Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Peter 1:16-21; St Matthew 17:1-9
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Saint Peter was correct in what he said to Jesus. Lord it is good that we are here. For the glory of the Lord Christ is intentionally revealed to him was the spokesman of the Twelve; the one who only six days prior had confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16). But he goes to far. He thinks he’s the Pope. He still has his mind set on the things of man rather than the things of God. Such thinking can be satanic.
For Peter’s suggestion to construct three temporary booths - one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah - is not as innocent as it first appears. In seeing Moses, Peter is reminded of the sojourn of the people of Israel. How they dwelt in tents for forty years in the wilderness. How even after they entered the Promised Land they were to remember their wandering by the annual Festival of Sukkot, in which they lived in temporary booths; a form of catechesis, instructing them that the Lord settles them into a home. He brought them into the land. He fulfilled His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But in suggesting the erection of such structures Peter was placing Jesus on par with Moses and the Prophets as though they are equals. They are not. Jesus may be the Prophet like Moses, raised up from among His brothers, but He is not a new Moses. He did not come to be the giver of moral norms. In his extraordinary work, The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, CFW Walther said, “If Christ came into the world to bring us new laws, then we could practically say that He might as well have stayed in heaven. Moses had already given us such a perfect Law that we are not able to keep that. Now if Christ had given us additional law, that would have driven us to despair” (p80).
Though this is a such a crude mingling of Law and Gospel, Peter and the Pope are not alone. This is not just the error of Roman Catholicism. Plenty of well meaning Christians try to turn Jesus into a new Moses. They set up their three tents - one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus - three separate mountain peaks all within the same range, trying to climb them up to heaven. And the names of these mountains are moralism, rationalism, and mysticism. And sinful man is always attempting to climb at least one of them, trying to seek access to God.
Moralism seeks access to God on the presupposition that our good works must advance our standing before God. The logic goes like this: God hates my sin and threatens to punish me for it, therefore He must love and reward my good works. This logic is biblically flawed. It turns justification and salvation into works. Jesus becomes a work-monger and the very essence of the Christian religion is rejected.
Rationalism elevates human reason, confusing human wisdom with God’s revelation. Rationalism works like this: it takes reason, which is a blessed gift of the Creator, and turns into the litmus test for the Creator. If it doesn’t make cognitive sense to me then it can’t be true. Miracles are discounted. Hard science rules the day. Faith is extinguished.
Mysticism seeks immediate union with God through emotional experience. The mystical experience is the immediate awareness that we are in contact with something much bigger than ourselves. Mysticism is a parasite that has been around since the beginning. The devil tempted Adam and Eve with mysticism: You will be like God. He continues to tempt you with the same dangerous teaching.
These three mountains that sinful man tries to climb to reach God - morality, reason, or emotion - are really three faces of the same peak: Mount Sinai. They are all strivings for God fueled by the Law. This is the old Adam’s natural theology. The was Peter’s problem. This is your problem. Within the conscience of fallen men the Law is a constant guest. And the wisdom of the Old Adam is constantly attempting to approach God on the basis of the Law; always seeking to overthrow Christ and set up a substitute deity. This torments your conscience, leaving you no peace.
We would not be too far off if when interpreting this text to interpret the Voice of the Father who is in heaven with a “Be quiet,” or even a “Shut up,” before He says, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well please; listen to Him. Listen to Him. Not to yourselves. Not to your feelings. Not your heart. Not your desires and wishes. Not to the culture. Not to your peers or friends - as the so-called friends of Job tried to lead him astray from God’s revealed will and Word. When your conscience is under attack, don’t even listen to the Law. For whenever our heart condemns us, writes St John, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God (1 Jn 3:20-21).
A confidence based not upon the Law. Not on works. Not on reason. Not on emotion. But based upon the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, and revealed to you from outside yourself in the prophetic and apostolic Word. Listen to Him.
There are no crevices on Sinai that will hide you from the Judge of all. No caves deep enough to shelter you from God’s wrath. Sinai is deadly; there is no life on its peaks.
But there is another Mountain. Mount Calvary. Golgotha. Where the demands of the Law are met in the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, the beloved Son. Where the accusations of the Law are silenced in the blood of the Lamb that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. It doesn’t cry to heaven for vengeance, but cries out to the Father for your pardon and peace. For the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all your sins stands in direct contrast to all strives and religions of the Law. It does not invite you to become righteous on the basis of your own works, reason, or emotion, but announces a God who comes to seek out the lost and receive sinners into His fellowship.
