In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the main themes for this Sunday in the Church Year, called Sexagesima, because we’re 60 days away from Easter, is the power and effectiveness of God’s Word. In our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah chapter 55, a very famous passage, Isaiah compares God’s Word to the rain and the snow that come down from heaven and water the earth. He writes, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” These verses show us several important things about God’s Word and what our attitude should be towards it as Christians.

First, they make it very obvious that the Word of God itself is the only thing that causes growth in His Kingdom, so we should focus our attention on preaching and teaching it faithfully, and not be concerned with anything else.

Sometimes in the Church, especially when we aren’t seeing as much numerical growth as we have at other times in the past, people can start to become restless. They can begin to think that we must be doing something wrong, or that something needs to change dramatically. In the worst possible cases, congregations and pastors are tempted to stop saying certain things from the Bible that others find offensive, and only talk about the stuff that they like. Topics such as sin, and especially popular sins, get brushed under the rug to make others who are doing those things feel more comfortable.

But that’s not how God says He gives growth in His Church. It doesn’t happen through withholding the teachings of the Scriptures, or putting less attention on them, it happens through proclaiming them more and more. Image what would happen if a farmer tried to get his crops to grow by not watering them on purpose. That wouldn’t make any sense! It would kill the crops and do the exact opposite thing that he wanted. And that’s what always happens whenever a church refuses to say what God’s Word says on certain subjects, and shies away from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. Even if it results in greater attendance at their services, that doesn’t necessarily equate to true growth in the eyes of the Lord.

During the time of Elijah there were more people in Israel who worshiped Baal than worshiped the one true God. Well, so what? Did that mean that the Baal worshipers were right because they had more people who came to their church on Sunday’s? Of course, not! And we should not be concerned if not as many people are at our church either. What we should care about it is whether or not we are being faithful to God’s Word. Are we doing the things that the Bible says, and putting the teachings of the Scriptures at the front and center of everything that we do, or are we not? That’s the only thing that matters, because that’s the only way that God gives true growth in His Church.

In fact, every error that has to do with growing the Church, always comes back to same error of not having enough faith in the Word of God. All of it stems from the false belief that we can make things better through our own striving and efforts apart from the ways that the Lord chooses to work. If we just have more fun programs, or do this or that new thing in worship, then our congregation will be bursting at the seams. But that’s not what the Bible tells us. Instead, it teaches us that the Holy Spirit grows the Church, and that He does it through the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s Word alone.  As Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” 

We don’t need to, nor can we, do anything to make God’s Word more effective and powerful than it already is by itself. If we try, what will happen is that we will obscure God’s Word and hinder it in the process. All that we are called to do is speak it and trust in it. As Paul also says, “Preach the Word in season and out of season,” meaning, whether its popular at the time or not. Then we can have the assurance that God will be with us and bless us no matter what happens.

Another thing that this passage from Isaiah chapter 55 reminds us about God’s Word is that we need to have patience with it. Yes, the Word of the Lord is powerful and effective, and it alone has the ability to bring about true spiritual growth, but sometimes that growth takes time. Just like it takes time for a plant to grow, and we shouldn’t expect it to be a mature tree overnight, it can take time for God’s Word to bear fruit too. This is true on a personal level as well as in general.

On the one hand, we shouldn’t expect to understand everything in the Bible and have a perfect knowledge of it just by reading one verse and moving on with our lives. Growing in your faith requires constant study of the Scriptures. It takes consistent and ongoing watering from God’s Word.

What that means practically speaking should not be that hard to discern. Obviously, one of the things that it means is going to Church every Sunday. God gives us an entire Commandment about not neglecting the day when Christians come together for corporate worship. Remember how Martin Luther explains the 3rdCommandment in the Small Catechism. He says, “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” Only going to Church on occasion, or when it’s convenient in our schedule, is not holding the Word of God sacred. It’s not treating it like it’s the most important thing in our life. Nothing good ever happens from skipping Church. In the same way that a plant will wither and die if it goes too long without getting water, our faith can wither and die if we don’t water it enough with God’s Word. But unlike a plant, you can’t ever over water your own soul. Hearing more of God’s Word will always be better for you than hearing less of it.

