I desire to bring before you only the first part of this chapter, that is, the magnificent scene of the transfiguration. The first verse properly speaking belongs to the previous chapter. In the last verse of that chapter, which has been already before us, the Lord says: “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Now I believe that the transfiguration of our Lord was a specimen and example of the coming kingdom and glory and power of our Lord Jesus Christ; indeed, Peter in his epistle tells us distinctly that this was made known, and that it was made known on the holy mount. The light that is thrown upon the transfiguration by the utterances, through the Holy Ghost, of the apostle Peter leads us into what the real object and purport of our Lord was in bringing up His disciples to witness it; and it is that scene I desire to fix your thoughts and minds upon during the little time we are together tonight.
First of all, you will notice that the same companions of our Lord who afterwards witnessed His agony in Gethsemane, are the chosen witnesses of His glory upon Tabor. Now that brings together two things that are kept together, and which are blessed for our hearts continually to keep together, that is, the suffering and the glory. The very same chosen witnesses of the glory here were the witnesses of the suffering afterwards. O what different scenes they were! The Lord was the subject of both; He was indeed the central object of both; but think of what a contrast there was between all this transcendent brilliancy of light and glory which shone out from Him even to His raiment on Tabor, compared with all the depths of the loneliness of His agony and passion in Gethsemane! O how blessed to keep both together! And how privileged these disciples were to witness both, to see in the first place the height that He reaches as a man; because that is really what the transfiguration is; He reaches the very highest point in the glory of His manhood on the holy mount. Have you noticed, that with the Lord Jesus Christ as a man here in this world, the path was always an ascending one till this point was reached? Born in Bethlehem, brought up in Nazareth, His path inclined, He went on step by step in that wondrous elevation that belonged to Him until He reached the very highest summit of glory as a man on Tabor. From that point it was descending; He goes down from the scene where He was glorified, where He was saluted by the Father’s voice as supreme in His affections and in His heart, He goes down step by step from the height of the holy mount until He reaches the deepest, darkest depths of Calvary. It is different altogether from the way in which sometimes the Lord’s path is presented when we speak of Him as going from the cradle to the cross. Hardly that; He went from the cradle to the holy mount; as man on earth, His path was one of transcendent ascending glory up to that. He reached the very summit of it there, and from that glory He descends. When we think of the close of the pathway of suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is very precious for our hearts to take in that it was the Man who was pre-eminently glorified as a man on Tabor, who descended to the lowest depths of Calvary’s cross. Now the disciples that witnessed the one witnessed the other; they were the chosen witnesses of His sorrows and of His glory.
But mark how they were introduced to it. We are told in verse 2 of our chapter that “He leadeth them up.” I believe, that for every sight of this kind, that character of leading must be known by us. It is not only that He leads them, but He leads them “up”; and I believe it must always be so. The reason that we see so little is that the elevation upon which we stand is not divine; we must have the divine elevation to understand all that is connected with the divine. To see the glory of this blessed One we must be led “up.” It is interesting that that word “leadeth” is in meaning akin to the word that is used in chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke, after the Lord had made Himself known to those two poor disciples in the tender way in which He did make Himself known to them on the road to Emmaus. The way that the Gospel of Luke ends is very touching and sweet to think of; it says, “He led them out as far as to Bethany.” “He led them out.” Here it is “He leadeth them up.” Those two little words have a very deep significance for every heart that is open to receive them: “up” and “out.” “He led them out as far as to Bethany.” To get that kind of blessing, we must be led out.” He led them outside of all, so to speak, that pertained to the scene here, to the one spot that was the sequestered home of Jesus upon earth. “He led them out as far as to Bethany,” and then “lifted up his hands and blessed them.” The Lord grant that you and I may be led out for that blessing; I do not believe we ever get it except as “led out.” I do not doubt for an instant that there are blessings from God on all sides; but oh! there is a special character of blessing which no soul ever gets save as “led out.” Are you ready for that? Are you prepared to put your poor, trembling hand into His, and to say to Him, “Now, Lord, lead me where you will and as you will, but O lead me out to where this blessing falls.” So here the Lord leads them up out of the range of all human influence; He leads them into a high mountain, He gets them above, so to speak, the atmosphere of earth. He gets them outside the atmosphere of the city and of man, He leads them up to a high mountain.
