The Transfiguration

In Luke chapter 9, Peter, James, and John witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus, and Peter couldn't hold his tongue. Let's pitch three tents.

Let's have three houses. I don't want to leave. This is a mountaintop experience I'm never going to get over. I have no interest in going to Jerusalem.

I have no interest in going back preaching. I have no interest in doing another day but to stand here and just bask in this glory. How like all of us, Peter was wanting to stay there on the mountain. That was a life-changing event for the three disciples. They witnessed something almost indescribable. But as amazing as it was, Peter would later say that there is something more surer than that experience.

Here's Dr. R.C. Sproul preaching from the Gospel of Luke. I'm sure it's the case with the vast majority of preachers that when they rise to exposit the biblical text, they suffer from a sense of personal inadequacy. That's certainly true for me every time I open this book before you. But to speak from such a text as we've heard this morning only exacerbates that sense of inadequacy because this text brings us literally face to face with one of the most profound moments that has ever taken place in the face of this earth.

And for me, in just a few moments, to try to plumb the depths of this is not only a Herculean task but an impossible one. And so we all need the help of God as we contemplate this marvelous event of the transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ. However, before Luke gives us that record, he mentions almost in passing the words of Jesus in verse 27, but I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God. There is no consensus as to what moment or event Jesus was referring to in this somewhat cryptic statement, but I will say that there are many who suggest that since Luke placed it right before the transfiguration that Jesus was referring to their witnessing that transfiguration only a few days after He made this pronouncement. Others have suggested that Jesus was referring to the resurrection, still others, to His ascension, still others, to the day of Pentecost, and still others, to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which is the view I favor. But just in passing, I note that the language that our Lord uses here involves what we call a particular negative proposition signaled by the use of the word sum.

And in the canons of logic and the laws of immediate inference, when a particular negative is expressed, it assumes also the opposite and equal particular affirmative in simple language. What that means is when Jesus says, some of you who are standing here will not taste death until this event takes place, it strongly suggests that some of them would taste death before this event would come to pass, which makes it highly unlikely that just a few days hence this prophecy would come to pass. It's unlikely that Jesus was saying something's going to happen in the next six to eight days, and some of you aren't going to live to see it when we know that all of them did live to see it. So having said that, let me just dismiss out of hand the idea that our Lord was referring to the transfiguration and then move on to the transfiguration itself, where Luke's account goes like this. 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, and then the description of the transfiguration. If you're like me, you sometimes like to speculate about what it would have been like to have been alive during the days of Jesus' ministry on this planet and how wonderful it would have been to have been an eyewitness of the things that He did during those years, to have seen the transformation of water to wine at the wedding feast of Canaan, to see the resurrection from the dead of the widow of Nain's son or Jairus' daughter or Lazarus, to see the other miraculous healings that He performed, or to have been an eyewitness of the resurrection or of the ascension or even of the cross. And when I think about that and try to rate them on a scale of excitement, it's hard to think of wanting to have seen anything more beautiful than the resurrected Christ, but short of that, the one event in all of human history that I wish I could have been an eyewitness of was this one that we just read this morning. That moment when God removed the veil where the concealed deity of Christ burst through the cloak of His humanity, displaying itself in nothing less than the pure radiance and refulgence of divine glory, only three human beings, nay, five were privileged to be eyewitnesses of that event, three contemporaries and two who had been brought there from the past days of history, namely Moses and Elijah.

But we're told here that it was only the inner circle of disciples, Peter, James, and John, who were invited to go with Jesus as He went up on the mountain to pray. And the event took place not during Jesus' conversation with the disciples, but the event took place while Jesus was having a conversation with His Father, presumably while He was on His knees, speaking to the Father while Peter, James, and John were merely onlookers and on listeners, as it were. Suddenly what the Greek calls a metamorphosis took place before their very eyes, a radical transformation of the visage of Jesus Himself, where we read that as He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, metamorphosized, changed.

