The Mountain of Transfiguration
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Read Matthew 17:1-13
The Setting
The Setting
Just as was the case with the mountain of temptation, we notice that this mountain scene appears in close connection with one of Matthew’s key structural markers: from that time on (Mt 16:21). The previous marker (in Mt 4:17) came just after the mountain of temptation and marked the start of Jesus Galilean ministry. The next marker in Matthew 16:21 comes just before the scene on the mountain of transfiguration and marks the shift in focus to Jerusalem and the Lord’s passion. So, in passing, we observe Matthew’s literary use of mountains as structural dividers for his narrative.
However, we need to back up a little further in the narrative to understand the setting for the transfiguration scene.
In Matthew 16:16, we have Peter’s glorious declaration, in answer to the Lord’s question, “Who do you say I am?” (Mt 16:15).
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Following that, we have the Lord commanding secrecy about his Messiahship (Mt 16:20).
20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Then, a prediction by Jesus of his death (Mt 16:21).
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
And finally, a challenge to that prediction and a correction from the Lord Jesus (Mt 16:22-23).
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
We will notice that our study passage has precisely the same structure of:
glorious declaration (Mt 17:5)
command to secrecy (Mt 17:9)
prediction of death (Mt 17:9, 12)
challenge and correction (Mt 17:10-12)
In each case, the declaration of Jesus’ sonship and Messiahship is central, but the true understanding of that Messiahship will not conform to the understanding upheld by popular culture. Hence, the need for secrecy and correction as God’s will for his Son, the Messiah, to suffer is unfolded.
The Structure
The Structure
Three times, in our passage, Matthew says “behold” (Mt 17:3, 5). These prompts cause us to see (and hear):
Moses and Elijah
The bright cloud
The voice from the cloud
The climax is the voice from the cloud and what it declares. It’s a glorious declaration, which is of central importance to the meaning of the passage: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Mt 17:5).
The wording of the declaration (aside from the last phrase) is identical to what Matthew records the voice from heaven saying at Jesus’ baptism (Mt 3:17). Precisely the same considerations regarding Jesus’ sonship, which we looked at in our study of the temptation narrative, apply here in Matthew 17. Jesus is still standing in the place of the nation of Israel, succeeding where they failed. The presence and voice of God validate his sonship.
The theological links to Sinai are even more obvious in Matthew 17 and help us to understand the salvation-historical importance of our passage. Let’s remind ourselves of the Sinai accounts to give context to our passage.
Read Exodus 19:3-6, 16-20; 20:18-20; 24:1-11, 15-18.
There are numerous similarities with our passage before even coming to Jesus’ transfiguration:
Matthew very deliberately records that it was “after six days” (Mt 17:1) that Jesus led them up the mountain. And in Exodus 24:16, we read that the cloud covered the mountain for six days before the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud.
Moses is instructed to bring three individuals up the mountain with him - Aaron and his sons (Ex 24:1). Similarly, Jesus selects three men to accompany him up the mountain - Peter, James and John (Mt 17:1).
Matthew records that a bright cloud covered them (Mt 17:5) and his emphasis seems designed to evoke memories of the cloud which engulfed Sinai. To the Israelites, it looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain (Ex 24:17).
The declaration of Matthew 17:5 comes from the cloud and, in just the same way, the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud (Ex 24:16).
The disciples’ response to the voice is to fall facedown, terrified (Mt 17:6). Just the same response is recorded of the Israelite camp - they trembled with fear (Ex 20:18).
Moses comforted Israel with similar words to those used by the Lord Jesus: Do not be afraid (Mt 17:7; Ex 20:20).
What we have in Exodus 24 is a covenant ratification ceremony, which is nothing short of awesome! The favoured three (plus the seventy elders) who ascended Mount Sinai that day seem to have sneaked a glimpse at the very throne of Almighty God - at least they saw the setting of the base of it, a pavement of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky!
God had become present (in the cloud) and was revealing himself to Israel (in the voice). And the wonder of it all is that they did not die! Indeed, they saw God, and they ate and drank (Ex 24:11)!
