Feb. 12, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
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| Welcome to another God's Grace is Greater segment and I'm your host Craig. | |
| Thanks for joining me. | |
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| Go check it out. | |
| But today, we're doing, as you can tell here, the transfiguration, this incredible moment where Jesus is essentially showing his disciples the kingdom of God in person. | |
| And this is an incredible moment, and there is a lot to unpack here. | |
| And again, I'm going to preface this before we get into the scripture, because we're in Luke 9, verse 28, reading up to 36. | |
| I'm going to preface this by saying, look, I'm not an eschatologist and I'm not a Bible scholar. | |
| I'm a simple evangelist, a Christian who was saved by Christ, and I feel that God's grace is greater than anything that happens in this world. | |
| And I believe in my heart that God can save us all. | |
| Now, whether we choose to accept that is a different story, but... | |
| I'm not going to give you the eschatological breakdown of these verses. | |
| I'm just going to do a simple scripture reading and then explanation from my perspective of what this means to me. | |
| And then I encourage you to let that start a dialogue between yourself and your family and your friends as to what it means to you and your family. | |
| And moreoverly, to spread this word out into the world is what's most important. | |
| So I challenge you that as we read through this scripture and then we talk about it afterward, that you not only hear it and try to fully grasp it with an open mind, but try to think of how you can take these lessons that we can learn together here with scripture and share them with your family but try to think of how you can take these lessons that we can learn together here with scripture and Because the gospel is an amazing gift and our eternal salvation is the greatest gift. | |
| And it's given freely by the blood of Christ. | |
| And all we have to do is accept Christ as our Savior. | |
| And once we do that, what are we meant to do with this gift? | |
| Well, we're meant to take it and not just keep it for ourselves, but share it for as many as we can to find the kingdom of heaven. | |
| Speaking of the kingdom of heaven, let's read this incredible story of the transfiguration now. | |
| This is right after Jesus. | |
| Has essentially gone through all these different things. | |
| He's fed the 5,000. | |
| We're in chapter 9 still. | |
| He's fed the 5,000. | |
| Peter has confessed that he is the Messiah. | |
| He told them that he was going to die and have to be resurrected, and the disciples don't seem to understand what that means. | |
| They think he's going to be a king on a horse with a sword fighting for a kingdom on heaven. | |
| And then he tells them to take up their cross and to deny themselves in order to follow him. | |
| And we're picking up right where Jesus leaves off when he tells his disciples that you must deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. | |
| Because it says, So let's pick up right there where we leave off with the transfiguration of Christ. | |
| This is a powerful story where he's with his chosen disciples here. | |
| Chapter 9 of Luke, verse 28-36. | |
| About eight days after these words, he took along Peter, John, and James, and he went up on the mountain to pray. | |
| As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white. | |
| Suddenly, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah. | |
| They appeared in glory and were speaking of his death, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. | |
| Peter and those with him were in a deep sleep, and when they became fully awake, they saw his glory in the two men who were standing with him. | |
| As the two men were departing from him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it's good for us to be here. | |
| Let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said. | |
| While he was saying this, a cloud appeared and overshadowed them. | |
| They became afraid as they entered the cloud. | |
| Then a voice came from the cloud saying, This is my son, the chosen one. | |
| Listen to him. | |
| After the voice had spoken, only Jesus was found. | |
| They kept silent and in those days told no one what they had seen. | |
| Wow. | |
| So this is one of the times here where God directly anoints Jesus as the chosen Messiah in front of witnesses, in this case, Peter, John, and James. | |
| But what's interesting is not only that God came down and literally said, this is my son, the Messiah, the chosen one, but that there's this interaction with the disciples that's a little funny and comical if you think about it. | |
| Peter, John, and James are going up on a mountain to pray with Jesus. | |
| This is something Jesus did commonly. | |
| He would go, and he would go into private places to pray and speak to God. | |
| Now, I've said this before, and I'll say it again. | |
| If our Messiah, the Chosen One, had to take time and meditate a prayer to God to find clarity and discernment, I think that that is a strong indicator that we need to do that as well in our lives, probably even more. | |
| And this is another incredible example of the confirmation of Jesus as far as what we're given with the text and the gospel. | |
| There are two individuals who are noted in this encounter, Moses and Elijah. | |
| Now, of course, Moses was of the Old Testament, you know, the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. | |
| And that whole sequence through the beginning of the Old Testament is where we get the Ten Commandments and God interacting with his chosen people. | |
| Elijah, a prophet of great accolade, was never, I guess, seen to have died. | |
| He was only said to have ascended into the cloud to be with God, it's said. | |
| So these two make this incredible appearance, which you have to remember that at that time a lot of people were saying, Jesus could be John the Baptist, he could be Elijah, he could be this, he could be that, he could be one of the old prophets. | |
| And there was a lot of speculation. | |
| This is almost confirming that Jesus was separate and aside, the chosen one, the Messiah, the one that was foretold in Isaiah and other Old Testament prophecy. | |
| Now, what's interesting is that The disciples had followed him up, and they're asleep, I guess, as Jesus is encountered with this incredible experience. | |