In addition to weekly Church attendance, the other thing that this absolutely applies to is taking advantage of whatever Bible classes are available to us and doing home devotions. Yes, it’s very important to be in God’s house regularly, but if His Word is never read or spoken in our own homes, it can give the impression that it doesn’t actually belong there. But that isn’t true. Being a Christian isn’t just a Sunday morning thing, it’s an everyday of the week thing too. I don’t think it’s being legalistic at all to say that every Christian is expected to read something from their Bible at least once a day and if there are people in our lives that can’t read, like little kids, we need to read the Bible to them. If we can watch TV for multiple hours of the day, and doom scroll on our phones late into the evening, we should have no problem finding time to open the scroll of the Scriptures instead. And if we neglect God’s Word, if we continue not to use it, we risk the possibility of not knowing it enough when we really, really need. We put our faith at risk of getting chocked out and dying, like Jesus talks about in the parable of the Sower.

Furthermore, besides being patient with God’s Word when it comes to personal growth, and maturing in our own lives of faith, we also need to be patient with others too. We should not assume that just because every interaction we have with those around us doesn’t result in their immediate repentance and conversion that nothing is happening at all. We don’t know that. Yes, it’s possible for a person to reject God’s Word, and refuse to listen to it, but it’s also possible for God’s Word to soften a person’s heart and break it down overtime.

The same thing applies to churches. We can’t force people to believe in Jesus and come and worship Him with us as His altar. We can’t trick them into becoming Lutherans, nor should we even try do that. Instead, we should be upfront and unashamed of who are, if who we are is guided by God’s clear Word. Rather than grumbling about the fruit that God hasn’t given us, in a particular moment, we can be thankful for fruit that He has. 

And that leads me to the last thing that this passage from Isaiah reminds us about God’s Word, and that is that it never returns void. In every place and time where the Word of God is proclaimed in its truth and purity, and the Sacraments are administered rightly, the Holy Spirit promises to be present and active to draw in God’s elect. The harvest isn’t a maybe, it’s a certainty. God will bring it about in His own good time. 

The only thing is that we to have a correct understand of the Church in order to recognize it. The true Church is not merely one local congregation here or there. It is the whole Body of Christ. It is everyone who hears the voice of the Good Shepherd and follows after it. Just because we don’t necessarily see numerical growth at St John Lutheran Church in Denver Iowa, that doesn’t mean that God’s Kingdom is not advancing. It doesn’t even mean that there won’t be a harvest somewhere else because of what we are doing here. Think about the story of Noah. For a hundred years Noah faithfully preached God’s Word and warned the people around him about the coming flood. As I’ve said before in the past, I can guarantee that he was a better preacher than any of our preachers today. But how many people got onto the boat? It was only 8. Only Noah’s family listened to God’s Word and was saved.

And yet, through those 8 souls that got on the Ark, what did God do? He repopulated the whole world. The harvest seemed small and insignificant in the days of Noah, but the fruit that was borne from their faithfulness, kept on spreading. I hope you can see what I’m trying to get at here.

It’s true that we might not have as many people attending this congregation as we used to in the past. Maybe God will change that in the future. Maybe He won’t. But our calling remains the same. We are called to be faithful to the Word of God and rely on completely on its power. In everything that we do, from the way that we worship, to the things that we say, God wants us to ask, does this teaching or practice agree with My Word and promote it, or does it work against it and obscure it? Like any good farmer, we put our attention on the watering and the planting, knowing that the growing is ultimately out of our control. But that is a good thing too. Because we have a merciful God who desires the salvation of all people. The Lord Jesus wants others to be saved even more than we do. And through His Word, He promises that in the end there will be a harvest. As He says in Isaiah 55, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At the end of the parable about the workers in the vineyard, Jesus summarizes it by saying that “many are called, but few are chosen.” This is a mysterious verse from God’s Word, which introduces to us an even more mysterious topic. And that is the so-called doctrine of election, also known as predestination. In several places in the Bible, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that even before God created the heavens and the earth, He elected or chose all those who would be saved. As Saint Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 1, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.” Similarly, the apostle Paul also writes in Romans chapter 8, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son… and those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.” From these few passages alone, we can easily see just how impossible it is for someone to reject this particular teaching, without doing serious injury to their faith. God gave us everything in the Bible for the purpose of saving our souls. Nothing is intended to hurt us, but all of it is supposed to help us. And that includes the doctrine of predestination.

