Luke 9:34-36

They feared as they entered into the cloud

Entering the cloud

I. THE GLOOM OF THE CLOUD OFTEN SUCCEEDS THE GLADNESS OF THE LIGHT. Delight even in our divines, experiences is not to be all. These disciples had a hard work to do yet. God has reasons for the darkness as well as for the light.

II. THE ENTERING INTO THE CLOUD WAS A MATTER OF FEAR. Fear on entering! It is often the first experience that we dread. The awful solitude of Glencoe strikes you most on entering; by degrees, you see colour among the rocks, beauty in the vale. Overcome first fear, and then, as you merge into some dread experience, the mind will become accustomed to the change. No sorrow is so great as it seems.

III. THERE IS A VOICE IN THE CLOUD, AND IT IS THE VOICE OF GOD. A cloud and a voice! Yes, the conjunction is beautiful even in a human sense. It is under the cloud of misconception that a friend’s voice is all-sustaining; it is under the cloud of some dark trial that the tender tones of love make sweetest music. This was the voice of God. That in itself is deepest solace and truest inspiration. Speak, Lord! Enoch heard that voice when he walked with God. It is a Father’s voice. In the cloud, if we are the children of the world, there will be heard only our own voice--the voice of repining--the voice of distrust--the voice of mourning--or, worst of all, the voice of despair!

IV. THERE IS A SOLITARY VISION AFTER THE CLOUD. They saw “Jesus only.” Beautiful in one sense, though they were disappointed that other visions were gone.

V. THERE IS A TRANSFIGURATION LAND, WHERE THERE ARE NO CLOUDS. Then the voice will come from the throne, not from the cloud. There are no clouds there; faith needs no more trial; character no more test. Christian transfiguration is not completed here; we are renewed, but not glorified yet. But in ourselves we have a prophecy of perfected life, even the earnest of the inheritance. (W. M. Statham, B. A.)

The overshadowing cloud, and the voice that comes from it

The first thing that claims attention is--

I. THE OVERSHADOWING CLOUD. It is not necessary for us to go on far in life before we find clouds coming to cast their shadows over us. We know that the elements are there out of which overshadowing clouds are in constant process of formation. And we know too that there are active agents all the time in operation on those elements. There are the rivers and lakes and seas about us, spreading out their broad water surfaces. And there is the sun with his genial beams, turning that water into vapour, and sending it off on its floating voyage through the air, to form into clouds which shall cast their shadows over our pathway. And just so it is in our experience of life in its moral or spiritual aspect. We carry in us, and find around us, the elements and agents that are occupied continually in forming the clouds that come and overshadow us. In the sickness and death of those we love, or in the visitation of personal sickness, in the loss of property, in the disappointment of our reasonable expectations, what clouds arise continually from all these varied sources! How darkly their shadows fall upon us! The apostles were on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus in all the glory of His coming kingdom stood in the midst of them. They stood at the very vestibule of heaven, with all the radiance of its glory beaming around them; and yet, even on that towering summit--a point of elevation in brightness and bliss, such as dwellers on this globe had never reached before--“there came a cloud and overshadowed them.” And so it must be with us. We must expect the clouds to come and cast their shadows over us. This side of heaven we cannot get beyond their reach. “There came a cloud and overshadowed them,” has been descriptive of the experience of God’s people from the beginning. If we look at the lives of Abraham, Job, Jacob, David, or any of God’s servants, as written in the Bible, we see how broad and deep these shadows have lain upon their pathway.

II. THE FEELING WITH WHICH THIS EXPERIENCE. IS GENERALLY MET. “And they feared as they entered into the cloud.” Nothing is more natural to fallen men than fear in reference to God and eternity. And it is not difficult to point out the causes of it.

1. One of these is our consciousness of sin. Fear cannot find room where sin has not gone before it.

2. There may be a failure to understand the views which the Scriptures give us of God’s providence; or an unwillingness to believe those views. Either of these things will give rise to the fear of which we are speaking. This is the Bible view of God’s providences towards His people. Could anything be brighter, or more cheerful? Then why should Christians fear when the cloud comes? There would be no room for fear if we only had simple faith in these Bible views of providence. Fear springs from the want of faith. In the darkest hour of Luther’s trying life the Elector of Saxony was the only earthly defender who stood by him. For a time it was doubtful whether the Emperor Charles V. might not send an army against the elector and crush him. “Where will you be,” said some one to Luther, “if the emperor should send his forces against the elector?” It was under the sustaining influence of the principle we are now considering that that heroic man sublimely said, “I shall be either in heaven or under heaven.” He could enter the darkest cloud without fear.

