Luke chapter 9, we'll begin reading at verse 28, actually verse 21, and then read through verse 36. Listen to God's Word this morning. And He strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one saying, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 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. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. Now about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure. which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep. But when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said. And he was saying these things, as he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed 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. When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days of anything of what they had seen. Reading from God's Word this morning. Do you remember back to our sermon two weeks ago? Do you remember how we wrestled with those very challenging words of Jesus that I just read? Verse 23. That call of Jesus, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Do you remember wrestling with those words? Wrestling with that very hard call to follow in Jesus' footsteps. That daily death to self. That kingdom self-denial. Do you remember talking about that? Wrestling with that. Did you try to think of what that looks like in your life? In the details. Did you kind of go back? And think through, the Monday mornings, the Wednesday evenings, what kingdom self-denial would look like there? Did you even go the next step and actually try to live it out? Was there a moment where your initial gut reaction was, I want to do here what I want to do here. But then there was conviction, OK? Yes, I'm a follower of Jesus. And so he calls me to follow him and lay aside my preferences and sacrifice for the sake of the kingdom here. Did you find yourself being challenged at places like that? It's hard, isn't it? It's difficult. Maybe you didn't really think about applying it at all. And I wonder if some of the reason why it's so easy to forget and not really wrestle with this is because it is so hard. We just kind of get overwhelmed by the call is so big that it's easy to kind of just be overloaded. And I can't even think about what this looks like. It's so difficult. And we put it aside. Do you think the disciples of Jesus found it hard? Absolutely, they found it hard. You look at what they're about to go through in the rest of the New Testament, it's an extremely hard call to follow Christ in this life of daily kingdom self-denial. Very difficult. Difficult for them, difficult for us. Well, here's the good news. The Lord Jesus knows it's difficult and He provides encouragement. He provides encouragement to those who struggle with this life of kingdom self-denial. And I think that's what our passage today is about. It comes right after that very difficult call. We get right into this interesting, powerful scene on the mountain. And I think where that comes in is for the benefit of the disciples. Notice how the two are very carefully connected by Luke. Now verse 28, now about eight days after these sayings, He took with Him Peter, James and John. And all the things that take place are in front of them. The voice that speaks from the clouds speaks to them. This is for their benefit. It's not for Jesus' benefit, though certainly Christ was encouraged in His calling by those events, but it was primarily for the disciples' benefit. They needed to see these things, apparently. After God had placed upon their life a very difficult call to follow Christ, literally follow in his footsteps, they needed to see and hear what they would see and hear. And so to those who received the same hard call, calling from God to follow Christ, God knows that we need to see the very same thing. And he's put it before us this morning. A passage of encouragement to those who struggle with kingdom self-denial. A passage that lifts up our eyes and encourages us along the way. Well, how does it encourage us? Let's take a look. First thing we see in this passage is what we'll call the displayed glory. The displayed glory. Kids, do you understand what's going on here? Do you see it? You see what Jesus is describing here, what God is describing here? Jesus takes with him Three of his closest disciples, Peter and James and John, and they go up on a mountain. And there on the mountain, Jesus, his appearance has changed. It's changed. His face becomes brilliant white. Another gospel says, as bright as the sun. Have you ever tried to look at the sun? Ever tried to look right at the sun? You can't really look at the sun. It's so bright. Well, that's what Jesus' face turned into. As bright as the sun. His clothes became sparkling white. Can you imagine being there? Imagine how amazing that would be? Well, that's what Peter, James, and John got to see. And if you want to remember a word, if you want to remember a word to think about this whole picture, remember the word glory. Glory. Maybe if you even have a pencil, maybe you can write that word down. Glory. Glory. That's a good summary of what's going on. Glory. The splendor, the brilliant majesty of God. The three disciples see that in the transfigured face of Jesus here on the mountain. And it's a reminder of past glory and also a preview of glory to come. Let's think about that quickly. The transfigured face of Christ and appearance of Christ is a reminder of past glory You might remember in John 17 right before Jesus goes to the cross He prays this great prayer to the father. And here's one of the things that he says and now father Glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed with the glory that I had with you before the world existed and The biblical picture of Jesus is that He is the eternal Son of God. The same in substance, equal in power and glory with the Father. What did we say earlier? God of God, light of light, very God of very God. That's who Jesus is. He's God. Along with the Father and the Son, fully God. And this eternal God is brilliant in His glory. But the Son, in time and space, takes on flesh, dwells among us. He doesn't stop being God. When the Son is incarnate, He doesn't stop being