Listen to Him

All right. Well, again, welcome to Hope Lowertown, and we are continuing the Gospel of Mark. But happy Easter to everybody and those who don't know me. My name is Brian, lead pastor here, and really excited to jump into this. And again, it might seem maybe a little out of the ordinary. I think that I really like church history, and I like what the church does with what they call the lexicon. And they kind of have an always on Easter, you open to one of the gospels and you look at the resurrection story. That's what you do in church. And yet we're gonna ignore that because I'm Baptist and we don't. No, I'm joking. That's not the case at all. We are just continuing through the Gospel of Luke or Mark. Excuse me. And really excited to do that. So let me just kind of go back. I've been doing this every week. I think this is week 29. But we've been doing this, looking at this very first verse, Mark 1:1 says the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, the good news. Maybe you've heard it called the gospel. The gospel just means the gospel. The gospel means good news. There's been gospels and good news all over history for all of mankind, but this is the good news about Jesus. It's not Mark's gospel. It's the gospel about Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the Savior, the Son of God. And he's gonna walk through this. And what does this mean? So he's been asking this question. I'm kind of going with a different format for my PowerPoint. Good way to test it out on Easter here this morning. So little small. Little small. We'll work on that next week. But who is this guy? Who is this man? Who is Jesus? And Mark is gonna say he's got authority in teaching. He's got authority over demons. He's got authority even to forgive sins. And he's got authority over nature. And we see that over and over and over throughout the Gospel of Mark. And then we get to chapter nine, and there's gonna be this huge, huge switch. As we're going to see, the tone and tenor of Jesus and his disciples are going to change that. He is now focused on the cross. He's now focused on Jerusalem and making his way to his death and burial so that he might rise again and win this thing. And so that's what this all is all about. I don't want to just skip over these verses. These are the last few verses of the text. That we're going to be reading today, starting in verse 11. They're really important, but yet we spent a couple weeks looking at this, maybe you didn't realize it in week one and two of the Gospel of Mark. And so it says, and they asked him, the disciples, why do the scribes that are just intelligent lawyers, people who would write the scriptures, that would study the scriptures, say that first Elijah must come? Elijah does come first to restore all things. How is it written, the son of man, that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? They're saying, we don't understand. We thought that you're saying now you're the son of man, you're saying you're the Messiah and that you're gonna suffer. But we have been taught that Elijah has to come first. And Jesus says, I tell you that Elijah did come and they did to him whatever they pleased as it is written of him. And what Jesus is referring to, who Jesus is referring to is his cousin, John the Baptist. And so we looked at John the Baptist the first couple chapters and then I forget exactly which chapter, maybe chapter six, where we read about his execution under Herod Antipas. And so we've already spent a lot of time looking at John the Baptist. I don't wanna just dismiss it, it's important. But there are other things that I want to really look at this morning. So the title of this sermon is Listen to him. We're gonna again be in Mark, chapter nine, verses two through 13. And I just read 11 through 13. This is tied very much so with the last couple weeks. And so I don't wanna spend a ton of time recapping, but it's very significant. And what Mark is doing and explaining who Jesus is and who Jesus is revealing himself to be is incredibly significant. We read a couple weeks ago about this two stage healing of a blind man, that a blind man is brought to Jesus. Jesus spits on his tongue and then he touches this man's eyes and he says, can you see? And he says, well, I can see. I think they're people, but they look like trees walking around. And then he does it again. And then he says, now I can see clearly. And this was the only time where Jesus did some multi stage healing. It wasn't that he lacked power. He was demonstrating something, a prophetic performance to his disciples that this is you. You are not seeing me clearly. You are only seeing me through cloudy vision as a tree walking around. And we see that the very next phrase, the apostle Peter is talking with Jesus and Jesus asked the disciples, who do people say that I am? They're like, oh, some say you're Elijah. Some say you're John the Baptist, come from the dead. And then he says, but who do you say that I am? And Peter says, you are the Christ. You are the Messiah. That's you. You're the Messiah. And then the very next phrase, Jesus says, you're