The Righteousness That Comes by Faith: The Faith of Enoch and Noah

John 3:16-21; Hebrews 11:5-7;

Genesis 5:21-24; 6:5-9, 9:8-17

Make what you will of the long lives reported for the pre-flood line from Adam and Eve down to Noah and his wife. Of the ten names in that list, all the reported ages are far beyond our experience and expectation for human life. The Bible does not explain why this is so, and we have no other data, so all our attempts to use human reason either to defend or to explain away these reports are simply speculative. Enoch lived on earth about five times the average modern life span, but when compared to his immediate family line only 47% of the next shortest lifespan in this list and only 37% of the longest, his son Methuselah. Why did Enoch get the short end of the lifespan stick? Had he done something very bad? Not so. Beyond the fact that Enoch fathered Methuselah and other sons and daughters, we know one other thing about him. The text says, “Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.” It wasn’t punishment; it was blessing. Presumably, it was something similar to what later happened to Elijah when he was escorted alive out of this life by chariots of holy fire.

Enoch was transferred from the realm that is visible to us into what is from our perspective the invisible realm of God…without first dying. This is not the sort of thing that God does for everyone who pleases him. Usually it is preferable that we live out our calling on earth and demonstrate how to live, to suffer, and to die with obedient, vulnerable, vibrant, creation-affirming faith before we enter eternal glory. Enoch’s transfer is a sign and an assurance to us of what pleases God, and what pleases God is a life spent walking with God. The Letter to the Hebrews gives the best explanation of the purpose of this sign: 11:5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

What the text says is that, if we would draw near to walk in close fellowship with God, we must have faith, believing and trusting that God exists and that, in some extraordinarily valuable way, God rewards those who seek him. Sometimes the reward is in this life, sometimes in the next life, sometimes the reward is a part of ordinary experience. Sometimes it can only be called miraculous, but what is important, either way, is that it comes from the hand of the sovereign God. To be sure, God may work to refine our understanding of what it means to be rewarded, blessed, and favored by God. Early in our walk of faith we may understand blessing too much in terms of the rewards that this world encourages us to seek: health, wealth, education, influence, pleasure, surface happiness, and we may be sometimes pleased to get what we want, but often disappointed when what we are expecting simply does not happen. The lack of the reward we had in mind does not mean that a reward is not coming, or even that it has not already come unnoticed by us. As we mature in faith, we are more likely to see blessing in the deep satisfactions of knowing that we know that we know that we serve a God who is holy, gracious, faithful, and eternally sovereign. The sooner we learn this, the sooner our satisfactions grow rich and deep. Jesus said, and I liberally paraphrase, “Seek first the prevailing of God’s will and righteousness, and all the rest of the stuff will fall satisfactorily into its proper place.”

What Jesus is saying is that we must by faith prioritize seeking God and his righteous will. This means that our number one goal in life must become to know who God is, what God wants, and what God is doing around us right now. If knowing God is really our number one goal, that means that we will spend time reading God’s word in search of deeper understanding of what God has revealed of his nature and purposes. If knowing God is really our number one goal, then we will frequently spend time in prayer listening for what God would speak to our hearts and minds through the Holy Spirit. If knowing God is really our number one goal, then we will find time to join in what God is doing around us so that we can know him better through serving him, experiencing God in action. Indeed, if we want to know God, we will practice the spiritual disciplines in which God shows up; our way of describing those is the 9 Ways.

There is a corollary to prioritizing knowing God, and that is that we must want God to know us as we really are so that God can work within us to make us more what he has planned for us to become. Of course, God already does know everything about us, but we must want that to be so. We must stop fooling ourselves into thinking that we can hide anything about ourselves from God. At most, we can fool ourselves into thinking we have hidden it from God. Really seeking God means letting go of foolish games of spiritual hide and seek, and letting ourselves (as we actually are) be found by God (as God actually is). God rewards that choice in deep and rich ways. Remember, whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Besides Enoch, we get especially favorable comment on one other of the listed ten. In Genesis 6:8-9, it says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord….Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” Noah found favor with the Lord and stood out in his generation as righteous and blameless, because, like Enoch, he walked with God. But he did not get transferred out of this life. Instead, he was assigned to oversee the repopulation of the earth after God’s sweeping judgment on its sin.

Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. 9 … Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. You know the story. God commanded Noah to build an ark. Noah followed God’s specifications and built the ark, supplying it and filling it as instructed, so that male and female of each kind of living creature of land and air, along with Noah and his family, were all preserved. The rains came, the waters rose, the world was flooded until there was no land life outside the ark, the rains stopped, the floods receded, and at last life was sustainable again outside the ark, and so the Lord sent the occupants of the ark out to repopulate the earth. There is, of course, more to the story than that, and every part has its importance, but today I want to skip to the ending.

Genesis 9:12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

By binding himself to this covenant, God guaranteed that there would never again be a destructive judgment as encompassing as in the time of Noah. Despite this covenant, God remained holy, not giving up one piece of his plans of perfection for his human children, and yet at the same time knew that his human children would slide back into sin. The rainbow covenant was extremely costly for God. It meant that he would have to take upon himself the cost of redeeming sinful humanity. In the fullness of time, the rainbow would require the cross of his perfect Son Jesus Christ through which God would offer to his wayward children not just forgiveness, but covering with righteousness and gradual transformation into actual righteousness, all that without yielding one iota of his holiness. When you see a rainbow, imagine not the pot of gold at its end, but envision the infinitely more costly and glorious cross of Christ, emblazoned in glory at the peak of that rainbow.

As the first recipient of the rainbow promise, Noah had an important part to play in the drama. Hebrews 11 sees it this way. Hebrews 11: 7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

By obeying God’s instructions for preserving life and faith in the face of righteous judgment, Noah demonstrated a faith that was in marked contrast to that of the perishing world. In this way, he condemned the world for its lack of faith and was himself counted righteous by means of Christ’s much later death on the cross.

When it says that Noah condemned the world, I am not saying that he went around giving angry denouncement speeches. I am saying that the positive counterexample of his faith showed the kind of faith that was open to everyone.

Noah was not a perfect person. You don’t have to be yet perfected to be by God’s grace through your faith on the path to perfection. Grace and faith will get you to the goal if you will hold on, keep getting up, dusting yourself off, and listening to and obeying God yet again. If you are living your life in Jesus Christ, that kind of faith turns to righteousness and eternal life.

Our texts emphasize walking with God, faith, righteousness, and obedience. Perhaps it is time for me to emphasize also that these are possible only by the grace of God. We enter and persevere in the journey to salvation only by the grace of God.

How does God’s grace make this possible? First of all, salvation is only through Jesus Christ, even for Enoch and Noah and the other saints of the Old Testament. They did not know Jesus, but he provided the way for imperfect people of faith to be counted in. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one-of-a-kind Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus with his costly perfect righteousness agrees to stand in for us, to set the balances right, so that our faith can be counted as righteousness, and so that we can enter eternity without wrecking the perfect plans of God. Without Jesus, that cannot happen and so salvation would never get started.

Second of all, God sends his Holy Spirit to those who believe in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit gives us new birth and gradual metamorphosis, changing us degree by degree toward the goal. It is only those who are on this journey who will persevere in their faith. And this journey would not be possible without the Spirit of God graciously living within us.

So, from beginning to end, our salvation is the gracious work of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but to receive God’s gracious saving work, we must gratefully walk with God in faith and obedience. When we read them carefully, the New Testament writers from Paul to James are in total agreement on this. It is time for us understand that the gracious signs of the rainbow and the cross call for us, like Enoch and Noah, to walk daily with God. One more time, remember, whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. So seek him, today and every day. Walk with God.

The Blood Still Speaks: the Faith of Abel

Lenten Theme: Holding Resurrection Faith While Bearing the Cross

John 6:35-40; 53-58; Hebrews 11:4; 12:22-24; Genesis 4:1-16, 25-26

4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” 2 And again, she bore his brother Abel. Eve was proud of the accomplishment of delivering her firstborn son, naming him Cain to indicate, “I have gotten a man, uh, hmmm, oh yeah, with the help of the Lord, of course.” I assume that her second son is named with more humility, with more awareness of his fragility. His name Abel (Habal in Hebrew) means breath or vapor. It is the same word used in Ecclesiastes to mean vanity or emptiness or meaninglessness, but it can also refer to fragility of life, in this case a prophetic name.

Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

For reasons we are not directly told, the Lord preferred Abel’s offering. Contrary to many explanations you may have read or heard, there is no hint in this story that God prefers ranching to farming or that thank-offerings had to have blood in them. All the text tells us is that Cain did not do well, perhaps because he did not give his best as Abel did, butt hat is more than we are clearly told. . 1 John 3:12 tells us that Cain murdered his brother because his own deeds were already evil. He had already departed from letting God shape his heart when the Lord turned down his offering. Cain’s resentment suggests that he was calculating that, if he met the basic requirements of the offering, God was obligated to reward him. His anger is that his calculations did not work out. Calculations never do work out when we think that we are obligating God to please us.

