2/18/24 Ex. 34:29-35, Mark 9:2-9 “Are You Spinning Your Wheels?”

15 Feb 2/18/24 Ex. 34:29-35, Mark 9:2-9 “Are You Spinning Your Wheels?”

2/18/24    Ex. 34:29-35, Mark 9:2-9      “Are You Spinning Your Wheels?”

I think that one of our biggest problems of today is our pride.  The Bible talks about this a lot and rightfully so.  I’m one of the biggest reasons why we should not be proud.  I played a lot of sports in high school and I thought I was pretty good.  Guess what?  I wasn’t that good.  I studied a lot in college and was proud of that but once again it was for naught.  It wasn’t until I met Jesus some 30+ years ago that I realized that I have absolutely nothing to be proud about.  Look into your own life.  Are you proud of your successes?  Are you proud of your money?  Are you proud of your power?  The list goes on and on and you can add many things to it.  I know that you can because I know that I have barely started naming them in my life.  Today, we are going to look at a couple of passages, one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament, and see if we can find similarities even though they occurred hundreds of years apart.  Let’s see where we fit into this and can we be what God wants us to be.

Ruth Rettig tells the story of having gone through unsuccessful cancer surgery and following up with chemo in Houston, which meant 500-mile roundtrips from their home in central Texas. The trips were exhausting enough but the chemo made her feel sick to death. She lost her appetite, her hair and her will.

Wallowing in fear and self-pity, she heard God say, “Plan a Christmas pageant that would bring the story to life for your grandchildren.” She said yes despite her fears that her children would think it was corny. She decided first on the barn as the scene of the pageant. She got to work taking the plot for the script right out of the Gospel of Luke. She assigned the roles to her family members, unbeknownst to them. She began making the costumes.

As she worked, she felt new life come to her. She enlisted her husband to make the star in the East and the shepherd’s crooks in his workshop. Finally, the holiday arrived and after Christmas Eve dinner when everything was cleaned up and the leftovers were put away, they set the scene, handed out the costumes and the printed instructions. When everyone was ready, she began to read the story from the announcement of the angel to Mary to the arrival of the wisemen. And as they laid their gifts at the foot of the manger, they sang “Silent Night”, ‘Away in a Manger” and then “Joy to the World.” And as the last notes hung in the air, no one could move for they all felt God’s warm presence in that cold, dark barn.

And then she writes, “And in that closeness…I’d left my fear behind. My soul was light, a newborn light that God had been leading me to for 6 months. It was the radiance of the manger, a radiance I helped God create. So, you see, if you’re stricken by illness or misfortune, (in other words, if life doesn’t make sense) find something worthwhile to do (for God) and then do it…Don’t be afraid. Go!”  Someone once got angry at me for saying that one of the ways to beat depression was to go and do something.  Here it is again.

Let’s begin today, with the story of Moses that is found in Exodus.  If you remember, Moses was the designated messenger for God.  He was the one, the only one who could go to God and speak and listen.  He conveyed God’s instructions to the people below, who were not allowed to come up on the mountain.  So, Moses goes up on the mountain and he receives the Ten Commandments on some sort of stone tablets.  Just as a little sidebar here, these tablets had to be heavy and Moses was an old man.  It was probably another of those unmentioned miracles that Moses could even carry them down the mountain.

So, Moses comes to the people and they are afraid of him.  According to what we read; the face of Moses was radiant.  We don’t really know what this means.  It could be that it shown so bright that they couldn’t look at his face.  It might have been that it was just far brighter than usual.  It doesn’t really say like it did in our Mark passage.  But one thing we do know, is that the people were afraid to come near him.  They know that if Moses had seen the face of God, then he should be dead.  Not only that but every time Moses sees God, his face gets brighter again.

All of this causes the people to be afraid.  We are called to fear the Lord but this is a little too much as they fear the Lord so much when He talks with Moses that it interferes with what God is trying to do.  God has a very simple solution to all this so He has Moses wear a veil on his head to they cannot see the brightness.

I think that something like this might happen to us if we are not carful.  I think that sometimes we get so caught up in studying what the Bible says that we forget that we are not in the business of studying the Bible but rather we are to do what it says.  We get so caught up in the ceremony of some things that we forget what the ceremony is all about.  Our mission is to take the word of God to the ends of the earth.  By me just saying that, I have lost many people because they have lost sight of the message.  We love Jesus but we don’t want to do what He tells us because we don’t really want to be that involved.  It doesn’t matter if the doors of the church stay open.  It doesn’t matter whether the church kitchen gets a remodel or not.  Many of our programs do not matter because they are not geared to incite people to move toward Jesus.  So much of Christianity today is just spinning wheels.  If every Christian in this country would just bring one new person to a good church every year, you would soon see results that would be out of this world.  It’s not too late for out country or our world.

Let’s switch gears a little and look at our reading in Mark.  This is a little different that what we just talked about.  We have a high mountain in both cases where God can come down to talk to His people.  Only this time, Jesus only brings 3 people with Him, Peter, James and John.  Many believe that Jesus went up on the mountain so that He could parallel what He was doing with what Moses did.  They both went up the mountain to talk to God.  Was this necessary?  Not with Jesus because He is part of the Trinity.  Also remember that Moses was the most revered man that ever lived according to the Jewish tradition.  Jesus wants the people to know that He is actually one step above Moses.  One other thing about the mountain before we move along is that we were not made to live on top of a mountain.  Just look through history and you will not find any people group who have lived at the top of a mountain.  We will get back to this in a moment.

