The Glory Road

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 17th chapter.

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After six days Jesus took with Him Peter, James, and John, His brother, led them up a high mountain by themselves, and He was transfigured before them.

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And His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light. And, behold, there appeared to them

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Moses and Elijah talking with Him. And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good that we are here.

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If You wish, I will make for You three tents here, one for You, one for Moses, one for Elijah.

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He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said,

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This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him. When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and they were terrified.

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But Jesus came and touched them, saying, Rise, have no fear. And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

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And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, Tell no one the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Glory.

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Glory. Isn't it all about fortune, fame, glory? We, well, we sinful human beings, we are glory mongers, right?

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Think about it. Our old sinful natures, they crave glory with the same consuming, covetous lust as the devil.

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This shows up in all kinds of forms, by the way, all kinds of forms. It could be the person who is obsessed with how many likes their post got on Facebook.

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How many retweets did they get this week? And, of course, now I'm talking about the old centrum social media.

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I couldn't even tell you about Snapchat or those other things, right? How many likes and loves did you get on Instagram?

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Yeah, that's just one form of it. And then you think there's all these different ways. I mean, you think about American Idol, right?

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Or America's Got Talent. It's about being recognized, seen, and discovered so that people could recognize your inherent talent and worth so that people will worship you.

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You'll have the big life. Millions and billions will know your names and they'll give you honors and awards and Oscars and name it.

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You get the idea. This is how this works. Now, in the religious world, oh, man, don't even get me started there.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. This quest for glory, this goes all the way back to the devil and Satan himself.

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Isaiah 14, let us remind ourselves of his self -obsession with glory.

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We'll see that manifested in its fullness next week in the Gospel text. But it says this in Isaiah 14,

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Oh, how you are fallen from heaven, O day star, sun of the dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid low the nations!

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You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high.

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I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds and I will make myself like the most high.

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You know the sad part about all of that? That sounds a lot like me. And if you're honest, it sounds a lot like you.

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Me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I. How'd the song go? Lord, I lift my name on high.

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Lord, I love to sing my praises. Right? Isn't that how we sing that song?

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Yeah, but don't even get me started on the religious aspects of it. For instance, everybody who is trying to save themselves by their obedience, by their good works, it's a form of glory mongering.

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Because what you're basically saying is, I'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps and I'm going to make myself worthy so that when

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I stand before God, God says, whoa, wow, you pulled it off, you did it. I'm going to receive glory from God.

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All God's going to do is recognize my glory. And then you think about the charismatic churches and the

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Pentecostal churches. They have this insatiable craving for the glory. And as I've pointed out, they've done this weird thing.

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They've taken the word glory and turned it into this really long polysyllabic word. It's the glory. Right? Yeah, they're craving for the glory.

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It's an unmistakable, noticeable feature of their doctrine and practice. One might even say that they are glory junkies.

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They are jonesing for their next hit of the glory. But in reality, all they're getting are goosebumps.

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And goosebumps and the strange experiences of the so -called glory are cheap counterfeits of God's glory. And they have nothing to do with the glory of God or the future glory that Christ's sheep will be, and listen to the word, gifted with in the resurrection.

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Stop seeking your own glory. There is a glory that God will give to you. And sadly, far too many people today rely on these so -called manifestations of God's glory.

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And here's how they use them. They use them as a substitute for the absolution. You'll notice in those churches, they don't confess their sins.

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They do not hear that Christ has bled and died for them. They do not hear the words, I forgive you, all of your sins.

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And so in a situation like that, where you're chasing after the experiences, you're somehow seeking after the glory of God and goosebumps and things like that, what does it turn into?

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It turns into kind of a sick drug that they self -medicate on. The idea goes something like this.

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I've had a difficult week, and it feels as if the devil, the world, my own sinful flesh, they have yet again gotten the upper hand in my life.

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It's not that the lot of us all. So I've gone to church. I've gone to church to get my glory hit so that I can feel those goosebumps again because I figure out if I just raise my hands high enough during worship, yield myself enough to the

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Spirit, if I'm sincere enough, then, maybe then, God will make me feel those goosebumps and those goosebumps will assure me that things between me and God are okay.

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They have to be because I had goosebumps, right? But my question is what happens when there are no goosebumps?

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Because the goosebumps of that type of worship are produced by the manipulation of the music. You can get those goosebumps from a good rock concert.

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You get those goosebumps even today if you were to attend a U2 concert. Now, I understand these guys are getting geriatric and they're getting close to the nursing home, but still they can put on a good concert.

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Okay, just saying. Don't even get me started about the Rolling Stones. I don't know how those guys are still alive.

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Anyway, the point is this, is that the same euphoria you feel in a good rock concert has been brought into the church and it's created the goosebumps that then you're supposed to feel that make you feel like you're okay with God.

