WORKERS COME AND GO

WORKERS COME AND GO

The significance of their presence and passing, suggested by these facts of their personality, is of deep in­terest. The RELIGION in which they were so deeply inter­ested was ABOUT TO BE CHANGED, not destroyed. The transfiguration of Jesus was symbolic of that which was taking place, through His presence and mission, in that old economy of which one of these men was THE FOUNDER, and the other THE RESTORER.

It is somewhat difficult to speak of the old form of religion, for if one speaks of it as Judaism, the mind of the believer associates it with the thought of bondage. There are many words which have a double meaning, and care must be taken to distinguish which meaning is intended, whenever the word is used. The word JUDAISM, used in reference to a system of bondage to form and ceremony, always refers to the yoke with which the saints are not again to be entangled. Yet the very heart and soul of Judaism is the heart and soul of Christianity. Judaism was the religion of the one God, the religion that insisted upon the Divine right to govern human life, and per­petually taught the truth of the nearness of God to the affairs of men; all that abides until this hour. The old forms and symbols and signs were perishing; and the old economy which Moses had founded, and to which Elijah had recalled the people, so far as it was outward, material, and temporal, was passing away. But the heart and soul of it remained, and was rediscovered in the mission of Christ. These men in the past had been great and powerful because they understood the spirit underlying the letter, and in conversation with Jesus upon the mount they knew that nothing was  passing away which was of value.

Moses stood upon that mount of glory the representa­tive of the law. Elijah there represented prophecy. Moses for the law, with its requirements, its provisions, and its shadow of sacrifice; Elijah for prophecy,—not foretelling merely, but forth telling,—that wonderful gift be­stowed upon various men among the ancient people, and continued at intervals in unbroken succession, until it ceased with Malachi.

Moses' presence signified that in Jesus the shadows of the law were all fulfilled and now withdrawn. In Jerusalem men were still fighting, not merely for the law of Moses, but for the traditions of the elders, and priests and leaders were still arguing about the tithe of mint and cumin, while here upon the mount was the great law-giver himself, by his presence acknowledging that this glorified One, Who should shortly be crucified in the name of the law, did in Himself gather up all that was hinted at, suggested, included in the economy of the

past.

The law, with its commands, its forbidding’s, was fulfilled in the Person of Jesus; and the law-giver Moses, by the will of God had left the heavenly places to greet upon the mount of transfiguration the One, Who in His own Person, had magnified the law, and made it honorable.

So also with Elijah. He had spoken the word of God. From place to place he had journeyed, speaking to kings in their corruption, to courts in their degradation, and to individuals in their need, that one unceasing word, "Thus saith Jehovah." (1 Kings 21:19) He had certainly been one of the most remarkable men in the history of the nation from the prophetic standpoint. God had spoken in times past by divers portions in the prophets, but by no man had He said more to the nation than by Elijah.

And now he stood upon the mount in conversation with One Who had said to His disciples, "I am the truth," (John 14:6) and concerning Whom Peter, on a subsequent occasion, speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit, said, "To Him bear all the prophets witness." (Acts 20:43) Every word that had passed the lips of Elijah in the olden days had been but the spelling out in simple syllable and speech, of that which was embodied in the Person of Christ; and he stoop now upon the mount to acknowledge, that in this trans­figured One, all the speech of heaven begins and ends that in Him every prophecy of the past is fulfilled, and that the prophet of the days to come, will gather from this Man and His teaching, his inspiration and his power.

They "spake of His exodus," (Luke 9:31) of His going out. The word here unfortunately translated "decease" signifies infinitely more than our Lord's death. It includes every­thing that was necessarily bound up in the thought of departure—His death, His resurrection, His ascension. His DEATH was the first fact, but because "it was not possible that He should be holden of it," (Acts 2:24) RESURRECTION was the necessary sequence, and if resurrection, having tri­umphed over death, then ASCENSION to the heavenly places.

How much the word meant to these men! How familiar “exodus" must have been to Moses, carrying his memory back to that wonderful movement from Egypt. He would recall the moment of peril and of victory, when from imminent death God made a way of life through the cleft waters of the sea. Elijah, too, would comprehend the true significance of the word. What had his mission been but a leading out of the people, an "exodus" from a new slavery to a new freedom, in the government of Jehovah. Both these men had led in an exodus, and now they have come to speak of that of which those of the past were but a shadow. They talked with Him Who is “the Author and Perfecter of faith." (Heb. 12:2) That word “Author " literally means a FILE-LEADER, the Man in front, Who makes a track through the forest in which all that come after Him shall walk in safety. His exodus was to be a passing through death into life, through the baptism of passion into the infinite spaces of His Father's kingdom. The surging of the waves upon the shore of old, would speak to Moses of the waves and billows, that soon should break over the head of Him with Whom he held speech upon the holy mount as He should lead the way through death to life. Alone He breasted the waves, alone He broke the pathway though the forests. And until this moment those who have believed in Him are following in the way He led and because of His exodus, they also have theirs, and are led out to the infinite reaches of the kingdom of the heavens.

The presence of Elijah upon the mount, and his conversation with Jesus, was almost a more wonderful story. His message to men had been that they should live the life of righteousness, but this Man is about to give His life to be the new dynamic of righteousness. Elijah had only been able to tell men of the things of God, but this Man will not only teach, but will energize, will Himself pass into the lives of men, and give them power to do the things that He shall tell them they ought to do. Moses and Elijah talked to Him of His exodus, and found that in His outgoing through death there should be the fulfilling of their own dreams, the realization of their own ambitions.

If their presence meant much, their passing was also full of significance. A cloud of glory overshadowed and removed them, and in their removal taught the completion of their work in Him. There was now no need for Moses, nor yet for Elijah. All that the Mosaic economy fore­shadowed found its substance in Him, and Moses may pass back to the rest of the Father's house. All that Elijah had heroically said in the midst of much opposition, with falter­ing and even failure, Christ is now to say with absolute certainty, and never failing, and Elijah may pass back to the celestial spaces, to wait the consummation of the work of Jesus.

A significant statement by Luke is worth passing notice in this connection. "When they were fully awake, they saw His glory, and the two men that stood with Him." (Luke 9:32) The significance of the statement is that the glory in which Moses and Elijah stood upon the mount was His glory. They stood, these saints of the old covenant, in the light in which they shall abide forever. There upon the mount stood these representatives of the service of the past. Moses had died with sadness in his heart. The people, whom he had led for forty years, were still outside the Promised Land, and yet he had to lay down his work before it was completed. Elijah was translated very quickly after the terrible experience under the juniper tree, and while the people were still living in idolatry, he had been called away. These men did their work, and laid it down un­finished, but God had gathered them into the glory of His final kingdom, and now upon the mount had given them the promise that all they had left undone would yet be perfectly accomplished.

So through all the ages He will gather His workers, and at the last, in the light of the final victory, they will under­stand the meaning of their work. In a short time everyone will have to lay down unfinished life's work. Nothing can be completed here. And yet, at last, no piece of work faith­fully done will be lost. He will gather Moses and Elijah and all the company of His faithful servants, and show how their work merges into the work of Jesus, and there finds its crown and reward.