This summer I want to share with you wisdom from some of my favorite theologians. We will start with John MacArthur, a strong champion of adherence to the full counsel the Bible offers us. His teachings are sometimes long, so feel free to listen to the podcasts of these teachings instead. I have given you the links for your convenience. In future blogs, I will share from other theologians I seek out often for personal study.
Today we will begin a series on “Great Moments in the Life of Jesus.” Narrowing it down to a few for the blog was difficult as He had constant moments of greatness. We will be focusing on three events this summer: The Baptism, The Transfiguration, and The Ascension. I hope to cover these every other week with shorter blogs in between.
Lesson One: The Baptism of Jesus Christ the Messiah
Matthew 3, Luke 3, and Mark 1 all tell the beautiful story of Christ’s baptism. What a glorious, meaningful scene. If you have been baptized, you know the feeling of import, significance, and holy reverence that act takes on in your heart. You may have felt your commitment to Jesus in that moment so profoundly as you made a public confession of your belief in Him and His Lordship over your life.
When Jesus chose to be baptized by John the Baptist, it made John pause. He even tried to “prevent” Jesus from asking him to do this. Listen to this exchange between the two cousins, starting with John’s pushback from John:
“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
You can just hear the purpose in Jesus’ voice and tone. This is the beginning of Jesus publicly and purposefully doing things that would fulfill His mission here on earth. He was on assignment from His Father. He wanted to teach people that they needed to be fully immersed in Him and the Father and to wash off any allegiances of the past. He was more than a role model for us to be baptized, He was teaching us the way to surrender and to righteousness. I will let the passage from Matthew 3 speak more eloquently to this beautiful day in Jesus’ life, but do note how glorious the ending is. Three extraordinary, thrilling things happened as Jesus emerged from His baptism: The Heavens opened, the Spirit of God in the form of a dove descended and rested on Him like a Dove, and He heard the audible voice of His Father God. Each of these is miraculous. Don’t let the familiarity of the story let you skip past what that moment must have been like had you been there.
Jesus already knew what this moment that begins His public ministry was going to cost Him. His mortal body was about to take on a campaign unlike anything a man had ever done and it would change the world. So Jesus is standing in the Jordan River, knowing He is on the precipice of great ministry that will bring many sons and daughters to glory at great cost, His cost, and He hears these words from His Father: “This is my beloved Son,[d] with whom I am well pleased.” Can you imagine how Jesus’ heart was moved and comforted as He heard those intimate, affirming words? Jesus was a man of tender emotions. What a sweet, holy, monumental moment for Him.
Below is the account from Matthew 3:1-17 ESV.
3 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”[a] 3 For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare[b] the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.’”
4 Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
The Baptism of Jesus
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him,[c] and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son,[d] with whom I am well pleased.”
Lesson Two: Excerpt from a Teaching from John MacArthur on Baptism, Part I
Matthew 3:2-17
Please note that in this lesson, John MacArthur strongly makes the case for immersion baptism, which is my belief also. I don’t want this to be a point of concern, however, if this has not been the practice of your family. There are many saints who will be with Christ in Eternity who were not baptized. Over the years, I have been privileged to pray with friends about family members who resisted for decades Jesus’ offer of salvation. I am amazed at how many accept Jesus in their final days or even hours. Praise the Lord! It is a glorious thing and one of my favorite moments of celebration in my prayer life. Especially with deathbed conversions, there is not time to immerse someone in baptism. Praise the Lord we serve a God of Grace and He welcomes these His children with open arms as He did the thief on the cross.
Please enjoy this teaching that is an excerpt from a John MacArthur teaching. I have heavily redacted this teaching, but it is still rather long. If you wish to enjoy the full teaching, you can find it at: https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-370/Believers-Baptism, “Believer’s Baptism,” Grace to You website, September 25, 2011.
