Show me Your Glory (Part 2)
Matthew 18:1-13
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
10-26-2025
The Future’s So Bright…
What if I offered you 50 million dollars and all you had to do was not eat chocolate for a year? Yes, at the end of 365 days of no chocolate, you would receive 50 million dollars. Would chocolate tempt you?
What if it was listening to Barry Manilow?
Let’s up the ante. What if it was no coffee for a year? Do you think you could hold on for 365 days for 50 million dollars?
What if I told you that you would go through suffering - physically, emotionally, spiritually - in your lifetime, but at the end of it all, you would get something better than 50 million dollars?
What if I told you that your future’s so bright you’ll have to wear shades?
Would that give you hope to hold on through the tough times?
That’s exactly what our verses for this morning are going to show us!
Part Two
This is part two of the sermon from last week. (If you missed it, you can always watch it on Facebook, YouTube, or our website)
In Exodus 33-34, we watched as the people stood at the entrance of their tents and watched Moses enter the tent of meeting and meet with God. Moses was a God-chaser. He wouldn’t settle for a second-hand relationship with God.
When God told Moses that He would send an angel to lead the people, Moses said, “If you don’t lead us, we’re not going anywhere.”
Then Moses prayed one of the most audacious prayers in the entire Bible - “show me your glory.”
God partly answered that prayer. God is totally holy and other than us. Because of our finiteness and sinfulness, we can not experience God in His fullness.
Just as Moses was shielded from God’s full Presence in the tent of meeting, God covered him in the cleft of a rock in order to allow him to see just a glimpse of His glory.
Moses was changed by his encounter with God. When he returned from the cleft of the rock his face glowed. Moses’ face reflected the afterglow of God’s presence.
Moses had prayed, “show me Your glory,” but the real answer to this prayer wouldn’t be answered for another 1,500 years!
Please turn with me to Matthew 17.
Prayer
The Text in Context (Matthew 16)
Everyone had an opinion about Jesus. If you would go to the market, people would be talking about Jesus. If you went to the synagogue, you would hear heated discussions about the wandering rabbi from Galilee.
In fact, the religious leaders had decided that He was demon-possessed (Matthew 3:22). Even His mother and siblings thought He had lost His mind (Matthew 3:31) Some said He was a saint, and others said He was a demon.
Some loved Him, some feared Him, and still, others hated Him so much that they wanted to kill Him. No one was neutral.
Unfortunately, most people were very confused about who Jesus was.
“ They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah, and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:14)
The disciples have been out among the people. They have heard the whispers. Three theories emerged about who Jesus was.
Some people thought Jesus was John the Baptist. Also, the rumor was going around that Jesus was Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.
The crowd was confused. But Jesus was really more interested in what His disciples thought so He asked a second question.
“But what about you?’ he asked. Who do you say that I am?’” (Matthew 16:15)
For three years, this group followed Jesus and watched Him. They saw Him up close and personal. They saw His miracles and heard Him pray. Now it was time for their final exam.
Peter speaks for the group and gives the answer that changed their direction geographically. After this event, Jesus resolutely heads south toward Jerusalem and to the cross. This question also changed the course of history.
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16:16)
Peter spoke for the group and his words still echo through history. Jesus was not John the Baptist, Elijah, or Jeremiah. He was the promised Messiah or “Anointed One” on which all the Old Testament hopes had been placed.
Peter calls Him the “Christ” -the Greek word for Messiah. This was not Jesus’ last name but a title that described Jesus’ mission of salvation.
He also calls Him “the Son of the Living God.” Jesus was no mere man. He was the unique God-Man.
Although Peter’s confession was correct it was not complete. All the disciples had been raised with an expectation of Christ. The only problem is they completely misunderstood who Christ would be.
Verse 21 is the hinge verse of the book of Matthew. Jesus is now walking resolutely toward the cross and is starting to prepare his disciples for His impending death.
“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, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
As usual, Peter puts his foot in his mouth and rebukes Jesus! Jesus responds to Peter, yes, the one that had just said that Jesus was the Messiah with a stinging rebuke.