But there is more in the verse even than that. Notice the words, “He leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by themselves.” I have been so struck with that peculiar action of our dear Lord and Master in every case in which He conferred special and peculiar blessing upon His disciples. And in every case in which He confers the like blessing upon us, I believe that we are made the subject of a gracious leading of Himself outside and apart, into a holy solitude and loneliness with Him, apart from every influence. Are not you aware of this, that the blessings so easily spoil, the color fades so soon? We need the privacy of His solitude to have this continued and fastened deeply in our souls and as well as apprehend it. Hence it is that they are taken up by Him and taken apart by Him themselves; and there, when all influences were aside and when man and man’s contrivances were all distanced, then we get the word, “He was transfigured before them.”
Now I would like you specially to notice that this word transfiguration is that which really gives us the English word “metamorphosis.” He was metamorphosed. It was a distinct change of the whole form and visage of the Lord Jesus. I believe that it was the brilliancy of light, the divine glory, if you please, that which came from God Himself, but that it worked from what was inward in Him out, even to His raiment. Mark in a very special way notices His raiment. If you compare the gospels—do not try to harmonize them, they never differed; you need not try to harmonize friends that were always in agreement: it will yield blessed fruit to you—if you compare Matthew and Luke with Mark, you will find that Matthew and Luke refer rather to His Person, and Mark lays more peculiar stress upon His raiment. Notice the words, for every little word is important in scripture: he says in verse 3, “His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.” It is His raiment to which Mark particularly calls attention. I suppose it fell in with the object of his gospel to display even the exterior of the great Servant-Prophet Son, to show the brilliancy and the power of that light, which whilst it burst forth from within, as I believe, yet shed its own bright rays upon every part even of His clothes. And if you keep the thought of each gospel in your mind as you read it, you will find it an immense help in seizing, by the Holy Ghost’s ministry, what the purport of each gospel is. Here it is the Servant, the great Servant-Prophet, the Son in sovereign goodness, divine goodness, among people who refused Him and despised. Him. Therefore even that which was external in connection with the Lord Jesus, His very garments, reflected the brilliancy of that glory that put into the shade all human splendor.
There is another little thought in connection with the word that is used that I would call your attention to, because it will help you to see the beautiful accuracy of each part of scripture, and the design of the Holy Ghost in inspiring the vessels of revelation in the communications that He made. You will notice when you read the Gospel of Luke that the word “transfigured” or “metamorphosed” is not used at all. Matthew uses it, Mark uses it, but Luke, though he speaks of the fact just as the others do, does not use that word. Do you know why? For this reason: it is pretty clear from the internal evidence of the gospel that Luke wrote more especially, primarily at least, for Gentiles, Greek readers. Now the use of that word would in all human probability have connected the minds of those who had been Greeks with the old heathen mythology, and therefore, I believe designedly, that word is omitted. Because there is a design in the omission of words from scripture, just as much as in the employment of certain words of scripture; and therefore designedly on account of those for whom Luke was specially chosen to reveal the mind of God in the gospel entrusted to him with regard to the manhood glory of the Man Christ Jesus, he omits a word which would not have fallen in with the divine thought and mind in the communication of God’s will in his gospel; whereas the other evangelists, Matthew and Mark, used it because the readers of their gospels would be under no liability or temptation to be lured away into the darkness and even the vileness of heathen mythology. So far with regard to this word “transfiguration”; and my only reason for mentioning it is that it shows the guiding hand of God, not merely over the subjects of scripture, but over the words of scripture. I have said before, and I say it again, and from the very bottom of my soul, and delight to say it, that I believe as profoundly as that I am in the presence of God, that the very words were given to the vessels of revelation as much as the subjects were communicated. It was not merely that they had got certain things to communicate, which we call revelation—revelation relates to the subjects, inspiration to the words—but they got the very words; they were not left to use what they thought the best word in their judgment, they were dependent upon the Spirit for the words. 1 Cor. 2 leaves us in no doubt with regard to that; “Which things,” says the apostle, “we also speak “; that is the vessels of revelation; “not in the words,” mark you, “which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth”; comparing spiritual things with spiritual, as our version has it; “communicating spiritual things to spiritual persons” is the real meaning of it; cast on God for the very word that would convey the revelation that God was pleased to give them, so that they not merely received directly from Him the revelation of His mind, but they got the proper vehicle whereby to communicate it. I hold, that there is no possibility of escape from it; if words mean anything, 1 Corinthians 2 means that; and if you and I are at liberty to take out of scripture what we think God has put into scripture, to form our own thoughts and opinions as to what is of God in scripture, and to reject on the other side what we consider is not of God in scripture, we are making ourselves superior, in what is called our verifying faculty, to scripture. The judge must be always superior to that which is judged; that which we pass the sentence of our minds upon must of necessity be inferior to our minds, if our minds are to be the discerning power so as to say, This is of God, and that is not of God, or the one is of God and the other is not of God. The truth is, it is all of God, in the subjects and in the words in which the subjects are conveyed. And this very omission here in the Gospel of Luke of the word “transfiguration” is a witness simply to that fact.
