This study was taught by Pastor Barry Forder at our family service on19th August 2018.
In this study, we remind ourselves of the importance of the transfiguration of Jesus, and consider the implications for us, who are also to be transformed from the inside out, to show forth His glory!
In the book, The Psychology of Redemption, Oswald Chambers comments: “According to the Bible, there are only two Men: Adam and Jesus Christ, and God deals with them as the representatives of the human race, not as individuals. All the members of the human race are grouped round these two Men. The first Adam is called “the son of God”; the last Adam is the Son of God, and we are made sons of God by the last Adam. The Christian is neither Adam nor Jesus Christ, the Christian is a new man in Christ Jesus. The first Adam and the last Adam are the only two Men according to God’s norm, and they both came into this world direct from the hand of God.”
He goes on to say:
“God created man a splendid moral being, fitted to rule the earth and air and sea, but he was not to rule himself; God was to be his Master, and man was to turn his natural life into a spiritual life by obedience. Had Adam done so, the members of the human race would have gone on developing until they were transfigured into the presence of God; there would have been no death. Death to us has become natural, but the Bible reveals it to be abnormal. Adam refused to turn the natural into the spiritual; he took dominion over himself and thereby became the introducer of the heredity of sin into the human race (Romans 5:12), and instantly lost his control over the earth and air and sea. The entrance of sin means that the connection with God has gone and the disposition of self-realisation, my right to myself, has come in its place.
“For by Him were all things created . . .” (Colossians 1:16). Did God then create sin? Sin is not a creation; sin is the outcome of a relationship which God never ordained, a relationship set up between the man God created and the being God created who became the devil. God did not create sin, but He holds Himself responsible for the possibility of sin, and the proof that He does so is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”.
Following the Transfiguration, Jesus went down into the valley below and finds the Scribes trying to trip up the disciples with their questions – no doubt trying to undermine their faith in Jesus. Jesus, as the great protector of the sheep, steps into the conversation at which point the scribes go strangely quiet!
A man steps forward whose son had been bound by the devil since he was a child. The disciples had been out of their depth, not knowing what to do. But Jesus hears the cry of a heart-broken father for his child and casts the evil spirit out of the boy.
Jesus makes the comment that ‘this kind can only come out by prayer and fasting’. The point here is that, if we are to be used of God in setting people free from the snare and tyranny of the Devil, we must be in-tune with God. We must be willing to fast (cut out of our lives all that is not of Him), and to be constantly praying. Such was the life of Jesus.
May you be blessed and encouraged by this study.
The Powerpoint slides used in these study are available for free download