“…What is baptism? It is a service in which a person is immersed into water…Two verbs in the New Testament support this basic idea. They are the verb baptō, used four times in the New Testament – it means to immerse, it means to dip into, it would be a word used to dip cloth into dye so that it was totally submerged so as to be fully colored by the dye – baptō means to dip into or to immerse. And then there is an intensified form of baptō, baptizō. That’s simply used many, many times in the New Testament, and it means to dip completely. The noun, baptisma, is always used in the New Testament in the book of Acts, always to refer to a person who is confessing Christ being immersed fully into water…
I want to give you a little insight into that. Turn to Matthew 3 – Matthew 3, John the Baptist in his ministry, verse 6, “They were being baptized by him” – not with the water from the Jordan River but – “in the Jordan River.” They were being baptized by him in the Jordan River. And how much into the river did they go? Verse 16, “After being baptized, Jesus” – who was baptized there by John – “came up immediately” – out from the water – “out of the water.” He came up out of the water…
In the eighth chapter of the book of Acts, this is the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. “They were going along the road. They came to some water, and the Ethiopian said, ‘Look, water. What prevents me from being baptized?’ And Philip ordered the chariot to stop.” Verse 38, “They went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him.” He submerged him, he immersed him. “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away.” Again, it is crystal clear what baptism is, it is immersion – it is immersion. And, of course, as we’re going to see, that’s the only thing – the only means by which you can actually symbolize what baptism is trying to articulate, trying to demonstrate.
There are some figurative uses of the verb baptizō in the New Testament. When you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you are by the Holy Spirit baptized into the body of Christ, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 13. You are literally immersed into, buried into, submerged into the body of Christ. John the Baptist preached about two baptisms. He preached about the baptism of repentance, which was an immersion into water, and the baptism of fire in the great and final judgment. An immersing of believers into water and an immersing of unbelievers into fiery, furious, divine judgment. And you can see them both in Matthew chapter 3.
Now, we’re going to focus on the baptism into water, but even in those metaphoric uses of baptism, the idea is to be completely submerged into judgment, or submerged into water, or submerged fully into the body of Christ. This water immersion is a picture, it is an object lesson, it is a symbol, it is a physical analogy of a great, profound, spiritual reality. And here’s the point: It is the way God wants to teach the most wonderful truth of all, the union of the believer into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the salvation reality.
Any student of Scripture knows that God has always taught spiritual truth using symbols. There were many symbols in the Old Testament, many pictures, many illustrations, and even in the New, many parables, many analogies. Throughout the Old Testament, God instituted many symbols, many ceremonies to commemorate events, to illustrate spiritual truth…
Baptism is one of the Lord’s most treasured symbols. He’s only left two of them with us in the church, just two. All those in the Old Testament have been wiped out. Only two, baptism and His Table of Communion. Baptism, then, is a symbol, an object lesson, a visual representation of a spiritual reality that describes and defines a complete submersion and immersion into Christ.
Okay, a second question. What has been the history of baptism? What has been the history of baptism? Is it old, or was it invented in the New Testament? Well, I’m happy to say it is very old. It goes back long before the New Testament. And the most important baptism, Old Testament baptism, was that which was designed by God to be a visual commitment to Him on the part of a non-Jew, a Gentile who wanted to become identified with the Jews and worship the true God.
Now remember, Israel, God’s chosen people, were chosen not to be an end but a means to an end, and the end was that they would be an evangelistic people who would proclaim the glories of the true God to the ends of the earth, to all the nations around them. They were calling other nations to worship the one, true, and living God and abandon all the false deities.
When a Gentile came along and wanted to become a proselyte or wanted to become a worshiper of Jehovah, of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the true and living God, the Creator and the Redeemer, he would go through a three-stage ceremony. The first was called milah. This was the painful part, circumcision, the unique sign of the people of God to demonstrate in symbol their identification with God’s people. It was even more than that. They needed to demonstrate in circumcision that they were sinful.
And – listen carefully – there is no place on the human body in which the evidence of our sinfulness is more profound than in the reproductive area because if you ever question the sinfulness of man and woman, all you have to do is look at what they produce – nothing but more sinners. Circumcision, then, was a way to ceremonially demonstrate not only that you belong to the people of God but that you needed a soul cleansing at a profound level. A Gentile would have to go through that – not easy to say, “I want to belong to the people of God and worship the true God” – milah.
Then there was tebilah. That was the second aspect of the ceremony, immersion in water. That’s right, immersion in water. Why? To demonstrate they were dead as to the old life. It was a kind of water burial. They were dead to the old life, apart from God’s Word, apart from God’s truth, apart from God’s promises, apart from God’s people, and that old life was buried, and they had risen into a new life and a new family.
