It Is Good for Us to Be Here
April 12, 2026 · Mark 9:1-13 · Gospel of Mark
Sermon Notes / Transcript
Scripture Reading — Mark 9:1–13
This is God's word, and it is eternally true.
And Jesus was saying to them, "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and brought them up on a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his garments became radiant and exceedingly white, as no launderer on earth can whiten them.
Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
For he did not know what to answer, for they became terrified. Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." All at once, they looked around and saw no one with them anymore, except Jesus alone.
And as they were coming down from the mountain, he gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man arose from the dead. They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant.
They asked him, saying, "Why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" And he said to them, "Elijah does come first and restore all things. And yet, how is it written of the Son of Man, that he will suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I say to you that Elijah has indeed come. And they did to him whatever they wished, just as it is written of him."
This is the word of the Lord.
Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Back in Mark: The Kingdom Coming with Power
So our text picks up right after where we left off a few weeks ago. Jesus had been teaching that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the church leaders, be killed, and rise again on the third day — the very things that we were just remembering as we celebrated Easter together and Good Friday. Killed and rose again three days later.
Now, the first verse of chapter 9 feels like it almost is more connected with the previous conversation than what follows it. "And Jesus was saying to them" — doesn't that sound like a continuity of what just came before? So verse 1 really almost belongs in chapter 8, and then verse 2 should pick up chapter 9. But we have the chapter breaks we have.
And so Jesus was saying that the things he was talking about — the kingdom coming with power — would happen before those standing right with him died. So what do we know from that? They would not taste death. If you remember back, you have to put your thinking caps on and remember several weeks ago — Jesus had just said, "Take up your cross." He was talking to them about their deaths. And now he transitions and says, "Truly I say to you, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."
So it seems safe to believe that actually happened. The people that he was talking to weren't going to die before they were going to see the kingdom of God come with power. And then, as if just to prove that, within six days we get the transfiguration. But not all of them. He takes three disciples with him.
Why Peter, James, and John?
If you notice through Scripture, it's really common that Jesus picks three. It's usually Peter, James, and John. They're kind of the inner circle. Like, there's your best friends and then your good friends and then your acquaintances and then everybody you're connected with on Facebook. The really tight inner circle is Peter, James, and John. And he grabs them and takes them up on the mountain.
Two things that we should see from this setting.
Mountains and Wells: Settings Matter in Scripture
What happens in the Bible at certain places? We joke about one of them in my family. You know, what happens at a well? If the Bible says they were at a well, what's going to happen? Someone's going to get married. Romance happens at wells. What happens on mountains?
Well, more than worship — people meet God. That's what we read in First Kings. Elijah hears God's voice. He goes up to the mountain and he hears God's voice. Where does Moses go when he receives the Ten Commandments? To the mountain. He goes up on the mountain. So if you see people in Scripture going up on the mountain, you know what to expect.
Just like when you watch a movie — when the ominous music starts playing and the scene turns dark, you know the bad guy's going to come on the scene. These are just ways God communicates. God is very familiar with this idea that settings matter. Why did God create mountains and valleys? One of the ways is to teach us something. If you go up, prepare to meet God — at least in Scripture.
Three Witnesses to Establish Fact
So why does he grab three men? Why does he grab Peter, James, and John to bring them up on the mountain? This is the other thing that if you know your Scriptures — what's the significance of bringing three witnesses with you?
This is how in their courts of law they could establish something as a verified fact. Deuteronomy 17:6 — at the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses, even crimes justifying the death penalty could be proved. So if you want to establish something as fact — as it really happened — you grab three witnesses. That's your establishment of fact.
So just by knowing the setting, just knowing that Jesus grabbed three guys and went up to a mountain, what can we expect? That Jesus is going to meet God — he's going to hear from God. And that this is going to have to be testified to later on. There's a reason you gather witnesses. There's a reason sometimes you write things in a letter as opposed to saying things out loud — because you want documented fact. You send something certified mail because you want to be able to prove later on that they got notice. Whereas if you just have a phone call, you can't do that.
The Transfiguration
Verse 2 tells us that Jesus was transfigured. That's a big word. In the Greek, the word is metamorphed. Which — what does that make you think of? Butterflies.
