Jesus Conferred

What Did Jesus Do?

And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah,
who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure
which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Luke 9.30-31

How many times have you seen a football team work the clock to take advantage of the Two-Minute Warning, and seen the quarterback trot over to the sideline to confer with the coaches about how to reach the goal line? It makes good sense, when everything is on the line, to have a meeting of the minds to make sure everything goes according to plan for the end game. When the “clock” was running out on His life, and the Lord neared the “goal line” (Jerusalem and the Cross), Jesus took a “time out” to speak with Moses and Elijah about how He was going to achieve the victory. Jesus conferred.

It is of particular interest who the Lord conferred with. You see, His life was all about fulfillment: the fulfillment of the Law (As signified by the presence of Moses), and the fulfillment of the Prophets (As signified by the presence of Elijah). The Law and the Prophets represented the two major parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, the record of God's covenant. Christ had come, not to abolish anything, but to fulfill all things, especially His Father's Word.

And so there were Jesus and His disciples, well on the road to Jerusalem, when the Lord headed off, not to the sideline but to a high mountain, bringing Peter, James, and John with Him. Now, the conference between Moses, Elijah, and Jesus was not overheard by the three apostles, so they were not in on all the details of the game plan. However, the three distinctly heard the voice of God compelling them to do whatever their “quarterback” told them to do,

“This is my Son, my Chosen One, listen to him!”
Luke 9.35

These instructions from God were going to be very important, because the end game was not going to be at all what any of the apostles expected; listening and obeying Jesus had always been a challenge, but none of the apostles could ever have imagined what was about to happen to their Teacher. But now they had seen Jesus confer with the two monumental figures from their Scriptures and they had heard God's injunction to listen to his Son, it was time to head down the mountain and get back in the “game.”

While this, the Transfiguration, might be the most notable conference between the Father and the Son, and the only one where figures from the Old Testament were present, the truth is that Jesus conferred regularly with His Father through prayer. Though we might expect that Jesus knew what God's plan was for His life, He never presumed to act on His own, but kept in close contact with the Father.

If Jesus took time to confer about how He was to fulfill His Father's will, do you imagine any of us need not take a “time out” to make sure we are following God's game plan for our lives? While we might not have a face to face conference with Moses and Elijah, we have the full record of the Law and Prophets available to us in the Old Testament. And, though we do not have the same privilege as the Apostles of personally listening to the Lord, we have the teaching and the words of Jesus available to us in the New Testament. And we have the direct access to God which the Lord promised—we have prayer which connects us to the Father, not just at a “two-minute warning” but 24/7. In fact, it is critical that we never assume we know God's will sufficiently to ever go it alone, but that we confer with him without ceasing. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4