And we open the Word of God together today to the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. The eight years of ministry that God has been pleased to give us together have been very enjoyable. I know I can speak on behalf of my family and say that it's been good to be here these eight years. That's an expression that we sometimes use, isn't it? Good to be here. It's an expression that a speaker uses occasionally when he is addressing an audience.
And as he begins to address them in order to get them on his wavelength, he says a few nice things about them and talks about some association he might have. And then he'll say, it's good to be here with you. Or a guest might use that expression, perhaps leaving the home after an evening at dinner, saying it's been good to be here. I have heard some worshippers use that after a particularly meaningful service when they have met God. It's been good to be here.
But our text today tells of an occasion when that phrase was used. And I think had any of us been there, we might have used the very same expression. Luke 9 beginning in verse 28. In some eight days after these sayings, it came about that Jesus took along Peter and John and James and went up to 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 appearing in glory were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep, which by the way may indicate that the transfiguration occurred at night. Have you ever thought about that? Usually in films we see it depicted in the daytime. But it may well have happened late at night when the disciples were quite weary.
But when they were fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. And it came about as these were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it's good to be here. And let us make three tabernacles, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, not realizing what he was saying. Have you ever been like that? Not knowing what you were talking about? And while he was saying this, a cloud formed and began to overshadow them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.
And 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. It's good to be here, says Peter. As you read this text, there are a couple of questions that might come to your mind as they did to mine as I was thinking about speaking on this Sunday morning on the transfiguration. One question is, why did this happen?
Why the transfiguration? It happened only once in the whole lifetime of Jesus. And then an accompanying question, why did it happen at this time? Why now at this point? It seems that the reason is because Jesus had given His disciples some new information, and He wanted them to be assured that He was in control because they had just learned that God's plan was not going to happen just as they thought it was.
And yet God's plan was not going to fail simply because their preconceived notions would not be realized. There are times, folks, when God works in ways that puzzle us. When we are puzzled, we should not be in despair. We do not walk by explanations but by faith. And that's one lesson God tries to teach us when we find ourselves puzzled with the ways of the Lord. I hope by looking at our text today that we will all learn what disciples everywhere need to learn.
That is that suffering and sacrifice are worthwhile because of the glory that's coming. I really hope that as a result of this message all of us will be committed to endure present hardship for Christ, that one day we might enjoy future glory with Christ. There are two simple observations that I want to make as we look at the text that we've read this morning. The first one, very simply, is this. For Christ, suffering preceded His glory.
Jesus had been preaching throughout His ministry about the coming kingdom of God. Just to see that in the briefest sense, would you turn back with me to Luke chapter 4 verses 31 and 32. This is the beginning of His ministry essentially as Luke records it, His public ministry. He says He came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and He was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were amazed at His teaching for His message was with authority.
Now He doesn't tell us there what He was talking about, but a few verses down He does give us the synopsis of what Jesus was preaching in those days. Verse 43, He said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose. What purpose? To preach the coming kingdom of God. Not only had Jesus been preaching that the kingdom was at hand, that it was about to come, but also He had given that same message to His disciples.
As we see at the beginning of the very chapter we're studying today, chapter 9, it says in verse 1, He called the twelve together, gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases, and He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing. And so the twelve too had taken this message and in some preaching journeys had declared it, the kingdom is coming. But there was a cloud on the horizon. A problem was growing.
There was developing hostility toward Christ, the King of the kingdom. And if they dared to reject the King, there was to be no kingdom. And now for the first time, earlier in chapter 9, from where we read our text, Jesus had introduced to His disciples some information that may well have come close to devastating them. I refer to chapter 9 and verse 18. It came about that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him and He questioned them saying, who do the multitudes say that I am?
And they answered and said, John the Baptist and others say Elijah, but others that one of the prophets of old has risen again. And He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Jesus is giving them here something of a final quiz. They answered and said, the Christ of God, and He warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone. They passed the final exam, but it wasn't time for that announcement to be made yet. And so we see here that the disciples had grasped His identity.
But Jesus goes on. He says to them, 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. Now this was new information to be sure, four pieces of information. They had not had this before. Jesus says to them, four things must happen, it's absolutely necessary that the Son of Man first of all suffer many things.
That He be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and scribes, that is the religious leaders of the nation of Israel. That He be killed and finally that He be raised on the third day. Now can you put yourself in the place of those disciples? They have been with Jesus now something like two plus years. And during this time, one of the main themes of Jesus' preaching has been the coming kingdom of God, and they themselves have gone out representing Him saying the kingdom is at hand.