It seemed to Cain that God unfairly favored Abel; Cain was jealous. James tells us that bitter jealousy and selfish ambition are earthly, unspiritual, demonic, and that they lead to frustration, quarreling, and murder. Apparently, this was true of the first two descendants of Adam and Eve born outside of Eden, for that is just what happens:

8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.…

Let us note again the following words of the Lord to Cain: “The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.” One might say that Abel was the world’s first martyr of the faith. His innocent blood ran into the ground and from there cried out to God for righteousness, justice, and vindication, just as the prayers of martyrs in heaven cry out for justice and vindication to this day. Note Revelation 6:9-11 where John reports his vision into the heavenly throne room as follows: I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. It is not up to us to take vengeance. When the number of faithful martyrs reaches a predetermined point, the One who says, “Vengeance is mine,” the Sovereign Lord of the universe, will act in the name of justice. We may rest in confidence that Justice will ultimately prevail. The voice of Abel and all his spiritual heirs who have been martyred for their faith and righteousness will be answered. Vindication will come.

In the meantime, life goes on. 25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

When Cain killed Abel, it was as though Adam and Eve lost both their sons, one murdered, the other a fugitive murderer. They had a third son whose name was Seth, meaning “He appointed.” Eve explained, “God has appointed for me another offspring.” Seth was more than just another offspring. He was the one whose lineage led down through Enosh (at which time worship of the Lord began to be observed) to Noah and from there to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, also known as Israel, to the twelve sons of Israel, including Judah from whom in time sprang the royal line of David, leading on down to Jesus, who had no physical offspring, but of whom all who gather in his name, today and through all history, are the spiritual offspring. Seth, who was appointed to keep the path open to the future that God had planned, kept the path open until the time when another voice would speak out of martyr’s blood a different and better message than that of Abel’s blood. It is not that Abel did anything wrong. It is not that the cry of his blood will not be answered, for, as we have seen, it will be answered. For further confirmation that the cry is heard and answered by God, we turn to Hebrews 11:4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”

The cry of Abel’s blood will be answered. But in the very next chapter of Hebrews, in 12:22-24 we read, “22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

When the text says, “You have come to Mount Zion,” this is addressed to Christian worshipers who read this text. How have we come to Mount Zion? Is that not where the Jerusalem temple was? It is no longer there. But the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is aware that through Jesus we have spiritual access to the heavenly New Jerusalem and to the glorious worship there. That is the Mount Zion to which we have come this morning. Today, as we worship God, we worship with the angels of heaven and with the human saints of all the ages. The writer describes the saints as the “firstborn,” that is, those who are baptized into union with Jesus, the firstborn Son of God, the heir of God’s kingdom. We also, who are enrolled on the pages of the book of life, are counted as firstborn heirs of the reign of God. It is explained that those who have been counted as righteous through Christ will there be made perfect. We come into this new position through the blood of Jesus, and it is this blood that speaks a better word than mere justice and vindication. The blood of Jesus speaks the word of total transformation, or rebirth brought to completion in perfection. We are not yet there in our bodily lives, but as we worship we are connected to the throne from where God and the Lamb reign and determine what will be, and the voice of the blood of the Lamb will bring us beyond righteousness, justice, and vindication, toward our ultimate fulfillment as royal children of a loving and sovereign God.

Hebrews also tells us that it is through us who are in Christ that Abel’s anticipatory faith is counted as sufficient. When the writer completes his long describing of the faithful of the Old Testament, a listing that began with Abel, he has a word of hope for this cloud of Old Testament witnesses. They did not receive perfection through their faith until Jesus had completed his work. They rested in blessing until they could receive their perfection along with the faithful in Christ, along with us. The writer says, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” It implies strongly that, with us, they too will be made perfect.

Now don’t ask me to explain the timetable of that. You and I are still in the earthly, linear time frame. Heaven, and the new heaven and new earth that will be, are in the eternal time frame. The two time frames are not in one-to-one correspondence. It is simply beyond the capacity of our poor limited brains to fathom how our human time frame links up with the eternal time frame. But we do not have to fathom it. We just have to trust that it all comes right in the end. We may be in the solemn season, Lent, but the truth, that all we have to understand is that it all comes right in the end through faith in Jesus Christ, is even now worth an “Alleluia!”

