Is knowledge enough? / Matthew 17: 1-9 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday February 15th 2026/ Transfiguration Sunday / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday February 15th 2026: Transfiguration Sunday / Matthew 17: 1-9 “Is knowledge enough?”

And after six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with Him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends is simply knowing something to be true enough? Does knowing the truth mean you’ll always act in the right way under pressure? Saint Matthew in his Gospel tells us that “after six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.” Six days after what? Seven days earlier this happened:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, [Jesus] asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” [Jesus] said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then [Jesus] strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ.[1]

As an aside, you’ll remember how following Jesus’ baptism it was Simon Peter’s brother Saint Andrew who told Peter what John the Baptiser had said of this Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And Saint Andrew said to his brother Peter, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).[2] So we know Saint Peter had not come across this information first hand. He was not yet an eye witness to the truth before he started to follow Jesus so when Peter says to Jesus “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus responds by saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven,” Peter has not reasoned this truth out by himself or discovered it on his own, it was God the Father who revealed this to Saint Peter by the words spoken to him and by the working of the Holy Spirit in him. And yet God the Father in our Gospel reading today at the Mount of Transfiguration will reveal the truth of this for Peter in a very concrete way which will make Peter an eye witness to the truth of Jesus’ divinity. As this little aside ends. I’ll bring up that opening statement from our Sermon today: “Is simply knowing something to be true enough? Does knowing the truth mean you’ll always act in the right way under pressure?”... Back to what happened seven days before the events of the Transfiguration:

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” [23] But [Jesus] turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will repay each person according to what He has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”[3]

Like I said this all happened seven days earlier and now after a week had passed Peter finds himself with his fellow fishermen the brothers James and John alone with Jesus on the mountain top when right before Peter’s eyes Jesus is revealed in a mind-bending dazzling epiphany standing with Moses and Elijah to be the very one that Peter had believed on when his brother Andrew had first told him the good-Gospel-news of Jesus being the Messiah the Christ, the very one that Peter had trusted in when Jesus said to him and James and John, “follow Me and I will make you fishers of men,” the very one the Peter had confessed to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” On this day Peter doesn’t only see this with his eyes, he also hears with his own ears God the Father say “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” Peter had not listened to Jesus when Jesus had started teaching them that He personally “must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Peter didn’t want to listen to that sort of thing from Jesus and so Peter contradicted Jesus’ teaching. We are not told if Saint Peter burned with shame and embarrassment when Jesus rebuked Peter saying “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” We are not told if Peter perhaps became angry or obstinate after being called out, but now we see that Peter is being told to listen to Jesus in a way that Peter can’t easily dismiss, if Saint Peter said ‘I was imagining it,’ or ‘I only thought I heard that,’ then his lifelong companions Saint James and Saint John would be right there saying, ‘no, no Simeon Peter we heard it too, we saw it too.” With all of this knowledge revealed to Peter by the witness of his brother Saint Andrew, by being the recipient of faithful teaching and preaching right from the very mouth of Jesus, by witnessing miracle after miracle preformed by Jesus, by being an eye witness of the glory of God upon the Mount of Transfiguration and hearing with his own two ears the same sort of thing spoken over Jesus’ baptism by God the Father surely Saint Peter would be imbued with a sort of conviction and steadfastness that would not waver under pressure or temptation? After all that Peter would always do and say the right thing without failure or fault? For those of you who know Saint Peter you know where this is going ... so again: knowing the truth [even as an eyewitness] doesn’t mean you’ll always act in the right way when you’re under pressure.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded [Peter, James and John], “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” From this point on Jesus’ path is going straight to the Cross of His crucifixion, His face is set like flint,[4] nothing will turn Him to the left or to the right. Dear ones remember what Jesus had said to them, “if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me,” and yet how many of the Twelve would be crucified with Jesus on Good Friday? Surely Saint Peter would be one who would be crucified with Jesus on Good Friday: right? Saint Matthew tells us that on the night in which Jesus was betrayed, after the Supper was ended and Jesus and the Eleven faithful disciples had departed to go over to the Mount of Olives to pray Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” Peter answered Him, “Though they all fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with You, I will not deny You!” And all the disciples said the same.[5] And now you see where this is all going: ‘knowing something to be true doesn’t mean you’ll always act in the right way under pressure.’

Have you in your life known the true and good and right thing and yet under pressure and temptation acted the opposite of how you knew you should act? Have you as a Christian behaved, and thought and spoken in ways that Christians are not to behave and think and speak? Have you made bold claims and proclamations standing firm on Jesus only to deny the very one you know to be true? Saint Paul rightly teaches that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”[6] men like Saint Peter, people like you and me, yes everyone; there is not one Christian who at some point has not caved under the pressure of temptation to sin even when they had full knowledge of what would be right, and understood who God truly is and who they are in Christ Jesus. This is no excuse for sinning—we are to resist the devil and temptations to sin—rather this is a lament for our condition that simply knowing good from evil is not enough, teaching children good from evil is not enough, and so Jesus reveals in His incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension something more than bare knowledge of the Truth. When Saint Paul says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Paul continues to say, “and are justified by [God’s] grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”[7]

And there it is. We don’t stop with knowing good from evil, we don’t stop with simply knowing the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be; the Christian is to live a life of repentance constantly turning away from their sins, from the times we’ve folded under pressure to sin and gone and done what contradicted everything we know is good and holy, and in so doing to grow and see how we are not justified by our knowledge or actions or our convictions or our public confessions of faith but rather we are “justified by [God’s] grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” 

Dear ones we learn through experience, and we learn through sharing our experiences with others and having others share their experiences with us. Saint Peter’s denial of Jesus while Jesus was being put through His trial flew in the face of everything Peter witnessed on the Mount of Transfiguration, over and over again Peter had not listened to Jesus when he ought to have but Saint Peter nevertheless didn’t lose faith and unlike Judas who proved to be false in his heart towards Jesus Peter did not fall into the temptation to judge himself. And when Jesus was raised from the dead Peter was granted the great privilege of seeing the same Jesus who called him from his fishing nets, who stood transfigured before him on the Mountain top, who was hauled away to be crucified before his very eyes, now resurrected from the dead in all His resurrected splendor and glory. And before His ascension to God the Father’s right hand Jesus by the Sea of Galilee — where it all began for Peter — forgives Saint Peter for each time Peter had denied Him. Take some comfort from this, Peter justified by the grace of God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, was being sanctified along the way, he was not left without personal growth in his faith. There will be times in your Christian life where everything seems to all happen at once, and there will be times when it all seems to be taking forever, but the Lord is not finished with you, Saint Peter is a testimony to that.

I’ll leave you with part of our Epistle Reading from a much more mature Saint Peter, and his description of what he and the brothers James and John witnessed and what this means for us as Christian:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honour and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the Holy Mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”[8]

Dear ones your salvation is not dependant on knowledge alone, it’s not dependant on being an eye witness to a miracle, or having seen Jesus with your two eyes or having heard Him with your two ears. Had you had all of this you would not be guaranteed to have been without sin. Today Jesus is revealed to us in His Word read, shared, preached and handed down to us; He comes to us in His Sacraments with His forgiveness and we like Peter, James and John are justified not by knowledge alone but by God’s Grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Amen.    

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,

Amen.

[1] Matthew 16:13–20
[2] John 1:41
[3] Matthew 16:21-28
[4] Isaiah 50:7
[5] Matthew 26:30–35
[6] Romans 3:23
[7] Romans 3:24
[8] 2 Peter 1:16–19

Photo Credit: Main photo La Transfiguration MBA from wikimedia commons.