Beholding His Glory (Luke 9:28–36) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 66)

Transcript

JRNT 117
09/06/2026
The Gospel of Luke: Beholding His Glory
Luke 9:28-36
Jesse Randolph


Something every Christian everywhere has experienced at some point in time in their Christian walk is worry. Whether it's worry about the direction a relationship is going or worry about a child or worry about a parent or worry about job security or worry about finances, there is always something or someone or some situation which threatens to worry us, to serve as a source of anxiety in our hearts, to cause us fear. Now to the world worry is just something that you sort of deal with. You stuff it down and you live with it. Occasionally you medicate it. You resolve to live by some sort of meaningless mantra like “What, me worry?” or “Don't worry, be happy.” Even in the church, though, according to certain lines of thinking, we can get down these paths of processing where worry indicates weakness or worry indicates a lack of faith or worry might even be sin, so just stop it, stop worrying. I'm going to suggest that there is a better way to deal with your worry, a more lasting way to deal with your worry if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. And that's to look to your Savior, to look upon your glorious Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, to consider Him, to meditate on what Scripture tells you about Him and to keep your focus on Him. When you do so, when you are committed to truly focusing on who Jesus is and what He did and what He will do, your worries, your anxieties, your fears will gradually over time melt away. The remedy, in other words, for worry is not merely behavior modification to change the way that you're thinking entirely or only; the remedy rather is to redirect your affections fully.

John Owen an English Puritan who lived in the 1600s wrote a book from his deathbed titled The Glory of Christ. It's a wonderful book, it's a difficult to read book because Owen is probably the hardest of the Puritans to read, but it's a wonderful book nonetheless, and Owen in this book, The Glory of Christ, says this. “By beholding the glory of Christ by faith we shall find rest to our souls. Our minds are apt to be filled with troubles, fears, cares, dangers, distresses, ungoverned passion and lusts. By these our thoughts are filled with chaos, darkness and confusion. But where the soul is fixed on the glory of Christ, then the mind finds rest and peace.”

Owen wrote those words in 1683 at a time when the world moved at a much slower pace, a time before Smartphones and six-lane highways and AI and fast-food restaurants and the entire rat race picture that we live under today. Yet how timely those words are for us today as we move at a much faster pace than he ever did and as we are as prone, if not more prone, to get swallowed up in the here and now moments of our lives. We take our gaze and our thoughts and our focus off Christ and the glory of Christ. Pastor Andrew just led us in song, and the last one was I Will Glory in my Redeemer, and it ends with those words, “His face to forever to behold.” What a precious truth that is, to know that one day when we are with the Lord Jesus in His presence, we will be able to behold His face and to do so in an unbroken manner forever, all throughout eternity. But the thing is we don't have to wait for glory to glory in our Savior right now. No, right now, today we can glory in what He has done for us. We can glory in the heavenly inheritance He has purchased for us. We can glory in Him in a way that actually transcends what He did and what He has done. We can glory in Him for who He truly is. The text we are going to be in this morning is going to challenge us to do just that, to glory not only in our salvation but to glory in the Savior who purchased our salvation.

Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to Luke 9, we're going to be in verses 28-36 this morning where we have Luke's account of the Transfiguration where Jesus's disciples, three of them, had this unique opportunity to behold His glory. We're going to be in verses 28-36, God's Word reads, “Now it happened some eight days after these words and taking along Peter and John and James, He went up on the mountain to pray. And it happened that while He was praying the appearance of His face became different and His clothing became white and gleaming. And behold, two men were talking with Him, and they were Moses and Elijah who, appearing in glory, were speaking of His departure which He was about to fulfill at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep, but when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men standing with Him. And it happened that as they were leaving Him Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three booths, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah, not realizing what he was saying. While He was saying this a cloud formed and began to overshadow them and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. Then a voice came out of the cloud saying, ‘This is My Son, My chosen One, listen to Him. And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen.”