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But the problem is that when you expose yourself to that type of emotional manipulation week after week after week, then, like any drug, you have the law of diminishing returns.

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You've got to up the dose in order to feel something and eventually the whole thing wears out.

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So what happens when there are no goosebumps? What if you feel nothing? Which, by the way, like I said, it's going to happen.

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What if you feel nothing, you sense nothing, you hear nothing for a long period of time? Well, what then? Well, you feel like you and God are not okay.

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Maybe God's not happy with you. Then what happens when your life doesn't go from glory to glory?

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Which is the normal life, by the way. Instead, we human beings do not go from glory to glory. We go from gory to gory.

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One defeat after another. Forget what Joel Osteen says about you being the head and not the tail and living a victorious life.

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I keep pointing out to you, every week when I show up here, I look worse than the week before. So do you.

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So there. That's just the setup for this sermon.

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So let's work our way back through. I'm going to try to weave in all three of our texts in our sermon today.

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And what I would like you to kind of consider in this is I'm going to do this in chronological order.

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I'm going to go Old Testament, Gospel, and then Epistle text. And I want you to take a look at where the glory appears in each of these texts because the first two are obvious, but the last one is so comforting and assuring for us.

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So I always like to apply the same rules that I make others apply when it comes to rightly handling

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God's word, and those are context, context, and context. So if you want to look at Exodus 24, I'm going to back up into the context, and we're going to look at verse 1.

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And we're going to notice that there's a lot of blood in this text, and that blood is important. So Yahweh, he said to Moses, Come up to Yahweh, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the 70 of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.

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Moses alone shall come near to Yahweh, but the others shall not come near. So here's our context.

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So if you know in chapter 20, the people of Israel, just before chapter 20 they had gotten to the foot of Mount Sinai, which by the way is in Arabia, it's not in Egypt.

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But they got to the foot of Mount Sinai, and the glory of the Lord covered, consumed the top of Mount Sinai, and then

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God gave them the Ten Commandments. And when God gave them the Ten Commandments, there was lightning, and thunder crashes, and the sound of a trumpet, and the people stood there with their knees knocking together while God said,

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You will have no other gods before Me. You shall not covet, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness.

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And everyone's going, Ah! And at the end of that chapter, they said to Moses, You talk to God.

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We don't want Him to talk to us anymore because that'll kill us. You'll note that when

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God shows up in His glory, and we sinful human beings are anywhere in the near vicinity, the experience that follows is anything but pleasant.

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And so now God has called the elders of Israel, 70 of them plus, Nadab, and Abihu, and Moses, and Joshua, He's called them up to have some worship time with them, but only certain ones of them can come close, and ain't nobody coming near until they're covered in blood.

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That's kind of the idea. So Moses came and told the people all the words that Yahweh, and all the rules, and all the people answered with one voice and said,

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All the words that Yahweh has spoken, we will do. Liars. That didn't work out because when

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Moses came down from the mountain, they were worshiping a golden calf. Moses wrote down all the words of Yahweh.

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He rose early in the morning, built an altar at the foot of the mountain, 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel.

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He sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings, sacrifice peace offerings of oxen to the

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Lord. And these are a lot of animals that died this day. Moses took half the blood, put it in basins.

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Half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant. He read it in the hearing of the people, and they said,

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All that Yahweh has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient. So Moses took the blood, threw it on the people and said,

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Behold the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with these words.

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There is blood all over the place. I mean, what kind of church service is this?

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Come on, folks, we've got some blood for you. Everyone's got it splashed on their faces.

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It's in their clothes. They're going, oh, man, I'm not going to be able to get this out. But you're going to know, you cannot draw near without this blood of the covenant, because without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.

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Scripture is clear on this matter. So them being covered in blood then lays the groundwork for them to be able to even come near to God.

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And I would say this, same with us. You cannot draw near to God, be in His presence or His glory, unless you too are covered in blood.

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Not your own or the blood of animals, but the blood of Christ. So the text continues.

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So Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, the 70 of the elders, they went up. They saw the God of Israel.

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Now, they didn't really see His face. The only description we get here is this one. There was under His feet, as it were, a pavement, a sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

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They got to see God's feet. He did not lay His hand on the chief men of the people of Israel.

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They beheld God and ate and drank. Notice v. 11. It's spoken as if this is some strange oddity.

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God did not lay His hands on them. As if the thing you should expect, you show up in the presence of God, well, that's the last thing you did.

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But here it says God didn't lay a hand on them. They're covered in the blood. So Moses rose with his assistant

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Joshua. Wait, I missed a part. So come to me on the mountain, God said, that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandments which

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I have written for their instruction. So Moses went with his assistant Joshua. Moses went up into the mountain of God, and he said to the elders, wait here for us until we return, and behold,

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Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let them go up.

