From glory to glory

This uh this morning's scripture reading is going to come from Matthew chapter 17 verses 1-8.

Sherry was uh was asking me this week, you know, we were talking about uh the text that I had for this week and uh I said, "Well, it's the transfiguration." She said, "What are you going to talk about with that?" And uh you know, some texts are are uh are easier than others. This one was challenging, but I also believe that the Lord always speaks through his word and he has great things to say. So hopefully this morning I'm not an impediment to that. Um, William Tindle translated the Bible into English in 1526. Uh this may not seem like a big deal because we have so many translations of the Bible this day and age, but at the time it was illegal to translate the Bible into the common vernacular. So the Bible existed obviously in its original languages. You had Greek and you had Hebrew. Uh the Catholic Church had translated it into Latin. Latin was the primary text and translation that was used. If you went to mass at that point in time, you would have heard it spoken in Latin. You would have no clue whatever they were talking about. um as they read from this text. And so the average person had no idea other than maybe what they tried to get from mass uh what the Bible actually said. And William Tindle had this conviction that the Bible should be actually put into the language of the everyday person that they should be able to hear these words and read them and learn them for themselves. And so William Tindle who was a brilliant brilliant scholar. He spoke eight languages and then he was uh very well equipped to translate the Bible and he had that conviction in his life to uh to make that a possibility. So he went to the church there in England. At the time it was the Catholic Church. It was not yet the church of England. And he asked for permission to translate the Bible into English. And he was vehematly denied to do so. But William Tendle one time debating a cleric about giving the scriptures to the people in their common tongue had such a conviction that he one time told a cleric, "My goal, if I live, is to make sure that the average plow boy driving the plow knows the Bible better than you." As he spoke to a Roman Catholic cleric, he wanted to give God's word, which he believed was rich and spiritfilled and lifegiving, to the people so that they could learn and hear for it from them for themselves. He died with that conviction. William Tindle left England, went on the run, translated the Bible in 1526 from Germany, had it smuggled into England, and would ne spend the next 10 years of his life running and hiding from the king's special secret agents who would seek him out all over Europe until one day he was apprehended, imprisoned for a year, and then strained. What gave William Tindle such a conviction that he needed to spend his life and dedicate and devote his life to something like this? And I think what it is is what every Christian to some degree has experienced. They have experienced an encounter with the living God. They've experienced his glory and his presence and his power revealed to them. And that experience and that knowledge and all that they encountered that all that we have encountered in propels the kind of life that we live. We talked last week about how Jesus calls us to lay down our life to take up our cross and to follow him. And that encounter is what empowered someone like William Tindle and so many other stories of Christians and I hope for your own lives to lay aside their own lives, their own will, their own kingship and surrender their lives to the king in hope of what Jesus talked about, the glory to come. the day and the age when God unfolds all of the true reality of his kingdom before us all and we all stand before the seat of God and he says well done my good and faithful servant William Tindle his life was between two glories the glory that he had experienced at some point in his life and the glory that he knew to come and for all that are in Christ you too in some way are living In between those glories, in between what was a preview of a reality to come, the presence in the king himself, and the ultimate fulfillment in an age to come when we see the fullness of his glory. As we look today, we're going to be reading from Matthew 17 1-8. We're going to be talking about a moment of glory. A moment when God manifests his presence, when Jesus comes and reveals a preview, a glimpse. It's not the end. It's not the final day. And this is going to so shape the life of these three disciples and really ultimately the lives of us all as God reveals his glory to us in our own way. So we look at Matthew 17:es 1-8. And after 6 days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. And he was still speaking when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. And a voice came from the cloud and said, "This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him." And when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Rise and have no fear." and they lifted up their eyes and they saw no one but Jesus only. This is God's word. So Jesus right here displays his glory to his disciples. It's uh the the text through the course of Matthew has been building. We have seen how Jesus uh shows up and and we see these hints that he is the son of God as we were traveling through the text. And at first maybe he's a great teacher, maybe he's a prophet. He starts doing some miracles, but he starts teaching with this authority. And there's all sorts of rumor swelling about who this man could be. And then he starts doing