Matthew 10

Chapter 10. The Glory of the KingAfter six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. (Matthew 17:1-3)The transfiguration of Christ marked a turning point in His life and ministry. Up to that moment His path had ascended in successive revelations of His grace and glory until at last in that manifestation of His glory and majesty on Hermon’s height, the veil of His humiliation for a moment was wholly cast aside and His disciples beheld Him in His primeval glory and in the glory of His second coming by-and-by. But from this moment the pathway descended down through the lonely valley of humiliation, suffering and rejection until at last it led to the agony and mystery of the garden, the cross and the grave. Purpose of the Transfiguration The transfiguration also marked the close of His Galilean ministry. We have already seen that He was preparing for some time previously to leave the scenes of His three-year ministry. He had gone up to the heathen region of Tyre and Sidon, and on His return he had still lingered on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee in the country of Decapolis, which was semi-heathen. But soon after the transfiguration He withdrew altogether from the northern region, where most of His mighty works had been done, and, for the next six months, we find Him in Judea, Perea and the country round about Jerusalem. The purpose of His transfiguration was perhaps, primarily, for His own encouragement and comfort, in view of the trying conditions through which He was passing and was soon to pass. His ministry of love and His miracles of power had been met by unbelief and bitter rejection, and before Him there loomed the darker shadows of His seeming failure and His cruel death. Looking down the immediate pathway, the heavy shadows of that awful tragedy that ended at last on Calvary opened before Him, and the hour was one which needed, as never before, the encouragement of that heavenly vision which came to Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. Henceforth, He looked not at the valley of the shadow of death just before Him, but at the sunlit heights immediately beyond, and “for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Hebrews 12:2). But the second object of the transfiguration was for the comfort and encouragement of His disciples. They had just begun to understand from His own announcements that their fond dream of an earthly kingdom through the Messiah was to be rudely dispelled; and that, instead of honor, power and earthly prosperity, they were to go forth to share His shame and cross and to seek their kingdom not in this world but on the other side of the grave. It was therefore necessary that they, too, should have a vivid conception of the divine character of the Master they were following at such tremendous cost and the reward that they were expecting at the end of all their trials and sufferings. All this was assured them in that midnight vision on the Mount when they beheld, first, His glory, and, secondly, their own, as it was set forth in the appearance of Moses and Elijah, who “appeared in glorious splendor” (Luke 9:31) as patterns and types of the glory which awaits every believer who follows Christ to the end. An Object Lesson There was a further purpose in the heavenly vision, and perhaps the most important of all, namely: an object lesson of certain truths which the Lord had been proclaiming to His disciples during the past few weeks, and which were set forth in a most striking manner in the vision of the transfiguration. He had taken them up on this northern journey, through the beautiful regions of Caesarea Philippi, as a sort of summer school, for the purpose of talking to them calmly and fully of the great truths of the kingdom which it was necessary that they should fully understand. After He had fully explained these truths to them in word, He took them up on the Mount that night and gave them a vivid illustration of them in the glorious scenes of the transfiguration. His Messiahship The first of these truths was His own divinity and messiahship. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13), was the question with which the discussion had begun. After they had told Him the various opinions of the people, He asked them more directly, “But what about you?… Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15). It was then that Peter uttered the great confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” which Jesus told him had been revealed to Him, not by flesh and blood, but by His Father in heaven (Matthew 16:16-17). Now, the transfiguration was a special and emphatic confirmation of this. First, the voice of God Himself from the overshadowing cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5). This was a distinct acknowledgment of the deity of Christ, accompanied with the manifestation of the glory of God in the illuminated cloud which was the unmistakable pledge of the divine Presence. The special command, “Listen to him,” was a distinct acknowledgment of His superior claims to both Moses and Elijah. Hitherto, they had been hearing the voice of the Lawgiver and the voice of the Prophets, but now they were to hear Him as God’s last and supreme Messenger to man. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Further, the appearance of Moses and Elijah in a place of subordination to Him and as messengers and ministers who simply waited upon His superior Majesty was a still further confirmation to the disciples that He was indeed the Messiah whom Moses and the prophets had foretold, and that their authority ended with His coming, even as the stars pale at the rising of the sun. To make the dramatic scene more effective, they, after they had waited upon Him in the vision, vanished away as a token that their ministry and their messages had given place to His, and the disciples “when they looked up… saw no one except Jesus” (Matthew 17:8). Thus, the whole scene was a most striking and impressive confirmation of Peter’s testimony and His own claim that He was indeed “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). His Death The next truth which He had unfolded to the disciples on their journey northward was quite different from this. From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew 16:21-23) This was his first explicit announcement of His crucifixion. It came as a shock to the disciples, and Peter, their impetuous spokesman, had no hesitation in expressing their utter dissent and protest against any such doctrine. He did not want a crucified Savior. He wanted a glorious and popular Messiah, subduing all earthly as well as spiritual enemies and providing a kingdom in the present as well as in the future for His faithful followers. This doctrine of the cross was repugnant