This is a devotional with my thoughts added to verses from the Bible. I highly encourage you to dig into the word with your own thoughts. The Daily Devotion series is one way to do this. However, I know that sometimes we want to read other people’s ideas about Bible passages, so I am starting the Everyday series. I hope and pray that these posts will draw you nearer to Jesus.
DAY 1–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 9:1-4 The Transfiguration
He said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste death until they see God’s Kingdom come with power.” After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and brought them up onto a high mountain privately by themselves, and he was changed into another form in front of them. His clothing became glistening, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. Elijah and Moses appeared to them, and they were talking with Jesus.
In this passage, it is important to remember that the gospel of Mark is really Peter’s story. This was Peter’s eyewitness account of what he saw on the mountain, and he starts it with a prediction that explains what would soon come to pass. This prediction took place just after Jesus told His followers that they had to be willing to die for Him in order to be with Him when He returned in glory with His angels. Jesus had just finished telling the disciples and the crowd that they had to deny self, take up their cross, and follow Him. Then He told them that there were some standing there who would not taste death before they saw the kingdom of God come with power. The people that He was referring to were Peter, James, and John.
This is a case where using a one’s own worldview instead of letting the Bible provide the context can cause misinterpretation. We must be careful to use the Bible’s definitions rather than our own assumptions. If we read Mark 9:1 alone, it may sound as if Jesus gave a false prediction since we have a tendency to define the kingdom of heaven as a place or at best, Jesus’ second coming to take us to a place. Using these definitions, it would be easy to say that since the people standing there have already died and Jesus has not yet returned, this prediction did not come true. However, the context clearly shows that Peter is trying to say that Jesus told them about the upcoming transfiguration before it happened. The prediction and its fulfillment are all there in the same passage: The lead-up to the transfiguration, the transfiguration, and the disciples’ reactions followed by the trip down the mountain. Let the context teach you the meaning of confusing passages.
We focus a lot on the dazzling appearance of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah in glory, but maybe the transfiguration was not the main event here. Maybe, the content of the meeting was the important detail. This was a conference meeting between earth and heaven, and Jesus knew that He would not be able to hide His glory while conversing with Moses and Elijah, so He warned the disciples about it beforehand. We are not told in detail what the two prophets and Jesus discussed during this conference, but it was important. Luke gives a little more information. “And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:30-31). Thus, the three were discussing the crucifixion, among other topics. Why was this necessary? Maybe, Jesus needed to be encouraged by His human friends who had known Him before the incarnation. Maybe, being with these two men reminded Him of the joy that would be His when He gathered together all of those who would be redeemed by His sacrifice.
The transfiguration demonstrates that there is more going on in this life than we know. There are forces we cannot see, and if we did see them, they would stun us. Why doesn’t God reveal them to us? Because it would not benefit us in any way. Peter saw the transfiguration and still denied Jesus. John saw the transfiguration and was still knocked flat when Jesus revealed Himself in glory again on the island of Patmos. “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last,” (Revelation 1:17). Thus, seeing these forces is a strain to our sinful system and does not help us in our fight against evil. However, it does help us to know that there is more going on behind the scenes than our senses tell us. Knowing how little we know should give us patience, faith, and hope even when we cannot see God’s presence in the events around us.
DAY 2–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 9:1-9 This is My Beloved Son
He said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste death until they see God’s Kingdom come with power.” After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and brought them up onto a high mountain privately by themselves, and he was changed into another form in front of them. His clothing became glistening, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. Elijah and Moses appeared to them, and they were talking with Jesus. Peter answered Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let’s make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” For he didn’t know what to say, for they were very afraid. A cloud came, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly looking around, they saw no one with them any more, except Jesus only. As they were coming down from the mountain, he commanded them that they should tell no one what things they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
The two men from heaven and Jesus conferenced about Jesus’ soon departure for Jerusalem and what He would accomplish there. This was a kind of pep talk rather than a planning session. The Bible tells us that the actual plan had been put in place from before creation. However, God had never been a man before and never had to suffer and die as a man. Thus, Moses, who was Jesus’ friend and had experienced death, could give Jesus some insights. Elijah knew what it was like to fear and run and forget his faith in God’s power, so both men had valuable insights into the weakness of humans and the problems Jesus would face. They had also been Jesus’ companions in their human lives on earth and then for centuries with Jesus in heaven. They were part of Jesus’ inner circle who cared about the fate of humanity as they were humans themselves. They understood what it meant to make sacrifices for unworthy people. Thus, just speaking with the two men who had “been there and done that” may have provided comfort for Jesus in the coming times when He would have to continue to work with ignorant humans who had no understanding of the big picture for humanity. Interestingly, there is sort of a role reversal here. During the lifetime of Moses and Elijah, it was Jesus who was their sustainer while they experienced the weaknesses of being human. Now, they were the sustainers from heaven while Jesus was in a weak human body subject to human limitations.
At this time, the disciples were still looking at Jesus as a slightly modified man or a superior prophet. They may have thought of Him as equal with Moses and Elijah but not superior to them. Here, the Father makes it clear to them that Jesus was more than a prophet; He was the Son of God. The Father testified that Jesus was His son so that the disciples would understand that they needed to place Jesus higher up on the scale of their reckoning.
When the Father speaks of Jesus, He always seems to have to put some form of love or joy into His words. He does not say, “This is my obedient son or my powerful son or my smart son or my royal son.” No, what the Father wanted the disciples to understand about Jesus was that not only was He God’s son, but Jesus was the Beloved of God. The fact that the Father loves the Son is an important truth that we often overlook. Jesus is beloved by His Father.
