Messiah: More Than a Prophet. Matthew 17:1-8

This is an episode in the life of the Lord that gives us an understanding of who He is, and it gives us a foretaste of the Lord in His glory; understanding that He is both fully God and fully man. As we orient ourselves again to this section of Scripture what we are going to see is that Jesus has been identified rightly by Peter as the Messiah. This is a critical focal point but it started a little mini-section here that is focusing on a correct understanding of who Jesus is and what His mission was at the first advent; understanding that the cross, the suffering Messiah was to precede the crown, the glorified Messiah. So when Peter says this he is focusing on his understanding of the Messiah, that the Messiah was more than a prophet, that the Messiah was the Son of the living God. And that is significant term that often is not understood today. It is roughly to be understood as an idiom of description. It is a Hebrew idiom, that if you were to talk about somebody's physical descent you would talk about, for example, Jesus as the son of Joseph, David as the son of Jesse. But in many cases in the Scripture the phrase “son of” doesn't mean father to son as we normally think of it, it means someone who shares the characteristics, the attributes, and the qualities of something else. For example, someone who is foolish is described as the son of a fool. Someone who had committed murder would be described as the son of a murderer. This is how we must understand two of the titles of the Lord Jesus Christ. That He is the Son of God doesn't mean that He derived His deity in a secondary sense from God but that He is fully and totally God; He is undiminished deity. When the title Son of Man is given to Jesus it is emphasizing the fact that He is full and true humanity; He is the God-Man.

We have looked at Philippians 2:5-10 focusing on an understanding of what is described as the hypostatic union, that union of two natures in the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is important to understand. When Peter says that Christ is the Son of the living God it means that He is more than a prophet. Jesus goes on to tell the disciples in terms of His expanding the understanding of Peter and begins to show in 16:21 that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed and be raised on the third day. This was something they really didn't quite grasp yet and even when it came time for Jesus to go to the cross they didn't quite comprehend what was going on, and it wasn't until after the resurrection that they began to put things together.

The area that we are talking about geographically is to the north of the Sea of Galilee in the area of Caesarea Philippi, and this the where the conversation between Jesus and Peter took place at the end of chapter sixteen. Then we are told at the beginning of chapter seventeen: Matthew 17:1 ^NASB “Six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. [2] And He was transfigured before them ...” The traditional site is Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in the northern part of Israel; it is right on the border with Syria. There is another site that is a secondary tradition and that is the site of Mount Tabor. He was transfigured, the Greek word METAMORPHOO, which means to change form. It is the same word that is used of Christians—we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. So it reflects a transformation right before their face. “... and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light.”

It is interesting that Luke omits this word (Mark uses it), possibly because Luke is writing to a Gentile audience and this word had certain connotations to pagan Gentiles that would have communicated something of the order of an epiphany and would have described some things that were related to their pagan mythology. Instead, Luke just says that he became as bright as a flash of lightning. Mark adds something interesting to this as well; he says He became white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. No matter what we use it doesn't get as bright as the righteousness, the holiness of God. And when we see heavenly beings, whether they are angels, often portrayed as light, so too we have with God. In Matthew 28:3 we have a description of an angel: “And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.” In Psalm 104:2 and Daniel 7:9 we have a description of God the Father as being white.

Psalm 104:2 ^NASB “Covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, Stretching out heaven like a {tent} curtain. Daniel 7:9 ^NASB “I kept looking Until thrones were set up, And the Ancient of Days took {His} seat; His vesture {was} like white snow And the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne {was} ablaze with flames, Its wheels {were} a burning fire.”

So if you are Jewish and have this understanding of the Old Testament, and you think of God as one who appears in a blinding light, then when Jesus appears like that you recognize a sort of family relationship; it immediately connects you to the description of the Father. This is the same kind of thing that we see in Revelation 1:14 when Jesus appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos: ^NASB “His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.” What John is doing in this description and the way Jesus revealed Himself to John is intentionally designed to connect the Jesus who appears to John to God the Father, indicating that Jesus is God; He has the full glory of the Father. As the writer to the Hebrews says, He is the effulgence or the radiance of His glory, His essence. Throughout the Scriptures we see this emphasis that Jesus Christ is fully God, He doesn't have secondary or derivative deity.

When we look at Old Testament passages that predict the Messiah there are two streams we see. The first stream emphasizes that the Messiah who is to come will be a divine Messiah (Micah 5:2—“the one whose goings forth are from eternity; Isaiah 7:14—Immanuel, God with us; 9:6—Mighty God). The fact that He would also be truly human is indicated by a number of factors: the title Son of Man, that He is to be a descendant of David, also Isaiah 7:14; 9:6.

Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine and these two natures are combined in one person. Though these two natures are combined in the person of Christ they remain distinct, they don't merge or mix together. What we learn is that Jesus as the second person of the Godhead is eternally God, so when He entered into the human race (the incarnation) He added humanity to His deity, and in that process willingly restricted the use of His divine attributes in order to accomplish the task that God has set for Him, which is to go to the cross and die for our sins. There are times when His deity is on display: when He changes the water into wine; when He shouts peace be still and the waves quieten down; when He is walking on the water—demonstrating His omnipotent characteristics. But when Jesus is leading His every-day life, when He is facing the fact that He lives under ungodly authorities in the Roman empire, when He is having to deal with the religious authorities of the Jews, when He is living in the Devil's world and has to deal with temptation in the wilderness, Jesus doesn't handle those problems and challenges by relying on His own deity, He handles them by relying upon the power that God has given Him through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. If Jesus handled all of those problems by using divine power then there is no example for us at all. He handled it just as we would to set an example for us so that He faced and handled those problems with the same resources that you and I have, and that is the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

We learn that there is no transfer of the attributes of one nature to the other. There is a firewall, as it were, between His humanity and His deity so that He can completely limit the use of His deity and only access it at times to demonstrate who He is as the eternal Son of God. It is a personal union. He is a person, and this one person, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the one who does everything. Sometimes people in struggling to understand this will say Jesus did that out of His deity, as if He is two persons. The one person performed the miracle, the miracle may indicate His deity. He hungered, He thirsted, He wept; that indicates that He was human. But the one person, the God-Man, hungered, wept and thirsted. There is one person and that union is eternal. Millions of years from now He will still be the God-Man. That limitation has permanently attached itself to His deity, but in His deity He is still eternal.

Matthew 17:3 ^NASB “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him.”

While they were on the mountain Matthew tells us that two Old Testament prophets appeared with Jesus—two witnesses. The Old Testament emphasizes that something must be validated, verified on the basis of two witnesses, and so these two witnesses appear. Jesus has unveiled His glory and has revealed to them who He is as the future messianic King, the King of glory. They see His deity, and then it is attested to by Moses and Elijah who appear to them.

Why Moses and Elijah? What we see in this is that the Bible is an integrated book. Everything in the Bible fits together. So often the way people approach the Bible is to read this little section or that little section in isolation from its immediate or overall context of the Scripture. But although the Bible has forty or more human authors it has one divine Author who is breathing out the Word of God through the writers of Scripture. There is an integral unity within the Scriptures. Every time we read one part of the Scripture we ought to ask: Why is this here, what is being emphasized, and how does this related to the rest of Scripture? Because it is one integrated whole.

When we look at the fact that Moses and Elijah are appearing here we should in a sense ask why Enoch didn't show up. Enoch didn't die in the Old Testament. Elijah didn't die physically; a fiery chariot took him directly to heaven. Why not Samuel, why not David? There are a couple of reasons for Moses and Elijah. The first is that Moses was the law-giver, but Moses was more than a law-giver, more than their deliverer who delivered them from slavery in Egypt; he was also a prophet, a unique prophet, indicated by Deuteronomy 15:18-19 where in addressing the Israelites before they went into the land he said there would come a prophet after him, one that is “like me”. It is understood in the New Testament to be a messianic prophecy and talking about the Messiah as this unique prophet. This is how they understood this. Moses and Elijah had appeared to Him, and often these were associated. In John 1:21 John the Baptist had been baptizing down by the Jordan and the religious leaders in Jerusalem found out, and according to their procedures if anybody seemed to indicate that they were the Messiah or if anything special happened they would go and investigate. So they went and asked John if he was Elijah. The reason they mention Elijah and the reason he is mentioned and appears on the mount of transfiguration is because Malachi chapter four said that Elijah would appear as a forerunner to the Messiah. John said no; I am not. Then they asked, “Are you the prophet?” They understood that Deuteronomy 18:15 was talking about a unique prophet, it wasn't fulfilled by Joshua or Samuel or any other prophet in the Old Testament. This prophecy in Deuteronomy was a reference to the Messiah. So they understood enough about the Old Testament to recognize that they were looking for this unique prophet, and that was the Messiah.

Later in John 6:14 when Jesus has been ministering and had performed the miracles, the distribution of the bread, and these men when they had seen the signs that Jesus did said, “This is truly the prophet who is to come into the world”. So again, they understand that Deuteronomy 18:15 is talking about the Messiah as a unique prophet. John 7:40 ^NASB “{Some} of the people therefore, when they heard these words, were saying, 'This certainly is the Prophet'.” In other words, Old Testament saints knew that they were looking for this unique prophet, and they were saved because they believed that God would send this prophet, the Messiah. There was more content to their understanding of the gospel than just simply that God would save them, they understood that God would save them through a specific individual who would provide redemption for their sins, and this was the messianic prophet.