III. THE VOICE FROM THE CLOUD. “There came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son; hear Him.” And this is the design of all God’s afflictive dealings with His people. The cloud comes upon us, with its overshadowing gloom, to check us in the too eager pursuit of other things, and to enable us to see Jesus, and understand His character and work. A soldier had lost his right arm from the shoulder during the last war. To an agent of the Christian Commission, who visited him, he said, “It seems to me I cannot be grateful enough for losing my arm. It was dreadful to me at first.” Thus he “feared as he entered into the cloud.” “But,” he continued, it has ended in bringing me to Jesus. And now, I can say with truth, “It is better to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into outer darkness.” Thus God lets the clouds of trial come and overshadow us, that we may be prepared to see the light, and glory, and infinite sufficiency, and preciousness, that are to be found in Christ.

“Sorrow touch’d by love grows bright,

With more than rapture’s ray;

And darkness shows us worlds of light

We never saw by day.”

And then this voice from the cloud quickens to duty, as well as points to Jesus. “This is My beloved Son; hear Him.” Such was David’s experience when he said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept Thy word.” The voice from the overshadowing cloud had quickened him in duty. There are two trees. One is growing on a fertile plain, the other is perched high up on the mountain-side. The lowland tree will lean to this side or that, though it be but a summer breeze that bends it, or a bank of cowslips from which its trunk leans aslope. But let the storm and the avalanche do their worst to the hardy pine-tree of the Alps, it will cling to its little ledge on the side of the precipice and grow straight. Its roots point down to the centre of the earth; and the more the storms rock it, the hardier, and the stronger, and the straighter it will grow. And the same law holds in spiritual growth as in that which is natural. The voice from the overshadowing cloud quickens to duty and strengthens for service. And there is no nobler sight to contemplate than that of a child of God, whose confidence in Him cannot be shaken--not fearing when the clouds gather, nor faltering when the tempests burst. And thus we have attempted to speak of the overshadowing cloud; of the fear with which it is entered; and of the voice that comes from it. The cloud, the fear, the voice. There is just one lesson we may carry away with us from the consideration of this subject. It is this: If we are true Christians we never need fear the developments of God’s providences. However darkly the clouds may gather, or however fiercely the storms may burst, they cannot harm us. We need not fear. (R. Newton.)

The cloud and the voice

With a natural cloud the facts we associate are obscurity, dimness, a degree of mystery, a hiding of the light--sometimes very mercifully softening and tempering what would be more dazzling than the delicate organ of sight could bear--yet a body so attenuated, transparent, and movable, that we feel the darkness is transient. It may pass away from the face of the sun; it may be touched by his beams, transfigured to the eye, and made almost like another sun in splendour. Such, under the laws of light and air and water and attraction, are the properties of the cloud in nature. Now, in that succession of special disclosures of the Divine Presence and care for man, of which the Bible is the completest record and Christ the perfect incarnation, it is striking to see how each principal act of revelation is covered with a cloud--a palpable veil of mystery. From the beginning to the end you see the persistent and remarkable reappearance of this symbol. Considering how these different books of the Bible were produced, and what a variety of authors, periods, countries, stages of literary culture, they proceed from, this is more than a coincidence--it is design. It discloses a general truth. As men are brought near to the very sight and feeling of their Lord, an obscurity overshadows them; there is a shrinking; reverence hides the face; the angels even, admitted to the brightest day, veil their eyes with their wings; no sight is clear enough, no faith is bold enough, not to need the screen. “They feared as they entered into the cloud.”

1. Most of our deepest acquaintance with religious truth comes by a discipline of some severity. To pass out of a life of indifference and self-indulgence into one of purity and prayer requires a painful effort. If you can look back to any time when your life took a new starting-point, or rose to a higher aim, you will remember there was some hard conflict connected with it. Suffering is not only the consequence of sin, but the instrument of recovery. It is a means of penitence, and so a minister to the only real peace.