Many of us have too much of the Greek idea of a stoic God. This is not biblical. In the scriptures, God is passionate and concerned and draws comfort and joy from us. Jesus was zealous about saving people and brooded when they refused to be saved. Jesus asked His disciples to give Him comfort when He felt bad. Jesus had joy in children and was excited when there was a breakthrough in His disciples’ understanding. He touched the disciples and let them lay on Him. Jesus demonstrated that God is full of passion and intimacy and touch. God is social and while “need” might be the wrong word, “want” is too weak for how God interacts with us. Because of His very nature of love, Jesus drew comfort from His two heavenly human friends and brought His three earthly human friends to share in the experience.
The transfiguration reminds us that heaven is a very different place than this world. Things are more brilliant and cleaner there. We should never be satisfied with this sinful degraded worldly life when there is a much more fulfilling future in heaven if we can only keep choosing to follow Jesus amid the squalor that we call home. Years later, Peter would testify that the majesty he saw on the mountain would be repeated when Jesus returns. “For we didn’t follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ We heard this voice come out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1:16-18). The event that those three men witnessed on the mountain top will one day be a sight for the whole world. The transfiguration is a call for you to live each day in anticipation of seeing Jesus coming in His glory to take you to the majestic, glorious place that He has prepared just for you.
DAY 3–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 9:9-13 Elijah has come
As they were coming down from the mountain, he commanded them that they should tell no one what things they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They kept this saying to themselves, questioning what the “rising from the dead” meant. They asked him, saying, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He said to them, “Elijah indeed comes first, and restores all things. How is it written about the Son of Man, that he should suffer many things and be despised? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they have also done to him whatever they wanted to, even as it is written about him.”
Jesus told Peter, James, and John not to tell anyone what they had seen until a later time. This admonition surely took away some of their excitement since they would have been eager to inform the other disciples about an experience they had received that was not only exclusively theirs but also extraordinary. Beyond their disappointment was their confusion about what Jesus meant by rising from the dead. However, rather than pursuing this topic, they decided to focus on their experience on the mountaintop.
The disciples had just seen the first Elijah, the one who had been taken up in a fiery chariot to heaven, and they started thinking about something that they had heard before. The scribes said that Elijah had to come again before the Messiah could come. The three disciples may have been uncertain about this prediction since the scribes said many things that were questionable. Jesus assured them that this was not only a true prophecy but also that it had already been fulfilled. At another time and place, Jesus identified John the Baptist as Elijah “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:12-14). At John the Baptist’s birth the angel also identified him as Elijah. “But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:13-17). Thus, the scriptures testify that Malachi’s prophecy of Elijah being the herald of the Messiah was indeed fulfilled.
The actual prophesy in Malachi says, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” (Malachi 4:5-6). The fulfillment of the Elijah prophecy (as well as many others) can be confusing for those who do not understand the Biblical use of names in prophecy. If a person believes that Malachi’s prophecy was forecasting the coming of the real Elijah, it might seem as if Jesus were stretching the prediction to make it fit John the Baptist. However, with more study of the scriptures, these people would find that it is typical in the Bible to use an old name and apply it to a new situation. For example, the King of the South was Egypt, but in prophecy it means a power that is similar to Egypt. Babylon in prophecy does not refer to the literal kingdom of Babylon but to a power that has some similarity to that literal kingdom. Isaiah was told to name his children symbolic names as prophecies. He also predicted that Jesus would be called Immanuel which used to confuse me as a child singing Christmas songs because it was not Jesus’ name. This symbolic use of names happens repeatedly in the Bible, so it should not be surprising that when Malachi prophesied that Elijah would come before the Messiah arrived, he did not mean the literal man who called down fire from God and killed the priests of Baal.
Just as the scribes were correct about the prophecy but wrong about its fulfillment, a lot of students of prophecy will be shocked by how future events unfold. The problem is not that they are misinterpreting prophecies (although many do), but most people have a tendency to throw in extra expectations based on their own experiences and biases. They are limited by the way things have happened in the past, but God has shown throughout the Bible that His ways are not man’s ways. Who would have foreseen the walls of Jericho falling for a trumpet blast, or Babylon being defeated without a long siege, or Samson defeating an army with the jawbone of an ass or Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul the evangelist? God is creative and perceives the end from the beginning. Humans have limited ability to imagine new and different outcomes, so even well-read, wise students of prophecy will be unable to tell us the details of how these prophecies will be fulfilled in real life and will also be unreliable in tracing the origins and paths by which these prophecies will come to pass. God will fulfill the prophecies just as the Bible says but not necessarily in the ways we expect, and that is the situation even without the obfuscations thrown in by Satan—misinterpretations, cultural assumptions, and unnoticed falsehoods underlying cherished ideas. When Satan’s deceptions are added to the mix, it would be wise for Christians to not be overconfident when looking at current events as fulfillments of prophecy.
If we can be easily misled by misinterpretations of prophecy, how can we be confident in proclaiming the truths of the Bible? First of all, we must always put Jesus higher than the world, our own selves, our situations, or anything else, including our own denominations and local churches. Second, we must constantly study the Bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Third, we must continually pray to God. Fourth, we must be active in serving others. If we are doing those four activities with God’s love abiding in us, even if we are deceived about a world event, we will still bring a truth filled witness about God to others. Finally, we must always trust God in all the events that occur in our lives. Trust is the key that will overcome the difficulties of this world.