APR 19 2026 | Glory Revealed S1E2 | Echoes of Glory

Sea Change Church · Glory Revealed · "Echoes of Glory" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · April 19, 2026
Matthew 17:1–9
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Right on. If you have your Bibles, you're going to open them up to Matthew 17, 1 through 9. I've been encouraging you all that if you don't have a Bible you bring to church, that you start bringing your Bible to church. And I'm going to start bringing my Bible to church. I have not set a good example for that, mostly because there's not enough room for it on the pulpit. So maybe I'm going to have to get a little something-something or whatever it is to kind of buff out the pulpit a little bit.

They should have a TV show. Remember that one with your car? Buff out my pulpit. We'll call it that. Make my pulpit better. When I was at North Coast Calvary Chapel, they actually had a, there would be no pulpit, and then they would come remove a trap door, and they'd press a button, and a pulpit would come out of the stage. So we're actually working on that for here. And then I can descend from the roof. Wouldn't that be amazing?

So we'll just do it at Christmas. So with that said, we're in Matthew 17. I'm reading Jeff. Be praying for Jeff. Jeff, our resident media guru and also the reader of our scriptures, and 1970s radio host on one of the largest radio stations in America, has gotten a motor, he didn't get in a motorcycle wagon. Someone hit him when he was stopped. So be praying for Jeff. He'll be back soon. Until then, you'll have to deal with the dulcet tones of my voice as I read through this.

We're in this glory series, right? And we're at the transfiguration. Verse 1, and after six days, circle six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. He was then transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun. His clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, circle Moses and Elijah, you can write in your Bible, talking with him.

And Peter said to Jesus, look, it is good that we are here. Peter, if you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah. And while he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. 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. They were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. I love that, right? In the midst of the fear.

Saying, rise and have no fear. When they had lifted their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, don't tell anyone, tell no one the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead. Mmm. Really powerful. Jesus transfigured into a luminescent version of his earthly but would be his transcendent self. And unlike Moses, goes up to the mountain not alone, brings a group with him.

You can see there's a change happening. And we're going to be seeing the transition. And once again, last week we connected this back to the Mosaic glory, Moses going up the mountain. And we're going to be seeing the transition, the handoff of what was formerly earthly glory, which was given to Mosaic, Old Testament version of glory, to what would become a future glory, which is a glory as we saw in 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

I believe it was verse 18 or 8, where it says that that glory that you yourself, as a follower of Jesus, will be able to share in the same glory, 2 Corinthians 3, in the same glory from one degree of glory to another, that God takes his glory, he puts it not only upon you but within you, and we share the glory of Jesus in our life. And I mentioned that we know how to feel a lot of feelings, right? Glory has a feeling, but it's not the kind of glory of when you win a championship.

It is the kind of glory that comes from being known by God. And so we know how to feel fear. Some of us are pretty, I kind of perfected that one. I would put my ability to feel fear up to most of y'all, right? Some of us know how to experience melancholy, what they would call modern day depression. Some of us know how to feel this, that, lust, covetousness, hope. But glory that comes from a radiant beauty and expression of God's nature is something that he says that we can experience from one degree to another.

This is what the series is about and how we can do that. And Raphael painted a picture in his last painting, there's a picture of it, of this transfiguration. And in it, he morphed together the transfiguration. You'll see Peter, James, and John there. You're going to see Elijah. I believe it's Moses is on the left with the tablet, Elijah on the right. You're like, well, what's going on below him? Below him is another gospel scene of the father with the child that had been possessed by a demon, had epileptic fits.

As you remember, 28% of all Jesus' healings were demonically involved, had a demonic involvement. I don't think that number has gone down. And so what you see here, and what Raphael does an incredible job of, is showing the transcendent nature of the temporal and then also the ethereal. And there's a dividing line between the two. But the New Testament makes it clear that we're meant to live in the temporal but be able to access the ethereal.

And so what he does is he does that there. And as we press into glory, as we press into understanding the glory of God, this is one way that we do that. As we bring his glory, Jesus brought his glory in multiple ways. We'll talk about that next week, how to bring his glory to earth, but how to experience it. You see that with Raphael there. The main word today is, once again, it was, I didn't put this in the notes, but you can add it to the notes.

The word, once again, is glory, is our key word for the day. And we're going to continue to focus on that word. Last week it was chabad is the Hebrew word. And doxa, I believe, was the New Testament word. And so you see that, and there's two main ideas today. But here's, excuse me, one main idea before we get to the two sub points. One is this. And this is so powerful. This is from C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory.

