Mark 9:2-13 - Three Tabernacles Talk

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk.

We are in actually probably one of the more apropos episodes for the name Tabernacle Talk today, because of an incredible account that we find in the Gospel of Mark, the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and in Mark, Chapter 9 in Verses

2 through 13 today. And Jesus has been going through, He's been doing miracles, He's been casting out demons, He's been showing His authority and His power over sin, over the forces of nature itself.

He has made it so clear and obvious that He is the Son of God. He is the Lord. But the Pharisees, the political leaders, the disciples, the people, they don't really get yet what that means for Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah.

And some of them know who He is, but they don't know the implications of it yet. And that's one of the things we see really clearly here in Mark, Chapter 9. It starts off like this.

After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves to be alone. So this is what's kind of referenced sometimes as Jesus's inner circle. And these were not the guys that perhaps were the most righteous.

These were just ones that Jesus loved and he included in some of the dearest moments to him. You can think even of the garden at Gethsemane. And so here it says that he led them up a high mountain by themselves.

And there's been a couple of locations for this mountain tossed around.

The one that I currently find most apropos, especially because of his proximity to Caesarea Philippi at the foot of this kind of mountain range in the northern part of Israel, the most likely suspect for the high mountain is Mount Hormon.

And this was a mountain that was often referenced in the Old Testament and in ancient Israel as a place of demonic worship, of worshipping false idols and false gods.

But it was something that God laid claim on in the Psalms, and that he said, I am going to have my worship, my praise happen from this mountain and everything from Hormon in the north all the way down to Sinai in the south.

He says basically all of this land is going to be used for the praise of God and no longer for the praise of demons. So this was a place a lot of idolatry had happened here over the years. But now Jesus is putting claim to this spot.

It says he was transfigured in front of them and his clothes became dazzling, extremely white as no launderer on earth could whiten them. So here he changes like it is clear. OK, whoa, this is more than just a human.

This one is divine. This is a spiritual being of some sort. And as if Jesus's appearance and change and shining clothes didn't indicate enough of who he is, verse number four, Elijah appeared to them with Moses and they were talking with Jesus.

So I think we've talked about this before in kind of the breakdown of the Old Testament that the Jews during this time had. They had the law. They had the Old Testament broken up into three sections.

So they called the law, the prophets and the writings and they used an acronym to call the entire thing the Tanakh. It was the Torah, the Neviim and the Ketuvim. And in that, the Torah is those first five books commonly attributed to Moses.

And then you have the Neviim, the prophets, and that was kind of a smattering of history. So you'd have first and second Samuel, I believe first and second Kings. Then you'd have a good amount of like Isaiah, Jeremiah, some of those ones in there.

And then at the very end, you had the Ketuvim, which would be Psalms. It would include the Book of Daniel, and it would end with the Book of Chronicles, or what we have today as first and second Chronicles. So it ended with a genealogy.

And if you have perhaps a Bible translation today in English that uses the Tanakh ordering of the books, it's all the same books. It's just the order that you put it in.

If you have a book like that, you would end reading the genealogies in Chronicles, and then you would begin the book of Matthew in the New Testament with another genealogy.

So in that breakdown, then you have Moses representing the law, the Torah, and then you have Elijah here representing the prophets.

And so a lot of times as you read through, I think it's especially in Matthew whenever Jesus gives, hey, as is written in the law and the prophets. And sometimes the writings, the ketuvim was just grouped in with the prophets.

So here you have Elijah representing the prophets and Moses representing the law. So it's basically like the Old Testament, the proof of it showed up in front of Peter, James and John. And the prophets and the law are talking with the Lord.

Wow, at this moment, man, there's got to be such wonder, such incredible thoughts that they might have had of, man, everything that we've heard about from childhood is true.

That Elijah really did exist, that that chariot of fire really did take him up, that Moses, the greatest ancestor that we have, he really did exist and he lives and he's talking.

And so verse number five, Peter says to Jesus, Rabbi, it's good for us to be here. Why? Because it shows us that you are God.

It says, Peter said, let's set up three shelters, tents, Tabernacles. It says one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah. Verse number six, because he did not know what to say since they were terrified.