And then there was a third phase, korban. An animal was sacrificed. The blood of that animal was sprinkled on the person, on the Gentile, symbolizing the need for forgiveness of sins provided through the death of a substitute. That substitute would be, eventually, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So there was a proselyte baptism – very, very familiar to the people in Jerusalem and Judea. By the time we come, then, to the New Testament, they are familiar with immersion. They know what it is to be baptized. They know it is connected to coming to worship the true God. It is a symbol of the death of the old life and the beginning of a new life. It is not surprising to them, then, when John the Baptist appears. He is the last of the Old Testament prophets, and he begins his ministry by calling for baptism.
And it’s an amazing thing because all these people are coming to him. The gospels tell us all Judea was coming out to him. And these masses of people were being baptized because John was saying the Messiah is coming, the kingdom is coming, you must repent, you must be ready for the Messiah and the kingdom. You need to be washed. You need to be cleansed. You need to be prepared for the Messiah’s arrival. And he was calling on them to repent and be baptized and – listen to this – to literally view themselves as if they were Gentiles, as if they were outside the covenant, outside the kingdom, aliens of God, strangers to the promises…
John’s message was, “You need to view yourself as if you were an alienated Gentile outside the covenant, outside the promises, under judgment.” This was a bitter pill for them to swallow, but they came and they were baptized with a proselyte baptism.
John preached repentance from sin and a call to righteousness, to be ready for the Messiah. Called for people to turn from iniquity to holiness, to die to the old life, and to come into a new life. And there was no better outward symbol for that than what they were familiar with, baptism, to testify that they were willing to make that dramatic confession of their alienation and turn to God in righteousness.
If you go back to Matthew 3, you see John coming and people being baptized in the wilderness, verse 6, in the Jordan, as they confessed their sins – as they confessed their sins. That was the whole point, being baptized, confessing sins. In Mark 1:4, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Now, they knew enough about Ezekiel 18. And maybe John liked to preach out of Ezekiel 18 because Ezekiel 18 is all about individual responsibility, and it talks about the fact that you’re not going to be punished for the sins of your father or the sins of your son, you’re going to be dealt with for your own sin. Every individual has to face his own sin and his own potential judgment.
So the baptism of John marked the turning, the repentance of a sinful Jew who said, “I’m no better than an alienated Gentile. I want to leave my sin behind, pursue righteousness, face the Messiah in a manner that is ready, and be associated with others who are being baptized as a penitent people, ready for the Messiah’s arrival and establishment of His kingdom. By the way, John the Baptist obviously had many temporary repenters – many temporary repenters.
Lesson Three: Excerpt from a Teaching from John MacArthur on Baptism, Part II
“It was a special day – back to Matthew 3 for a moment. It was a special day when John was in the midst of this. Verse 13 says, “Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent Him, saying, ‘I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ Jesus, answering, said to him, ‘Permit it at this time for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he permitted Him.” It was unthinkable to John the Baptist to baptize Jesus. Why? Because this was a baptism of repentance.
This was a baptism for sinners. This was a baptism for confessed felons, as it were, who had violated the law of God. He knew Jesus. He knew His divine identity. He had probably known about Him for quite a while since they were related as Elizabeth and Mary were related. In John 1:29, when he first saw Him, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He knew He wasn’t an ordinary man. He knew He was the final and everlasting sacrifice. He knew He was God’s anointed, the spotless sinless one.
And since John understood baptism and he understood that baptism was the confession of sin and repentance and the death of the old life and the beginning of a new life, and he knew Jesus was sinless and didn’t need to leave a sinful life and embark upon a new righteous life, the whole exercise seemed ridiculous to him, nonsense. Why would the sinless one want to be baptized? And so John tried to prevent Jesus and said, “No, no, no, let’s turn it around. You baptize me.”
John resisted baptizing Jesus for the opposite reason that he resisted baptizing the Pharisees and the scribes that came to him and the Sadducees. Back in verse 7, “Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.’” He wasn’t about to baptize them. He rejected them because though they were in need of repentance, they were unwilling to ask for it. He refused to baptize them because they were not willing to admit their sin.
Opposite that, he refused to baptize Jesus because He had no sin. Hebrews 4:15 says He was without sin. But Jesus prevailed upon him. Why? Why did Jesus insist upon being baptized? Well, He says it, doesn’t He, there? Verse 15, “Permit it at this time for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Some have suggested that Jesus wanted to be baptized in order to identify with the people who were making ready for Him. He just wanted to be a part of that group of people. Some suggest that He wanted to set an example for them, identify with them.
