Sermon Tone Analysis

Series: Meet the Savior Who Was A Servant

Sermon: The Savior’s Summit

Mark 9:1-10

February 28, 2010

Ricky Powell, Pastor

!

Introduction:

Politicians love to host and to attend summit meetings.

This past Thursday saw the culmination of President Obama’s healthcare summit.

The attention of the media was arrested as politicians gathered to discuss their plans to improve healthcare for all Americans.

I will leave it up to you to decide if anything good came out of the President’s summit.

Today, however, I want to draw your attention to the greatest summit ever held.

It was held just six months before our Lord’s death on Calvary’s cross.

It was not located in Washington D.C., but on top of Mount Hermon in the Promised Land.

Its participants were not presidents and politicians.

No, at this summit was God’s great legislator, Moses, God’s great spokesman, Elijah, and God’s great Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Like all summits there were participants, and there were spectators.

Peter, James, and John, comprising the inner ring of Jesus’ disciples were invited to the summit.

Like modern summit this one even had reporters.

For much later the Gospel writers Matthew, Mark, and Luke would record what happened at the Savior’s Summit.

Even the apostle John would give the final analysis of the event when he wrote, “…and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14b).

Long after the President’s healthcare summit is relegated to a footnote in history, and eventually forgotten, men will still be discussing the implications of the Savior’s Summit!

There is a message for us today in what the Savior did on that mountain summit 21 Centuries ago.

First, consider the Summit and…

! 1.

The Cross

The account of the summit begins in the synoptic Gospels with a note about time.

We are told that “after six days” Jesus invited that triad of trusted followers to join him on the slopes of snowcapped Mt.

Hermon.

It is described as a “high mountain,” and indeed it is, reaching up over 9,000 feet into the sky.

But that word about time, “after six days,” should not be passed over lightly.

Mark is setting the context for what is about to happen on the mountain by pointing us back to previous confession of Peter and instruction of the Lord.

We cannot understand the significance of the Savior’s summit if we do not view it through the lens of the events a week earlier at Caesarea Philippi.

Do you recall Peter’s confession concerning the person of Christ in Mark chapter eight?

Do you recall the Lord’s instruction to Peter, the disciples, and Christ’s followers?

Peter’s confession concerning the identification of Jesus: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus, I confess you as the Messiah, the anointed one of God.

Do you remember the instructions the Lord gave after Peter’s confession?

“And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Mark 8:31 (NKJV)

When Peter heard Jesus speak of the cross he took him aside and rebuked him.

Peter said, “Not so, Lord, not so.”

Jesus then rebuked Peter by saying, “Get behind Me, Satan!

For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

Mark 8:33 (NKJV)

The disciples are left confused and concerned by the news of the cross.

It is in this context that Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up to Mt. Hermon.

I do not know why He chose these three and not others.

The sovereignty of God will always be a mystery.

He certainly did not love them more than the others.

Perhaps He selected these three because they were more receptive to His love and light.

James wrote, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).

I agree with Dr. Vines when he says you as a Christian can be as close to God as you want to be.

Perhaps Jesus chose these three men because they had been with Him in the room of Jairus’ daughter when Jesus raised her from the dead (Mark 5:25-43).

At that moment in that bedroom the disciples were confronted with Jesus’ authority over death itself when He said, “Little girl, rise.”

Now they needed to be reminded that He still had power over death.

The cross was part of God’s plan, but so was the resurrection.

Yes, Jesus would surrender to death on the cross, but as the God-Man He was superior over death and would rise again on the third day!

These same three would be with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as He, the Master of death, and as the One superior to death, yielded Himself to death, even the death of the cross.

Thus, the transfiguration was to be a teachable moment for His disciples whereby they received assurance in the midst of their concern and confusion that Jesus was not going to the cross as a mere man, but as the God-Man.

He was not going to the cross as a victim, but as a volunteer.

Jesus wanted them to remember this moment six months later when they saw Him dying at mid-day as the sun refused to shine, remembering that He is still the light of the world whose face had shone brighter than the sun.

When they saw the Roman soldiers at the foot of the cross gambling for his outer garment they would remember this day when His robes were white as light, whiter than any bleach could make them, and when as Luke wrote, they flashed as bolts of lightening across a night sky.

And when they would see the visage of their Lord, bloodied, battered, and bruised with the brutality of Calvary, when they saw His beard having been plucked from His face, and when they saw the crown of thorns upon His brow they would be reminded of the night when His dear face shone with the glory of the sun in its mid-day strength.

And when they saw Him bow His head and dismiss His spirit into the hands of the Father they would be reminded of that night on the Mount of Transfiguration when His head was lifted and held high with the glory of God!

The Savior’s summit was a prelude to the cross.

Second, let us consider the Summit and…

! 2. The Christ

This transfiguration becomes a revealing of the divinity of Christ on the one hand, and of the humanity of Christ on the other.

!! A. The divinity of Christ.

“…and He was transfigured before them” (Mark 9:2).

The word transfigured is from the Greek word, “μεταμορφόω” (metamorphoō) is the basis for our English word, “metamorphosis.”

It refers to a change from within.

The transformation is visible on the outside, but it originates from the inside.

It is what happens to a tadpole when it turns into a frog, or a caterpillar when it turns into a butterfly.

The outward form has changed, but the inward essence is the same.

The transfiguration of Christ was an outward visible transformation of His appearance in accord with His nature.

Jesus’ outward appearance was temporarily changed from that of an ordinary man to reveal His eternal deity and glory.

The radiance of His true self shone through in all His resplendent glory!

What was on the inside was being revealed on the outside!

J. Dwight Pentecost correctly describes the scene when he writes, “Christ was not transfigured by means of an external light focused on Him so they He reflected the glory of God.

Rather, this was the outshining of the essential glory that belongs to Jesus Christ” (The Words and Works of Jesus Christ, p. 256).

!! B. The Humanity of Christ.

“…and He was transfigured before them” (Mark 9:2).

Do not lose sight of the divinity of the Christ and do not lose sight of the humanity of Christ.

The Bible says, “He” was transfigured before them.

The one transfigured before their eyes was none other than the same Lord Jesus with whom they had lived and followed for nearly three years.

He had not been a phantom all this time, merely feigning to be a man.

No!

He was and is the God-Man.

God of very God and man of very man!

He was the same one who contracted Himself to the span of a virgin’s womb and was born to peasant parents in an obscure village.

He was the same one who wore the common clothes of the common man.

He was the same one who grew to be a man, working as the Carpenter of Nazareth.

He was the same one who fell asleep in the boat after a long day’s work.

He was the one about whom the prophet Isaiah wrote, “He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.” (Isaiah 53:2).

This simply means that Christ came to earth as an ordinary man.

But the transfiguration shows that he is more than an ordinary man.

He is Emmanuel, God with us!

He is the divine Son of God!

He is the God-man.

Only man could serve as a substitute for men under the righteous judgment of God.

Only a man could be the sin-bearer for you and me.