So they're super freaked out. Peter, not knowing what he's supposed to say, goes, oh, great. You know, let's let's set up some little tents, some little Tabernacles for you guys.

Verse number seven, a cloud appeared, overshadowing them, and a voice came from the cloud. This is my beloved son. Listen to him.

Suddenly, looking around, verse eight, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.

Man, when it comes to when it comes to the Bible here, when it comes to the Old Testament and you look at all the laws and all the things, God says, what's not important is Moses. What's not important is Elijah.

What's important is what I'm doing right now in the person and work and life of Jesus, because he is not just another one of the prophets. He's not John the Baptist reincarnated. He is not Elijah.

He is Yahweh. He is God, this second person of the Trinity. Even as we would read about, I believe it's in the Book of John, which we'll be going through here at Tabernacle here before too long.

The Jews knew what it meant for Jesus to be the son of God. That position, that role, that authority that he had meant that he was equal with God. He was not a subordinate, he wasn't a lesser God.

He too was God himself. So God makes it very clear. You worship Jesus.

He is God. Moses and Elijah, yeah, like they testify about the coming Messiah, but they are nowhere near as important as my son. And so they go away and they don't see anyone with them except Jesus.

Verse number nine, As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They kept this word to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.

Again, they had no idea of what was coming with Jesus' life and death.

Their idea of resurrection was a very kind of Old Testament version of Job saying, hey, I know that even after my flesh and my bones are dead and destroyed and gone, he says, yet I know in my flesh, I will see God.

There was an expectation of physical resurrection at the end of time. They didn't know about this resurrection from the dead that would come through Jesus. They didn't know that you could have a resurrection that didn't happen at the end of time.

So they're wondering about this. Jesus, as he's been doing all throughout the Book of Mark, he goes, I don't want people to believe in me because of the miraculous.

I want them to believe in the words that I'm saying to them, like who I genuinely am, not just when I suspend the laws of nature that I created. I want them to hear my words, to know that it's me.

And so he tells them, until I rise from the dead, don't tell anyone about this. And Peter, as we read about in 2 Peter chapter 1, he does write about this after Jesus has risen from the dead.

And he tells them, hey man, this so emphatically proved that everything that we had read and heard about and listened to growing up about the Old Testament, that it was true.

And so he says, so now we have so much more confidence in what God has said, because I've seen it. I know the Old Testament is true, because I've seen Moses. I know the prophets are true, because I've seen Elijah.

So here Peter, James, and John, they're confused. They're wondering what rising from the dead means. So verse 11, then they asked him, why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?

And there they're quoting from Malachi chapter 4. And I'm going to read here these verses. Remember the instruction of Moses, my servant, the statutes and ordinances I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

Look, I am going to send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of Yahweh comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.

Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse. So here they are saying, why are the scribes saying that Elijah needs to come before the day of Yahweh? And verse 12, Jesus says, Elijah does come first and restores all things.

He replied, why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be treated with contempt?

So he goes, Elijah did come and restored like this God centered consciousness in the people of Israel for this day of the Lord that would come.

And here, I don't believe it's mentioned specifically here in Mark, but in one of the other Gospels, they interject, oh, yeah, Jesus was talking about John the Baptist when he said this.

So in the spirit of Elijah, John the Baptist came, he preached, he preached it straight like Elijah did. He preached against wicked kings and queens, just like Elijah had. And then he was killed.

And so Elijah had come and prepared the way of the Lord. But then Jesus reminds them of something.

He goes, OK, you guys think that Elijah is the barrier, like the problem of OK, well, the day of the Lord is not supposed to come yet because Elijah is not here yet. And so this can't be like the time of God's reckoning with the world.

And Jesus goes, OK, first off, Elijah did come. Secondly, I want you to think about Isaiah 53, the son of man suffering many things and being treated with contempt. He says, if you want to think about what all of this means, think about Isaiah 53.

And he says, But I tell you that Elijah has come and they did whatever they pleased to him, just as it is written about him.