Now I haven't forgotten that last Sunday morning at the end I left us all on a cliff. Do you remember that? It was our last point last Sunday morning, the cliffhanger. Being a man of my word, I'm going to get us back to that cliff, we're going to finish our business on that cliff and then we'll jump off that cliff into the text for this morning. Before we get into verse 28, I do want to take us back to verse 27 and recall the scene. Jesus has temporarily relocated to the north, to Caesarea Philippi with His disciples, with the twelve, and while He is there, He lays down these very powerful statements, these charges, these words of warning to the twelve. In fact, look at verse 23, we'll just read it briefly. It says, “And He was saying to them all. If anyone wishes to come after Me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself. For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”

So, we worked through that already, that profound section of Scripture, we won't revisit today but now look at what Jesus says in verse 27. “But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God.” Now note right away how authoritative those words are and with what power and assurance they were delivered. First of all, they come from the lips of our Lord Himself, they come with this inherent divine authority. But they also have that familiar “but I say to you” formulation baked into them. So, it is like He is saying, Perhaps you heard it said a different way or Perhaps you thought about it differently, but I say to you. And then He doubles down further by saying, “But I say to you truthfully.” It's like He is triple underlining what He is about to say. He is saying, Listen up, tune in, pay attention because what I am about to say to you is very important.

Then come these words, “There are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God.” How is that possible? How can it be? How could it be that there were those in this moment on this scene in this place, Caesarea Philippi, standing in Jesus's presence 2,000 years ago, how could it be that they would not taste death until they saw the Kingdom of God? How could they see the Kingdom of God before they died? How could this be, given that the Kingdom of God that is mentioned here is not a present-day reality but it's a future reality that is going to come 2,000 years or more from this moment? I mean, as you can imagine there has been a lot of ink spilled and many trees felled over the different interpretations of this passage over the past many years of church history. There have been many well-meaning folks who have tried to make sense of what Jesus is saying here and in doing so have arrived at a number of different conclusions. For example, some have said that Jesus's words in verse 27, “there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God,” refers to the eventual Second Coming of Christ. The return of Christ which will trigger the establishment of His kingly rule, His millennial Kingdom on earth. So, if you just track with the Biblical chronology, Revelation 19-20. In Revelation 19 we have Jesus returning on His white horse, He has those eyes that are like flames of fire, He is clothed with that garment that is dipped in blood, He has that sharp sword coming out of His mouth, He has that garment and, on His thigh, it says, King of kings and Lord of lords. That is Revelation 19, at His return. We know from Revelation 20 that when He returns, He comes and He sets up His Kingdom on earth and then He reigns for a thousand years. Now according to this first view, this first interpretation of Luke 9:27, those ideas or these words, “there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God,” are pointing forward to that Revelation 19-20 timeframe. They are entirely future oriented; they are entirely eschatological. Well, that doesn't work. Why? Well, those events—Christ's return, His eventual setting up of His Kingdom here on earth, Revelation 20—haven't happened yet. They are still, from our vantage point even, yet future events. Obviously, those who were standing there in Jesus's presence at Caesarea Philippi 2,000 years ago, well, they died, all twelve of them, meaning they did in fact taste death and they tasted death before they saw the Kingdom of God. This view doesn't hold up and that's because there were some of those standing there when Jesus said these words who did, in fact, taste death before they saw the Kingdom of God.

That leads now into a second view, a commonly held view, of what this passage means and it's advanced by an entirely different group. Now this other group, recognizing the weakness of this first view and the holes that you can poke in it, this second view would hold that there must be some sort of spiritual dimension or spiritual component or spiritual aspect of the Kingdom of which Jesus spoke here. So according to this second view maybe what Jesus was trying to communicate to His disciples here in verse 27 was not about the physical establishment of His Kingdom at the end of human history, but instead it was about the spiritual kingdom He was about to establish in their hearts. We've covered that topic several times already in our study of Luke's Gospel going back many, many months now, but the Kingdom of Christ of which Christ spoke when He addressed the disciples about the kingdom in Luke, wasn't a spiritual kingdom. It wasn't a kingdom which involved Christ ruling spiritually over their hearts. Rather, when He spoke of His Kingdom, He was referring to His future physical kingdom, one which would follow His Second Coming, one in which He would rule and reign from the throne of David, one in which swords would be turned into plowshares, one in which the lion would by lying down with the lamb, one in which the child would play over the hole of the cobra in this time of upheaval and in this time of great peace. Meaning when Jesus said here in verse 27 that “there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God,” He wasn't referring to some sort of spiritual kingdom. The reference, rather, was to His coming physical kingdom.

Okay, so if here in verse 27 Jesus was not referring to His disciples being alive or tasting death until they saw the coming Kingdom of God and if this passage is not affirming that there is a spiritual kingdom dimension to the Kingdom, that whole kingdom in your hearts idea, what is He saying? What does this mean? Well, look at the next verse, verse 28. It says, “Now it happened some eight days after these words.” which words? Well, the words we covered last week, verses 23-27, including the words of verse 27 that “there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God.” So “Now it happened some eight days after those words,” verse 28, “that taking along Peter and John and James He went up on the mountain to pray and it happened that while He was praying the appearance of His face became different and His clothing became white and gleaming.”

