Sunday Teaching & Lessons: ‘The Transfiguration’…

NOTE

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Written submission on the Transfiguration will be made over the next 6-weeks, this particular journal being updated and frontloaded as work is produced on each consecutive Sunday. Work on this area will continue, therefore, and not be fully complete until mid-July.

On completion, ‘Sunday Teaching & Lessons’ will not resume, again, until the late autumn.

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TRANSFIGURATION

And, behold, there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias; who appeared in glory, and spoke of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9: 30, 31)

• (1) Sunday, 14 June 2009

Teaching from Scotland

THE Transfiguration of Jesus was intended to teach clearly the doctrine of His supreme divinity. This is the inference which the Apostle Peter made: “We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

God in human nature.

I direct your attention to the vast importance of this doctrine. I regard it not merely as a most amazing truth – that the very Being who spoke all things into existence has walked in human nature on this earth. The doctrine forms the pledge of our eternal safety. If the God who made the heavens is on our side, who shall be against us? He created this vast universe and, if He is resolved to save, He is without doubt able to destroy all our spiritual foes. He is able to accomplish all the purposes of His grace, to carry forward to perfection His glorious work and present the redeemed creation perfect in the view of all the universe.

Teachings for Sunday, 14 June - Sunday, 12 July 2009 (inc) are given from the Gospel according to St. Luke.

Great care was therefore taken that this preliminary truth should be fully established. It was not enough that the prophets had spoken in exalted terms of the surpassing glories of a coming age, when the Son of God should become a sojourner in this world. It was not enough that a star from heaven should announce His coming, and that the hosts of heaven should proclaim His birth on the plains of Bethlehem, in songs of praise. Men were apt to forget, when they beheld a lowly son of Adam, that they beheld that glorious Being whom unnumbered angels adored in heaven; even His disciples did not understand the dignity of their Master. He therefore not merely put forth His omnipotent power continually, displaying His unsearchable wisdom, manifesting the most unheard-of benevolence. To impress the truth indelibly on their minds and make it plain to all future generations, He took with Him three chosen disciples and, instead of His glory merely shining in rays through the chinks of that covering of flesh with which He was clothed, the covering itself was removed and His whole glory blazed forth as it does from that glorious throne on which He shall sit throughout eternal ages.

Rather than attempt to describe the glory of this scene, we must learn lessons from it. The inspired writer has left us nothing to do but wonder and adore. He has set before us the Redeemer surrounded, on a lofty mountain, by the representatives of both worlds – the Church on earth and in heaven – engaged in deep conversation on the most important event of all time. Men shall never understand what is meant by this glorious Transfiguration till their spirits are brought into God’s presence, where they shall see His majesty and all His bright spirits face to face – knowing as they are known.

Still, there are many important truths to be learned from this wonderful display of glory. Let us suppose, for example, as we are apt to do, that this was the most astonishing event in the Saviour’s history on earth. It was far more astonishing that His glory should have been obscured so long – that it should have been obscured at all. For 4000 years before He came into our world, He had been arrayed in the same majesty, behind the scene which separated the eternal world from human view. From eternal ages, before the foundations of earth were laid, He had been the same glorious Being. And during all the eternity to come, He will be the object of all worship, the glorious Ruler of the universe.

 

• (2) Sunday, 21 June 2009 

A glimpse into heaven.

THE APPEARENCE of Moses and Elias, and their conversation, teach us important lessons suited to our present circumstances. Moses and Elias, then glorified spirits, stood before the disciples in their distinct personalities. In reflecting on eternity, one is apt to wonder if all the souls of men in heaven will recognise each other amid the mighty throng of the angels; whether those who have gone down to the regions of despair will recognise, among the vast crowd, their companions in wickedness; whether exalted friendships will endure in heaven; whether deep-rooted dislike will continue to boil and fill the lost with eternal wretchedness.

Now the glimpse into the invisible world which this opening (and other) passages of Scripture give us proves that all this will be the case. Although we cannot understand how spirits stand apart from each other with marks of individuality, we know that all angels are distinguishable; so Michael, for instance, is not confounded with Gabriel. And when the last trumpet shall sound, Christ will descend with a whole crowd of spirits all distinct, all hasting to join the bodies arising from the earth. Here on Mount Tabor we behold two men, after hundreds of years mingling with the spirits in heaven, now standing with all their marks of identity, as distinct as when previously they sojourned on earth. Therefore, when any of your friends go into the eternal world, do not think they are lost in the crowd of spirits or that, when your spirit enters eternity, you will fail to recognise those whom you knew on earth and be recognised by them. That spirit which you imagine to be invisible will have some distinct marks of identity which spirits can discern; and you and I and all men will find ourselves distinct objects of attention in heaven or in hell.

