11/02/07 A View From the Mountain Top

2PE 1:16-18 For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, "This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased"-- and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.

There are events in each of our lives

that alter the course of our lives forever.

And most of the time, I think,

we rarely see them coming.

We are studying Peter’s 2^nd letter

and we’ve reached a point in his communication with us

at which he wants to offer us his credentials for the authority he is claiming in our lives.

He wants us to trust him,

to trust his Divinely appointed right

to say the things to us that he says.

That may seem strange to us

who now live in a world in which Peter is without a doubt

the best loved Christian in the history of the world.

But at the time he wrote these words,

even though he was certainly well respected and trusted within his immediate group of believers,

he had already seen more than a little of the deception and corruption

that has become such a dominant part of religion during the past 2000 years.

And he wanted to offer those who would read his words in the years ahead

some valid proof of his right to speak.

And so he takes us back

to what was certainly a major pivotal point in his life.

As with most of us in the defining points of our lives,

though this experience certainly altered Peter profoundly forever,

he did not see it coming.

It was one of those God things,

a Divine set-up,

an encounter between an arrogant, self-reliant, self-sufficient Simon Peter

and His Creator.

And since Peter uses this event

as one of his major claims to authority

I want us to spend a little time with it.

In fact, I want to do the best I can

to allow us to be there with him,

to see what he saw,

and hear what he heard,

and feel what he felt.

And to do that

I’m going to borrow a portion of Peter’s words from The Fisherman

to help us join Peter on the mountain top.

This event took place at least two

and more likely three years into Peter’s friendship with Jesus.

Buy this time Peter thought he knew the Master pretty well.

Certainly he knew him as well as anyone did.

On this particular day

Jesus roused Peter, James, and John early in the morning

and invited them to join him on a hike up a nearby mountain.

They hiked for some considerable time,

picking their way through the rocks

with each step giving them a more glorious panoramic view of the world below.

Eventually the Master came to a stop and sat down

and the others followed his lead.

All of them were hot and sweaty

and it felt good to relax.

And I’ll let Peter tell you the rest of the story.

The warmth of the sun on my face

felt good after the climb.

I wasn’t going to sleep, of course,

but just a little rest in the warmth and the quiet seemed only natural.

As I stretched out on my back,

I noticed James and John following my lead.

I’m not sure what it was that woke us.

It may have been the noise.

It may have been the light.

But whatever it was,

I came out of a deep sleep knowing something was different.

The sun was still shining,

but the scene before us

made our sunlit surroundings seem pale by comparison.

Just a few feet away from us

Jesus stood talking with two other men.

The first and certainly the most dramatic aspect of the scene was Jesus’ appearance.

I can only describe him

by saying that he was clothed in light.

It wasn’t just that he was glowing.

It certainly wasn’t as if a brilliant light was being pointed at him.

It was more as if he had become light himself.

We could still see his clothing,

but his entire being was bathed in a radiance

unlike anything I had ever seen before.

I have seen the metal craftsmen

heat iron and bronze until it glows white-hot.

It was something like that without the heat or the fear of injury.

For several minutes we sat in silence

listening to the conversation taking place before us.

The two men were also clothed in light.

Jesus addressed them by name as they talked—Moses and Elijah!

They were talking about the preparations being made

for what Jesus referred to as his “departure from Jerusalem” in the near future.

It was the strangest sensation,

sitting there, listening to them talk.

Have you ever seen a child attempt to converse with a group of adults,

believing in his childish mind that he is communicating on their level,

being accepted as an equal in their eyes?

As I listened to Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah,

I suddenly felt like that child.

For the past three years,

I had been talking with Jesus,

living with Jesus,

offering him suggestions and advice.

I knew we were not really equals,

but I allowed myself to believe we were not far from it.

Had he not chosen me to be with him?

Had he not equipped me with the ability to do some of his works?

Did he not genuinely delight in my friendship?

And yet now,

watching Jesus engaged in conversation with these two supernatural personalities,

discussing issues I could not even begin to grasp,

cloaked in some sort of heavenly brilliance,

I suddenly saw my own infinitesimal stature next to the Master.

We listened to Jesus’ conversation with his visitors

until it ended and Moses and Elijah departed.

The silence following their departure was more than I could take.

I don’t do well with silence.

Jesus said nothing.

James and John just sat there in silence.

It was up to me to fill the void.

