Well, good morning everybody and Happy Labor Day. Listen, if you are in the house today, you are my favorite people on the entire planet. If you're at the lake, it's a different story. Um, thanks for being here today. I know it's kind of that last moment of summer we got a lot of people traveling. But here's the cool thing that the pandemic has taught us is that we can be the church everywhere. And we're excited about being here today, excited about some groups that are just going to be walking back onto campus. Next week, it's going to be a little bit more life here in the church, just walking through just some steps of what life can look like. Well, I got to thinking this week on kind of part of my role as a pastor, as a Bible teacher is to really and truly just bring clarity to kind of two different concepts. The first concept over here is kind of who God is, it's the attributes of God, the qualities, the life of who God is.   But on this side, it's really just to bring clarity on how it is that we're to live out our faith.  How we are to represent God.  How we are to walk with God and how we are to point our lives in a direction that just gives Him, just honoring Him, gives Him glory. And here's one of my incredibly difficult parts of that task is that there's so many of you, and I know that sounds weird, but go with me just for a minute. And I want you to think about something. 

There's so many of you that aren't alike. There's some young people in the house. There's some old people in the house, there's some really, really joyful people. And then there's other people in the house. There's lots of different thinkers, there's kind of concrete thinkers, and there's kind of just out over the rainbow thinkers. And there's, just such a range of people and I want you to hear just kind of from a communicators heart that when you walk in front of a crowd, it's really hard because there's this just fear in you that half the crowd has just totally checked out from what you're saying. And I get this, I know you've never done this, but you've probably got friends that have gotten here. And I'm always in this fear in teaching that, about half of you are really just here, but you're not here. Maybe you've checked out or maybe you're already like right now you're already checking your social media feed. It's been 10 minutes, or maybe you're already playing Candy Crush.  You know, I don't know. I don't kid around when I see that happen all the time. And here's the reason why.  There's some of us who have gotten to points in our lives to where we feel like we've gotten things accomplished in our lives, or we feel like oh, well, he's not talking to me right now. So I'm just gonna check out or maybe that's not a common struggle of mine and so I'm just gonna check out and so when we communicate, we realize that we're speaking to like five different groups in the room. But here's one really cool thing that has come out of the pandemi, alright, if we can say that.  One kind of thing that has kind of risen to the top over the last six months is that it's kind of just simmered some some kind of common struggles. It's kind of simmered to the top some kind of common difficulties and it's kind of risen some things to our minds that over the last couple of months have just kind of been exponentially bigger than they've ever been before. And one of those things is just the idea of fear. And it's the idea of just this fear and this increased level of exposure to whether it's national events or community events, or even global events. Over the last 6 months, if you think about what has happened in your life, in my life, and in all of our lives over the last 6 months, we have become professionals, at so many things that we used to not know anything about. 

I mean, here's the thing, every one of you in here knows how to solve the pandemic. At this point, every one of you in here knows how to solve the school crisis. At this point, every one of you knows how to solve the mask or no mask problem at this point.  I see you post about it all the time. You talk about it all the time. We've kind of gotten to be professionals at this global affairs market. And what has happened to us it just seems like For some reason we begin to be professionals at searching the news, at searching the articles, at searching the things that are going on all around and we've got our ear to the community, like we've never had it before. And here's, what I want to tell you this morning. At one level, that's incredibly positive. It's incredibly positive that we're kind of keeping our minds and our eyes kind of seeing what all is out there. But on another level, I just think it's weighing on us. I just think it's putting this undue weight on us  that I'm not sure God really ever wanted us to have. I get to talk to my granddad a pretty good bit. He's 90 years old. And I ask him questions like, hey, tell me what you think like, how is the world operating right now? I mean, is it really true that we just kind of crossed over the line and the world is just kind of going to hell in a handbasket right now. And he's like, no.  He goes, the world is no different than it's ever been. He said, you just hear about it. Because when I was a kid, which was a while ago, you just didn't hear. And isn't that true? I mean, think about where we are right now. We hear every thing.

We hear, and it's some levels that's healthy, but at some levels, man, it just drags us. And we take this weight on to us that I don't think that we were designed to have on a global scale. I want you to think back with me just over the last couple months. Last six months of our lives, what do you think about this perfect storm that really I'll say that Satan, I think has just been able to take advantage of.

I mean, think about this perfect storm of life. I mean, number one, there's some of us that have never been concerned with our health before. But all of a sudden, it is just kind of risen to the top, has it not? I mean, we're just kind of concerned a little bit, we're just kind of worried a little bit.  Some of us never even knew what a virus was until about six months ago. And now we don't even want to touch people anymore. I mean, we just kind of got in this mindset that we're fearful of our lives. We're fearful for our health, and it's valid. We're fearful for the health of others that are vulnerable around us. And as a result of that, what has happened? We've gotten fear for our lives and we've been asked to isolate right? We've been asked to pull back from community, we've been asked to pull back from people and what have we done? We've honored that, we pulled back, we locked ourselves in our houses, we only had online groceries for a little while and we watched those when those came into our house for a while.  

