If You Get Nothing Else

Peter was plagued by uncertainty. Just when he thought he knew what was going on, knew what to expect, knew what to say, he had been proven so terribly wrong. Like those words from a week earlier were still stinging, "Get behind me, Satan!" Really? Did Jesus really mean that? I mean, was his desire to protect him and keep him from harm, was that so wrong? And then there's this talk about going to Jerusalem and he's got to suffer and he's got to die and somehow on the third day rise again. It didn't make any sense.

Peter had gotten it right earlier. When they were making their way to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus casually asks the disciples, "Who do the people here say I am?" They'd all heard the talk. They knew the theories; basically, it boiled down to they thought that Jesus was a great prophet. Maybe the greatest of all, perhaps even John the Baptist or even Elijah come back from the dead. But then Jesus turned to them and said, "Well, who do you say I am?" And when Jesus said that, something leapt in Peter's chest, and it says it's as if the answer came to him just as those words were passing his lips and he blurted out, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God." Well, that conversation went a whole lot better. Jesus even commended him in front of all the other disciples.

And so to go from the high of that moment to the low of hearing Jesus say, "Get behind me, Satan." What a letdown. I guess the best you could say was that Peter was batting 500. One moment he hits it out of the park. The next he strikes out miserably. And so he tells himself, "I'm gonna do better next time. I'm gonna pay better attention. I'm going to think about my words more carefully." Peter's about to have another aha moment. And of course he doesn't know this. He doesn't even get what he's supposed to be getting while he's getting it. But what he got was a bigger vision of Jesus. He got to see Jesus in his splendor. He got to see Jesus in his glory. He had an opportunity to realize that there is no one else like Jesus.

And if you get nothing else this morning, I pray that you'll get this. Good morning, by the way. My name is Mark. One of the pastors here want to welcome you. So glad that you're joining us here. We're in the summer series called "Aha," and it's just been so awesome. I mean, how about Albert Tate last weekend? Oh my goodness. I mean, wow. That was some serious preaching right there. I mean, I was sitting here on Saturday night and I was just going... One moment I'm just, you know, celebrating his giftedness and this is virtuoso preaching performance. And then the other hand I'm thinking to myself, "Man, I feel so sorry for the guy that's got to follow Albert." You know what I'm saying? I do. I've been praying for that guy all week long.

And then of course next week we've got Craig Barnes. I mean, what a towering, intellectic, awesome speaker. President of Princeton Seminary. It's just going to be amazing next weekend. You won't want to miss that. So you know how I got sandwiched between Albert and Craig? It's like... I don't know. I got to pay better attention next time. Let's say "La Vie." Because this morning I want to show you an incredibly powerful "aha" moment in Peter's life, and I am convinced that it is going to speak to each and every one of our lives.

And so if you have a Bible, I want to invite you to open it up to Mark's Gospel chapter 9. You can grab one of those in the seat back in front of you if you want. Look it up on your phone. The verses we're going to cover are going to be in the notes and on screen. And so I want to invite you to follow along Mark 9. At the outset, I really got to give credit to a pastor named Chris Brown. Chris preached a sermon on this text about three years ago that I was privileged to hear, and I'm borrowing from him liberally at some points during this message. And so thank you, Chris, for all of your help.

Mark 9 starting at verse 2. After six days... six days after what? Six days after the whole "get behind me Satan" episode. Six days earlier, Jesus was telling Peter and the other disciples that he was going to go to Jerusalem, that he would suffer at the hands of evil men. He would be crucified, and on the third day he would rise from the dead. And do you know what Peter did when he heard Jesus say this? He says, "Jesus, come over here." He actually pulls him aside, and the Bible says he gives him a stern rebuke. In other words, he gets in his face and he scolds him and he says, "Never, Lord, this will never happen to you. Quit the crazy talk." And that's when Jesus turns and says, "Get behind me, Satan. You're a stumbling block. You don't get it because Peter, you hear the words I say, but you are not listening."

And of course, you know we're often the same way. God's Word says something to us about something that we don't understand or we don't agree with, and we just want to pull Jesus aside and say, "Jesus, I'm not so sure about this. You know, we got to update your info here." And this is not computing. And it's not like we would say that directly, but if you're like me, you see things in Scripture that you don't agree with or whatever, and so you just ignore it or overrule Jesus. But we'd never say that. We just do it. It's like with Thomas Jefferson's Bible. Are you familiar with how he treated the New Testament? You can actually see a version of his four Gospels. Whenever in the Smithsonian, whenever Jefferson would be reading the Gospels and he came across something that he didn't like or didn't believe, he would literally take out his little razor blade and he would cut that section out of his Bible.

