EPISODE 31 Luke Chapter 9 ”Listen To Him” for Share The Word

Welcome, friends, to Share the Word. Whether you're just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you'll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. Thanks for being a listener. Now let's get right into today's lesson. Luke chapter 9. Listen to him.

How hard do you think it is to create a hit reality TV show? I'd think that more than anything, you need a really good idea, a hook that works over and over, well enough that the show attracts and holds a large audience so it gets renewed for season after season. A guy named Stephen Lambert came up with such an idea, and it became a hit show in both Britain and the United States. Other countries since have done their own versions, I understand. It started here in 2010 and ran for 11 seasons and 136 episodes. What was this show, and what was the catchy idea behind it?

It was called Undercover Boss, and it involved the head honcho of a large company going undercover, pretending to be an entry-level employee. Like, say, imagine the CEO of Lowe's or Home Depot going to work at one of their local stores as a cashier or a stockman, or the CEO at Domino's or Papa John's making pizzas at one of their company's thousands of franchised restaurants. That concept really clicked with the public. I mean, who hasn't worked for a business or company and thought, Geez, I wish I could give whoever owns this place a piece of my mind. In each episode, that happens as workers unknowingly train, work alongside of, and chat up their undercover boss. Of course, the climax comes when he or she takes off the disguise and reveals their true identity, and the co-workers find out that new guy they've been so chummy with for the last week, in fact, owns the whole operation.

A surprising identity unveiling, not unlike that, occurs in our chapter today, and you'll see how that happens in a few moments. This chapter begins with Jesus sending out his disciples again to towns and villages in Israel. This is at least the second time that he's done this. They are going ahead of him, preparing the way for him, we assume, because he intends to visit these places. The disciples were proclaiming the kingdom of God, Luke says. It was a message of repentance, urging people to get their hearts ready to submit to God's rule.

At verse 7, Luke describes even King Herod inquiring about Jesus, trying to figure out who he was, and then Jesus questioning his own disciples about what people were saying about him. There were a lot of opinions, for sure, but the general consensus sounds like Jesus was definitely viewed as some kind of special, you know, unusual messenger from God. But then Jesus asked his own disciples directly, So who do you think I am? Peter answered for the rest of them and answered correctly. You are the Messiah of God, he said, and Jesus affirmed to them that he was right. But then he curiously followed that up with, But don't be telling everybody that.

I have to admit, that's puzzling. Why wouldn't Jesus want them to reveal his true identity? Do you have any ideas? The only motive I can think of is that this is still rather early in his public ministry. Publicly proclaiming he was Israel's Messiah could have provoked a too-soon confrontation with King Herod, who, remember, had only recently imprisoned and then killed John the Baptist. Or Jesus' religious opponents, who we know feared his popularity.

Or even the Romans, who responded to any threat of uprisings very quickly and brutally. Jesus knew the time for confronting them was going to come because we read immediately after that he told Peter not to out him and the other disciples not to tell who he was. He revealed to them then that the fact is he's not going to end up on the throne as Israel's king. Far from it. His future would be, in these reserved words, the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and be killed, but on the third day raised to life. I'm sure his disciples found such a statement from Jesus at this point incomprehensible.

I mean, what's that mean? He went on to warn them, actually, at this point, that aligning with him going forward could be dangerous for them and could be costly. But he promised them, if you do, ultimately it will be worth it. Jesus was revealing to them now that the kingdom of God, as most Jews expected it, was not coming in their generation. That was not his purpose. His purpose was to soon lay down his life as an atonement for sin.

But where we are in Luke's account, we're still near the high point in Jesus' public ministry. He was very popular with the common people, so the disciples found such negative talk about rejection and death, I'm sure at this point, very hard to imagine. It didn't compute for them. As time goes on, we'll see Jesus, time and again, reiterate the hard truth to them that, no matter what it might seem, when the multitudes of people were applauding him, he was going to be rejected in Israel and, in fact, killed. It's on the heels of this that Luke records a very interesting comment that I want to focus on in our time today. He quotes Jesus at verse 27 in this chapter after making it very clear the political kingdom they and their nation longed for was not his goal, as saying, But I tell you the truth, some of you who are here listening to me now will not die before you see the kingdom of God.

Hmm. So how could that be? It appears the answer is in what our author tells us about next, truly one of the wildest events described in the Gospels. It's usually referred to as the Transfiguration, and here's how it was told to Luke. About eight days later, Luke writes, Jesus took Peter, John, and James up on a mountain to pray. And as he was praying, his appearance was transformed and his clothes became dazzlingly white.

Suddenly, two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared with him and began talking with Jesus. They were in glorified bodies, and they were speaking about his exodus from this world, soon to be fulfilled in Jerusalem. Peter and the others had fallen asleep. When they woke up, they saw Jesus' glory and these two men standing with him. As Moses and Elijah were starting to leave, not even knowing what he was saying, Peter blurted out, Master, it's wonderful for us to be here. Let's make three shelters as memorials, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.