Now, I want to encourage you. Last week I gave you Matt Redmond's album, Face Down. You can find that on Spotify. It's all about God's glory, the whole album. I think it's one of the top five worship albums ever cut. And it's a live album. A lot of you reached out to me this week and said that you had listened to it and that it was spot on. And you also were texting me a bunch of pictures of sunsets and stuff, which was awesome.

I got three or four people who were just texting me pictures like, here, I saw God's glory. I'm looking for God's glory. Look for the glory of God. The creation is one of the best ways to find it. And then we thank him for that creation. But C.S. Lewis says something. And if you, this is the other, the tool that I want to give you, the weight of glory. First of all, the first ten pages of this thing are arduous. Like I'm listening to it, you know, and I'm like, he's in the Sophocles.

And I'm like, dude, where are we? Wow. It's like super deep, right? Hang out, okay. Walk with him for a little bit. Let him hold his hand because he's going to get to this part of glory. And he makes a statement that I think is transformational when it comes to how we experience the glory of God. And I'll show it more in a little bit when I give the actual quote. But the main idea comes off his quote is that the greatest glory of mankind, that's men and women, is being accepted by and delighted in by God.

And if you can add to that, as father. Please add as father. Father, that there's no other glory that matters. That where we get any glory is not some luminescent, you know, brightness that comes from us like Moses' glory. That was a fading glory, it said in the scripture. That glory fades. Everything that you do. Maybe you were the best looking person in your high school, right? Amazing. You still have that picture, right?

When you were the best. I mean, I know what it was like. Obvious. No, I didn't. All that fades, right? But the glory that we experience. If there's anything that you can take in a good way, like Paul speaking about spiritual pride in a good way, not the bad spiritual pride, you can say the God of the universe not only knows me, not only has made me his son or daughter, but he delights in me. The God of the cosmos, the eternal God, knows you individually, and you matter to him more than anything else.

That is, that's all you need. That is where our glory comes from. And Satan wants to keep you out of touch with God's delight over you. And he doesn't want you to experience the weight of that. It's a weighty proposition. And multiple came of you, three of you came up to me after the service and said you would also experience the weight of God on you when you would experience him during worship. So I wasn't the only one that had had that other people in the congregation, which was great, and I appreciate you sharing that with me.

I got to move. Let's go. Number one is Old Testament glory versus New Testament glory. And then our glory is found in God's acceptance. Super powerful. If we end the sermon right now, you've got enough. Right? You've got enough. But we aren't going to end because we're going to look at the echoes of glory, and we're going to compare this scripture with the Old Testament. Once again, it's reaching back. So this is going to be a little bit of a Bible study today.

I'm going to put my John MacArthur hat on, right? We're going to do a little bit of a Bible study. Go to verse 1. And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, his brother, and led them high up the mountain by themselves. Well, this obviously reaches back to Moses going up the mountain twice. The second time that he went up before the second covenant, that was the time where the cloud descended. We'll talk about that cloud in a moment, but the cloud had descended the second time when he went up for the second covenant.

Remember, he broke the tablets the first time. He came down with the tablets. He's all stoked. He's got his little tablets there to show everybody, and they're dancing around a golden calf. And he asked his high priest, how did the golden calf get there? Well, they brought the gold to me, and I kind of threw it in the fire, and the calf jumped on out. Well, okay, didn't happen, Aaron, but you can tell that story if you want.

Moses breaks the tablets because the first covenant of the law is broken. We don't live under that covenant. We live under the covenant of grace, which comes through Jesus Christ. And so right when this going up to the mountain goes back to Exodus 24, when Moses also went up the mountain. But notice, as I said before, Moses goes up alone. Jesus goes up in community. The gospel is going out, and you are part of that community now in the next iteration of glory because glory will continue to ascend throughout eternity, or at least our understanding of his glory.

And that six days as I read it, I thought, that's not in there by mistake. I thought, you don't just throw in six days, you know, when they're writing, you know, back in the day. And so I looked it up, and it correlates to the second time Moses goes up in Exodus 24, 16. You'll find that in your notes. If you don't have it, write it down. The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai. And the cloud, interesting, because that relates to Matthew 17 we're reading, the cloud covered it for how long?

Six days. So Jesus goes up. It says, after six days, Jesus went up the mountain. And we see that we have a six days of the cloud covering the mountain. And on the seventh day, seventh day is the day of Sabbath. Seventh day is the day of reconciliation. Seventh day has all the, obviously, reaches back into Genesis. He's seeing all these tie-ins. You can spend a lot of time in Bible study this week continuing to go on.

