The Centrality of the Son
Introduction: Mountaintop Experiences
We live in a restless and experiential age. People are constantly chasing the next high, the next peak experience, the next spiritual thrill. They want the glory without the story, the crown without the cross, the destination without the difficult journey. Our modern evangelical landscape is littered with the residue of this thinking. We want to build monuments to moments of spiritual ecstasy and live there permanently, safely insulated from the messy, demon-haunted valley below.
This is precisely the temptation that Peter faces in our text. He gets a glimpse of the unveiled, unmitigated glory of Jesus Christ, and his immediate, well-intentioned, and utterly wrong-headed impulse is to domesticate it. He wants to build booths, to set up a memorial, to put the eternal glory of the Son of God on the same level as the derivative glory of His most eminent servants. And in this, Peter is a true forefather to much of what ails the modern church.
But the transfiguration is not given to the disciples as a permanent state. It is a preview. It is a fortification. It is a glimpse of the destination that is meant to strengthen them for the brutal road ahead, a road that leads directly down this mountain and onto the path of suffering, rejection, and death. The glory on the mountain is unintelligible apart from the gore of Golgotha. God the Father interrupts Peter's foolishness to deliver the central, non-negotiable command of all reality: "Listen to Him!" Not to Moses, not to Elijah, not to your own spiritual impulses, but to the Son. This event is a divine recalibration, moving the disciples, and us, from a divided allegiance to an absolute one. All previous revelation, represented by the Law and the Prophets, finds its fulfillment, its purpose, and its terminus in Jesus Christ. After the cloud lifts, they see "Jesus Himself alone." And that is entirely sufficient.
The Text
And six days later Jesus brought with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. And Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three booths here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, 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!” And when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, “Get up, and do not be afraid.” And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone. And as they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” And He answered and said, “Elijah is coming and will restore all things; but I say to you that Elijah already came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that He had spoken to them about John the Baptist.
(Matthew 17:1-13 LSB)
The Unveiling of Glory (v. 1-3)
The scene is set with a deliberate selection and a significant location.
"And six days later Jesus brought with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him." (Matthew 17:1-3)
Jesus takes His inner circle, the same three who will later witness His agony in Gethsemane. They are shown the height of His glory so they might endure the depth of His suffering. He leads them up a high mountain, a place of divine revelation throughout Scripture. Moses received the law on a mountain. Elijah had his confrontation with God on a mountain. Mountains are places where heaven and earth meet.
And there, He was "transfigured." The Greek is metamorphoo, from which we get our word metamorphosis. This was not a light shining on Him from an external source. This was His own intrinsic, divine glory shining out from within Him. For His entire earthly ministry, the glory of His deity was veiled by His humanity. Here, for a moment, that veil is pulled back. His face shines like the sun, a direct echo of Moses' experience on Sinai, only infinitely greater. His garments become as white as light itself, a brightness no earthly launderer could produce.
And then, two visitors appear: Moses and Elijah. This is not random. Moses represents the Law (the Torah), and Elijah represents the Prophets. Together, they embody the entire Old Testament revelation. And what are they doing? They are "talking with Him." Luke's account tells us they were speaking of His "departure," His exodus, which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. The Law and the Prophets are not His equals; they are His attendants. Their entire ministry, the entire Old Testament, points to this moment and to the cross. They come to bear witness that Jesus is the fulfillment of all that they wrote and all that they prophesied. He is the one to whom the entire story has been pointing.
Peter's Pious Blunder (v. 4)
Faced with this overwhelming glory, Peter does what Peter does. He speaks.
"And Peter answered and said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three booths here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.'" (Matthew 17:4)
We must not be too hard on Peter; Mark tells us he spoke because they were terrified and he didn't know what to say. His heart is full of reverence. "It is good for us to be here." Amen to that. But his theology is muddled. He offers to build three booths, or tabernacles. This is likely a reference to the Feast of Tabernacles, where Israel dwelt in booths to remember their wilderness wanderings. Peter wants to make this moment permanent. He wants to institutionalize the glory.
But notice the fatal flaw. "One for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah." In his terrified awe, he puts Jesus on a level platform with His servants. He makes Jesus first among equals, the star of a heavenly all-star team. This is the constant temptation of man-centered religion: to honor Jesus, but to place Him alongside other sources of wisdom and authority. We build a booth for Jesus, but also one for our favorite political philosophy, one for our therapeutic sensibilities, and one for our cultural traditions. Peter's proposal, though pious, is a subtle act of demotion. And it requires a direct, divine correction.