really things that only God could do. And he starts forgiving sins that only God should do. And more and more we are getting these hints that Jesus is not just your ordinary prophet of the day and age. And then there's this climatic moment in the last week or two that we looked at where Jesus essentially Peter announces you are the son of God. And so we see that take place and Jesus beginning to proclaim that his kingdom will come. Jesus manifests his kingdom based upon what he said in the last passage from last week where he said in verse 28, "Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom." And here Jesus now fulfills that six days later when he brings three of his disciples up and he reveals to them his glory. It transforms them. It changes them because when you meet God, when you see his glory, when he reveals himself to you in some particular way, you will not be the same. And if in Christ, I hope that each of you have experienced at some point God meeting and revealing his power, his beauty, his authority, his grace, his mercy, all of the great beautiful things that are found in him to you. And God doesn't just meet us on mountains. In fact, sometimes God meets us in valleys. And sometimes he just meets us when we're minding our own business on a road and he interrupts life and shows up and invites us to change our direction and our life to lay those things aside and to come and to follow him. You know, you can you can hear about glory. You can hear about it from afar, but the Christian journey is something where we're all called to experience God's glory in some way revealed to us. Not just to hear it or have some sort of mental ascent to like, yeah, that I I understand it. I've heard the stories about that guy, Jesus, the good moral teacher. No, you have to experience his power, his authority, his love, his grace, his forgiveness, his mercy in your life. And he does that. He reveals himself to each of us in that way. And the reason it's not the same, the way that maybe to illustrate it would be the way I thought of it was the Grand Canyon. If you have watched a documentary of the Grand Canyon, you have not experienced the Grand Canyon. If you have seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, you don't know what it's like. You can understand visually what it looks like, but until you stand at that south rim and behold the glory of the Grand Canyon, I can tell you it's different. And there is no picture and no documentary that captures the glory and the grandeur. I remember the first time I went as a teenager, what what I what struck me is there were over a hundred people standing around me as we gathered at the edge of this thing and it was silent. Everybody was all struck. I mean, they could not believe the I'd seen the pictures. I'd seen the documentaries. I had a mental image of what it looked like. But until they and I stood there and beheld and were just set back by this moment, we had not really experienced the glory of the canyon. And if you've only made a mental ascent to Christ or you've only sort of heard the stories and I believe in the sort of fuzzy thing, you've not experienced the glory. And the invitation for you if you have not experienced that is to come to behold to answer that drawing and that calling to come up the mountain to leave that valley behind in your life to turn from those things and to commit your life to Christ to behold him so that your whole life becomes transformed like William Tindles and like so many other people where you you behold the glory and life takes a different direction a different purpose a different meaning as you live between the glories of what you experienced and what lies ahead. So the glory changes us. It humbles us. It shifts our whole perspective about who we are and who that there's something else greater, more powerful, more beautiful beyond ourselves. It pulls us outside of oursel that we are not the end in ourselves. And as God draws us, often times that's the thing we do is we feel that we sense that. So as we look at this text today, I'm actually going to the way I'm going to shape through this text is I want us to look at three implications of Jesus's transfiguration. Three implications of experiencing the glory of God. So the the first one we have here is that we have one who is worthy of our worship. We have one who is worthy of our worship. Jesus here in this text possesses the glory. It's it takes its sort of height or crescendo in the midst of this. We see in verse two says that he was and as they go up the mountain it says and he was transfigured before them and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light. Now you know in our modern day nothing surprises us. We've we've probably seen so many movies and imageries that when you hear just a story on paper, there's nothing that really captures your imagination. Like maybe ancient hearers of a story like this would be captured and captivated. We've sort of been um used to it, maybe desensitized to it. But I think you all know that it's not the same. That even if you can't quite picture it, like I can picture what a hurricane is like. I can picture because of documentaries what a tornado is like. I can picture so many I can picture what war is like. But I know and probably most of you do until you walk through those things, till you experience the power of a tornado, until some of you have been in a war and hear the gunshots and the the the the just the deafening sound and feel all of that going on, you just really don't have a full appreciation. And so for us, some ways we can't have a full