What happens when a butterfly metamorphizes? It goes from a gross worm to a pretty butterfly. Its glory is exposed. It goes from caterpillar-esque — leggy and elongated — and there's some cute caterpillars. But a butterfly? There's a glory of a butterfly. Wings and colors and antennae and — boom — a different thing.
So Jesus is changed from one form to another. Still Jesus. But now what's happening? And if you were here for the Easter service, what does it remind you of? Whiter than snow. When the women got to the tomb, what did they see? It was empty, and there were two angels. And what did the angels have on? Dazzling clothes. The version I read said "dazzling clothes" — it makes me think of an ice skater with sequins. Dazzling. Bright.
Jesus' clothes are described as being so white that the best laundromat in the world couldn't get clothes that white.
Have you seen — they have a black paint these days, and it's the blackest paint ever? They'll take a fork and paint the fork black, then paint the background black. And they'll move the fork in there, and it's indiscernible. You can't see the fork because there's so little light reflecting off of it. It's the opposite of that. This is the whitest, brightest, shiniest thing ever. It's so shiny that the disciples kind of stupefy. They forget what they're doing. Their speech doesn't make sense. They're afraid. They're fearful.
Just imagine that. You walk up the mountain and all of a sudden — you know, today, everybody's got a phone in their pocket that glows. We're used to seeing glowing things. You walk in at home and you turn on your light and your 7,000-watt LED light bulbs shine so much that you can't see anything when they're turned off. Your car headlights shine 17 miles in the distance, they're so bright. We're used to seeing bright, shining things today.
They weren't. If it wasn't the moon or the stars, it was something on fire. They didn't have monitors and screens that just glowed constantly, filling their eyes. You can just imagine — What is going on? This is amazing. This is incredible.
Elijah and Moses Appear
But not just radiating light. Also, Elijah and Moses appear. Now, how did they know it was Elijah and Moses? They're not wearing name tags. I don't know what Elijah looks like. I don't know what Moses looks like. But somehow God made them know that there was Jesus over there conversing with these two guys — and one was Elijah and one was Moses.
Peter's Response: Let's Build Tents
Overwhelmed by the scene, Peter wants to fit this glimpse of power and glory into something that he already knows. Six days earlier, Peter was calling Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. Today, he says, "Rabbi" — teacher. Okay, maybe that doesn't mean anything.
But then Peter says, "Let's make some tents. I got an idea. Let's set up some booths. We'll set up one for you, one for Elijah, and one for Moses. This is the kingdom of God right here. We're going to start by just making little huts for you guys to hang out in. And when people want to come visit and hear the word of God, they'll come up here to this mountain and visit you in this little tent."
Which — God's done that before. God's presence came to earth and was specially present in the tabernacle, specially present in the temple. So it's not unreasonable what Peter's hoping for here. It's just — on the scope of what really is happening — Peter's like, "Oh, yes, great. We're going to go to McDonald's for dinner tonight." It's like, yeah, that's something. But — we're going to go get steak, man. This isn't fast food.
He wants to fit what he sees into something that he already understands, something that's graspable for them. If it was today and we saw that, we'd come up with some sort of natural explanation for what happened. "Oh, he must have used some sort of new detergent." Or, "They didn't actually see other guys. It was just this shared hallucination because they all ate the same mushrooms." We would come up with some sort of convoluted explanation that kept things comfortable, that kept things in the realm of how we can understand them.
Sometimes I worry that I pick on Peter too much. But what I see in Peter is what I see in all of us. We want things to be understandable. We want things to be explainable, within our grasp. Let me say it differently — God scares us. God working scares us. God being involved in our lives in ways that we don't have control over scares us. Just like it scared Peter and the other disciples to see what was going on.
The Father Speaks from the Cloud
Now, God in his mercy protected Peter and James and John by sending a cloud down. This is another thing that God does. When the Ten Commandments were delivered, a thick darkness descended, a thick cloud. God's glory is so overwhelming — his glory and majesty and power.
And so Jesus here, for a moment, reveals some aspect of who he is. His power and his glory through this transfiguration. Most of the time, it was all bundled up and compressed and concentrated down into the person of Jesus. You just look at Jesus, and he looks like a normal person. But here, just for a moment — just a little bit of it — they just got a glimpse of who Jesus really is. And they're afraid.