He called Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now, I love some glory, and I would love to see some cloud. But as you see also in Matthew 17, we're not meant to dwell yet in the cloud. God pulls the cloud back. He actually ends, the cloud goes away when he says, Jesus says, go back to verse 7 of Matthew 17 in the notes. Jesus came and touched them, saying, rise, have no fear. When they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus.

And as they were coming down the mountain, this coming down the mountain is important because I heard when I was young, you don't want to be so heavenly-minded, you're of no earthly good. How you come down the mountain matters, but the key is you've got to ascend the mountain. And the Christian life, somebody came to me, I disciple a young man. He's in his 30s, and he reached out, and so he meets with me about quarterly.

And his question was, how do we persevere? How do you finish strong? And I said, well, I kind of think it's the same way you start. Like, I don't think the gospel gets more complicated. Read your Bible, you know, pray. Pretty simple. But I think it's going up the mountain with the Lord and then coming down the mountain and letting those two experiences inform each other on how you are to live. And so we want a church that comes down the mountain, is right?

That's just a little addendum today. So you see that six days, and then there's a seventh day. So we see that correlation there of this glory on the mountain. But it's harvesting the glory, not fearing, walking back out. And then it says, this is really interesting. In verse 5, it says, a voice came. We'll get to this in a second. This is my son whom I love, and I'm well pleased. They were terrified. Jesus touched them.

But I also like that, excuse me, in verse 5, at the end of verse 5, it says this. Listen to him. If you want to finish strong, listen to Jesus. Read his words. Do what he says. So that's the six days. The next we see that he's much like Moses is in verse 2. And when he was transfigured before them, his face shone like the sun. It was luminescent. Luminescent is light without heat. It shined like the sun. And his clothes became white as light.

Now this is going to happen in your clothes as well because we are sprinkled by the blood of the lamb, it says in Revelation. And your clothes, you will become sparkling white like this. That happens now. Recently in my quiet times, I picture myself before the throne of God and Jesus sprinkling me with his blood and me becoming white. And I try to meditate on that scripture when I think about my own, you know, humanness, my own sin before God.

I just regularly say, I need to be sprinkled with your blood. I need to be in your courts where you say that I am not guilty because of the blood of Jesus. And you should do that on a regular basis. Now you see that Jesus has this light that is far exceeding the light of Moses. But that reaches back to Exodus 34. I told you I was going to be John MacArthur today, didn't I? Of course, he wouldn't wear a t-shirt when he preached.

But nonetheless, Exodus 34, 29 through 30. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. Stop. When you talk to God, when you spend time with God, people will see it on your face. Recently with somebody, I said, you've been spending time with the Lord. They said, how did you know? I've been having these really great quiet times. I said, I can see it on your face.

You can see it. Hey, my mom just says on a regular basis, one of the things she says is, one of the best things you can do to be the most popular person is smile. You know what I mean? Let your face reflect the glory of God. As we come down that mountain, verse 30, Aaron and the people of Israel saw Moses and behold, the skin of his face shone. And they were afraid. There's that fear because God's glory should nuke you, right?

So big. They were afraid to come near to him. The Jesus' best friends were afraid of him. And he says, rise and have no fear. Do not fear as in the Bible I've heard. 365 times you get a verse for every single day. And we're definitely going to need that. So now you have the face like the sun. You have the six days. And now we have some friends that have shown up, right? You have Moses and Elijah. Now here's a little interesting thing.

Moses, I always thought this was a burn on Moses. God didn't let him go in the promised land. I thought he put up with a lot. I know he hit the rock. I know he was mad. But it just felt like an unfair judgment to me. I don't know if anybody else is with me. I'm like, Chris, you with me? I don't want to speak. Tell God what he should do with Moses. God said you may not go into the promised land. You may not cross over.

Bummer. Well then what's he doing there? Because God has grace and Moses made it to the promised land. And I love that. I love that Moses is in the promised land. He might not have gotten there, right, when he was with us. But on the other side he did. And I think God wants to take you there as well. And behold them appeared to Moses and Elijah talking with him. Why Moses? Why Elijah? Well, if you follow the ministry of Jesus, Jesus is regularly speaking.

And the Pharisees will come up to him and they'll say, you know, the law and the prophets. The law and the prophets are Moses and the prophets. They're referring to two things that matter back in the day. They didn't have Messiah. They had the law and they had the prophets. And the law and the prophets was the entirety of their revelation. They did not have the messianic revelation of grace that comes. That next testament and you become a living testament because of that.