I haven't given you my first preaching point yet for this morning, but here it is. Point one is KINGDOM GLORY PREVIEWED, that's our first point. What did Jesus mean in verse 27 when He said, “there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God?” Well, what He was saying is what they were about to preview just eight days later is what it is going to be like in His Kingdom when His subjects live in His presence and behold Him in His glory. He wasn't saying that the kingdom was in their hearts. He wasn't saying that any member of the twelve would live somehow thousands of years to see Him establish His physical kingdom on earth. What He is saying, rather, is that some of His disciples, that's the word there, “some.” He was saying that some who made up the twelve would get a glimpse of His Kingdom and a preview of His kingdom and they would get that glimpse through that preview of His kingdom before they passed away. This event was about to take place in a mere matter of days, that event being the Transfiguration. That's what He is referring to verse 27 when He is speaking about seeing the Kingdom of God. They were about to see a preview of His Kingdom Glory at the Transfiguration.

With that we are off our cliff from last Sunday morning, you can ask me questions about that in the lobby afterwards. But here let's move into our second point as we get into our text now, here is point two, TRANSFORMING GLORY DISPLAYED. Look again at verses 28-29. It says, “Now it happened some eight days after these words that taking along Peter and John and James, He went up on the mountain to pray. And it happened that while He was praying the appearance of His face became different and His clothing became white and gleaming.” Now Luke starts here in verse 28 with these words, “Now it happened some eight days after these words,” which again refers to verses 23-27 and the very words we worked through last Sunday. Some eight days after that “Jesus took along Peter and John and James,” and it says, end of verse 28, “they went up on the mountain to pray.” So, these three men, Peter, James and John, the inner ring, we've seen it already, they were these highly privileged men even among the twelve who themselves were privileged. It was these three alone, Peter and James and John, who witnessed the raising of Jairus's daughter back in Luke 8. It would be these three alone who would be there and witnessing Jesus's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as you get to the end of the different Gospel accounts. It was these three alone who were present here at the Lord's Transfiguration which took place on this mountain. Now note, it's an undisclosed mountain, “He went up on the mountain to pray.” So which mountain is this? We're not told. Some have said this is Mt. Tabor. That's unlikely because the setting here is still far north in Caesarea Philippi and Mt. Tabor is way down south in the exact opposite direction of where the disciples had been ministering up to this point. So, if it is not Mt. Tabor, what would be the most likely mountain for this event? My guess would be it was Mt. Hermon, which is in much closer proximity to Caesarea Philippi in the north, north of the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus is there on Mt. Hermon, He is not with the broader group of twelve at this point, you can see He is with this tighter circle of three, Peter, James and John, and Jesus is on this mountain to pray. As we have already seen in Luke's Gospel, I won't turn you right now to every occasion, but Jesus would often, when there was something significant or major about to happen, go to prayer. He would get away, He would remove Himself, He would get far away from the crowds, He would go up on the mountains to do this very thing, to pray. Well, a major event, in fact a significant event, was about to take place in verse 29, namely, Jesus before He made His way to Jerusalem for sinners, before He drank the cup of the Father's wrath, before He hung and bled on the cross, before He was killed, before all of that He was going to give this glimpse of His divine glory. His disciples had already confessed. Back in Luke 9:20, Peter, speaking on behalf of the disciples, said that “He is the Christ of God.” They had confessed that He is the Messiah. There were these other times earlier on in the Gospel where men like Peter alluded to the fact that Jesus is God, like in Luke 5. After the miraculous haul of fish, you remember Peter said to Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.” There is some implicit acknowledgment that something divine or someone divine was in his presence. But now with the Transfiguration Jesus was going to show these men even more openly, even more directly as He peeled back the curtain on His divine glory that He was God.