2. The second point on this practical side of the doctrine is that it is when we are entering into this cloud--having only the dark side of it before us, and its damp and chilly folds closing around us--that we are afraid. The purpose of the cloud is to shut out all that we are not meant to see. It is also a kind of background for the heavenly vision. This is only one way of expressing the exact and eternal contradiction of right and wrong. The true life is born by a painful travail.

3. For, thirdly, there comes, as the Evangelist writes, “a voice out of the cloud,” which is sufficient, if we will hearken to it, to guide us through the dark, into the light, where the sun is never dim.

4. “Hear Him.” Hear Him, and He will scatter the cloud from about you with the breath of His mouth. (Bishop Huntington.)

The cloud

I. The Lord did show that He could frame a better piece of architecture of a sudden than Peter could imagine to build: he spake of three tabernacles, which would be long in piecing together; God in a moment creates one cloud to receive them all better than a hundred tabernacles. Such a one as Moses and the Israelites had in the wilderness to shadow them against all offence. Such things the heathen did drive at in their poetical fictions: but I am sure the Lord is able to pitch a cloud between His chosen and their enemies, that the hand of violence shall not touch them, neither shall any evil come nigh their dwelling.

II. A cloud did interpose itself to qualify the object of the Transfiguration, and to make it fit for the disciples to behold it: the cloud indeed was very bright, yet it was dark and opacous in respect of Christ’s body, which did exceed the very light of the sun. In this life we must look through a cloud, we must expect to see Him as in a glass darkly, hereafter we shall see Him face to face. Mark the infirmity of man’s nature in this sinful corruptible condition, and let us learn humility; it was not enough that Peter, John, and James were not transformed in the Mount, as Christ was--no, nor as Moses and Elias were, our vile flesh is not receptive of such celestial excellency--but to abase them and us further, a shady cloud opposed itself before their eyes, because we are not fit nor worthy to behold such pure happiness in these days of vanity. “Such knowledge is too excellent for me,” says David, “I cannot attain unto it.”

III. This cloud was set up for a land-mark to limit curiosity, and to drive men off from approaching too near to pry into the Divine secrets. Where God sets up a cloud it is a manifest sign that those are our bounds, and we must not break them.

IV. And I am sure this reason searcheth the true cause of the cloud as near as any. God the Father in the Old Testament was wont to utter His voice out of the thick clouds of the air, and so He continues His holy will in the gospel, and therefore prepared this cloud to preach from thence the words which follow, “This is My beloved Son,” &c. (Bishop Hacker.)

A cloud of protection

Where God covers anything with a miraculous shadow, it promiseth that the Divine protection is round about it. Leonidas the Grecian was told that his enemies came marching in such full troops against him, that their darts when they threw them up would cover the light of the sun: Leonidas puts it off with this stout Courage, Turn in umbra pugnabimus; “Then we will fight in the shade.” A courageous word, and made very fit for a Christian’s mouth. Believe in the Lord, and we are all under His custody and defence; beseech Him to stretch His wings upon us, and the Holy Ghost will overshadow us, In umbra pugnabimus, to that shadow we betake ourselves to shun the fire of anger, and the heat of con cupiscence; under that shadow will we fight against our ghostly enemies. Why did not the disciples know their own strength and assurance when this cloud did overshadow them? Did not the Lord declare that He took them into His protection? (Bishop Hacker.)

Man and mystery

I. MAN IN CONTACT WITH MYSTERY. The disciples now stood face to face with “The Cloud.”

1. Every science is an attempt to solve Nature’s mysteries, to discover Nature’s secrets.

2. Nor in the realm of Religion does man have less frequently to do with mystery. In the fact that man has thus to do with mystery, we have a sign of the finiteness of our nature.

II. MAN ALARMED AT MYSTERY. There are many mysteries, such for instance as some in the physical world, contact with which does not awaken fear. Some in the natural world. As when stupendous nature seems to be the enemy of man, so that it arrays itself in plague, storm, earthquake, against the feeble, the unoffending, the good. Some in intellectual speculation. Those who climb the mountain of inquiry often “fear as they enter the cloud.” Some in personal experience. And there will be death. In the fact that man is thus alarmed at mystery, we have one proof of the sinfulness of our nature. To a pure being mystery would have no dread.