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And you're going to note in v. 11 that God ate and drank with them also. When you're forgiven, when you're covered in the blood, you can commune with God and have a meal with Him.

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That's what we do every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper, by the way. So the glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, v.

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16 says, and the cloud covered it six days, and on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

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Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.

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Now the first appearance then chronologically in our text of the appearance of the glory of God, it is like a devouring fire.

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What a magnificent, terrifying thing it must have been to see this.

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The very top of Mount Sinai, Jabal al -Moshe, is actually what it is in Arabic.

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The mountain of God consuming fire, burning from the top of this nonstop.

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And the people are terrified. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights.

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So there's our first appearance, the glory of God consuming fire, and this is a terrifying thing.

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And you're going to note that Peter, James, and John, they were terrified too. Second appearance in our chronological look at the glory of God here today is back in our

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Gospel text, Matthew 17 .1. After six days, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, His brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves.

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And He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun. His clothes became white as light.

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And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah.

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Moses, Moshe, and Yeshayahu are there. The Law and the

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Prophets talking to Jesus. If you remember, the Law and the Prophets, they bear witness to Christ in the

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Old Testament Scriptures. It's important that they are there. And it's also worth noting this, that you're going to note that they are in the near presence of Christ, in His immediate presence.

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Luke, in his account, tells us they were discussing with Christ His exodus. And so this should help us out a little bit here because when we talk about the

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Christian faith, we talk about faith, hope, and love. Faith in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

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Love towards neighbor in good works. But the hope is the final reconciliation with God where we can once again have that face -to -face relationship with God in His glory and His presence and not suffer the consequences of our sins.

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That we would not be terrified. That we would not be destroyed by God for our sins.

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And that comes, well, at a later time. And here, Moses and Elijah, they give us a glimpse of that, if you would.

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This is a little, tiny foretaste of the resurrection. And I would remind you that we, as Christians, are promised that we too will shine like the sun.

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These are the words of Christ. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus tells that parable of the weeds of the field.

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You know how a fellow had a field and he had good seed and he planted good seed in it, but he had an enemy.

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And the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. There's terrorism on this part.

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It was an enemy who did it. And Jesus tells us in His interpretation of this particular parable that the field is the world, the good seed.

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They are the sons of the kingdom, the weeds. They are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

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The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels. And Christ then says, just as the weeds are gathered and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

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So the Son of Man will send His angels and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace.

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That's hell itself. And in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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And that's what we all deserve because of our sin. But then He says this, then the righteous. And we know that we are made righteous because of the gift that Christ has given us, by forgiving us of our sins, bleeding and dying for us, and clothing us in His very righteousness.

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Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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So you note that part of our Christian confession is the hope then of the resurrection.

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And so Moses and Elijah flanking Christ, talking with Him about His exodus. The reason why they're talking with Him about His exodus is because Jesus is about ready to climb another mountain.

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Think of it this way. Mount Sinai, this is where the glory of God appeared. Here we have the Mount of Transfiguration.

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And we're not exactly sure which mountain this is. If you were to take a tour of Israel, there are some competing mountains for this, for being the

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Mount of Transfiguration. It doesn't really tell us which one it is. And so if you take a trip to Israel and you go to the

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Mount of Transfiguration, know that there's a possibility it ain't the one because there are competing claims for this.

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But again, note, climbing mountains is a big deal and God does important things on the top of mountains.

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And the Mount of Transfiguration and the Mount of Sinai are two places in which the glory of God appeared.

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But then we continue with these points from our text. So Peter, seeing that Christ is transfigured, talking to Moses and Elijah, he says,

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Lord, it's good that we're here. If you wish, I'll make three tents here. One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.

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Let's see if we can memorialize this thing. You can imagine the tourist dollars we can get. And while he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them.

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And a voice from the cloud said, This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. And now listen to these last words.

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Listen to Him. So the voice of the Father bears witness that Jesus is

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His Son, and yes, God has a Son. And so he said to Him, Listen to Him.

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And it's at this point that we need to take a quick peek, if you would, at our third text. If you want to look at 2

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Peter 1 with me, I would like to point out the third place in which the glory of God appears.

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And you'd miss it if you're not looking for it, but Peter was quite, quite helpful in putting it here.

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And here's what he says. We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. And now we can see why

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Jesus chose three guys. And you're going to note here, Jesus didn't take all 12 of His disciples with Him. He didn't take all 12.

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So this idea that somehow, you know, we're all supposed to have these glory experiences is nonsense because 75 % of Jesus' 12 disciples didn't get to have this experience.

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But you're going to note, according to Torah, according to the ancient world's requirements when it comes to eyewitness testimony, you need at least two to validate something.

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And a third, well, that's just a little bit of overkill to kind of make the point. And so you're going to note that Peter recognizes he was an eyewitness.

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That's why he was there. He was there as an eyewitness. He heard that voice. He saw the glory of Christ.