The cry of Abel’s blood will be answered. And the cry of Jesus’ blood will win the full victory in the end. Abel’s blood cries for justice, Jesus’ blood cries for redemption and for perfect fulfillment of all that can be purified. In the end, it will all come together just as it should. Alleluia!

We live in a broken world. We do not have to look far to see signs of its brokenness. We know of enough brokenness in our own daily lives that we do not even have to watch the news to see it. Indeed, many of us might be better off not feeding ever more images of darkness and outrage into our minds. We might do better to spend more time considering what Jesus has accomplished and letting Jesus determine our outlook on life.

In this world there are crosses. There is, both literally and figuratively, always more righteous blood being spilled. Sometimes that spilling of righteous blood touches us personally, especially as we seek to live as representatives of Jesus. Jesus does not call us to hide our eyes, but neither does he call us to become angry avengers. He calls us to take up our crosses and to live as vulnerable representatives of his better voice, the voice of healing and delivering and reconciling and redeeming, the voice of new beginnings, the voice of wholeness, the voice of steadfast love, the voice of faith and hope, the voice of God.

That is not an easy voice to raise in this world of crosses, but we are not only bearers of crosses, we are also holders of the good news of resurrection. A victory is coming. It has already been secured and guaranteed by Jesus, crucified, risen, and exalted. Even as we cry out for justice, let us even more clearly celebrate our Lord’s victory. We can bear the cross in this life because we hold to the resurrection that rules the next life. It all comes right in the end. So speaks the blood of Jesus. That is the better voice. Alleluia! Amen!

Desiring a God-Shaped Life: An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Exodus 33:12-23; 34:5-9; Psalm 103:1-14;

Luke 6: 32-36; Ephesians 4:17-24, 32; 5:1-2

Tonight, in keeping with the purpose of an Ash Wednesday theme, we come to repent of our sins and to get back on a path toward spiritual purity. This is consistent with God’s calling of us to become his representative people, showing forth his character in our daily lives and interactions.

Many people believe that the purpose of salvation is to give us a way to escape hell so that we can go to heaven, and that all we have to do to receive this salvation is to say the sinner’s prayer and profess our faith in the fact that Jesus is our only Savior, with some churches adding baptism at this point, and when we have done those things, we will be set for eternity. This cannot be true because it does not fit with God’s purpose for offering us salvation.

God’s purpose in offering salvation is that we might be restored as his royal children and obedient servants, able and willing to represent his holy character in our daily lives. It is true that, as a by-product of this restoring work of God in our lives, we will when we die enter eternal blessedness, but, let me re-emphasize, that is a by-product not the goal of God’s salvation. The goal of God’s salvation is to restore us to being able to live for the praise of the glory of God by demonstrating God’s character to people around us.

People who try to slide by with claiming salvation without surrendering control of their lives to God would not even like the new heaven and new earth where God reigns totally and eternally; they would hate it and want to escape. They might even prefer to be in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, but where they are free to rage against a Sovereign God who requires their submission.

Far better it is to get to know God in this life and to be pre-shaped by God’s character, to be in the process of being made fit to reign with him in eternity. It is not so bad as the slackards imagine. Indeed, the greatest secret in this world is that highest pleasure to be found is being restored, degree by degree, as children of God in God’s likeness.

All the hymns we have sung in this service are about the joy of submitting ourselves for being transformed in Christ, “changed from glory into glory,” “Take your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in your likeness, that the light of faith may be seen today in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.” “Purify my heart, cleanse me from within and make me holy.” “Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.” “All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee; fill me with thy love and power, let thy blessing fall on me.”

The scriptures we have read are also on this theme.

Our Old Testament text: While Moses was on Mount Sinai with the Lord God, the people of Israel had seriously broken their recently formed covenant by making and worshiping the golden calf. The Lord and Moses, both angry, had negotiated what to do with “Your people,” “No, your people.” Moses agreed to lead the people only if the Lord would accompany them. He argued that, if the Lord did not go with them, they would not have the distinctive character that they needed to fulfill their end of the covenant with the Lord, for the Lord had called them to be his representative nation among all nations. Moses finally asked that the Lord reveal his glory to him so that he would better know the Lord’s character. The Lord complied, revealing his glory as resting in his character as a God who is not only holy, righteous, and just, but also merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Our Psalm text: Our Exodus passage is reinforced in Psalm 103 where it says that the Lord made his ways known to Moses and then gives the description that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Actually, the Exodus passage has echoes not just in Psalm 103, but also throughout the Old Testament.

