Plays On Word Radio
An in-depth look at the Word of God, the Plays On Word community, and the Plays - with original music - we perform, that are based on the Word of God. New episodes drop Fridays at 7AM EST! To find out how Plays On Word Theater can perform 'LIVE on YOUR STAGE' and to support this missionary & podcast visit: https://playsonword.org/
Plays On Word Radio
Ep 158: From Shepherds To Transfiguration - Seeing God’s Glory Up Close
"Have you ever wrestled with the line between bold faith and careful wisdom? This conversation invites you to slow down, look up, and let Scripture set the pace. Today on Plays on Word Radio."
We trace God’s glory from the shepherds’ night in Luke 2 to the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, and reflect on choosing wisdom over risk during a winter storm that halted our trip to America’s Keswick. Eyewitness faith, inner transformation, and simple worship shape how we move forward together.
• update on America’s Keswick and our planned 'CHRISTMAS JOE' presentation
• the shepherds’ encounter with the angel and heavenly host in Luke 2
• the Transfiguration and the meaning of metamorphosis in Matthew 17
• Romans 12 on inner renewal versus outward conformity
• Peter’s eyewitness account in 2 Peter 1 and its weight for faith
• discerning faith versus presumption in travel and ministry decisions
• community, worship, and songs that steady the heart
• plans to return in spring and requests for prayer support
Please be in prayer for us.
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Lord, you know! It's the best. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I'm not even in the right key. He busted that song out. The name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, and welcome to Plays on the Word Radio, where we have to analyze work and play on the Word of God. Thank you for joining us on the security today. Let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr., the founder of Plays on the Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01:Hey men, well thank you. Welcome to every one of you to Plays on Word Radio. My name is Fred David Kennedy Jr., otherwise known as Pastor Teddy or Pastor Buck. That's what they call me, Pastor Buck, because I pass the buck to the Lord. He's the boss. I'm the horse. Well, no, actually, he does the work too. Like, we're any work that's meaningful, that means anything. So my father-in-law used to say, sometimes you're the boss, sometimes you're the horse. Uh, I guess that doesn't really apply. The Lord is always the boss, and his strength is what we do things in. Anyway, welcome to all of you to Plays on Word Radio. Thank you very much, Katie Kenny and Josh Taylor, for the introduction. And uh last week we were contemplating whether or not we were gonna make it up to the Northeast for a play at America's Keswick and in New Jersey, in Whiting, New Jersey. And we um we have brought many, play brought all our plays there to the colony of mercy. It's a place where guys can really recover from addiction and and they can really press into their relationship with the Lord to get to know the Lord. There's guys there that come there and not even believers, and they leave on fire for Christ. So the work they've been doing at America's Keswick has is uh I want to say oh well over a hundred years. Something like that. We need to get our our dear brother Rob Russellano, the mayor of Keswick, um get him here to talk about it. And uh we were planning on coming up to do Christmas Joe, believe it or not. We were gonna do Christmas Joe at the end of December, but it was for a pastor's conference, and most of the pastors there have not seen our Christmas Joe presentation or concert. And with Christmas Joe, we do a 30-minute play, and then after the play, we do about 45 minutes of hymns and songs that are Christmas-based, like Mary Did You Know, Go Tell It on the Mountain, um, Silent Night, uh, God Rest Ye, Mary Gentleman. All these hymns and and songs are based on what happened to the shepherds. And I'm gonna give you those of you that are new to the broadcast, Christmas Joe takes place at the manger scene, and Joseph looks up and he uh basically tells the shepherds to be quiet because he just put Jesus and Mary asleep, just got them to sleep. And the shepherds are still there. And the shepherds you can read about in Luke chapter 2, the shepherds just came to tell their story about how they saw an angel, they saw an angel, and then they saw multitudes of the heavenly hosts, and they were all proclaiming glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will. Can you imagine being a shepherd? First of all, middle of night, or at night, it's come it's completely quiet, and then all of a sudden, some dude is standing before you, and his clothes are basically glowing. His cl- I mean, I don't know if Hollywood has done anything close to, you know, so we could even try to visualize. His clothes look like lightning. Lightning. An angel. You know? Doesn't really say they look like lightning, but I'm just trying to draw upon other heavenly encounters with angels. Um and usually when the glory of the Lord, the Shekinah glory, uh, is involved, it the only way to describe it is white like like like lightning. How do you know that, Pastor? Well, do you