And then, just like the Father did at Jesus' baptism, he speaks here. And the voice comes out of the cloud and says, "This is my beloved Son."
A Word About the Trinity
In both instances, the Father and Son interact. And we should hear this and take it and be careful about some teaching that's fairly common these days — a teaching of either Unitarianism or Oneness, usually Oneness Pentecostalism. I feel like it's growing in popularity and growing in frequency, so it's worth warning you about.
There's a view that says God can only be one. He could not be three. And he just appears in different ways sometimes. It's called modalism, if you want to be technical about it. It's an old heresy that comes up with new flavors and new ways. What it does is it reduces God from being the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — three persons in one God — and reduces God down to, often, just Jesus. Jesus is God. And sometimes this Jesus-God presents himself as the Father. Sometimes this Jesus-God presents himself as a Son. And sometimes this one God, this one person, Jesus, presents himself as the Holy Spirit. That's this Unitarian Oneness idea.
What it doesn't make sense of is when the Father says, "This is my Son, listen to Him." It doesn't say, "Listen to me down there." There's a difference in person, in communication — not just in role, not just in what they do, but who they are. They're different persons. One God, three different persons. Persons who interact, who do different things, who have different responsibilities.
In salvation, God the Father sent Jesus to go do the work of salvation — of purchasing salvation, of being the sacrifice. And then they send the Holy Spirit out to effectuate that salvation by working in the lives and the hearts of man.
So I just want to clarify that this is a good showing of Trinitarianism — of the different persons within the Godhead. And we should be careful and use discernment when we hear people overemphasizing the oneness of God in a way that actually denies who God has revealed himself to be.
"This Is My Beloved Son"
Now think about the context of when he says, "This is my beloved Son." Jesus is standing there with Elijah and with Moses. And he says, this one — this one is my beloved Son. Does that mean he doesn't love Elijah and doesn't love Moses? No. That would be foolish. So why does he say it? Why does he especially love Jesus?
One — because he's God. He is the Son. He is co-eternal with the Father. They have always existed together. They have always been in fellowship and relationship. Moses and Elijah were created. There was a day before they existed, and then they existed. God made them to be Moses and Elijah.
But there's something more than that, too.
The Law and the Prophets Fulfilled
What did Moses do? A lot of these times, you have to be very familiar with your Bible to understand the rest of the Bible. And this is the glorious thing about these Bible reading programs that get you reading the Scriptures regularly through. You're reading about Elijah, then you're reading the New Testament, then you go back and you read about Elijah, then you read the New Testament — back and forth — because our brains can't get it all in one read-through. We can't get it all with just me standing up here and reading a few verses every week. You have to know Scripture in order to understand Scripture.
Because Moses and Elijah here are real people, but they're also kind of shorthands for ideas. Moses — he's the one who received the law. He got the Ten Commandments. God's people got the Ten Commandments through Moses. Then Elijah — Elijah is one of the most significant and prominent prophets.
And so here we have Jesus with the representative of the law and the representative of the prophets, and God saying, "This is my Son. I love him." And it just fits so nicely in the New Testament idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of the whole Old Testament — both the law and the prophets. And here is Jesus, that fulfillment of it, that beloved Son that both Moses and Elijah helped prepare a people for.
So there is the reality of what's going on, and then there's also the significance of what's going on. And so the cloud comes down, Moses and Elijah disappear, and it's just Jesus there again.
Why the Transfiguration? Why Now?
This isn't the culminating event where the kingdom of God is reestablished and the resurrection has happened and all the powerful people get their own tents and tabernacles. This is just a momentary display of Jesus's power and glory, right here on the cusp of the crucifixion — right before the power of the church to condemn Jesus, the power of the Roman Empire to kill Jesus.
Here is Jesus's power just momentarily displayed. The love of God for his Son momentarily displayed. Why would God do this? Why the timing? Why now?
Part of the answer is to show that Jesus willingly laid down his life — that no one took his life from him, that he had all the power and glory. He didn't need to earn the power and glory. He had it all. He had it all with the Father from before all time.
And he came to earth not to establish his own glory, not to establish his own power, not to establish his own standing with God — but to redeem a people, to redeem God's people, the people that would believe and come to the Lord.
