READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 3:1-14
2 Peter 1:16-21
St. Matthew 17:1-9
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)
Who speaks to you on this day of His Transfiguration from
His Gospel, saying:
“And he was
transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes
became white as light”
Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Transfiguration will always be
and remain heaven’s testimony to Christ’s divinity. That He is God and man and
on Transfiguration’s mount, a finite man shines with the glory of infinity.
This points us to faith and hope that because Christ, a man, has done this,
that we too, as men, may be brought along to glory. We apply this to our own
lives by understanding better God’s Word of faith and hope for us and for all
people.
Maybe you are like me and were a little disappointed in the
Exodus story, when you learned it as a child. Or maybe you have recently
discovered it or have never heard of it, so your disappointment could yet
materialize!
Disappointment number one: these people, God’s people are
enslaved. We hate that word, whatever it means. God brought them a chance to
get out, to be free, and they didn’t want it. It took 12 plagues to get them
out and they wanted to go back each step of the way, away from Egypt.
They were thirsty and didn’t want God’s water. They were
hungry and didn’t want God’s bread. They were tired and didn’t want God’s rest.
They didn’t want to wait for Moses. They didn’t want to hear from God. Are we
there yet? Are we there yet?
Disappointment number two: exile in slavery turned into
exile in the desert for 40 years. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The
Great Exodus turned into the Great Wandering, wondering when the heck they
would get out of the desert, after the Lord split the blessed sea in half for
them to cross without getting wet.
“How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of
all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down
with a plague and destroy them” (Num 14:11). And even though Moses once
again interceded for his people and turned away the wrath of God (14:13-20),
the Lord declared that “not one of them will ever see the land I promised on
oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever
see it” (14:23). Rather, they would suffer by wandering in the wilderness for
forty years (14:34) and die out there.
Disappointment number three: Moses did not get in to the
Promised Land! After all that and after all the signs and wonders that God
caused to literally come from of Moses’ hand, “Since you did not trust in
Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, for that reason you
shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them”, saith
the Lord to Moses (Num 20:12).
Not to mention that Moses did not level Egypt with hellfire
from an A-10 Warthog fighter plane. I mean God knew the future right? Neither
did God instantly teleport all the Hebrews out.
Regardless, what a let down. God intended signs, wonders,
and great faith and it just didn’t pan out. The people remained stiff-necked,
Egypt in power, and the other God-hating nations were poised to wreak havoc on
the Chosen.
So why is the Lord’s Church bringing that disappointment up
today, at the Transfiguration, by reading the beginning of the Exodus in our
Old Testament? I mean besides the supernatural coincidences of bright things
and Moses in proximity, why bring it up? St. Luke rubs it in even more, in his
account of Transfiguration. Jesus says, “And behold, two men were talking
with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his Exodus,
which he was about to fulfill at Jerusalem” (Lk 9:30-31).
What we have here, is God directly linking two events
intimately and inextricably together. That now, when we hear of and ponder the
Transfiguration of Jesus, we can not help but cast our thoughts also to the
Exodus and what they mean together.
Repent! Since you did not trust in God, to treat Him as holy
in the sight of His Church and your community, you also fall under the curse of
the Exodus. Your sin will send you to exile for much longer than 40 years and
you will also never enter into the Lord’s Rest. Take care! An evil, unbelieving
heart, leads you to fall away from the living God (Heb 3:12). Even those who
hear the Word still rebel.
Begin to understand the patience and love of your God in
this way. The Exodus was incomplete on purpose. It was never meant to be the
permanent, final solution to the problem of Israel. One of the ways we know
this is that God uses the word “forever” when He speaks of the Promised Land
and, as we know all too well today, the “Promised Land” is not.
Listen to Jesus:
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still
with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets
and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Lk 24:44)
And Matthew 3 and 5:
“Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to
fulfill all righteousness” (v.15)
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (v.17)
Not just the Law, but Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms
must be fulfilled. They are all lacking. They are all incomplete. Some portion
or part is missing in order to finish them. This is part of the reason we may
have some anxiety when reading the Old Testament. We know its supposed to be a
full story, its already over, but it just feels disappointing.
So the Exodus is incomplete. God’s people are still
enslaved. The mountain top on which Jesus stands today is simply the mountain
tops on which Moses met with and saw God, in the flaming bush and the dark
clouds. This time round, Moses is not sent. The Flaming bush goes Himself,
aglow with consolation, to free His people from their sins.
Jesus brings His people to a point. He walked with them out
of the Exodus, stayed with them throughout all the desert wanderings, and never
left them for a minute in the Promised Land. However, in all their doings there
was always a place where Jesus could go, but not the people.
“Jesus said to them,” in John 8, “‘I will go away;
you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot go where I am
going…You belong to this world here below, but I come from above. You are from
this world, but I am not from this world.’” (Jn 8:21-23)
Part of the fall into sin, in the Garden of Eden was
separation from God. Adam and Eve saw God, walked with God, knew God. After the
Fall, they knew sin, death, and the devil and God was far from their hearts.
There was an impassible wall that had gone up and no getting around it, through
it, or over it.
Thus, the curse from the beginning was, “If you eat of the
tree you will surely die”. When we try to follow Jesus, we die from sinfulness.
We cannot go on. We strike the wall and it kills us. It is at that point that
Jesus says, “Rise, let us go from here” (Jn 14:31). He says, “Let us
go to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests
and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the
Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the
third day.” (Mt 20:18-19)
Jesus says, “but later you will follow me” (Jn 13:36)
and we do follow Him to Jerusalem. It is Jerusalem that is the point. The point
of no return. “rise and have no fear” (Mt 17:7), He says, we go to the cross.
Have no fear, we are going through that wall. Have no fear,
we must die to breach it. Have no fear, Jesus will die first, make the way
straight, and the rough places plain. Have no fear, transfiguration's light
pales in comparison to Resurrection’s Light.
God’s rest, that we cannot enter, is completed in Christ’s
rest in the Tomb. What the Exodus, Moses, the prophets, and the psalms all
could not get past was the wages of sin, which prevents all sorts of godliness.
Jesus opens up a man-sized hole into sinful humanity, which tears that veil in
two, from top to bottom.
Freedom is through the Cross of Jesus and there are no ways
around it. We must follow after and in so doing, we find the exodus from
slavery fulfilled. Where the march from Egypt and subsequent desert vacation
could not erase the stain of rebellion, the blood of Jesus does. Where the
thunder and lightning from the mountain could not persuade to obedience, the
crucifixion moves to Faith. Where the Moses, the prophets, and the psalms words
fell on deaf ears, the washing of rebirth and renewal breaks that levy.
The Body and Blood of Christ purchases Faith for us. In that
Faith, we trust the Word of God, in the water, in the desert, and in the
plagues. In that Faith, we are brought to the mountain of our sinfulness and
find only Christ Crucified there, having already accomplished His work for us.
Moses and all Israel have finally found rest after all their
wanderings in sin. Not because they have died and cannot move anyway, but
because they have been set free from the bondage of death. For their Lord and
Maker, Jesus Christ, has crossed the river. He has absorbed the hatred, the
rebellion against God, and our mistrust of God’s holiness and has exchanged
them for forgiveness, for you.
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