If we may pick one of those characteristics as dominant, as involved in all the other characteristics, it would surely be steadfast love, the Hebrew word being hesed. This is the kind of love that does for the loved ones what they cannot do for themselves so that they can remain in the divine family covenant. This is the kind of love that, in human terms, is shown by a kinsman redeemer who takes risks and makes sacrifices to maintain weaker members of the family in the family fabric. The Lord God is the very model of a kinsman redeemer, and that is the character he wants his people to demonstrate in their relationships with one another and even with peoples of other nations. It takes a lot of transformation for the people of God to show kinsman redeemer type love for the lost, the last, the lagging, and the lawless.

Remember that Moses said that the reason he needed to know God’s character was that otherwise, the people of God could not be distinctive. If we do not know who God is, we cannot be shaped in God’s image.

Our Gospel Text: Luke reports that Jesus asks us to love our enemies and to do good without expecting anything in return. He sums this up as being merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. In other words, we are to replicate God’s own qualities in our relationships with even the difficult people in our lives. Indeed, it becomes evident that Jesus is our model, our exceedingly high standard of how to do what he asks of us.

Our Epistle Text: Paul understands that our maturation in Christlikeness is gradual, step by step, degree by degree. We do not get there all at once. We invite Jesus to rule our lives, and then we grow in our ability to follow him. But Paul expects us to be clear about the direction we are moving, that we are putting off the old self, corrupt through deceitful desires, and we are putting on the new self in which our dominant desire is to be shaped by the character of God as we know him through Jesus Christ. Our new self is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. The characteristics of this new self sound a lot like the character of God which God revealed to Moses: mercy, grace, patience, steadfast love, and faithfulness.

Of what do we most need to repent? Sin. Sin is anything that causes us to miss the mark, to become diverted from the goal of our calling to represent the character of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. What is it that makes us less merciful, gracious, patient, steadfastly loving, and faithful than God is? It is that of which we most need to repent and to be purified.

God Cares About Our Obedient Listening

Isaiah 6:1-8; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Mark 9:2-8

Mark 9:2 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. (Luke adds: 9:30 And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure (literally, exodus), which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.) 5 And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” 8 And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.

British Bible scholar Christopher Wright, in his marvelous recent book, The Mission of God’s People, notes a pattern running through the Bible of assuring us that what the Bible is promoting is not a human-invented religion or philosophy, but the result of actual historical events that contained within them evidence of divine presence and revelation, reported in human words that were shaped by the Holy Spirit. He does not mention today’s text, but for the three disciples, the transfiguration was clearly one such event that gave them evidence of divine presence and revelation. We have Peter’s word for it.

Wright gives examples of two texts about such divine events, one from Deuteronomy and the other from Acts. Deuteronomy presents Moses addressing the people of Israel on the verge of entering the land of promise, and reminding them of the witnessed events of their history: ‘Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? (as happened in the exodus)’ ‘Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?’ (as happened when they received their divine covenant at Mount Sinai).” The founding events of Israel as a people, their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their being given a divine covenant at Mount Sinai, were utterly unique events, not because God liked Israel better than other nations, but because God chose to use them to reveal his character for all nations to see. What Israel knew about God that other nations did not yet know, it knew based on the undeniable facts of its historical emergence as a nation. God had acted in unique, undeniable, knee-knocking events, and Israel would not have existed as a free nation unless God had in fact acted.

Wright notes a similar pattern in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter and John have effectively proclaimed the healing of a man lame from birth, a man who had been a well-known lifelong beggar of alms from visitors to the Jerusalem temple, and Peter has taken advantage of this situation to say that the healing is one more compelling piece of evidence that Jesus, who had been crucified not long before, was now raised and exalted, and that the healing had been done in his name and by his effective authority. The healing of the lame man was now a signpost to all who beheld it of what God could do to bless them if they would repent and believe.