III. MAN ENLIGTENED IN MYSTERY. But the cloud became a sanctuary; the mystery a revelation. For out of it there came a voice, saying, “This is My beloved Son: hear Him.” So hearing the Divine teaching about the ever-living, ever-present Christ, we connect Him and mystery together thus: Christ is the moral of all mysteries. The cloud settled on the mountain, and enwrapped the three disciples, solely to perfect the revelation of Christ to them. Thus every mystery in human life is meant, and adapted, to train us for Christ. Does mystery discover to us our ignorance, so that we feel as those that grope in darkness, and stretch forth imploring hands, and strain eager eyes for light? That yearning, thus intensified under the pressure of mystery, is a yearning for Christ, “the Light of the World.” Does mystery make us realize our feebleness, so that we feel as a leaf driven before the winds of circumstances, a waif tossed on the waves of the unresting ocean of the material universe, and cry for strength? That cry is for Christ, the arm of the Lord revealed.” Christ is the interpreter of mystery. There are mysteries that He solves for us now by the record of His wonderful words. Christ is the controller of all mystery. Not alone hath He “the keys of death and hell,” though verily these two are among the deepest of all mysteries; but He is the Sovereign of the future, for to Him “is subject the world to come.” (U. R. Thomas)

The Lord Jesus as Mediator

1. From the occasions upon which this voice came from heaven; at His Baptism, which was Christ’s dedication of Himself to the work of a Redeemer and Saviour, and now at His Transfiguration, to distinguish Him from Moses and the other prophets, and publicly to instal Him in the mediatory office.

2. The matter of the words show His fitness for this office, for here you have--

(1) His dignity; not a servant, but a Son (Hebrews 3:5).

(2) The dearness between God and Him.

3. His acceptableness to God, who is well-pleased with the design, the terms, the management of it.

II. This work of Mediator Christ executeth by three offices of King, Priest, Prophet.

III. That though all the three offices be employed, yet the prophetical office is more explicitly mentioned, partly as suiting with the present occasion, which is to demonstrate that Christ hath sufficient authority to repeal the Law of Moses which the prophets were to explain, confirm, and maintain till His coming. (T. Manton, D. D.)

Christ, the great Prophet, must be Head

I. That Christ is the great Prophet and Teacher of the Church appeareth

1. By the titles given to Him.

(1) He is compared with Moses, the great Lawgiver among the Jews Deuteronomy 18:15).

(2) He is called the Angel or Messenger of the Covenant (Malachi 3:1).

2. By the properties of His office. He has three things to qualify Him for this high office.

(1) Absolute supreme authority; and therefore we must hear Him and hearken to Him.

(2) All manner of sufficiency and power of God to execute this office John 3:34).

(3) There is in Him a powerful efficacy. As He hath absolute authority to teach in His own name, and fulness of sufficiency to make known the mind of God to us; so He hath power to make His doctrine effectual. And when He dealt with His disciples, after He had opened the Scriptures, He opened their understandings (Luke 24:25). So He opened the heart of Lydia Acts 16:14). He can teach so as to draw (John 6:44). He can excite the drowsy mind, change and turn the rebellious will, cure the distempered affections, make us to be what He persuadeth us to be. There is no such teacher as Christ, who doth not only give us our lesson, but a heart to learn; therefore to Him must we submit, hear nothing against Him, but all from Him.

II. About hearing Him; that must be explained also. First, What it is to hear. It being our great duty, and the respect bespoken for Him. In the hearing of words there are three things considerable; the sound that cometh to the ear, the understanding of the sense and meaning, and the assent or consent of the mind. Of the first, the beasts are capable, for they have ears to hear the sound of words uttered. The second is common to all men, for they can sense such intelligible words as they hear. The third belongeth to disciples, who are swayed by their Master’s authority. Secondly, How can we now hear Christ, since He is removed into the heaven of heavens, and doth not speak to us in person. The revelation is settled, and not delivered by parcels, as it was to the ordinary prophets. Now we hear Christ in the Scriptures (Hebrews 2:3). Thirdly, The properties of this hearing or submission to our Great Prophet.