God. He doesn't give up any of His divine attributes. Still all-powerful, still all-knowing. But in the incarnation, Jesus, His glory, that eternal glory, is veiled. Is veiled. You don't see it. Disciples normally saw Jesus. He looked just like any other man He didn't see the brilliance of of the glory that he had from before the world began Well here what we have on the mountain is for an instant God as it were pulling back the veil and the disciples get it get a picture of the eternal glory that the Sun always had and they get to see it in its brilliance and and and wonder manifest here in a small way there on the mountain. But it's also a preview of future glory, of what is to come. This Jesus, glory veiled on this earth in the form of a servant, but he will not always have the form of a servant. This Jesus, in the form of a servant, goes to the cross, dies, but then is raised up, and then descends in great glory, seated at the right hand of the Father, that name above every name, exalted, glorified. And we read a picture of that glory this morning, when John, the same John we had here on the mountain, gets to see Jesus again. And here, the Jesus he sees is not the form of a servant, but a Jesus like he saw on the mountain, a Jesus in glory, a Jesus in splendor. In fact, one of the things we read earlier was John saying the description of his face. Revelation 1, 16, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. Same description that I think it's Matthew gives here in the Transfiguration. Like the sun. What we have what we have here on the Mount is a preview of the future glory that that the the resurrected exalted Christ will have And Peter James and John get a preview of of what is to come So, how does this help? Disciples who were wrestling with kingdom self-denial. How does this provide encouragement? Well, I think what it does is it gives us an understanding, a picture of both the depths of Christ's humiliation and the heights of his glory. The depths of his humiliation and the heights of his glory. And that's an encouragement to us. You see here just how low Jesus brought himself to come and save us. And when we see the glory that He had from before the world began, you see how far He brought Himself low to take this form of a servant. That He put aside that glory that we see shining on the mountain. He put that aside. That was veiled. To take the form of a servant. To go to death for us. See how low He brought Himself? See the depths of His humiliation? And we begin to meditate on that. all of a sudden our sacrifice begins to look a little different. First of all, we get encouraged because we can put our sacrifice up against his. You think about an just everyday life examples of where we're called to put our self aside. Maybe it's your one evening off and you had all these great plans of what you wanted to do, watch the game or get this project done or do this or that, and then all of a sudden you realize that there's Other ways that you could serve. Your spouse could really use help here. Or a brother or sister could use some encouragement. A neighbor could use help. And that kingdom self-denial, following in the footsteps of Christ, means putting your interests aside. Or maybe it's something you've really been hoping to purchase that would be really neat, maybe even really helpful, but there's the fall thank offering coming up. And you're thinking, should I put aside what I really want and give to the work of the Great Commission? Those are real sacrifices, everyday sacrifices that we face. When you put that up against what Christ did, that eternal glory that He puts aside, that He vows to come here to save you, all of a sudden our sacrifices don't look so big or difficult even. But also when we seek the depths of Christ's humiliation, we also begin to see that our own self-denial connected to Him has real worth. in real glory, real dignity, real worth. We're following in his footsteps. We see the depths of his humiliation. We also see the heights of his glory. Follow him into sacrifice. We also follow him into glory. And so the glory that the disciples see there on the mountain in the face of Jesus is not only a preview of what's in store for Christ, but what's in store for them. Because if they follow the road of following Christ, then they will end up in glory like him. And that picture of exalted glory is a picture of where disciples go. That's a picture of where we're going to go. And so what an encouragement that they'll receive that, yes, there's a hard road first, but look at where it's going. Look at where it's leading. Look at the glory. They get to see it. We get to see it. Be encouraged. Fix your eyes on the glory that is to come. When it seems hard, when the sacrifice starts to seem hard, go back to passages like this. Read through Luke 9. Read through Revelation. One, get that picture of Christ and remind yourself that by faith you're connected to that Christ. And you're going where He is by His grace. So the displayed glory. Secondly, the coming exodus. The coming exodus. Kids, did you catch as I read that there's two other people who show up on the mountain? Did you catch that? Two other people from the Old Testament? Remember who they were? Two other people? Moses. Elijah remember those names from the Old Testament Moses and Elijah Here they are they show up two of the biggest names to the greatest men from the Old Testament representing The old huge chunks of Old Testament scriptures long prophets two men Were both great prophets both spoke the word of God to the people two men that God spoke to on mountains, which is Interesting because God is about to speak again on a mountain Both men both Moses and Elijah were associated in the Old Testament With the coming of the kingdom with the dawning of the New Age Moses back in Deuteronomy 18 18 Gives God's promise that there's going to be one like him raised up a prophet like him raised up a This expectation of a greater Moses that's going to come. Malachi 4, that before the coming day of the Lord, there's going to be Elijah coming to prepare the way, you know, fulfilled in John the Baptist. But there's this expectation, and especially