The religious leaders in Jerusalem, who had arranged for the death of Jesus, could not ignore that this was a direct challenge to their authority. They had Peter and John arrested, held overnight, and brought before them the next day. Even overnight the church was growing because of what had happened. The religious leaders asked Peter and John by what authority they had acted. Peter’s inspired answer was, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Now the religious leaders had an even bigger problem. They had two uneducated, common men standing before them, speaking with compelling boldness and eloquence. Clearly this was due to the effect that Jesus had on them. Further, the man who had been healed was known to all temple attenders, and his healing was an undeniable fact that they could not hide. The most they could do was to try to pressure Peter and John into silence. But no matter what they said and threatened and did, Peter and John kept giving answers such as, “4:19b Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, 20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” Or, again, “5:29b We must obey God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

What Peter is saying here is that tangible evidence of God’s action in history cannot be rightly ignored. Peter believes that, if the religious leaders were at all open to the truth, they would already have all the evidence they needed to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was actively at work through his followers, that they had sufficient basis for being called to faith and repentance, and that their failure to repent and believe in the face of clear evidence was serious evidence in itself of their actual spiritual condition.

Fast forward thirty plus years ahead when Peter, knowing that he is up against a set of political leaders in Rome who are not going to allow him to live much longer, is writing to an audience to whom he has written before, most likely the churches of what is now northern Turkey. He is writing to encourage them to stand firm on their faith and calling, and to persist in their spiritual growth, so that they might become ever more fully the partakers of the divine nature.

As Loretta read earlier in the service, Peter recalled the events on the mount of transfiguration as an assurance that his faith was true: 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

Peter went back to an event that had come at a crisis point for him. He had left everything to follow Jesus. He had concluded that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. Then Jesus began to talk about his coming crucifixion, and Peter could not get his head around that. How could the Christ, the anointed agent of God’s reign, be crucified? It made no sense. Had he backed the wrong horse?

Jesus took the very troubled Peter, James, and John up on a high mountain with him. There they beheld Moses and Elijah, representatives of the Law and the Prophets, talking with Jesus. Luke tells us that they were talking about Jesus’ coming exodus which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. No doubt, if the three disciples had been in a mood to absorb the content of the conversation, they would have heard why the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus were necessary to God’s plan for redeeming all creation, as indicated by a careful reading of the Law and the Prophets. They were not ready to understand this until much later when the risen Jesus took them back through the Law, the Prophets, and the other Old Testament Writings, showing them what had sailed right past them on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter however, years later, could recall that event on the mountain as a time when the three disciples had beheld the glorious eternal majesty of Jesus. They did not yet understand, but they had seen something they could not deny, which would keep them following Jesus until they understood far more. The Mount of Transfiguration was one of those undeniable events that told them that grand and divine things were afoot through Jesus…no matter how much the events were outside their ability to comprehend.

The point of the events on the Mount of Transfiguration was not so much to give them wonder tales to tell later, but to convince them that they needed to continue to follow, to listen to, and to obey Jesus, even when they did not understand him, even when his way of doing things did not fit with the way their worldly minds were sure that things should be done.

Tradition tells us that Mark’s Gospel reports the memories of Peter about Jesus. Mark tells us that Peter remembered hearing the divine voice saying, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” Years later, Peter still remembers hearing that divine voice as an assuring moment in his faith journey, one of those undeniable events to which we can turn for assurance that God is part of the directing of our lives. And Peter was now passing this memory along to his readers who were about to be deprived of leaders like Peter and Paul. He wanted them to know that the gospel would not be undone by the passing of their first apostles. He wanted them to know that their faith was on solid ground guaranteed by multiple divine events.

I have a string of such events in my life, those unbelievable and undeniable occurrences, big and small, that can only be signs of God’s presence and involvement. Those events keep me listening to and following whatever I can sense of God’s leading even when my mind objects, even when my heart rebels, even when the journey is scary or painful, even when I am not hearing anything fresh, but merely having to cling to the last thing that I knew for sure long after I am less certain that it still applies. But I continue to listen, I continue to cry out, “God, if you want me to change directions, you are going to have to make it clear to me.” I find that God does not waste words, but that God is quite capable of getting my attention when necessary, often when I least expect it. I recognize that I am utterly dependent, but that my dependence is on a faithful and powerful God. It is humbling.

But I know that my life—or at least the portions of my life that count for ultimate purposes--depend on my obedient listening to what God says in Scripture, to what God says through the Holy Spirit, to what God says through Spirit-led saints, to what God says through events where he is most undeniably present and active. And I am most certain that it is God speaking when what I hear is holy, steadfast love, redeeming, restoring, and purifying the lost, the last, and me.

What about you? For what are you obediently listening? How is it sustaining you on a journey of faith? What step of faith is God asking you to make today? How does it all fit in the plan of what God is doing in Berryville, AR, today?