I sprang to my feet and babbled,

“Master, this is great! If you want, we can make three tabernacles here: one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Even as I was speaking,

a sort of radiant cloud suddenly appeared just above our heads,

blocking the sun while at the same time filling our world with light.

It dropped over our heads,

swallowing us instantly in its heavy, glowing interior.

Though we were only a few feet apart,

I could no longer see Jesus, James, or John.

We each found ourselves in total isolation,

and yet I had never felt less isolated in my life,

for the cloud itself contained a presence

that somehow communicated itself to every sense and sensation of my being.

It was at the same time terrifying and thrilling,

as if I was somehow being immersed in an endless sea of liquid life.

I dropped to the ground and buried my face in the dirt.

Then a voice came from the midst of the cloud.

Have you ever heard thunder?

I mean really heard it—heard it explode just above your head,

causing the ground to shake under your feet,

obliterating all other sounds and senses?

Now can you imagine what it would be like

for that thunder to suddenly form itself into words and speak?

If so, then you have some sense of what we heard.

The words and their meaning were unmistakable.

“This is my Son, my chosen one; listen to him!”

Then, as quickly as it had come, the cloud departed,

leaving us in absolute silence.

This time, though, I had no desire to speak.

Everything that needed to be said had just been said by God himself.

For several minutes we continued to lie there,

our faces to the ground.

When we finally looked up, we saw only Jesus standing next to us,

looking as human and safe and wonderful as we’d ever seen him.

It changed me, of course,

that morning on the mountain,

but not in the way you might think.

When it was all over, I was still just “Simon Peter,” the man.

In fact, even more so, if you know what I mean.

Having entered into the very presence of God himself,

and having heard him speak to me in audible words,

with a voice that could create or destroy anything, everything at will,

I came away profoundly aware of my own finite humanity.

Until that day I had spent my life comparing myself to others,

using what I chose to see in them to feed my own pride and arrogance.

Look at my strength!

Look at my skill!

Listen to my bellowing voice!

I am great among men!

But those few seconds in the presence of God

provided me with a mirror in which I caught a fleeting glimpse of my real self.

For the first time I understood Isaiah’s agonized cry

when he too entered into the presence of God.

“Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

Isaiah came away overwhelmed with his sinfulness.

I came away overwhelmed with my arrogance.

It wasn’t that I saw myself as having no value.

Indeed, it was exactly the opposite.

Everything that happened that day between myself and my Creator

confirmed my incredible value to him.

But it was a value absolutely unrelated

to anything I had ever done or ever could do.

I had value to him simply because I had value to him,

and nothing I could ever do or not do would alter that reality.

I left the mountain that morning

knowing I was a tiny speck of God’s infinite creation

yet a speck who had incomprehensible value to him.

Those few minutes in the presence of God

provided me with another gift as well.

Having seen the real thing,

I can now so easily recognize the counterfeits.

There are so many games used by Satan

to cheat and rob the people of God.

One of his most effective

seems to be inviting God’s people into a kind of spirit-world communication

that plays on their egos and bolsters their pride.

He feeds them messages and offers them experiences

that seem to confirm for them an elevated status in the family of God.

They come away feeling as though

they have become skilled in the ways of the spirit world,

qualified to interact with the presence of God at will.

To those who have been so deceived,

let me speak the truth.

Entrance into the presence of the real God,

the living God,

is the most humbling of all human experiences.

If you find yourself coming away from spirit-world exploration

focused on yourself and what you’ve learned and what you’ve experienced,

seeing yourself as a select member of a privileged few within the family of God,

then you have simply been deceived into playing ego games with the devil.

For, you see, when we enter into the real thing,

with the real God,

we do not come away focused on ourselves.

We come away overwhelmed with him, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

And if we see ourselves at all,

we see only our unworthiness

and the inexplicable wonder that he loves us as he does.

OK, that’s the event Peter was referring to in his letter to us,

an event that affected him as deeply

as any other event in his life.

To have heard the voice of God Himself

giving him absolute validation of who Jesus was

and what He was doing

was quite simply huge.

And after reminding us of that event

he then goes on to apply it’s significance to our lives in three areas.

He says,

2PE 1:19-21 And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

OK, the first thing he says is, And so we have the prophetic word made more sure...

And what I hear him telling us

is that there are times in our lives

when God will arrange events in our lives

in a way that makes it a whole lot easier

for us to trust what He’s said to us in His written Word.

And I need to emphasize something here

to be sure I’m not misunderstood.