in Israelites of Jesus' day, like Peter, James, and John, very much would associate Moses and Elijah with the coming of the new age. Well, here they are, they appear. And they appear next to Jesus. Next to Jesus in His glory. And so we get this great picture of the shadows of the old now giving way to the glory and brilliance of the new. The great prophet has arrived. The new age he brings with him. The fulfillment of everything that came before. Notice also that they're talking. They're chatting. And we're told exactly what their conversation is about. Verse 31, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Okay, so obviously they're talking about Jesus' death. He's just been saying he's going to have to die. We know that's going to happen in Jerusalem. Talking about his death. What a sort of a strange way to say they were talking about Jesus' death. He spoke about his departure. Or literally, they spoke about His exodus, which He was about to fulfill at Jerusalem. His exodus. Here is Jesus talking with Moses about His exodus that He was about to fulfill. Jesus' death is called His exodus. And there's Moses, the very one in the Old Testament who led the exodus. led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, slavery under Pharaoh, delivered them out of that slavery, out into freedom and service to God. And here's this same Moses who's talking to Jesus and talks about his death, Christ's death, as a new exodus, a different kind of slavery, not an earthly slavery, but a slavery to sin, a worse slavery. A slavery that we're all bound up with naturally. Slaves to sin and to the death that comes from it. Here is the new Moses who's going to lead his people in a greater exodus. Freedom from sin through his death on the cross. The death is the exodus. That's what accomplishes our freedom. Christ dies in our place. He sets us free from that slavery to sin. Free to serve the living God. Free to live in a heavenly promised land. You see the picture here. The entire Old Testament is about to be fulfilled. Now here are the shadows, as great and wonderful as they are. Moses, Elijah. The shadows give way to the glory of the new. And the glory of the new focuses attention on the cross. On the cross. Yes, there's glory coming after that. First, the cross. They talked about the cross. The Old Testament pointed forward to the cross. What an encouragement as we struggle with the way of the cross in terms of following Jesus. And our temptation to say, no, something must be wrong here. We see all the glory of the Old Testament pointing forward and it focuses on the exodus that will take place on the cross. No, the way of the cross is exactly the way. the way for Christ and we follow in his footsteps so that we don't have to be confused disciples like Peter. Come to our next point. Peter makes a suggestion and Luke kind of gives us a little commentary on it that he really didn't understand what he was talking about. First thing we notice about the disciples is that they were struggling to stay awake. Something that pops up again and again apparently They're not too different than us. They sometimes fall asleep. I know you guys never fall asleep during sermons and stuff, so you wouldn't understand. But the disciples frequently are struggling to stay awake. And it's a picture of their heaviness of mind and heart, slow to understand, that picture of sleepiness. And it seems to come out in Peter's suggestion. He has a suggestion. We're told as Moses and Elijah are beginning to leave, Peter pipes up and says, you know, I got an idea, Jesus. Let's build three tents or three booths. You can also translate three tabernacles. Another way to translate it. Three temporary structures here on the mountain. Let's build these three booths, Jesus. One for you, one for Elijah, one for Moses. What's Peter talking about? Probably what Peter has in the back of his mind here is the Feast of Tabernacles Old Testament feast sometimes called the Feast of Booths or Sukkot That feast every year Jews were supposed to celebrate this feast one of the great feasts of the year and what they would do to celebrate according to Leviticus 23 is At that time of year they would all Jews would go and they build outside a booth for tent like structure And they may live in it for seven days. They go outside, build a little structure, and they live in it. And what that was supposed to commemorate and celebrate was what God had done in the Exodus. Starting to sound familiar? Okay. They celebrate what they had done in the Exodus. God, to their forefathers, brought them out of Egypt, and then God had cared for them in the wilderness when they dwelt in temporary structures. Like these booths that they built, they'd live in them for a while celebrating what God had done. Well, as the Old Testament went on and practice went on, more and more people thought about the Feast of Tabernacles as not just looking back to the old, but also looking forward. Looking forward to something new that God would do at the end of the age. A kind of new exodus. And so here's Peter, seems to be seeing, well, here's Moses, and there's talk of an exodus, and he seems to latch on to that, and it's, Jesus, this is great, this must be it. The coming, the newness is here, this is fantastic. He sees Moses and Elijah starting to go away. No, no, no, no, okay, let's stay here. Let's build booths, let's build tabernacles. Let's stay here. This is it. And Peter says that, Luke says he doesn't understand. He doesn't get it. What Jesus had been teaching. Yes, something great is here. But Peter's idea to keep the glory going for a while, to stay there and dwell there was wrong. Because the way forward was the way of the cross. It wasn't staying there in the glory. The glory would come, but it would come by way of the cross. That's what Jesus had been teaching them. The Son of Man must suffer and be rejected and be killed, then be raised. And that's what Peter missed. He thought, no, the glory was here. You get that glory without that cross and suffering stuff. And the answer is no. Isn't that something we all struggle with? To think that maybe we can, maybe this life should be like heaven a