Matthew 17:3

“Then appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.”

In a rare moment heaven and earth join together as one, an outstanding moment for the three disciples.  There stood Moses, the revered father of all Jews, the Law-giver, the deliverer and much more. None exceeded Moses in all the history of the Jews. Here he stands, speaking with Jesus, the friend of the three wide-eyed fishermen of Galilee who are simply swept away by it all.  Imagine seeing Moses!  Unbelievable.  Something huge is happening. “What?” They must have surely thought.

That is not all, Elijah appears. He is the renowned miracle worker and prophet of God, like Moses, known by every Jew alive. He is unique in that God swept him off to heaven without passing through death. There he was, in deep conversation with Jesus and Moses.

What were these three – Moses, Elijah and Jesus – talking about? Luke wrote that “They talked about Christ’s death.” Luke 9:31. Moses and Elijah, and, most important of all, Jesus, were well aware of the crucial importance of Jesus’ sacrificial death for all sinners. Were Jesus to be dissuaded and resist the horror of his crucifixion, no one, including Moses and Elijah, could be free from the penalties of sin. Without that vicarious sin offering no one could be saved, so to speak.

But  what were Moses and Elijah saying to Jesus? From the context we noted that Jesus was dreading that sacrificial death on the cross.  We can not begin to understand what Jesus was facing. The most daunting must have been that Jesus, the sinless human being, would in a dreadful moment take into himself all the accumulated sin of mankind and there on a Roman Cross experience the judgment of God on all sin, ever.  Jesus dreaded that prospect. That is clear as he moved closer and closer to the event. So what might Moses sand Elijah have said?  I do believe they encouraged Jesus, with all their heart, to follow through on the eternal plan and yield to the horrors of it all.

I think I hear them say, “Jesus, do it!  No other can.”