| And as they wake up, what do they wake up to? | |
| They wake up to Jesus shining brightly. | |
| As you can see here, you can almost not even make it out, but this is a good kind of a drawing of what it might have looked like, and I'm sure it doesn't do it any real justice, but it is Jesus shining and being bright and white. | |
| This is dazzling white. | |
| And essentially, he's standing on both sides by Peter and Elijah, and he's showing this to his disciples. | |
| Now, what does Peter do? | |
| John and James seem like they're the sons of thunder, you know, the brothers. | |
| These, I think, were distant cousins of Jesus in some form or fashion. | |
| But they were silent. | |
| They didn't say anything, or at least nothing is really recorded about what they said. | |
| But what we do know is that Peter had something to say about this. | |
| Peter, in the same way that you and I would probably react to being confronted with Moses and Elijah and God face-to-face with Jesus in this bright light being shown as being the Son of God, how does he react? | |
| Well, he says, well, let me build you tabernacles. | |
| Let me build you a tent somewhere to rest because you must be weary, essentially, is what he does. | |
| And Because he's saying it's good for us to be here. | |
| He's like, well, it's good because we're here. | |
| We can serve you. | |
| We can build you a tabernacle. | |
| We can do something to honor you. | |
| And he doesn't know what he's saying, really. | |
| I think he was just saying whatever he thought he could say. | |
| And that just shows you how human they were, just like us, right? | |
| And I love that. | |
| You know, always humanizing the disciples to kind of have that connection point between us and them to show that, you know, their reaction is probably not that far off from what our reaction would be. | |
| And then all of a sudden, though, this incredible sequence of events happens. | |
| The clouds come in and they engulf them on the mountaintop. | |
| And that's when they hear God say, this is my son, the chosen one. | |
| Listen to him. | |
| After the voice had spoken, I guess everything disappeared and it was just Jesus left. | |
| And they never said anything about it. | |
| You can imagine why. | |
| I mean, having an encounter like that must have been shocking. | |
| And it must have been something that had, you know, they almost probably pinching themselves. | |
| Did this really happen? | |
| Did we really experience what we thought we did? | |
| But I'm sure that just like in our own lives, our connection to God and Jesus is a personal one. | |
| It is paramount for us to share the gospel. | |
| We are given the Great Commission, Matthew 28, from Jesus to go out and make disciples and to do it in his name. | |
| But there is also something we said in this story of the Transfiguration about quiet contemplation and understanding the uniquely personal relationship that we all have with God and Jesus, his Son, our Lord, and the Holy Spirit that lives inside each and every one of us. | |
| I believe that it is incumbent upon us both to embrace the Great Commission, the calling of Jesus to go out in the world and make disciples and spread his word, but just like we saw in the beginning of this story where Jesus was praying, and he does this often, to embrace that unique and personal relationship that you and I can have directly with God through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. | |
| Remember that as much as we are called to outwardly share this word with as many as we can, we must also never forget to embrace the inward aspect of embracing the relationship with God. | |
| That is where we find the strength through the Holy Spirit and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to go out and do things with His power in His name. | |
| If he so chooses, of course, to allow us. | |
| I truly believe that this is a story both of the obvious, which is the naming of the chosen Messiah by God himself in Jesus our Lord and Savior, And the revelation that it was to John and Peter and James at that time when they were on the mountain with Jesus. | |
| And there is an eschatological interpretation where they talk about the Old Testament and Moses and the new covenant with Elijah and how it's all connected to Jesus. | |
| And if you want to have that, I'm sure there's some Bible scholars and eschatologists who can give you the full rundown and all that. | |
| But I'll just leave you with this. | |
| My belief is that it's a story that reminds us to both embrace the inward relationship that we have from our whole soul and our heart with Jesus and our Lord and God in heaven and the Holy Spirit, but also the outward proclaiming of the gospel that we're called to do through the Great Commission. | |
| So I'm going to leave it there. | |
| We'll say a prayer, and then we'll wrap it up. | |
| Lord and Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, and thank you for this incredible account of the transfiguration of Jesus Christ our Lord. | |
| The naming of him as the Chosen One and Messiah, and the ability for us all these years later to still read these words and to see their power. | |
| I pray for our audience and myself as well to embrace our relationship with you on an individual level and a personal one Lord, to reach out to you with prayer like Jesus taught us, to connect with you one-on-one. | |
| But also, Lord, I call on us to share this gospel out into the world and help others find it in their heart as well. | |
| Lord, we thank you for all you've given us. | |
| We thank you most of all for our eternal salvation through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. | |
| In Jesus' name, amen. | |
| Alright, well, I hope you enjoyed that. | |
| We're going to go ahead and keep going in, Luke. | |
| So there's a lot more to cover, so we're going to get right into it. | |
| But I want to say thank you all for watching. | |
| Again, go in the description if you want to find links to everything that I do on all the other platforms. | |
| And there's a link to support the channel if you want to make a financial contribution. | |
| Your support helps keep this channel alive, so I want to thank you for it. | |
| With that being said, I'm going to say thank you all for watching this episode of God's Grace is Greater. | |
| We'll see you on the next one. | |
| Until then, my name is Craig. | |
| Godspeed. |
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