Worth It

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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My name is Mike Gabendroth. I have a new book out. It's some older material, redone, law gospel, more grace, more hope, more assurance.

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It's called King, How the Sovereignty of God Changes Everything.

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If you understand God as a king, it'll help you in many areas. I mean, we don't really understand kings much these days because we don't have a king.

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I think we had a big no kings thing. And even the kings we know about,

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Queen Elizabeth, kings and queens, you know, royalty in England, kind of a paper, you know, monarch, constitutional monarch.

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I mean, they're not like the Bible days where Ahasuerus, the king, did whatever he wanted or whatever.

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And so if you understand God as king, of course, Jesus, prophet, priest, and king, it'll help you.

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So that's out on Amazon and it's about 100 pages. You can pick it up. I hope it will bless you.

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It discusses prayer, worship, election, God the king chooses.

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So anyway, Mike Abenoth, No Compromise Radio. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com or info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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Today, I'd like to talk about encouragement. Everybody needs encouragement. And sometimes we forget to encourage.

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The Bible teaches us that God is a God of encouragement. May the God of encouragement.

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It's kind of interesting. That's wonderful in my mind. And we are to encourage one another. 1

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Thessalonians talks about that. Encourage one another. Hebrews chapter 10, encouraging one another. And so I'd like to obey

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God today and encourage you in a way that you might not normally think of. So today on No Compromise Radio, I want to encourage.

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Back in the day, when I preached or taught, I wanted people to say, man, I got so convicted. And I don't mind conviction.

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But most of the time now, if I preach somewhere and someone will say to me here even, oh, that was encouraging today.

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I think, great. Right? I want you to be encouraged. You should be encouraged when you think about grace and preaching the means of grace and talking about who

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Jesus is. Christians should be encouraged when they hear about their Lord and Savior. Well, the encouragement today comes through the transfiguration.

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Now, if I were to ask you, what's like the greatest event between Christ's birth and death?

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Maybe you'd say feeding of the 5 ,000 men, 20 ,000 people probably in total.

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Maybe you'd say walking on water, stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee, touching the leper and healing the leper, casting out demons, resisting

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Satan in the wilderness, some of the teaching events, the

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Sermon on the Mount. I mean, you could find all kinds of majestic, wonderful, glorious things that you say, wow, that was like a major event.

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Some scholars have said, and they could be right, that the most significant event between Christ's birth and death is the transfiguration.

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Fascinating, that makes me want to study it. The transfiguration is found in Matthew, Mark, and today we're looking at Luke, the account of the transfiguration of Jesus in Luke.

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And it is designed to encourage the disciples. It's designed to encourage you.

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And here's the wild one. It's designed to encourage Jesus. What in the world?

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To encourage the disciples, to encourage all the readers of the Bible, and to encourage

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Jesus, transfiguration. Now, as you know, we talked about last week.

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If you missed last week, you're a loser, slacker, who knows what you are.

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No, but seriously, if you missed last week, Jesus said to remind the men, and He did it often,

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I'm going to suffer, I'm going to be killed, delivered into the hands of the scribes and Pharisees, et cetera, and I'm gonna die, and I'll be raised again on the third day.

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And He keeps telling the disciples that. I'm going to suffer. And then He says, well,

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I suffer, you're going to suffer. And He tells the men,

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I want you to realize that if you want to come after me, you need to deny yourself, pick up your cross daily and follow me.

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And so you're going to suffer as well. And so the men must have been thinking, is it worth it?

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You might be thinking as a Christian, is denying self and picking up cross daily worth it?

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I mean, look at the world. They're free and easy, and they've got everything going well.

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And you just see all these unrighteous people that excel in life, and they even seem to have a good family, and they've got money, and they've got cars, and they've got yachts and all that other stuff.

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I mean, Jeff Bezos just got married yesterday, and I was just looking at some of the people there. Look at the world has everything, and they engage self.

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They promote self. They love themselves some self. And all of a sudden I have to deny self.

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Is it worth denying yourself? Is it worth picking up your cross daily, even unto martyrdom?

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And is it worth following Jesus? Because we know it's cross, then crown.

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We know it's suffering, then glory. And is it going to be worth it? So today on No Compromise Radio, I want you to know it's worth it.

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If you could just see Jesus's glory for five seconds.

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So think of the trial you're in now. You probably have some kind of trial, the one you just get out of. And you're like, I don't know.