No, I don’t think that’s it. It was really a matter of fulfilling all righteousness. It was a command to be baptized, and Jesus obeyed that command the way He obeyed every command that God ever gave. This is critical to His active righteousness, which is imputed to us at salvation. His passive righteousness is in His dying; His active righteousness was in His living. Since it was a command of God, since it was a ceremony ordained by God, commanded by the prophet of God who was the voice of God, Jesus said, “Although I don’t fit the symbol of it, I do it because it is righteous to obey every command” – every command.
And I believe beyond that, He knew that this baptism, which had long been a symbol of the death of an old way of life and the beginning of a new way of life, was going to be the symbol that marked the believer and his union with Christ in His death and resurrection. I think He saw in this a prefiguring of Christian baptism.
Not long before his final trip to Jerusalem, Luke 12, He told His disciples, “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am,” He said, “until it is accomplished.” He had His own submersion, immersion into death, into judgment, into darkness. But in that, that baptism would be the very death of believers and resurrection of believers symbolized by Christian baptism.
So in submitting to baptism in John’s case, He was being obedient because it was commanded, and He was previewing what it would be like for Him when He was buried under the waves of divine judgment, bearing our sin. Literally, we were there in His death, burial, and with Him in His resurrection. Jesus said, “This is necessary. This is necessary.”
The apostles knew Jesus was baptized. They followed John the Baptist and baptized more people. Listen to John 4:1 and 2. When the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were, so they just picked up with John and they were doing the same baptism unto repentance that would eventually be transformed into the symbol of the believer’s union in the death, burial, resurrection of Christ. That’s why in the Great Commission, “Go into all the world, make disciples, baptizing them.”
And that takes us to the third question. We’ve already given you the answer, but let’s just develop it a little bit. What is the meaning of Christian baptism? What is the meaning of Christian baptism? I don’t know what the meaning would be of baby baptism, it has no meaning. I don’t know what the meaning would be of splattering water on somebody’s head, trickling it, pouring it out of a pitcher. I don’t know what the meaning would be of putting water on someone’s forehead or three or four spots in the sign of a cross on their face. I don’t know what the meaning of that is. Biblically, it has absolutely no meaning.
But I do know what the meaning is of submerging someone in water. That’s clear. Because that is what the New Testament teaches. When you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you’re immersed into Christ. I want to show you this because you need to understand it. So let’s take a look at this in Romans 6. Romans 6. We won’t spend a lot of time here but just to give you the picture, Romans 6:3. Now, this is a dry section, okay? There’s no real H2O here. While this gives us the spiritual reality pictured in water baptism, this is not the water baptism, this is the spiritual reality section.
“Do you not know” – Romans 6:3 – “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” When you come to Christ, you are literally immersed into His death. You die with Him there so that all your sins are paid for in full. Solidarity with Him. Very much like 1 Corinthians 10:2, which says that the children of Israel going through the wilderness were baptized into Moses. In other words, they were immersed into Moses. They were one with their leader. So we are immersed into Christ.
When you come in faith to Christ and you are redeemed and saved, you are literally immersed into Christ, which means you have been immersed into His death. Verse 4, “You have been buried with Him through baptism.” Again, a spiritual union into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we might walk also in newness of life. You were buried with Him. You died with Him. You rose with Him.
He goes on in verse 5. “We have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, and also we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. Our old self,” verse 6, “was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed from sin. If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”
He’s circling back over this massive truth again and again. As Christ has been raised from the dead never to die again, death is no longer master over Him, for the death that He died, He died to sin once for all. The life He lives, He lives to God. And even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Salvation is not adding Jesus to your life, salvation is immersing you into Christ. That’s why the New Testament talks about being in Christ.
In Galatians 2 and verse 20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I have been crucified with Christ. Immersed, submerged into Christ, to die His death and live His resurrection.”
In Colossians 2:12, “Having been buried with Him in baptism,” that’s the baptism into His death, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” When you were dead in your transgressions and uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven all our transgressions. That’s the whole point. Salvation is placing a person in union with Jesus Christ, and in some amazing, supernatural way, we participate in His death, in His resurrection, spiritually.
Now, again, there’s no water in Romans 6. There’s no water in Galatians 2. There’s no water in Colossians 2. This is what Peter calls the baptism that saves. This is what Paul calls the washing of regeneration or in Acts 22:16, “The washing away of your sins.” It is immersion into Christ. And that is what is depicted ceremonially, symbolically in baptism.