And so Moses and Elijah there are strategically because they are encompassing the entire Old Testament understanding of all of the law and everything the prophets said. And that is why they are there. Now in Hebrews 1 through 3. I'm giving you a lot to go study this week. And I hope you have fun. Go to your favorite coffee house or wherever you're going to get your matcha. I can't drink that stuff. It's horrible. I don't care if it's ceremonial grade.

Nasty. Put coconut in it. The drink of millennials. Go ahead. No. Just kidding. My daughter drinks it too. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by whom the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us. How? By his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is what? Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. And you share in that glory, it says in 2 Corinthians 3. I don't have a purpose. What am I supposed to do with my life? That. Bake your bread. Dance your dance. Youth pastor your youth pastoring. Whatever you do. That's your purpose. And I know we feel unfulfilled when we don't get to do that thing. And God has put a deep longing. You know, it says when the heart becomes downcast when dreams are unfulfilled.

And I get that. But if we can replace our dream that Jesus is driving. I want to hitch a ride on the dream that Jesus is driving. Not on my own dream on a regular basis. I will, when thinking about glory, just so you know, I know it's going to be sad for everyone. I'm actually retiring from, completely retiring for the second time, again from basketball, this Thursday night. Don't be sad. I will sign any of your grow shirts.

I will sign them. Now, I'm at the Jewish Community Center League. It is a tough league. I just want you to know this. And I'm leading rebounders. 17.3 rebounds a game. That's a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Feel that glory? Woo! We won the semifinals and we're in the championship on Thursday. Everybody wants to come? 7.30 p.m. I'm hoping to retire with a championship. Here's, we were talking about winning the championship and I was with everybody and I'm so excited.

My body can't handle anymore. I'm going out again because I retired five years ago and came back for a farewell tour. And this story's going somewhere. And I was sitting there talking to some of the guys and I was like, yeah, I'm going to win that championship. Yeah. And they go, who won it last season? Everyone was thinking, who won the championship last? It was like three months ago. You know what I mean? It's like every three months we run it back, you know?

It's like doesn't matter. It's stupid. Like it's fun. But it's stupid. Right? Because I can't tell you, Thursday afternoon at four, so much of my self-worth is going in with all the other guys thinking about me. Are we going to win? Is the church doing? Whatever. And as I'm studying this, I'm just realizing it's just stupid. I mean, it's meaningful if the relationships. But like all of it's going away. You were the most popular person in your high school.

No one cares. I met the coolest guy in my high school, one of my high schools. I went to seven high schools because I got kicked out. I got kicked out of five. I got to hurry. I got to hurry. Okay. I got kicked out of a bunch of them. And I met this guy, and he was just in a place in his life that I was like, bro. Like, this guy, he was king. You know what I mean? He was like Henry VIII of our school. And I looked at, and I've gone to the reunion.

Have you gone to the reunion yet? You 10 years out, 15 years out? Go to the reunion. It don't look like it did in 1986. I'll tell you that much. You know, and the people who were kind of lame in the social order, they're super cool. They're thriving. You know what I mean? None of it matters. What matters is the glory of God. And according to C.S. Lewis, that's because God knows you. He knows who you are. He calls you son, and he calls himself your father.

I'm going to read two verses. I'm going to actually get them in the scriptures. One is Hebrews 3, 3 through 6. This illustrates just this enormous treasure trove of passages on the transference of glory that you can get into. One is in Hebrews 3, 3 through 6. Verse 5. Now Moses was faithful in God's house as a servant to testify of the things that would be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over God's house. As what?

As a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast to the confidence, boasting only in our hope. I mean, that is so powerful. That's out of Hebrews. Let me give you another one. Now, 2 Corinthians 3. There it is again. Now, if the ministry of death carved in letters on stone, we talked about that in Exodus 24, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze upon Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end.

It was coming to an end, just like all of our glory will as well. Will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? See how often they use the word more glory, an ascending glory. For if there was glory in the ministry that brought condemnation, then the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all. Facts. Because of the glory that surpasses it.

For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more what is the permanent has glory. The final point in closing is our glory is found in God's acceptance. You'll see this verse 5 in Matthew 17 has this addendum, this footnote tag to it, that is basically the same thing, except for listen to him, that is when Jesus comes out of the water on his baptism. Do you see that connection there? And it's interesting that the glory, this is what C.S. Lewis' argument is, that the glory that is associated with the thing that God says, why would he say this?