They're looking at Him as He's deep in thought, communing with His Father. And while they're looking at Him before their eyes, Jesus' face begins to shine. And if we look at the other accounts of this in the rest of the gospel, the shining of His face was so intense that it was as the brightness of the sun. Now before I go any further, let's think for a second of another episode in biblical history where somebody's face began to shine like this.

And you know when that happened, thousands of years before this in the days of Moses, when Moses ascended Mount Sinai to meet there with God. And after meeting God and beholding a portion of His glory, as Moses began to descend from Mount Sinai, his face became so radiant. It was shining with such a high degree of brightness that when he appeared to Joshua and to Aaron and to the others, they were terrified because his face had been altered and his countenance was now radiating with heavenly glory, that they asked him to put a veil over his face. Because when people came close to Moses, the intensity and the brilliance of that shining glory frightened them. But we understand that in that episode in the Old Testament, that repulsioned glory that was coming from the face of Moses was simply a reflection. It wasn't the glory of Moses.

It didn't come from inside of Moses, but was bouncing off of Moses. Because the glory that was being reflected there was a heavenly glory, a divine glory. And you recall that the Bible says that there are different kinds of glories, different levels of glory, different levels of dignity and weightiness that God assigns to creatures. There's a glory to the sun, a glory to the moon, a glory to the animals, a glory to human beings.

But those are all different levels and stages of creaturely glory, none of which can ever begin to approach the transcendent majesty of divine glory. There is a glory, a kabod, a weightiness that belongs uniquely and singularly to God Himself, His eternal glory, which is made manifest throughout history in different times through the appearance of the Shekinah, that cloud of radiance and brightness that blinds those who look at it. It is that heavenly glory that God says He will share with no creature.

I will share my glory with no one, saith the Lord. And so He doesn't even share His glory with Moses. He displays it, and it is so bright that the face of Moses can't absorb it.

He can only reflect it. Now the difference between that and the transfiguration of Christ is that in the transfiguration, the radiance on the face of Jesus is not a reflection. It is not a glory from outside of Him that is now refracted and bounced back by His human nature. It's the divine glory coming from the second person of the Trinity who shares the fullness of the divine glory. As we sing, glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning is now and forever shall be. The eternal glory of the Son of God that is hidden by the frame of His humanity bursts out, and now they're seeing it on His face and on His clothes. His clothes are altered as well.

They become white, whiter than any launderer can make them, white that is pure, without any defect, without any blemish. And so there as Jesus is praying, and Peter, James, and John are watching this take place, they see the glory of God, the divine nature right before their eyes. And this experience, beloved, left an impression on these men that they were never to forget. Remember how John, who was there that day, began his gospel, and the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and he goes on through the rest of the prologue and he gets to the end of the prologue and he says what? And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth. John couldn't write that gospel without first saying, we saw His glory. Later when Peter writes to the church in 2 Peter chapter 1, he says this, for we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the excellent glory.

This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. Oh, oh, yes, during the ministry of Jesus and even after His death and resurrection and ascension, Peter had his well-known moments of laughs, but the one thing he never forgot is what he saw on that holy mountain when Christ was transfigured before him. And behold, we read, two men talked with Him who were Moses and Elijah, Moses who represents the law, Elijah who stands at the head of the long line of prophets. And we can say here that what happens on the Mount of Transfiguration is that the divine nature breaks through in the presence not only of the disciples but of the law and of the prophets, of Moses and Elijah who had called the people's attention to the One who would come.

And this comes right after the Caesarea Philippi confession when Peter had said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, that the Messiah would not just be an anointed human being, but He would be the divine Son as well. One of the ironies of this text is that Moses at the end of his career as the mediator of the Old Testament, the one to whom the angels gave the law to be presented to the people, Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land. He could look at it, but God took his life before he could enter the promised land.

And now hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later, he gets into the promised land. And there is Elijah, both of these men taking a brief vacation from heaven where they beheld the glory of the Father day and night, came to the earth to behold the glory of the Son. And Moses and Elijah appeared in glory, the glory they brought with them, and spoke of His, that is Jesus' demise or decease, which He was about to accomplish to Jerusalem. Jesus had told after the Caesarea Philippi confession that He had to go to Jerusalem to suffer and to die.

