this again. You're not going to go." But now here he is. He gets to go to the Promised Land. But I think the The more obvious significance about Moses is that he represents the law; he is, after all, the great lawgiver.
And then Elijah represents the prophets; he was the the most dramatic of the prophets. And so here appear Moses and Elijah. I think representing the old covenant, and they're talking to Jesus about his exodus.
Now, the book of Romans tells us that everybody gets saved by grace through faith. No one, no one in the Old Testament, gets saved because of his good works, and.
So in the book of Romans it says that God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. It says this: He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. What what sins? The sins of Adam, and Noah, and Moses, and Elijah, and all the Old Testament saints—they had been taken into heaven on credit. They had been taken into heaven because the covenant of grace had stipulated that in due time their sins were going to be paid for.
He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just, and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus. God's salvation is bestowed upon us in a way that. Is not only consistent with justice; it extols justice. It shows the the inflexible righteousness of God, the absolute holiness of God, that He will not forgive even the sins of a favorite like David.
He will not even forgive the sins of a favorite like John, the beloved disciple, apart from a sacrifice made to atone for their sins. And I, I, we don't see what Moses and Elijah said, other than they were talking to him about their exodus. But I can well imagine that one of them said, "Lord, we're with you." All of us, all of us saints in heaven, are. We need you to do this. We are eager for this, and we are all looking on with with eager anticipation and wonder.
The angels are all looking down, wondering what's going on. They earnestly desire to look into these things, and and we don't understand it all, but. We're with you. We are with you. I don't know if that's what they said, but there they were, the law and the prophets saying, "We need Jesus." Now, let me conclude this sermon with making several things that we might infer.
About the state of the departed saints, which also will be a comfort to us as we anticipate the time when we will die and go to heaven. What might we expect? What can Moses and Elijah appearing here teach us about that?
Well, let's see what it says here. It says in verse thirty. And behold, two men talked with him, who were Moses and Elijah.
So the first thing that we can see is that departed saints are not transformed into some other kind of spiritual being; they remain human. They were men. Moses and Elijah were men.
Sometimes. People talk about their departed loved ones as well. They've become an angel now. No, an angel is a different kind of spiritual being. These these men remained men.
And then notice next that they talked with him. They were awake. They were intelligent. They were communicative.
So departed saints in heaven remain human; they remain capable of talking, and they also were recognized. I don't know how Peter and James and John recognized that it was Moses and Elijah, but it could be that the Lord just revealed it to them. It because they'd never seen a photograph of them. It may be that Jesus said something like, "Moses, Elijah, great to see you." So, it's possible that something like that happened. But at any rate, they were recognizable, and I think that that's.
That's something that we can infer is true of our loved ones who have already gone. When we see them, we will know them. They will remain who they were, only perfect. When you go to heaven, you are going to be the person you are. Only your soul is going to be immediately made perfect in holiness.
You'll immediately pass into glory.
Now I'm not. I don't know what to make about how how they saw Moses and Elijah. It's possible that Elijah had been had been transfigured himself because Elijah never died. You know, he was taken up to heaven in that in that fiery chariot. But Moses, it says that the Lord the Lord buried him, and so Moses.
Never had his earthly body unless God raised his earthly body from the dead, glorified it, and gave it to Moses so that he could appear here. It is. It does say here in Luke that they appeared in glory. And so, again, as I mentioned last night, glory is not a word that the Bible throws around. And so, the fact that they appeared in glory makes me think that they also were shining and resplendent beings.
But they were still Moses and Elijah. They could be recognized. And then let's notice one other thing that we can glean from this. It says that they spoke of his decease or his exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. A question that that many of us ask and wonder may not ask it out loud, but we wondered about our departed loved ones: Is do they know what's going on in my life?
Do they know what's going on on earth? And I think from this we can say. At least sometimes. I I don't know that. I don't know that we can go beyond that.
But Moses and Elijah knew that Jesus was accomplishing something through his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. They knew about it, and they were talking to him about it. I. I think this also indicates that they knew a whole lot more in heaven than they had known on earth, because they they knew about the gospel and the accomplishment of the gospel. I think it's fairly safe to say that that people in in the other world, both heaven and hell, are.
Remembering things that happened on earth and concerned about things that happen on earth, the saints in heaven in a way that doesn't interfere with their eternal bliss, the saints in hell so that there is no hope given to them. I I mention hell because of the rich man and Lazarus that I mentioned earlier this week, that the rich man lifted up his eyes and he said, let Let Lazarus go and speak to my five brothers, lest they come here. I had a a good friend that I played basketball and football with when I was in junior high and high school, who died as a young man. He died without giving any significant evidence that he was born again. I was a new preacher.
I was only about 18 years, I guess, 18 years old when they asked my dad and me to do the funeral. And my dad said something at this funeral that was very wise. He said, "We know." He called. He called the boy by name. He said, "We know that he is in the hands of Him who does all things well." He wouldn't preach him into heaven.
He wouldn't be so cruel as to say he's probably in hell. But he did say he is in the hands of Him who does all things well, and. That's a good word.
Something that I have added to that through the years is to try to say as delicately as possible, regardless of where your loved one may be, there is biblical evidence that they are concerned that you trust in Jesus Christ, because there is coming a time when this body is no longer working. That you are going to go somewhere. You will go to heaven, or you will go to hell. You'll be conscious. You'll still be the same person.
You'll be capable of talking. You'll be capable of thinking. But your cat, your die, your destiny will be eternally determined before you leave this world. And so, while it is still called today. Do not harden your hearts, but receive the Lord during the day of salvation.
Amen.