Jesus, here in this moment, he wants the disciples to get it through their heads that Jesus is going to die for sin, that Isaiah 53 and what it talks about of the servant of the Lord dying on behalf of others, of the fact that he was going to be

rejected by men, that people, even his friends, his family, they wouldn't even recognize him after everything that he went through. And Jesus goes, yeah, like, it's really great that you saw me transfigured, but that's not what I want you to focus

on, and that's not the message that I want you to be thinking about. He says, I want you to think about this gospel, the fact that your problem is not political. It's not you needing to take care of Rome.

It's not you needing to overthrow the Pharisees. It's not about getting a bunch of worldly goods and possessions and even, you know, unlimited bread.

He says, the point is that all of you are dead in your sins and you need to have forgiveness and a restoration of the kind of relationship with God that He made you to have.

And obviously here, even as we'll see in our next episode, they don't get it. Not yet. One day they will, but for this moment in time, there's just a, there's a blockade there that they don't understand what Jesus is doing.

And man, that is so true for today's day and age, as we interact with people, even as we interact here in America with many people that maybe believe that there is a God or nominally believe in the God of the Bible, that He exists, but they do not

have a relationship with Him. And so even as you talk about right and wrong, there's not a huge impetus to say, okay, well then I have to obey this God. I need to follow Him. I need to give Him my life.

What He says is important, I need to make important. There's just a, I believe that He exists. And so when I get to the end of my life, I think that as He looks at me, weighs my good and my bad, I think I'll turn out all right.

Or they perhaps think, okay, as long as I keep on doing things for Him, I'm going to be all right. And the truth is that all of us have sinned. We have become separated from God because of our wickedness.

And we need to be reconciled. But we can't reconcile on our own. We can't pay for our sin.

And that's why Jesus came. He came to be that prophet that Moses prophesied 1500 years before, 2000 years before, saying, hey, there's going to come a prophet like me, and whoever listens to him is going to have life.

And whoever disobeys him, whoever does not listen to him, God will cut off from his people. Jesus is the one that has all of the prophets, like Isaiah or like Jeremiah or like Ezekiel prophesied.

He was going to be the one that came in and put in us a new heart, the one that would give us a hope and a future with the Lord. Because life as we live it, it's not finally worth living.

Life without God, without a knowledge that one day everything will be made right, it is a hopeless endeavor. And that's what our world today realizes.

It's why depression and anxiety is so high in this generation because even though we have grown in so much knowledge and awareness of what's happening in the world, it doesn't spark hope in us, it sparks despair.

Because wickedness and evil and injustice and unkindness and a lack of hope is everywhere. And so we need God. And we don't just need him to exist.

We need him to move in, to change our hearts so that we no longer try to define good and evil on our own, but that we would accept his definitions, that we would follow and obey him, believe in him, worship him, adore him, because that is where the

good life is found. And here that's what God tries to tell Peter in particular. Because Peter goes, oh great, we'll just set up these Tabernacles, these tents, these shelters for all three of you because all of you are great.

And God goes, no, like these other ones, they served a purpose, they were my servants. He says, but the only one that you need is Jesus. It's not to say we throw out the Old Testament, it points us to Jesus.

And because it does that, it's valuable to us. It tells us who to expect, what he would look like, all of the different prophecies and little pictures and types that we would be able to recognize Jesus and say, man, he's been here all along.

He has loved us, he has cared for us, and that we would rejoice in God and in the fact that he designed this from the very beginning.

So as we look at the Mount of Transfiguration, may it spark in us the same motivation that Peter gave to those that he taught in 2 Peter chapter 1 where he says, because I am an eyewitness and I can tell you, I can assure you that everything that

we've told you about Jesus is true and accurate, and that everything that happened in the Old Testament, it was real because I've seen the individuals, I've interacted with them. I accidentally said that we should set up Tabernacles, shelters, tents

for them. He says because of that, you can believe in God's Word. You can obey him. And I would tell you today, listener of Tabernacle Talk, to turn to Jesus.

Don't just turn to morality. Don't just turn to big pictures of right and wrong.

Realize that, man, God has done so much for you in Jesus, that the point of incoming was not just to be a miracle worker, but it was to die for our sins, to share with us the Gospel, the good news that we could be restored and put back in God's good

design again. Today, thank him. Worship him, follow him, obey him, be grateful and share the message with others. Thanks for tuning in, have a great day.