We remember that. And now as He is about to make that journey, the Father sends Him Moses and Elijah, probably in the answer to His prayer. The Scriptures don't say what Jesus was praying about, but given His passion, given the intensity of His prayer in Gethsemane, I can only guess, and it is just but a guess, that He was praying about that cup that the Father had placed before Him, and the Father sends Him Moses and Elijah to comfort Him, to encourage Him concerning His coming death. Peter and those with Him were heavy with sleep, and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory in the two men who stood with Him. And then it happened as they were parting for men that Peter said to Jesus, Master, it's good for us to be here. Let's pitch three tents.

Let's have three houses. I don't want to leave. This is a mountaintop experience I'm never going to get over. I have no interest in going to Jerusalem. I have no interest in going back preaching.

I have no interest in doing another day but to stand here and just bask in this glory. How like all of us, Peter was wanting to stay there on the mountain. So we'll make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.

We don't mind sleeping on the stones, not realizing what he had said. Again with all his attempt to encourage Jesus, once more Peter's trying to dissuade Him from his destiny, and while he was still speaking, a cloud came. Was it the Shekinah or an ordinary cloud?

Luke doesn't tell us, but a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were fearful as they entered the cloud, which makes me think it was the Shekinah. And a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is My beloved Son. Hear Him. Only three times in the New Testament are we told that God speaks audibly from the heavens. You remember the first time at the baptism of Jesus when the dove descended and the heavens opened and the Father spoke, saying, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Now the message changes slightly. The same affirmation of sonship is given, this is My beloved Son, listen to Him. How could you not pay heed and want to hear every word that came out of the mouth of the One who has just been transfigured in front of you? If you've ever tasted the glory of God, if you've ever had the slightest glimpse of the majesty of Jesus Christ, why wouldn't you want to hear everything that He has to say? Here comes the cloud, and that's scary enough.

They've just seen the glory and that terrified them. Now the coup de grace, the voice from heaven. Hey, Peter, James, John, do you know who this is? Do you know who this one is who has just displayed His glory before your very eyes? This is My beloved.

This is My beloved Son. Hear Him. And when the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone, but they kept quiet. And they didn't tell anyone in those days any of the things that they had seen. Later, of course, they couldn't stop talking about it and told everyone.

But for now, it wasn't time for talking, it was time for hearing, which they did. You know, beloved, every one of us in this room who is in Christ Jesus one day will see this same glory. It's inherent in Jesus. The author of Hebrews says that Jesus is the brightness of God's glory. And that when we enter into glory and our mortal eyes are overwhelmed by the brilliance of the light which we enter and we try to peer into that light and try to find the source of that light, we'll see Jesus not for a moment, but forever in the blinding glory of God. We missed the transfiguration the first time, but God willing, we won't miss it the next time.

What a glorious hope. Peter and the other disciples found it difficult to believe that Jesus would have to suffer and die, and they were no doubt troubled by our Lord's teaching that true discipleship involves suffering. They needed encouragement. They also needed assurance that all was going exactly as God had planned and that suffering for Christ's sake would be worthwhile.

In the transfiguration, they received that encouragement and assurance. We're glad you've joined us today for Renewing Your Mind for Dr. R.C. Sproul's series from the Gospel of Luke. And let me recommend that you request Dr. Sproul's commentary on Luke.

His careful explanation of this section, verses 28 through 36 of chapter 9, covers nearly five pages. You'll be able to deepen your own study of Luke's Gospel when you request the digital download of his commentary. Contact us today with your donation of any amount. Our offices are closed on Sunday, but you can contact us online to make your request at renewingyourmind.org. Here at the end of the program, let me also remind you that our goal at Ligonier Ministries is to come alongside the local church. We would never desire that this program replace the fellowship you enjoy with your church family. We're thankful that you appreciate Dr. Sproul's teaching, but we also hope that you're benefiting from God's means of grace in the proclamation of the Word and administration of the sacraments in your own local fellowship. Renewing Your Mind is the listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. I'm Lee Webb, inviting you to join us again next Lord's Day.