Look at verse 29 again, “And it happened that while He was praying the appearance of His face became different and His clothing became white and gleaming.” So, He is there with these three on the mountain, most likely Mt. Hermon. He is praying and while He is praying, we're told, He underwent this change; this transformation. This Transfiguration where first “the appearance of His face became different,” it says, and second “his clothing became white and gleaming.” Let's take those one by one, starting with the appearance of His face. Luke says it as “the appearance of His face became different.” Luke is being uncharacteristically vague here. He is usually so detail oriented and we have to go to the other Gospels to see even more detail about what was happening here. Turn with me, if you would, over to Matthew 17, where we're going to see the parallel account of the Transfiguration. Matthew 17, and we'll look just briefly at verses 1-2 here. Matthew 17 says, “And six days later Jesus brought with Him Peter and James and John his brother and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them and His face shone like the sun and His garments became as white as light.” Now you might have noticed that in our text in Luke 9, Luke says it was some “eight days later,” but here Matthew says it was “six days later.” Uh oh, what gives? How are we going to talk our way out of that one. Right? Well, there is actually a pretty simple explanation for that. You have two human authors moved by the Holy Spirit to deliver this same account. One is Matthew, a Jew, one is Luke, a Gentile and they are simply using different calculation means, conventions, you could say. Luke as he is calculating what was happening here, he is including the day where those various sayings were given back in verses 23-27, and he is including the day of the Transfiguration itself and the six days in between; whereas Matthew's only counting those six intervening days. Hence his “six days later” language. So different counting conventions, different cultural backgrounds. No reason to be critical as the critics are of the text.

Well back to Matthew 17:2 where it says that Jesus was “transfigured before them.” Now that Greek verb, transfigured, is a fun one to say and you'll hear the word in it. It's metamorphoo. We think of metamorphosis when we hear that, we think of caterpillars and butterflies and such. The word simply means to change. That is the idea here, that Jesus was changed, He was transformed. He was changed and He was transformed in a very specific way. Matthew says it in verse 2 of chapter 17, “His face shone like the sun.” Now when these Jewish disciples of Jesus, Peter and James and John, when they eventually woke up and they came to their senses and they witnessed this transformation or this Transfiguration of Jesus's appearance, this metamorphosis where His face was now appearing like the sun, no doubt each man had a specific scriptural example in mind as this was taking place. They were thinking of an incident involving Moses back in the days of Israel's exodus.

In fact, would you turn with me over to Exodus 34 where we're going to see a familiar account. Exodus 34:29 and note the parallels here and how Peter and James and John would have been processing what they saw of Jesus through this Old Testament lens. Exodus 34:29 says, “Now it happened when Moses was coming down from Mt. Sinai and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses's hand as he was coming down from the mountain, and Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him. Then Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses and behold the skin of his face shone and they were afraid to come near him. And Moses called to them and Aaron and all the rulers in the congregation returned to him and Moses spoke to them. And afterward all the sons of Israel came near, and he commanded them everything Yahweh had spoken to him on Mt. Sinai. Then Moses finished speaking with them and put a veil over his face. But whenever Moses went in before Yahweh to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out and then he would come out and speak to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded. And the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses's face shone. So, Moses would return the veil over his face until he went in to speak with Him.” So that is what Aaron and the sons of Israel experienced when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets in hand, the Ten Commandments in hand, having just spent 40 days and 40 nights in God's presence on Sinai.

Something far greater was happening with Jesus in our text back in Luke 9 as He was transfigured in the presence of these disciples. Jesus was and is greater than Moses, that's what Hebrews 3 is all about. In fact, Hebrews 3:3 says that “He,” meaning Jesus, “has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.” In this Transfiguration scene as it is recorded in the Gospels note that Jesus didn't merely have a face that was shining like Moses and He wasn't even merely reflecting or refracting divine glory having basked in God's presence like Moses did. No, Jesus being God Himself and having all the divine attributes and powers and prerogatives of God; here He was projecting His own divine glory. Jesus has always and perfectly possessed divine glory. This is why He could say in His high priestly prayer in John 17:5, “Father, glorify Me together with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” Now having demonstrated up to this point both through His actions and His words and His miracles and various scenarios that have unfolded for us in Luke's Gospel. Now having shown in different ways that He was God up to this point; Jesus ratcheted things up as He pulled back the curtain. As He pulled back that layer of flesh, as it were, and He beamed forth this incredible display of His divine, kingly glory. “His face,” it says in Matthew 17:2, “shone like the sun.”

