This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to week 19 of our look through the book of Matthew. Hi,
this is Pastor Tom. And that means we're in Matthew chapter 17 today.

You might remember we took a couple of extra weeks on some of the chapters. Day
one of chapter 17. And in this day, we're going to have a mountaintop experience
with Jesus.

You might know what a mountaintop experience is. It's a spiritual high. It's a
time when you connect with God or others in a special way.

Sometimes it happens on a retreat. Sometimes it happens on a literal
mountaintop. Other times at the beach.

Sometimes at the church. It's a time when God reveals or magnifies his vision
for your life. And here at the beginning of chapter 17, the disciples have a
mountaintop experience with Jesus to top all other mountaintop experiences.

Listen to what happens in the first eight verses. After six days, Jesus took
with him Peter, James, and John the brother of James and led them up a high
mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them.

His face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light. Just
then there appeared before him Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. Peter said
to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here.

If you wish, I will put up three shelters. One for you, one for Moses, and one
for Elijah. " While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them and a
voice from the cloud said, "This is my son whom I love.

With him I am well pleased. Listen to him. " When the disciples heard this, they
fell face down to the ground, terrified, but Jesus came and touched them.

"Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid. " When they looked up, they saw no one
except Jesus.

What an experience, this mount of transfiguration experience. And there's a lot
of different ways we could look at it. I'd like to look at it in terms of the
people that were there.

Who was there on this mountaintop? Well, first we see Moses and Elijah were
there. Now, how did God bring Moses and Elijah to be there on that mountaintop?

And how did the disciples recognize them, by the way? They didn't have old
Sunday school books that had pictures of Moses and Elijah from thousands of
years before. I don't know the answers to those things, but I do know that God
is God.

And if he wanted Moses and Elijah to be there with Jesus, he caused them to be
there. And somehow he caused the disciples to know, or Jesus told them, that
that's who was there. So let's look at who was there.

Elijah first was there. When you look at Elijah and his life, Elijah's life, in
one sense, is filled with mountaintop experiences. Elijah the prophet, you see
three major mountaintop experiences in his life.

Mount Carmel, Mount Horeb, and this mount of transfiguration. On Mount Carmel,
you might remember, he battled the prophets of Baal, and he won this battle
showing that God is God. He had the mountaintop experience there of a great
victory.

Then the tiredness of that caused him in confusion to run to Mount Horeb, and at
that place he expressed his great discouragement to God. So it wasn't a place of
great victory, it was a place where he went and he expressed to God his great
discouragement, and even depression. And God met him there.

You might remember God met him in the still, small voice. Mount Carmel, Mount
Horeb, and now the Mount of Transfiguration. This is a place of great worship,
of great fellowship.

We could spend all day studying just Elijah and his mountaintop experiences.
It's a good study in scripture to go back and look at the kind of experiences he
had. It tells you the kind of experiences you need to have with God from time to
time.

When was the last time you had a Mount Carmel experience, a sense of God's great
victory in your life? No matter how your life was going, you promised that
victory in Jesus for all eternity. Or had a Mount Horeb experience where you
were able to sit before God in discouragement and even maybe depression and say,
"God, I know you're there, no matter how I feel.

" Or a Mount Transfiguration experience, sensing the closeness of God,
worshiping God maybe like never before. Elijah was there. Moses was also there.

And there's something interesting about Moses being on this mountaintop. It is
in Israel, they're on this mountaintop, we're not sure what mountain it was,
there's a lot of guesses, but we know it was in Israel. You might remember the
story of Moses, that God, because of Moses' sin, because he didn't follow God's
commands, he was not allowed to go into the promised land.

He died on a mountain overlooking the promised land, was not allowed to go in
until here and until now. God allows, in this moment, Moses to be standing on a
mountain with Jesus and Elijah and the disciples, the three disciples, in the
promised land. It's a reminder to me that even in those times when we think
God's promise could never come true in my life, it's impossible.

You would think Moses' death would mean this could never happen. God still has a
way of showing his grace in unbelievable ways, in powerful ways. And so Moses
stands on this mountain in the promised land.

Moses and Elijah being there, there were personal experiences for them. And I
want to talk about the disciples and Jesus in a moment. But before that, there's
also a teaching that's going on here.

Why is Elijah there? Why is Moses there? God is using this as an opportunity to
teach the disciples.

