In Matthew 17:1-8, Jesus takes Peter, James & John up a high mountain and shows His heavenly glory.
He transfigured ("metamorphosis") before them and appeared as bright as light speaking with Moses and Elijah.
Moses, the lawgiver and Elijah, the prophet symbolized the quintessential "Law and the Prophets" (i.e., the OT as we know it).
With Jesus in their company, their meeting symbolized perfect salvation plan of God, the coming together of fulfillment of all things.
In a moment of awe and trepidation, Peter blurts out his desire to remain in this place of indescribable glory and offers to build three shelters for Jesus, Moses & Elijah.
But "while he was still speaking," it says, God speaks.
This "mountaintop experience" was marked indelibly in Peter's mind as we can see from his confession in his letter towards the end of his life:
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. (2 Peter 1:16-18)
The danger that Peter and everyone else who have had such glorious experience of God's presence - a revelation of His goodness, faithfulness and love - face is the desire to remain there up on the mountain, away from the drab, mundane, often troublesome valley of reality below.
Mountaintop experience is not the place we are called to remain in comfort and contentment. If we do, we risk spiritual stagnation.
Any stagnant, stale water without inlet and outlet for water flow is fertile breeding ground for pestilent insects like the mosquitoes.
We become perfect breeding ground for Satan to plague our souls and destroy the work of God in our lives.
If we do not come down the mountain to the valley below, we become spiritually stagnant, wanting to go from one height of experience to another - hopping between mountain peaks, never wanting to touch the valley below. But the real Christian walk is done in the valley of the demon possessed.
Jesus and his three disciples descend the mountain to find a father with a demon-possessed boy.
Jesus drives out the demon and the boy is saved.
If Peter and the others had stayed up on the mountaintop, they would never have seen Jesus at work.
It is true for us.
If we try to remain up on the mountaintop of spiritual "highs," we will never witness Jesus at work in our lives and others. In fact, we will never truly grow and mature.
Mountaintop experience is always followed by the valley of the demon-possessed.
The retreat we have just had this weekend marked the beginning of or the point of encouragement for our spiritual walk. We are not called to go from one experience to another, but to live our lives in the valley of every day life and walk with the Spirit.
And it is here in the depth of the valley that we taste and see that the Lord is good.
--from Nakwon EM June 10th Sunday Worship Service
12 comments:
I think you should make recordings of your sermon. This way, we can hear it everyday... =)
I volunteer!!!
Sorry... we're working on it, but we have some complications like lack of appropriate equipment to get this going...
Bug Tobi. She'll come up with somthing with her techno-wizardry with enough pestering.
=)
great...more things to think about. you guys are going to kill me one day.
to live in Christ. to die is gain.
i meant, to live IS Christ...
hee
All we need is a recorder that journalists uses...
Everything has been recorded from the retreat if you want to hear it and it's pretty scary though...hehehe
recorded? what do you mean?
You don't know what does recorded meeeeaaan...?
O_O
how did you record it?
Put a tape in my recorder, press record and change them to other side when they finfished.Once both sides finished take out and put another tape...I even interviewed some people, well...only one for my reference...hehehe
I had an idea way before the retreat to record the sermons actually..But everyone says it's not a great idea because JDSN would do something , i don't know what she would do to me or to my recorder :-)
Anyways it wasn't a good idea as i thought it would be...but it's very helpful during the week...some part can be used for scary movie or something...
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