So, in this morning’s sermon, what I’m going to do is simply walk through some of things that we need to keep in mind if we want to get this teaching right. Lots of times I think that the reason why people don’t want to talk about predestination, or even think about it, is because they don’t really understand it. Instead of considering it in light of God’s Word, they come to conclusions based off of their own reason. But’s that not how we do theology! We don’t think our way to the correct beliefs, we listen to Scriptures, and we let them do the thinking for us.

The first thing that we need to remember if we want to get the doctrine of predestination right is that God truly does want everyone to be saved. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, the Bible literally tells us, “This is good, and it pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” Likewise, in 2 Peter chapter 3 we read this: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

And, that, of course, is exactly what we see taking place in the parable of the workers in the vineyard too, isn’t it? On the one hand, the owner of the vineyard, who obviously represents God, goes out of his way to invite people to come and work for him. Despite the fact that many of them are standing idle in the marketplace, and definitely don’t deserve to be there, he still compels them to come in. He offers them a place in his vineyard, just like God offers all men a place in His kingdom. Again, what does Jesus say in our text today? He says, “Many are called.” That means that God’s call is universal. His grace is for everyone. The Lord wants all people to be saved.  

Even at the end of the parable, when some of the workers are mad at the master, and stubbornly walk away from him, what does the master still call them? He calls them his “friends.” He says, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.” This shows us that even when a person rejects God’s grace, and dies and goes to hell, that was never God’s desire for them. It wasn’t because He hated them, or wanted them to be lost from the beginning. They might not have wanted to stay with the Lord, but the Lord always wanted to be with them.

The monstrous idea that is taught in some churches that God has predetermined to send certain individuals to hell from eternity, and that those who end up there, He must have never actually wanted to save, is completely contractionary to the Scriptural witness. Yes, the Bible does tell us that God has absolutely elected some to salvation, and that He knows what will happen to all people, but it never says that He has elected others to damnation. The true application of this teaching only goes in one direction. It only applies to Christians.

And that leads me to the second thing that we need to remember if we want to get predestination right, and that is that the reason why some people are lost is not because of God’s fault, but their own. Remember what Saint Stephen once said in the book of Acts. Right before the people picked up rocks to kill him, he said, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” That’s very similar to what Jesus once said about the people of Jerusalem in Matthew chapter 23, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” He cried, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” From these verses we learn that the cause of someone’s damnation is not located in the heart of God, but in the heart of man. The reason why some people don’t go to heaven is not because God doesn’t want them to, but because they resist the means that God uses to bring them there.

Yes, God desires that all people would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. But how do we come to that knowledge? We come to it through the preaching of God’s Word. That’s how the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith. That’s how He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ. He does it through the proclamation of the Gospel. So, when someone refuses to listen to the Gospel, or ignores it and plugs their ears to it, even though God wants to save them, their salvation isn’t possible. 

Again, think about the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The owner of the vineyard repeatedly called people to come and work for him and promised them a certain amount of money. He went out at the first, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and even the eleventh hour. But what would have happened if someone didn’t listen to that invitation? They wouldn’t have gotten the denarius. Even though it would have been there waiting for them, they wouldn’t have got to receive it, because they refused to have it. That’s how it works when a person goes to hell. It isn’t God’s fault when that happens. It’s their own. 