Now, on the mount of transfiguration, the message is once again that God will be present with and will make his name known to a people on the earth - a people who will see him and eat and drink with him! He is, once again, going to enter into a covenant with a community who will come to him through the person of his Son.
That’s the significance of this validation of Jesus’ sonship for salvation history! It cannot be overstated!
And, for the disciples, that validation was never more necessary than at this moment, because what was about to happen in Jerusalem would challenge every concept they had of their expected Messiah.
Predictions of Jesus’ death straddle the divine declaration of his sonship (Mt 16:21; 17:12). For the Son of God, the way led inevitably to Calvary, but the disciples were to be in no doubt that all of this was intentional and that Jesus was no less the Son of God’s love. Rather, the fact that he had chosen the way of the cross goes to the heart of what it means to be the Son of God and to the Father’s expressed love for him.
On the mount of transfiguration, those favoured three men saw the Son of God crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, i.e. I believe this was a glimpse of the glory and honour Jesus would receive in resurrection. However, I think they also saw the Son of God crowned with glory and honour in preparation for the suffering of death, because that is what he had set his mind on, in subjection to the will of his Father.
There has never been a more obedient Son of God; he was transcendent in his obedience and, therefore, transcendent in the glory which is his as a consequence of his obedience. And, since he learned obedience through the things that he suffered, he was never more obedient than when he humbled himself to death, even the death of the cross. Consequently, I believe he was transcendent in his glory on Mount Calvary too! Don’t for a minute think that God turned his face away from the sight of his Son, at Calvary; he did not! There was never anything displeasing about Christ. God forsook his Son on the cross because of our sin; he turned his face away from the sight of our sin, which his Son bore in his body on the tree. The Son of God was ever his beloved, the one who pleased him well!
The setting of the glorious declaration from the cloud, the prediction of Jesus’ death, takes us to the tension at the very heart of God’s covenant promise to be present with his people. Will God accept his people no matter what they do? What about his holiness! Will he then give up on his people and his promise? What about his faithfulness! Everyone tends to come down on one side or another: the side of law or the side of love; moralism or relativism. But God, in his wisdom, finds a solution which protects his holiness and preserves his faithfulness. And that solution is the humble, obedient Son of God, who will taste death for us! No wonder we find him on a mountain crowned with glory, his sonship validated, because this is indeed “good news”!
Listen to Him
Listen to Him
The Sinai typology doesn’t end there, though, because we’ve yet to say anything about the transfiguration itself. One important detail which is unique to Matthew’s record is that Jesus face shone like the sun! And, in this detail, we’re touching upon what seems to be an important sub-theme in Matthew’s gospel, namely the link between Jesus and Moses. Let’s make that link clear by reading Exodus 34:29-32.
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.
It seems beyond doubt that Matthew wishes his readers to pick up the allusions to Sinai and to see the resemblance between Moses and the Lord. Moses, of course, is even present at the transfiguration, as if to underscore the point. He is present with Elijah, both of whom had the experience of meeting with God on top of Mount Sinai.
As he pleaded for the Presence of God to remain with Israel, Moses asked the Lord, “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Ex 33:16). Shortly thereafter, God caused all his goodness to pass in front of Moses, hiding him in the cleft of the rock and allowing him just to see his back, as he passed by. Moses was certainly distinguished by the experience. His time in the presence of God had caused his face to change, to become radiant, and he descended the mountain into the camp without even realising that God had distinguished him in this way. God was validating the testimony of his servant, his prophet, distinguishing him in the eyes of his people.
And Matthew wants us to see Jesus, the divine Son of God, as the one whom God distinguished on the mountain of transfiguration in a similar way. What we have in the words “listen to him” is an allusion to Deuteronomy 18.
15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”
17 The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him.
Deuteronomy 18:15 concerns God's promise to raise up a prophet like and as a successor to Moses to communicate his divine will to his chosen people. The promise recalls God's appearance to Israel at Sinai when they first entered the wilderness and remembers that it was the people who demanded that Moses speak to them in the place of God, lest they die.