The next point here is, who His companions were: not merely who were the witnesses of His glory, but observe, His companions here. In verse 4 we are told that “there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus.” These two were the ancient fathers of the Old Testament; there was the great heroic law-giver, Moses, and there was the great lion-hearted prophet, Elijah, the typical chiefs of the ancient dispensation. O what a wonderful thing to see not merely the disciples of His love and choice, but to see who of olden times were the companions of this blessed One in this effulgence of His glory as a man here upon Tabor. Do you think there was distance there? Notice what is said: “They were talking with Jesus.” How blessed the intimacy, the holy familiarity of that word! We talk with those we are intimate with; we commune with those that are beside us, so to speak, in the same position. This blessed One is pleased to grant this intimacy to these Old Testament saints; they talked with Him. Do you and I know what that is? I daresay you know those sweet words—
“A little talk with Jesus,
How it smooths the rugged way!”
but do you know what it means? Do you know this holy nearness, so that you can talk with Him? It does not say that He talked with them; that would not be the same thing: I could quite understand that, but it would not convey to our hearts what this word conveys, “They were talking with Jesus”; they were in nearness, in intimacy, there was the absence of all reserve, they were outside everything that could check; they talked with Him. Lord give us to understand the blessedness of talking with Thee.
May I say to you in passing, that you will find it an immense comfort to your heart if you are pressed down with difficulties or trials or sorrows, to have One you can go and talk with about it. How many times I have heard the lamentation of many of God’s dear people when they have been sorely pressed, and the heart well-nigh burst, and they longed for some one to whom they could speak, and failed to find upon earth one to whom they could tell the depths of their hearts. And you know this, I suppose, it is only to your most intimate friends that you can tell your sorrows; you can tell your joys to anybody, but it is only to those that are close to you, and in all the nearness of affection and intimacy, that you can tell your sorrows.
Now I speak to you in this way because I have no doubt there are many who have—who of us is there here that has not some time or another, and God knows it may be now—some crushing weight of sorrow or trial or some pressure upon their heart. Go and talk to Him about it. O what a reality it is to talk to Him about it! He loves to hear. Talk with Him: find the relief there. You will find what a floodgate that will be to let that bursting heart of yours out to Jesus. He will keep the secret; He will never break faith with you. O how I love to hold a brief for Him in that respect, so to speak, and to plead for Him with you that you might know the blessed, precious relief it is just to go and tell the whole thing out. You cannot inform Him about anything that He does not know; but as you talk with Him just like these chosen witnesses of the Old Testament here, your heart will find a solace, you will find a pillow for your aching head and your weary heart. Now just go and unburden it, open it out, and talk with Him as they did. They talked with Jesus.