On the other side of the coin, though, the third thing that we need to remember if we want to get predestination right is that no one is allowed to take any credit for his or her salvation. Sometimes the fact that the Bible says that individuals are responsible for their own damnation, makes people assume that they must at least have some role to play in their salvation too. “If I can do things to dam myself,” the argument goes, “then certainly I must be able to do things to save myself as well.” But that’s not what the Word of God teaches us either.

All throughout the Scriptures we learn over and over again that a person is saved solely through God’s grace alone. It isn’t the result of anything that we do, but purely the work of our merciful Lord. For example, in Titus chapter 3 we read, “God saved not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy.” And as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Literally, the entire point of the parable about the workers in the vineyard is that salvation is not a reward for our good works, but a gracious gift of God. Some people in the parable worked all day long. Other people in the parable only worked for an hour. But at the end of the day, everyone got the same thing. That shows us that we don’t get into heaven by the things that we do. We get there through what God does for us. 

One popular way that people have tried to solve the mystery of predestination in the past is by suggesting that God must have elected certain individuals to salvation in view of their future faith. He must have looked ahead in advance to see who would “make a decision for Christ” and then He made His decision based off that. But the problem with that explanation is that that’s not how faith actually works. We don’t come to faith by a decision of our own free will. Our will is bound in sin apart from Lord. We are spiritually dead prior to our conversion and can’t do anything to bring ourselves to faith at all. Rather, faith is gift that God gives as a result of His own gracious will. It isn’t something that we cause to happen, it’s something that the Holy Spirit causes to happen to us. As Jesus says in John chapter 15, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” And as He tells us in John chapter 6, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent me draws Him.” God doesn’t elect people to be saved because He saw that they would one day decide to accept His grace. His election is what lead to them receiving His grace to begin with. 

Nothing highlights the truth that we are saved by grace alone more than the doctrine of predestination. When did God choose to save us? When did He determine to call us to faith and preserve us to the very end? The Bible says that it happened even before we were born. As Saint Paul writes, “He chose us, in Christ, before the foundation of the world.” 

And finally, then, the last thing that we need to remember if we want to get the doctrine of predestination right is that the only purpose of this teaching is to comfort Christians who are sorry for their sins. It’s to humble those who think that their salvation is caused by their own good works, and console those who are looking to Christ for salvation because they know that their works haven’t been good enough. What does Jesus say right before He says, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” in our text? He says “the last will be first, and the first last.” That’s a summary of how things work in God’s kingdom. Those who consider themselves worthy of a place in it because of themselves will not enter it. But those who know that they should be outside of it, and yet trust in the Lord to be merciful to them and let them in anyway on account of Christ, will stay in it forever.

If you’re thinking about predestination in such a way where gives the impression that you can do sinful things on purpose and it won’t make any difference because you’re one of God’s elect, then you’re not thinking about it in the right way. You aren’t using it to comfort sinners; you’re using it to harden them. And if you’re thinking about predestination in such a way where it makes you terrified that you might not go to heaven, regardless if you repentant of your sins, and look to Jesus for forgiveness, then you aren’t thinking about it correctly either. What you’re thinking about isn’t even the real doctrine of predestination. It’s something else entirely. 

We seek out the answer to our election always, and only, in Jesus Christ alone. As our Lutheran Confessions point out, He is the Book of Life in whom all the names of the saved are written. That means that you don’t figure out if you are one of God’s elect simply by sitting in the corner of a room and wondering if God chose you. You look to His Son Jesus, who died for the sins of the whole world, meaning He died for you sins too. You look to the promises that God made to you in your Baptism, where the Bible says that He called you by name into His kingdom, just like the master in the parable called the workers into His vineyard. You listen to the word of the Gospel, which assure you of everlasting life for all believers. And after all that, then you marvel at the mystery that God planned your salvation and chose you for it even before the world began. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Transfiguration of Jesus is one of those events from the life of Christ that doesn’t always get talked about nearly as much as it probably should. Lots of people remember how our Lord healed the sick, raised the dead, and walked on water, but my guess is that not too many of them could tell you about the time when He was transfigured in front of His disciples and what that was even about. And yet, Saint Peter, who was there and saw it happen, tells us that this was a pivotal moment in Jesus’ earthly ministry and a basic building block of our Christian faith. As he writes in our Epistle lesson today from 2 Peter chapter 2, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitness of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘this is my believed Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.” According to Saint Peter, the Transfiguration of Jesus was a very big deal.