to all Peter’s pride and ambition, and still more so to his love for his Master. But Peter only represented the natural thought of the human heart. Man does not want a crucified Savior. The doctrine of the cross too deeply recognizes the fact of human sin and the need of blood and sacrifice to wash it away. And further, it implies the painful and humbling truth that, for the disciple as well as the Master, there must also be a cross. If our Lord is crucified, we must also deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. If the world rejects Him, it will also reject us; if He must die for our sins, we must die to our sins. Men do not like this at all, and, therefore, the cross has always been and always will be unpopular with the world. Little wonder today that it is being questioned and even rejected by the worldly Church. But all such ideas are more repugnant to our Lord than His cross was to His disciples. “You are a stumbling block to me” (Matthew 16:23), He says to His favorite disciple the moment he begins to question the precious doctrine of His death. What must He think of those in His very Church who today are heaping dishonor upon the doctrine of the blood and trying to find a way to heaven aside from the blood-stained pathway of Calvary’s cross? The transfiguration was a fine object lesson of the estimation in which the heavenly beings hold the cross of Christ. This scene was a sort of drama in which the disciples were spectators and stood gazing upon a stage on which great truths were being set forth in dramatic action. They stood listening to the strange conversation of the glorious beings that had come forth from the upper world to their Master. These two that appeared that night on Hermon’s height were the most illustrious men that had ever lived. One of them was the great lawgiver himself, reverenced by every Hebrew next to Jehovah Himself, Moses, the founder of their Jewish theocracy and the giver of their venerated law. The other was the great Elijah, the mighty prophet who had come in the darkest hour of the nation’s sin, and, after performing miracles unprecedented even among the mightiest of the prophets, including the raising of men from the dead, had at last himself been swept to heaven in a chariot of fire without the intervention of death. There could be no doubt to any Hebrew mind about the authority and importance of such witnesses as these. But now, these two illustrious men appeared in a posture of inferiority to the Lord Jesus, their glorious Master, uniting in the Father’s testimony to His majesty, and, still more, bearing witness to His sufferings and death by speaking of that event as the one sole theme of their conversation. Looking at this wonderful spectacle, it must have seemed to the wondering disciples that the chief theme in the heavenly world was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. “They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). And it is still true that if we could pierce the heavens and listen for a moment to the songs and conferences of the heavenly beings above, we would find them engaged in the same great theme. In the book of Revelation the Apostle John has lifted the curtain upon that world, and the one song they sing and the one theme they celebrate is thus expressed: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12). Dear friends, let us cherish and honor the cross of Jesus Christ, the badge of His shame before the world that rejected Him, but the glorious theme which ransomed saints and holy angels ever celebrate above. His Coming Once more, the transfiguration bore testimony to the Master’s word concerning His second coming. This also had been one of the themes of conversation in their journey northward. The Lord had just reminded them of the utter worthlessness of every earthly thing compared with the value of the never-dying soul and then had added, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27). The Lord had then added the very significant announcement, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28). At first sight, this almost looks like an announcement that some of the disciples should never die, but live on to the actual coming of the Lord Jesus. This, however, is not necessary. The words are sufficiently fulfilled if we understand them to mean that the transfiguration which followed shortly after was an actual exhibition and illustration of the words “coming in his kingdom,” and that in seeing it they practically saw His kingdom come. This is more impressive when we note the next verse in the opening of the 17th chapter, which seems to follow as a direct explanation of this announcement: “After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them” (Matthew 17:1-2). This, then, was what He meant when He said that they should see Him coming into His kingdom. The transfiguration was a revelation of His coming, and the more we look at it the more will we be struck with its complete foreshadowing of the second advent. In the first place, the Father was there standing behind the scene and manifesting to the world the glory of Jesus Christ as His Son. This is to be fulfilled when Christ shall come again. He will come in the glory of His Father; He will occupy the center of the stage, and He will be the Judge and the King, and all the splendors of that hour shall cluster around His person and His throne. Next, the presence of Moses on the Mount represented the resurrection of the dead at Christ’s second coming. Moses had died at Mount Nebo, and God had evidently raised him from the dead and brought him back to take part in the scenes of the transfiguration. He stands, therefore, for that glorious multitude who sleep in Jesus, whom the Lord will bring with Him at His return. Then Elijah stands for another class, the living saints of God who shall be on earth at the time of Christ’s coming and who shall suddenly be changed and caught up to meet Him in the air. Elijah did not die, but was translated to Heaven in a chariot of fire, and so we are taught that when our Lord returns “we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). And again we read, “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinking of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). The Apostle Peter was one of the three disciples who saw this glorious event on the Mount. He refers to it in his second epistle, and he speaks of it as specially designed to set forth “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:16), and, as we take in all the circumstances of that glorious scene, there is nothing that more sublimely or accurately sets forth the chief events connected with the blessed hope of our Master’s coming. Lessons Let us gather up some practical conclusions from this sublime story.