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This is hard, going through a hard trial. Or I'm saying no to self in some area, and it's very difficult for me.

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If I let you see heaven for five seconds, I wonder if you'd say, okay,

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I can make it through. I got just enough encouragement. I know what's coming. I know the later. Five seconds of glory in heaven.

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Would it be worth it? And you know the answer. And that's what the transfiguration is. That's why the transfiguration is where it is in scripture.

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Deny self, pick up cross daily, follow me. Is it worth it? How do you encourage the disciples?

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That's a daunting thing. You're gonna die for me. And it's not gonna just be old age, except for maybe one of them.

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You're gonna die. Is it worth it? Crucifixion, public execution, shame, ridicule.

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And then any other lesser trial we as Christians today might go through. Is it worth it?

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Is it worth being a Christian? And so Jesus, eight days after he says these things, he takes

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Peter, James, and John up to a mountain. And you should be thinking mountain, Revelation, Sinai, Moses, et cetera, even

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Elijah on Mount Carmel. And Jesus takes them to a mountain, Luke 9 says, and he takes the three men,

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Peter, James, and John, and Jesus is going to pray. One of the things you should do when you're reading the

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Bible, when Jesus prays, something big's gonna happen. When Jesus prays, better pay attention because here

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Jesus is praying probably about the passion, probably about the suffering, probably about the cross.

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He's on his way to Jerusalem. I don't know, six months later, he gets crucified. I don't know the exact timing and he prays.

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So he goes to the mountain, takes three of the men and he prays. While he was praying, the appearance of his face became different and his clothing became white and gleaming.

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Now, I think that's an understatement. The appearance of his face became different. I think ESV says altered.

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Matthew and Mark use the word transfigured. Transfigured basically means what someone is on the inside comes outside.

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So here we have Jesus, the eternal son who took on flesh and dwelt among us.

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And I don't know if it's through the pores. I don't know, in my mind, it's like,

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I'm gonna just go, and out comes the glory. Instead of Moses, when

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Moses goes up to see God's backside, he doesn't see his face, but he sees

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God, the glory of God. He's got the radiating glory of God on his face.

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And remember, he has to put the veil on because the people are afraid. This isn't radiating glory that's reflected.

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This is essence. This is nature. This is divinity. This is the glory cloud.

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This is Shekinah. This is the glory of God is streaming out of God because Jesus is

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God. And it says his face was altered. I mean, this is bright. This is shining.

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This is, I don't know what words you want, effulgent glory. This is the glory of God. This is the, think about the pillar of cloud, the pillar of glory, and directing the

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Israelites, God himself. And so his appearance becomes different.

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And so much so his clothing becomes white. We think this is probably in the evening.

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This mountain is probably Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon, 9 ,200 feet, has snow on the top of it, quite possibly.

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And now, if you were at the bottom of the mountain, you were far away, this mountain is lit up.

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This mountain is shining. This is just the brilliance. The, like lightning would shine, make things bright.

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And behold, two men were talking with Jesus and they were Moses and Elijah. What? Jesus is talking with two men.

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How do they recognize it's Moses and Elijah? By the way, if you really wanna get stumped on No Compromise Radio, when you die, you don't get a body till later at the resurrection.

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You have a spirit. Well, so that we could recognize, as my best guess,

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God gives Moses and Elijah a glorified body to go back to the earth with.

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I don't know if he then took that body away. By the way, Moses, kind of a strange death, wasn't it?

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He was well, he was bright and alive, but he was disobedient and God took him in.

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Remember, God buried him. When I was on top of Mount Nebo, where God buried Moses, I thought, how many people have looked for the bones of Moses?

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I was even looking around, where would I look? Gotta be down there somewhere. And Elijah, he had kind of a strange departure too, right?

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Up he goes, right? Chariots, a fire. And it says they're talking.

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Now, I'd like to know what they're talking about. I think it was S. Lewis Johnson who said, do you think they're talking about politics?

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When will Nero get the ax? When will Pilate get replaced? Maybe they were talking about,

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I don't know, what kind of sports teams that were going on around there. Maybe they were talking about,

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I don't know, farming. Of course they weren't talking about any of that. Would you like to know what they're talking about?