appreciation of how Jesus transfigures and light, brightness, glory just unfolds before them. I mean, they're aruck by it. I mean, Peter, all of them, they're they're kind of speechless. Peter starts kind of baffling along, but is the glory of God revealed? Revealing that he is not just a man, not just a prophet. This is the presence of God. This is this eludes back to even those times when when Moses or Elijah uh or Elijah would go up the mount went up the mountain of God and saw the presence of God, felt the presence of God in those places. Jesus is very different here. We see the disciples are dumbruck. They feel this desire to worship. We should build some tabernacles, right? As Peter calls out, they they feel that this is a worship moment. Uh even though Peter's a little bit misguided uh in in his understanding there, God distinguishes his son though as one who's worthy. We we see here in verse uh verse 5 it says he was still speaking. That's Peter when behold a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. Moses and Elijah kind of fade into the background as Jesus pinpoints. It's not about three tabernacles. There's only one on this mountain that's worthy of worship. The glory that is not it's not just that Jesus is reflecting God's glory. He is possessing and emanating the glory of God in himself because he is the son of God. Not just a man. This changes everything. He is one who is truly worthy of worship, worthy of our devotion, worthy of our listening to and our obedience to so Christ's glory comes. And when glory when the glory of God truly appears in our life, it's arresting. It's lifealtering, life shifting. It it it turns you from whatever directions or theologies or pursuits you had in life and it makes you behold one who is worth chasing after, living for and worshiping and giving the whole rest of your life to because you experience all of the power and the goodness and the beauty. Now, glory, we think of glory as just bright shiningness. But glory, glory, I love the Hebrew of it. It's it's it's cavode. It's like this heaviness, this weight, this presence. Kind of like with the Grand Canyon when you stand before it and just feel this sense of awe and weight. It's like the glory just sort of unfolds in front of you. And so it is with God and his glory that there's beauty in it. There's power in it. And it creates all sorts of emotive in our life that arrest you. I have had the privilege uh in life and I'm sure most of you have at some point of praying with someone who is rededicating their life or coming to faith for the first time and and for me I've seen a few times where I am witnessing the glory of God unfolding in that moment in that person's life and I can tell you I have seen people shake shake with guilt or with shame or with anger with frustration as they think about their old life and yet at the same time in the in that glory that they're experiencing their their unworthiness standing before God and feeling just the weight and the glory of who he is and then yet at the same time receiving forgiveness as they call out to him and that grace and that mercy I also see that by the end of that prayer and I've even heard it articulated I feel alive. I just feel I just feel like and they can't even put it into words. I feel happy. I just feel joy. It feels I had a person recently, not here in this church today, but but a person I was praying with recently, and he just said, "It just feels good. It just feels like like like I'm coming to life." He was experiencing the glory and the presence. And all of his life, I hope, is dedicated now to because he saw there was one worthy of worship. There was one worthy of devotion as he laid aside all of the old things in his life and now is pursuing that person that Christ Jesus in his life. We have one who reveals himself who is worthy of our worship. Second thing, a promise we believe we can believe. We have a promise that we can believe. Moses and Elijah appear in this scene. And there's all sorts of rich Old Testament illusions that that come. But but one thing to know is that Moses and Elisha are these types for Christ. Uh the Old Testament has these figures and the that that their lives essentially have this link and this pointing. They're like signs po uh signposts that point to one who would come, the Messiah. And we know that that Moses was very much one. Matthew very clearly throughout the book of Matthew is constantly reminding us that this is the new Moses. In fact, this is the greater than Moses. Moses' life just is a foreshadowing of the ultimate reality of Christ. Moses also, you know, went up the mountain and experienced the glory of God. Jesus doesn't. Jesus emanates it, though. He's not just Moses. He's greater than Moses in this. Elijah himself in many ways there's a duality to him because Elijah in one sense points to the life of John and we see that we see that fulfillment where the the but John's life is really also just a sign point post pointing to Christ and there's many ways in which there's alignment with Christ and Elijah Elijah also raised the dead Elijah he killed lepers Elijah fed hungry people so did Christ Elijah went up the mountain and heard the still small voice of God speaking. And so we do see these foreshadowings and links and ultimately when it calls that about Elijah in Malachi and it says see I will send the prophet Elijah. This is what so many of the religious teachers were looking for. I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction. The one who really brings that kind of wholeness, that kind of reconciliation, it's really Jesus. John