The transfiguration teaches who the teacher is. Jesus is the teacher. It's not
Moses who represents the law.

It's not Elijah who represents the prophets. It's not Moses representing the law
to look to. Jesus fulfilled the teaching of the law.

He tells us this in Matthew 5-12. He fulfills the teaching of the law by writing
it on our hearts by the power of the Spirit. So he turns the law from empty
rules into an eternal relationship.

And the teacher is not Elijah and the prophets. Jesus fulfilled their teaching
also. You can read that in Matthew 5-17.

The prophets preached about judgment, but they ended with the message of hope.
And Jesus is the fulfillment of that message of hope. He's the fulfillment of
the overall teaching of the prophets, the message of hope.

He's also the fulfillment of many of the specific teachings, prophecies of the
prophets who look forward to the Messiah who would come. So Moses and Elijah are
there, and they have personal experience, but they're also there to show that it
is Jesus that we're to look to. Moses is there.

Elijah is there. Also, the disciples are there. Not all of them.

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him. Now, why Peter, James, and John? We
don't know all the reasons, but we do know that God had specific tasks of
leadership for them.

And Jesus tended to spend time with these three above all others because he knew
he needed to invest in their lives, I would suppose, for leadership. We know
that they were there, and we see the experience that these three disciples had
in two responses. First, Peter's response, "Let's build three tents.

" Moses and Elijah and Jesus, and he says, "Let's just build three tents and we
can stay here. " Now, all of us can relate to Peter. Peter's that guy who, when
he had nothing to say, he went ahead and said it anyway.

And he'd already known, he'd already been told that Jesus was going to go to the
cross, but he wanted to stay there. Sometimes you just want to stay on the
mountaintop. All of us can relate to this feeling that Peter had.

If you have an experience, a feeling especially close to the Lord, maybe at a
retreat or maybe even just in a personal quiet time, you just want to stay
there. But the truth is, we have to come down from the mountaintop. We have to
get our lives involved in ministry.

That special place of intimacy with God or with others that God's brought into
your life, he does it in this world to give you a taste of what heaven's going
to be like, but also to prepare you for the ministry that he has for you. Don't
try to hold on to it forever. He'll try to live on the mountaintop.

He'll try to build three-tenths. And that's not where God means for us to live.
He means for us to live in a place of ministry.

So the disciples, one of their responses is, let's build three-tenths. And then
the second response is, they fell on their face in fear. This cloud envelops
them.

They hear this voice, "This is my beloved son. Listen to him. " And they fell on
their faces.

And the Bible says very clearly, they were terrified. They weren't worshipping.
They were terrified.

This is one of the deepest spiritual experiences of their lives. And they don't
fall to their knees in worship. They fall on their faces in terrified fear.

We can't be in God's presence. We're not holy. What's God going to do to us?

When you experience the power of God, sometimes it brings terror. Not the fear
of the Lord that the Old Testament talks about, a reverential, respectful fear
of who God really is, but terror. What will God do to me?

The picture of God as being one who punishes, who's going to strike me with a
lightning bolt in this moment. Well, the truth is, Jesus is the one who came to
make sure that we know we don't have to be worried about that. We don't have to
worry about God's judgment because he's going to take the judgment for us on the
cross.

When it comes to this mountaintop experience, we're not disposed to build tenths
and stay on the mountain, and we're not supposed to want to flee the mountain in
terrified fear. We're supposed to focus on Jesus. In fact, that's what we're
going to talk about tomorrow.

How do you focus on Jesus? What does this experience teach us about focusing on
Jesus? But for today, I'm going to take a moment to talk to the Lord about
mountaintops in our lives.

Would you pray with me? And just in prayer, say, "God, thank you for the
mountaintop experiences. Those times when I feel especially close to you or
others, or when it seems like you open up heaven and you show me the vision for
what's next, or, Lord, those times when my sense of worship with you is so
close, so wonderful.

Those times, Lord, when even in discouragement, when I don't know where to turn,
when you meet me there and you encourage me. Thank you for those times. Lord,
forgive me that sometimes I want to live there and stay there.

You know why I do. I want to be close to you, but in this moment, I want to
thank you for those experiences and how they prepare me to serve you. If I need
an experience like that, Lord, help me to go to the mountaintop.

If I've had an experience like that, help me to share what you've said to me,
the strength you've given me. I pray this in your name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.