Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. We're in the middle of a series called Mark's Jesus, where we're going through the gospel of Mark, looking at who Jesus is and what we know and learn and eventually come to love about him. This week, or when I sat down to write the sermon for this week, what I had scheduled was the kind of quintessential Mark sermon, which is what the gospel of Mark is known for almost more than anything else, which is to lead, you need to be the servant of all. And so I was going to talk about servant leadership and what that means. And we probably will do that one yet. But as I was looking for that passage, I came across another passage that I love. I think it's incredible. I actually think it's the most fantastical, awe-inspiring story in the life of Christ. And one of the most fantastic stories in the whole Bible. And we never really talk about it on Sunday morning, which is the transfiguration. So, if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn to Mark chapter 9. We're going to be looking at verses 2 through 10 today. The Transfiguration of Christ is, to me, one of the most remarkable stories in Scripture, and it's this picture of Jesus that we really don't get again until the book of Revelation. So, it's maybe the most remarkable story in the gospel outside of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. So as I was preparing, I came across this story and I reread it and I went, yeah, I want to talk about this because we hardly ever talk about the transfiguration. I can't remember ever hearing a sermon on the transfiguration of Christ. I've been taught about it in theology classes and maybe a Sunday school type setting, but I can't remember hearing a sermon on it. Doesn't mean I haven't. I just don't remember one. And you guys may not remember one either. I know I've never preached on it, but something dawned on me as I was reading it. And I went, yeah, I want to put that in front of grace, and I want us to have a chance to respond to that. So I'm going to read it so that we're all on the same page about what happened. Some of us might need a refresher. Some of us might not know what it is or what I'm talking about yet, and that's perfectly fine. So I'm going to read through, and then we're going to reflect on it just aling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses who were talking with Jesus. Okay, quick pause right there just so we understand what's happening. What's happening is what sounds like it's happening. Jesus says, hey, Peter, James, and John, come with me. I want to go somewhere. So they followed Jesus up a high mountain. And Peter, James, and John, just as an aside, are known as the inner circle of the disciples. So there was 12 disciples, but Peter, James, and John were the three that he was the closest with. James and John were brothers. Their nickname was the Sons of Thunder, which is just the coolest nickname in the Bible. So they go up to the top of the mountain with Jesus. Jesus is in blazing. He changes. He transfigures. His face starts to glow. He's dressed in blazing white, whiter than anyone could bleach. He starts to glow at the top of the mountain. And then Moses and Elijah appear next to him. Now, what's significant about that is Elijah is the only man to never experience death. God sent a fiery chariot down to scoop him up into heaven because he was so righteous he didn't want him to have to experience it. And Moses is the only man ever buried by God. He died on Mount Noab with no one around and God buried him himself and did the funeral himself. So these are the heroes of the Hebrew faith. And they're glowing like Christ is. All right? So that's what's happening on the top of this mountain. That's why I say it's a fantastic story. Then, pick it up in verse 5. Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. He did not know what to say. They were so frightened. Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the clouds. This is my son, whom I love. Listen to him. So now they're up there, these three fantastic figures, Jesus, Moses, and Elijah have descended back down from heaven, and they get to witness this. And then the cloud descends, and it's the voice of God. It's Father God now speaking. This is my son. I love him. Obey him. And that's significant because God came down in a cloud and appeared to Moses, and his face glowed so brightly that he had to cover it with a veil. So this is kind of a throwback to what God's done before. Now he's doing it for Jesus. And God appeared to Elijah in a mountain and spoke to him in a whisper. So he's done this to Moses and Elijah. Now he's doing it to Christ with the disciples near him. That's why it's a big moment. Suddenly, verse 8, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what rising from the dead meant. Which that last one is just a little bit of a hint that they still didn't really understand who Jesus was and what he came to do because they didn't know what rising from the dead meant. They didn't know that he would have to do that. So that's the story. It's this remarkable moment in the life of Christ nestled in the middle of the Gospels. I find it to be completely fantastic and completely awe-inspiring. And when you read it, you kind of go, okay, well, what do I do with that? So you can talk about the theological implications of what's going on there, and that's fine. What's happening here is this is a picture of the end of days. This is an acknowledgement from God that Moses and Elijah, Elijah represents the prophets, Moses represents the law, and it's God saying that Jesus, he's got the Father saying that Jesus, God the