Matthew 17:1-271And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, 2And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. 3And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. 4Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. 5While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. 6And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. 7And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. 8And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only. 9And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. 10And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? 11And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. 12But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. 13Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. 14And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, 15Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. 16And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. 17Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. 18And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour. 19Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? 20And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. 21Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. 22And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: 23And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry. 24And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? 25He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? 26Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. 27Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee. (Matthew 17:1‑27)
There are three scenes brought before us in this scripture, and I want, by God’s help, to bring them very briefly before you, with the lessons imprinted on them. They are, first, the mountain (what is called the holy mount, where the Lord reached His highest glory as a Man); next, the plain; and third, the city.
I want, first of all, to look at the mountain, and what we find in connection with it. In Peter’s second epistle, we get the divine meaning of the transfiguration. It was a foreshadowing, when Christ was glorified there as a Man upon the holy mount, of that glory which would be His as a Man in the kingdom by-and-by. I say this only to give a true exposition of the scripture. But I would like you to take notice of this, that the path of the Lord Jesus in this world was an ascending one as a man up to this point. I think there is a mistake made when people speak of Him as going from the manger to the cross. That is true in a certain sense, but not the whole truth. He went really from Bethlehem to the holy mount.
He went on, step by step, as a man in all the glory and blessedness of what pertained to Him as a man, until He reached His highest glory as a man on the holy mount, and there He was held forth as a man, perfect in all the distinctness and blessedness of what belonged to Him as a man; and yet more than man, because He was the Father’s beloved Son. Still, as a man, He was glorified. He reached that height of eminence, and distinction, and glory, as a man, that no other man ever reached. Then He descends from the mount, and goes down, step by step, till He goes down to the depths of Calvary. That is the true explanation of His path and course here, till He reached as man His highest point of glory on Tabor; then He leaves Tabor by a descending course until He comes down to the lowest depths of Calvary. That is merely looking at the scripture as to the truth set forth in it. But I think I see more in this beautiful scene. Here, His chosen disciples are brought up, where also you find Moses and Elias; and they are thus all privileged to be in His company on that mount when He was transfigured before them, and appeared in glory, and they appeared with Him. And Peter, who is always the spokesman, and always ardent in that way, looks upon this scene somewhat as we might—namely, how can we perpetuate it? This is a scene beyond all conception of blessedness—how shall we continue to have this order of things here? Jesus in glory, and Moses and Elias appearing in glory with Him. Another Scripture tells us also the nature of their intercourse when there—they spake of the decease He should accomplish at Jerusalem—glory and death were thus brought together.
The disciples were also there, but they could not keep awake in the presence of His glory, any more than they could afterwards in the presence of His sufferings. That is what man is, and what people want to exalt and put on a pedestal to-day. But when they were awake they saw His glory, and then Peter makes this proposition, the object of which was to put the Lord, Moses, and Elias all on an equality one with another. He says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here: let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias.” Let us have this thing perpetuated in this orderly kind of way. Now mark what comes.
While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.
The cloud was the place of the divine presence, the shekinah, or cloud of glory. It was a bright cloud, and there is no brightness except up there. We get the mist here, you must go up there to get the bright cloud—and, with all holy reverence I say it, a bright voice came out of that bright cloud; and a blessed voice it was, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” What is the meaning of that? Just exactly what the disciples found afterwards when the voice was past, when the affirmation of the Father was gone, telling of His heart’s desire to have that Son of His bosom supreme. There could be no equality with Him on that ground. He must be first and last, everything—supreme for time and for eternity, “all things,” and that voice that vindicated the right of Jesus to be first, and to be everything, when past, was found true. They proved what the voice affirmed. “When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only”—Jesus only, that is heaven. Now I think there is no subject, perhaps, that has been more fancifully dealt with, and upon which the imagination has been allowed to play with greater freedom, than the subject of heaven. And I will tell you more—that some of the late ideas and notions on this subject have turned people away from the truth, and turned them away to what I call a specious, wretched kind of materialism which lowers the truth, and brings it down from its own blessed speciality, and peculiarity, and from its own proper glory—and all this has greatly arisen from these fanciful ideas to which I have referred. People have allowed their minds to run on in connection with heaven, and the real meaning of what the enemy is about in all this, the object he has before him, is to make the things down here, which are things of sight and sense, that pertain to this life—his object I say is positively to turn them over, and to give them a sort of exaltation, and thus to level them up; and on the other hand, at the same time, to level the heavenly things down. You never see leveling up, but you see leveling down in proportion. Be assured, as you level up the things of this world, and our life here and all that pertains to it; in proportion as you cry them up, so you correspondingly degrade and bring down the heavenly. And all these ideas about heaven, and pictures of heaven, which are indulged in, even by some in preaching, are simply the outcome of a diseased imagination, which is allowed to run riot in picturing heaven after a material fashion.