right, I am the Messiah and I'm gonna suffer and I'm gonna die. And Peter says, no, no, Lord, it's never gonna happen. You can't die. And then Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. I just said, like, you are really important. The church is gonna be established in your name and through you. And yet I'm gonna tell you to get behind me because you don't see me clearly yet. It's very significant because this morning what we're gonna see in this passage is that the disciples, and specifically Peter is gonna see Jesus and see him clearly. Going back to last week. Patrick was preaching last week and kind of ended on this verse. This is verse one. Just truly, I say to you, this is Jesus talking to his disciples. There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power that has confused people for a long time. But if you compare what this passage in Matthew, Mark and Luke, this passage, this telling of this of Jesus saying, this is always followed by what's called the transfiguration. Okay, so you have here in this passage, Jesus saying, you're not gonna taste death until you see me in glory. Okay, now that's really interesting because then all three gospels say the same thing. So what is it? And Patrick did a good job of saying, hey, there's kind of five things this could possibly mean. And I'm telling you where I've really been convinced and I've landed and I think I've convinced several other people this week that I'm right, but I could be wrong. I'll keep little asterisk there. So when I listen to this sermon in 20 years, which I won't do, I can go, oh, yeah, see, I gave myself an out. But I'm really convinced by this that what he means is that there are some standing here specifically in our passage today. Peter, James and John. You're not going to taste death until you see me, until you see me clearly. And it's about to happen. And so we get into this text and we're gonna see this of listen to him. The first point here is the transfiguration says this after six days. If you've been along with us in the Gospel of Mark, that phrase should actually stand out. Why? Because Mark loves the word immediately. He's just immediately, immediately, immediately. And now here he says after six days, he wants us. He's painting a picture here. I want you to pause, and I want you to think and I want you to remember where maybe if you are a Jew and you grew up studying the Messiah and waiting for the coming of the Messiah, then maybe there's something that stands out here. Says after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them to a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them. So we see the six days, we see him going up a high mountain. This moment of Israel that happened on a mountain, we gotta go all the way back to the beginning of the scriptures. In Exodus, there's the book of Genesis. And then Exodus, it says in Moses, Moses is like the prophet of Israel. He's the one who gave them the Ten Commandments. And he goes up Mount Sinai, and he goes up this mountain, and there's this cloud and the glory of God around him. And what does God do? God gives him. God descends on that mountain and gives him the Ten Commandments. But listen. Listen to the Exodus account of Moses. And then what we just read about this transfiguration passage. Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. Same language we're gonna see in Mark. And the glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. Mark here setting this up. He's saying something's about to go down. Something to the likes of Moses is about to happen here again. Now in our presence, and he talks about this phrase. He says that he was transfigured before them. So what in the world is transfiguration? What's happening here? We get a little bit of a clue. Maybe in the Latin, it's transfigurato. Or in the Greek, specifically, it's metamorphote. Which doesn't really help, other than we might know that word in some English of metamorphosis. And when we think of metamorphosis, we probably think of, like, a butterfly or a caterpillar, right? I'm a beautiful butterfly from a bug's life. I know, I'm too old. You young kids don't even know what I'm talking about. But the Incredible Hulk, right? You know, he's Bruce Banner and he changes into something, and maybe one that's kind of both generations right here of Optimus prime, that he is a semi truck, and he is also an alien robot killing machine. Okay? He's both things. And I was doing this just kind of as like, this is what metamorphosis is. But it actually fit better than what I thought it might in that Jesus is not becoming something he was not. Okay? He's not just completely changing into something new. He's saying, look at me. I want you to see what I always was, and I want you to see me clearly. Just as a truck is this robot, alien, and Bruce Banner, right? I'm. I'm always angry. This is who I am. That's what Jesus, in a sense, is doing, that he's transforming before them, revealing, unveiling himself, that this is who I've always been. And I'm just letting you get a glimpse of my glory. He's momentarily unveiling what he already was. His