We isolated and we kind of got internal a little bit, we started turning into ourselves a little bit, and then we had to find other ways to fulfill this community. And so we started watching the news. We started scrolling the articles. We started reading the right wing and the left wing.  We started getting more mad. We got updates on our phone every time a new number came out or a new raid came out and we all became professionals. But then all of a sudden, what happened is our church was limited. The people that we did life with was kind of pulled back a little bit weren't we?  I mean, we were kind of fearful. We want to do the right thing. We want to be the good community members, right? We pulled back we isolated, we kind of suspended public gatherings. I mean, it was the right thing to kind of honor those requests, right?  And then we got pulled back from our communities of faith. So now we're scared, we're isolated. We're by ourselves, we're just kind of wallowing in our owness. And then all of a sudden the racial tension, the greatest in my lifetime, probably most of yours as well started rising to the top, right? 

We started to see all of these, tension moments and a lot of just kind of nastiness of just hearts of people  that are just absolutely away from God. And we started just feeling the weight of the global racial kind of tension that we are walking in, one more time Satan gets to kind of step into it. And then we got even farther, didn't we? Then we started fighting each other on how to get out of all this problem. And we started saying we should be here or we should be there and even people didn't like each other started fighting and then we got one more problem then we added schools to the mix, right? Now we're in real big trouble because we want to go back,  we don't want to go back. We don't have to go back, we can go back. We don't know how to fix any of this stuff. And now we got 17 internet things going on in our house all the time and we really need them to go back, right?  I mean, we need all of this to happen. All this tension. What are we doing? We're looking outward. We're looking outward. We're blaming,  we're saying this can be fixed and then all of a sudden we start fighting each other and we don't even know what we're fighting about anymore. I mean, we're just fighting. If you say yellow I'll say green. I don't even care. I just want to argue with you a little bit. I mean, I'm  just getting sparky, why? Here's what I've noticed. A lot of Christians right now because of this perfect storm, a lot of Christians have kind of fallen into or a lot of followers of Jesus have fallen into kind of a couple of different categories in the middle of this hurting, in the midst of this isolation. And I think the first one we kind of fall into this category of just reverting back to our old selves and we just gave up.  I mean, just to be honest, I know there are a lot of believers that have just kind of given up on life right now and they've become nasty people and they've become just kind of angry people. They become just ornary people that nobody wants to be around. There's some others of us that have just kind of gone numb. Right? 

This is a good percentage right here. That have just kind of been soaking it in and soaking it in and looking at the world and looking at our nation and looking at our community. And we kind of just kind of put our hands in the air and we just kind of gone flatline numb to the world.  Where it's like, well, I can't fix it. I can't do anything about it. I'm just gonna forget about it. We've just gone numb but then there's another category of us and that's where I think a lot of us are is we've shifted our mindset over to an incredibly outward perspective of life, forgetting that God wants to speak to us. And here's what we've done, I need to give you a warning this morning.  We have started looking at the condition of the world, we've started looking at the condition of our health, the condition of the political parties, the conditions of racial tensions, we started looking at all of this stuff and we've allowed this cloud to be over us to the point that we are no longer personally seeking God to speak to us. All we're doing is asking him to work out there to work with others.

And I just want to be a voice of balance today because I think we're missing some things. And look, there's an incredible intention on loving people and you know, we just talked about the gospel last week. That is a heartbeat of mine, the heartbeat of this church. I know that nowhere in the world and loving the world and having mercy for people but I want to be a voice of balance I want to be a voice of warning today because here's what's happening in this world where so much global information is hitting our mind is that sometimes we're focusing so much on what is happening out there that we're missing the heartbeat of God and a personal experience of what He wants to do in here.  In here, and look, I get it it's hard. This is hard right now but hear me.  Let me just give you an example. This is what I hear so much of.  Matt, I just really have a burden. Matt we just really need to pray for our nation. Matt we just really need to pray Matt, our nation right now, our nation right now, our nation right now and our world right now.  God would you just send a revival,  we just say it.  That's an incredibly great thing to sing about and I love it. I would love to see God do something big in our midst. It would be huge, but can I just tell you I wish as a pastor, I would hear more of this, Matt can you just pray for my heart right now? And, I know there's even some tension in saying that because of some of you that are choosing sides.