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I know what they're talking about. And so do you, if you just read the next verse. Who, Luke 9, 31, appearing in glory, were speaking of his departure with which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

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Okay, here's the big reveal. Speaking about his departure. Let me give you the Greek word for departure.

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They were speaking about his exodus. That's the literal word. They were speaking about his exodus that he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.

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Wow. Moses representing the law, Elijah representing the prophets.

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Together, as Jesus would say in Luke chapter 24, pointing to the

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Messiah who would be a suffering Messiah, a sin -bearing Messiah, a victorious

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Messiah over death and sin and hell. All of the Old Testament with types and shadows and prophecies, all pointing to this

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Messiah who would come, not just once, but twice. All these things were pointing to what had to be accomplished at Jerusalem.

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That is Christ's sin -bearing death, even though he didn't sin. Now, when we talk about death, it's sad.

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And we have different words for death, don't we? Passed on, kicked the bucket, deceased. Sometimes we talk about people that have died, dearly departed, right?

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Dearly departed. They departed. What is accomplished when people die or depart?

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When I die, what will be accomplished? Well, I guess God's glorification in me, but that's not my point.

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Jesus's death accomplished is my point. That's what they were talking about. What Jesus's death would accomplish.

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For me, death is the end of it all. For you, death is the end of it all. Death doesn't accomplish, death finalizes.

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Death ends, death terminates. Jesus's death accomplishes. And Moses and Elijah are there saying, yes, everything about the

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Old Testament and about you, Jesus, finds itself at the end of the cross. And of course, then the resurrection.

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And if you ask scholars like John Calvin, Sinclair Ferguson, R .C.

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Sproul, and a whole host of others, they say that not just Peter, James, and John need the encouragement.

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Not just for us, we need the encouragement because we're going through trials and deny self, pick up cross, and following Jesus is difficult.

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Will it be worth it? But these men, glorified men, Moses and Elijah, were encouraging

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Jesus, giving him courage. You say, how does that work? Dear friends, do humans need encouragement?

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Do humans need to be bolstered? Do humans need to be fortified? Do humans need to have, like I said, encouragement?

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The answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes. Next question. We've seen the great divine essence come out of Jesus in the transfiguration, but Jesus also is truly man.

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He is divine, that's certain, and he is man, that's certain. And so these scholars rightly say, this occasion is not only helping

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Peter, James, and John and all of us, it's helping Jesus, giving Jesus encouragement.

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Now, the text goes on. Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep, but when they were fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.

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Can you recognize people in heaven? By the way, this is just an inference here, but when you get to heaven, will you be able to recognize your mom?

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If she's in heaven? I mean, my mom's in heaven, will I recognize her? Well, she's got a glorified body, maybe not.

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I will be able to recognize her. They're recognizing Moses and Elijah. That'd be interesting. By the way, did

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Moses ever make it in the promised land? Remember God said, hit that rock, you hit that rock, and you're not gonna make it in.

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You've disobeyed me, dishonored my word. And Moses never made it in the promised land. He, like I said, was at a

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Mount Nebo and he was looking down at the promised land and he could see it, but he never made it in, right? Did he ever make it in?

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Yes, he's standing on the Mount of Transfiguration right now. He made it into the promised land.

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And these guys were sleeping. They see the men standing there. And I don't know what you're like when you first wake up.

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It takes me a half an hour with a cup of coffee before I want my wife to ask me a difficult question or what are we doing today?

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Or how's this gonna happen? How does it get the car fixed? I'm like, I don't know, I'm waking up. I just blame everything on age now.

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And as these were leaving him, Moses and Elijah leaving,

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Peter said to Jesus, master, it's good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah, not realizing what he was saying.

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Let's just camp right here. Let's just have a little tabernacle, a little feast of the booth, a little tent.

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Let's just kind of be here, a little shelter. Let's reside here. Again, stupidly thinking, oh, cross is coming, suffering's coming.

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Let's just settle down in glory right now. We don't need to go anywhere else. And even more stupidly, the equality of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.

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Let's make three tents. Every, hey, now there's nothing wrong with saying, thank you for Moses and the prophets, but they're not on the same level of Jesus.

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You look at Hebrews chapter three. There's a difference between Jesus and Moses. That's for certain.

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While he was saying this, now it's usually Jesus that corrects Peter. What do they say about Peter?

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He's got a foot shaped mouth or something like that. While he was saying this, someone else is going to correct

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Peter this time. And that someone else is the father. A cloud formed and began to overshadow them.