You know many decades later after Jesus rose and ascended to the Father, one of these three disciples who was present at the Transfiguration, the Apostle John. He received an even more focused and sharp vision of the glory of Christ while he was in exile on the isle of Patmos being a prisoner for the Lord in Revelation 1. Go ahead and turn with me, if you would, to Revelation 1, and as you are turning there just a reminder. We're going to resume our Sunday evening series in Revelation two Sundays from now as we pick it up in Revelation 14. I'd invite anybody who hasn't gone to Sunday evening church or hasn't been a part of those services, it's a great opportunity with the new ministry year beginning to be a part of the evening gathering and learn from this precious book. We're not in Revelation 14 this morning, we're in Revelation 1. Look at Revelation 1:9, it says, “I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the Word of God and the witness of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, Write in a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me and having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a Son of Man clothed in a robe reaching to the feet and girded across His chest with a golden sash. And His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow, and His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze when it has been made to glow in a furnace and His voice was like the sound of many waters, and having in His right hand seven stars and a sharp two-edged sword which comes out of His mouth and His face was like the sun shining in its power.” That sounds familiar, doesn't it. It sure does. In Matthew 17:2 Jesus is described as having been transfigured before them with His face shining like the sun, and here in Revelation 1 as Jesus appears to the now aged Apostle John many years later it says, “His face was like the sun shining in its power.” His face was as bright as the noonday sun, it was blindingly bright, so bright that it would cause one's eyes to sting and burn and water immediately. And so bright that in John's case his eyes weren't just stinging and burning and watering, but it caused this visceral reaction in him. Look at verse 17, “And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.” He keeled over; He bent over and prostrated Himself before Jesus. In response the Lord, ever merciful and ever kind, did this. It says, “And He placed His right hand on me saying, Do not fear, I am the first and the last and the living One. And I was dead and behold I am alive forever and ever and I have the keys of death and Hades.”

So back to Luke 9 and specifically to our text in verse 29 where Luke says that “the appearance of His face became different,” Matthew said that “His face shone like the sun,” and we have a greater glimpse of it here in Revelation 1. Now look at the next detail that Luke provides in his account of the Transfiguration at the end of verse 29. It says, “and His clothing became white and gleaming.” So, the Lord's face was radiating brightness like the sun dialed up to full strength and also His robe, His clothing, His attire was gleaming with this dazzling whiteness. You know Matthew puts it this way in his cross references account, Matthew 17:2 says, “His garments became as white as light.” I love how Mark puts it, this is Mark 9:3, he says, “His garments were shining intensely white as no launderer on earth can whiten them.” That is so perfect. No Tide, no Gain, no Arm & Hammer, no bleach, no Oxyclean could make Jesus's already radiantly white clothing any whiter than it already was. His garments were intensely white, astoundingly white, blindingly white. He was shrouded in supernatural brightness. He has always shared that glory with God the Father from before the world was, but now it was shining forth in divine splendor.

Again, what all of this was, connecting this back to verse 27, what all of this was, was this glimpse of, this preview of, this prefigurement of what Jesus will demonstrate when He sets up His Kingdom on the earth. During His First Coming throughout His earthly ministry our Lord's glory was veiled, it was regularly veiled. He was encased in a body of flesh, it was in the Scripture reading this morning from John 1:14 where John says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Literally He tabernacled among us. Though God, He pitched His tent among us. Then recall what the verse says later, and this is John again who was there for the Transfiguration, he says, “and we beheld His glory.” We beheld His glory, “glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We beheld His glory. Not just that God manifested Himself through Him or God showed Himself through Him, but rather God was in our midst in the person of Jesus. We beheld His glory, glory that will be on display in full when He sets up His Kingdom on earth. That's what these apostles, these three, were witnessing, this sneak peek of Christ's Kingdom Glory. As we read on, two new figures now enter on the scene in the middle of this mountaintop experience that these three were able to enjoy. There was Jesus, there were the three disciples, Peter, James and John, and now two more join the group, Moses and Elijah.

Our third point for the note takers is this, PROPHETIC GLORY PRESENTED. Look at verses 30-31, it says, “And behold two men were talking with Him and they were Moses and Elijah who, appearing in glory, were speaking of His departure which He was about to fulfill at Jerusalem.” Now for starters note that Luke doesn't leave it a mystery as to who these two men were, these two men who were talking with Him, talking with Jesus. No, the Holy Spirit as He moved Luke to write this account, He revealed that very detail to us. End of verse 30, “they were Moses and Elijah.” So, these weren't types or shadows or figures or phantoms or figments of the disciples' imagination. No, they were Moses and Elijah. That is really significant because these were two highly important, highly significant Old Testament figures. Moses is the one who gave the Law to Israel, the initial human lawgiver. So he represents the Law. The prophets were historically represented through Elijah, according to Jewish tradition at this time.