Like, "well Matt if you're praying for your heart, then you're not praying for the nation." That's not what I'm saying. I'm telling you, that I right now, man I got a burden for the hearts of believers right now. I've just got a burden. Because I think there's a perfect storm that is just kind of shifting around that has taken us to such a global perspective that we have forgotten that first and foremost that God wants to do something in us. So here's what I want to tell you for the next couple of weeks. We're gonna look, we're gonna kind of pull back on some global thinking just for a minute, and we're going to look at us.  We're going to look at our personal walk with Jesus and we're going to see in the middle of this, God willing, that our personal moments with Jesus, they shape us and here's why.  Before I get accused of not loving the world, because I love the world, here's the principle I just want you to see, we first have to experience God in private before, here's the principle, before we will ever be effective in public.

Now, let me just say that again, we must experience God in private before we will ever be effective in public.  Because, what God does to us and in us and through us in private is what drives us and ultimately, the world will see happening in us. I mean, how many of us for six months now because we've been drug into the pandemic, drug into the isolation, we have forgotten that God wants to have this personal one on one relationship with us.  And instead of spending time with God, we spend time making sure we're up to date on what all is happening out there in the name of Jesus, of course, right? In the name of Jesus, we have done that. So here's how we're going to do this over the next couple weeks.  We are going to just dissect a passage of Scripture for the next three weeks, we're going to look at one of those passages of Scripture that kind of pulls back the curtain a little bit and shows us what happens when us and Jesus, alright are just intimate, are personal when we get together.  We're going to look at one of these private times with Jesus as God begins to show us a model of how we can walk with Jesus. And it all comes from one passage of Scripture that we really kind of glaze over and a lot of times it gets a little bit out there, but I want to do my best to kind of really go deep and have a deep dive into Matthew chapter 17, into this moment of the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Harrah. Now, here's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna just take some truths from it. We're gonna take some passages from it. We're gonna take some one liners from it. And we're just going to allow God to speak to us. Now, let me give you liberty just for a couple minutes. Forget about what's happening out there. Alright? Just forget it. 

I want you to see what's happening in here and I want us to use these guys as the goal to be able to do that.  Matthew 17:1 says this, I'm gonna read the whole story, read the whole account, and we're gonna come back and get some background.  It says this, "After six days, Jesus took with hHim, Peter, James, and John the brother of James, and led them up on 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 them 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 youn't enough? 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 covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my Son whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!"   Verse 6 says, "When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified.  But Jesus came and touched them. Get up, He said." Oh, Jesus is like, hey, nothing big happened right here, come up. "Don't be afraid. When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus."

Now, I love this event, because Jesus speaks into these future leaders of what really and truly becomes the foundation of the faith, the foundation of this worldwide movement that happens across the planet, and we're gonna see how a lot of this starts.  Now, I want you to notice how this text starts. Because it's a phrase that many of us when we read the Bible, we just kind of skip over it. We just kind of launch over this phrase. And I want you to see verse one, it starts with these three words. And it says this, after six days.  After six days, to which leads us to the question of,  after what?  Right?  After what?  We got to look at this, if we're going to study the Bible, to which we have to go back to chapter 15, and we have to see what is happening. And this is a big point that I want you to be able to kind of grab onto. After six days what had happened before this?  Matthew 15 and 16 where its this combination of incredibly big events and the disciples lives as well as in the lives of all this region that they were doing ministry in.  You'll begin to see if you go back and look at them this week in Matthew chapter 15. There's this feeding of thousands of people. There's these miracles that are happening with thousands of people Jesus is spending time with the Pharisees. He is spending time with the disciples. And Jesus has this incredibly big following around him and these huge ministry public events are happening in Jesus's life. Jesus, He predicts His death. He predicts His resurrection.  Peter stands up and the only way Peter can do it and speaks out against it. He's like, nope, I'm not gonna ever let anybody kill you and Jesus is like well then get behind me, Satan, because I'm dying and I'm raising for you.  Jesus begins to ask these people that, hey, it's not enough just to walk with Me. You got to take up your cross, you got to follow Me. He heals people. He warns them that they shouldn't have this kind of outwardly life and earthly focus that they should be just piling their lives into Him. And I want you just to feel the weight of chapter 15 and chapter 16. Because there's a reason there's an incredibly big transition right here. 