This is not merely curious speculation; it is fitted powerfully to stimulate to duty and deter from sin. There is nothing, for example, sweeter on earth than friendship; and though all the dear ties of this life must be broken by the ruthless hand of death, yet if we are united by the more sacred tie of Christianity, we shall be joined again by a tie which shall never be dissolved, when we reach the glorious paradise of God. There we shall be purified and made more glorious than eye has seen or ear heard or has entered into the heart of man to conceive. In heaven there will be the welcome of friends, the rapturous meeting with those glorious men who stand prominent among the saints – which no grief shall cloud, no pain interrupt, no death destroy. But there will also be the fearful meeting of sinners who taught each other to sin; their ruined souls will haunt each other with eternal terror. Let sinners in Zion be afraid; let trembling seize the hypocrites.

 

• (3) Sunday, 28 June 2009 

The appearance of Moses and Elias

Why did two glorified spirits come down to meet the Saviour on this mountain? It was to indicate the deep interest of heaven in what was soon to take place on Calvary, and to rebuke the awful indifference which reigned in Judea. The merchant was continuing his trade, the labourer his toil; the high priest arrayed in his glorious garments was continuing to slay the sacrifices, to carry their blood within the veil, ignorant that the great sacrifice had come and that all those emblems were about to vanish away for ever. Even the disciples who had been left at the base of the mountain had not penetrated the meaning of these events, while those who stood in the presence of the heavenly visitors only gazed with wonder and spoke what they did not understand.

Moses and Elias came down to manifest the deep interest which heaven felt in an event now imminent, for which all the saints had longed, in the faith of which they had died, and towards which their whole gaze was still directed. Nothing is more remarkable than the striking contrast between the displays of feeling on earth and in heaven. Men have always been steeped in profound security before the plans of God, before the affairs of heaven above and of hell beneath, and even those events in the spiritual world which have taken place before their eyes. Thus angels and spirits of men in the regions of blessedness, beyond the possibility of change, must come down to awaken them from their lethargy, to consider the glories of salvation.

But why did all the spirits in heaven not come down to meet the Saviour on this mountain? Or if only a deputation must be sent, why did Abraham, the friend of God, not come? Or Joshua, who led the people into the promised land? Or Caleb, who followed God fully? Or Samuel, for whom all Israel mourned when he died? Or David, the man after God’s own heart, whose harp had long been resounded the praises of the Messiah? Or Isaiah, who described in such glowing terms the glories of the coming age? Or Jeremiah, who longed that the transgressions of Judah might cease and that the glory of the latter day might shed its radiance on desolate Jerusalem?

Very little consideration is necessary to convince us that Moses and Elias, though in some respects less distinguished than many of the rest, stood far above them by their exalted offices. The Old Testament is divided into two parts: the Law and the Prophets. “The law and the prophets were until John; from this time the kingdom of God is preached.” That whole dispensation, with all that was done and said under it, may therefore be ranked under these two heads; while the New Testament is ranked under one – the everlasting gospel revealed in all its clearness to every nation and kindred and tongue and people by Jesus Christ and His Apostles. Now on Mount Tabor we have representatives of all the three. The whole line of priests and ceremonies may be traced up to Moses, the whole train of prophets to Elias; while in Christ Jesus we have the beginning and the ending of the plan of divine love. We have therefore by far the most significant group that could possibly have assembled, the most fitted to reflect light on the pages of inspired Scripture.

 

• (4) Sunday, 05 July 2009 

Their conversation.

It must be highly significant to ponder their subject, for all the priests were represented there in the person of Moses, all the prophets in the person of Elias, all the Apostles in the person of their great Master. It was therefore a full muster of the Church of God in all its parts, and under both dispensations. What is the subject of their discourse? “They spake of [Christ’s] decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem”.

From this we are to learn the important lesson, that God’s object, from the foundation of the world, has been to set forth the atonement of Jesus Christ. As if to confute all those blind high priests, who were continually offering sacrifices whose meaning they could not understand – as if to cover with eternal confusion all those foolish interpreters who have laboured so long to darken the counsel of God and heap up useless learning to prove that the Jewish ritual had no reference to Christ’s atonement – Moses himself was brought down from heaven after two thousand years and, from a mountain in Judea, pointing to the cross of Christ as what explains all the strange ceremonies, the apparent enigmas, of his mysterious law. As if to confound all those foolish students of sacred prophecy who then laboured to darken  counsel by words without knowledge – and who, in after ages, have used their cumbrous erudition to rob man of his only hope by claiming that the prophets of God did not speak of an atonement – we find Elias coming down from his eternal rest to declare that the cross formed on earth the subject of all his preaching and was now in heaven the foundation of his joy.