divine glory that's usually veiled in flesh as we sing it around Christmas. It breaks through. His glory breaks through. And his disciples see him clearly. And they can see him and say, ah, there you are. And it is glorious and it is magnificent. There's something about being human, about wanting and needing to be seen. I mean, really seen. It's one of the first names that is given to God in the Bible, if not the first name by Hagar. She says, you are the God who sees that is powerful. All of us remember being young and playing, you know, at recess, and I was always, like, super athletic, except when it came to my feet. Which means that you're not very athletic, right. There was a disconnect between upper body, lower body. And so I learned that very quickly at a young age when we would do kickball and I'd get picked to be in the. Yeah, Brian's on my team, and I would, like, strike out and kick ball. Who strikes out and kickball? I did. But there was something about being picked, right? There's just something about that, of being seen even as a child, in that moment that someone sees you. And as you get to know them, even through your faults and your failures and your grossness, that they say, no, I still love you, I still see you, I still want you. There's gonna come a day in glory when I'm gonna see you, my friends, and I'm gonna look you in the eye. I'm gonna say, yes. That's who I always knew you were. That's who I always knew was in there. But we shield it, we hide it in Shame, guilt, fear, whatever you wanna put on it. But someday we can be fully ourselves the way we were always meant to be. What a day. And that's what's happening here. Peter, James and John are seeing Jesus in his glory. What was always there, now revealed, unveiling what he always was. The next point here is Moses and Elijah. It says here in our text. And he was transfigured before them. And his clothes became radiant, intensely white. Mark here actually does it a little bit differently than Luke and John or Matthew and Luke in that he talks about his clothes rather than his face. It says that Moses face lit when he was in the presence of God. Where Mark here is gonna say his clothes. He's keeping some kind of human element which Mark is known to do. He's really demonstrating the humanity of Jesus as God in the flesh. And his clothes became radiant, intensely white as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses. And they were talking with Jesus. This is really significant. I already talked about who Moses was, this old prophet with the commandments that God had chosen to reveal himself to the nation of Israel. But then you also have Elijah. Elijah was incredibly powerful prophet who did healings and miracles, even raised people from the dead. So you've got these two people in the Old Testament that are there now with Jesus. And that's significant. It's not David, King David, it's not Abraham, the father of the faith. It's not Esther and Tamar, some relatives of matriarchs within the family of Jesus. And his bloodline he brings up and with him in this transfiguration, Moses and Elijah, which in other places is interpreted as the law and the prophets. In other words, all of the scriptures are represented there with Jesus. They're right there. Incredibly, incredibly significant. And then we're going to see here now with this, these representatives of the all of Scripture with Jesus, we're going to see this. I can't even read that. Domesticate the glory is the next point. And Peter said to Jesus, rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents or other ways that could be translated as tabernacle or altar. Let's make three altars where we can worship Moses and Elijah. And you. One for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah. There's something painfully human here of what Peter says. And I love that this is Peter recounting these stories of what happened in his life and the life of Jesus. And he's telling them to Mark and Mark is writing Them down. And Mark there. Peter is not ashamed. Peter's not like, this is gonna make me look like an idiot. Yeah, you do that a lot. And he does it again here, and he says, let's worship. There's something painfully human. And I think, actually, that we can all relate with this impulse to build these alters, and that is that when we counter, when we encounter something transcendent, when we encounter something glorious or experience God, our instinct is usually to contain it, right? We wanna domesticate it. I wanna take that, and I wanna bottle it up. And so that way I can just experience that all the time. I wanna feel that way. I wanna feel like I'm on the mountaintop all the time. I did not ask my wife's permission to show this. I probably should have. I think I maybe have shown this before. This is either 2011, 2012, my wife and I went to what's called the Passion Conference. I think they still do this down in Atlanta. Maybe they don't, but they did it. This was in the old Falcons stadium before they built a new one. And it was. I was a college pastor. I was young. I think I was, like, 25, 26. And we were newlyweds, and