This was always in Jesus. It was just veiled. It was just covered up in the man of Jesus. The transfiguration just showed them what he really was — that glory and that power, that magnificence. And they saw it just for a moment, just enough to be able to testify that it was there with Jesus even before the crucifixion.
What we see here is that Jesus brought enough — but not more than enough — witnesses to establish his power and his glory and his beloved status with the Father, even in the presence of Moses and Elijah. Better than the law, better than the prophets. But because it was a preview, Jesus orders these few witnesses not to say anything. This is a sneak peek of what's to come.
The Disciples' Confusion: "What About Elijah?"
Now, what's interesting is the disciples' reaction. Because Jesus starts telling them, "You can't tell anyone until after the resurrection happens." And so they start talking about, "What's he talking about? This resurrection? Did you hear that right?"
And they're like, "Okay, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus. We've heard the scribes say that Elijah has to come first before the Son of Man comes in his glory. So how — we don't understand how this resurrection is going to happen if Elijah hasn't come first." They're concerned that Jesus has the order wrong, that Jesus has somehow messed up what's really going to happen here.
And again, I just think this is so normal for mankind. We have our understanding of Scripture — how Scripture should work, how God should do things. And anytime it works differently, anytime God reveals something differently, it's like, "Whoa, I'm sorry. No, that's not the order it's supposed to go in."
We understand exactly how the second coming is supposed to proceed. "Wait, sorry, no, that's not right. That was supposed to happen, and then this." How many times during my lifetime has someone said, "Well, this is the fulfillment of this prophecy, and therefore Jesus' return is going to come on June 16, 1987"? I don't know if that was the exact date, but there have been billboards bought announcing — because "we understand with precision these end-time events" — "Therefore, Jesus will return on this day. You better get ready."
And here's the hard part — because this is the hard part that I have with Peter as well. Peter's like, "All right, awesome. Moses and Elijah — let's build the tents. Let's build the tabernacle. Let's go. This is great." And I'm kind of sympathetic. I'm like, yeah, we should celebrate. This is good. We should be ready for Jesus' return. There is a good element of these bad prophetic interpretations. There's a bit of a good heart to it, a bit of a good desire to honor God, to set up tents and tabernacles, to make this be the worship thing.
But the problem is — what do we do when God tells us it's something different?
And let me say — I don't think there's any part of saying "Jesus definitely will return on XYZ date" that's good. We should not do that. He says that no man knows. And so if no man knows, no man knows.
The Real Problem: Pride and the Desire to Avoid Suffering
So what's man's problem when it comes to seeing God's revelation? It's sin, and it's our pride in particular. It's our pride that says, "I got it figured out. I know exactly how this is going to proceed, and it's going to proceed just the way I think it should."
This happens with conversions as well. How many people see some famous movie actor or rock star get converted and they're like, "Oh yeah, this is what the kingdom of God needs. We need a celebrity. We need famous people to be Christians, and then everyone will want to be a Christian." Or — "I can never imagine that person getting saved because they're too wicked and they're too sinful." Or — "She used to be, he used to be a fill-in-the-blank, whatever the horrible sin of the moment is. They could never be a Christian."
Christian nations come and go. You look at how the gospel spread — the gospel spread in many places that are now ruled exclusively by Islam. We need to have some humility when it comes to how God reveals himself, how God carries out his purposes. We should hope. We should worship. We should pray. We should be ready for Jesus's return. But the idea that we can reduce that down to a spreadsheet — the idea that we can reduce that down to "I know it's not going to happen because this hasn't happened yet" — is hubris and pride.
And it's the same thing that kept catching the disciples by surprise. Jesus had already talked to them about him dying and rising again three days later. And then he starts talking about the resurrection, and they're like, "What's he talking about? Did he just say resurrection again?"
Our Duty Today
What's our duty today? Our duty is to praise the Lord. It's not to figure out all the prerequisites and all the fulfillments.
We were talking about something earlier, and Randy and I disagree on something. And you know what's okay? That's okay. We don't agree. Whether something — you know, a hurricane hit, and someone said that was God's judgment. And some people got worked up about that. Was it God's judgment? I think we can wonder. We can have a conviction. And will we know with perfect clarity? Will we know with perfect certainty? We won't. So we have to have a little bit of humility when we have those conversations.