Passages in the New Testament, like Acts 3:22, 23 where Peter is speaking: “Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people’.” Stephen said, Acts 7:37 “This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, ‘GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN’.” Peter and Stephen are both identifying this prophet as Jesus. So this is the reason Moses shows up. Moses also stands for the first section of the Old Testament known as the Law. Elijah is mentioned because he is associated with often the second section of the Old Testament, the prophets. There are three divisions in the Old Testament: the Law, the prophets and the writings. Often they were referred to as the Law and the prophets, and that would cover the entirety of the Old Testament. Elijah is one of the foremost prophets, he founded the school of the prophets, and he is the one about whom Malachi prophesied would appear before the coming of the great day of the Lord.

As we look at Scripture we see again and again this reference to Moses and the prophets. Luke 24:27 ^NASB “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.”

John 1:45 ^NASB “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, 'We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and {also} the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph'.” In other words, he identifies Jesus as the Messiah.

Jesus said to the Pharisees, John 5:46 ^NASB “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.” So Moses and Elijah are the individuals who represent the totality of what was taught about the Messiah in the Old Testament.

Luke adds a few details about Moses and Elijah that are not mentioned by Matthew or Mark. What happens in terms of chronology is that Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain, and then Jesus reveals who He is in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah appear and they are having a conversation with Jesus. That is left out of Matthew and Mark. Luke tells us that they are having a conversation and that they appeared in glory and spoke of His “decease”. That is really not the best word to translate it—probably departure, but that could include His death. Then Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep. They were sort of drowsy with the whole scenario, so this indicates they're in a sort of vision state perhaps. When they were fully awake, though, they saw His glory. Some think that being heavy with sleep means that they were in a vision trance. I am not sure that that is right, I don't see this sort of ecstatic thing going on in the Scripture. The second clause, “when they were fully awake”, is when they have their conversation when they see what is going on. This is like the situation in the Garden of Gethsemane where they seem to be under a certain amount of emotional pressure.

The word that is translated “decease” is EXODOS, from the compound of EX=out or from, and HODOS=a path or a way. It literally means a departure. It is used a few times for a departure from this life, so it has that sense of death. Peter uses this same word and it indicates death, 2 Peter 1:13-15 ^NASB “I consider it right, as long as I am in this {earthly} dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my {earthly} dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will also be diligent that at any time after my departure [physical death] you will be able to call these things to mind.” Then Peter goes right on in the next verse to talk about what happened on the mount of transfiguration. 2 Peter 1:16 ^NASB “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” When did that happen? It happened on the mount of transfiguration [17] “For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased'--[18] and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.” This made an impact on Peter and he refers back to it in 2 Peter chapter one.

So there is a conversation that goes on between Moses and Elijah and Jesus. It seems to be a discussion related to the fulfilment of Jesus' mission to go to the cross because they are talking about His death, the fact that He will die. So again, this message Jesus had given to the disciples in Matthew 16:21, that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things and be killed—which didn't find a receptive audience among the disciples—is a message that they are confirming. Again Peter doesn't warm up to that Message, it isn't something that he wants to hear. But this is necessary because the mission of Jesus at the first advent was to pay for our sins. He was to come and die as out substitute. Moses and Elijah are talking to Jesus about the completion of the plan of salvation. In the Old Testament they were saved, as it were, on credit; they were saved by believing the promise that their sin would be paid for but it wouldn't be paid for until Jesus died on the cross. They were saved on the basis of a promise of a future redemption. Remember, in the Old Testament they didn't go directly to heaven. They went to Paradise. When Jesus paid the penalty for sin, in those three days between His death and resurrection He announced the accomplishment of the payment for sin in Hades, i.e. in Paradise. Scripture says He took captivity captive. That is, He took those who were the Old Testament saints to heaven. It was only after He finished paying that penalty on the cross that they were saved.

Peter and James and John are listening to the conversation on the mount but they don't catch everything. They saw Jesus' glory, they saw the two witnesses, and Peter is just impressed with the persons that were there. He is also impressed with the fact that “this is really good”. We are with the Lord, He is glorified, this is a great environment, let's just stay here, let's not go back into the Devil's world; and the last thing we need to deal with is that you are going to get arrested and die, we don't want that to happen, let's just stay here.

Matthew 17:4 ^NASB “Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah'.” We can just stay here and not go back into the world! The word translated tabernacles is the Greek word SKENE, originally a Hebrew word. The Hebrew form is SHEKINAH, the word we use when we talk about the glory of the Lord, the Shekinah glory; but the word SHEKINAH means to dwell, to abide. The glory of God when it abided in the tabernacle was called the Shekinah glory. What is the problem here? The problem is that Peter is speaking out of turn and is equating Jesus with two prophets. He is treating Jesus as if He is just another prophet like Moses and Elijah. So God the Father is going to immediately interrupt him: “Peter, keep your mouth shut for a little while and pay attention; listen to my Son. Matthew 17:5 ^NASB “While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, 'This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!'”