So, Jesus takes these three disciples and brings them to the top of the mountain.  Suddenly He is transfigured so that He is shown as to be the brightest thing on the earth.   No one had ever seen anything like this before.  This is huge.  This is like when the people could not look at the face of Moses after He had seen and talked with God.  Now to add a little to all this drama, Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus in this brightness.  These are two men who had been dead for centuries and here they are alive.

Just this part here should be enough for everyone to turn their hearts to Jesus.  Jesus is the way to eternal life and here we have the proof.  I’m sure that many of you have been around some people who demand proof of Jesus.  Well, here is just one instance of proof that goes beyond all understanding.  When people realize that there is this proof plus much, much more, then you have to be ready to lead them or have someone else lead them to a personal relationship with Jesus.  They need to confess their sins and ask Jesus to live in their hearts as their Lord and Savior.  When they do this, then Jesus will lift the veil that has been over them their whole lives.  For the first time they will actually see and understand what Jesus is all about.

But the story is not over yet.  Moses and Elijah are talking with Jesus.  In this transfiguration, Moses is said to represent the Law which was very alive and well at the time of Jesus, and Elijah is said to represent the prophets.  These were two of the biggest characters in the Bible up to this point.  Can you imagine that conversation?  Did Jesus spend a lot of time with these two before He was born into this world?  Were they talking over the game plan of what was ahead?  It sure would have been interesting to have been listening in on this conversation.  But nothing is said of it so we can only infer that it is not that important for us to know.

But another thing that is important is what Peter does next.  Peter is so dumfounded that he wants to set up tents and make this into a social gathering.  He fails to realize that these beings are spiritual beings that need no shelter or food or anything from us.  This is a case of Peter spinning his wheels.  Now I don’t want to be too hard on Peter here.  After all, this is something that happens once in a life time or once in human history.  He is baffled by what to do but he has to do something because Peter is one who does things.  Sometimes they are not the right things but he is out there doing them.

I think that there are many of us who are like this also.  I know that I am.  I almost always have to be busy doing something.  This in turn sometimes clouds my judgement.  And guess who is behind this clouded judgement?  It is none other than that old fool, Satan.  If we can just begin to realize all the terrible things he is having us do in the name of being busy.  Or all the things that we do that are just a little bit wrong.  Anything that goes against Jesus or against what we read in our Bibles, comes from Satan.  We have many denominations today, who are following Satan down the wide road to destruction.  I’m asking you to wake up to these things today.  Wake up! Before it is too late.

So far, this is totally unbelievable to Peter but what is next is even more so.  Now we have a great cloud appeared around them.  To us this would mean that it suddenly became very foggy.  And from this cloud came a voice saying, “This is my son, whom I love.  Listen to Him!”  This tops off one of the most supernatural experiences a human has ever witnessed.  And remember, there were three witnesses here.  This makes all of this very credible.  Then, as quickly as this all started, it was over.

There are two very important things happening here.  First, Peter tries to take over on his own.  We see this many times with Peter.  The trouble with him is that he is just like us.  I would guess that you probably do this all the time.  When Peter tried to do things on his own, it never worked and it didn’t work here.  Have you ever thought that this might be a problem for you also?  How many times have you started something and failed because you didn’t go to Jesus first?  I would guess that just about any project you have started that failed did so because you didn’t go to God first!  I know a church like this.  They have been hearing the word of God for years but they didn’t listen.  Now they are on the verge of closing and they are wondering what happened?  Well, duh!!  Jesus Christ is only a prayer away.  This stuff is not rocket science.  Go to Jesus with everything.

The second and most important part of both passages is that God comes to earth.  God came down here for you.  These stories are quite old but they are about you.  God came down to Moses to give your ancestors the Law by which to have a better life.  You have heard the term better life many times from me.  Not only that but He showed them that He is God and there is no one or nothing that even comes close to Him.

Once again, He comes down to the mountain for Jesus for much of the same reasons.  He wanted to show you that He is still here and He is still caring for you.  Why else would He send His only son, Jesus, to live and die.  It’s because He loves you.  There can be no other explanation as to why this happened.  God loves you.  Then He tells us that Jesus is His son and that He loves Him also.  But here comes the catch.  We are to listen to Jesus.  That does not mean that we come to church every week, then go home again, then start to do things like we never went to church in the first place.  Remember, trust and obey, for there is no other way.

Several years ago, there was a middle school teacher in Kenya that can show us how this works.  One day he told 20 of his students, “”I will do my best to teach you and train you. If you obey me, you will be the best students of this school.” They were excited.

In a short time, he realized that only some of them were willing to keep up with his training. Some of them said, “It’s too difficult.” Some said, “We have more important things to do.” Some of them said, “You see other students are having more fun than we do.” When they graduated, 2 of them were the best students of the school. Only 2 out of 20.  Unfortunately, this is how it is today!

I see this over and over again in the church, in my so-called Christian circles.  You hear all that you need to hear but, for the most part, you never do the things that need to be done.  I’m asking this week that you put some of this to practice and go out and try to be Jesus here on earth for someone you meet.  It is very easy to do, far easier than the other path.  Jesus is calling you every day.  Answer Him for there is no other way.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.