The Book of Mark
When Does Elijah Come?
Mark 9:9-13
Tonight we come to Mark 9:9-13 and just to refresh our memory, Jesus is trying to turn the attention of His disciples to His nearing death and in this passage He does it in a very unique way.
Mark 9:9-13
When we read that, it seems there are some details and vital information that is missing. As we work our way through it, I’ll try to help you with that. Let’s break it into three sections to help us digest what’s happening.
First all of all, there is
1. A Prohibition
They’re coming down the mountain from the transfiguration experience and there must have been a look of dazed shock on their faces as they try to process what just happened. They’ve seen the glory of God spilling out of Jesus, Moses and Elijah show up, and God speaks in an audible voice. That is not your typical day at church!
And maybe the detail that got lost in that experience is the conversation Moses and Elijah ahd with Jesus about how He would die.
And to top it off, as they are coming down the mountain Jesus gives them orders not to talk about what has happened.
Verse 9
Can you imagine how hard that must have been? When was the last time you had to keep a secret? Maybe it was the gender of a grandchild and the ultrasound results are confided in you and for whatever reason, there are orders not to tell.
Maybe it’s a surprise birthday party or a job promotion, or whatever. But here Peter, James and John, saw Moses and Elijah as Jesus is transfigured before them and God speaks and they are ordered by Jesus to not tell any of the details. I don’t know whether I could do that.
But the key to understanding why is found in the last phrase of verse 9. This was to be kept quiet until after the resurrection. An incomplete Gospel is not to be shared. The story was not about how He could heal or raise the dead. It was not even about what happened on top of the mountain.
The gospel is that Jesus died and rose again and anything less than that is incomplete and will mislead people. So His orders are to not tell anything until you have the complete message to share. It’s only after His death and resurrection that the great full story can be told and then He commands His followers to share it everywhere.
And as hard as it must have been to keep quiet, according to Luke 9:36, they did what they were told to do.
I think they did, however, talk to each other about it and the implication of verse 10 is they had lots of questions.
Verse 10
Now they should have understood what resurrection in general was. If they were students of the Old Testament, they were familiar with statements from men like Job who said, “Even if my body is eaten by worms, I’ll see God”, speaking of his own resurrection.
They knew the psalmist said that God would not allow His Holy One to suffer decay, but would show Him the path of life. And in Daniel chapter 12, they were fully aware of the promise of God that there would be a resurrection of righteous people and a resurrection of unrighteous people at the end of the age.
And they had watched Jesus raise people from the dead so they aren’t having a discussion about the nature of a resurrection.
They’re having a discussion about the resurrection of Jesus because that doesn’t fit their expectations of the Messiah. They know He’s talked about dying and rising from the dead and here He is talking about it again.
And boy, do they have questions. And even though they are ordered not to talk about it with anyone else, don’t you know they spent some long night together talking to each other about what they had seen and heard and what it all meant?
So first there is this prohibition from Jesus. Second, He talks with them about
2. The Prophecies
Verse 11
Now in their mind, even if Jesus has to die and be raised back to life, all of that must be going to happen very quickly. They’re still bent on avoiding suffering. They don’t want to talk about the death of Messiah, although they can’t escape it.
Remember what happened at the very first appearance He makes to His disciples? We are only forty days out from the resurrection and in Acts 1 He appears to tell them to hang around Jerusalem until Pentecost. Then they will be empowered to do the work He has for them to do.
Acts 1:6
The very first thing they ask about is the Kingdom. If they are going to be empowered, it must be to establish the Kingdom! That’s the mindset we see here in Mark 9. If He is going to die and rise, the glory is going to come right after that.
And they have a question about how all of that will go down. And there question comes right our of the Old Testament. In this case, the scribes have taught them correctly regarding Malachi 3.
Malachi 3:1
In other words, God promises that before Messiah appears, there will be a herald that goes before Him to prepare the way.
That is directly out of ancient middle-eastern life. Kings and rulers didn’t arrive in town unannounced. They followed a messenger proclaiming their arrival. He was sent ahead to prepare everything for His coming.
He is described in more detail in
Malachi 4:4-5
That’s why they were asking about the coming of Elijah. They were listening in Sunday School!
Read between the lines here in Mark 9, and what you find is they were convinced Jesus is the Messiah. They now know that. They have confessed it. It has been revealed to them internally and externally. They’re sure of it. They’ve just seen it in living color and had it affirmed by God Himself.
What they can’t figure out is that Elijah didn’t show up before Jesus arrived, and at the very least he should have stuck around after the Transfiguration. At the very least, what they expected to happen is for Elijah to come down the mountain with them, gather everybody together, march into Jerusalem and announce that God’s Messiah was right behind him!
And that didn’t happen. Elijah went back to heaven with Moses. He was supposed to come with them and fulfill the prophecy of Malachi. What’s going on? Why did the scribes tell us Elijah must come first if You are going to establish the kingdom without his announcement?
That’s a very good question. So He answers in
verse 12a
The first Jesus does is affirm the accuracy and truthfulness of Scripture. “The prophecy of Malachi is absolutely accurate. But while we’re talking about prophecy, let Me give you another one.” And it is found right in the middle of verse 12.