“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 concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus gives the strangest recruiting speech I’ve ever heard.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
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 they have done.”
Jesus makes it clear to the disciples that they would suffer for His sake but, when that happens, they should hold on to hope because their future is secure and amazing.
Jesus ends this section with a very mysterious prophecy.
“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Some liberal theologians point to this verse as a mistake that Jesus made. Obviously, all his disciples died before Jesus’s second coming so this is another example of why we can’t trust the Bible.
But Jesus wasn’t talking about His second coming. Three of His disciples would see this sight about a week later!
A.W. Tozer said, “As God is exalted to the right place in our lives, a thousand problems are solved all at once.”
Jesus Shines in Glory
After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
About a week later, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the side of Mt. Hermon. Luke tells us that they went there to pray.
We know they were in the region of Caesarea Philippi and that is where Mt. Hermon is located.
Mt. Hermon is 9,000 feet tall and there are ski resorts on top of the mountain now.
They probably didn’t climb the whole up but stopped along the way.
Jesus took His inner circle - Peter, James, and John.
It seems that John was the closest to Jesus. Then these three disciples. Then the other nine and then a larger group of about 72.
Peter, James, and John had been present for the healing of Jarius’s daughter (Luke 8:51), when He agonized in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33) and now they would have an experience that would be more powerful than that.
There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.
Matthew records that Jesus was “transfigured” before them. The Greek word is “metamorpheo,” where we get our English word metamorphosis.
The prefix “trans” means “across or over,” like a transatlantic flight.
We usually associate that word with a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. And that is exactly what happened. A glorious transformation.
Jesus “unzips” his humanness and His glory is revealed. What an incredible sight!
His face shone like the sun…just like Moses after experiencing the afterglow of God in Exodus 34.
His clothes became as white as the light. Luke describes this as “brighter than a flash of lightning.”
I was out chasing tornados and had stopped to film the clouds spinning above me. Right as I got out of my car, lightning struck a windmill directly behind me. For a moment, I was surrounded by a blinding light that nearly knocked me down.
Max Lucado writes:
“Light spilled out of him. Brilliant. Explosive. Shocking. Brightness poured through every pore of his skin and stitch of his robe. Jesus on fire. To look at his face was to look squarely into Alpha Centauri.
This radiance was not the work of a laundry; it was the presence of God.
How long since . . . a fresh understanding of Christ buckled your knees and emptied your lungs? Since a glimpse of him left you speechless and breathless?”
David Guzik has an interesting thought on the transfiguration writing that "Essentially this was not a new miracle, but the temporary cessation of an ongoing one. The real miracle was that Jesus, most of the time, could keep from displaying this glory.
“Praise the Lord, my soul. Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.” (Psalm 104:1)
Then Jesus says “Gideon, Michael go get Moses, now! He has waited for such a long time to see this!” To see Jesus was to see the full revelation of God’s glory.
Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
If this wasn’t amazing enough, Moses and Elijah appeared, according to Luke, in “glorious splendor.”
Moses the representative of the Law and Elijah is the representative of the Prophets.
Luke tells us that they were speaking of His departure (exodus) which He had to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Moses talked with Jesus, literally “face to face”, about the plan for the redemption of mankind. In Exodus, Moses felt like God was holding out on him.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses saw the shadows turn into substance. All the Old Testament symbolism of a sacrificial lamb would be fulfilled by the sacrifice, once and for all, of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Just as Moses led a captive people out of Egypt and to the Promised Land, Jesus would lead humanity out of the darkness of sin and hopelessness into a relationship with God. In fact, this was the first time Moses had ever set foot in the Promise Land.
Moses’ prayers were fulfilled as he stood in the promised land talking with the promised One.
Tim Keller writes, “When Moses encountered God’s glory he reflected the glory of God as the moon reflects the sun. But Jesus produces the unsurpassable glory of God; it emanates from Him. Jesus did not point to the glory of God as Elijah, Moses and every other prophet had done; Jesus is the glory of God in human form.”
Jesus is the new and greater Moses.
