Sermon Tone Analysis

We’re back in the gospel of Luke after taking a break for Easter last Sunday.

In case you’ve forgotten, Luke has gone to great lengths to show us that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah and Savior God had promised to his people.

And we’ve seen that in Jesus’s own ministry, he’s letting more and more of that come out: just between chapters 8 and 9 (so far), he has calmed a storm with a word; he has cast out a legion of demons from a man; he has healed a woman from a chronic illness; he has raised a girl from the dead; and he has multiplied a small meal so that it feeds thousands of people.

The closer we get to the cross, the more Jesus is proving himself to be the Son of God, who came to save us.

But our temptation is to limit Jesus’s person and work to that: we say he came to save us.

And he did…but that’s not all he came to do.

In the Old Testament, the prophet Habakkuk gives us one sentence which is perhaps the best summary statement of what heaven will be.

We read in :

:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white.

30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

32 Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here.

Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.

34 As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.

35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.

And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord

In this passage we’re going to see Jesus as we’ve never seen him before: we’re going to see him in what’s called “the transfiguration.”

Now to understand that, we need to understand what “glory” means—when we talk about the glory of God, what are we talking about?

John Piper gives this helpful definition (I’m paraphrasing): The glory of God is everything he is—all of his goodness and power and wisdom and transcendency—made visible.

God’s glory is what we see when we see God as he is.

And that’s what Habakkuk says we will see, in the end.

The earth will be filled not just with the glory of the Lord, but with the knowledge of his glory.

And it will be filled with that knowledge so completely that the only fit comparison is the way the waters cover the seas, filling every square millimeter of space across endless miles of terrain.

Every man, woman and child will see God’s glory.

as the waters cover the sea.

That’s what the earth was created for; that’s what we were created for.

To see his glory.

That is essentially what is happening in our text today.

Jesus and his disciples go up to a mountain to pray, and there on the mountain the disciples witness what’s called a theophany.

(This word comes from the Greek word for “God”—theos—and the Greek verb “to appear”—phainein.)

It is one of those instances in which God actually, visibly, shows something of himself to human beings.

They were rare occurences: theophanies usually only happened to people who were central to God’s plan of salvation.

God appeared to Abraham as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch (); he appeared to Moses in the burning bush ().

The difference between those theophanies and this one, however, is striking: God appears to the disciples; but he doesn’t do it in the form of an object (a pot, a torch, a bush); he appears to the disciples through the person of Jesus.

Theophanies were visible manifestations of the Creator and were usually granted to central figures in the Almighty’s redemptive plan.

We can think, for example, of God’s appearance to Abraham as a “smoking fire pot” and “flaming torch” (), as well as Moses’ vision of Yahweh in the burning bush ().

The transfiguration, we will see, stands in this tradition, but Jesus the Christ exceeds all previous theophanies, expressing as He does the fullest revelation of who God is.

This is the theophany known as the “transfiguration,” in which Jesus shows himself indisputably to be not just a wise teacher or a miracle worker, but God himself.

A Transfiguration (v.

28-29)

Let’s read the text together (Luke 9.28-36):

28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white.

This is a horribly crude comparison, but I’ll never forget the first time I watched Star Wars with my son.

(The original, from 1977, of course.)

I’d been dreaming about that moment since I was a teenager, when I was finally old enough to imagine having a family one day.

I enjoyed the movie (as I always do); but what I enjoyed more was looking to my right and watching my little boy’s face as he watched, fascinated—like I had when I was a kid.

I watched the flashes of this (decidedly flashy) movie, in that dark room, light up his face.

It’s stupid, but that’s something I’ll never forget—a memory that never fails to make me smile.

If someone can get that much enjoyment from something so insignificant, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the disciples.

What it must have been like for Jesus, watching his disciples as they saw him in his full glory for the first time.

Mark says in his account that Jesus was “transfigured”—literally, metamorphosed—in front of them.

Jesus is a fully human being, but he is also fully God.

And for this moment in time, the veil of his humanity was lifted, and the disciples saw the other side of his dual nature shining through.

This was the glory he had before he became a man; and this is the glory that we will see when he returns.

What’s happening here is called a theophany.

(This word comes from the Greek word for “God”—theos—and the Greek verb “to appear”—phainein.)

It is one of those instances in which God actually, visibly, shows something of himself to human beings.

Peter, James and John, seeing this, must have been shocked and terrified…and later, probably bewildered and awestruck by the memory of it.

And that memory would serve them well.

They would face incredibly difficult things in the years to come—the death of their Master, persecution, and eventually death.

And the vision of this glory would be an incredible comfort to them—they would remember who it is they were serving.

That glory is how they would think of Christ; that glory is what they would testify of him.

They were rare occurences: theophanies usually only happened to people who were central to God’s plan of salvation.

God appeared to Abraham as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch (); he appeared to Moses in the burning bush ().

The difference between those theophanies and this one, however, is striking: God appears to the disciples; but he doesn’t do it in the form of an object (a pot, a torch, a bush); he appears to the disciples through the person of Jesus.

As John said in the introduction to his gospel (John 1.14),

Mark says in his account that Jesus was “transfigured”—literally, metamorphosed—in front of them.

Jesus is a fully human being, but he is also fully God.

And for this moment in time, the veil of his humanity was lifted, and the disciples saw the other side of his dual nature shining through.

This was the glory he had before he became a man; and this is the glory that we will see when he returns.

…we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

A Conversation (v.

30-31)

But Jesus, as it turns out, wasn’t alone.

V. 30:

30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

If you’ve read the Old Testament, you could probably think of a lot of men and women who would have qualified to appear there on the mountain with Jesus.

Abraham; Joseph; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Ruth; Esther; Deborah; David… The Old Testament is filled with the stories of men and women who honored God well and whom God used in great ways.

But it’s not about who they were as people; it’s what God did for and through them that made Moses and Elijah the perfect candidates for a conversation with Jesus.

They had both spoken with God on a mountaintop (; ); they had both seen God’s glory; they were both expected to be there when Christ comes back (; , ; , ).

As R. Kent Hughes wrote, “Moses was the great lawgiver, and Elijah was the great prophet.

Moses was the founder of Israel’s religious economy, and Elijah was the restorer of it.

Together they were a powerful summary of the entire Old Testament economy.”

This was a telling reminder to the disciples that Jesus didn’t come out of context; he wasn’t separated from what God had done before.

God wasn’t doing something new with Jesus; he was completing something he had previously started.

Jesus was integrally connected with the disciples’ own story, the story of the people of Israel.

So Moses and Elijah come, and they’re speaking with Jesus.

What were they talking about?

v. 31:

[They] spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

They were speaking together about what we spoke about last week: Jesus’s impending death, resurrection and ascension.

Every time I read this, I wish we knew more about what they said to one another.

Were Moses and Elijah encouraging Jesus, leading into this trial which would be more terrible than anything we can imagine?

Were they themselves encouraged, speaking to him?

Jesus had said that he had not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them (); Moses and Elijah were representatives of the Law and the Prophets.

And now they were speaking to the man who was the fulfilment of everything they had lived for!