Son, is fulfilling both the law and the prophets and is the conclusion of the lives and ministries of Moses and Elijah, that he is the right heir to those things. And now he's coming in to do things for all time. So that's the symbolism of what's happening there. And we can talk about that. But what I'd rather talk about is this. And this is a hard right turn, but you'll come with me. What I'd rather talk about is when I was a kid and the first time I saw Luke Skywalker. When I was a kid, I'm sure that there were other heroes that I was aware of before Luke Skywalker. Spider-Man and Batman and Superman, I'm sure. But there was something about when I was a kid and I saw Luke Skywalker for the first time. And I watched those Star Wars movies for the first time. And here's this hero. I'm completely in awe of him. I'm marveling at him. He's incredible. He defeats the Empire. I'm terrified of Darth Vader. There's never been a better villain in the history of villains in any sort of story creation ever. And Luke, I just remember being enamored with him. I just thought he was amazing. And I thought that the Star Wars movies were amazing and captivating and sweeping in a way that I had never experienced anything before in my life. And so when I read this story and I think about the way that Jesus appears and what he does and how fantastic it is, it conjures up within me those wisps and hints of what it felt like to be a kid and to worship a hero and to marvel at a hero, right? So when I read this, that's what I see here. And what occurred to me is that now when I think about the Transfiguration and what I saw that I wanted to put in front of grace Was that the Transfiguration? Reminds us that we were made to marvel at Christ We were made to marvel at Christ that childhoodination, that fragrance of adolescence, of how I felt when I saw Luke Skywalker on the screen, about how I felt about having big, bold heroes that I loved and I wanted to wear their shoes and their shirts and all that stuff. The way I felt when I saw those things, that's conjured up within me when I read the transfiguration and I see the depiction of my Jesus up on to marvel at Christ. And what I know that is true of us is that we all have this inclination in us to worship a hero. We all, at some point or another, had that childhood wonder where we marveled at someone else, where we made someone else the object of our affection and our worship, whether it was a fictional character or a real person, we all at different times in our life have looked and have glorified heroes that we see. And here's how I know this is true. There's many, many ways I know this is true, but here's one, and I thought this would be a fun exercise. I would like you to raise your hand if in your childhood bedroom you had a poster of an athlete or a celebrity or a superhero? Yeah. Jeffy, who was yours? It was Theismann, wasn't it? Yeah, it was Theismann. Tom, who was yours? Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Yeah, there you go. We all did. I had Michael Jordan. I don't know why. I was not a Green Bay Packers fan, and I never even cared about the guy. I think I got it for free, like a leftover at the book fair. So Sterling Sharp, Green Bay Packers, number 84. Great. There you go. Go Pack Go. We all had that when we were kids. Some of us, maybe you still do. I don't know. It's cool if you have a poster. And then we carry this into our culture, even in adulthood. We have celebrity worship. We worship celebrities. We have whole magazines that are published to tell us about the lives of the celebrities. And I don't understand them. There's a picture of like, look, Ashlyn Tolbert gets coffee just like I do. Like, great. I wonder how she takes it. Nobody cares. But we worship these celebrities. We put them on a pedestal. We see them. We marvel at them, and we wonder at them. And we also see this, and I've got to thread the needle here, but we see this in our political figures too, where one individual can often become the focal point of an entire party and the focal point of an ideology that says that is our hero and they are going to do what we need them to do to maintain our standards and the life that we want or to bring about the life that we want for our country. But we aggrandize our politicians and we engage in a little bit of hero worship from time to time. I'm not saying you do that with your vote, but I'm saying if we both think a little bit hard, we can see that happening where people make politicians their heroes. And it's because of this inclination that we have within us that drives us to worship heroes, that drives us to want to marvel at somebody or at something. And because of that, you may think that this idea of worshiping a hero is actually not a positive one. It's not something that we should do. That's something that we should grow out of. That's something that we leave in childhood, and in adulthood, we're more realistic about the expectations of our heroes, that we place on our heroes. We look up to them, but we don't worship them. We don't marvel at them. And this culture that we can create where we engage in hero worship is actually not a healthy one. So maybe we don't even agree with, we were created to marvel at Christ. We were created to worship the hero that is Christ. Maybe we find that premise fundamentally problematic because we've seen the downside of hero worship. But to that, I would suggest this, that all perversion is misplaced desire. All perversion in life, whenever we see that, all it is is a result of misplaced desire. We were all created with the desire for our spouse. We were all created with a desire