What I want you to see, the first thing here, and that which is very comforting to one’s own soul, is, that here we get a picture of heaven, here I find what heaven really is, and what I believe the heart that really longs for it delights in, and that is, it is “Jesus only.” That is heaven, Jesus only. And I will tell you more than that, beloved brethren, the comfort of it to the heart that knows and tastes its preciousness, and that is to hear Him praised, and praised, and praised! That is heaven. You must be conscious of this, that people—and it may be the case with some here tonight—have other thoughts about heaven, I know very well the way people talk about it. They have lost beloved ones on earth, they will meet them in heaven. Their heaven will be a resumption of old ties. All material—that is not the heaven of scripture. I do not mean to say for a moment but that all belonging to Him will be there in supreme blessedness. But do not tell me there is any other object but Jesus only. Mark the jealousy of the Father’s heart to make the Son in that scene supreme. “This is my beloved Son—hear ye him.” The Lord, in His infinite grace, enable us not only to enter into that now, but may we, in spiritual power, let our hearts go out in all its present blessedness.
Some weeks ago a friend staying at my house, had a bird, and she had a thought that this bird long enough in captivity, would not desire to leave, so she opened the cage and let it out in the open air. Well, this bird had wings on it all the time it was in captivity, but could not use them because confined by the cage, but as soon as ever it was out of the cage, and in the open air, it began to use its wings, and did so with effect, and soon flew away, and who would blame the poor creature that it did so? It found out it had wings that would carry it out of the reach of all who would retain it here, and it used its wings. And there is not a Christian here tonight who has not wings: why are we not all using them? Why, because we have got some cage around us. If you are a Christian, you have the Spirit of God, and you cannot have less than the Spirit of God in its fulness. A Christian is a person who, having the forgiveness of sins through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, is sealed with His Spirit. If you say a Christian has the forgiveness of sins, but leave out the fact that he is sealed by the Holy Spirit, you leave out Christianity. He is sealed with the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is the wings, and the Spirit would carry you to heaven now, in affection and faith to the place where Jesus is, and carry out the Father’s desire about Jesus, and make Him everything to you. And that is what heaven is now, and oh, do not say it is a very fanciful idea, and that we cannot be in the enjoyment of that now. Did you never hear of a person being in heart where not in body? A man crosses the Atlantic, or goes to the Antipodes, and leaves wife, and children, relations, and friends behind, and is not that man when he reaches the shores of America or New Zealand, in heart and affection still in England? And if that is true down here, how much more true is it where the Spirit of God carries your heart up to Christ. You have not got the Holy Spirit to carry your heart and affections to your natural relations. But He does carry you in faith, and affection, and heart, to the place where Jesus is; and He makes everything of that blessed One, and “Jesus only” is before your soul, and you love to live there. I remember when I first went to Yorkshire, I was greatly interested in watching the coal mining on such an extensive scale, and I felt the truth very much of what I have been speaking about, when I saw the men go down in the cage to bring up the coal, and when I saw these men drawn up again, knew that they had a home and a circle above that they loved so well—did they not leave their hearts behind them when they went down into the coal mine? And so exactly is it as to what I am bringing before you now. The Spirit of God carries the affections of the new man, and sets them on Him who is the spring and delight of those affections after He has created them. Then you find “Jesus only” fills every eye there; and He only satisfies. But you should continue there, and then you will know what heaven is. And be assured you are not fit to live here till you go there. No one is fit to live in this world till he has crossed over, until he has been lifted up in heart and spirit to be where Christ is. Thus this is a beautiful picture of that place where “Jesus only” is before every one. Oh, that the Lord, in His grace, may give us to know what this is! If we would only use our wings, we might. It is the cage, some of us get, that keeps us from it. Only get the door open, break open the cage, and what a different being you would be. Depend upon it, it is the cage that keeps you. Just remember what the writer of the old hymn felt when he wrote,—
“See how we grovel here below,
fond of these earthly toys,
Our souls, how heavily they go,
to reach eternal joys.”
And there is an immense deal of truth in it; but it is the cage that keeps us down. I never saw a person yet who had enjoyed the smallest taste of it, if he could not gratify it, but was depressed. Do you say you do not know what it is? That is because you are not gratifying your heart and your new affections. Here you are, and you have got new tastes, and you are positively not gratifying them. And that is where so many of us are. They are unsatisfied, and you can see it in their faces. Hence some of them take up the Lord’s work in hope of reaching this satisfaction. But this avails not. They will leave the mark of dissatisfaction on their work.