And now Jesus says to them, it's necessary that I suffer, be rejected, be killed, and be raised again. Can you see any confusion coming to your mind in that situation? Had you been one of the disciples? Can you see any questions erupting within you as you heard this new information? But Jesus, what about the kingdom? What about its glory? Jesus, have we misled the multitudes? Jesus were you wrong in saying the kingdom is at hand? Now Peter spoke up first, which is not uncharacteristic of Peter.
Matthew tells us that he began, he took Jesus aside and he began to rebuke Jesus. And basically what he said was, Jesus, Jesus, this will never happen to you. He's saying, Lord, do you know what you're talking about? Why this won't happen to you. It can't happen. Peter was sincere too. There was nobody more passionately devoted to the Savior than was Peter. And if there was a threat of that happening, Peter would see to it himself. This will not happen to you, Jesus.
And Jesus turned to Peter in the presence of all of the disciples with everyone listening. And you know what he said? Get behind me, Satan. Isn't that an amazing statement for Jesus to make? For Peter in that instance had begun voicing Satan's mind. And Jesus spoke exactly to that in his rebuke. I think there's a lesson here that we need to observe before we go any further. That is when Jesus is doing something that we don't understand.
We can, in sincerity, overreact and unwittingly become the voice of the devil. We have to be careful not to be presumptuous or impetuous when we're not sure what the Lord is doing, but rather to be patient and to wait upon Him. I believe that it was because of those confused and questioning disciples that what happened next did happen, and that is the transfiguration. Because just eight days later, Jesus took three of the disciples, Peter, James, and John. Why those three?
I'm not sure, except that they seem to have been an inner circle of men who were very close to Jesus, perhaps closer than the others. We do see that they had significant destinies. Peter, for example, became the leader after Jesus ascended back to heaven. And James was the first one who was martyred, the first one who was killed for his faith of the apostles, that is. And then John lived longer than anybody. He was the last of them.
Jesus took these three and went to a mountain, and there prayed. And as we've suggested, it may have happened at night that they became weary and fell asleep. And Jesus was changed. He allowed for the one single time in His 33 years on earth for His glory to be revealed. From the transfiguration event that is recorded in the Gospels, we observe several things. First of all, it reveals the inherent glory that was Christ's because He is God.
The glory that was His as eternal deity was allowed to show through the very flesh, the skin of His body. John says in his prologue of the Gospel, the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. That is, the eternal Word, the deity, the Son of God, took upon Himself flesh and lived as though in a tent in that body.
And then he goes on to say, and we beheld His glory, perhaps mentioning this very occasion, thinking of it rather in his mind, when that glory became clear and evident through the tabernacle in which the Son lived. It was essential that that glory be veiled at His incarnation, for if it had not been veiled, that glory would have consumed anyone who came in its presence. It was only the grace of our Lord that preserved these three men in the presence of His visible glory.
We also observe from the transfiguration that it reveals the agreement of the law and the prophets to the fuller revelation about His coming death. Moses was there, Moses who had died and whose body was buried by God, and Elijah who did not die but was taken bodily up into heaven in a chariot of fire. They were both there with Jesus in glory. We don't have time to talk about what that says about life after death. The two of them were there representing their eras. Moses representing the law.
Elijah there representing the prophets of God. Both of them conversing with Jesus about His death. Wouldn't you like to know what they said? Perhaps Jesus was instructing them. Perhaps He was saying, now you see Moses back when you wrote about that brass serpent being lifted in the wilderness. When you talked about that lamb that was slain, Moses, that was talking about me and what I'm going to do shortly in Jerusalem. Perhaps He spoke to Elijah and referred to what happened in the prophets.
Elijah, that was talking about me. It may be that those two men were there conversing with Him, discussing together what they already knew regarding His coming death, and that that discussion was simply for the sake of these disciples who were listening so that they might know that both the law and the prophets agreed with what Jesus had said about His death. This was not anything new from God's perspective, that it was God's plan on track.
But we do see here nonetheless the agreement of the law and the prophets to the fuller revelation about Jesus' soon death. And the transfiguration we also see that it reveals that Christ viewed His death as a departure. The word here literally is Exodus. Now He viewed it other ways as well. He viewed it as a sacrifice. He viewed it as doing the will of God, but in this particular instance they were talking with Him about His death in terms of an Exodus.
That's very graphic to us, because when we think of Exodus, we think of the release of God's people from Egypt. Isn't it interesting to think of Jesus' death as His release from the body in which He had limited Himself for these years, and that He looked forward to that release and His return to heaven? And then we see that the transfiguration was understood by the disciples as a preview of Christ's kingdom glory. It seems as though these men perceived the significance of this event.
