Matthew 17

The Lord Jesus Christ has promised us a glorious kingdom. We believe; Lord, help our unbelief. We perhaps think that it might help our faith if we could see a glimpse of that kingdom now. This is precisely what Jesus gave to Peter, James, and John. The last words of the prior chapter were, “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” The fullness of the Lord’s coming in His kingdom will not occur until He returns. Peter, James, and John tasted death a long time ago. But only six days after Jesus made them this promise, He gave them a wonderful glimpse of the glory of His coming and of His kingdom in this event called the transfiguration.

In this kingdom-coming miracle, Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus Christ, who shined as a personification of the glory cloud of God. At this time, the era of the Law was coming to a close, and the new prophetic Elijah, John the Baptist, had already completed his work of pointing to the Messiah. Yet Moses and Elijah were still alive in some other realm. Somehow their presence was known that day and was visible to the disciples, who clearly did not know what to do. Unless this appearance was completely misleading, we must conclude that heaven is a real place, a place from which visitors could come, although a place that we cannot normally see. Men like Moses and Elijah appeared to be aware enough about the events of redemption transpiring at this turn of the ages for them to have a conversation about these things with the Son of God.

The glory cloud of God then was suddenly manifest as a separate presence from the Son of God, and the voice of the Father spoke in their hearing. The words were very important for our consideration. The Father confirmed that the man known to many as Jesus of Nazareth, presumed to be the son of a man named Joseph, was in fact the Son of our heavenly Father. This Jesus was called the beloved Son. There was nothing lacking in Him or offensive about Him that would cause His Father to turn away from Him. The Father was well-pleased with Him, and apparently wanted His disciples to know this and to hear this explicit instruction: “Listen to Him.” It is amazing, then, that the Father would later turn away from the Son, when atonement was made for our sins.

This was a terrifying and deeply impressive experience for these men, one which Peter and John referred to in their writings that were recorded for us in the New Testament. It was Christ who was able to calm them at that time, as He spoke of His coming resurrection. The Son of Man would be raised from the dead. They would be witnesses not only of this glorious transfiguration, but of post-resurrection appearances of Christ as well.

These men did not understand the timing of future events and were trying to make sense of it all. They had seen Elijah on the mountain, but was not Elijah to come first before the Messiah? The expectation that people rightly had of a preparatory Elijah-like ministry was correct, but this had already happened in the prophetic work of John the Baptist. People did not recognize him for who he was, and they did to him what their forefathers had done to the earlier prophets. John’s suffering and death needed to inform their expectations concerning what would happen to Jesus, for He too would soon suffer at the hands of men. They needed to listen to the Son of God about this, and about everything, as the Father had commanded from heaven.

Soon they were down again with the rest of the disciples and those who needed healing. The contrast between the present heaven and the present earth was well displayed in these events. Moses and Elijah do not live here any more, but we do. And there are other people here, and they need help. Here we have the effects of the fall and of God’s curse. Here we also have opportunities to walk by faith, to obey God, and to serve Him. It was not easy for Jesus to be here, and it will never be easy for people of faith to live in a faithless and twisted place. If we are to be followers of our Lord, we must listen to His words. We need the kind of listening that moves outward in love, seeing God do the impossible.

No matter how God would choose to work wonders through His church today, this earth still awaits the glory of the Lord, the glory that we will see after death, the glory that will descend upon the earth from on high when Christ returns. Until that time, this is still the place where the Son of Man was killed by men, but it is also the place to which He will return in the resurrection age. It is the place where the rulers of this world collect taxes to do what they will do, and we try our best to be peaceful and law-abiding. But it is a fact that we are the sons of the coming kingdom, a kingdom that is in some ways here already in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the subsequent movement of His gospel across the globe.

If we could just climb a mountain to get to heaven now, we would do so. We could be with our reigning Lord, the One who is the visible glory of the invisible God. We could see people like Moses and Elijah, and talk to those who are alive in that place, embrace them as completely healed people, eat with them, laugh with them, work with them, and rest so very well. But there is no mountain like that for us to climb. Yet Christ Himself is with us and in us, and He is the One upon whom angels from heaven descend to earth and ascend back to that realm above. We are in Him, and He is in us. Therefore glory is not so far away after all, and today is another day to walk in faith, a day for waiting and serving in a glorious hope, a hope perfectly secured for us in the Word of Christ, and in His death and resurrection.