Moses and Elijah: Face to Face with Jesus with R.C. Sproul

SPROUL: As we continue now with our study of those  people who came face to face with Jesus during his earthly ministry, we notice that for the most  part the characters we've examined are people who appear in the New Testament, with one notable  exception. I've sort of pulled a little trick on you when I took you back to the Old Testament and  looked at the appearance of Jesus as the captain of the Lord of Hosts to Joshua, seeing that as a  Christophany, an Old Testament manifestation of the pre incarnate Christ. Well, I'm going to throw  another curve today, and that is, we are going to look at Jesus coming face to face with some other  characters from the Old Testament, but we're going to double the fun; instead of going back to the  Old Testament to see this encounter of Jesus with these Old Testament characters, we are going to  see his encountering them in the New Testament, not in a Christophany pre incarnation sense, but  in his incarnate sense.

Jesus comes face to face with two figures from the Old Testament; and those  persons are Moses and Elijah. Now, before we look at this text, let's just consider the significance  that it is these two men who meet Jesus face to face in the New Testament. There is significance  in their appearance, because Moses, as the mediator of the old covenant, is most famous for,  and noted for, the giving of what?

The giving of the Law. Whenever we see portraits of Moses, or  sculpture, we usually see him holding the tablets of stone, he's the law giver of the Old Testament.  And the role of Elijah in the Old Testament is to stand at the front of a long line of men who  are called of God and endowed charismatically with the gift and the calling of that of a  prophet.

And the Scriptures so frequently say, in summarizing all of the testimony of the  Old Testament, the reference will be to what? To the Law and to the prophets. The Law and the  prophets, John tells us, ruled until John.

And so with the appearance of Moses and Elijah in the New  Testament, we see the appearance, the confluence, the coming together of the Old Testament  Law and of the prophets of the Old Testament with the Messiah who was to come, whose coming is  foreshadowed and promised both in the Law and in the prophets. What a fantastic moment in human  history this is, where this intersection takes place in time and space, where the Law and the  prophets come face to face with the Messiah. And, of course, I'm talking about that aspect in  Jesus' life that is called "The Transfiguration.

" The Transfiguration is recorded in more than  one Gospel. And today I am going to read, first of all, the record of it that is found in  the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Mark has his treatment of the Transfiguration in Chapter 9,  beginning at verse one.

We read this, "And he said to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you that there  are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God present with  power. ' Now, after six days, Jesus took Peter, James and John, and led them up on a high mountain  apart from themselves, and he was transfigured before them. " The first thing we have to note  is where this takes place in the life of Jesus.

Jesus had carried on a public ministry for  quite some time, and he had ridden the waves of popularity where he ascended like a meteor  to tremendous fame and popularity in the land, but there was an increasing, growing hostility  emerging at this time. And near the end of his ministry, in a sense Jesus and his disciples  went on a retreat. They went far to the north to Galilee.

And there, while they were at Caesarea  Philippi, Jesus gathered his inner circle, Peter, James and John, around himself and sort of  took the pulse of what was going on. And it was there that he asked the question: "Who do  men say that I am? " And he got the response, "Some say that you are a prophet," and so on. 

And he said, "Well, who do you think that I am? " And it was on that occasion that Peter gave the  great confession, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. " You know the story, how then  Jesus blessed Peter, and said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jonah, thou shalt be called Petrus--the  rock, and upon this rock will I build my church,” and so on.

But then in the next episode that  takes place, Jesus explains to his disciples that it's time to leave this place of retreat,  and journey back to Jerusalem where Jesus tells his disciples that when he gets back to Jerusalem,  he is going to be betrayed and be delivered up to the authorities, and that he's going to suffer and  die. And when he says that, this same Simon Peter, who had just moments before said, "Thou art the  Christ, the son of the living God," now says, "No, no, no. God forbid that you should go  to Jerusalem.

We are not going to stand for that," and so on. And Jesus just so recently had  said, "Thou art Petrus--the rock"; now, he says, "Get thee behind me, Satan. " He has to rebuke  Peter for his poor confession at this point.

So when Mark tells us, after six days, he is setting  this in the historical narrative, where six days after Jesus had informed his disciples that he  was going to Jerusalem to die, and they set out on that journey, probably the most frightened,  disappointed group of men in all of human history, trudging along, following after Jesus as he sets  his face like a flint towards Jerusalem, as they are trying to bear up under this horrible news  that he has given to them that he is about to die. How like it is of God in the midst of that kind of  moment to burst through the veil of humiliation, and give his people a taste of glory. The record of the transfiguration, frankly, is one of my favorite passages in all of the New  Testament.

