When John the Baptist was baptizing out at the Jordan River, there had been a group of priests and Levites who had gone out to him, sent out by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, to learn about who John claimed to be. They asked him a series of questions, to which John responded in the negative each time. John told them that he wasn’t the Messiah, so they asked:

Are you Elijah?

Are you the Prophet?

Why these questions? Elijah had already come and returned to heaven, and there had been many prophets, nearly all of whom the Jews had killed or persecuted and treated badly. Well, they asked these questions because of prophecies that they had read that had been written by Malachi and Moses.

First, Malachi had said that Elijah would come in advance of the coming day of the Lord. These were literally the very last written words of the prophets, approximately 400 years prior to John’s arrival on the scene:

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.

Malachi 4:5-6

Jesus later confirmed – in fact, immediately after the Transfiguration – that John the Baptist was the Elijah that was to come and he had prepared the way of the Lord in calling the people to repentance for their sins. However, Jesus also noted in that same statement about Elijah that he would also come in advance of the second coming of Christ.

Clearly, then, Elijah is an important figure in the ministry of Jesus and as he stood there on top of the mountain with Jesus at the Transfiguration, Elijah represented the importance of the prophets, those whom God sent to call his people back to himself in repentance and who told the people of the coming Messiah, fulfilled in the life of Christ.

In addition, though, we see that Moses is also there on the mountain top with Jesus and Elijah. Moses represents the Law, that which was given by God, through Moses, to the people of Israel as God made his covenant with them that if they would obey the commandments that he had given them, God would be their God and they would be his people.

Together in the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, whom Jesus had brought with him, were able to witness the representation of the Law and the Prophets and the fulfillment of all that both had said in the Messiah, in Jesus. Then, though, as Peter is blabbering on about building shelters for everyone so that they can spend the night, God interrupts him from above:

This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!

Matthew 17:5

So now, we not only have the Law, the Prophets, and the Messiah himself, we also have God speaking, affirming to the disciples that Jesus is his Son. He is the one with whom the Father is pleased and God tells the disciples, and all of creation through all time, to listen to him, to listen to Christ. His voice is the voice that counts. His voice is the voice of truth, the voice that gives life. He is from heaven, just as he said, so God calls us to listen to him. The Law? Yes, read it. Obey it. Do as it says. The Prophets? Absolutely. But Jesus’s voice is the one voice that is authoritative over all. Over the Law. Over the Prophets. Over all. Listen to him.