only points to it. Jesus is the one that reconciles us even to the heart of the father. We are weward children who through Christ now can be reconciled to our father in heaven. And so we see that he in some ways ultimately fulfills the prophecies about these two figures. Moses even had said, "One prophet like me will come and rise among you and you need to listen to him." And God here pronounces that over Jesus. This is my son. This is the true and ultimate Moses as we see alluded to here in this passage. And what does God say? Listen to him. Listen to him. And ultimately, maybe a from a big picture standpoint, what is happening is there's like a baton being passed here. Moses and Elijah and so many others before them were just signposts in their life. Moses represents the law, the law of God. And Jesus ultimately fulfills all of the law and all the prophets that all the the symbolism of the temple worship and the lamb and the altar and the blood and all those things find their fulfillment in Christ. He is the ultimate temple that tabernacles among us. John 1. He is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world through his blood. He is the ultimate lamb. He's all of those things are fulfilled through his life and through his teaching. Jesus lives the perfect law, keeps the law perfectly in every way. He's greater than Moses. And the same with with Elijah. Jesus is greater. He fulfills all of the prophecies. Not just Elijah, but Elijah represents all of the teachings of the prophets before and the summation of what they all proclaimed that God would one day come that he would come and rescue his people. That he would come and reunite them. He would call them from afar. And he wouldn't just call Israel, he would call Israel's enemies back to him as well. And we see Jesus this early pieces of these things coming together and beginning to happen right now. And in case there's any confusion on the mountain when Elijah and Moses are present with Jesus, there's only one that God says is the son of God. There's only one that's emanating the glory of God. It's Jesus worthy of our worship, but also one, as I said, who we can believe in. He ultimately fulfills the promises of the Old Testament in his life. You know that the the G Moses had prophesied 1500 years ago. I'm the prophet's going to come after me like he's going to raise up like me. God's going to raise him up. 1500 years. That's forever. This thing as time went on in Israel through her exile and through her political corruption and through her wicked kings and and through having to be ousted from the land and then return and then see religious corruption in the land and so many things happening and still just longing and waiting. How long, oh Lord? When's it going to come about? And losing faith in the promises. And yet after a millennium and a half, as he hinted over and over, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming. And then he comes and he fulfills the law, he fulfills the prophets. And it shows us that God is a God that keeps his word. He keeps his promise. He fulfills it. And from the grave, some of us never get to see what he will do. We live in the glory to the glory, wondering, "I can't make sense of this world. I don't know what's going on. Where are your promises? When will you return? When will you bring these things about?" And yet, we see God as the God through hundreds of years later, thousands of years later, keeps his word. It stands true. And even if you go to the grave unable to understand certain things about what God has done in this life, you can know that he does not fail. You can hold forth the promises. I shared a minute ago about William Tindle. William Tindle gave his life and his last words with his desire to see God's word made known to the people shouted out, "Lord, open the eyes of the king." Three or four years later, the king of England changed his mind and he made it law that the Bible could be translated into English and gave it to the people. And from the grave, God brought forth. Ali uh Tindle never saw it in his life. He never saw his his heart and his desire. Maybe what he felt like God had called him to. It seemed like it died in vain with him. It would never happen. He smuggled a couple translations in a big deal. But God opened the eyes of the king and made the Bible and the common tongue for the people and it changed hearts and lives. And in the same way as we labor in the time in between, we can have hope. God does not fail. You can trust his promises. You can trust his promises. Third thing, we should long for the final day. You experience the glory of God. It's just a foreshadowing. It's just a taste of what is to come. And it points to something, an ultimate reality that is to come. There's this thing happening here uh with Peter. Peter says something very strange that puzzles us. Um, you know, it says verse three, "And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus,"Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." And you know, the Bible commentators say several things about this passage, but um some of the best, which I believe uh draw a line here. And they actually say there was a real meaning among the people at the time in Israel about the feast of tabernacles. And the feast of tabernacles because of Zechariah chapter 14 was associated with the day of the Lord. That even on the day of the Lord they would all celebrate that nations would come and be called to celebrate the feast of tabernacles. And so that feast, that tabernacling, it has this sort of signpost as an ultimate fulfillment of the day of the Lord