I have said that what we all need is the power to endure; and it is just there, as we have seen, that Peter introduces the Transfiguration. He speaks about 'the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth ...' - the TRIAL of your faith. 'Manifold temptations' - be brings in the vision as the power for enduring and going through. We are told that Moses endured 'as seeing Him Who is invisible' (Hebrews 11:27). This is the power. Now, you can see this from the opposite and contrary standpoint. See the effects of loss of a vision! However many other visions the Lord's people may have, as soon as they lose the vision of the Lord Himself, as Lord over all, as on the Throne, what happens? They lose their sense of purpose; they lose their awareness of a true objective in their existence. They then have to have substitutes for that vision, to keep them going; but these things wear out and disappoint. The loss of vision always results in the loss of an incentive, real incentive for life.
In the same way, it is true of this matter of cohesion, coordination: lose vision, and the result is always disintegration, division, separation, confusion, and the loss of strength and stability. This is no matter of theory or technique - it is very true. Some of us know - and that is why we are speaking like this just now - we know that when a people have really been gripped by the vision of the Throne, the Majesty of the Lord Jesus, the Authority of Christ, a wonderful sense of purpose comes on that people, and a wonderful incentive, and a wonderful unity: they are a one people. It is the Throne that has done it, and their apprehension of that Throne. And when things take the place of the Lord - anything that you like to mention - then the falling apart begins. Sooner or later the disintegration sets in, the confusion, the loss of heart, incentive and purpose. A real INWARD seeing of the Lord Jesus, as in the place of Authority and Government and Majesty, is the answer to our every need, personally and collectively. It was so of old; it is so now.
Four Major Elements
Do you notice how this Transfiguration was the confirmation and complement of all the teaching? Look again at the record of the Transfiguration in Matthew 17. What have we? We have the four major elements of the Christian faith and the Christian life:
(1.) The Person of the Lord Jesus
"When Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples,saying, Who do men say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 16:13-17).
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." I think that there it might have been said that Peter, once again,did not know what he was talking about! It was a tremendous utterance: "Thou art the Messiah! Thou ART the Messiah!" Both "Christ" and "Messiah" mean "The Anointed One", and, as such, the Son of the Living God. Here is the basic fact of Christianity - the Person of the Lord Jesus. For a man like Peter, a Jew, versed and saturated in the Old Testament and Jewish history, to say that, meant far more than we realize. Think of the tremendous things that were bound up with that word "Messiah"!
There were three great conceptions of the Messiah in Israel. The first we find in the first part of the prophecies of Isaiah - the "Son of David"; the Seed and the Son of David. You remember Isaiah's prophecy about 'the shoot of Jesse' (Isaiah 11:1).; that was the first conception of the coming Messiah, the Anointed One, Who should take over the Throne of David, and all that that meant.
In the second part of Isaiah, the Messiah is the Suffering Servant of Jehovah; King-Redeemer, Redeemer-King; and Isaiah 53 stands right at the center of that conception of the Messiah. We see the Throne, and Redemption: how it is going to work out.
We find the third conception of the coming Messiah in the Book of Daniel, chapter 7. It is a very wonderful passage.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 48)
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