Listen to Him!

Music hits me harder than when the words are sung by me. By you. It’s all about you.

Not Jesus, but you. What was I talking about just now? Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. That’s the story of my life.

Don’t nod, Holly. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Oh, man, those are powerful words.

And they affected the author of the song as well. Prone to wander. That’s why we have amazing things in the life of the church like the season of Lent.

To get us back on track. To get us refocused. Today is not Lent.

But I’m talking about it because it starts, does anybody remember? Wednesday. And Wednesday becomes 40 days of what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with that time, this awesome gift that God has given us to focus on Jesus? Now today is what is called in the life of the church Transfiguration Sunday. And if we listen carefully, I think you’ll see how the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ that we are going to study really gets us into the season of Lent.

And it starts helping us think about what Lent is all about. We get caught up in thinking it’s just about suffering. But there’s an end goal.

There’s something with that that can be amazing with our Lord. Our scripture this morning comes from the book of Luke. This is, believe it or not, I’m going with common lecture today.

Amazing, huh? When you stand as you’re able. Luke 9, 28-36. So eight days after these sayings, he took along Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

And 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 appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in 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 as these sayings were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah. Not realizing what he was saying.

While he was saying this, 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 he kept silent.

And reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen. The word of God. For the people of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.

Now, one thing I love doing in ministry is before someone gets married, we have pre-marital counseling. I’m actually in the middle of pre-marital counseling right now with a couple in Valley Center where we were at several years ago. The wedding is in a couple of weeks.

And this comes up in every counseling session that we talk about communication. And how communication works in a marriage. And what can happen a lot is that, I mean, men have bad rap for this, but women can do it too.

It’s not just all about men doing this. A woman can say, I had a tough day. I didn’t like today.

And the man, while she’s talking, starts saying, how can I fix this? And she says, hey, I’m going to tell you a little bit about today. And suddenly, he just says, this is going to take care of it. You’re telling me because you want me to fix it.

I’m guilty of that. We want to fix stuff. We want to use the power tools.

We want to make it happen. Peter, as a fisherman, was a fix-it kind of guy. What was he doing when Jesus found him the first time? Mending his nets.

Okay? Now, if you look at the context of what we have here, and I’m going to pull not only from the context of Luke, but from Matthew and Mark, the synoptics, as we see all of the synoptics lead to this transfiguration on the mountain, that it starts with this. There’s a feeding of the 5,000, which is so amazing that Jesus would do such an amazing, huge, God thing to feed 5,000 people with a few loaves of fish. You know, you just go fishing for a few hours, and then you feed 5,000 people.

Pretty good, huh? And then Jesus pulled the disciples away after this huge miracle, and he said, Who do people say that I am? And the disciples say, Some say Elijah. Others say the prophets. And Jesus says, I know.

I know what the rumors are, but who do you say I am? And Peter jumped up, and he said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I love that. But he said that, and Jesus said, Blessed are you, Peter, for these words did not come from men, but they came from God himself.

That God told you in your heart who I was and that you know who I am because of this. And Peter was given some of the greatest praise a disciple had to be given up to that point in time. And then I think you know the rest of the story, that Jesus goes on to tell him, Hey, the Son of Man must suffer, and he’ll die, and he’ll be in the earth for three days, and then he’ll rise again.

And Peter, in the book of Mark, in 8.32, it says Peter went over and grabbed Jesus. And he said, He rebuked Jesus. A lot of times we rebuke Jesus subconsciously.

He actually put his arm around Jesus and said, I’ve got a better plan. And he said, No way will I let this happen to you. I want to fix it.

And no one’s going to stand in your way. And Jesus said, Peter, you’re standing in my way. Get behind thee, Satan.

So not only does Peter get the greatest praise, but he gets the greatest rebuke by Jesus. Get behind me, Satan. Peter, although he had great intentions, was trying to come up with a better plan than God had ordained from the beginning of time through Jesus Christ.

So this all happened. And then Jesus responded and said, Everyone has a cross to bear. If you’re going to be my disciples, you need to take up your cross and follow me.