for someone else physically. We all have that. And so God in his goodness gives us spouses that become the correct vessels of that desire. They're the ones that if you're, if you're a married man, your wife is to be the receiver of that desire. She is the vessel to hold that. She's where you put that. And it becomes perversion when we put it anywhere else besides the gift that God has given us and our spouse, right? We can have a desire for food. We can have a desire and appetite for good Right? to you with this inclination towards hero worship is when we put it in an athlete or a politician or a fictional character or anything else that's not Jesus, all we're doing is perverting a natural inclination to marvel at a hero, something that we all carry. And so this morning, what I want to suggest to you is to just consider the fact that you were made to marvel at a hero. You were made to worship a hero. You were made to hear stories like the transfiguration about your Jesus and go, whoa. You were made to read Revelation and hear Jesus go, I am the Alpha and the Omega and I hold the keys to death and Hades and go, whew, that's great. That's a natural inclination that God gave you so that you would turn that in praise and marvel to him. And so I just want, you probably haven't thought about that in a minute, but I want to reacquaint you with that possibility that God created you to actually marvel at him and to worship him. And so that inclination is a good one. The problem is we've misplaced it so many times that we don't trust it anymore. And this is why the older you are, I think the harder it is to marvel at Christ. The older you are, the harder it is to be awed at something, to wonder at something. Because with every passing year, with every year that goes by, the older we get, the more we've seen our heroes fall. The more they've let us down. The more the people that we place on the pedestal and that we want to be like, we learn they're human too. And we learn that the fictional characters are fake. And that Luke Skywalker doesn't exist. And what hero worship does when it's misplaced, when it's not, when Christ isn't the vessel for that worship, and we make people or things or places the vessels for that worship, what happens is they lead to disappointment and disillusionment. I'm disappointed and I don't understand. And then we retract and we bring that instinct back into ourselves. And instead of expressing it in its proper way, we repress it and we displace it and we say that's not appropriate for adults I'm a 55 year old man I don't need a hero yes you do yes you do and you were given an inclination by your Creator to marvel at and worship that hero and the Transfiguration shows him in this full display that reminds us that he's the savior of the universe and that that is true and that is right and that that is good. But I think the older we get, the harder it is to allow ourselves to worship a hero. But I want to try to encourage you to think about maybe it's because you've repressed a good natural inclination because life has taught you so, not because that's not a good thing to do. So we need to get over that challenge to marveling at Christ. There's one more challenge that I want to mention that I think we can butt up against when we are trying to marvel at Christ and worship our hero. And that is committing the mistake of Peter. Now, I don't know if you caught it. And I don't want you to look down yet because it'll ruin the setup. I don't know if you caught what Peter's first words were when he got up there at the transfiguration. But this is, to me, the most hilarious, stupidest thing that's said in the whole Bible. I can't get over how obnoxiously, mind-numbingly dumb what Peter said was. Okay? Let's just make sure we understand where we're at. Peter, the disciple of Christ, the Messiah, the incarnate God, is following him up a mountain. As he follows, the only person who's ever been 100% man and 100% God, as he follows the Savior of the universe who holds the keys to death and Hades up the mountain. That figure begins to glow in bright white and take on his heavenly form. And Peter begins to get a glimpse of what he condescended from to take on flesh. He begins to get to see that. And he looks around, and there's only three humans in the world that get into this circle, that get into this meeting, into this place, that have this experience. And then after Jesus starts to glow, one guy who never died is just back on a mountain again. And another guy that God did the funeral for that represents the biggest hero in his religion is sitting right there. And they just start talking, it says. They start chatting it up. Peter is in the middle of that. And this is Peter's response. I think it's hilarious. Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Jesus, listen, I know you guys are talking just real quick. Just want to mention, you're lucky I'm here. Would you like us to build you tents? It is a patently absurd thing to say. It is completely tone deaf and not self-aware at all. It would be like if I were somehow golfing with George W. Bush. And on the ninth fairway, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln just show up. And they start talking. And I went in, I was like, hey, what's up? Hey, George, do you guys have any questions for me? Like, it's the stupidest thing ever. Shut up, Peter. Shut up and marvel at your Jesus. But here's the mistake of Peter. Oh, this is one more thing that I think is funny. Parenthetically, verse 6 says, he did not know what to say. They were so frightened. So Mark, this is why it's funny. Mark is kind of Peter's right-hand man. He's