1. It tells us of the closer fellowship into which the Lord Jesus brings some of His disciples. There were only three of the 12 who saw this vision. The other nine remained below and passed through that night, as we read a little later, in a troubled and fruitless conflict with the adversary; but the three were taken apart and caught up to meet the Lord on the mountain top and behold His glory. We find the same three disciples taken into His intimate fellowship on two other occasions, once at the raising of the daughter of Jairus from the dead (Mark 5:37), and again as the companions of His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37). They represented that closer fellowship into which the Lord Jesus takes those who are willing to follow Him all the way. All that this means now and is to mean by and by would be difficult to express, but surely it means enough to make us covet that wondrous promise and let nothing rob us of its blessing. “To him who overcomes, I will give… a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it” (Revelation 2:17). There is a difference now, and oh, there will be a difference then, between those that have followed Him fully and those that have hesitated to go with Him all the way.
2. It tells us of the hours of elevation and revelation which come to us amid the trials and pressures of the present. That transfiguration then was given to comfort both them and Him at a real crisis in their lives and His, and so the Lord Jesus still gives His people hours of vision and revelation when they are elevated above the clouds and shadows of the present and permitted to come into closer touch with eternal things. Not always should we look for these celestial uplifts; it would not be wholesome. Two or three times in his life, the Apostle Paul had such special visitations from his Master, and then the ordinary current of his life and work was commonplace and without special revelation. Just as the mariner takes his observations when the stars shine out and the clouds flee away and sails by this light for many a stormy day, so God gives to us these uplifts and hours of elevation as we need them. Let us thank Him for them and say with the Psalmist, “I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon” (Psalms 42:6)—that is, the heights of Hermon, where David also had his transfiguration hours.
3. It tells us that our loved ones who have left us are living, happy and glorified, and that they are coming back again some day to meet us. In the resurrection glory of Moses and Elijah, there shines a great light that drives away the darkness of the grave and wipes away the tears of the mourner. They are living beyond, they are not dead; they are active, intelligent, busy and happy, and we shall be with them in a little while and cease to sigh For the touch of the vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still.
4. It tells us of the blessed hope of the Lord’s coming as the pole star of our lives and the inspiration of our labors and sufferings. Let us never forget it, but be ever looking “forward to the day of God and speed its coming” (2 Peter 3:12).
5. It tells us of something higher even than the transfiguration. The scene that followed the vision on the Mount is even finer than the vision itself. It is the victory of Jesus Christ at the foot of the Mount on the following morning over the power of Satan. When they came down, they found a terrible scene—an agonized father with a lunatic boy torn by demon possession and the little company of the disciples vainly trying to cast out the evil spirit while the people were looking on with mingled sympathy for the father and scorn for the baffled disciples. There seems to have been something unusual even in the Lord’s appearance, for Mark tells that as the people looked at Him, “they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him” (Mark 9:15). There must have been something in His face and bearing that bore the traces of the glory of the night before. Certainly there was a power that had not yet appeared, for in a moment the whole scene of defeat and despair was changed to victory, the demon cast out of the living child, and the father and multitude filled with wonder at the mighty power of God. Need we pause to make the application—how it tells of the purpose of our transfiguration, to prepare us for the conflicts and the ministries that await us in this sad world below? We go not up to the Mount of Transfiguration to “put up three shelters” (Matthew 17:4), that we may stay forever there, but rather to get a touch of heaven to bring down to the dark, sad world in the valley below. Oh, that we might come forth clothed with the power which they beheld in Him, to live transfigured lives among our fellow man and to share with them the glory which we have caught upon the Mount of Vision. Surely, this is something higher than nursing our sanctification, seeking our blessing and being satisfied with our visions. There was deep significance in the old legend of the two men that entered the celestial portals. The first was white-robed and stainless, and, when asked by the warder whence he had come and how his garments were so clean, he told how he had just passed a poor struggling traveler on the earth below whose cart had become entangled in a great swamp and how he had begged him to help him to extricate it, and with what difficulty and pain he had escaped the urgent call and kept his garments spotless to meet his Lord. The second pilgrim followed, and his robes were soiled with mire and grime. Flushing crimson with shame, he explained that he had tried his best to keep his garments clean, but that, just as he reached the portals, he found a struggling wayfarer vainly trying to get his cart out of a quagmire, and that he could not refuse to put his shoulder to the wheel and help him out of his trouble, “and so,” he added, “the marks are still on my once spotless robes.” But the angel smiled and said, “My brother, those stains will not hinder your welcome here, for, lo! while we speak, you will find that they are transformed into jewels of glory, and they are shining upon your garments as the badges and recompense of that love which is the highest glory of our sanctity and the brightest jewel in our crown.” Dear friends, shall we not only claim the Mount of Transfiguration with the Master, but oh, shall we learn to come down from the mountain to live the transfigured life of love below?