And then they all go on to say, some days later, Luke says, about eight days later, to connect the two together. So keep all that context in mind as we dig into Luke 9. Jesus broke off. He had an inner circle of three, James, John, the brothers, and Peter.

And they took them up to a mountain, the other gospels say a high mountain. And he was praying. And while he was praying, we see in Luke 29, we just see it was like this brightness appeared over the mountains.

And Jesus’ face changed. And he had a different appearance. His clothes became white.

It was a spectacular, amazing, huge sight to see before them. Now, again, Luke uses some different language here. But if you go to Matthew and Mark, which is the key for today’s Sunday that we’re going to talk about, especially in Matthew 17, it uses the word transfiguration.

Now, the Greek word for transfiguration, the base word is metamorphou. But here it’s metamorphopho. Metamorphopho.

And I got it up there so I can’t make you guess. What word that sounds like in English? Metamorphosis. Or transformation.

Or transfiguration. And it’s like Jesus, as a human, was like a caterpillar. But then in his full glory, he was like the garden fly.

They got the seeds. In fact, right before, in the context that I didn’t mention before, it says in all the synoptics, but I’ll say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God, meaning they all tied that together to show that Jesus was saying, Peter, James, and John got to see the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, Jesus is in this full glory.

And it’s different than we see. Normally. And think of Jesus as normally.

This picture of Jesus is different. And then it says this. And behold, two men were talking with him, and they were Moses and Elijah, appearing in glory, speaking of his departure that is about to come.

Now why would it say they are appearing in glory? And not just Jesus. Well, in order to do that, they have to look at the context of Moses and see that when Moses was with the Israelites, and they were in the desert, and he was getting the Ten Commandments, he was up on the mountain for a long time with God. And he came down, and it says his face shone like he had a bad sunburn from being in the presence of God.

And like many things that happened in the world back then and today, it freaked everybody out. So he put a veil over his face when he had come down, and it says until his face became normal again. Being in the presence of God, he became bright and shining.

Now, when you see that Moses and Elijah appeared in glory, where does that tell you they came from? The presence of God. Another part to that is to show the disciples that on the mountain, they are here with Jesus, and they are in the presence of God, and the glory of Jesus just resonated off of this. You see, Jesus’ glory came from within, and he was transformed.

Their glory came from just fasting in the sunlight. That’s a pretty bold picture of Jesus. Now, when you look at what transfiguration is and all this shining, we go to the book of, that was the book of Exodus, now we go to the book of Revelation.

Here’s a picture of God, here’s a picture of Jesus specifically, that most of us don’t think about. We may think about the picture of Jesus with a lamb over his shoulder being a good shepherd, or Jesus being gentle with a child on his lap. Here’s the picture John saw.

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the middle of the lampstands, I saw one like the sun of man, clothed in a robe reaching to his feet and girded across his chest with a golden sash. His head and his hair were 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. In his right hand he held the seven stars, out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in its strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man, and he placed his right hand on me, saying, Do not be afraid, I am the first and the last and the living one, and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and ease.

His face was shining like the sun. His hair was white as wool. When you think of that picture of Jesus, who do you think of? Who does that sound more like in our history and in our minds? God, the Father.

It sounds more like God the Father. That’s the picture we have of the Father. We get it from, you know, the David picture, the touching of fingers, the white hair and the wool, and the face that shines like the sun.

But guess what? The face of Jesus shines like the sun in heaven. And the disciples got a picture of the kingdom of God right there in that today, which is an amazing thing. And Peter, learning his lesson, saw Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah, Moses representing the law, and Elijah representing the prophets.

And the law and the prophets came, and the law and the prophets were saying, We’re going to talk about your departure. Now, what’s really cool to me is I’m going to say this. Don’t fall asleep when I say this, because in the end, it’s going to be really cool.

What do you think the Greek word for this is? Exodus. The Greek word itself is actually Exodus. They were speaking of this Exodus, meaning, you know, when the Israelites with Moses had an exodus from Egypt, they went from bondage to the freedom to life in God.