remember the transfiguration of Jesus? When Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain. And uh you know what? Let's read it. Yeah, we're gonna shift into our Pete play right now. Listen to this. This is from Matthew. It says, and after six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them. What does that mean, man? He was transfigured. I believe, let me check it. I believe the Greek is is the word metamorphosis. Yeah. It's a form, it's a form of uh metamorphosis, it's where we get our our word metamorphosis, uh metamorpho-o, the verb, he was changed into another form to transform, to transfigured. And interestingly enough, it the same word is used in the book of Romans, where Paul's writing to the Romans in chapter 12, and some of you are light bulbs, are going off right now. Yes, that's right. Chapter 12, um, verse two, where Paul actually, you know what? Let me let me let me let me read you the whole one into because you know I'm I'm a context guy. So uh chapter 12 of Romans, verse 1. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Verse 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And when he says, Do not be conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind. That word transformed is the same word. He says, Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, and it's a metamorpho. Probably butchering that. First century Greek speaking Christian would be like, What? What are you talking about, man? Metamorpho, what? No, no, no. Metamorphosis, metamorphosis, we we use, and it's not a conforming to pressure from outside, like clay. It's not a change that comes from an outward source of power or an a um uh outward, outward influence pressure. Metamorphosis is really the idea is a change coming from within. Now the Holy Spirit within you is the one that's doing the metamorphosis in you. In the case of Jesus here, though, in Matthew, we go back, it says verse 2 of chapter 17 of Matthew, he says he was metamorphos. He was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun. His clothes became white as light. Shone like the sun. His face shone like the sun, meaning it was so bright. You can only look for a little bit, man. You can like you ever look at the sun? There's this pond in my my backyard, this lake, kinda. And uh on a clear day, if I'm out there reading my Bible or whatever, if I look up and the sun is on the is is really reflecting in such a way the angle that I'm catching the reflection in the water, or as they say down here in North Carolina, in the water. And the and there's a bunch of ripples in the water, why in the in the water, forgive me, I'm trying, I'm working on it. I'm trying to get right down here. And the sun, and I look at the water, and then I look back to my Bible or my book I'm trying to read. I see nothing but blue spots all over the place because the sun reflected. It was so bright, so bright that it actually imprinted on my retina. And that's what uh Matthew's saying, man. It was basically, you know, his face shone like the sun. You can only look for so long, and then you could see a number of spots. And then it said his clothes became white as light. This is amazing. If this didn't happen, Peter, James, or John, somebody would have corrected it. But no, Peter actually references this in his letters. Yeah, all right, we're we're going on an ADD trip. Let's look at sometimes ADD Bible study is where it's at, man. So in 2 Peter, in his letter, the letter of 2 Peter, in verse chapter 1, verse 16, Peter drops the bomb and he says, For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, comma, but we were eye witnesses of his majesty. Verse 17. For when he received honor and glory from the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, comma, quote, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Close quote. We ourselves heard this voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And I'll stop there. That's Second Peter talking about this incident that happens in Matthew 17 that Matthew's describing. And let me let me continue. His clothes shone like the uh back in Matthew chapter 7. His clothes became white as light, verse 3. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, two of the most important characters in the Jewish lexicon, Moses and Elijah, with him, they appeared there. It's amazing that Peter, you know, as far as I know, Moses and Elijah, they didn't have name tags. What did that look like? How did Peter and James and John, how did they know that was Moses and that was Elijah? Did Moses have his staff? Or did they have a word of knowledge or something where they just knew, yo, that's Mo. That's Eli. You know? They but they knew they understood. And they were talking with Jesus. Verse 4. And Pete now Peter has to jump in. Peter said, Lord, it's good that we're here. If you wish, let us make three tents. One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. And then Matthew adds in verse five, He he was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my son with whom uh this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. And then it says, when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, Rise, have no fear. And when they lifted their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus. Now back to our main