1. There must be a resolute consent or resignation of ourselves to His teaching and instruction. All particular duties are included in the general.

2. This resignation of our souls to Christ as a Teacher, as it must be resolute, so it must be unbounded and without reserves. We must submit absolutely to all that He propoundeth, though some mysteries be above our reason, some precepts against the interest and inclination of the flesh, some promises seem to be against hope, or contrary to natural probabilities.

3. It must be speedy. No delay (Hebrews 3:7).

4. Your consent to hear Him must be real, practical, obediential, verified in the whole tenor and course of your lives and actions; for Christ will not be flattered with empty titles: “Why call ye Me Lord, and Master, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). Many study Christianity to form their opinions, rather than reform their hearts and practice. The great use of knowledge and faith is to behold the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that our own love may be quickened and increased to Him again. If it serve only to regulate opinions, it is but dead speculation, not a living faith.

III. The reasons why this Prophet must be heard.

1. Because He is the only beloved Son of God.

2. Because the doctrine of the gospel which He speaks is the most sweet, excellent, and comfortable doctrine that can be heard or understood by the heart of man. Uses:

I. Of conviction, to the carnal Christian for not submitting to Christ’s authority.

1. Do you seriously come to Him that you may have pardon and life?

2. Do you respect the word of the gospel, entertain it with reverence and delight, as the voice of the great Prophet? Do you meditate on it, digest it as the seed of the new life, as the rule of your actions, as the charter of your hopes?

3. Do you mingle it with faith in the hearing, that it may profit you?

4. Do you receive it as the Word of God?

5. Doth it come to you as the Mediator’s word, not in word only, but in power?

6. Do you hear Him universally?

7. Do you hear Him so as to prefer God, and Christ, and the life to come, above all the sensual pleasures and vain delights, and worldly happiness, which you enjoy here?

II. ADVICE TO WEAK CHRISTIANS.

1. TO excite themselves to obedience by this “hear Him” when dead and lifeless.

2. When you do renounce some beloved lust, or pleasing sin, urge your hearts with Christ’s authority. Remember who telleth you of cutting off your right hand, and plucking out your right eye. How can I look the Mediator in the face, if I should wilfully break any of His laws, prefer the satisfaction of a base lust, before the mercies and hopes offered me by Jesus Christ.

3. In deep distresses, when you are apt to question the comfort of the promises, it is hard to keep the rejoicing of hope, without regarding whose word and promise is it (Hebrews 3:6). (T. Manton, D. D. )

The cloud a blessing

Man is harrassed by groundless fears. Who has ever looked for blessings in a cloud? Were we appointed to collect the riches of the universe, how many would pass by the clouds, as though in their dark and troubled breasts no treasure could be found I How often have we trembled as we have entered into the cloud of bereavement, or sorrowful apprehension; and yet in such a cloud have we heard a voice, as did the trembling disciples l In the cloud which they dreaded they heard the Divine voice; henceforward, then, let us gratefully remember that even a cloud can contain a blessing, and that sometimes fear is but the quaking harbinger of joy. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Keeping a secret

It is a privilege to be trusted. Sometimes the trust is a burden. Few can keep secrets. The disciples were able to do so. We are told concerning one thing that they had seen that they kept it close.

I. THE SECRET HELD. A vision of Christ’s glory among beings of another world. That vision had been--

1. Instructive.

2. Assuring.

3. Elevating.

II. THE REASONS FOR THE MAINTAINED SECRECY.

1. The spiritual attainments of the disciples were not sufficiently advanced for them to speak freely of what they had seen without some damage to themselves. A sneer of some doubter might have weakened their belief at that time.

2. Christ had enjoined silence. He was in no haste to astonish the world.

3. The outside world was not in a fit state to receive the knowledge of that vision. A time was sure to come when the disciples could speak openly and effectively. Peter doubtless made frequent references to it (2 Peter 1:16). We may remember that--

(1) We have no need to refrain from speaking of what Christ has done in giving us peace.

(2) Whatever witness we bear should be the outcome of a real experience. Anyhow, we should endeavour to let the praise of Christ be on our lips and reflected in our lives. (Homiletic Magazine.)