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And they were afraid as they entered the cloud. Then a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my son,

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Psalm two, my chosen one, Isaiah 41, no, excuse me, 42.

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Listen to him. Moses and the prophets certainly pointed to Jesus, but Moses and Elijah are not on the same level as Jesus.

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They fade in the background, Moses and Elijah, listen to him, listen to him.

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And I'm sure that encouraged Jesus as well in terms of, I'm the beloved son.

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I've been sent on this mission by the father. I'm the chosen one to do the very thing that the father sent me to do, to accomplish his will.

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And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. Like there's nobody else you should be listening to.

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The other ones are gone. And they kept silence and they reported no one in those days of anything that they had seen.

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Wow, I would have liked to have been there. Can you imagine? Bright, shining, brighter than the sun.

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I mean, it's like basically blinding you. I'm not saying these men were blind, but to see the glory.

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What was happening? Now we think a big picture. What was going on here? The transfiguration. The men needed some encouragement.

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Of course, Jesus got the encouragement too. Is it worth it to go through this life as a

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Christian with all the difficulties involved? From denying self to certain trials, by the way, the trials that God's sovereign over.

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Think about the trials that you go through. Is it gonna be worth it? Is heaven gonna be worth it? I mean, when you say

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God is sovereign over my trials, I hope you realize that God sovereignly put you in the trial. It's like, oh, what?

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Now I've had some near -death experiences. Close to death after 16 days being in the hospital with COVID.

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I got allergic reaction in the Czech Republic with hazelnuts and my throat started to swell up and they rushed me to the

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ER and I thought I was gonna die. But my kind of one brush with I thought was death was when

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I went to the hospital. I have a smaller esophagus and I was choking on food.

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And I think I probably swallowed the food eventually, but I think I felt like scratches and stuff like that.

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And things can kind of get partially lodged there. And then you die in your sleep because it fell out or whatever.

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So I go to the ER. They take me in and they get me all ready. And they said, we're gonna give you some ketamine.

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Okay, I wasn't even thinking, just get this thing out of my throat. I would have preferred,

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I don't know, fentanyl or something. I don't know what they give. And I don't really know much.

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I mean, I know about street drugs, but I don't really know much about ketamine except you can either have a lot of fun with it or there's the downside of it.

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And I think the guy on Friends, he was the kind of guy that he liked the effects or it affected him positively.

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So they give me the ketamine and I'm now out. But I was awake in my mind.

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And exactly what happened to people on the downside of ketamine, I started going down a hole and it's called the ketamine hole, the

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K hole. I'm going down feet first. Felt like I was in a toboggan and zooming down, swirling down.

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I'm like, I'm dead. I just died. And in my mind,

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I thought something's wrong because the Bible says to live is

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Christ, to die, gain. I'm not doing any gaining right now. I'm going down a hole. Absent from the body, present with the

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Lord. I'm not, I'm floating. I'm like, I guess the Catholics were right, purgatory.

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I'm going to limbo, flying down this thing. It's like, you know, the closest thing

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I can think of is if you go to a water park and it's a really high slide, it's completely covered, right?

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It's not a half a slide. It's complete, so you don't fall out, flying down this thing. And I thought, there's no glory.

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And I guess I'm going to hell. I trust in Jesus. I believe in Jesus. I guess it wasn't saving faith and off I go.

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I'm going straight down, down, down. There's no glory, no glory cloud, no Shekinah, no little sneak peek of heaven.

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That's what the transfiguration was, a sneak peek of heaven and glory to be had, not by just Jesus, but all who would follow

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Jesus. And it's worth it. And here I am going down the K -hole. Well, I thought, maybe

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I'm still alive. And so can I breathe? I couldn't breathe. I mean, I really was breathing, but I couldn't feel myself in this ketamine deal.

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So all that to say, they did the work. I start slowly coming out of it and I'm still going down this thing.

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But I start seeing my, I was wearing black vans and I didn't take them off because I'm not in that surgery.

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I'm just like in a room and I could see my black vans. And I go, this can't be heaven because you don't go to heaven with your clothes.

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You don't go with your vans. I mean, probably some people are buried with their vans. I learned this week that the man who invented

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Pringles, his ashes are in a Pringles can. True. Aren't you glad you turned into the radio?