As God sought out Adam and Eve in the Garden and did not annihilate them in His wrath, but revealed to them His true glory, in showing mercy. He put aside their in adequate coverings, the work of their hands to hide their shame with leaves and instead offered them the garment of the sacrifice. For He offered a sacrifice - and the Fathers thought it was a Lamb. He shed the blood of that innocent animal, hung it from the Tree and removed its entrails. And with blood dripping down, stained the dirt of the cursed earth, He skinned that Lamb, removed its cloak and laid it upon Adam and Eve, clothing them in the righteous garment of another.
So too has He done for you, beloved. For Christ, the Lamb of God was offered up in Sacrifice upon the Tree of the Cross. His veins were opened and He poured out His precious blood for the sin of the whole world. Lifted up upon the Mountain you behold the true glory of the Father, to show mercy and have pity upon His creation. There, in the pierced hands of Christ is the fulfillment of the Law and the testimony of His divine love for you. Do not fear to come near to Him. But listen to Him as He says to you, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Lk 23:34).
You are terrified of your sins and are afraid to stand before God the Father and rightly so. For this side of glory the Law always accuses you. But Christ has appeared as a High Priest of the good things that have come. And through the greater and more perfect Tent of His immortal flesh, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the means of His own blood. This very blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God, purifies your conscience from dead works of the Law to serve the living God (Heb 9:11-14).
For here stands the true holy mountain, Mount Zion, the perfection of beauty. Since you have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, come, draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with your hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and your bodies washed with the pure water of your Holy Baptism. Your conscience, dear Christians, is captive to the Word of the Lord, calibrated by His holy Word and will in the Ten Commandments, and comforted only by the full and free forgiveness of all your sins in His shed blood.
As you come and fall on your knees, lift up your hearts and your eyes, here Jesus touches you with His nail scarred hand and the Holy Absolution only He can bring. Learn to behold here, in the Sacrament, no one but Jesus only. Jesus only in His Word. The veil of Moses has been lifted and you are given to behold in faith Christ in all the Scriptures, both Old and New. As it is written, When one turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom [from the condemnation of the Law]. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:16-18).
You are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses - Moses and Elijah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Peter and the Twelve - lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and run with endurance the race that is set before you, looking to Jesus only, the Author and Finisher of your faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:1-2). As Christ is in His Transfiguration so shall you be when He returns again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Until then, beloved, find your relief in the wounds of Christ Jesus and the promise that His blood cleanses you from all sin. And serve your neighbor according to the Light of His Word in the joy and confidence the He has had mercy upon you and welcomes you into the eternal fellowship of His Father, who together with the Son and the Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Saint Peter was correct in what he said to Jesus. Lord it is good that we are here. For the glory of the Lord Christ is intentionally revealed to him was the spokesman of the Twelve; the one who only six days prior had confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16). But he goes to far. He thinks he’s the Pope. He still has his mind set on the things of man rather than the things of God. Such thinking can be satanic.
For Peter’s suggestion to construct three temporary booths - one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah - is not as innocent as it first appears. In seeing Moses, Peter is reminded of the sojourn of the people of Israel. How they dwelt in tents for forty years in the wilderness. How even after they entered the Promised Land they were to remember their wandering by the annual Festival of Sukkot, in which they lived in temporary booths; a form of catechesis, instructing them that the Lord settles them into a home. He brought them into the land. He fulfilled His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But in suggesting the erection of such structures Peter was placing Jesus on par with Moses and the Prophets as though they are equals. They are not. Jesus may be the Prophet like Moses, raised up from among His brothers, but He is not a new Moses. He did not come to be the giver of moral norms. In his extraordinary work, The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, CFW Walther said, “If Christ came into the world to bring us new laws, then we could practically say that He might as well have stayed in heaven. Moses had already given us such a perfect Law that we are not able to keep that. Now if Christ had given us additional law, that would have driven us to despair” (p80).
Though this is a such a crude mingling of Law and Gospel, Peter and the Pope are not alone. This is not just the error of Roman Catholicism. Plenty of well meaning Christians try to turn Jesus into a new Moses. They set up their three tents - one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus - three separate mountain peaks all within the same range, trying to climb them up to heaven. And the names of these mountains are moralism, rationalism, and mysticism. And sinful man is always attempting to climb at least one of them, trying to seek access to God.
Moralism seeks access to God on the presupposition that our good works must advance our standing before God. The logic goes like this: God hates my sin and threatens to punish me for it, therefore He must love and reward my good works. This logic is biblically flawed. It turns justification and salvation into works. Jesus becomes a work-monger and the very essence of the Christian religion is rejected.
Rationalism elevates human reason, confusing human wisdom with God’s revelation. Rationalism works like this: it takes reason, which is a blessed gift of the Creator, and turns into the litmus test for the Creator. If it doesn’t make cognitive sense to me then it can’t be true. Miracles are discounted. Hard science rules the day. Faith is extinguished.