So, why did it even happen, and what was the point of Him even doing it? I think our hymn of the day sums it up for us really well: “O wonderous type! O vision fair of glory that the Church may share, which Christ upon the mountain shows where brighter than the sun He glows.” When Jesus transfigured Himself in front of His disciples, He did it to show us the future glory that awaits us as God’s people. He changed His appearance and gave us a glimpse of His majesty in order to remind us of what is waiting for us in heaven and how it is that we get there.

People speculate all of the time about what heaven is like. But we don’t figure any of that out through speculation, we do it by paying close attention to the written Word of God. And in the account of the Transfiguration, God’s Word gives us several important details.

First, it reminds us that in heaven our bodies will be glorified. What happened to the body of Jesus when He went up on the mount of transfiguration? Our text tells us that His face shined like the sun, and that His clothes became white as light.  If you remember, that’s the exact imagery that the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation use to describe the saints of God in heaven. They stand before the throne of the Lord clothed in white robes and shine like the brightness of the stars forever and ever. Saint John even tells us explicitly that on the Last Day, when Christ returns in glory, we will be like Him. He writes in 1 John chapter 3, “What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” 

Jesus showed Himself “as He is” for a brief moment during His Transfiguration. For just a split second He didn’t hide any of His glory, but revealed all of it completely to His disciples. And when Jesus did that, He showed us the glory that awaits us too.

Eternal life in heaven will not be just a spiritual existence. We won’t float around on the clouds in some dismembered reality like a phantom or a ghost. Rather, the same bodies that God gave us in this life, He will raise again to new life. The only difference is that He will restore our bodies and make them entirely new. God will glorify our bodies just like He glorified the body of Jesus.

Think about what that means for your body. Are there things that you suffer from in this life that make it very difficult on you? Do you have high blood pressure, diabetes, or cancer? Do your knees and joints not work the way that they used to, and do you pretty much hurt all of the time? Do you struggle with depression, anxiety, or feelings of loneliness and despair. Whatever causes you pain in your body or mind, Jesus will take away from you, when He restores your body and mind in heaven. That’s what He showed you when He transfigured Himself in front of His disciples. When He changed His body, He was making a promise about what He would one day do for your body too.

Another thing that the Transfiguration of Jesus reminds us about heaven is who will be there with us. We won’t just be there by ourselves, but we will enjoy the full company of God’s elect. In the Creed, that’s what we call the “communion of saints.” It goes hand in hand with the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body. Peter, James, and John, weren’t the only ones with Jesus on the mount of His Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah were there too. Besides demonstrating to us that everything in the Law and the Prophets points us Christ, their presence also showed us what it would be like for us when we are with Christ in eternity. We will know one another and they will know us. We will be able to recognize each other and tell exactly who everyone is. Not only will that be the case for our own loved ones who died in the faith a long time ago, but also for other Christians that we’ve never even met before. 

The apostle Peter had never seen Moses and Elijah before in his life. He had no idea what they looked like. But at the Transfiguration of Jesus, he was able to tell who they were immediately. That’s how it will be for us too. When we are raised from the dead, and experience the fullness of the communion of the saints, we will be united with all those who died in Christ in such a way where we will have perfect knowledge of who they are. The same people that we have fellowship with now through faith, we will see face to face. We will meet Abraham and his son Isaac. We will greet Mary and her husband Joseph. We will visit with King David and get to talk with Saint Paul. There will be a happy reunion for us with every believer whom we’ve ever known and loved. From our parents and grandparents who first taught us the faith, to those little children that we committed to the Lord through prayer and lost before we could ever watch them grow in their faith. The full family of God will be present. And we will be able to tell who everyone is. Just like Peter, James, and John knew Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration, Jesus promises that we will know one another in the Resurrection.