And so in fact, his first rendition of the first four Gospels amounted to all of 42 pages. And it wasn't because he was opposed to the teachings of Jesus. He actually admired them. It was the miracles that he thought were completely unreasonable. And so he reasoned that the gospel writers must have just invented this as fiction, tried to make Jesus look better. And so again he just edited that out. In fact, the verses we're gonna read this morning did not make the cut in Jefferson's New Testament. They didn't fit his abridged version of Jesus. But like I said, he's neither the first nor the last person to do this, at least in practical terms.

Six days later, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and led them up a high mountain where they were all alone. Now why these three? Peter, James, and John. If you read the descriptions of them in the New Testament, the Gospels, they don't just come across obviously as the smartest of all the twelve or the most spiritual, or there's something special about these three. John does coin the term beloved disciple. But where do we see the term beloved disciple? John's gospel, okay. You see a number of us appear on stage. Let me just assure you there's nothing special here, okay? Every single one of us are here by God's grace, every single one of us.

So maybe with these three, maybe they just weren't the three that Jesus could afford to leave back in camp. You know what I mean? You parents know what I mean. Jesus says, "Hey guys, I'm gonna go up on that mountain there, I'm gonna go pray for a while and I'll be back in a couple days, okay? I'll see you later." And it's like, "You know what? On second thought, you three, you're coming with me." Right? Because they've already got the matches out or something like that. How many of you know my brother Paul? He's a pastor here on staff. Paul became a pastor because he needed a shorter leash. That's, that's, okay truth be told that's the story of my calling too, all right? But I love that even two thousand years ago, even then, they have to go to the top of some remote mountaintop in order to be alone with Jesus, okay? It's never been easy. It's always taken some intentionality.

And once there, he was transfigured before them, his clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. Now I know this is Holy Scripture, but I mean, come on, just a little tongue-in-cheek here. Do you think, when you read, it's possible that Mark was kind of having a hard time coming up with like the best descriptive phrases here for what's going on with Jesus as he becomes dazzling and radiant? He's so bright, his clothes, it's just so luminous that it's brighter than anyone in the world could bleach them. I mean, come on, if you read Matthew and Luke, they have the same story, and when Matthew gets to the transfiguration, which by the way, we get our word metamorphosis from that, it changes in appearance, but as one of my Greek professors used to say, there's a nuance to this word, it has to do with revealing on the outside what's true on the inside. And so as Jesus reveals his transcendence, his deity, and he's radiant, Matthew says his face became as bright as the Sun, you know, it's like wow and his clothing is like hot white light. It's like, well, okay now we're getting somewhere, and even Luke, when he covers the same story, he talks about his clothing, it's so bright, it's like flashes of lightning. It's like, okay, that's impressive.

And so can you imagine these three? They're in heaven and they're comparing notes and looks like, "Hey, you guys covered the transfiguration, didn't you?" "Oh, of course, man, it was huge, all three of us, we covered it." And Luke's like, "Hey Matthew, how did you describe that moment? I mean, that was, it was huge." And Matthew's like, "Man, it was like the Sun, I went with the Sun, like rays of sunlight just blinding their eyes and white light with his garments." And Matthew's like, "Dude, that's good man, you nailed that, that's awesome." "What did you use Matthew or Luke? What did you use?" "I went with lightning, you know, like when she flashes and your hair stands up on your neck, like, wow, that's cool, yeah, you nailed that, yeah, lightning, that totally works." Then they turned to Mark, "Hey Mark, how about you?" Mark's like, "Yeah, I covered that story, yeah, no, no, no, no, what did you do when you talked about him going, well, come on, was it like supernova or something like that?" He's like, "I went with bleach, but not like any old bleach, I mean, it was like brighter, whiter than they ever get it at the cleaners, so I mean, it was, you got to read your Bible, yeah, it's just like cool stuff in there and there's Jesus, he's just glowing, bright as the sun and lightning, really bleached clothes.

And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses who were talking with Jesus, whoa, did you catch that? There appeared Elijah and Moses who were talking with Jesus, come on, and I see your faces, it's like, you know, we're all kind of churched out or most of us come from a long lineage of pagan Gentiles who are like, okay, well, if you say so, yeah, that's fine. But for these Jewish men, Peter, James, and John, this is like Superman and Batman showing up, are you kidding me? Moses parts the Red Sea, let my people go, Ten Commandments, greatest leader in the history of Israel, he's there, and then the greatest prophet Elijah calls fire down from heaven while the prophets are bailing, prophets are bailing trying to get a little spark going. I mean, this is awesome, greatest leader, greatest prophet, Jesus is radiant, they're talking, it's incredible.