Verse 12b
In so many words He says, “You’re all caught up in a prophecy regarding Elijah when you need to be focused on prophecies concerning My suffering.”
Once again, He shifts the focus back to His death and crucifixion. And He does that by asking them to tell Him about the prophecies of His suffering. They could remember the prophecy about Elijah, but could they remember the prophecies about Him?
Let’s see, how does that go? He’s it trying to get them to focus on the cross. They are more concerned about Elijah’s prophecy, So he takes them to Daniel and the Psalms and Isaiah and Zechariah and what they wrote about His suffering and death.
They’re asking how can You be Messiah if Elijah hasn’t come? And He responds by saying, “How can I be Messiah if I don’t suffer? That’s the bigger question.” They’re asking how can You be Messiah when Elijah hasn’t come? He’s asking, “How can I be your Savior if I don’t die in your place?”
Well the truth is the Elijah prophecy will be fulfilled at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Elijah will most likely be one of the two witnesses on the earth during the Tribulation time and Malachi’s prophecy will find its fulfillment at that time.
They had no way of understanding the timing of the church age and all of that. Jesus doesn’t even try to explain it. Instead, He focuses them on the cross because more important than all that, Scripture says that Messiah must die.
That leads us to a final thought. We have the prohibition from the Savior, we have prophecies from the Scripture and finally, we have,
3. The Preview
Verse 13
Now verse 13 is a very interesting verse to me. If you had been standing there listening the day Jesus made that statement, or if you just look at this verse and you don’t pull the rest of the Scripture and what Jesus said about Elijah, together you could be confused by it.
But without any hesitation, straight Jesus says Elijah has indeed come. Don’t you know when Jesus told them Elijah had already come, they must have really been confused. It’s confusing enough to us when we have the rest of the Bible to add it’s commentary and explanation.
I think I would have been tempted to say, “He has? What do you mean he has?”
They had just seen him on the mountain, but that certainly could not be seen as a fulfillment of the prophecy where he will come to prepare the way fo the Lord.
I’m glad we have the privilege of having Scripture to help us understand. Turn to Luke 1.
Luke 1:5-17
The prophecy of Malachi is actually fulfilled in tandem. There is a symbolic, church-age fulfillment in John the Baptist as he came in the spirit and power of Elijah. And for those of us who receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, we see that fulfillment in him as he came preparing the way of the Lord.
Listen to Matthew 11: 7-15
Hypothetically if you had accepted him and accepted his message and accepted the Messiah, he would have fulfilled that Elijah prophecy. But that couldn’t happen. That’s pure hypothesis because if they had accepted John and accepted Jesus and there was no cross, there would be no salvation. But what our Lord is saying there is, he is not the final coming of Elijah. He only could have been if you had accepted. That’s not the plan. So he’s a preview. He’s Elijah-like. He’s in the spirit and power of Elijah.
The Jewish fulfillment of that prophecy will come at the end of time when the Lord returns to this earth and will be preceded by Elijah himself. The church will have been removed and the Lord will return in power and judgment to establish a Kingdom. And at that time, Israel will receive her king.
John then becomes a preview of the final Elijah. There will be the coming of Elijah before the Lord comes to judge and establish the Kingdom, but when he came the first time, there was a forerunner who came in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare a people for the arrival of Messiah. He was that Elijah-like prophet.
One more thing before we close that I want to point out to you.
Mark 9:13b
“They did to him whatever they wished, as it is written of him.”
If we go back to the physical life of Elijah, we discover they didn’t do to him whatever they wished. Elijah defied death. Jezebel vowed to kill him, but was unable to do that and eventually God sucked him off the earth in a blazing chariot.
John the Baptist, on the other hand, they did do to him whatever they wished as he was beheaded for preaching God’s judgment on Herod.
However, if you look ahead to a future time in Revelation 11, you will find two witnesses who are sent to the earth during the Tribulation.
Even though they have tremendous power, God allows them to bne killed and their bodies lie in the streets of Jerusalem and thye become the objects of ridicule until they are resurrected by God.
Is it just possible that a Sovereign God Who sees beginning to the end allowed John the Baptist, as a fulfillment of the coming of Elijah, also allows him to be a preview of what will eventually happen to Elijah in the last days? I think so.
And he stand in those dual roles as testimony to the amazing consistency of God. John the Baptist will come in the spirit and power of Elijah announcing the coming of the Lord. Elijah will come before the Second Coming as a messenger of the judgment of God.
John was a preview and a fulfillment. The way they treated John was consistent with the way they treated Elijah. ANd the way they killed John is a preview of what they will do to Elijah in the future.
And through them, Jesus is just clarifying the true Messianic plan. This is the way it’s going to be. The forerunner preview version comes, John the Baptist, is rejected and killed. The Messiah is rejected and killed and rises in the future. The prophesied Elijah comes, is rejected and killed and raised again as the Kingdom is established.
And what we learn is it is all in God’s hands. It is affirmed by God through the presence of His saints, both past and future to remind us there is no glory without the cross and the resurrection. There’s no gospel without the cross and the resurrection.