First of all, let me state the obvious -

everything God has said to us is absolutely and utterly true.

Everyday of our lives

we are engaged in a relentless battle,

a battle in which Satan will repeatedly take events and circumstances in our lives,

hold them up before our face

and use them as evidences that our God does not love us,

or cannot be trusted.

And seeing those lies for what they are

is a big part of the warfare we are called to each day.

And I will promise you

that, if you attempt to correctly understand your God

by beginning with your circumstances in life

you will fail miserably.

You see, that’s exactly opposite of the way it works.

We must begin by understanding who our God is

and then we have some basis for seeing and relating to our circumstances correctly.

But having said that,

there are times when God knows we need a vision beyond the veil.

We need a clear, powerful confirmation

of His deep love for us

and absolute faithfulness to us,

a confirmation that comes to us through His direct intervention

in some circumstance or event in our lives.

And when He does this

let me just say that you’ll know it’s Him.

You won’t be thinking,

well, maybe that was God showing me something.

Do you think,

when that cloud lifted from Peter on that mountain,

he said to himself, “Well now, I wonder...was that really God?”

If He chooses to intervene in that way in your life

you’ll know it’s Him

because you will come away from that event

with a deeply intensified awareness of His love for you and His absolute commitment

to bringing about all that is best in your life.

In other words,

it will confirm what He’s already told you through His written Word.

Second, talking about God’s revelation of Himself to us, Peter goes on to say,

“...to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.”

And I have to tell you that I do love statement.

I love it because once again Peter captures for us

the real life churning

that is so much a part of our walk with our God.

Do you know what that “dark place” is that he talks about?

That dark place is us,

our minds and our emotions and our memories

apart from the light of His truth and His love.

And in that beautiful statement

Peter describes for us

an experience that is a part of every growing Christian’s life.

He talks about us, in our darkness, and our confusion, and our doubt, and our fear,

staring at this light - the words, the truth given to us by our God.

And he urges us to keep staring at it,

to make it our determined point of focus,

no matter what’s coming at us from any other voices,

...until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

That is Peter’s attempt to put into words

what happens within the human spirit

when we finally see and believe the truth.

Because when we finally see the truth,

when we finally gain a tiny glimpse

of the real nature of our God’s love for us

and of His faithfulness to us,

our spirits will respond

by recognizing it as the most wonderful, beautiful thing we’ve ever seen.

And obviously

Peter wants us to understand

that our doorway into those points of discovery

is through our wrestling with God’s communication to us,

staring at it,

churning over it,

refusing to turn away from it until we finally see the truth.

And why does it have to be that way?

Why does it so often take that kind of determined commitment from us

before the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts...?

Well, I can think of at least two reasons right away.

The first is simply that we have no idea how deeply corrupted our own reasoning processes are.

When God begins that life-long process

of renewing our minds to His truth

He’s not simply talking about feeding us a pack of Bible verses

so that we can whip them out and quote them to ourselves or others when they seem to fit.

He’s talking about

rebuilding the very core foundations of our entire reasoning processes.

Prior to our union with our God

we have approached all of life,

and certainly developed every “logical” reasoning process within us

on the assumption that God isn’t there,

or isn’t good,

or doesn’t really understand us and our needs,

or that He simply doesn’t care all that much about us.

And reworking those lies within us is a slow, massive process.

But I think there is a second reason why there is so often

a gap between our hearing the truth

and that truth lighting up our spirits,

and it has to do with faith - our choosing to trust what our God says

even when what He says seems unreasonable or wrong to us.

You see, this business of choosing to believe what our God has said to us

is at the very core of our relationship with our Creator.

Do you remember what Adam and Eve did

that shattered their relationship with God in the first place?

Just one thing - the refused to believe what their God had said to them about that tree.

Do you remember what our God asks from us

in order for us to be freed from the curse that came upon the human race through Adam and Eve?

Just one thing - choose to believe what God has said to us about another tree -

the tree upon which Christ paid our debt for our sin forever.

And in my experience,

and apparently in Peter’s experience as well,

with most of the truths given to us by our God

there is a point at which we must first simply choose to believe what He’s saying to us,

even when it seems to make no sense to us at all,

to choose to believe before we see the fulfillment of the promises He’s made to us.

Well, there’s a third part to what Peter says to us in these final verses of chapter one,

but I think we’ll save that for next week

because it actually fits best with what he does next as he moves into chapter two.