But even as he was saying that, a cloud overshadowed them, and they were gripped with terror as it covered them. Then a voice came from the cloud, which said, This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to him. When the voice finished and the cloud lifted, Jesus was there alone. Wow, talk about an undercover reveal. As I've talked about before, there's nothing in the Gospels written by, or in Luke's case learned from, those who were with Jesus to indicate that he appeared any different than any other man.

The implication actually is quite the opposite. And then this happens? Jesus asked his three inner circle disciples to accompany him as he got away privately to pray, and they're up on this mountainside, possibly Mount Tabor or Mount Hermon, because they were in the northeast of Israel. And while Jesus was long praying, the disciples fell asleep. And as they slept, somehow, Jesus morphed, we might say, from his temporary physical human form into his eternal heavenly form. When the three disciples awoke, they saw his body literally emitting bright light.

That's what the word Luke uses literally means, emitting bright light. He was gleaming, some translations try to describe it. Luke says they saw his glory, and they saw more. There were two others with Jesus, men who are identified as Moses and Elijah, key figures from the Old Testament times. As the wide-eyed disciples strained, they overheard them discussing Jesus' departure from this world, which would soon occur at Jerusalem. Why Moses and Elijah, you might be wondering?

That's a good question. My thought is that Moses was the great lawgiver for the Jews, and Elijah was one of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. People in Jesus' time actually referred to the law and the prophets, and by which they meant the whole of Old Testament Scripture. Jesus was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. So I think maybe these two great men of God from the past, representing all that had gone before and that God had revealed before, were there in their heavenly bodies sent to strengthen Jesus for what was ahead in the plan of God. Peter, fascinated and amazed by what he was seeing, blurted out, Lord, we should build some temporary shelters so we can stay here for a while.

I'm betting seeing Jesus in his transfigured, glorified form convinced Peter that he should now be revealed to Israel as God's King. They were in a kingdom-type setting here on that mountaintop with Jesus unveiled for who he truly was, and he was flanked by these great men of God that all Israel respected. This was literally heaven come down to earth, it seemed like. But even as Peter was speaking, suddenly the mountaintop was covered with a cloud. What was happening? The disciples admitted they were terrified at this point.

Then a voice came from the cloud, which they realized was God himself. And the voice said, This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him. As suddenly as the cloud had covered them, it passed off the mountaintop, and when it did, Moses and Elijah were gone. That whole otherworldly scene was gone, and things were as before, and Jesus was as they'd always seen him. Luke says that Peter, James, and John didn't tell anybody about what they'd seen that day on the mountain.

The other gospel writers note that that was at Jesus' instruction. Later they would speak about it, but Luke means not immediately. Just as earlier, when Jesus instructed them not to be identifying him openly as the Messiah, talking about incredible things like what they saw that day on the mountaintop would only have increased the growing messianic hysteria in Israel, which Jesus just did not want to apparently fan. It was not time for what that could do, like create confrontations with people he didn't want to confront yet. But what those three saw, that was a fulfillment of what Jesus had told them. They had seen into the very kingdom of God, seen into the future.

This is wild to even contemplate, isn't it? Theologians often refer to Jesus during his time on our planet as being veiled in the flesh. He had a disguise on, we might say. But on that mountaintop, for a little while, the disguise came off, and those three disciples saw the remarkable sight of the Son of God in his glorified state, literally gleaming, radiating bright light. As I imagine, we'll someday see him in heaven. I believe for those disciples who witnessed that, it was intended by Jesus, or allowed by Jesus, to confirm for them who he really was, his true identity, his deity as the second person of the Godhead.

Remember, he had just asked them not long before, So who do you think I am? Seeing Jesus glorified in his heavenly form, not veiled by his assumed humanity, was certainly something mind-bending these men never ever forgot. This is important. Do you remember way back at our very first podcast from the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the author revealed who he came to believe Jesus was. John, one of the men on that mountain, wrote in his gospel at the beginning, among other things, The Logos became flesh and lived among us, and we beheld his glory. That day on the mountaintop, Jesus literally did show his glory to John.

And Peter, who was there as well, wrote in his second general epistle, For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes. We heard a voice from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. Clearly, Peter was recalling this unforgettable experience we call the Transfiguration, when he saw God the Son in his divine glory. On the same point, the Apostle Paul, writing in Philippians chapter 2, says, Although he, Jesus, existed in the form of God, he did not consider his equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges, took on the form of a servant, and was born as a human being.

We've talked many times before about why, why in God's plan to save sinners, was it necessary for God the Son to do that? And I hope you're crystal clear on why. The reason is, Jesus had to become a real human, like us, to represent us, so he could suffer and die for us in our place. But don't let anybody tell you that the one on that cross was anything less than God at the same time. Because if he was not God, then what he did there would never be valuable enough to pay for the sins of all of us. It's only because of who He was, God and man at once, that Jesus' death on Calvary as an atoning sacrifice had the power to save all who will believe into Him.