A few years ago I wrote a book called "The Glory of Christ. " And that book focused on  those moments in Jesus' earthly ministry when, as it were, his divine nature peaked around  the veil. Normally, Jesus traveled incognito, willingly embracing his role as the Suffering  Servant in this mist of humiliation, hiding his glory from the naked vision of mortal  men, but on rare occasions, the glory would break through.

And it was a delightful experience  for me to write a whole book just focusing on those moments where the glory broke through.  And there is no moment more glorious, I think, during the earthly ministry of Jesus than this  one that is called the Transfiguration. Again, we look at the text of Mark, Chapter 9, "After six  days, Jesus took Peter, James and John,” his inner core, “and led them up on a high mountain apart  by themselves, and he was transfigured before them.

" Now, that word "transfigured" is not a word  that is commonplace in our vocabulary. In fact, the Greek word would probably be more communicable  to us than the English word, because the Greek word is the word from which we get the English  word "metamorphosis. " And the word "metamorphosis" I think is more familiar to us than the word  "transfigured.

" When do you ever hear the word "transfigured," except when you are singing  the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," you know, where "the glory in his bosom that transfigures  you and me," and even then we have no idea what it means that we are transfigured. But let's  look at a metamorphosis. A metamorphosis is something that takes place when the caterpillar  becomes the butterfly.

Ovid, the Roman poet, wrote a whole book by the title Metamorphosis.  And metamorphosis has to do with a change of form. Morphology is the science of forms.

And so  the Greek word here in this text has to do with a sudden dramatic visible transformation,  transformation that is a going across, or a changing of the forms of Jesus himself before  their very eyes. Suddenly, Jesus' form changes. His figure changes into what?

His clothes  became shining, exceedingly white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten  them. Wow. The first appearance here is of a transformation in Jesus' physical appearance in  his clothes and in his face.

We are told that now, suddenly, the refulgent glory of God begins to  shine. Whenever Scripture speaks of the glory of God, it speaks of that glory in terms of  a shining. And it speaks of it in terms of a dazzling blazing light that is so bright it  would hurt the eyes to look at it directly.

And here, as the author of the New Testament  seeks to somehow find in his finite arsenal of vocabulary words a way to describe this ineffable  experience of glory, he says that the whiteness of the garments of Jesus became whiter than any  fuller or whiter than any launderer can make them. I remember when I was a child, I grew up, and  we didn't have television, we had radio. And when we would be home sick in the summertime, we'd  have to listen to the soap operas all afternoon, and they were called "soap operas," because the  sponsors of these programs were soap manufacturing companies.

And I would listen to the jingles  of the commercials, "D U Z, D U Z, put those in your washing machine, see your clothes come out  so clean, D U Z does everything. Rinse so white then so blue," you know, and I would hear all  of these programs day after day after day with these ads. Well, the one that intrigued me as a  child was this one soap called "Tide.

" "Tide's in, dirt's out, T I D E, Tide. " That was the way we'd  sing that little commercial. But it seemed like every year Tide would come out with a new improved  version, and they always advertised, "New and Improved Tide.

" And I started to wonder about that  after a while. I said, now, if this is eight years in a row that we are getting new and improved  Tide, I wonder what that product was like eight years ago, it must have been terrible. I mean, one  of them, I don't know if it was Tide, or whoever, finally, came up with a slogan that they made  their clothes come out whiter than white.

And I said, Now, this is the nadir of Madison  Avenue, distortion of the sanctity of truth, because surely there is nothing whiter than white.  White without any hint of color. White without the slightest hue of gray.

White without the most  minute mar or imperfection. A white that is absolutely pure. Oh, if you want to catch a vision  of that, read Herman Melville's classic chapter in Moby Dick on the whiteness of the whale, which  was his symbolic description of the character of God himself.

But before the very eyes of the  disciples, suddenly they see his clothes lose their drabness, the gray, the black, the soil  disappears, and there is a whiteness that is so pure, that is so dazzling, that is so bright that  it begins to shine like the sun in its strength, and now, this light is flowing out of Jesus. Now, remember in the Old Testament when Moses went to the mountain to meet with God, and  when he spoke with God at Sinai, he asked for the big one. He said, "You know, God, it was  great to see the Exodus and the burning bush, and all of those things, but let me see what  every human eye has burned to see, let me see your face.

