The Translucent Mountain

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We have our final churchwide Mark Bible Study TONIGHT 6:00-7:00 PM. I AM SO PUMPED ABOUT THIS STUDY. We’ll be looking at a fascinating—and troubling—passage in Mark 11 in which:

  • Jesus curses a fig tree;

  • Flips over the tables in the Temple courts;

and then says

  • “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.”

WHAT THE HECK?!

I am so so so excited to talk about this passage. (Has my enthusiasm come through yet?)


Really hope you can make it.

Now, back to today’s regularly scheduled programming.

 

Mark 9:2-13

The Transfiguration

2 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

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.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”

8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.

9 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.10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.

11 And they asked him, “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?”

12 Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? 13 But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.”

 
 

What happens here is that the curtains of reality are pulled back and the three disciples see the glorified Jesus. This is what the en- tire book of Revelation is about—John seeing behind the curtain, so to speak.

Mark has included this story in his gospel to remind us that the future is a good future!

What if you could see God’s reality around you today? How would you then live?