And, as if to preclude the possibility of those awful perversions of the false seducers who should afterwards arise – even denying the Lord that brought them and endeavouring to banish out of the world the recollection of that death by which alone men can be saved – we have the Saviour openly disowning such, and setting forth the decease which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem as the great event in His history on earth, fitted to inspire sinners with courage and joy.

The great lesson which we are to learn from the text is that the death of Christ is what gives meaning to the whole Old Testament dispensation, to all the predictions of the prophets; especially on this day we should bear it in mind. The economy of Moses was evidently only a full development of the promise made to Abraham. Let everyone consider the temple at Jerusalem, its priests, its washings, its sacrifices, the blood which was constantly shed, without which no one could approach God in peace. Then let him compare them with the full disclosure made of Christ under the New Testament and he will see that they accord exactly with the statement that the Apostles spoke “none other things than those which … Moses did say should come, that Christ should suffer” to secure salvation for man.

We cannot imagine what idea anyone can have of God who could dream for an instant that it was otherwise. What advantage could there have been in slaying so many thousands of innocent creatures? They were God’s property, and it would have only been an aggravation of man’s offence to slay them if this had not been appointed to direct the thoughts of the Jews forward to the sacrifice of Christ. Besides, what favour could have been shown to the Children of Israel in bringing them into Egyptian bondage, in detaining them for so many years in the wilderness of Arabia, in loading them with a burden of ceremonies which they were almost unable to bear, and forcing them to slay their flocks in sacrifice, unless an important meaning was conveyed which was hidden from the inhabitants of other lands – unless all this was fitted to point to the atonement which would blot out their sins, and secure for them everlasting habitations? When viewed in this light, all is consistent, all is glorious; otherwise it is an unmeaning riddle.

Let no one ask why God permitted so much time to elapse before the great Redeemer came. It taught men, by its awful consequences, how evil and how bitter sin was. It exercised the faith of the ancient saints in the truth of God’s promise, and it was consistent with other works of the Almighty. When He created the world, darkness brooded at first over the face of the deep, then there was the dim twilight and, last of all, He placed the sun in the heavens. So, from the time of the Fall, God had thoughts of love towards men and never left them without a witness of this. He set up a school in Judea, and by pictures and symbols He trained up a family for heaven – making the light which first glimmered in paradise gradually become brighter and the truth clearer, until at last the Sun of righteousness arose, with healing in his wings. And, as Noah opened the window of the ark, sent out first one messenger, then another and at last came forth himself on the surface of the earth, which has just emerged from the waters of the deluge – so Christ sent messenger after messenger, and set up representation after representation, until He himself shook all nations and suddenly came to His temple.

 

Dedication:

• “The Voice”

 

• (5) Sunday, 12 July 2009

Truth brought to our senses.

The object of the whole dispensation of Moses was to set the truths of Christianity before the human mind through the senses. It is impossible to understand it unless we have this in view. And we are not to suppose that it cannot now contribute to our instruction. The veil of the temple, with its cherubims, still exhibits the curious workmanship of Israel’s God. The pictures used in the Jewish school still form a great gallery of figures of strange device, which every Christian would do well to ponder with solemn thought. And, as he casts his eyes around them, he may see all the articles of his creed portrayed. The long line of priests ended in Christ, the great High Priest in ministry and of the Kingdom; the long line of sacrifices ended in Christ, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”.

The whole race of prophets, represented by Elias, equally pointed to the decease which Christ accomplished at Jerusalem. You are only reminded how one declares that He was to be wounded for man’s transgressions and bruised for his iniquities, and another that the Messiah was to be cut off, but not for Himself. The Old Testament not merely points forward to Christ Jesus as a dying Saviour, but exhausts every figure whereby His glory may be illustrated. “Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips: therefore God hath blessed Thee for ever. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. All Thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made Thee glad. Kings’ daughters were among Thy honourable women: upon Thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.” “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? That this is glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength?”

Every object in the world is called in to illustrate the glory of the coming Saviour. The whole gorgeousness of eastern imagery is employed to sound His praise. The kings of the earth and its chief princes are set forth as nothing in comparison with Him. The glorious sun which enlightens all the world, wine that gladdens the heart of man, bread that strengthens him, the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, rivers of water in a dry and arid place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land – these are some of the figures which Old Testament prophets used to point out the Saviour of the world. His name is said to be like ointment poured forth; He is said to be as glorious as the curtains of Solomon, comely as Jerusalem, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense and all the powders of the merchant; He is declared to be the chiefest amongst ten thousand and altogether lovely.