And lastly, everything that we need to know about heaven is summed up for us in the words that God the Father spoke to Jesus from the cloud. He said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” There are lots of things about eternal life that we don’t know, because God hasn’t revealed them to us. But what we do know is that we will have God’s never-ending blessing and favor. The Lord will look at us, and we will look at Him, and both us will be happy with what we see.

The reason why we aren’t always satisfied with what we see in this life is because this life is filled with sin. We do things that hurt one another and ourselves and that causes us pain. Even the way that we think has been distorted by our sinful nature. But when we are with the Lord someday in heavenly bliss all of our sin will gone. The sin that Jesus already forgave, He will remove from us completely. We won’t even be able to fall into sin anymore, because our sinful nature won’t even exist. We will be the way that God intended us to be from the very beginning, the way that He already promises to treat us now because of Jesus. His Divine image, which was lost to us in the Fall, and renewed within us partially at our Baptism, will be restored to us fully, and we will live perfectly as His beloved children with whom He is well pleased. That’s what Jesus showed us on the mount of Transfiguration. When He changed His appearance, and made His face shine as bright as the sun, He gave us a picture of the future glory that awaits His Church. He made a promise to us, and to all believers, of what things would like be for us in heaven. 

But not only did Jesus show us what heaven would be like at His Transfiguration, more importantly, He also showed us how to get there. It wouldn’t do us any good to know what things are like in heaven, if we didn’t know how to get there. Lots of people still don’t. If they even believe in heaven at all, they usually think that getting there is a reward for being a good person. They think that we earn it by the nice things that we do for others. But that’s not how the Bible says you get into heaven. You don’t get there by the good works that you do for God or for other people. You get there by trusting in the perfect work that Jesus Christ did for you.

Again, what did the voice from heaven say at the Transfiguration of Jesus? It didn’t just say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” It said, “listen to Him.” That’s how you get to heaven. That’s how you obtain all of the wonderful things that Jesus showed us at His Transfiguration. You get them by listening to the voice of Jesus and believing His Word. As Jesus Himself tells us in John chapter 10, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them… I give them eternal life and they will never perish.” We receive salvation as free gift of God through faith in what Jesus accomplished on our behalf.

Yes, heaven is wonderful place. But it would not be possible for us to go there, if Jesus did not first go through hell. That’s why our Lord did not let Peter build those tents for Himself, Moses, and Elijah. Even though Peter was right when he said, “Lord, it is good that we are here,” he wasn’t right about how that happens. It doesn’t just happen automatically. People don’t just go to heaven and get to live with God forever just because. In order for us to have the things that Jesus revealed on the mount of His transfiguration, He had to go down from that mountain and carry His cross up another. He had to suffer and die for our sins and make atonement for them. And because Jesus did that, now, we can stay in God’s presence forever. Now, we can go to heaven.

The very last thing that we are told about the Transfiguration is that after it was over the disciples lifted up their eyes and saw Jesus only. That’s the most important detail from our text today. It gives a perfect summary of how we should live our lives on this side of glory, if we want to live someday in the never-ending glory of God. We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. We don’t trust in our own merit. We don’t rely on our own works. We put our faith in Christ. When our sins trouble us, and our consciences accuse us, we look to the Lord for mercy and grace. We bring our guilt and our shame to Jesus, fall down before Him in humble repentance, and He says to us the same thing that He once said to His disciples, “Rise, and have no fear.”

You don’t need to be afraid of whether or not you’ve done enough to go to heaven. You haven’t. But Jesus has. Through His Transfiguration He foreshadowed your salvation. Through His death and resurrection, He accomplished it. And through the preaching of His Word, He promises it. So, keep your eyes fixed on Christ. Keep looking at Jesus only and the glory that He showed will be yours to share one day too. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.