So, let’s ask a fourth question – and they overlap as we go. What is the relation of immersion to salvation? What is the relation of immersion to salvation? Well, I think a simple way to answer that is to say that immersion is not a saving ceremony – is not a saving ceremony. It’s important, but it doesn’t save you. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, “I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius.” Now let me tell you something. If baptism saved, Paul would have been baptizing everybody. He said, “I did baptize the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I don’t know whether I baptized anybody else. Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the gospel.”
This is a disclaimer on Paul’s part for any saving virtue in H2O. We say that in baptism here all the time. Well, you say, “Wait a minute, it says in Acts 2:38, ‘Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins.’” I take it that the construction indicates there, when paralleled with Matthew 12:41, “Repent and be baptized because of the remission of sins.” Baptism was an immediate, inseparable, public testimony of a true conversion. True believers were baptized on the Day of Pentecost, the same day – same day. Wasn’t weeks later, months later, years later, decades later. The apostles insisted on it and the people assumed it.
If a convert wasn’t willing to do that, there would be little confidence in his professed repentance. If he was willing, then he paid a price in that Jewish community to confess Jesus Christ as Lord openly and publicly. On the Day of Pentecost, they must have used every pond and pool in Jerusalem to do three thousand people in a day. It was an inseparable sign of true salvation, so it became spoken of as that which was the evidence of salvation.
In Ephesians 4, when it says there’s one Lord, one faith, one baptism, that’s talking about water baptism as the symbol of salvation. It was what they did. Now, salvation is by grace through faith, not of works, right? Any doctrinal treatment of salvation makes it clear that salvation does not depend on water. You can use the thief on the cross as an illustration, if you need to, but the outward sign was water baptism.
And one who refused baptism would be one who refused Christ because they would say, “Repent and be baptized.” That’s how they preached in the book of Acts. “Repent and be baptized. Repent and be baptized.” And if you refused to be baptized, you would, in a sense, do so because you refused to repent.
Listen to the words of Matthew 10:32, “Whoever confesses me before men, I’ll confess Him before my Father who is in heaven. Whoever denies me before men, I’ll deny before My Father who is heaven.” An open, public confession of faith in Christ is the evidence, the initial evidence, of one’s true conversion when you’re willing to go on public record as having abandoned your former life and embraced Christ.
Now, if you’re looking for some kind of immediate benefit from baptism, it is the same benefit as any act of obedience. Baptism produces nothing but the blessing of obedience. It’s not designed to make you more holy, to make you more secure, to save you. It is simply the first public step of true confession of Christ openly. The ordinance of baptism, then, exists for the purpose of showing in a symbol form the reality of every believer’s identification with His Lord and Savior and his abandonment of the old life and embracing of the new life in Christ.
There’s an old confession that was used in the church that went like this: Someone would be baptized and they would say, “I hereby confess in my willing submission to this divinely appointed ordinance my glad obedience to the command of my Lord and Savior. In this manner, I show forth my identification with the One who bore my sins, took my place, died in my stead, was buried and rose again for my justification. As Christ went through the dreadful reality of suffering and death to secure my salvation, so by my immersion in water and emergence therefrom, I thus publicly declare my identification with my Lord in His death, burial, and resurrection on my behalf, with the intention henceforth to walk with Him in newness of life.”
What a confession. No picture could be more simple, more beautiful, more spiritually significant than that.
Fifth question: With all of this being so clear, why is there so much confusion regarding baptism? Well, of course, Satan wants to break the pattern of obedience at the beginning. So many attacks have come against baptism. Some deny baptism’s place altogether. There are people in the Christian church who flatly, openly deny that baptism has any place in a Christian’s life, Quakers, the Friends Church, the Salvation Army, and certain hyper-dispensationalist quote/unquote evangelicals who think it was a Jewish ritual.
There are others who say that it is required for salvation, and if you haven’t gone in the water, you can’t go to heaven. That would be the Churches of Christ and those who teach baptismal regeneration, Christian churches, churches of Christ. Some say baptism is for dead people. That would be the Mormons who have proxy baptisms for the dead at a multimillion clip a year. .. (Article continues. This is only an excerpt. You can read the article in its entirety at https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-370/Believers-Baptism, “Believer’s Baptism,” Grace to You website, September 25, 2011.)