But you know what? This vision of Christ's divinity, that divinity, that actually wasn't the miracle. The miracle is His incarnation, that for 30 years His divinity could be hidden in His humanity, that God could become one of us without ceasing to be God. That's the miracle, that's what a lot of us don't get. But now with that veil momentarily pulled back and they see His divinity, I mean, what do you do in a moment like that? I mean, this could not be more epic and I don't know, do you fall on your face? Do you just kind of freeze? Do you put your hands up and praise? Do you have to remind yourself to breathe? I mean, any one of those would have been a great response. What does Peter do? Well, here's what Peter did. Peter said to Jesus, mind you, he's talking with Moses and Elijah, "Oh, Rabbi, excuse me, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters. One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. You just thought, you know, might be a good thing to do right now. I mean, I don't mean to butt in. I know you guys probably got a lot to catch up on and stuff, but somebody's got to set up camp here, so I gotcha." And this is where even Mark, Mark can't hold back an editorial comment because editorially in verse 6, he says, "He did not know what to say." They were so frightened. He's like, "I don't know." And Luke, Luke's even less polite. Luke just says, "He didn't know what he was saying." I mean, he just went, he left the reservation right there.

And you know, I love Peter. I don't like to bash Peter. He has so many wonderful moments in Scripture. This just doesn't happen to be one of them. What's he doing with this just completely interrupting this sacred scene? I have no idea. So we're just gonna close in prayer. But seriously, most Bible scholars think that Peter believes that this is the moment, this is how salvation is gonna come. That through this amazing display of power where there's, you know, Elijah and there's Moses, the saints of old are parading in and there's Jesus flanked by them and he's removing any and all doubt that he is who he claims to be. I mean, hey, didn't his adversaries in fact taunt him and ask him to do the very same thing? Hey, show us a sign then we'll believe. Even on the cross. Hey, if you come down, we'll believe you. And so Peter without even knowing it, he's still opposing the cross. Who needs... we got this awesome religious event going on right now. We'll set up these three tents because that's what they did after the Exodus with Moses. They lived in tents. In fact, they had a national holiday tent, the Feast of Tabernacles, where they would stay in a tent for a week to remind themselves of God's great deliverance. Also, there was the tent of meetings. So, man, tents are good. We're gonna set them up, one for each. People can come up to this mountain. They can see Jesus. They can see the... see Moses and Elijah. It will be awesome. We won't need Jerusalem. Jesus won't need to suffer. Forget about this whole cross stuff.

And see, Peter doesn't understand the cross because he does not understand the depth of sin. He thinks that if you just have enough religious activity, somehow that takes care... somehow that will actually change people's hearts. Or even if you have enough miracles. But he's missing the point that there are all sorts of miracles with Moses, parting the Red Sea, all that kind of stuff, manna, you name it. Did it change people's hearts? No. Elijah, again, calls down fire from heaven. Huge miracle. Did it change people's hearts? No. It left them unchanged. We don't need an endless series of miracles. We need a Savior who will die in our place, who will atone for our wickedness, who will break the chains of sin and death and changes from the inside out. That's the miracle that we need.

Peter's first mistake is to hear but not listen to what Jesus is saying about the necessity of the cross. The second one is to treat Jesus along with Moses and Elijah as if they all belong on the same org chart. You know what I mean? Like Jesus is merely the first among equals there. So I'll just make a tent for each one of you. We'll cover all of our bases there. And make no mistake, Moses, Elijah, two of the greatest, finest human beings that have ever lived on this planet, but they were merely human beings. Jesus is both fully human, fully God, and that's something that His Father is going to make abundantly clear in this next verse. It says, "Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud. This is my son whom I love. Listen to him." Just as quickly and suddenly as Jesus was transfigured in front of them, suddenly now it's like the cloud comes down. They can't see a thing as if to say show's over. This is my son, my precious, priceless son whom I love. The voice of the Father says.

And then think about this. Of all the things that He could have said next, of all of the commands, of all of the whatever He could have said, thousands of different options, He says, "Listen to him." Just begin by listening. You want to know what God thinks? You want to know what God loves? What God's about? What God's purposes are? Listen to His Son. God says, "He's the source. Listen to Him." Earlier this week someone asked me, "What are you going to be preaching on this weekend?" I said, "I don't know." Because I said, "I haven't had an opportunity to listen to Jesus and get a sense of what He wants me to say to His church." And I didn't say that to be cute or because I have like some pipeline where He just gives the direct download from heaven. No, it was just I was so busy I hadn't had a chance to even listen. Just sit and tune out the noise.