You know, what if he just said like, look how rad Jesus looks when he's really bright, you know? Like, look how cool we are. That isn't what he says. He doesn't talk about the glory of Jesus unto himself. He basically, he ends it in verse 5, And while I was speaking, 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. Our glory only comes from that.

You are his beloved daughter. You are his beloved son. He loves you. He knows you. He yearns to be with you. He thinks about you regularly. You are the object of his desire. You are the heartbeat in his chest. And when you understand that, you don't need to chase any other glory. But you can radiate the glory that comes with that acceptance. And when you walk into a room knowing that you are a beloved child of God, you don't have to prove yourself anymore.

You don't have to walk in and size up the room until you feel comfortable. I remember I was like that. I used to walk in somewhere, and I had to spend 5, 10, 15 minutes sizing up who's here. Oh, they got some good social clout. Oh, what about that person? I'd feel inadequate, or I'd feel superior, and I'd kind of find my place in the pecking order, and I wasn't comfortable until I got a lay of the room. I know other people that are abuse victims.

They say, I got to know where the exits are. I'm not comfortable until I find some exits, right? When you know that you are a beloved child of God, that's what you got to get into. C.S. Lewis then, in his quote, said, Glory for C.S. Lewis is not brightness, luminescence, or fame, but acceptance. The soul's desire to be known and approved by God, finally satisfied when we stand before him and are welcome in. He said, I summed up four things that he said.

Humans carry a persistent longing that nothing in this world can fully satisfy. Nothing in this world. The Jewish Community Center Championship will not satisfy that longing. I know you think it might. That longing, according to Lewis, is not misplaced. It's a clue pointing to beyond this world. That longing that you have, that thing that you need, it is God giving you a hint that there's something more. C.S. Lewis writes about Reepa Cheep, right, in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, my favorite character in the entire Chronicles of Narnia, and he's always on the shore wanting to go beyond.

He's always wanting to go to the other land, the further place, farther on, farther in. He's always looking to the next shore, over the horizon, into the sea. Lewis says what we actually desire is not merely heaven as a place, but it's the approval of God. The ultimate glory is to be noticed, known, and welcomed by God himself. Here's your two takeaways. One, relate to God as an accepting and loving father. No matter what the tapes tell you, no matter what you think God thinks of you, no matter what the devil tries to tell you, I'll just tell you I'm backstage.

You know what was going through my head? You're rejected. You've screwed up in your life. Father's rejected you. He's taking your anointing. None of this is going to happen. I'm back here. This is the stuff he gives me, right? Now, I'm just like, enough. You know what I mean? But I can tell you, it hits. Devil's going to hit you with all that, right? All your marriage or whatever. He's going to hit you with that constantly.

I'm just like y'all, right? I'm not from the South, and I don't know why I say you all on occasion. They snuck that over to California. I don't know how they got that into California, but they did. I hate you, Tennessee, for that. And then I would say, stop practicing image management. Just stop. Social media doesn't work anymore anyway. It's all fake. Like, I can't even look at it anymore. It's just everything's fake.

Like, I just, AI is going to kill, social media will be dead in five years. It's going to be dead. Because you're not going to be able to look at anything and believe it. So who's going to look at it, right? So AI will kill social media. So that whole thing that we've been doing, that's just my, that's my prediction. And then what will kill AI? Stop practicing image management. Like, be vulnerable, but not to the point where people may feel like they have to take a shower after they talk to you.

You know what I'm saying? But like, Theo Vaughn, I'm vulnerable. Let's not do that one. Stop practicing image management. The real longing is to hear God say, well done. Come further up. Come further in, is what C.S. Lewis says. In closing, the final thing I will say is I realize, as I walk through here, the shadows of 17 to 18, I think it's the count other pastors, pass me on a regular basis. I come here by myself and I walk and I walk.

And there's been other pastors and they've had their marriage issues and they've had their visions and they've had their good days and their bad days. And they've all just walked through this place and now they're just shadows. They've just blended into the, to the woodwork. And I just realized I'm the same. I'm just going to be a shadow that passes by. But I want to leave something for God's glory that is going to be transcendent of who I am or any talent I have or anything else.

And I want to share that with you, separate of you being here at this church. That you're just a shadow. You're just a whisper. But Jesus died on the cross so he could introduce you to his father. And that's the point of the gospel. The love of a father that says you're accepted. And that's our glory. Amen.