Now we are not told here, but we are told elsewhere, the subject of the conversation. A wonderful thing to think of; the subject of the conversation was “His decease.” A very remark- able word is used to convey that to us, the word that gives the English word “exodus”; they spoke of His exodus. He came in and He went out. I love to think of Him going out in that way. One of the Gospels always presents that; you will be struck with it if you carefully study it for yourselves; but I believe I am correct in saying that you will hardly find in the Gospel of John the Lord’s going out of this world presented in the shape of His death at all. Of course I do not mean to say that it was not really His death, because His death was the way in which He went out; but the Gospel of John nearly always, and the Lord when He speaks of it Himself too, speaks of it after this fashion: He was going out of the world to the Father; “When his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father”; “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father.” And it is lovely to dwell on it in that way; that was His exodus. He came in and He went out That was the subject here of the conversation in glory.
Now I would like you to think over this for a moment. Is it not blessed to know that the subject of the glory is the cross? And there could be no subject more suited to the glory than the cross of Jesus. How wonderful to have the cross and the glory brought together like that! They spake of His decease, the accomplishment of the exodus that was yet to come. They spoke of it; there was communion, so to speak, of its kind and up to its measure there between them and Him; “they spake of his decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem.”
We come now to a solemn part of this scene. While that was in progress, Peter who was always ardent, always ready, always quick and foremost in everything, makes a suggestion. Notice what it is. I can quite understand how his heart was oppressed with the thought of the transient nature of that converse and the fleeting character of that scene. And it is so like us, so natural to us, to long to perpetuate seasons of blessing; we long in some human way, to hold these moments of mercy before our eyes. It was a sort of testimony to the little continuity there is in us. “Master,” he says, or “Lord,” “it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles.” Do you know what to connect “it is good for us to be here” with? It was a great contrast with the shirking shrinking of his heart from the cross in the previous chapter. In that chapter, which we have had before us, when the Lord brings His cross and His sufferings and His pathway of rejection and scorn before them, Peter shrank from it, in the essential worldliness of a spirit that could not brook the thought that the One he loved should suffer degradation like that. I have no doubt the contrast was strong before him here; “It is good for us to be here.” It would not be good to have to suffer rejection and scorn and shame with Jesus, but it was good to be in this glory, and good to be outside of that which he shrank from previously. But unconsciously he dishonored his Master. Verily, it is very wonderful to see how quickly we can pass from one thing to another! He shrank from the cross of Jesus in chapter 8; because he could not brook the shame of it to be heaped upon One whom he loved; but here in chapter 9 he himself is the unconscious tool who dishonored Him. Because observe what he wants to do: he wants to bring Him down to a level with Moses and Elias. “It is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid.” That is so very like Peter. Peter reminds me of a man that rushes into a sentence which he does not know how to finish; it is like one that embarks upon a journey and does not know what the end of it will be. “Let us make three tabernacles”: let us perpetuate this glory; let us keep up this converse; do not let it pass away; do not let it be like a wayfaring man that turns aside to tarry for a night; let us have it here permanently. He did not know what to say, for they were sore afraid.
While that suggestion was being made, and just as it passed his lips, mark the way it is met. (v. 7) “While he spake there was a cloud,” “a bright cloud,” Matthew tells us, a brilliant cloud, a bright shining cloud, a cloud that was illuminated with the brilliancy of light, a privacy of light which overshadowed them; it was the shekinah, the visible display of the Divine presence. That is the first answer to Peter’s suggestion; the bright cloud overshadows them. Is not there something very remarkable in that? God heard Peter’s words, the Father replies to Peter’s desire, and at once suddenly shows Himself; a cloud overshadows them.
And not only was there this overshadowing cloud, but mark, “a voice came out of the cloud.” You “will observe that three times during the progress of His blessed pathway upon earth that voice was heard; it was heard at His baptism, it is heard here, and it was heard also as He stood upon the threshold of His passion: in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His blessed pathway, the voice from heaven was heard. There is a sweetness about that. O how the Father loved to let it be known what His heart found in His blessed Son! What was this voice? First, “My beloved Son.” O how blessed it is to think of that! It is the expression of the tenderest and dearest and closest and nearest affections of the Father for the Son. Some one has said, and I accept it, that the moment you come to the expression “Father and Son,” you touch the fount of love, you get to the source, the great fountain head, of love. I believe it is true. So here the voice from the cloud says, “This is My beloved Son.” O, He says, I must have him all up for My own heart and My own affections. Thank God, He gives Him out to us; but He must have Him all up for Himself. His whole heart’s deepest, tenderest out-goings found their answer in Jesus as a man here. I believe it was in connection with His service specially—as the Gospel of Mark is in connection with service—that this beloved Son was the Servant Son here. “This is my beloved Son.” Put Moses and Elias on a level with Him? Put three tabernacles over them to bring them into equality? “This is my beloved Son,” He says. And now there is another word: “Hear him.” Silence every voice, silence every note, silence every song, silence all earth; “Hear him.” I ask you affectionately tonight, is that enough for you and me? Are we satisfied, beloved, just with that? Can you in the depths of your soul, and I ask myself the question with you, can we take those words up and use them?