So, you have these two men, Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the prophets. These two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, also through their ministries pointed forward to the one-day coming of Israel's Messiah, the Christ. In fact, after His resurrection Jesus would say on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:27, this is Luke reporting, he says, “Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets Jesus interpreted to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” These were these two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, who were directly associated with Israel's future hope through their Messiah. It was expected that God would eventually raise up a prophet greater than Moses in the last days. Here is Deuteronomy 18:18, “I will raise up a prophet from among their brothers like you and I will put words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” So, there is going to be one like Moses who would come as a prophet, a greater prophet, when the Lord worked again through Israel. Elijah, too. Elijah was expected to be the prophet who turned the hearts of the people back to God when the great day of the Lord came. This is Malachi 4:5, “Behold I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction.”

The point is these two individuals, Moses and Elijah, were significant, highly significant figures to the people of Israel. But by this point both men had long since been gone. Moses died like close to 1500 years before this and Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire some 900 years before this very scene. But here they are, alive and well and very much present, arriving in their heavenly splendor and they are conversing here with the Son of God. Verse 30, “Behold,” it says, “the two men were talking with Him.” There was something they were talking about. Verse 31 says, “Appearing in glory,” meaning having just come out of the very glorious presence of God and their heavenly brightness, “they were speaking of His departure which He was about to fulfill at Jerusalem.” That word departure is exodon in Greek. It's the word from which we get our word exodus. It's quite the interesting link, considering that one of the men who is speaking to Jesus in this scene was Moses, the very man who led Israel out of Egypt in the exodus. But the departure of which Moses and Elijah were speaking here wasn't about Jesus leading captive Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land as Moses had done. Rather, the departure which Moses and Elijah were speaking here was of Jesus eventually going to Jerusalem to be crucified, to be killed. It was from Jerusalem that Jesus would depart from this world and bring about not only the hope of salvation for Israel but to all who would believe.

As we read on, I do want us to note something interesting which is that while we, having read up to this point in Luke's account in chapter 9, have learned of the fact that Jesus has been transfigured by this point. And having even read this off the page, have in a sense beheld His glory just by taking this in from the text, Peter and James and John are behind us in a sense. They haven't actually seen any of this materialize just yet. That is because they have been sleeping this entire time. But that was about to change. Go ahead and take your fourth point down here, if you are note taker. This would be DIVINE GLORY OBSERVED. Look at verse 32, it says, “Now Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep, but when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men standing with Him.” Now the companions here of Peter, of course, were James and John who along with Peter incidentally would be the same trio who would fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22 and that's when Jesus rebukes them and says, “Why are you sleeping? Rise up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Well, those same three guys who would sleep later are sleeping here. So apparently this scene is taking place late at night and Jesus has been praying and at some point, while Jesus was praying these three fell asleep. In fact, the way that Luke reports it here in verse 32, it is quite descriptive. He says, “they had been overcome with sleep.” The literal expression is they were heavy lidded; they were exhausted. We would say it like they were dog tired. they are so tired that they've been sleeping for the entire 40 or so minutes I've been going. They've been asleep.

But not anymore. No, they were awakened by this bright burst of light, and when they woke up, it says, “when they were fully awake,” and then here it comes, the end of verse 32, “they saw His glory.” imagine that. You are in a deep sleep and that really, really good kind of sleep, that precious kind of sleep, unhindered sleep. That kind of sleep you wake up feeling actually rested and you feel like you actually have just fallen asleep, but you've actually slept for many hours, and you are fully recharged. Then, all of a sudden, you are no longer experiencing that peaceful nothingness of sleep or that peaceful blackness of sleep, instead you are now seeing red as these brilliant beams of light are now piercing their way through your paper-thin eyelids. And now your eyes are starting to crack open, and the light now penetrates right into the heart of your eyes. That's what is going on here. These three men, Peter, James and John, were fully knocked out. They had sunk into this deep sleep and now there is this bright flash of overpowering light like a flashlight being pointed at your face at 3 a.m. in the morning on a camp out, that kind of bright light, and it causes them to wake up. When they did, verse 32, it says, “they saw His glory.” They opened their eyes and they beheld the divine majesty of the Son of God. In fact, that is how Peter would report it later in II Peter 1:16, he said that he and James and John were “eyewitnesses of His majesty.” They beheld; they got a glimpse of His grandeur on this evening. They saw His glory. It was also at this time, end of verse 32, that they saw the two men standing with Him, meaning Moses and Elijah.