The promise of a successor is given in the context of a warning to the people entering Canaan, when seeking revelation of God's will, not to listen to the sorcerers or diviners of the nations they would dispossess. Rather, they must listen to the prophet whom the Lord raises up in Moses' place.
How were Israel to know whether or not a prophet had been raised up by the Lord? Moses, of course, was a prophet of unique stature and his testimony was validated by the glow of his face every time he left the presence of God (cf Nu 12:6-8), after speaking with God face to face.
“LISTEN TO HIM!” (Mt 17:5) is an allusion to Deuteronomy 18:15. Jesus is also a prophet of unique stature! In echoing the words "listen to him" in connection with his Son, God's voice from the cloud in conjunction with the transfiguration of Jesus’ face authenticates and validates the unique testimony of the divine Son of God. He is the promised Prophet; he is the new and better Moses. From now on, we must listen to him!
On the mountain of temptation, we saw Jesus identified with the people of God coming into covenant relationship with God as Father. Here we see Jesus in the position of Moses - the mediator of that covenant. He is not so much presented as Law-giver here on the mountain of transfiguration; that role is presented much more clearly on the mountain of teaching. Here, he is the one who is qualified to convey divine revelation, the one who speaks for and on behalf of God. On the mountain of temptation, we acknowledged him to be transcendent in his obedience. Here on the mountain of transfiguration, he is still transcendent in his obedience, but that is coupled with transcendence of glory.
This is my Son
This is my Son
And as Matthew continues to elevate the Son of God, with his high mountain Christology and, in addition, as we come to appreciate him in a mediatorial role, we also want to notice another OT allusion which expands our understanding of Jesus’ sonship.
We have already seen how the OT presents God as father of Israel in his care for his covenant people. However, as an extension of that covenant and an individualisation of it, the OT speaks of God’s fatherhood in the special maintenance of a relationship between God and Israel’s king - David's successors to the throne (and ultimately the Messianic King). Let’s take a look at this in 2 Samuel 7:13-14.
13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands.
This is what’s known as the Davidic Covenant. In answer to David's desire to build a permanent house for the LORD, God promises to establish David's house and to establish the throne of his kingdom forever. David himself will not be the one to build the house of God, but God will raise up a successor, his own flesh and blood, to succeed David and to build the temple of the LORD. Then God promises to be Father to that king (i.e. he promises to be fatherly, disciplining and loving the king as a father loves his son); likewise, the king will be God's own son. Whilst the promise has immediate application to Solomon, it also points beyond him to the Messiah. Indeed, this is seen as the original source of Israel’s concept of the Messiah.
Now, back to our passage. The words from the cloud, "This is my Son", are seen as an allusion to Psalm 2:7, where the Psalmist says:
7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:
He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
In Psalm 2, we again see the link between sonship and kingship. Psalm 2 is a psalm celebrating the ascension of Israel’s king to the throne of David; but the Psalm has clear Messianic overtones. If the declaration from the cloud is seen as an allusion to Psalm 2, then the events of the mountain of transfiguration can be viewed as an enthronement ceremony. This Son of God is not only fulfilling the requirements of humble, obedient sonship in place of the people of Israel, he is also the royal son, who will reign on David’s throne in answer to the ancient covenant.
In his address to the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, Paul explained that Ps 2:7 was fulfilled at the raising of Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is the beginning of Jesus' kingly reign; that is the point at which Christ ascended the throne and God decreed “You are my Son”.
The transfiguration, then, in so much as it recognises Christ’s kingship may be seen as pointing forward to the resurrection; what the disciples see [his majesty] and what they hear [the Lord’s decree proclaimed] are a brief glimpse of the coming enthronement of the King in the glorious power of his resurrection.
And the vision pointed forward beyond even the resurrection because, although Christ ascended to the throne in the power of his resurrection even today the extent of his kingship has not been fully revealed. So often, when Matthew deals with themes of the king and the kingdom, we discern a tension between things which are already true and at the very same time are also not yet. We see that tension in the disciples’ questions concerning the coming of Elijah. They beheld Christ crowned as King, yet were reminded of events which must take place first. Evidently, they were thinking of Malachi's prophecy (in Mal 4:4-6):
4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
5 “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
The prophecy concerns events that will happen prior to the day of the Lord. In the OT, the day of the Lord is a special season of God's wrath and, in particular, is associated with the final judgment reserved for the end of the age.