I want you to notice verse 27. These are words which they had heard but eight days before. Jesus spoke to all of them and said, I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. That has been interpreted in a variety of ways, but I think the best interpretation of it is that Jesus was speaking of the three men who would see the glory of His kingdom in the transfiguration. It seems as though these three understood that.
They suggested that three booths or tabernacles or huts be built, one for Jesus, one for Moses, one for Elijah. Tabernacles or huts were commonly identified in that day with the final feast or festival in the Jewish calendar every year. It was called the Feast of Tabernacles. On the occasion of that feast, the Jewish people remembered that they had been redeemed from Egypt and that they spent 40 years as pilgrims in the wilderness living in tents.
Every year they would build tents, sometimes out of palm branches or other simple materials. In the Feast of Tabernacles, they would live in those tents to remind themselves that their ancestors had lived that way for 40 years. But it also, that is this feast also, came to point to the future kingdom when Israel would be finally redeemed from the nations and regathered to the land that God had given to them and in which they would dwell securely.
And so it seems to me that the disciples, in some simple way at least, understood the essence of what this transfiguration was. It was a preview of the coming glory, glory that would follow suffering. And they understood that that glory was the kingdom in preview here. The thing they failed to realize was that the kingdom was not going to come in their lifetime. God manifested himself in another way to correct their enthusiasm on this occasion. There was a cloud of glory.
This was not a rain cloud. This was a cloud of Shekinah. This was a cloud like that which dwelt over the tabernacle in the wilderness. It developed and came upon them and encompassed them on that occasion. And God spoke to these men out of that cloud and He said to them, this is my son, my chosen one. Perhaps there's a hint of warning here about putting Elijah and Moses on the same level as his son who is unique. And then He says, listen to him. Listen to him. Those are good words.
We are often tempted to listen to our experiences. God is saying don't listen or pay too much attention to this experience if it would supersede Jesus. Listen to him, not the experience. Then remember that two of the most famous people in all of their history were present on that mountain with them, Elijah and Moses, heroes. And so the Lord is saying to them, don't listen to your heroes. Listen to my son.
We live in a day of hero worship ourselves with media preachers and famous athletes and others who get converted and those people are put on a pedestal and we tend to listen to them. And the same word comes to us as came to those disciples on that occasion. Don't listen to your experiences. Don't listen to your heroes. Listen to Jesus. He's my son, my chosen one. And all of this produced tremendous fear in the disciples. They fell on their faces like dead men.
They were terrified and Jesus went to them. He touched them. He told them, don't be afraid. When they lifted up their eyes, all that was left, this whole majestic scene was Jesus. Jesus only. The point it seems was this, that Christ was the King and the glory of the Kingdom was then present within him. But that glory was not going to be expressed in a political sense as they had thought at least at that time. The glory was coming.
They had not lied to the multitudes, but before the glory came suffering. Jesus suffering and their own. And that brings us to the second observation that we want to make before we close. We said for Christ suffering precedes glory. I want you to know that for Christ's disciples, suffering also precedes glory. The followers of the Savior need to know that glory does not come immediately. It comes later. Back up into chapter 9 again, let's continue what Jesus said as we pick it up at verse 23.
Now this is before the transfiguration again. 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 shall lose it and 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, his soul that is.
For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. So Jesus again affirms glory is coming, not only for me but for those who are mine. But he says before the glory comes, there's suffering and there's sacrifice. And he says to be a disciple of mine, to come after me, to follow me, there are two prerequisites. Number one, a man must deny himself. That is he must say no to himself.
And secondly, he must take up his cross daily. The cross was a shameful death. The disciples were well familiar with this image because undoubtedly they had seen hundreds of their own fellow countrymen crucified by the Romans. They fully understood the meaning of the cross. And the one who was condemned to the cross carried the cross beam out to the stake where he was placed upon the upright pole. They understood what he meant when he said take up his cross.
He meant to be identified with the cross and its shame every day. When one was identified with that cross as he walked out to the place of execution, it meant to him shame, ridicule, suffering, and death. And Jesus is saying that if one wishes to be his disciple, there's a cross that he must bear. No, the cross is not that car that won't start on a cold winter morning. The cross Jesus is talking about is not the mother-in-law that you feel you have to put up with.
The cross is that shame, it is that ridicule that comes because of your identity, your willing identity with Jesus Christ and his suffering and his death. Jesus elaborates upon those two thoughts in verses 24 and 25 and 26. In the first two of those verses, he elaborates upon what it means to deny oneself. He says, whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake is the one who will save it. To deny oneself means to lose one's life for Christ.
It means to release one's hold on his own self-ambitions. It means to lay aside one's self-drivenness. It means to let go instead of trying to hoard and save, to release it to the Lord. He says the one who does that, who says no to himself, that one is going to save his life. That means that the essence of his life, its purpose in the world, its meaning, its eternal duration is going to be saved. It will be preserved for him to enjoy.