point, which is the book of Luke, this Christmas story with the shepherds. And you know, it said the glory of the Lord shone around them. And this this glory, this, this glory that that Peter, James, and John saw, man, they got a dose of it. Uh Isaiah gets gets a glimpse of the glory of God, man. In chapter six, he looks and says, Whoa, in the in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Train of his robe filled the temple. He gets a glimpse. And he's like, you know, he sees he sees the seraphim flying, saying, Holy, holy, holy. He sees this scene, man, and the glory, and he was overwhelmed because of his inadequacy. Absolutely amazing. And these shepherds, they get a dose. These shepherds out in the field, they get a dose of the glory of God. And they're proclaiming it. They see the angel, he says, Fear not. I bring you good news. This day is born in the city of David, which is Bethlehem. In the city of David, who uh a savior, born a savior at this day. Who is Christ? In the Hebrew Mashiach, but it wasn't written in Hebrew, it was written in Greek. Andor Aramaic. It's possible spoken in Aramaic. But the manuscripts we have, the extant manuscripts, are in Greek. Christos. Christ. And this will be the sign to you. You'll find a baby uh wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God, saying, Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth. And among men with whom he is well pleased. This is something else, man. This is amazing. And we were gonna bring this. We were all geared up to bring this to America's Keswick. And then the nor'easter storm kicked in, and we were we were playing it. We're waiting to call it. We were still planning on coming up. We were like, maybe, maybe it won't it won't be that bad. Maybe it won't be that bad. And looking at the reports and the amount of snow that was coming and the roads and the fact that north I think even North Carolina declared like a state of emergency. A bunch of the Northeast Corridor, 95, every every all the way up 95. It was a state of emergency. So I just had to make the call that it wouldn't be wise to drive up beyond the road when they declare a state of emergency. They need first responders and people to be able to get, you know, and they don't need to be responded to me off in a ditch in a snowbank. So to our we were real sad about that having to um cancel. And it, you know, it's always hit and miss for plays on word in January, February, and part of March. And let me back it up. December too. It's yeah, December, even, which is pretty rare. We get snow in December, but um, but yeah, it the winter months are difficult for us touring-wise in the northeast. Uh hopefully we'll we'll be touring the south uh this year. But the problem is, even the south got hit. Texas was blasted. Um, Georgia got and Alabama, all of them. Tennessee got hit with ice and all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, we're we're disappointed in that. We're really disappointed that we missed, we haven't missed that pastors' conference in years, and we love all the folks and all the people. We really just have come to dearly love all the people involved there. My my man Roy Larson and Jackie Larson. Roy's the he's on the board of plays on word, and he's also the base one of the bass players. And um, oh last year at the pastor's conference, he just grabbed his guitar. He just grabbed his guitar and went up during a uh what was it, man? I don't remember what it was like after the all the sessions, and then he just went up and started leading worship. And it was such a sweet, sweet time of praise and worship. He was playing really simple old songs, but everybody knew the words. Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be the name of the Lord. Most high. The righteous run into it. They are safe. Yeah, that was him. Yeah, man. He just busted everybody went into it. He he brought the house down. I know Roy was disappointed that we couldn't make it up there. Roy, please forgive us. We do have a a doctor's note. We have a good excuse. Uh we do plan on making our way back to America's Keswick in the spring. Um so and thank you all for praying for for wisdom because part of me was tempted to just push it and trust the Lord. Trust God, have faith. Talk to the storm. Um yeah, no. Um I just uh no. I I felt in my heart it was not it was not the uh uh it doesn't mean I'm lacking faith. Sometimes the Lord gives us wisdom to make a correct, wise decision, and I believe we made a wise decision. So anyway, yeah, just wanted to share that update with you guys. Thank you for supporting Plays on Word and being with us and being with us every Friday morning. You know, hopefully you are blessed by our little quick ADD Bible study today, running through. Uh next week we're gonna have something good for you. God willing, Lord willing. Please be in prayer for us. And uh yeah, and we are a we are planning on we are planning on having Dan ready. I don't know exact date, but we're planning on having it ready, okay? So pray on the the final touches on that whole thing. Alright? And until next week, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peep.
SPEAKER_00:This program was made possible by the Playson Word family of supporters. To find out more, check out our website at playsonword.org.