“I have heard the voice of Jesus,
Tell me not of aught beside.”
Fine poetry! Is it true? That is the question. That is the Father’s thought, at any rate, that is what is in the mind and thought and heart of God; “Hear Him.” And that is what He wants us to hear. He calls us apart from this scene, apart from the din and the strife, and the turmoil, and the upheaving and the crashing of all that is round us in this world; He calls us to hear Him. Bend your ears to catch the sound of His voice. “Hear Him.” O, what sort of people should we be if we were only better listeners of Jesus Christ! What sort of Christians should we be if only we heard Him! What sort of testimony should we bear in this world if His voice entered into our ears and into the caverns of our souls! “Hear him.”
Now look at the effect of it? There is an effect produced, not only by this cloud, but by this voice, and a very blessed effect too; and therefore we read, “And suddenly when they had looked round about,”—because it all took place in divine rapidity—“they saw no man any more.” O what a mercy it would be if we saw no man any more! What an exodus that would be if men only retired and Christ only was heard! “They saw no man any more.” Well, alas, we cannot help seeing men until God clears the scene. It is a great thing not to hear them at any rate. “This is my beloved Son: hear him.” And thank God there is a moral effect, not a literal one, but a moral effect produced, where Christ alone is listened to, that you will find human sounds and human voices and human thoughts retire. And I believe that as the voice of Christ is heard, that as the face of Jesus by faith is seen, there is a moral retirement from the whole scene, and we walk in sweet forgetfulness; as another has said, “Too far for some, not far enough for others, but with Him.” That is the secret of it; with Him. “Hear him.” “Suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.” Thank God it does not say “Jesus only,” but “Jesus only with themselves.” There was the abstraction of His own blessed presence, and they were, so to speak, absorbed with Him. “Suddenly, they saw no man any more”; all disappeared, the scene was cleared; no man any more was seen but “Jesus only with themselves.”
Now, what a thing it would be for us tonight, if by grace and sovereign goodness we only heard that blessed One, if only we answered to the Father’s desire to hear Him, if only we let the sound of His own sweet voice into our ears and into our souls, and made this scene and the strife of it retire from our hearts, and we “saw no man any more save Jesus only with” ourselves! Do you think we should be losers? We should be immense gainers! O the gain, the bliss, the blessedness of it! Why, it would be just a foretaste of heaven; it would be heaven begun now! Because that is what will constitute heaven. People are very fanciful in their ideas about heaven. We go to meet Jesus. If you ask me what heaven is, I think I told you once before and I tell you again, I believe heaven is the place where Jesus Christ is praised and praised for ever; it is full of the presence of Christ; it is Christ. You will not find one syllable, not one single word, ever spoken of in connection with it but that. Says the great apostle, whose heart and soul was formed by Christ in this way, “I have a longing, an ardent desire”—for what? To be at rest? That is the way people talk. Why? Because they are not at rest now. “O to be gone!” Yes, that is to escape out of the troubles and difficulties of the world. Self will hold fast in our hearts as long as it possibly can. Not a word of that do we find in “I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ.” “Absent from the body,”—to be out of all its aches, and its groans, and its pains? No; “present with the Lord.” May the Lord in His infinite grace give our hearts to taste and know a little of what it is to listen to the Father’s voice now. “Hear him.” Then we shall find that there is a moral clearance of the scene, and it is Jesus only with ourselves. May God command His blessing, and bring His blessed Christ and fix Him more distinctly and livingly and powerfully in the affection of our souls, for His blessed name’s sake. (Notes of an Address.)