Mysticism seeks immediate union with God through emotional experience. The mystical experience is the immediate awareness that we are in contact with something much bigger than ourselves. Mysticism is a parasite that has been around since the beginning. The devil tempted Adam and Eve with mysticism: You will be like God. He continues to tempt you with the same dangerous teaching.
These three mountains that sinful man tries to climb to reach God - morality, reason, or emotion - are really three faces of the same peak: Mount Sinai. They are all strivings for God fueled by the Law. This is the old Adam’s natural theology. The was Peter’s problem. This is your problem. Within the conscience of fallen men the Law is a constant guest. And the wisdom of the Old Adam is constantly attempting to approach God on the basis of the Law; always seeking to overthrow Christ and set up a substitute deity. This torments your conscience, leaving you no peace.
We would not be too far off if when interpreting this text to interpret the Voice of the Father who is in heaven with a “Be quiet,” or even a “Shut up,” before He says, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well please; listen to Him. Listen to Him. Not to yourselves. Not to your feelings. Not your heart. Not your desires and wishes. Not to the culture. Not to your peers or friends - as the so-called friends of Job tried to lead him astray from God’s revealed will and Word. When your conscience is under attack, don’t even listen to the Law. For whenever our heart condemns us, writes St John, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God (1 Jn 3:20-21).
A confidence based not upon the Law. Not on works. Not on reason. Not on emotion. But based upon the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, and revealed to you from outside yourself in the prophetic and apostolic Word. Listen to Him.
There are no crevices on Sinai that will hide you from the Judge of all. No caves deep enough to shelter you from God’s wrath. Sinai is deadly; there is no life on its peaks.
But there is another Mountain. Mount Calvary. Golgotha. Where the demands of the Law are met in the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, the beloved Son. Where the accusations of the Law are silenced in the blood of the Lamb that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. It doesn’t cry to heaven for vengeance, but cries out to the Father for your pardon and peace. For the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all your sins stands in direct contrast to all strives and religions of the Law. It does not invite you to become righteous on the basis of your own works, reason, or emotion, but announces a God who comes to seek out the lost and receive sinners into His fellowship.
As God sought out Adam and Eve in the Garden and did not annihilate them in His wrath, but revealed to them His true glory, in showing mercy. He put aside their in adequate coverings, the work of their hands to hide their shame with leaves and instead offered them the garment of the sacrifice. For He offered a sacrifice - and the Fathers thought it was a Lamb. He shed the blood of that innocent animal, hung it from the Tree and removed its entrails. And with blood dripping down, stained the dirt of the cursed earth, He skinned that Lamb, removed its cloak and laid it upon Adam and Eve, clothing them in the righteous garment of another.
So too has He done for you, beloved. For Christ, the Lamb of God was offered up in Sacrifice upon the Tree of the Cross. His veins were opened and He poured out His precious blood for the sin of the whole world. Lifted up upon the Mountain you behold the true glory of the Father, to show mercy and have pity upon His creation. There, in the pierced hands of Christ is the fulfillment of the Law and the testimony of His divine love for you. Do not fear to come near to Him. But listen to Him as He says to you, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Lk 23:34).
You are terrified of your sins and are afraid to stand before God the Father and rightly so. For this side of glory the Law always accuses you. But Christ has appeared as a High Priest of the good things that have come. And through the greater and more perfect Tent of His immortal flesh, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the means of His own blood. This very blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God, purifies your conscience from dead works of the Law to serve the living God (Heb 9:11-14).
For here stands the true holy mountain, Mount Zion, the perfection of beauty. Since you have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, come, draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with your hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and your bodies washed with the pure water of your Holy Baptism. Your conscience, dear Christians, is captive to the Word of the Lord, calibrated by His holy Word and will in the Ten Commandments, and comforted only by the full and free forgiveness of all your sins in His shed blood.
As you come and fall on your knees, lift up your hearts and your eyes, here Jesus touches you with His nail scarred hand and the Holy Absolution only He can bring. Learn to behold here, in the Sacrament, no one but Jesus only. Jesus only in His Word. The veil of Moses has been lifted and you are given to behold in faith Christ in all the Scriptures, both Old and New. As it is written, When one turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom [from the condemnation of the Law]. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:16-18).
You are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses - Moses and Elijah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Peter and the Twelve - lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and run with endurance the race that is set before you, looking to Jesus only, the Author and Finisher of your faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:1-2). As Christ is in His Transfiguration so shall you be when He returns again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Until then, beloved, find your relief in the wounds of Christ Jesus and the promise that His blood cleanses you from all sin. And serve your neighbor according to the Light of His Word in the joy and confidence the He has had mercy upon you and welcomes you into the eternal fellowship of His Father, who together with the Son and the Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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