In the NT, the day of the Lord is seen to commence with the second coming of the Lord Jesus to the earth in judgment and to begin his 1000 year reign on the earth. It is clear that the Scribes understood Elijah to play an important role in restoring the hearts of God's people prior to the day of the Lord. Indeed, Moses and Elijah are both mentioned in Malachi’s prophecy, which has led many to conclude that Moses and Elijah may be the two witnesses of Revelation 11:3.
28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
The experience on the mountain of transfiguration seems to be an immediate answer to the Lord’s promise in the verse immediately preceding our passage (Mt 16:28). The three disciples saw a vision of the day of the Lord - they saw the King coming into his kingdom at the end of the age and they were struggling to reconcile this with their expectations about Elijah (and no doubt also with the Lord’s prediction concerning his death).
Jesus answer to their question (in Mt 17:11) once again reveals the tension: Elijah would come (not yet); but Elijah had already come (by which he referred to John the Baptist). In just the same way, the disciples would see the coming King in the “already-ness” of his power after his resurrection from the dead, but the full extent of his kingly reign would not be manifested until the end of the age.
For the three, then, the transfiguration had been a foretaste, not just of the resurrection, but of Christ’s coming into his millennial kingdom at the end of the age.
Application
Application
We could summarise the meaning of Matthew 17:1-13 as follows: in the transfiguration, Jesus, the promised Messiah and beloved Son of God is authenticated by his Father. He will accomplish all that the Father requires of him, choosing the route of humble obedience even though it will lead to death on a cross. For this, his Father has and will glorify him.
Once again the passage is thoroughly Christological and the primary application is faith in the the person and work of Christ.
Listen to Him
Listen to Him
The desired response of faith must start with us opening our ears. In our passage, the pattern of seeing and hearing is finally reversed to hearing then seeing!
The disciples see the transfigured Christ and hear him conversing with Moses and Elijah. Next, they see the cloud and hear the voice from the cloud. The voice from the cloud instructs them to listen to the Lord. The order is then reversed: they hear him and his words of comfort, then they see him (and only him)!
For us, the seeing comes later and we need to be careful to live by faith, not by sight. One day, when he appears, we will be like him for we will see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2). For now, we need to learn to listen to his voice.
He is the uniquely qualified conveyor of divine revelation. In these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son (Heb 1:1). Not even Moses saw the face of God, but Jesus has. No wonder his face shone like the sun; he is God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side and who has made the Father known to us!
To what or whom are we listening to discern God’s will for our lives? If we want to prosper in the land, we need to have ears tuned to the voice of Son of God.
See Him
See Him
We said that the seeing comes later for us. That’s true, but there’s a sense in which we see him now through the eyes of faith. And careful listening to his voice will enable us to see him as God sees him - transcendent in the glory of his humble, obedient sonship. The disciples had some misconceptions which needed correcting.
Do we come submissively to the word of God, allowing God’s voice to gently guide us to a true understanding of the person of his Son?
Do we have confidence in the identity of Jesus Christ, whom God has authenticated as Messiah and beloved Son of God? What about you, who do you say he is?
Do we regard him as consultant or as King?
Expect Him
Expect Him
And, lastly, do we expect him to come into his kingdom?
The mountain of transfiguration is referred to again in 2 Peter 1:16-18.
16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.
Because of what he witness on the mountain, Peter confidently expected the coming in power of the Lord Jesus Christ, i.e. his coming into his kingdom at the end of the age. That hope shaped Peter’s life and he wanted the same for his readers.
Peter recounts the events of the mountain of transfiguration to support his exhortation to make their calling and election sure, by living a life worthy of a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Pet 1:10-11).
Are you confident in the promise of his coming? Such confidence produces hope and hope produces perseverance… a life worthy of a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of the King.