From glory to glory

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

Sherry was asking me this week, you know, we were talking about the text that I had for this week and I said, "Well, it's the transfiguration." She said, "What are you going to talk about with that?" And you know, some texts 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.

Intro story

William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in 1526. 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. 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 as they read from this text. And so the average person had no idea other than maybe what they tried to get from mass what the Bible actually said.

And William Tyndale 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 Tyndale, who was a brilliant, brilliant scholar—he spoke eight languages and then he was very well equipped to translate the Bible—had that conviction in his life 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 vehemently denied to do so.

But William Tyndale, 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 plowboy 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 spirit-filled and life-giving, to the people so that they could learn and hear from it for themselves. He died with that conviction. William Tyndale left England, went on the run, translated the Bible in 1526 from Germany, had it smuggled into England, and would 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 strangled.

Living Between Two Glories

What gave William Tyndale 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, 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 Tyndale 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 Tyndale, 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, verses 1-8.

Scripture reading

"And after six 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.

Encountering the Presence of God

So Jesus right here displays his glory to his disciples. The text through the course of Matthew has been building. We have seen how Jesus shows up 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 rumors 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 climax 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 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 can hear about glory 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 assent to like, "Yeah, 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.

Moving Beyond Head Knowledge

The reason it's not the same—the way to illustrate it would be 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 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 awestruck. I mean, they could not believe it. 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 assent to Christ or you've only sort of heard the stories and believe in a 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 Tyndale's and like so many other people where 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 that there's something else greater, more powerful, more beautiful beyond ourselves. It pulls us outside of ourselves that we are not the end in ourselves. And as God draws us, often times that's what we do, we feel that, we sense that.

As we look at this text today, 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.

1. Jesus Is Worthy of Our Worship

The first one we have here is that we have One who is worthy of our worship. Jesus here in this text possesses the glory. It takes its height or crescendo in the midst of this. We see in verse two it says, "And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light."

Now, in our modern day nothing surprises us. We've probably seen so many movies and imagery 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 used to it, maybe desensitized to it. But I think you all know that it's not the same. 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 what war is like—I know, and probably most of you do, until you walk through those things, until you experience the power of a tornado, until some of you have been in a war and hear the gunshots and the deafening sound and feel all of that going on, you just really don't have a full appreciation.

And so for us, in some ways we can't have a full appreciation of how Jesus transfigures and light, brightness, glory just unfolds before them. They're awestruck by it. Peter, all of them, they're kind of speechless. Peter starts kind of babbling along, but as the glory of God is revealed, it reveals that he is not just a man, not just a prophet. This is the presence of God. This alludes back to even those times when Moses or Elijah 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 dumbstruck. They feel this desire to worship: "We should build some tabernacles, right?" as Peter calls out. They feel that this is a worship moment. Even though Peter's a little bit misguided in his understanding there, God distinguishes his Son as one who's worthy. We see here in 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. 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 the glory of God truly appears in our life, it's arresting. It's life-altering, life-shifting. 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, we think of glory as just bright shiningness. But glory—I love the Hebrew of it, it's kavod. 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—there's beauty in it, there's power in it, and it creates all sorts of emotions in our life that arrest you.

I have had the privilege 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. 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 with guilt or with shame or with anger or frustration as they think about their old life. And yet at the same time, in that glory that they're experiencing, seeing 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 like..." and they can't even put it into words. "I feel happy. I just feel joy."

I had a person recently—not here in this church today, but a person I was praying with recently—and he just said, "It just feels good. It just feels like I'm coming to life." He was experiencing the glory and the presence. And all of his life, I hope, is dedicated now 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, Christ Jesus, in his life. We have One who reveals himself who is worthy of our worship.

2. A Promise We Can Believe

Second thing: a promise 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 come. But one thing to know is that Moses and Elijah are these types for Christ. The Old Testament has these figures whose lives essentially have this link and this pointing. They're like signposts that point to One who would come, the Messiah.

We know 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 One greater than Moses. Moses' life just is a foreshadowing of the ultimate reality of Christ. Moses also went up the mountain and experienced the glory of God. Jesus doesn't just experience it; Jesus emanates it. 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 [the Baptist], and we see that fulfillment. But John's life is really also just a signpost pointing to Christ, and there's many ways in which there's alignment with Christ and Elijah. Elijah raised the dead, Elijah healed 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.

Ultimately, when Malachi speaks about Elijah and says, "See, 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 wayward 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."

Ultimately, 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 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. 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 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 these early pieces of these things coming together and beginning to happen right now.

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.

Moses had prophesied 1,500 years ago, "The prophet's going to come after me, God's going to raise him up like me." 1,500 years. That's forever. As time went on in Israel through her exile and through her political corruption and through her wicked kings, 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—still just longing and waiting: "How long, O 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"—then he comes and he fulfills the law, he fulfills the prophets. It shows us that God is a God that keeps his word. He keeps his promise. He fulfills it.

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 who, 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 Tyndale. William Tyndale 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 king of England's eyes." 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 it forth. Tyndale never saw it in his life. He never saw his heart and his desire—maybe what he felt like God had called him to—it seemed like it died in vain with him, that it would never happen. He smuggled a couple translations in, no big deal. But God opened the eyes of the king and made the Bible available in the common tongue for the people, and it changed hearts and lives.

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.

3. Longing for the Final Day

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 with Peter. Peter says something very strange that puzzles us. In 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.'"

Bible commentators say several things about this passage, but some of the best, which I believe draw a line here, say there was a real meaning among the people at the time in Israel about the Feast of Tabernacles. 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, has this sort of signpost as an ultimate fulfillment of the Day of the Lord that comes in all of its fullness and glory.

Peter's like, "Let me 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 can have fervor and 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 worth worshiping."

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 Jesus to avoid the cross; he's already made that clear. Peter would love to avoid the hardship and his own taking up of the cross that's going to happen in life. Let's just arrive. 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. It infuses and fills his life with such hope and remembrance of what he saw and experienced that day. 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.

In that same way, even for us, we have to go down the mountain after we experience the glory of God revealed to us. He doesn't just call us into his kingdom come immediately. 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.

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 God made himself real to you, and you can carry that.

One of the practical, beautiful ways that you can do that is learning to bring together scripture and prayer and learning to fix your mind on it. Some people in the old times used to say "meditate." And I don't mean like meditate like Eastern mysticism. 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 gave the metaphor of a dog. He said, "I have this old dog and he just chews on that bone until he finds the good stuff." 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 had that same thing in his own life where he 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 sometimes single words would enlighten his eyes. He said it was like light flooding my eyes with 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 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.

Peter at the end of his life was one who continued to labor in that same way. Peter writes the church—he actually recounts this in 2 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 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 heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on that sacred mountain."

And 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 on that final day, we will enter in. We will enter in.

Until then, we are called to labor. We are called to do what the Westminster Shorter Catechism says: that our chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Let's pray.

Closing Prayer

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.

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 hundredth 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.