We have to remember that God is the author of Scripture, and that his being, his mind, his words even — the only way that we understand it, the only way that we're not immediately terrified and killed, is when he, by his grace, covers up his glory by putting a cloud in between us and the true revelation of who he is. We just can't even receive it. We can't even accept it. That's how high he is above us. He condescends. He comes down. And the ultimate coming down is Jesus Christ — putting all that glory into the body of man. And then, boom, at the transfiguration, there is just this tiniest little glimpse of it, and it throws the disciples into a tizzy.
Humility with One Another
Let us have humility with how we come to God. Where God has revealed things clearly, let us cling to them and proclaim them and hold them as true. And where he hasn't, let us exercise humility and grace and compassion with one another as we all stumble through this life trying to figure things out, trying to overcome sin, trying to overcome the defaults that we were raised with — that seeped in through culture and through schooling and through our parents.
We tell our kids all the time — we're just messing you up in different ways than we were messed up. We're pointing you to the truth the best we know how. But you look back on the ways that people used to say things, and they weren't faced with the same kind of trouble that we are faced with now. They had different trouble, and so they had to clarify different things.
This comes up in legal practice all the time — you write something down with an idea in mind. Take the right to bear arms. One of the common objections is, "But they didn't have machine guns at the time. They didn't have rocket launchers. So are arms really arms as we understand them today?" It's a fine question. It's a fair question. And it's a conversation that should happen. But they said "arms" then because that's what they were dealing with. And so we have to use discernment and clarity to look back and try and figure out what was meant before.
The reason I have this in mind is honestly because of our men's study — you look back on some of the confessions of faith, and they talk about Adam and Eve both sinning in the Garden of Eden, and that being the capsule event. And then you look at how our modern culture has taken sex and gender, and we've totally confused everything. Well, you can't look back on things that were written 100 years ago and expect them to have addressed the complications of transgenderism, because that wasn't the conversation.
Now, you can look back on God's Word. Why can you look back on God's Word differently than you can look back on man's word? Because he created us, and he knows all the things — all the controversies that are going to come up. And he chose to write the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek with all the flavors and variations of the words that are used in those languages. And that's how he communicated truth to us.
And so we can look back on God's perfect, unerring, infallible Word — his perfect Word, his perfect communications — and we can look into that even with our 21st-century eyes and try and understand how we should be dealing with problems today.
The Disciples Wanted Glory, Not Suffering
And the real problem is that the disciples were trying to find a way to avoid what Jesus was saying — that now was coming a time of suffering. Because that's what Jesus kept going back to. Now is coming the time for suffering. And they didn't want the suffering to come. They wanted the glory to come.
So this is what Jesus explains again in verses 12 and 13. He says, "You've missed it. Elijah has indeed come." That was John the Baptist. He came, and they killed him too. That's what they do with God's messengers. That's what they're going to do with God's Son.
The Son of Man must suffer and be treated with contempt. That was God's way of bringing in his kingdom. He was going to come gentle and mounted on a donkey before he came in power and in glory. He suffered many things on our behalf so that he might a people redeem.
So it wasn't a time for building tabernacles. It was a time to prepare for suffering. And that's what the disciples missed time and time and time again. And that's what I fear we're too easy to miss as well — that the Christian life is a time of suffering. It's not a time of glory. It's not a time of honor. It's a time of suffering in this life. And to the extent that we run away from that is doing the same thing that Peter did — denying God's plan, denying what God has prepared for his people.
Heavenly Father, I pray that we would lay down our pride. That we would lay down our hubris. Our rebellion. And that when you say it is a time of suffering — and that there will be continued death and suffering — that we would, instead of losing hope, look forward to the glories of the eternal life with you. The reality of the resurrection. The hope of having eternal bodies that no longer are subject to sin and death.
Father, strengthen us for this. Give us faith and hope. And help us not to turn away from the living sacrifice that you have called us to walk — from picking up our cross and following you. We can't do this on our own strength, Father. We need you. And it is a glorious thing that you went before us — that you didn't call us to do something that you haven't done. But you call us to follow you.
So Father, strengthen us for this work. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.