we brought a bunch of college students down to this Passion Conference. And I remember just this moment, right, of just mountaintop experience, of, like, I just feel God's presence. It was just amazing. And then I went back to my church in Normal, Illinois, and I went to my staff meeting, and I. When they're, you know, I'm the new guy, I'm the young guy. And they're like, hey, how was Passion Conference? And I just wept. Like, I couldn't. I couldn't get a word out. I was just so overwhelmed and overcome with. With passion and with. With just feeling and experiencing God. And I was like, we gotta do this. This is how we gotta do church all the time. And they're like, all right, hey, just take a breath. Calm down. Go get some water. And I'm like, no, you don't get it. You know? And it was just. I was so amped up, and what did I wanna do? Even in that experience? I wanted to take God. I wanted to bottle him up. I wanted to domesticate him and bring him with me. And every time I wanted it to be like, look, this is what it is, and this is how it should be all the time. That's what Peter is feeling in this moment. But glory, by its nature, cannot be contained. It cannot be domesticated. It moves. And as we're gonna see it descends. It leads us back down the mountain, as we're gonna see next week, into a young boy who is being tormented, who is sick. That's what happens. You have this mountaintop experience again, and you walk back down the mountain into suffering. That's what happens. That's called life. The transfiguration was not given to the disciples so that they could just stay up on the mountain. It was given to them so they could endure the descent. And so I want to ask you this morning, what mountain moments. Sure. What mountaintop moments have you tried to preserve rather than carry them back down the mountain? What is it? Cause I know I can look back at these moments in my life and I can think and I can look back and, man, that was great. If only I could replicate that thing. Man. I had these roommates in college. I went to this private Christian school, and we were just so close. And we would study the Bible every night. And it was just amazing. If we could just get back to that, if everyone could just experience that, then we could all live on that mountain for all time. Or I go back to maybe my conversion story of my faith story when I saw Jesus clearly and I was like that. Jesus, that's the one. I see him now. I see him clearly. He's revealed himself to me. I wanna go back to that, and I just wanna keep it. Maybe it's a baptism. Maybe it's. Who knows what else. Just some time where you felt God close to you and you said, I just wanna go back to that. You can take those mountaintop experiences and we can use them when we're in the valley of the shadow of death, that we're in the midst of pain and suffering and life, that we can go, Yeah, I remember that. And God was with me then, and he's with me now. It doesn't feel the same as it did back then. But I know he's here because it was the same way with Jesus. Jesus is transfigured. He's in his glory. And then within a few short weeks, the. He's going to be nailed to a cross and he's going to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But yet, God, you're with me. We need to carry these back down the mountain. Next point is listen to him. For he did not know what to say. For they were terrified and the clouds overshadowed them. And the voice came out of the clouds saying, this is my beloved son. Mark has highlighted this before. At the baptism of Jesus, he gets baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist. And as he comes up out of the water, a voice from heaven says, this is my beloved Son. There's something that's happening here, right? There's this new glory, this new cloud. And the voice of God comes out of the cloud. Here we go. We're gonna get some new laws. He's gonna give us some more commandments. He's gonna show us his glory. He's gonna perform some miracle. But he says, this is my beloved son. Listen to him. And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with him but Jesus. Only that's significant. He's saying, you have the law and the prophets that have now disappeared, and Jesus remains. Jesus is doing something new. There is a new covenant being enacted in and through Jesus Christ in only a way that he, the God man, truly could. No one else, no other man, no other animal could make a sacrifice that could appease the payment that needed to be paid. Only Jesus. Incredibly significant in Luke 24:27, after the resurrection, Jesus is walking with some disciples. And they're sad. And he goes to them and he's like, why are you so sad? And they're like, are you clueless? Have you not heard anything that's happened in Jerusalem over the last couple days? This guy we thought was gonna be the Messiah, he's dead. And it says that Jesus took them to the Scriptures. And starting with Moses and the prophets, he showed them everything that the scriptures had to say about him, that they all had to say everything about who he was. And so now we listen to Jesus. This is my beloved