The Father's Authoritative Correction (v. 5-8)
Before Peter can even finish his sentence, God the Father interrupts him.
"While he was still speaking, behold, 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!'" (Matthew 17:5)
The bright cloud is the Shekinah, the visible manifestation of the presence and glory of God that filled the tabernacle and the temple. The Trinity is fully present: the Son in His unveiled glory, the Father speaking from the cloud, and the Spirit present in that same cloud. The Father's words echo what He said at Jesus' baptism, but with a crucial, thunderous addition. "This is My beloved Son... listen to Him!"
This is a direct rebuke of Peter's three-booth proposal. The command is not "Listen to them," but "Listen to HIM!" Moses and Elijah are dismissed. The era of the Law and the Prophets as the primary voice of God is over. They were faithful servants, but the Son is now here. The author of Hebrews makes the same point: "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son" (Hebrews 1:1-2). The final, definitive, and authoritative Word from God is Jesus. He is not one of three. He is the One.
"And when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, 'Get up, and do not be afraid.' And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone." (Matthew 17:6-8)
This is the proper response to the unveiled voice of God: utter prostration and terror. The creature cannot stand in the presence of the Creator. But here we see the gospel in miniature. The terror of God's holiness is met by the tender mediation of the Son. Jesus comes, He touches them, and He speaks peace: "Get up, and do not be afraid." It is only through the touch of the Mediator that we can stand before a holy God. And when they look up, the summit is cleared. Moses is gone. Elijah is gone. There is "Jesus Himself alone." He is all they need. He is utterly sufficient.
The Descent into Suffering (v. 9-13)
The journey down the mountain is as instructive as the vision on top of it.
"And as they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, 'Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.'" (Matthew 17:9)
The glory must be kept secret for now. Why? Because glory without the cross is a false gospel. It becomes a theology of triumph without trial, which is exactly what the disciples wanted and what our flesh still craves. The transfiguration can only be understood through the lens of the resurrection. The resurrection vindicates the suffering of the cross and validates the glory of the mountain. To preach one without the other is to preach a distortion.
The disciples, processing what they saw, connect it to the scribal teaching about Elijah's return from Malachi 4. "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" They saw Elijah, but he left. How does this fit?
Jesus' answer is a lesson in the nature of prophetic fulfillment.
"...I say to you that Elijah already came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." (Matthew 17:12)
Jesus affirms that the prophecy is true, but its fulfillment was not what they expected. Elijah did come, not in person, but in the "spirit and power of Elijah" through the ministry of John the Baptist. And how was this forerunner received? He was not recognized by the religious establishment. He was rejected, and they "did to him whatever they wished," a clear reference to his imprisonment and beheading by Herod.
And then Jesus makes the crucial connection. The fate of the forerunner is a preview of the fate of the King. "So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." The path to glory is not a glorious path. The path to the crown leads directly through the cross. The world that rejected and killed the messenger will do the same to the Son. The disciples came down the mountain with the glory of heaven in their eyes, and Jesus immediately directs their gaze to the grim reality of His coming suffering. There is no other way to the kingdom.
Conclusion: Jesus Alone
This event on the mountain is a paradigm for the Christian life. We are granted moments of clarity, of mountaintop grace, where we see the glory of Christ. But we are not permitted to stay there. We must descend back into the valley, where there are demons to cast out, people to serve, and a cross to bear.
The pattern for the Christian is the pattern of Christ: suffering, then glory. We must not try to reverse the order or skip the first part. Our momentary afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. But we must go through the affliction.
And in all of it, the central lesson from the mountain remains. The Father's command thunders down through the centuries to us. In our confusion, in our fear, in our well-intentioned but foolish attempts to build our own little religious kingdoms, the voice from the cloud corrects and centers us: "This is My beloved Son... Listen to Him!" Not to the culture. Not to the talking heads. Not to your feelings. Listen to Him. And when the clouds of confusion and fear dissipate, we are to lift our eyes and see what the disciples saw: Jesus Himself alone. He is the final Word. He is the ultimate authority. He is gloriously, wonderfully, and eternally sufficient.