Lesson Four: The Transfiguration, Part 1
Matthew 16:24- 17:13
Several times throughout the year, if I need to see a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, I will turn to Matthew 16-17 and read about The Transfiguration.” At times, the ruler of this world Satan is just so oppressive and his works surround me on all sides, and I need a little glimpse of His glory. I need to see reality. The circumstances I see with my eyes and in the news and in the gossip I hear are not reality. They are temporary. They are distortions of people when they are at their worst. I need to get some distance and look at the Eternal, unchanging reality of Jesus Christ and Who He really is. I need triumph. I need victory. I need to behold my magnificent Savior. I need to know that goodness wins in the end. I need to know that just like Jesus, I will leave this earth on some magnificent day and be with Him. He and I will be standing side by side in happy companionship and in sweet communion, and all my struggles will be over. It will be a moment of victory. Through Him, I will be a victor and undefeated. That is my reality. That is your reality. This life is not. I am reminded, “This life is temporary.”
Just before the Transfiguration, Jesus has been doing glorious but hard ministry. Don’t you often find it true that when God decides to give you a really transcendent, glorious moment with Him, you usually have just been through an exhausting or difficult time that has drained you? I often think He wants me wrung out of everything- energy, my thoughts about ministry, and especially self—before He can fill me up with an experience of wonder and His Grace. That is how Jesus must have been physically- wrung out. In His recent days, He had been ministering all over—Jerusalem, Tyre, Sidon, and Caesarea Phillipi. He cannot get a moment alone. Matthew 15:30-31 shows Jesus going up on a mountain, we assume to get some rest and solitude, but “great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, 31 so that the crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel.”
He has been challenged by the Pharisees, exhausted by healing and preaching and performing miracles, feeding crowds of thousands, and constantly ministering to people. Even the Apostles let Him down. Just before the Transfiguration, we see Him having several conversations with those closest to Him, including Peter, that must have been discouraging to Him. The early verses of Matthew 16 show that even after Jesus has poured into them, they still don’t seem to get what He is all about. This is the state we find Jesus in as Father God decides to give Him a moment of glory in Matthew 16:24-17:13:
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life[g] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
The Transfiguration
17 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. 3 And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 5 He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son,[h] with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” 8 And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
9 And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” 10 And the disciples asked him, “Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” 11 He answered, “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. 12 But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.” 13 Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.
Mark 9:3-4 describes the glory His disciples witnessed this way:
, 3 and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one[a] on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. “
This is an amazing sight that was both exhilarating and terrifying to Peter, James and John. I almost wrote, “I can just see it,” but I know that would not be accurate. This is too wonderful for me and my limited view of Jesus, but it won’t be one day. One day, I will see His shining raiment and His glory in its fullness and stand amazed in His presence and so will you. Jesus will be standing beside me shining, His dazzling raiment so bright no writer can describe it. The entire scene will be so incandescent that I feel we will need to fall down because we are so overpowered by the brilliant light and love as we have never known it.
One of the tender parts of Matthew 17 is when the Father tells the witnesses how He feels about His Son:
“This is my beloved Son,[h] with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Matthew 17:5
Does this sound familiar? It echoes the Father’s acknowledgement of His Son at His baptism when He said, ““This is my beloved Son,[d] with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:17
And one day, when Jesus presents us as a spotless bride before the Father, we, too will be changed. The light of Jesus will finally be able to shine out from us because the dark smudges of sin are not blocking His glory from pouring out of us, lighting everything around us. We will be beaming. There will be only brilliance and rejoicing in His presence.
And may we each hear the Father’s voice saying to us, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant…” Mathew 25:23
Lesson Five: The Transfiguration, Part 2
Because I had to redact over half this message, I encourage you to read the entire article if you have time at: John MacArthur’s “Preview of the Second Coming, Part 1,” https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/2322/preview-of-the-second-coming-part-1 ,” Grace to You website, October 31, 1982.
“…Now, the 16th chapter of Matthew is a marvelous chapter. It contains some monumental realities. It’s startling how many great truths are clearly put in focus in this chapter.
Remember, now, that it’s just a few months until the coming of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as He moves rather rapidly now to the passion time, He senses the great need to prepare His apostles for what they’re going to endure, and then for the resurrection, the ascension, and their consequent and subsequent ministry.