Now moving on, verse 33, apparently these three men, especially Peter, were overwhelmed with the glory that they beheld. Note what it says, verse 33, “And it happened that as they were leaving Him,” meaning as Moses and Elijah were beginning to depart from Jesus, as these Old Testament saints were making their way out, that's when Peter spoke up and tried to keep the band all together. Verse 33, “Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here.” Now the way that Peter is saying that, the manner of his expression is really interesting because he is saying to Jesus, because look what comes next, “Master, it is good for us to be here, let us make three booths, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” The sense of what he is communicating here is good for you, Jesus, because we are here. He is saying something like even though we've been asleep this whole time and we just woke up and figured what's going on, it just so happens that we are pretty handy guys and we can fix this whole situation right up for our distinguished guests. I mean, Lord, what would You do without us? If we weren't here, how would you entertain these two? That's kind of the sense here. Peter wanted to build booths, he wanted to build these leafy shelters or huts for the three of them, for Jesus and for Moses and for Elijah. Why? Was it to keep them cool from the hot day that was going to come the next day? Was it to commemorate the days of the Israelites' wilderness wanderings? Was it to celebrate the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles, the old Israelite feast and custom? No, Peter's gesture here, his offer to build these booths for Jesus and for Moses and for Elijah was very clearly signaling that he thought the Kingdom had come, that the Kingdom had arrived.

We don't have time to go there now, but if you ever study Zechariah 14, one of the things that is revealed in that amazing Old Testament chapter of prophecy is that in the Kingdom, in the 1000-year reign of the Messiah the nations will come and they are going to build booths in Jerusalem. And so, Peter, what he is doing here is he is acting in accordance with what he thinks is happening in real time before him that the Messiah's Kingdom has been ushered in. So, he is saying here, “Master, it is good for us to be here,” and he is saying, “Let us make three booths, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah,” and he is saying it because he thinks the Kingdom has arrived, the Kingdom is about to begin. So, let's make our distinguished guests, these prominent figures in the Kingdom, let's get them all set up. I can imagine Peter also thinking that this is actually a pretty neat opportunity to talk to these guys, like Moses as he is putting thatch on the roof. Right? What was it like to part the Red Sea? Elijah, as he is laying leaves on top of his booth, what was it like to slay the prophets of Baal? What was it like to be taken up in a chariot of fire? I'm probably engaging in some sanctified imagination there, but his line of thinking was that the Kingdom had arrived, the Kingdom had come so let's make these booths for Jesus and Moses and Elijah.

Well, look at the end of verse 33 where Luke now inserts this editorial comment, you could call it, and he sets the record straight. He's talking about Peter here and he says, “He was not realizing what he was saying.” That's a very polite way for Luke to correct Peter sort of off, but really on the record. He is saying that Peter thought the Kingdom had arrived, but the Kingdom hadn't arrived. Peter had missed the situation; he had misread the situation. His zeal yet again had outpaced his knowledge. Remember, Peter just a matter of days earlier had heard Jesus say in Luke 9:22, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day.” That's what Jesus had said to this group, including Peter just a few days prior. But now here on this mountain, having been sleeping, having been awakened, having been taken by this stunning display of glory, having seen Jesus's glory, having witnessed these two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, next to Jesus, it apparently in the moment escaped Peter's recollection that before Jesus the Messiah could experience true kingly glory and set up His Kingdom, He would first have to suffer. Hence Luke's comment here, at the end of verse 33, that Peter was not realizing what he was saying. It is at this point in a lot of sermons where preachers will just kind of rip on Peter. Can you believe Peter? And all kinds of names and adjectives are used to describe what a fool he was. Peter's constant source of stumbling is something I have already mentioned. His zeal continually outpaced his knowledge. He knew the right answers, he had been in the presence of the right answers being given to him, but continually his zeal would outpace what he knew. I thank the Lord for having an example like Peter in Scripture because I know I am guilty from time to time of having my own zeal outpace my knowledge. Thank the Lord that we can learn human lessons from the Scriptures about real people, real sinners with real struggles and grow from them.

