The readings for the Transfiguration of our Lord are taken from Exodus 24:8-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21, and Matthew 17:1-9.
According to Exodus, Moses and others went up on Mount Sinai to meet God, and God gave Moses the Ten Commandments written on two stone tablets. God appeared to Moses in cloud and fire. Moses was with God forty days and nights.
Peter recounts the transfiguration as evidence that our faith/belief/trust (FBT) are founded on fact, not fiction or myth. Central to the transfiguration is God, the Father’s own witness to the identity of Jesus. Jesus, as the substitute for all people under the law, IS the One with whom God is well pleased because He perfectly fulfilled all that the law requires. God’s Word is truth, founded in history and confirmed by so many witnesses. The value for us comes by looking at that Word until God’s own Spirit reveals the truth to us, just as the risen sun shows us the world around us as it is.
Matthew records the transfiguration of Jesus. God incarnate in Jesus Christ met Moses and Elijah on a mountain with Peter, James, and John as witnesses. Jesus was about the complete His obedience to the whole law AND His fulfillment of every promise and prophecy about our Redeemer that God had ever made. This witness to the divine nature and work of Jesus came just days before Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and Holy Week, which climaxed in Jesus’ death on the cross.