Astounded at the greatness (2)
Transfiguration is about astonishment. It is about amazement. It is about awe. It’s something that might be hard to capture in worship in your overly familiar sanctuary with the people you know so well. So, how do we capture this sense in our weekly expression of worship? We sing it. And we see it. Art is probably the best way to evoke a sense of awe.
Beyond the Veil: Understanding the Transfiguration
Bible Passage: Lk 9:28–45
1. Divine Display of Glory
2. Disciples' Divine Encounter
3. Dawn in the Valley
4. Direction to the Cross
This was one of the great crises in the life of Christ. Appropriately it is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels (see the notes on Matt. 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8).
Luke says it was about eight days after these sayings. Matthew and Mark say “after six days.” Both expressions mean “a week later.”
Once more, for the fifth time, Luke mentions Jesus as praying (cf. v. 18). He does not use the word “transfigured” (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2), but instead describes the changed appearance of Christ—As he was praying, the fashion of his countenance was altered (v. 29).
Luke’s most important contribution to this incident is found in verses 31 and 32. He says that Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and spake of his decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The word decease is exodos in the Greek, an “exodus” or “going out.” Bengel writes: “The subject was a great one: the term describing it a very weighty one, wherein are contained the Passion, Cross, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.”
Meyer says that they “were weighed down with sleep (drowsy); as they nevertheless remained awake, were not actually asleep, they saw.” He adds that the verb “is not to be explained as it usually is, as ‘after they became awake,’ but as when, however, they had thoroughly awakened.”
Perhaps this explanation by Meyer is as near as we can come to the correct meaning. Plummer leaves the matter uncertain.
Before He cried He was answered, and while He was yet speaking He was heard. Blessed interruption to prayer this! Thanks to God, transfiguring manifestations are not quite strangers here. Ofttimes in the deepest depths, out of groanings which cannot be uttered, God’s dear children are suddenly transported to a kind of heaven upon earth, and their soul is made as the chariots of Amminadab. Their prayers fetch down such light, strength, holy gladness, as make their face to shine, putting a kind of celestial radiance upon it (2 Co 3:18, with Ex 34:29–35).
His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white them” (Mk 9:3). The light, then, it would seem, shone not upon Him from without, but out of Him from within; He was all irradiated, was in one blaze of celestial glory. What a contrast to that “visage more marred than men, and His form than the sons of men!” (Is 52:14).
. Moses represented “the law,” Elijah “the prophets,” and both together the whole testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures, and the Old Testament saints, to Christ; now not borne in a book, but by living men, not to a coming, but a come Messiah, visibly, for they “appeared,” and audibly, for they “spake.”
spake—“were speaking.”
of his decease—“departure”; beautiful euphemism (softened term) for death, which Peter, who witnessed the scene, uses to express his own expected death, and the use of which single term seems to have recalled the whole by a sudden rush of recollection, and occasioned that delightful allusion to this scene which we find in 2 Pe 1:15–18.
The emphasis lies on “saw,” qualifying them to become “eye-witnesses of His majesty
so, certainly, the most commentators: but if we translate literally, it should be “but having kept awake” [MEYER, ALFORD]. Perhaps “having roused themselves up” [OLSHAUSEN] may come near enough to the literal sense; but from the word used we can gather no more than that they shook off their drowsiness. It was night, and the Lord seems to have spent the whole night on the mountain (Lu 9:37).