son. Listen to him. God is no longer some just ethereal being in the sky, some power. He's real. He's tangible. He's human. Or as we say at Christmas, evil Emmanuel, which means God with us. This is Christ. This is God in the flesh. Listen to him. And so when our culture might say, find your truth as hard as it is, listen to Jesus. When we skip hard verses about forgiveness because they ask too much of us or they tell us to love our enemies, we listen to Jesus. When you hear a preacher or some podcast or even me say, follow Jesus, following Jesus means a smoother life. You listen to Jesus. When our political tribe tries to define who our neighbors are or who our neighbors aren't, we listen to Jesus. We keep Jesus of first importance, the main thing, regardless of what's going on, we listen to Jesus. When worry has restrained us long enough or anxiety or fears, we listen to Jesus. Lastly, rising from the dead, and as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Okay, so you're hanging out, you're with Jesus, like, wow, I think you're the Messiah. You've been doing things only God can do. Think you're the guy and I just saw you. Something just happened that was wild. I'm sure they just wanted to tell everyone what just happened. And Jesus says, don't tell anyone until I've died and I've risen from the dead. Huh. It's so. It's. I think it's impossible for us this side of Easter of hearing the word resurrection, even though we've never experienced it, even though we've never seen someone rise from the dead. We just are used to that thought and that idea. This was. This was an impossibility. And to say, no, this is my best friend. But he said, he's going to die and he's going to rise from the dead. What in the world does that mean. Again? It just has become so commonplace. They just don't understand. They're about to. And they're about to turn the world upside down. The followers of Jesus, they betray him, they abandon him, they disown him, they deny him. And then what happens? He rises from the dead, and those same people who denied him turned the world upside down. I want to quote here Professor Pinchas Lapade. He is a professor. Was. He died in 1997, but he was a professor in Israel. He's non Christian, but he had this to say about the resurrection. So if you're in here and you're a skeptic, you're just like, yeah, Jesus, cool, teaches some really good morals, but, I don't know, like, rose from the dead. Come on. I just want you to hear what. What he had to say about this. Concerning the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. I was for decades a denier. I am no longer a denier. So he. He never says, I'm a Christian. He never does that in his life. But he says, but something happened here. It had to. He says, I'm no longer a denier in the resurrection. Since the following deliberation has caused me to think den this through anew. When these peasants, shepherds and fishermen, the disciples who betrayed and denied their master and failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter. Than no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation. I could give you A litany of books written by atheists about the historical Jesus. And when they get to the, when they get to the resurrection, they go, something happened. I don't know what it was. The disciples saw something they believed in, something that we know and it changed the entire course of all of human history, unlike anything that we've ever seen before. Because they saw something. They believed that Jesus rose from the dead. They believed Jesus rose from the dead, but we know that couldn't have happened. That's where they land. He continues. If the defeated and depressed group of disciples overnight could change into a victorious movement of faith based only on auto suggestion or self deception, that is, they just imagined he was risen from the dead without a fundamental faith experience, then this would be a much greater miracle than the resurrection itself. That's a lie. If they just made this, they just thought they saw Jesus or they just like, hey, we should, you know what we should do? We should just invent this story that Jesus was the Messiah and the only way that he could be the Messiah is if he rose from the dead. Let's all just agree to believe that. But they go and they turn the world upside down. And he says, if that would have happened by auto suggestion, that would have been a greater miracle than actually Jesus rising from the dead. In a purely logical analysis, the resurrection of Jesus and is the lesser of two evils for all those who seek a rational explanation of the worldwide consequence of that Easter faith. I mentioned this on Good Friday, but when you study the crucifixion, what the cross was meant to do, yes, it was a torture device, but it was so much more than that. In the Roman world and Empire, the whole point of crucifixion was to completely eradicate a human being from the face of the earth. We have records of tens of thousands of people who were murdered and executed by hanging on a cross. And out of those tens of thousands of people that we know of, guess how many names of crucified individuals we know of? 1. His name is Jesus. Why is it that billions of people talk about Jesus every single day? It's because he rose from the dead. The only reason why we even know the name Yeshua of Nazareth is if he rose from the dead. Because if he didn't rise from the dead, he would be like any other number of criminals and rebels who were executed by Roman crucifixion. Something happened, something changed. He rose from the dead. It wouldn't be an Easter Sunday if I didn't read the actual resurrection text. So I'm going to do that now. This is from Luke chapter 24, verse 1. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, again, resurrection is not normal. Behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. Two angels. And they were frightened and they bowed their faces to the ground. And the men said to them, why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he told you after the Transfiguration? Remember what he told you while he was in Galilee? That the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified. And on the third day rise. And they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and the rest. This is a couple women that went to the tomb. And now they're going back to the disciples. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary, the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale that those who knew Jesus best, that Jesus said, I'm gonna rise from the dead. And people are saying he rose from the dead. They're like, what are you talking about? That's not possible. It's an idle tale. And they did not believe them. But Peter and also John rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in. He saw the linen clothes by themselves, and he went home and marveled at what had happened. My gospel application for us this morning is, are you listening to Jesus? Maybe you've heard this Easter story a million times, but are we listening to Jesus when we're in the valley? Or are we still continually trying to climb and get to this mountaintop experience? Am I so quick to pass by the cross or do I just walk by and I just go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jesus rose from the dead. Yeah, yeah, of course he did. Someone rose from the dead and turned the world upside down. Maybe you're hearing this for the first time. Maybe you've never heard of that Jesus. You just thought Jesus was just some religion. It's not. It's a man who is God who died for your sins and rose again. And all you have to do is believe that. We have communion here every week to Hope Lower Town. And so we've got the elements here and we've got gluten free on My left, your right. If that's a dietary restriction. We read in our scriptures that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, this is the night that he gets crucified. He's having the Passover meal with his disciples, a meal that has been celebrated for thousands of years in the Jewish community. And he changes it. He says, this used to represent a lamb that was slain and that its blood was poured out for the forgiveness of our sins. But he changes it, and he says, no, I'm gonna be that sacrifice. It is my body that's gonna be broken. It is my blood that's gonna be poured out for you. And so every time we're together, we remember this. We remember the finished work of Christ, this God man who died on the cross for our sins but didn't stay dead. He isn't just a good moral example. He rose from the dead to show and to demonstrate he's God and the world has never looked the same sense. So we remember, we take the little wafer, and I like to break it symbolically, just to say, this is his body that's broken for me. And I drink the juice. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you're a follower of Jesus, if you say, yes, Jesus, that Jesus who rose from the dead, who died for my sins, I worship him. I love him. I want to see him the same way that Peter, James, and John got to see him. Take these elements with us. We get to celebrate this in remembrance of him again. Jesus says, this is my blood being poured out as an offering. A new covenant. Moses and Elijah, Old Testament, the prophets, they're. They're gone. I'm here now. And someday he's going to say, behold, I make everything no new. And he will look you in the eye and he will say, I see you. I see you because of my finished work for you on the cross. Let me pray. The worship team's going to come back up. They're going to play two songs. And so feel free to grab these elements as you see fit. Take some time to pray, reflect. Let me pray for Father. Thank you again, just for the opportunity to be here this morning, Easter Sunday, a day that has been celebrated for almost 2,000 years. That something happened on that day thousands of years ago that turned the world upside down. That Jesus, God in the flesh, veiled in flesh, reveals himself to these disciples in this transfiguration. There will be a day where you will return again. You will make all things new. And we will see you face to face what a day that will be. We love you. And it's the name of Jesus that I pray. Amen.