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You wouldn't learn these things. My brother's show is better than mine, the pactum, but you wouldn't learn about Pringles on the pactum now, would you?

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So all that to say, the second you close your eyes in death, dear

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Christian, it's glory, indescribable, face -to -face, seeing

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God. When you see Jesus face -to -face in heaven, you'll say to yourself, oh, it was all worth it.

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This is unbelievable. This is worth it. You know, the Bible talks about that.

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And I want you to know whatever trial you're going through, whatever kind of self -denial you have to go through, 2

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Corinthians reminds me of this wonder that awaits us, the glory.

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It says, therefore, we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

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For momentary light affliction, that's what we're going through now. No matter what that is in comparison, it's momentary in light, is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison.

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No matter what we're going through now, the preview of heaven that they got, the preview of heaven that they received on the

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Mount of Transfiguration is enough to get you there. And here it goes on to say in 2 Corinthians, while we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen.

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For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. I want you to know heaven's reality, purchased, gained, secured by, inhabited by the

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Lord Jesus. And it's worth it. Whatever you go through, it's worth it. I regularly do premarital counseling.

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There's a lot of weddings here at the church. And I'll ask the couple, are you staying pure?

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You're not sleeping together. And I tell them, I'm gonna ask them that every single time. And I'll tell them, do you know what?

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You'll never, when you're married, say to yourself, say to each other, we should have had more premarital sex.

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You'll never say that. You'll never say, oh, you know what? We shouldn't have stayed, kept ourselves pure until marriage.

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That was dumb. We should have fooled around more. You'll never say that. Now you will say, I have all kinds of sexual regrets.

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You will say, I'm thankful that the blood of Jesus washes me clean from all those sexual sins. But you'll never say, we should have had more premarital sex.

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Nobody will say that. You'll think, you know what? It was worth waiting.

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The wait was worth it. And only in a semi -related way, you're gonna say to yourself in heaven, you know what?

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Was all that suffering worth it? You won't say at all, because it will have been worth it.

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It is suffering than glory. It is the cross than the crown. And you're gonna be saying, you know what? That was all worth it.

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I see exactly what the Lord was doing. I see how it honored Him. I see how it worked with other people. I see it all now.

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It was worth it. Was it worth for me denying myself on earth? When I'm in heaven, I'll say, self -denial, was it worth it?

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Or are you gonna say, you know, picking up the cross daily wasn't worth it? Of course, you're not gonna say any of that.

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Here, the transfiguration is given to encourage, and it's to encourage you. You didn't see this with your eyes, but you can see it with your eyes of faith, because it's in the word that this is what heaven is like.

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This is who Jesus is. This is His glory. He's the Lord of glory, the King of glory. When you think of glory, you should be thinking of bright.

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You should be thinking about dazzling, spectacular. You should be thinking about heavy, weighty, gravitas, glory.

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That's the word for glory. And you're just like, heavy. When I was a kid, you know, that was the language of the kids.

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If something was cool, that's heavy, man. It's a heavy thought, and that's the language of glory.

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So on No Compromise Radio, if you need encouragement, the answer's found in who

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Jesus is. If you need encouragement, the answer's found in, how about reading Revelation chapter 20 and 21 and chapter 22 about the eternal state.

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If you need encouragement, how about rereading Romans chapter three, thinking how much need we have of a

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Savior who would save us from all those unrighteous deeds, and then the hope of heaven. Can you imagine heaven waits for you?

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Co -er with Christ. We have a living hope, 1 Peter chapter one says.

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So my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Don't forget, you can order the book,

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King and other books on Amazon and how the sovereignty of God changes everything.

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I wish I had it in front of me, but Todd Friel endorsed the book. And he said, you're holding in your hands what will certainly be one of the worst -selling books of all time.

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Thanks, Todd. In a similar fashion, when I met Sinclair Ferguson for a class once, and he was asking me about me, and most speakers just talk about themselves, but he was asking me about me, which was kind.

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And he said, oh, so you're writing some books? Yes, what are they about? I said, well, the first two are about Jesus.

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And he said, they'll never sell. Nobody buys books about Jesus because they all wanna buy books, even if they're

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Christians, about how to get over anxiety and how to be a better communicator, how to have a nice marriage or whatever. So he was right, by the way.

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They didn't really sell too much. But with the no cohorts, I'm sure you'll order all kinds of shows.