that comes in all of its fullness and glory. And Peter's like, "Let's break out the tabernacles. Let's start inviting the nations to worship the Lord. Let's do this." Now, his theology is a little bit off. You know, you can have fervor. Your theology still be off. Theology is important. And so, God has to give him a correction in a minute here and say, "There's only one only one worth worshiping." But the other mistake of Peter is he thinks this is the time and it's not the time. It's a glimpse. Peter would love for us to avoid the Jesus to avoid the cross. He's already made that clear. Peter would love to avoid the hardship and the his own taking up of the cross that's going to happen in life. Let's just let's just arrive. Well, we all want that. But at the end of the day, Peter has to go back down that mountain because that was just a glimpse of the glory of God. and he has to live in the times in between. And yet because of what he has seen, it changes everything and it infuses and fills his life with such hope and remembrance of what he saw and experienced that day. And it fuels and propels the rest of his life as he continues to live as a person looking for that final day when Christ will come. And in that same way, even for us, we have to go down the mountain, we experience the glory of God revealed to us. And yet, he doesn't just call us into his kingdom come. We have to live life. We have to groan. We have to labor sometimes, experience sorrow, sacrifice, surrender. But yet we have hope and we can believe that promise. And maybe just just pastorally to speak to you that hope doesn't have to fade into the limelight. You can carry that down the mountain with you. God's glory revealed to you can be renewed over and over in the course of life. that you can find the moments when you remember the message of the gospel and you remember the glory that you experienced. You remember how co God made himself real to you and you can carry that. And one of the practical beautiful ways that you can do that is learning to bring together the scripture prayer and learning to fix your mind on it. Some people in in the old times used to say meditate. And I don't mean like meditate like Eastern mysticism. Uh Eugene Peterson used to talk about it like this. He would say you take a verse or a scripture and you just chew on it and you chew on it and you let it speak to you. He he gave the metaphor of a dog. He said I have this old dog and he's just chews on that bone until he finds the good stuff. And then same with scripture. His analogy was chew on it and let the Holy Spirit just start bringing forth all sorts of revelation. Jonathan Edwards did that in his own life. Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan pastor back in the 1700s and he uh he he had that that same thing in his own life where he would would chew on the word. He would meditate on God's word and he used to talk about how it was like it would just come alive that just sometimes single words would enliven enlighten his eyes. He said it was like light flooding my eyes of these beautiful truths that would move me at times to tears. Through God's word, through prayer, through meditating on his word and hearing the Holy Spirit, he will bring you at times and reveal him himself and his beauty and his character and his glory once again. And it will renew you as you walk between the glory to the glory. But the glory will come. God has given us a glimpse of it and we can trust his promises that it will come. And Peter at the end of his life was one who continued to labor in that same way. Um Peter writes the church, he actually recounts this in second Peter chapter 1 and he says, "For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty. We received honor and glory from the God the father when the voice came from the majestic glory saying this is my son whom I love with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves have heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on that sacred mountain. But then Peter also writes in chapter 1, he says, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. He reveals himself and calls us into his glory. And ultimately that final day, we will enter in. We will enter in. And until then, we are called to labor. We are called to do what the Westminster Confession Catechism Shorter Catechism says that our chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Let's pray.

Lord, I pray God that

you would renew within us a picture of that glory. That you would renew something even today, God. Maybe even in this passage here that reminds us that the God of the mountain is also the God who meets us on the everyday ordinary path and he meets us in the valley. His glory is real and there is a coming glory that we can look forward to. And as we live in the in between of life, we can groan, we can worship, and we can wait and hope because hope in you does not fail. You will come. You will accomplish your purposes. And I pray Lord that it would give us the power, the perseverance, the hope, the joy to endure in the days in between. Lord, if there are some who have not received or experienced your glory, Lord, I pray that you would so draw their heart and open it up to receive from you because I know personally, Lord, it is rich. And as so many I've prayed with, there's life in it. It's good. And I pray, Father, that we, whether for the first time or for the hundth time, would be renewed in the reminder that there is good to come so that we do not fail even today in our perseverance and pursuit of you. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.