But he warns that the one who grasps, the one who follows the philosophy, the control of our present culture, which says live for yourself, which says that the highest ethic is duty to self, the one who lives that way is going to lose it all in the end. Jesus says if we want to be his disciple, we begin by living in a counterculture that says no to self, but it also embraces the idea of the cross.
He says in verse 26, whoever is ashamed of me and my words, I repeat that the cross was identification with ignominy, with disgrace, with reproach. There is no one in his right mind who would want to identify with any cross. But Jesus said if someone wants to be my disciple, then he must identify with the cross every day. And he warns that if we are unwilling to be identified with him, if we are ashamed of that, that when he comes in his glorious kingdom, he will be ashamed of us.
These men were already disciples of Jesus, but they needed, as all of us need, to be reminded of what he demands of those who would be his followers. Wherever the message of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, there are those who, being led by grace, respond to that message in faith, repentance, submission of life. For those who are led by God by grace to do that, then denying self and taking up their crosses are actions that are willingly done.
They are not perfectly done, for all of us fall short of the perfection that might be demanded in these statements. But that represents the direction of life, the bent of the heart to deny self to be identified with the cross. Even those early disciples failed, didn't they? But they all repented, except for Judas. On the other hand, there are others who respond to the message of Christ by attempting a compromise.
For them, it makes more sense to want Jesus and to embrace him, but at the same time to live for themselves. They want to save their lives. They want to live for themselves and to find self-fulfillment in a very perverted sense of that term. They refuse the cross of identification with Christ. Jesus warns that when he comes, those who attempted that compromise have a surprise coming. But he will not recognize them and will be ashamed of them at the judgment.
Those of us who are Jesus Christ must never lose sight of the main lesson that Jesus is attempting here to communicate and does so effectively. Glory is coming. Glory dwells in Immanuel's land. Glory is a place. The Apostle Paul was caught up there to the paradise. There is glory coming. But before the glory comes suffering and sacrifice. It was that way for him, and it's that way for those of us who call ourselves his followers.
The thing that you and I need to keep in focus as we traverse through this life is this. Whatever the sacrifice we are called upon to make, whatever the suffering, whatever the shame and ridicule that we take because of our identification with Christ with the cross, however deeply it cuts us to say no to self, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus.
Whatever the suffering may be, when that glory is revealed, when Jesus comes in all of his splendor and his majesty, we will be glad for every time we said no, for every occasion when we embrace the cross and identify with him. So I call upon all of us today to courageously and faithfully deny ourselves and to take up that cross so that when the glory comes we can get on our knees before our Savior and thank God for the grace that he gave us that we might say no to self and yes to Christ.
For those who are attempting to live your lives in the best of both worlds, I hope you will understand the warning that Jesus gives in verse 25 when he says, What is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits his soul? If I gained the world but lost the Savior, were my life worth living for a day? Could my yearning heart find rest and comfort in the things that soon must pass away? If I gained the world but lost the Savior, would my gain be worth the lifelong strife?
Are all earthly pleasures worth comparing for a moment with a Christ-filled life? Had I wealth and love in fullest measure and a name revered both far and near, yet no hope beyond, no harbor waiting where my storm-tossed vessel I could steer, if I gained the world but lost the Savior, who endured the cross and died for me, could then all the world afford a refuge, whither in my anguish I might flee? Oh, what emptiness without the Savior, mid the sins and sorrows here below!
And eternity, how dark without Him, only nights and tears and endless woe! What though I might live without the Savior when I come to die, how would it be? Oh, to face the valley's gloom without Him, and without Him, all eternity! Jesus said, What will a prophet of man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? Let's bow together. I wonder if there is a friend here this morning in the sound of my voice who would have to say, Pastor Call, I have attempted to live the best of both worlds.
I have wanted to embrace Jesus, but I honestly wanted to live for myself at the same time. And I have done everything I could to avoid any cross with its shame and suffering. But this morning I have heard the voice of Jesus. And today I am saying no to all of my self-drivenness and yes to Christ. And I am willing, indeed I do, to take up my cross that I might follow Him. Jesus said if any of us would come after Him, we must do that.
If in fact that is the position and the decision of your heart, I am going to ask you to indicate it by lifting your hand and then putting it down. Yes. Are there some others? I see your hands, sir. Yes, there in the back I see you. God bless you. Yes to Jesus today. No to self. It may mean suffering. Indeed I can assure you that it will mean sacrifice. It will mean suffering. Friend, the glory is coming. It is worth it. Anyone else before we pray? Yes. God bless you. And another yes.
Please stand together with our heads bowed.