The narrative continues. If you are taking notes this is our fifth point this morning, REVEALED GLORY EXPRESSED. Look at verses 34-36, it says, “While he was saying this a cloud formed and began to overshadow them. And they were afraid as they entered the cloud. Then a voice came out of the cloud saying, ‘This is My Son, My Chosen One. Listen to Him.’ And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen.” So while Peter was speaking, verse 34, “While he was saying this,” meaning while he was making that suggestion that they build booths for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, in that very moment. A cloud, Matthew by the way calls it a “bright cloud” in Matthew 17, a cloud, a symbol of God's divine presence as it was in the days of the exodus when the people were led during the day by a pillar of cloud, a cloud surrounded, it encircled, it enveloped Jesus, Moses and Elijah. The entire experience left Peter and James and John fearful. Look at the end of verse 34. “And they were afraid as they,” meaning Jesus and Moses and Elijah, “entered the cloud.” Now that fear may have come from Peter and James and John being worried that their teacher, Jesus, was going to go up in the cloud with Moses and Elijah and never be seen again and they'd be without a teacher. Or that fear could have been brought on simply by the fact that they had a heightened sense of awareness from that cloud that they were in the presence of divine glory and in God's presence. We ultimately don't know for sure where the fear stemmed either as a viable option. What we do know, though, is what we see here in verse 35 that what happened next is that a voice came thundering forth. Verse 35, “Then a voice came out of the cloud saying, ‘This is My Son, My Chosen One. Listen to Him.” That immediately takes the reader back to the scene of Jesus's baptism in Luke 3 where the same voice came thundering from the heavens when He came out of the waters. But there is an even more, I think, salient link which is back in Deuteronomy 18. In Deuteronomy 18:15 God said to Moses, “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like Me from among you, from among your brothers.” That's a reference to the Messiah that God would one day raise up for Israel. Then He says in Deuteronomy 18:15, “You shall listen to Him.” Now as Luke is recording it, that Messianic prediction from Deuteronomy 18 about this One who would be greater than Moses is being fulfilled in the person of Jesus, and the people were to listen to Him and to obey Him.

Now verse 36, it says, “And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.” So, after God's voice thundered from the cloud, Moses and Elijah were taken back up, leaving only Jesus there in the sight of Peter and James and John. And I really do believe that it was at that point that it clicked for them. At this point seeing Jesus alone in this scene where Moses and Elijah had been next to Him but now, they are taken up. They've just heard the voice of God thunder forth. I think it is at this moment that these disciples realized that in this scene, in this event, at the Transfiguration what actually was happening was the words of Jesus in verse 27 were being fulfilled. Remember He had said, “There are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God.” These three, Peter, James and John, were the “some of these” of verse 27, and they had been given a glimpse throughout this passage this morning, before they tasted death, of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Glory that He will manifest in full when He one day sets up His Kingdom physically on earth. Now look at these final words of verse 36, it says, “And they kept silent and reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen.” Now why did they keep silent? Well, they finally understood that they were not only in the presence of their Messiah and not only were they in the presence of God, but they understood that before He entered His state of exaltation that He had to first be executed, that He needed to go as He said He would back in verse 22, He needed to go to Jerusalem to die. Finally, it is clicking for them, and they are embracing that this was the plan, the divine plan. They were resolved now to not get in the way of that plan, and so “they kept silent and reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen.”

Note, Luke does say, “in those days,” meaning in the days of Jesus, before His death and resurrection. It was in those days that they kept their mouths shut. It was in those days that they reported to no one the things which they had seen. But we do know that after our Lord's death and resurrection everything changed. John, as we have heard mentioned a couple of times this morning, would testify later in John 1:14 that “we beheld His glory.” He was no longer silent when he said that. Or if you turn over with me to the book of II Peter, we're going to see that Peter, another of these witnesses at the Transfiguration, would eventually speak up, too. Look at II Peter 1 where we see this same apostle who was there for the transfiguration saying something similar. He says this, starting in verse 16, “For we did not make known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ following cleverly devised myths but being eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father such an utterance as this was made to Him by the majestic glory, ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.’ And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.” Verse 19, “And we have as more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.” Did you catch that? “We have as more sure the prophetic word.” Though none of us here this morning has witnessed firsthand as Peter and James and John did the Transfiguration of Jesus, Peter here is saying and the Holy Spirit through Peter is saying that we have something more sure. We have God's Word. Peter and John testified to having seen Christ's Glory and one day we who have put our hope in Him and our trust in Him will, too. That day of future Kingdom Glory is coming where we in our immortal bodies are going to take in this dazzling, brilliant light of our King. But what this text is telling us in II Peter 1:19 is that until then we have our charter, we have our compass, the sure Word of God through which we are no less able today to behold His glory.

We started our time this morning with a quote from John Owen's book, The Glory of Christ. I'm going to give you one more short one as we wrap up. John Owen, The Glory of Christ, he says, “On Christ's glory I would fix all my thoughts and desires. And the more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes, and I will be more and more crucified to the world.” Amen. No matter what sources of worry or fear or anxiety might hit you this week, no matter what might come our way, anyone of us, this week, may we all be taken with the glory of Christ as we from His Word behold His glory.