Now observe, when they leave the mount and come down to the plain, what do they find? A very solemn thing—they find the devil’s work, and his confusion and disorder; affliction, the result of his hatred of God and man, they find a most pitiful and touching case. Here was a poor father with a lunatic child, and he comes to the Lord’s disciples, and beseeches them to free him from this terrible calamity. They had the power to do so. We see in chapter 10 Jesus had given them the power; and they might have said, Oh, yes, we have the power; then the father says, Do free me from this pressure; yet they could not do it. Then observe he comes to the blessed Lord Himself and says, “Lord, have mercy on my son,” &c. And Jesus said—and oh! what a word—in tones so tender, so gracious, and gentle, “Bring him hither to me.” Thank God! what comfort to the heart, “Bring him to me.”
Now I want to apply this. You may not have got a trouble so heavy as that—you may not have a lunatic child, but you have some trouble, the result of the devil’s confusion, and what do the Lord’s people do in these circumstances? it is a sad thing to see the resources the saints turn to when difficulties arise. What a mournful thing to contemplate the ways of God’s people! When pressure or difficulty come upon them they are thoroughly perplexed; they run to this person and that, and what to find? Not any good, just distraction, and just unsatisfaction, and the place where they think most to get help and comfort is often the place where they least find it, and they have to go away vexed and disappointed.
What does Jesus say? “Bring him to me.” Have you been to the Lord with your trouble or your difficulty or your affliction? Have you done like John the Baptist’s disciples? When their master was roughly and rudely murdered they took up the body and buried it, but it was just a lifeless body, and their burying it did not calm their broken hearts, but they went and told Jesus. Do you know what it is to do that? Down here in the plain the devil makes all sorts of confusion, and turns things upside down for us, but the whole question is, Have you been to Jesus about it? He says, “Bring him to Me.” The church may fail, do you think He has failed? Do we say, “Is it not all gone?” I tell you, we are all gone if we say so. The disciples have failed, has He failed? That is just the thing that comes out here, “Bring him to me.” And the father brought his child, and again we get the most touching proof of His sufficiency. Oh, how blessed, and what a comfort to see this! He likes us to bring our troubles to Him. Oh if we could only believe how His sufficiency waits upon our every need! Are you in the most pressing exigency, have you a sick child? “Bring him to me.”
He says, as it were, Have you some trouble on your heart, some pressure on your spirit. “Bring it to me.” I am the One to come to when all else is broken up, I am unchanged. That is the way He gives us to get the comfort. He is not changed in the least, the same in glory that He was down here.
Now notice when this child was healed, the disciples say, and well they might, Why could not we cast him out? And mark—and I would to God we might all learn from this—they come to Jesus; there is something very noble in the disciples in this matter. They had the sense, they could not do it, and they would like to know why? Now, dear brethren, do not you think we ought to say to ourselves, when placed in circumstances like this, how did I get into this strait, how was it I did not see the path through this labyrinth? Why in that difficulty—why, Master, could I not meet it? We have got the power by the Spirit, and He is here to guide into all truth; but some confusion of the devil has tripped us up. Why is this? The disciples say, Why could not we? He never says, Because you have not power. He says, Because of your unbelief; because you have not faith. And then He mentions a grand characteristic of faith.
“If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed,” &c. If you had the smallest confidence in God, that is, if you had faith at all; not strong faith. I think there is a great deal of confusion introduced by the discussion about faith. If you had faith at all you would be able to do things truly impossible to nature. You might say to this mountain, &c., and nothing would be able to stand against you. But He says further, and this is the thing that ought to come home to us, “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” Thus you see it is not only a question of power, as some of our dear friends would make us believe. They tell us it is all a question of standing, and all a question of position; there is nothing of that here. It is prayer and fasting wanted, the moral state is in question. And beloved friends, that is so important for us in meeting the devil’s confusion, and what he works. If you have moral condition, or prayer and fasting, that is dependence, and that you do not minister to nature in its resources, you cut that off, then you refuse nature as an adjunct or help if you fast. I do not for a moment mean to say that fasting is not scriptural, that abstinence from food was not what was meant here. I believe it was; I am perfectly convinced Scripture does speak of this. And I believe also there may be cases in which it might be an exceedingly helpful adjunct to the moral state of some. But there is great force in this looked at morally. There must be not only dependence on God, but there must be self-denial, or what is stronger still, the denial of yourself—the refusal to minister to the resources of nature, or to take in nature at all in this holy work. “This kind goeth not out,” &c. And is not this a solemn thing for us in connection with our difficulties, our church troubles, and our domestic troubles, and our troubles generally here in this world? How our moral state is revealed thereby! Is it not a sad revelation of our moral state that when the devil creates confusion in the church there is no power to meet it, and people are stranded in a moment? While all is going on smoothly they can swim on as easily as possible, but the test comes, and they are nowhere, and why? The moral state—lack of prayer and fasting. May the Lord by His Spirit teach us this. They had the power, but could not use it; and they were not able to use it because of their moral condition.