little bit more. After all, we're followers of Jesus, right? So it should be a pretty smooth road. We can sort of expect God to give us the good things in life. Nothing wrong with that. If they're not bad things, we can expect God to give us the good things, shouldn't we? No bumps in the road? Okay, maybe there's a bump or two, but that should be quickly alleviated by a couple prayers. That's what we should expect, right? And then all of a sudden we find out that it's not that way and we get confused, even upset with God. What's going on? It's kind of like Peter. We want to just camp out on the mountain and stick with the glory, hold on to it. And the way that Jesus leads is the way of the cross. It's going to the glory. But the cross first. Though I find it somewhat encouraging that we're like Peter. Here's Peter, the greatest of the apostles, who goes on to lay the foundation for the church. God uses him in an amazing way. And I find it somewhat encouraging that I act somewhat like him. I'm not alone. And God can use people who struggle and don't understand, like Peter. God's going to change him. You can expect God to work and change you as He's working on and changing me. But don't give up just because you find it hard. Peter found it hard too. And God did great things with him. You're in good company. Then we end with the heavenly verdict. The climax of this whole scene. Remember where this discussion started about self-denial. It started with Jesus talking about who he was. Remember? Who do the crowd say that I am? Who do you say that I am? Now we get heaven's verdict on who Jesus is. It comes in a voice from the cloud. Verse 34. Some of this starts to sound familiar with some of the things we read earlier. And he was as he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them and they were afraid as they entered the cloud and a voice came out of the cloud. Here we are on a mountain. With Moses and a new Moses, greater Moses. And a cloud comes over that mountain, and a voice comes out of the cloud, and the people are afraid. It's right out of Exodus 19. God speaks out of the cloud, but with a powerful, a powerful new message. The message directed at who Jesus is, this heavenly verdict. This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to Him. Listen to Him. What God seems to be doing is putting together a couple of different Old Testament references in this one statement. This is my son, drawing on words from Psalm 2. Remember Psalm 2 there, God is speaking about a son from the line of David. You are my son, Psalm 2 verse 7. God here uses that language. This is my son, my chosen one. That is language from from Isaiah. I remember in the second half of Isaiah There's a lot of talk about this servant of the Lord who God will raise up This servant of the Lord who will even suffer for sin In the Isaiah 42 1 the Lord says behold my servant whom I uphold my chosen God uses that language. This is my son my chosen and My chosen. Listen to Him. Listen to Him. We mentioned earlier in Deuteronomy 18, where Moses is talking about the One who will come after him. The One like him. Listen to what he says. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to Him you shall listen. God takes all these Old Testament threads. prophet greater than Moses, Isaiah's suffering servant of the Lord, the Chosen One, the Son from the line of David, even the Eternal Son. And God declares that this is who Jesus is. In the midst of His radiant glory and the overshadowing cloud, the presence of God, here's this verdict. This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to Him. Listen to Him. That's exactly what the disciples needed. Above everything, what they needed was a greater sense of the majesty and the greatness of Jesus. The one that they're going to follow, yes, into difficult roads, they needed a sense, a vision deep in their hearts, deep in their minds of the greatness and glory of this Jesus. So when they walked that road, they would have their eyes fixed on that Jesus. And that's what we need. The very same thing. As we struggle to go down those hard roads, what we need is fixed in our minds and planted in our hearts is a vision of the greatness and glory of this Jesus. The Son. The Chosen One. We need that in our hearts so we can fix our minds, yes, through the hard road of laying ourselves aside daily. We fix our eyes on that Jesus. The one who goes before us. That's what we need to do in the very difficult call, in the very difficult moments, the Monday mornings, the Wednesday evenings. Our minds filled with the glory of this Christ. That will get us through so that with joy we can listen to Him. With joy we can listen to Him. Because isn't it easy sometimes in the moment to think that we know more than Jesus does? We hear we okay Jesus. I know that you said, you know Take up the cross daily. I know you said that You know whoever saves his life for my sake will find it Or whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I know that's what you said Jesus, but Jesus I don't think that works here Not here not now. I think I know more than you here. Isn't that what our hearts will often say? It's really hard to listen to Jesus. I Well, here, see what glory that God gives. He gives this picture of who this Jesus is who speaks. Now, who this Jesus is who talks to us. It's this glorious one. And then the Father declares, listen to Him. Listen to Him. You see, that's not punishment. That's not God punishing us. We've got to listen to Him. No, that's joy. That's glory. Look at the one you're listening to. The one who's fulfilling everything that came before. The One who laid all His glory aside and took the form of a servant to die for you. That's the One we listen to. The One who is going to go before us into glory and then take us with Him. That's the One we listen to. Look at Him. And then with joy and confidence, listen to Him. Let's pray. Father, we pray that we, with the disciples before us, would see Jesus, that we might rejoice in who He is and what He's done. And Lord, follow Him each day, Lord, living as He did, knowing the life that is to come. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.