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He saw His majesty. And he says this, For when Jesus received honor and glory from God the

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Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the majestic glory, saying, This is my beloved

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Son with whom I am well pleased, we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.

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Which one? We're not sure. And then listen to what he says. And now we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.

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Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Third place that we're to look for the glory of God now, because the

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Father has said, listen to Jesus, is in the Bible, in the scripture. I'm a photography nerd.

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I apologize. You're going to get a little photography nerddom here. But there was a Russian photographer who's actually quite whimsical.

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I like following her on Instagram. And her and her husband put a series of photographs together that were just clever and hilarious.

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If you Google it, it says, photograph of man stealing the sun. And it's a great series of photos.

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And so all the human beings and all the stuff that's there are in silhouette.

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And it's sunset. And so a guy has backed up his SUV next to the sunset.

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And what he does is he goes and he grabs the sun. And that's in one photo.

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And then the next photo you see him taking the sun and pushing it into the back of his SUV. And then the next he's getting ready to drive off with it.

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Right? It's a good thing. So I love this photograph series. It's so funny. But anyway. Sorry, I have to come back.

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Nerded out. My apologies. All right. So think of it this way. Just like those photographs of the guy stealing the sun.

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What Peter has done here is shown us that what Christ has done for us, what God has done for us, he's taken the glory of God and he's captured it and he's pushed it into the scriptures.

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And now the glory of God shines for you as a lamp shining in a dark place.

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Leading you to Christ. To the forgiveness of your sins. Reconciliation with the

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Father. And all of this is so vital and important. The glory of Christ is now found in the scriptures.

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That's where the glory is. And it's a lamp shining in a dark place. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path, the psalmist says.

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And this then, the glory of God, shines from the scriptures, illuminating the path before us, leading us out of the valley of the shadow of death into the glorious light of His kingdom.

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That's the idea. And so Peter says, knowing this, that first of all, the no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

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We didn't make this stuff up, guys. No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. And so when you hear the voice of the Father say, This is my beloved

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Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him. Where do we go to hear

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His voice? Do we climb a mountain? Do we get into the lotus position and go,

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Om? No. His voice is speaking to us in the scriptures themselves.

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And hearing then the voice of the Father, the disciples fall on their faces, and they too were terrified.

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But watch what happens here. The disciples get something that the children of Israel didn't get at Mount Sinai.

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Jesus came and touched them and said, Rise. Have no fear. Why? Because Jesus is getting ready to go and climb another mountain.

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It's a terrible mountain. It is the mountain that Abraham climbed when he was told by God to sacrifice his son.

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His only son. It sucked. You see, the next mountain that Jesus was going to climb was

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Mount Moriah. And there was nothing glorious about it. Nothing. This is the same mountain where the

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Temple Mount is to this day. It is the same mountain where Jew and Christian and Muslim all have a claim, a stake on.

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But Jesus that day climbed Mount Moriah. He did it on a Friday morning. And there was nothing glorious about it.

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On that mountain, there was no light. In fact, at noon, the sun failed to give its light.

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And that mountain and the whole world was consumed and covered in darkness. On that mountain, that wasn't a mountain of life.

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On that mountain, there was only death. On that mountain, there was no victory.

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In fact, it was just straight -up defeat. And on that mountain, there was no glory.

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There was only shame. And there was ignominy. As the Son of God took upon Himself Your sin and mine, and He suffered the shame that we deserve in our place so that we would not have to suffer shame in God's presence and in His glory.

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On that mountain, the voice of the Father was not heard at all despite Jesus' plaintive cries and calls to Him, Father, why have

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You forsaken Me? But know this with certainty. Jesus was forsaken.

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The glory was gone. The light extinguished. The voice of God departed so that you and I can be forgiven and pardoned of our sins, so that we could again have the image of God restored to us, so that we would not be forsaken, so that we then could shine with the glory of God.

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But you see, God's glory is closed off to us without the blood of the new covenant.

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And unless we are sprinkled and made clean by the blood of the sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ, then we can never see the glory of God and expect to live.

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So this Transfiguration Sunday, listen to the voice of Christ and His voice which is only found today in the

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Scriptures. Open them up. Hear His voice. Let Him tell you, do not fear.

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I have forgiven you. I have bled and died for you. I have suffered God's wrath in your place.

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The light of Christ is now hidden in the Scriptures, and it will light your path and shine for you in this dark world.

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The very valley of the shadow of death itself that we're all wandering through. As Christ leads you through this life of sorrow and tears and toil and shame,

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He's going to take you to yet another mountain, Mount Zion, the new earth, the place where His glory fills the earth, and the sun itself will be superfluous, unnecessary to light the world.

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And there we will forever shine with the glory of Christ, which is given to us as a gift. And we will shine with the glory of Christ because as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.

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Amen. We thank you for your support.

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