THE GLORY OF THE KINGDOM (Matthew 17)

THE GLORY OF THE KINGDOM (Matthew 17)

H. A. IRONSIDE

MATTHEW 17:1-8 - There the Saviour appeared in that glory in which He will be manifested when He returns to take His great power and reign (Rev. 11:17). The two heavenly saints who appeared with Him in glory depict two groups of believers, who will share the kingdom with Him. Moses represents those who, having died, will be raised in glorified bodies, and Elijah depicts all believers, who at the Rapture, will be caught up to heaven without passing through death (1 Thes. 4:13–18). The three favored apostles who beheld His glory and heard the Father’s voice, speak of Israel restored to the Lord in the latter day and so entering into the blessing of the kingdoms. The scene at the foot of the mountain illustrates the effect of the second advent, binding Satan and giving to the troubled nations deliverance from his power. 

  MATTHEW 17:21 - Occupation with the glorified Christ is the preliminary to service for Him in a world where Satan’s antagonism is manifested to all that God is doing. This is overcome only by dependence upon Him as indicated by prayer and fasting. No man is competent to meet Satan in his own strength. Prayer is the expression of dependence upon God, which alone gives victory. Fasting is the evidence of such concern for spiritual blessing that desire for that which satisfies carnal appetite is held in abeyance. 

  MATTHEW 17:2 - “Transfigured before them.” It was a metamorphosis, a change from within; the glory of Christ’s eternal Sonship shone out through the veil of His flesh so that the disciples might have ocular proof of His true character as Immanuel—God and Man in one Person. 

Jesus is not a mere Man who, by dint of spiritual enlightenment and surrender to the Father’s will, became more divine than any other man. He is God the Son, one Person of the Eternal Trinity, manifested in the flesh and thus the one Mediator between God and man. Peter’s confession and the Father’s voice after the Transfiguration tell the same blessed story. Jesus had to be who He was in order to do what He did. None less than the Son of God could make propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).

  MATTHEW 17:11-13 - It seems clear from the prophetic scriptures that a similar Elijah-testimony will be given in the dark days of the great tribulation before the manifestation of the Lord in judgment. The vision of the two witnesses in Revelation 11 would appear to confirm this. 

  On the mount, the disciples had been taken into God’s confidence and given a foreview of the kingdom to be ushered in with power and majesty at our Lord’s second advent. In the plain, they beheld anew something of the ravages of sin and Satan, under which this poor world suffers and groans still, and from which it will be freed completely only when Christ returns. But all down through the present age of evil the Lord Jesus is the One who hears the prayer of faith and gives deliverance to those who put their trust in His Word. No case is too difficult for Him. His disciples are often powerless because of unbelief and failure to recognize their own inability to work apart from Him who commissions them to represent Him in this scene. 

   Again the Lord declared that if they had faith even as a grain of mustard-seed mountains of difficulty could be removed, and absolutely nothing would be impossible to them. But true faith and self-indulgence are never found together; therefore, He added, “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” The flesh and its appetites must be kept in subjection in order that faith may flourish. Moreover, there must be a real sense of dependence on God of which prayer is the continual expression.