And Jesus, going from the chains and the restraints of being human to being back to, as we see in Philippians 2, that, you know, it said, Being found in the image of God, he did not consider it too great to conform to the likeness of a man. But he had the constraints. Including that man could die.

You see this picture of Jesus, how amazing it is? And Luke tells us very clearly that they might have been groggy, but when they were fully awake, they saw the two men there, and when the men were getting ready to leave, Peter jumped in, and Peter learned a lot. So Peter said this, Hey, Jesus! I don’t know what brand of drill he had, but Peter had a drill. He said, Hey, Jesus, let me build three tabernacles.

Now, this was like the Feast of the Tabernacles. When God was supposed to come, the people were supposed to fast in the presence of God, and he wanted tabernacles for Jesus, and Elijah, and Moses. And part of the problem with that was that was not showing that Jesus was even greater.

It was showing an equality between Peter, between Jesus and the law and the prophets. What God was trying to show them is that Jesus was greater than even the law and the prophets. Jesus was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

And if you think I’m jumping too quickly on Peter, then a cloud showed up. Again, a cloud is a reference to Exodus, when they would follow the pillar, the cloud during the day, and at night it would be a pillar of fire. The cloud was what descended on the ten of knees, and what it said, ten of knees, what it said, God would talk to Moses as a man who would friend face to face.

And so the cloud showed up. And you talk about a rebuke. The cloud showed up, and as the cloud enveloped them, the disciples became afraid.

And God said, Peter, shut your pie hole. He said, this is my dear son. Now if you remember back when Jesus, God said, this is my dear son, whom I love through Jesus.

Now God says the same thing. This is my dear son whom I have chosen. When God says, this is my dear son whom I have chosen, that means Jesus is the chosen one, which in Hebrew is the Messiah, or the Christ.

This is the one whom I have chosen. And then he says this to Peter directly. Listen to him.

Sometimes, it’s probably not you, but sometimes we tell God we have that plan. We say, hey, I can take care of this. And sometimes, it’s more important.

So after all this explosion of spiritual awakening, to see Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus. Elijah representing one of the greatest prophets in history. Moses representing the one that God sent the law through.

And then God, the Father, showing up in a cloud, telling Peter to shut his mouth and listen. And then it says, it gives this great picture of, after all this, and all these huge things, all of a sudden, it was just Jesus standing there. It was just Jesus left with them on the mountain.

It was the same guy they circled around the campfire with in the evenings. And he told them parables. And he explained the parables.

And he taught them. And they would love what they were learning. They didn’t understand it all.

But they were trying to learn to be in the presence of Jesus like that. In here is saying that sometimes we think we need big things, even big religious events. Or we need to put so much on ourselves.

Now, what do you do when you just shut it all off? Am I still talking? I can’t even hear myself. When you just shut it all off and listen, what pours into you the most? Does it come out of your phone? Does it come from the TV? Does it come from the radio? Does it come from whatever source of information? Or do you just shut off, close your eyes, and listen to the voice of Jesus? God said, just listen to him. He’s got the answers.

He’s got the plan. He’s got what you need. In Matthew 23, 27, Jesus called the Pharisees and the scribes a whitewashed tomb because the appearance on the outside was beautiful, but the inside, they were full of dead man’s bones and uncleanliness, meaning they were superficial.

Whatever we take in, that becomes what is on our heart and what is on our mind. How much time do we spend listening to God, listening to others? How much time? Shut it all off and listen. It might not be the excitement of Christmas Eve or the excitement of Easter or the excitement of something else.

Just close your eyes. Sit around the campfire. It can almost feel like we’re in our home builder’s room sitting around in the school.

Listen to the voice of God speak to you directly. Trust that God has a plan and he can do amazing things. This Lent.

Almighty God, thank you so much for the peace we have in Jesus Christ. Thank you so much that Christ alone is enough. That we have one hope in you, and it is in you alone.

Help us just stop trying to come up with our own plan and trust in your plan to trust in Jesus. And know that before we fix anything, we have to stop talking and let you do the talking. Help us to listen and trust in you more every day in Jesus’ name.

Amen.