The Transfiguration #1

The point: Take off the shoes from off our carnal feet and draw near in holy reverence, standing with Peter, James, and John, beholding this display of the majesty and the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Martin quotes a commentator who felt the Transfiguration was so profound that reverent silence was more fitting than exposition, illustrating the awe and majesty of the event.

One very, very careful student of this passage who lived and who left the legacy of his thought in a commentary when commenting upon this passage opened his first sentence of commentary with these words. The Transfiguration is one of those passages in the Savior's earthly history which an expositor would rather pass over in reverent silence.

4:15 - 4:47 Read in full sermon

The point: Take off the shoes from off our carnal feet and draw near in holy reverence, standing with Peter, James, and John, beholding this display of the majesty and the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Transfiguration is compared to Moses' encounter with the burning bush, which both drew and repelled, to convey the glorious yet awesome presence of Christ.

This man, after spending many hours before this passage, found within him a longing to pass over the task of attempting to comment upon the passage, not because he thought it irrelevant, but because he saw such dimensions of the majesty and the glory of Christ that he felt reverent silence was more appropriate than carelessness. If we are able to read, if we are able to be free from sin, then this is a beautiful commentary. In a sense, this passage is like the burning bush of the New Testament. You'll remember when Moses came upon that bush in the wilderness there in Exodus. We are told that t...

4:49 - 5:50 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Remember, the Scriptures are the Word of God in the language, patterns of men. And rather than undermine my faith in Scripture, this only strengthens my faith.

Martin uses his own recent preaching trip to Scotland and England, describing it as both 13 and 15 days depending on the inclusion of travel days, to illustrate how the Gospel writers' 'six days' and 'about eight days' are not contradictions but flexible ways of speaking about time.

He is doing one of two things. He is either using an idiom, which means after about a week, after about the, of a week's, He could have been including the day on which the sayings were spoken, the six intervening days, and the day on which the transfiguration occurred. And we use this kind of juggling of the numbers in speaking of time frames, all of the time. For example, most of you know that back in the month of May, I went abroad to preach in Scotland and in England.

11:20 - 12:03 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin details the 'precise setting' of the Transfiguration, first addressing the 'after six days' timing, reconciling apparent discrepancies with Luke's 'about eight days.' He…

Martin uses the analogy of a man seeking increasing levels of solitude (home, study, remote cabin) to explain the emphasis on Jesus going 'apart by themselves' into a 'high mountain' for true seclusion.

We've noticed in the Gospel of Mark there are times when it says Jesus would go aside, with His disciples, but no sooner does He speak to them, but we found Him turning and speaking to the multitudes. It wasn't a real retreat. There was only semi-privacy. If I may illustrate it this way, a man may leave his place of work and say, oh, I want some time alone, and he goes home to his own home, and there in the privacy of his home, he's within relatively close proximity to his wife and to his children.

23:43 - 24:16 Read in full sermon