And so, this is a time of rather intense teaching. And in this particular chapter, He begins to speak to them of all that’s involved in the heart and soul of the Gospel. For example, in chapter 16, He has them affirm that He is the Messiah. They say, “Thou art the Christ,” through the voice of Peter. And then they affirm as well, by the revelation of God, that He is the Son of the living God. And so, the chapter then focuses on His messiahship. It affirms and confirms also His deity…
Christ has come; He is the Messiah; He is God in human flesh; He is building His kingdom. Nothing can stop it. He will die, He will rise, and finally, He will come again. And that comes to them in verse 27.
And that’s where we pick up our text together. “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels. And then He shall render to every man according to His works.” This is the first clear revelation, in the life of our Lord, of His second coming. This is a great truth for them to hear. He is Messiah; He is God in human flesh; He will build His kingdom; nothing can stop it. He will die; He will rise again to prove that even death can’t stop it, and then He will return in full blazing glory.
Now, this then constitutes the great Gospel message which becomes His theme as He instructs the disciples in the days and weeks and months until His death… Now, it wasn’t a new message that Jesus would come in glory. The prophets were filled with that message. Isaiah talked about it. The psalmist in Psalm 22 talked about it. Even David talked about it, that the Messiah would never be left to corrupt, but there was coming a great time of glory. Even the great Davidic covenant promised that there would come a King with an everlasting, glorious kingdom.
And so, Jesus is merely affirming to them the glory that the prophet said would come to pass through the Messiah. There’s a sense in which, however, they may have lost that sense of glory because of the things that had occurred in the coming of Christ. He was not taking the glory they thought He would take. It wasn’t going the way they had thought it ought to go. It wasn’t according to their messianic expectation.
And so, our Lord here adds this most significant dimension, that the last view the world has of Jesus Christ will not be as a crucified criminal; He will come again in full glory. The first time He came in rejection, hostility, and death. Executed as an outcast criminal. The second time He comes in glory, majesty, dominion, power and might, and is worshipped as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And the disciples really need to know this fact.
So, verse 27 is so important to them. It’s perspective they need, you see? Because as it appears, it just doesn’t seem to be unfolding the way they planned. Verse 27 needs to be seen from two vantage points. First, it has a promise character. It is a promise to those who believe…
For those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, the thought of His coming is a promise that fills us with great hope and anticipation. Doesn’t it? And we, like John, say, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” We’re like those who gather under the altar, in the book of revelation and cry out, “How long, oh Lord, how long? How long will you allow the world to go the way it goes before you intervene in glory?” We’re like David, who in the imprecatory psalms cries out to God and says, “God, how long will the unrighteous prosper? When are you going to come and take your glory and bring equity and justice to the world?”…
If you would be a Christian, if you would follow Jesus Christ, if you would belong to Him, if you would identify with Him, if you would be one of His own, if you would enter His kingdom, here’s how you come, verse 24 says, “Denying yourself, bearing your cross, and following in obedience.” Sacrifice. Self-denial.
You say no to self; you say yes to the will of God. You say no to ease and comfort, and you say yes to a cross. The cross of rejection, the cross of persecution, the cross of alienation from the people of the world, and maybe the cross of martyrdom, but you carry it willingly. And then you say to loyal obedience at any price. Those are the conditions. It’s all sacrificial; it’s all saying no to the things that allure in the world. It’s all saying no to ease, and comfort, and money, and pleasure; and saying yes to pain, and struggle, and persecution, and warfare. And He’s just told them that.
…And then He says, “By the way, I have to go to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed.” And that’s all they heard. And then He says to them, “Not only do I have to be killed, but I want you all to take a cross, and I want you all to deny yourself, and I want you all to follow me no matter what the price. And as over against gaining the whole world, I want you to say no to all of that stuff; follow Me.”
And it really is getting a little heavy. And they see a lot of the pain, but not much of the gain; and a lot of the suffering, and not much glory; and a lot of cross, and not a little crown. And the Lord knows that. And the Lord never gives us more than we can bear, does He? And so, there’s all of a sudden this light that clicks on in the wonder of what He says, “Look, that isn’t all there is, men. The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels.” That hasn’t changed. The plan is on schedule; it’s coming.
Later on, the apostle Paul adds the footnote to this when He says, “The suffering of this world isn’t even worthy to be” – what? – “compared to the glory that shall be ours with Him,” Romans 8:18. So, it’s a hopeful verse; it’s filled with promise for them and for us, because we, like them, long for the coming of Jesus Christ, do we not?