Jesus takes three disciples up the mountain.
Moses goes with three named people plus seventy of the elders up the mountain. (Exodus 24:1,9)
Jesus is transformed and His clothes become radiantly white.
Moses’ skin shines when he descends from the mountain after talking to God. (Exodus 34:29)
God appears in veiled form in an overshadowing cloud.
God appears in veiled form to Moses in a glorious cloud. (Exodus 24:15-16, 18)
A voice speaks from the cloud.
A voice speaks from the cloud to Moses. (Exodus 24:16)
The writer of Hebrews wrote:
“Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.” (Hebrews 3:3-6)
Three Tabernacles
Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
In the midst of this amazing sight, Peter, like an awkward teenager who doesn’t know what to say, interrupts and starts talking!
Mark actually tells us “He didn’t know what to say, they were so frightened.”
He offers to build three shelters or tabernacles for the three of them.
He is saying, “We need a tabernacle, we need to set up rituals, to protect us from the presence of God.”
This was misguided in several ways. They would not be staying on the mountain. Mountain top experiences aren’t meant to last.
And he was treating Jesus as equal to Moses and Elijah, which was something that Moses and Elijah would have rejected.
The Father States His Pleasure
While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
God had enough of Peter’s babbling and interrupts, bringing the disciples to their knees.
A bright cloud covered them. This is the Shekina glory of God.
We see this happen in Exodus 13-14 with the glorious, glowing cloud that guided and protected Israel after they left Egypt.
Last week, we saw God reveal Himself at the tent of meeting through the cloud of His glory. (Exodus 33).
The same glory cloud appears at the ascension of Jesus (Acts 1:9), at the rapture of the saints (I Thes 4:17), and at His second coming (Matthew 24:30)
Charles Spurgeon wrote
“When God draws near to man it is absolutely necessary that his glory should be veiled. No man can see his face and live. Hence the cloud, in this instance, and in other cases.”
God’s voice thunders, as it did at Jesus’s baptism in Matthew 3, and makes three important statements:
This is my Son. Jewish ears would have automatically remembered Psalm 2:
“Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” (Psalm 2:12)
Whom I love. With Him I am well pleased. Again, the disciples would have recalled Isaiah 42:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations.” (Isaiah 42:1)
Listen to Him. Deuteronomy would be a prophecy they would have hidden in their heart as little boys:
Moses wrote:
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” (Deut 18:15)
God uses the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms to drive home the point that Jesus is who the Old Testament said He is - the Messiah.
They should listen to Him, particularly about His suffering, death, and resurrection.
When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified.
It’s interesting to me that they didn’t fall on their faces when Jesus exploded into glorious light.
But at the voice of God, they fell face down on the ground terrified.
We see this through the entire Bible - Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Paul, and the Apostle John all experienced terror at the sound of God’s voice.
But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
Only Matthew gives us this detail and I’m glad he did.
Jesus touched them, encouraged them to get up and then calmed their fears.
Tim Keller writes “Moses is gone, Elijah is gone, and Jesus is the bridge between God and humanity. Jesus is able to give what Elijah couldn’t give, what Moses couldn’t give, what no one else could deliver. Through Jesus, we can cross the gap into the heart of reality; into the steps of the dance. Jesus is the temple and the tabernacle, because He is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices…”
When John saw Jesus, his earthy best friend, in all His glory on the island of Patmos, he writes:
“I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.” (Rev 1:17)
When they finally glanced up, it was just them and Jesus. And for them, that was enough.
The Disciples Struggle to Understand
They were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Can you imagine how excited these three disciples were coming down from this experience? I bet they couldn’t wait to tell the others about what they saw and heard.
But Jesus has other plans. He commands their silence - don’t tell anyone! Why would He do that?
First, who would believe it?
Second, they really couldn’t articulate what they experienced. Mark even tells us that they were confused by what Jesus meant by “risen from the dead.”
Until they understood the link between death and resurrection, suffering and glory, they couldn’t really explain what they experienced on the mountain.
But after the resurrection, the transfiguration would make sense.