I was so consumed with my own grief, with the grief of others here in this church, grief over what happened this past week to precious little eight-year-old girl, Maddie Milton. Last weekend on Sunday I was preaching at Vintage Faith Church, and the last service starts at 6. So I'm driving right by the tannery complex just a little minutes after 5 o'clock. I have no idea of the horror that is playing out in those very moments. What a sad abject tragedy in the lives of all involved. If you pay attention to griefs like that or griefs surrounding other people's lives or things going on in our world, our community, our country, anyone ever feel overwhelmed? I do. But when you're in that moment of just feeling completely overwhelmed, man let your first best response, and there may be others that follow, but let your first best response be to just listen to the Son and take your cues from Him.

I mean does He know what it's like to feel overwhelmed? Does He know what it's like to feel opposed or to be grieved or to be lonely or the full spectrum of human emotion? Does He know? Of course He does because He's human, but again He's fully God. So through His Word He will speak to us, through His Spirit. The Spirit says, "I will remind you of what He said." Even through the community of His people, He speaks to us. People say, "Well Jesus told me this." Well does His Word tell you that? Does the Spirit tell you that? Does the community of faith tell you that? Even couples will come to me and they'll say, "Hey we want to get married." I said, "Well what are the people with maturity around you think?" Well they're all against it. Well okay. You might want to listen or at least hit the pause button. That's what the Father says. Listen to, in fact that's what the Father commands. He says, "You all listen to Him."

And Matthew says that when the disciples heard this they fell face down to the ground terrified, but Jesus came and touched them. "Get up," He said. "Don't be afraid." And then back in Mark, "Suddenly when they looked around they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead." In other words, it's like, "Guys, what you just saw up there?" No one's even gonna believe it before I pull off Easter, so don't even bother, you know. I think on a deeper level actually. Jesus does not want the story of His glory, even His divinity, told apart from the story of His suffering.

And I don't know what you might think of Jesus here today, but you cannot understand Jesus apart from the cross. That is central. In fact, if you read His Word, I think it's fair to say that the thing that He wants us to know most is that He loves us so much that He would suffer and die and that He would rise again on our behalf. Just a moment we're gonna be observing communion. That's the thing He wants us to remember, His death. And He says, "As you do that, you will proclaim my resurrection." And so it says, "They kept the matter to themselves discussing what rising from the dead meant." And I love this because it's not this, you know, this real tidy sitcom ending here where they're like, "Oh now we get it. Let's go on to the next episode." No, they're still chewing on it. They're just still like, "What in the world does this mean?"

And it's not that they were unfamiliar with the idea of resurrection. It was that having seen Jesus in His glory, they couldn't conceive that the divine Son of God could or would allow Himself to die. And even after they saw Him on a cross and they saw Him die and they saw Him put in a tomb and then they saw Him on the third day, even then it's not like the mystery just was completely dispelled for them any more than it is for us. But you know what? You don't have to actually understand everything there is to know about His death and His resurrection to ask yourself this very same question. What does it mean to me? What does that mean to you personally? Is it just a fiction that Jesus made up or His disciples, His followers made up to make Him look better? If it is, then I guess it doesn't mean a whole lot. You may as well cut out the whole Bible at that point.

But man, if that's something that's through God's grace you've become convinced of that you're willing to kind of bet the farm on that you know, "No my Savior died for me. My Savior lives for me." Then it becomes the center of every single hope that you will ever have. Like I said, I don't know what it means to you. For me it means more and more and more every day. Especially these last days. The risk of mentioning this too many times, two months ago most of you know I lost my very best friend, and it's no small comfort to know that he heard the voice of Christ calling Him. He listened to that voice. He loved Jesus. He's with Jesus right now alive, but truth be told I still miss Him every single day. I miss Him terribly. I've had other griefs in my life, but there's something about this one where that separation of death seems so absolute.

So when I can steal away and just listen, tune out the noise. Those are the times that Jesus comes and He touches me and He says, "Get up." Mark, you don't have to be afraid. I've defeated death. I have bridged that chasm. Some of you, that's what you need to hear today. That's, I don't know what your circumstances are, but the hope of the gospel is right there in that scene where somehow Jesus comes to us and He touches our lives and we hear Him say, "Get up." Rise into the newness of life, and when that happens, He assures us you don't have to be afraid because everything you need, whether it's hope, forgiveness, comfort, encouragement, strength, meaning, everything you actually need in this life, it is all bound up in Him. And if you get nothing else this morning, I pray that you get that. In fact, let's pray to that end right now.

Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your love and Your grace. I thank You for Your goodness to us. And Lord, I just pray that as You've spoken to us through Your word, through this times of worship and some of those lyrics which is so rich, I pray Lord that we would have ears to hear and that those words would find purchase in our hearts that they would actually move us and change us and conform us all the more to the image of Your glory, of Your character. And so Lord, as we prepare our hearts for communion for the Lord's table, I ask Lord that You would continue to speak to us. Ask us in Jesus name, Amen.