24th July 2026

24th July 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (Matthew 17:1–13 focus)


Message (Alan Burke)


You’ve gotta love it when you’re having a conversation with someone and you’ve told them something important and they miss it entirely and ask something kinda related but they miss the main thing. I think that is what is happening here, they knew Jesus to be the Son of Man. After Peter’s confession, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life (16:21), and he’s just told them not to tell anyone what they have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Maybe I’m being too hard on these disciples, but I think they are so caught up with what they have seen and for obvious reasons that they hadn’t really grasped what Jesus had just said. In light of the fact that God the Father had spoken from heaven, I’d be wanting to know more.

Instead, these disciples ask about Elijah. There was an expectation that Elijah would come before the day of the Lord (see Mal 4:5). Peter, James, and John had just seen Elijah there, but they were also beginning to realise that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, although they did not fully know what that meant, so they were confused. But Elijah had come; John was the fulfilment of that prophecy, for John the Baptist was not a reincarnated Elijah; instead, he came as the last Old Testament prophet in the "spirit and power of Elijah” as the gospel of Luke tells us (1:17). He came before Jesus to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” He came fulfilling Malachi and the promise of God, so before Jesus, John came, as Elijah was to come before the Christ, the Messiah. 


John came and called people to repent of their sins; he fulfilled the mission of Elijah. He prepared the way for Jesus, the Saviour and Son of God. John had come, and to John who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, he suffered; he was imprisoned for telling the truth, for preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He came as the forerunner of the gospel and was beheaded by Herod; he suffered and died at the hands of sinful men. The forerunner of the Messiah was dealt with severely; should there be any surprise about the fate of the Messiah himself?


These disciples were given a glimpse of the Glory of the Son of God, who was to suffer and die but would rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven. In this life, we will suffer to lesser or greater extents. Jesus made that clear for his disciples. The rest of the New Testament doesn’t shy away from it, but as Romans reminds us, that as his children through faith, as fellow heirs with Christ, that as we suffer we will be glorified with him, for the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (ESV) (Rom 8:17–18)


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q21 Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect?
A. The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, for ever.
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