kind of writing this on behalf of Peter, right? Mark wasn't a disciple. Peter was. And so Peter's telling him these stories. The transfiguration is in other gospels. And Peter's stupid comments in other gospels. This is the only one that says, hey, could you just put in there real quick? We were told we were really scared. We didn't know what to say. It's funny to me. But here's the mistake of Peter, and this is what we do. We tend to make it about ourselves and not our Savior. When Jesus shows up in our life, when he does amazing things, when we have a moment to sit back and marvel at our Savior, so often in those moments we make it about ourselves instead of shutting up and worshiping our hero, instead of being quiet and sitting down and marveling. What Peter should have done is fallen on his knees and worshiped his Savior and thanked his God that he was able to be here in this moment. But he missed it because he made it about himself. What he should have done is looked at James and John and go, are you seeing this? Holy smokes. But instead he made it about himself. Instead he said, okay, he immediately went to, what am I supposed to do with this? And there are times in my life when Jesus has shown up in an absolutely profound way. And what I do is I make it about myself. I make it about, okay, how am I going to take this and get over the next thing that I need to get over? How am I going to use this to move through? So often as a pastor, I go, okay, how do I teach this? How do I share this? I'm already starting to do it. On Saturday, I'm going to fly to Istanbul, and I have the incredible privilege of getting to work with a guy named Rusin and help train. I'm just going to be in the room with a group of Iranian pastors that lead illegal churches in Iran. And I'm going to sit in the room with that kind of faith. And I'm going to listen to Ru teach them and I'm going to watch them interact. I'm going to listen to the questions that they ask. And I can already feel my mind going to, how can I help in that room? How can I add value? How can I encourage them? What sermons should I bring back to share with grace? And you know what I probably need to do? Shut up and marvel at Christ and listen and be humbled by what he's doing in these places. There are times in our lives when Jesus shows up in an unexpectedly profound way, maybe through the birth of a child, through a miraculous healing, through times of great joy and times of great grief. And so often in those moments, because we don't know what else to do with ourselves, we miss it. And we make it about ourselves and not our Savior. When what we should be doing is shutting up and marveling at our Jesus and worshiping our hero. So as I was going through this and thinking through it and writing it, I realized that what I wanted to do this morning, rather than continue to preach to you through word, is I wanted to worship with you in communion and worship with you in song. So we're going to take communion together. And we're going to do that because what I want to do for the rest of our time together this morning is just stop and be still and marvel at our Jesus. I want us to stop and be still and worship our Savior. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take communion. So elders, you all can come up and get ready to serve that. And when we take communion, I'm not even going to pray to end the sermon because this is part of the sermon. Because as I was writing it, I went to Gibson. And I said, hey, man, I'm going to set you up. You finish the sermon in song. We will preach it in worship through communion and through song. And so as we take communion, I want to leave you with this thought of where we should focus as we seek to marvel at Jesus. He loves you. He died for you. He advocates for you. He waits for you. He loves you. He loves you enough to leave that form and condescend to take on human form. He loves you enough to die for you. He loves you enough to sit at the right hand of the Father and advocate for you as your high priest, and he loves you enough to wait for you where he's preparing a place. I don't know how Jesus has shown up in your life. I don't know what your moments are that you don't want to miss, but I would like to encourage you to take the next 10 to 15 minutes and marvel at your Savior. Look at the cross. Think about his love for you. Reflect on how he's shown up and what your gratitude is. But let's stop and shut up and worship our hero. So when we take communion, we do it because Jesus started this tradition before his death. When he took the bread that was on the Passover table the night that he was arrested and he broke it and he said, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. A way to phrase it this morning is every time you do this, marvel at me. Be awed by me. Wonder at me. Worship me. He's our hero, the savior of the universe. Then he took the wine and he poured it and he said, this is my blood that spilled out for you. Every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. So instead of me praying, what I'm going to invite you to do is to go ahead and stand. And I'd like to encourage you as you go through, you go out the sides and back up the middle. If you're not comfortable taking communion, just walk right past the elders. You don't have to do that this morning. But if you are comfortable taking it, take the bread and dip it in the grape juice and cup that in your hand and go back to your seat and sit down and you pray yourself and you allow God to prepare your heart to marvel at him. And let's finish the service worshiping him in communion and worshiping him in song. Go ahead.