If you show someone a puzzle with many pieces missing, they may not understand the image. The puzzle must be completed to see the full picture. The Transfiguration was a piece of the puzzle, but the resurrection was the key to seeing the entire story of Jesus’ mission.
John would later write :
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
And Peter would write:
“For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)
Then the disciples did one of my favorite things - they asked a question!!!
The disciples asked him, “Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?”
They knew how the Old Testament ended.
“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” (Malachi 4:5-6)
Elijah was going to come and restore all things, but they just saw Elijah on the mountain with Jesus, who Peter had proclaimed as the Messiah. They were confused. So they asked a great question that Jesus answers:
“To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.”
Jesus explains that “Elijah” had already come.
When the Angel of the Lord was telling Zechariah what his son, John, would do, he echoed Malachi 4:
“And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17)
John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, had come on the scene and the people had rejected him. He was ultimately beheaded because of a king’s oath and teenage girl’s belly dance.
Jesus predicts, again, that He too would suffer and die at the hands of the religious leaders.
The same Scriptures that predicted the coming of Elijah prior to the Day of the Lord also predicted a Suffering Messiah.
And then something happens that is rare in the Gospels - they got it! They put the puzzle pieces together.
Applications
1. Jesus is the Glory of God
The disciples understand that Jesus was the Son of Man. He was human. He got tired, hungry, and sleepy.
But the transfiguration was one of the events that helped pull back the onion of their understanding of Jesus as the Son of God.
100% human and 100% God.
We sing at Christmas:
“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity, Pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.” (Hark! The Herald Angels Sing)
The writer of Hebrews said it this way:
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)
Paul wrote to the Colossian believers:
"The Son is the image of the invisible God….” (Colossians 3:15)
John wrote:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
And because we meet Him at the intersection of His holiness and our sin, we ought to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29)
The transfiguration was a reminder of the glory that Jesus had before He became a man and a preview of His future exaltation.
Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones wrote: “The Son of God became man so that the children of men might be the children of God.”
2. A glimpse of God’s Glory can fill us with wonder and help us understand the cross
In our culture, it’s cool to be “spiritual but not religious.” People are seeking spiritual mountain top experiences but coming away just as empty as they arrived.
As one of my fellow pastors from the conference I attended said, “If you are going to have a mountain top experience, make sure Jesus is there.”
Years later, Peter refers to this event:
“For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice from the Majestic Glory came to Him, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And we ourselves heard this voice from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1:16–18).
Glory and death are intertwined in the story of the transfiguration and the crucification. One commentator noted:
The glory revealed on the mountain is a private event while the suffering on the cross is a public spectacle.
Jesus is surrounded on the mountain by two prophets of old, Moses and Elijah; on Calvary, by two thieves.
On the mountain, Jesus’s clothes shine with glory, on Golgotha, they take His clothes away from Him, compounding His humiliation.
A Divine voice from the cloud announces that Jesus is the Son of God; one of His executioners, a Roman centurion, acclaims Him to be the Son of God after His death.
3. Jesus gives them a glimpse of coming attractions to help them get through the suffering that lay ahead.
When I go to the movies, I love the trailers. Nowadays, the trailers seem to go on forever. They are designed to give you a glimpse of the upcoming movies to make you want to go see them.
That’s what the transformation did for the disciples, and for us!
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (I John 3:2)
C.S. Lewis wrote in “the Weight of Glory”
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations…
There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.” (Phil.3:20)
An older pastor was voted out by the congregation. They believed that he had become too old to do the job.
One of the young men he had poured his life into walked to him to his car and with tears in his eyes told him how sorry he was for what had just happened.
The older pastor smiled and said, “No worries. I’m going to heaven.”
The younger man became worried and said that if he needed counseling he would pay for it.
The older pastor smiled again and said, “Im hurt by what just happened. But it’s okay. I’m going to heaven. My future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades!”
As we said in student ministry, “That’s the mash potatoes, everything else is just gravy, baby!”
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
We are glory bound! And that’s a lot better than 50 million dollars!
Ending Song: What a Wonderful Name
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