The third scene is the city. And it is a very interesting point we get at the end of this chapter, and that it should have taken place at Capernaum of all places. It was the city of exalted privileges, the place most of all expressive of great glory. A city is the result of man’s wisdom, and skill, and power. It sets forth man and his glory, all that he is able to collect together.
That made it so solemn for the bride in Canticles to be found in the city. What business had she there? The bride in the city! Was it not right she should lose her veil? She had got into man’s circumstances. There are two things here. First the Lord announces His death. Now I am very anxious we should take this in, because there has been a great deal of gratuitous affirmation about what the disciples knew and expected, and what the saints of old time looked forward to; but what did the Lord say here? He announced His death as a martyr, “The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.” Some people would fain persuade us because they were sorry they entered into the thought of his death as a sacrifice for sin. They were exceeding sorry, a very strong word, but why? I never understood the meaning of this passage till I heard a beloved servant of God, many years ago now, explain it; and he used this expression, he said, “it was the death of the heir.” That is to say, He was the link as the heir to all the earthly promises they were looking for, and all the earthly inheritance, and all their hopes in this world, and His death put an end to all. Oh, but people say, how the disciples looked into His death. It was the very thing they stumbled at. Just as in Luke 24 the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, when the Lord met them, and asked them why they were sad. They spoke to Him of his death, and added, “We trusted it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” His death was the overthrow of everything in their minds.
That is how people try to level up and down. What in reality was in their minds? Earthly things; the very thing that turned them all aside; they were looking for something here: and there are people to-day looking for something here, and it is a thousand times worse for people to-day in the light of Christianity, for those who profess to have been brought into the fulness of the light of the truth to be looking for things on earth, and yet that is what diverts people, and that destroys the principle of walking in the truth of the heavenly things. The disciples were full of earthly things; and therefore the death of the heir, the One that linked them with all the promises down here, with all that their hearts were set on—for Him to be slain was intolerable to them. But all our blessings begin with the Son of man lifted up. They begin in connection with the cross. Hence in John 3, you have the earthly and heavenly things contrasted—when do the latter begin? With the Son of man lifted up. Here there was an instance of what I have referred to, how occupation with earthly things turns us away from the heavenly. They were looking for Christ, the heir to all the premises to David and to Israel to set up the kingdom in this world; and hence, as these hopes were blighted, they were exceeding sorry. And we know as a matter of fact, for the Lord says so, and He say’s it, too, in the Gospel of John, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” &c.
The last point is with Jesus at Capernaum. And I touch on this just to bring out a fact of the deepest blessedness for us, viz., that in connection with the payment of the tribute money. “And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, doth not your master pay tribute?” In other words, Is He a good Jew? Peter replies, Yes. When the Lord comes into the house, He anticipates Peter by saying, “What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?” Peter replies, “Of strangers.” “Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free.” They were the children of the great King of the temple. They were then to exact from strangers and not from children. “Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.” “Lest we should offend them.” What a word this is from Him; see the graciousness of His heart. But again, “Give unto them for me and thee.” How blessed that He should associate His poor disciple with Himself in that act, but that is the kind of association which really takes the heart out of everything here.
For what matters it about things down here in this world if I am associated with Him in that way? You will find the same principle brought out in Psa. 45, viz., that association with Him breaks off other associations—hence He says there (vv. 10, 11), “Hearken, O daughter,” &c. Association with the King breaks off the other—makes you forget the thing nearest to you. It is a hard thing for some people to forget their own people and their father’s house.
Now I commend these three points to you, and may God give us in His grace to know what the joys of heaven are now. What it is to be brought up to the hill-top for we must be brought up there to get them. Jesus brought them up. Just as in Luke 24, they were led out. You must go up for it, not be sitting down here. He brought them up to the mountain, and they found He was everything up there. He was supreme in the Father’s affections, in the Father’s heart; there is no one to Him like His Son. “This is my beloved Son,” and the Father adds, “Hear him.” Listen to His voice, fix your eye on Him, turn from everything else, and let it be “Jesus only.” Will you want your natural tastes there? Oh, no, it will be Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus only!
But down here in this world we need to have prayer and fasting, moral condition to use the power He has given us. And what then shall we covet of the great world and its cities, and all the rest, if nourished with Christ Himself?
Oh, may God, by His Spirit, just imprint these great realities on all our souls, that thus we may rise up and go from this place to live from heaven down here. It is not a sort of materialistic heaven, nor a carnal heaven; but it is a sphere of unspeakable blessedness and delight, where God and the Lamb are the divine source of every joy and love.