” And God said, "No, Moses, no man can see my  face and live. But I will tell you what I will do, I will carve out a little niche, a little hollow  place in the rock, and I will place you securely in that cleft of the rock, and I will pass by,  and I will allow you a momentary glimpse of my backward parts,” --literally, in the Hebrew, the  hind quarters of Yahweh, “but my face shall not be seen. ” And the Scriptures tell us the glory  of God passed by that cleft in the rock, and Moses had a momentary instantaneous glance at the  refraction of God's glory.

And when he came down from the mountain, his face was shining with such  intensity that it frightened the people. Moses' face. Moses' face was shining.

And the shining  that was coming from Moses' face was the result of the reflection of God's glory from a  sideward's glance at his backward part. Now, I want you to understand that the light that  the disciples see in Christ is not a reflection; it is a light that is coming from inside of  him, bursting through the shell of his body and of his garments, as the glory of his deity now  explodes on the scene. And when they see this, what is their reaction?

It's the same reaction  all of us would have. They were terrified. And we read in verse four, "And Elijah appeared  to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.

And Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it is good  for us to be here. Let's make three tabernacles: One for you, one for Moses, and one for  Elijah,” because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. " Peter didn't know  what was going on.

All of a sudden there is this transfiguration. All of a sudden there is this  dazzling whiteness, and this brightness of the strength of Christ's glory. And then to add  astonishment upon astonishment, suddenly who appears, but Moses and Elijah.

And the disciples  are watching as Moses and Elijah ignore them, and are involved in deep, earnest conversation  with Christ. The Bible doesn't tell us everything that is spoken between them, but you know what was  being said. Moses and Elijah come to the Messiah, and they say, "Go to Jerusalem, it is your  destiny.

And we have borne witness to you, and we stand with you, and God in heaven has sent us  to come and confirm that to you. " The law and the prophets are standing there discussing the mission  of Christ with him. And as the Scriptures say, "The disciples are very much afraid.

" And now,  to make matters worse, what happens? A cloud came and overshadowed them. And a voice came out of the  clouds saying, "This is my beloved son, hear him.

” Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no  one any more, but only Jesus with themselves. What kind of a cloud was this? What kind of a cloud  do we always associate with the presence of God, but the Shekinah glory.

And this cloud of glory  comes now and encompasses Christ, and encompasses Elijah, and encompasses Moses. Perhaps it had come  to transport Elijah and Moses back to heaven, just as Elijah once had been translated and had gone  on the chariots of fire into the heavenly places, and just as the Shekinah glory cloud came again  to escort Christ in his ascension into glory, and the promise that Jesus made that at the  last day when he would return to this world, he would return with the clouds of glory.  So the Shekinah cloud that indicates the visible presence of God himself and his exalted  majesty, now overshadows it.

If the vision of Christ's transformation wasn't enough, and the  appearance of Moses and Elijah wasn't enough, now, here comes the cloud, and that is not the end  yet. And as the cloud envelopes them, they hear audibly the voice of God from heaven. Think of  it.

Only three times in all of the New Testament is it spoken of God that he spoke audibly from  heaven. And on every occasion when God spoke, the message was substantially the same. Remember  at the baptism, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

" And now, while the disciples  are cowering on the ground and hiding their faces in absolute terror with this phenomenon that  is taking place, they hear the voice of God. And what does God say? "This is my beloved Son,  hear him, listen to him.

" They didn't want to hear him. They didn't want to listen him. They didn't  like what he was telling them that he was going to Jerusalem to die.

And to re enforce Jesus'  teaching to these men came the testimony of Moses, the testimony of Elijah, and finally, the audible  Word of God himself, "This is my son, hear him. " Have you ever had a mountaintop experience  where you didn't want to leave it? It was such a spiritual high, you just wanted to tarry, enjoy  it, revel in it.

Peter had that experience on the Mount of Transfiguration. He says, this is time  for a celebration. Let's make a booth and we're going to make a house, little house for Elijah,  little house for Moses, little house for Jesus, and we're all going to stay up here and have a  bless me party for the rest of our days.

Isn't it sad that in that moment of transfiguration  where the glory of Christ burst through, and God's voice itself is heard from on high, that the  disciples themselves were still thinking strictly in terms of glory and not in terms of suffering.  They still had not come to peace with the mission of Christ. They forgot where they were headed,  and they were reluctant to go to Jerusalem.

They wanted to stay on the mountain. They didn't  want to be involved in ministry, they didn't have to work out the concerns of the church, or  the ministry of redemption, or a ministry of compassion. They wanted religion for what it  would do for them, so that they could bask in spiritual joy and delight on this mountain without  any intrusion of duty.

But the purpose of the mountaintop experience for them is the same as the  mountaintop experience is for us to send us out of the church and into the world to be participants  in the death and in the humiliation of Christ.