This is a common mistake. People want to treat Jesus like another prophet. This is one of the errors of Islam. It is terribly politically incorrect to say anything negative about Islam. Who would have thought fifteen years ago after 9/11 that we would be in a place where if we said something negative about Islam we would get in trouble? In Islam they want to portray Jesus as another prophet. We can't talk about Jesus as being just another prophet because the Bible doesn't say that. When it talks about Him as a prophet He is that unique prophet mentioned by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15. This is what Peter is recognizing in his statement in Matthew 16: “You are the Messiah”. The Messiah is equated to the Son of the living God. That means He is eternal; He is full and undiminished deity.

Many times in Scripture we see clouds associated with the presence of God. Go back to the tabernacle. When the presence of God inhabited the holy of holies a cloud descended upon the holy of holies. The same thing occurred in the temple. When the Israelites are taken through the wilderness it is through a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

There are three things said here in this passage. “This is my beloved Son”, and that comes from Psalm 2:7; “in whom I am well pleased” is a quote from Isaiah 42:1; and “listen to Him” is a quote from Deuteronomy 18:15ff.

Psalm two is a messianic psalm. It is prophetic and it refers to what will take place at the end of the campaign of Armageddon. It is describing the final victory of the Messiah over the kings of the earth. The first part is a conversation that takes place between God and His Messiah. The setting is, Psalm 2:1 ^NASB “Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? [2] The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD [God the Father] and against His Anointed [God the Son, His Messiah], saying, [3] 'Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!'”

Notice God's politically incorrect response. It is politically incorrect to laugh or scoff or show scorn for someone else's religion in our modern PC world. God isn't bound by PC. He laughs; He shows scorn for them. Psalm 2:4 ^NASB “He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. [5] Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, [6] 'But as for Me [God the Father], I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain'.”

Psalm 2:7 ^NASB “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me [God the Son], ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You'.” This has been picked up by New Testament writers and applied to the resurrection. The crucifixion was one of the most horrific executions in the ancient world for rebels and criminals, and no Jewish religious leader could ever think that the Messiah would ever go through such an ignominious death. Basically what happens in Acts 13 and Romans 1:4 we are told that the resurrection is God's stamp of approval on Jesus and with the resurrection He is declared by God's power to be the Son of God. He has always been the Son of God but He is declared with power to have always been the Son of God at the resurrection.

So when the Father says, “This is My beloved Son” it is a quote from Psalm 2:7. In Isaiah 42:1 in the middle of the messianic prophetic section of Isaiah, focusing on the servant of God as the Messiah, God says: “Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one ...” This is the Hebrew word bahar, which means choice. It doesn't mean chosen one because God isn't choosing Jesus from among many; it is talking about the quality of who He is. The Father delights in Him because of who He is. So when the Father says in Matthew 17, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased” He is connecting Psalm 2:7 with Isaiah 42:1. And then the last line is from the end of Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses' prediction that “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”

When the Father speaks, the one thing He didn't say in Matthew chapter three is “listen to Him”; He adds it here in Matthew 17. It is a quote from Deuteronomy 18:15 and ties all of these things together for us, showing that Jesus is more than just a prophet. He is the messianic Son of God who has come to redeem us from our sins.

Matthew 17:6 ^NASB “When the disciples heard {this,} they fell face down to the ground and were terrified.” This typically happens in Scripture. Isaiah fell on his face and said: “Woe is me, a man of unclean lips” when he is brought before the throne of God in Isaiah chapter six. Jeremiah, Daniel, Zechariah all fall on their faces when they are presented with a theophany of God. John the apostle on the Isle of Patmos falls on his face when Jesus appeared to him. This is what happened to the disciples. When unrighteous men are confronted with the holiness of God they do the same thing that Adam and Eve did; they run in fear. And what does God do? He reaches out for us in grace. This is exactly what happens with Jesus in Matthew chapter seventeen. Matthew 17:7 ^NASB “And Jesus came to {them} and touched them and said, 'Get up, and do not be afraid'.”

It is interesting that in the Gospel of Luke when Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, went in to serve in the holy of holies and the angel Gabriel was there. Zacharias was struck with fear being in the presence of a holy angel. The first thing Gabriel said was, don't be afraid. That is the grace of God. When Jesus came at the first advent He didn't come to judge (John 3:17), He came to pay for our sins. That is the grace of God and that is the emphasis today in the gospel: the redemptive work of Jesus Christ; that by faith alone in Christ alone we can have salvation.

One day he is coming clothed in white light, in the garb of a judge (Revelation 1:16). He will destroy the armies of the earth, establish a rule of iron, and at that point there will be judgment. The issue today is to be prepared for that, and the only way to be prepared is to trust in Jesus Christ as your savior.

Matthew 17:8 ^NASB “And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone.”

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