Why I wanted to zero in on this particular scene from Luke 9 is because Peter, James, and John, those three disciples, clearly saw, with no filter in the way, who Jesus really is on that mountain. They saw and interacted with Him in His actual heavenly form, radiating the glory that is God's alone. And then a few moments later, when the cloud lifted, they saw Jesus as apparently just a man again, just like them. One more scripture on this key point. In a chapter that Margie was teaching from, John chapter 17, we listened into a prayer of Jesus in the upper room the night before He died. In that prayer, He said in part, I brought You glory while I was here on the earth by completing the work that You gave to Me.

Now, Father, bring Me back into the glory we shared before the world began. After finishing God's amazing plan for our salvation, these same witnesses, along with many others, saw Jesus ascend back to heaven, returning to the glory He had always shared as part of the eternal Godhead. And when we see Him, we who are believers, if it's when we pass from this life or if it's at His return, it will be in all His divine glory, just as He was revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration. Don't miss this. There are many reasons from the information given us in the New Testament by those who were with Jesus to conclude He was God. He had to be God, in fact.

And this is another one to add. Those three disciples on the mountain literally saw Jesus in his God form, disguised off in his dazzling divine glory. I have a little bit of time left in this episode, so how about I put a personal theory out there that this scene suggests to me. I don't like to use Share the Word to do a bunch of speculating, so when I am giving you an opinion rather than teaching something that I believe is clear in the New Testament, I'll tell you ahead of time. And I'm telling you right now, this is my opinion. Are you ready?

Think about this. When the three disciples saw Moses and Elijah conversing with Jesus, those Old Testament believers were certainly in their heavenly bodies. They had to be because they had been long off of this earth, hundreds of years off of this earth. But on the mountain, Peter, James, and John saw them obviously very much alive. And Luke was told, who remember is passing on information he got from interviewing eyewitnesses, Luke was told that Moses and Elijah appeared in splendor, or as other translations say, in glory. They too were kind of shining somehow, apparently.

Not as brightly as Jesus, I'm sure, but their bodies and clothing appeared luminous, we would say. Have you noticed in the Bible that when angels come from heaven to interact with people, it's often noted how bright they looked or how shining they were. There's a fascinating account in the Old Testament regarding Moses again, but this time during his normal lifetime when he was in his regular body. It talks about this in the book of Exodus chapter 34. It says that when he went up on the mountain to receive the law of God. When he came back, his face was shining, so much so that he had to veil his face until the glory wore off.

Here's how it's described in Exodus 34. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the covenant of law in his hands, he wasn't aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. But when Aaron and all the Israelites saw him, his face was so radiant they were afraid to approach him. This makes me wonder. Glory belongs to God alone. We know that.

Only God is truly in Himself glorious. Did you know that in the new heaven and new earth described at the end of Revelation, the earth then will be lit not by the sun or something similar. It says that it will be lit by the glory of God Himself. He will be the light. That's some very bright, radiating glory. In our chapter scene, Moses and Elijah were radiating with God's glory, as angels do, as Moses had when he was in his earthly body when he saw God on Mount Sinai.

And these guys at this point had come up not from graves on the ground, but had come from heaven, from the Lord's presence. So it appears to me that those who are in God's presence, in changed spiritual bodies, to some extent at least, reflect or radiate God's glory. The Apostle Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3, when our Savior returns, He will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body. And then when Jesus was talking about the end of His age and the dawn of His kingdom, He said once, this is in Matthew 13, at that point the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Roll with me here, will you? This is the most interesting clue for me.

When Paul is describing the transformation that will take place in our bodies when we are taken up to heaven, he says, this is 1 Corinthians 15, There are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one thing and the splendor of the earthly bodies another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another, and the stars another. And each star actually differs from the other stars in their splendor. So it will be, Paul wrote, with the resurrection from the dead. So it will be. He's clearly saying that the bodies we are now in will be changed into different immortal bodies when we're resurrected.

That's the whole context. But when talking about their splendor, to use the same term Luke used of Moses and Elijah's body on the mountain, why does Paul say, compare it to the moon or the sun and the stars and how they're different? The sun is one brightness, the moon much less, and the stars vary in brightness even from each other in the night sky. Is it possible that Paul's line about the differing glory of the sun, moon, stars, and so on suggests that there will be an obvious and visible difference in the coming kingdom of God between the individuals who are there? Everyone will have changed immortal, glorious bodies that will apparently, to some degree at least, be luminous, but will some radiate with and reflect God's glory brighter than others? Will we recognize those God honors more, the real luminaries of heaven, we could say, because they radiate His glory more brightly?

Could that be part of the rewards Jesus promised to those who follow Him faithfully and are fruitful in their lives here and now? Man, this interests me, and I'm going to ride with this theory and give it some more thought, and maybe I'll come back to it at some time in the future. Might be onto something here. I don't want to end on a speculative note, though, so let's end here today. The voice of God from the cloud confirmed Jesus' identity to John, Peter, and James. The absolute glory of Jesus' unveiled persona did as well.

But then they heard God's own voice: This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. Listen to him. That's exactly what you are doing now through Share the Word, listening to Jesus as Luke and John and Peter and the other New Testament writers share what they actually saw and heard when he was there with them for a short while. Thanks for listening. And if you have any questions, you're welcome to get them to us at info at sharetheword dot org.

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