But then it also has a warning character… You see, He has just said in verse 25, “Whosoever saves his life will lose it.” You try to hang onto this world, and you’re going to forfeit eternity. He’s just said, in verse 26, “What does it matter if you gain the whole world? What good is it when you lose your soul? Then what are you going to have to buy your soul back?”
So, He is saying also, in verse 27, something that is of severe warning in character. What about you people who do not belong to Jesus Christ? And you’ve never followed Him, abandoning yourself, taking up the cross. You’ve never come after Him; you’ve never been obedient to Him; you’ve never named His holy name. What about you? Well, He’s coming also in glory, and He’s going to come and act on your behalf just as much as on the behalf of His own. For it says at the end of verse 27, “He will render to every man according to His works.” Everyone.
…And Paul looked at the coming of Christ in the same way. On the one hand, it was great joy, and he longed for Jesus to come. On the other hand, he said, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.”
And so, because Jesus is coming, it’s joy to our hearts, but at the same time, it’s sadness to the same hearts. We rejoice in what shall be ours and His, and we are pained over what shall not be the lot of those who know Him not. But He will come. For some, that means that a life of self-denial, and a life of cross bearing, and a life of loyal obedience, and a life of sacrifice is over. And it’ll be repaid with eternal rest, and eternal riches, and eternal prosperity, and infinite blessedness. And for some, a life of self-centeredness, self-circumference, and self-indulgence will end and be replaced by an eternity of torment, unrest, poverty, and loneliness.
…He’s just talking in a general sense and saying when He comes, in the fullness of His coming, in the progress of all those event, everybody’s going to be dealt with. The believers raptured, immediately taken to the judgment seat of Christ to receive their reward for the things done that were worthwhile, God produced. The unbelievers gathered finally at the great white throne from out of the sea and out of the land and brought before God as the final Judge, and then sent into the second death, the everlasting hell forever.
…Let’s look at it. Verse 27 says, “For the Son of Man shall come.” Why does Jesus call Himself the Son of Man? Well, it is an identification point that He uses more commonly than any other by far. He most often refers to Himself as this, and it first of all marks His humanness. It speaks of Him as the incarnate God. He is identified with men, one of them.
But in this context, it gets a richer, fuller, more marvelous meaning. And if you’d like to note that, turn in your Bible to the seventh chapter of Daniel. Daniel chapter 7 and beginning at 9 – the ninth verse – Daniel is looking across the history of the world. And he’s seeing the final wrap-up on human history. In fact, he sees all the way to the final judgment in verse 9. And he says in the vision, “I beheld till the thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was like the fiery flame and His wheels as burning fire.”
Now, what is this? Well, this is judgment taking place. The thrones are set, and the Ancient of Days – that’s God Himself – sits in judgment. His garment white as snow speaks of His purity, His utter and absolute holiness, His hair like pure wool of His wisdom. His throne like fiery flame. His majesty and His authority are like wheels and burning fire. It’s a throne on fire is what it is, with whirling flames at the foot of that throne in consuming judgment, purging judgment.
In verse 10, “A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him” – and it’s the judgment that comes off the throne and consumes everything in front of it – “a thousand thousands ministered to Him, ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him” – and those are the angelic hosts. And this scene has a purpose, “Judgment was set, and the books were opened.” God keeps books, do you know that? The final accounting will be based on objective data. God has kept the records. God can look at the books in judgment. And then we find, in verses 11 and 12, the destruction of the satanic world leader, the beast, the Antichrist, the Roman system that’s grown up, and the end time is utterly destroyed and devastated.
And then verse 13 says, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”
And there you have the Son of Man coming in glory to receive the kingdom from the Father and to act, as it were, in harmony with the Father in judgment. And I believe, as you look now, again, at Matthew 16 and verse 27, when you see the Son of Man coming in the glory of His Father with his angels to render to every man according to is works, you have another prophesy, like that of Daniel, which sees Jesus as the Son of Man, coming as man to judge men on behalf of the eternal God.
And so, this is Jesus in judgment, Jesus in glory, Jesus coming to take His kingdom. And those who belong to Him go into the kingdom, as Matthew 25 says, and those who don’t are thrown out of the kingdom forever.
Note: Here, John MacArthur is referring to The Ascension, which we will study in a future week.
Adventures in Christianity 