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We Are Being Transfigured

by | Feb 19, 2023

Scripture: 2 Peter 1:16-21 and Matthew 17:1-9

Introduction

  • In the Christian church calendar, today is considered Transfiguration Sunday.
  • I think it is appropriate to reflect on what this meant to the disciples and to us.
  • As I’m winding my way through this message, I want you to keep this question in mind.

Why did Jesus take His closest disciples: Peter, James, and John up on the mountain and reveal these things??  Just keep that in mind.

  • Merriam-Webster dictionary defines transfiguration as two things:
  1. a change in form or appearance
  2. an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change
  • What’s another word we like to use for change? REPENT
  • Some of you might get tired of hearing how much our little group here has changed.
  • But it didn’t happen overnight, although looking back it seems like it did.
  • I keep reminding us that we’ve changed because I want to continuously praise God.
  • The changes that have happened here in the lives of this church are dramatic, but wait, there’s more!!
  • The more we accept the work that God is trying to do in us, the more He will do.
  • The more obedient we are individually and as a church, the more He blesses us.
  • God will not intervene and break into our free will unless … what? WE ASK HIM
  •  And God will let us find rock bottom if that’s what it takes for us to submit to His will.
  • One exception is that God will try to reach us, and He will do it through other people.
  • As Christians, each of us is being transfigured – conformed to the likeness of Christ. Here are three points to consider:
    1. What needs to be changed?
    2. How will we be changed?
    3. Who will make the change?

1. What needs to be changed?

  • In Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People by Keith W Drury, he writes:

God has a plan for changing Christians like you and me from what we used to be, into what we’ve become, and finally into everything we could be.

  • Simply put, everything about us must change.
  • We are all sinners and fall short of the grace of God, yet His grace is abundant to fix us.
  • At the very least, because of the price Jesus paid for us, He is committed to accepting us.
  • Drury speaks of this change in terms of both an INSIDE and an OUTSIDE change:

Salvation is both an inside and an outside job. Many of the changes at your conversion were outside changes. For instance, the moment you accepted Christ into your life you were “justified.” In justification God decreed that you were no longer liable for your sins—it was “just-as-if-I’d” never sinned. This didn’t happen in your heart, it happened outside of you at God’s throne in heaven.

  • But what is happening on the inside? Drury says:

God didn’t limit his “great plan of salvation” to outside transactions. He works within too. When you received Christ you were “born again” or “regenerated.” You became a new person inside; the old life passed away and you were reborn inside… things became new.

  • We are all on different steps in our spiritual journeys but God can use any of us to help another.
  • There is a change that must happen in each of and we are a continuous work in process.
  • Consider the change that took place in Jesus on the mountain:

There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.

  • We cannot see it, but that is what is happening to each of us: we are becoming more and more like Jesus as time goes on.
  • This is God’s plan for each of us as long as we don’t resist or get in the way.
  • Friends, that is our biggest enemy when we think we have the answers and take control.
  • The scary part is that God will let us take control but what if we didn’t and let Him drive?

2. How will we be changed?

  • Drury suggests that there are five steps in God’s process of how Christians change:

  1. The Dawning Awareness Stage – God makes us aware of an area needing change. This awareness often comes slowly.

  2. Growing Conviction Stage – The Holy Spirit gradually puts greater pressure on us… both logically and emotionally as He convinces us of our need for change.

  3. Crisis Decision Stage – Somewhere in the process of growing conviction we become convinced that we must change.

  4. “Changing Grace” Stage –  God is in the business of changing people. His “grace is sufficient” to meet all our changing needs. His power is mighty.  Sometimes He works instantaneously and sometimes it is more gradual.

  5. Disciplined Obedience stage – When the change occurs—whether instantaneously or gradual—the change is not complete. God does not make spiritual robots out of us. And He does not ban Satan from further temptations in that area. What He does is free us from the bondage of a specific thought or language pattern, habit, or activity. We are now free to choose God’s way.

  • Once we recognize what needs to be changed, the solution is to turn to God and work with Him.
  • We have to be open to whatever He wants to do; sometimes it may be very unexpected.
  • Think of the story of Jonah the prophet. Where did God want him to go?  Nineveh
  • God wanted Jonah to prophesize to the Ninevites whom Jonah despised.
  • Where did he actually go? Tarshish he boarded a sailing ship going the opposite way.
  • It took some convincing, but in the end, Jonah was obedient – reluctantly
  • And then what happened? Was Jonah effective in his task to reach the Ninevites for God?  YES
  • Isn’t this often the case with us? Aren’t we often headed to Tarshish instead of Nineveh?
  • “We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable” says Peter.
  • Who are the prophets among us today? Other people
  • What makes people that God uses to be His voice, prophets? Is it something they know?
  • No, the people who God uses to say what He wants to say are simply relaying Gods message. They may not even know they are being used in this way.
  • As Peter says: “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
  • The Holy Spirit moves in us and connects us to the Godhead in ways we don’t understand

3. Who will make the change?

  • Who will make the change indeed?? Who do you think?  YOU WILL.
  • Remember, you have free will so God will not be doing the changing – you will.
  • This is a wee bit hard to swallow sometimes when you stop and think about it.
  • Sometimes, its downright painful to accept the things that God asks us to do.
  • But here’s the thing: God will ease your suffering and intervene on your behalf.
  • I started out by posing the question:

Why did Jesus take His closest disciples: Peter, James, and John up on the mountain and reveal these things??

  • MOTIVATION… The changes you need to make are often tough and take a lot of work.
  • You’re gonna need some motivation to do the stuff you need to do to make those changes
  • Jesus showed His glorified self to three witnesses. This would stand up to testimony.
  • Jesus showed how He could freely interact with men long-dead from heaven.
  • Jesus showed how the Father was so pleased with the Son,
  • We know from Moses’ writing that he could not look upon God the Father

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

  • The cloud sufficiently obscured the Father’s image so that He could be in their presence.
  • I ask you now: “If you know the reward waiting for you is success, won’t you be motivated to change?”
  • As Matthew Henry says in his commentary, Jesus was in the midst of the humiliation that He had to suffer while on earth, but He took a brief moment to give the disciples a glimpse of the glory that is waiting for us.
  • I believe that is how God works in this life – I have seen it personally.
  • As you work to be obedient to the call God has placed on your life, He gives you a glimpse of your progress – a glimpse that you are on the right path.
  • What is God calling you to change in your life?
  • What decisions do you need to make? And how will you know you made the right ones?
  • When you are on the right track, God will give you feedback.
  • He will make your path straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

  • Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14:“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”