The man who can read the writings of all the prophets without seeing Jesus Christ set forth in all His glory – dying, rising, ascending as the Saviour of sinners – must be wilfully blind, for this truth was spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began. They all enquired and searched diligently, “searching what, and what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow”.

I suppose it is unnecessary to dwell on the truth that the decease which Christ accomplished at Jerusalem was His objective in coming to this earth. It had been recorded that, without shedding blood of infinite value, there could be no remission of sin; and Christ assumed our nature that He might have somewhat to offer. If we could suppose He did not die, Moses and Elias and all the redeemed must have been driven out of heaven, for they had entered it only because of the future propitiation, in which they all believed. They entered the inheritance before the price was paid, for God had decreed that it would be sufficient to satisfy every claim.

The Old Testament dispensation was about to vanish away, and types and prophets were no longer necessary, now that the age of full revelation had begun to dawn. The Saviour announces the grand truth: as Moses had lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man was to be lifted up, that whosoever believed on Him might not perish but have everlasting life.

 

TO remember the decease which Christ accomplished at Jerusalem,  think of the eternal God in human nature enduring the penalty of His own violated law; the countless multitudes to be saved from eternal misery and crowned with endless glory; the myriads to be punished for ever for despising it; the intense interest it excited among angels and the spirits of just men made perfect when it did happen, and indeed among all the spirits of darkness; the innumerable multitudes that have in all ages spread the glory of it amidst all ranks of men; the myriads of communion tables, specifically, that have been spread in honour of it; and the certainty that it will be celebrated till the end of time. All these considerations point it out as the most amazing event in the whole universe.

It should fill us all with holy joy and praise to recollect this. If anyone feels no interest in this death, does not daily give thanks to God because it took place, he must look forward to a fearful reckoning on the day of judgement. To be without holiness and stand exposed to the eternal indignation of God is fearful, but to feel no interest in the means by which these awful evils may be averted marks out a hardened reprobate. To be exposed to all the storms of heaven is lamentable, but to turn obstinately away from a refuge indicates daring infatuation. To be blind is a fearful calamity, but if we obstinately shut our eyes against the light of everlasting truth, we deserve to stumble and fall and be snared and taken. To be enemies of God in our minds and by wicked works, and hasting on to eternal ruin, is fearful. But when Christ comes down, endures the punishment of sinners, and sets before us a full and free redemption; when he sends messengers to speak to us of the decease which He accomplished at Jerusalem and warn, exhort, implore us to be reconciled to God – then to turn away those messengers, and to refuse those warnings, is to go on the highway to everlasting ruin.

There is only one fountain in the universe in which a sinner can wash; there is only one gate by which to enter the realms of glory. Omnipotence itself cannot save the soul if one turns stubbornly away from that fountain, or if a poor deluded sinner flees away from the gate.

Be the wise merchant who esteems the great Redeemer as this pearl of great price. Act in the world as the saints in heaven, rejoicing in a crucified and risen Saviour. Christ has done all, suffered all, taken all your infirmities, finished the great work of redemption for you. Let Him be the joy and the rejoicing of your hearts.

If He is your Shepherd, what can you want? If He is the master, to whom the universe belongs, shall He not make your table abundant, your cup of prosperity run over? You are prone to err; He is the way to heaven. You are prone to doubt; He is the truth. You are prone to faint and die; He is the life, the strength, the everlasting joy of all who trust in Him. He died once; He lives and reigns, for the keys of hell and of death are His; pardon, peace, all blessings are at His command. He has accomplished a glorious decease; many saints are enjoying its blessed fruits in heaven.

Fix your eyes on Calvary and sincerely implore the forgiveness and grace of the eternal God, your place of defence shall be the munition of rocks; you shall then see the King in His beauty and the land that is afar off.

To God be the Glory.

 

The Lord taught us to pray together, saying:

THE LORD’S PRAYER

OUR Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.

 

Amen.

[St Matthew 6:9-13]

 

The writer was formerly commissioned as a Boys Brigade Officer by the Reverend Robert Lynn, St. Leonard’s Parish Church, Ayr.

The Boys Brigade is a commissioned body and authority whose aim is to “advance the Kingdom of Christ”.

The Boys’ Brigade was founded in Glasgow on 4th October 1883 by Sir William Alexander Smith.