Chapter 15 and 16 focuses on the hugeness of the events of Jesus and then we have right now, a private moment. We have this private moment. And here's what's happening. All those big crowd events. They're kind of in the rearview mirror. They're behind them. They're kind of a little bit in their past. It's six days later. And now it's kind of like there's a scene change. When you're watching a movie, you go from this scene over to this scene. It's exactly what the Bible uses in this transition. And I love these little phrases, because Jesus is about to do something so profound in this private moment, that it's not only just going to change these guys, but it's going to change the rest of their lives. It's gonna change what happens in their lives. Now, I want you to feel the difference here. Because when you're looking at the Bible, so much of the New Testament is Jesus at these really big public events, right? He's healing people. He's raising people and these guys, the disciples that were with Him, they loved it. They loved to walk with Him and loved to see His power and His majesty. They loved to see Jesus introducing himself to hundreds, even thousands of people at a time they love to see people fall at the feet of Jesus and meet Jesus. But the public events of Jesus's life were designed around this idea that Jesus's character, and Jesus's love would shine. But the private events, anytime you look at the Bible, and you see the private events, when he pulls the disciples aside, when he pulls one person aside, it's the private moments in Jesus's life that radically change people's hearts. They radically change their hearts. Now, here's the principle in this, that I want you to see.  The power, the wisdom, and the revelation that we receive and the private will always dictate the life that flows from us in public. Always, and Jesus knew this. This is why we see this trend of Jesus pulling people aside. This is why we're seeing in the story that six days later we go from this hugeness of this event to this intimate moment with Jesus walking with these couple of people. And Jesus, what is He about to do? He's about to crack open the veil of heaven. He's about to show these guys a glimpse of His divine glory. Because remember, Jesus held back a little bit, right?  He held back part of that divine nature. And He held that part of who He was. And people just kind of saw Him as a good teacher as a moral person and as a provider, but now Jesus is about to go big with these 3 people. You know, it kind of got me thinking this week?  It got me thinking that He went really big with these three, because these are the 3 that made themselves the most available to Him, these 3 guys. 

If you look at the New Testament, it was these 3 guys that every time Jesus was on the scene, who was with Him?  These 3.  Every time they were sitting together, who was on his right, who was on his left?  It was these 3.  Every time they were walking every time there's people talking it was these 3 people for He's about to do this. He's about to show them this incredible moment, himself this incredible revelation. Why? Because they made themselves an incredible, incredible group of guys that were with Him, personally. Here's what I kind of walked away from with this.  If I'm going to get serious about knowing Jesus more deeply than I'm going to have to prioritize my time alone with God, listen to me, above everything else in my life, above everything. What does that mean? That means that I need to get to a point in my life where I realize that my time with Jesus means more than my time with anything else.  Matt, you say it means more than my job? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Matt, you're saying that means more than my marriage? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Matt, you're saying it means more than my kids emphatically? Yes, it does mean more than your kids. Matt, what about my golf and my tennis? And what about my video gaming? And what about my media presence? Listen, it means more than any of that.  And here's what I've learned when I prioritize my time alone with God, here's what God does. He absolutely blesses it. And the rest of those things fall into an order that I could have never gotten into an order. I could have never gotten them to fit. So we're seeing He pulls back a little bit, and He starts walking with these guys in this private moment, this intimate moment, and it's where He wants us.   I would have loved, I'm just gonna tell you.  I would have loved to have walked Matthew chapter 15, and 16, with Jesus, I just would have.  Why?  Because I love public gatherings of Christians. That's why we've worked so hard about being back in this building, being safe in this building, doing what we can to bring back worship in this building. There's power in the public worship of Jesus. 

There's power in the public moments of Jesus, there's power in our groups getting better and getting back together next week. There's power in that.   Don't get me wrong, public ministry is incredible of Jesus. But I'm going to say this, that its in the private intimate moments that Jesus speaks to us the strongest. So if you're looking to get your fill, if you're looking to get your whole spiritual tank full from a hack like me on Sunday mornings, it's never gonna work. It's never, you're always going to be left wanting, you're always going to be left about 60% on a good day, most of those about 30%, all right? I'm just saying, I'm not the answer. Your life group leaders are not the answer. It's private, intimate moments, six days later.  Six days later, but what do those moments look like? You know, people like me all the time. They stand up in front of you and they're like, you need to spend time with Jesus and you need to have a quiet time. We use all this Christian language.  You need to have a devotion and people are like, I don't even know what that means. What are those private times look like?   Here's the incredible freedom in them.  They look incredibly different for everybody. They do. They look incredibly different. Some of you love mornings with God, that's me. I love morning time. First thing, give me a big ol cup of coffee and let me sit at my desk and just leave me alone. That's my goal in the mornings, right? Some of you are nighttime people, you're like, Matt I am a nasty person in the mornings I needed to be nighttime. That's cool. Some of you are lunchtime people, you just kind of check out at lunch for a little while. Have your moment in the word that's great. Some of you are devotional people. Some of you are Bible app people just trying to keep the streak alive, right. Some of you love, love, love. You know where I'm at. I'm really like that to man, when I fail on that thing. I'm like, no. I mean, some of you love walking through books of the Bible. Some of you walking through devotionals.  Some of you love just kind of there's different nuances to exhaustive prayer lists, and all of this stuff. 

There's so many ways to spend personal time with God. We can't walk through all of them. But here's what I want to do this morning. Because this is so important. I want to give you 3 just common elements that need to happen. If you're gonna walk with Jesus personally, here's 3 common elements all of our times with God if you're going to do it, you're going to have to have these 3 in your time. Number 1, it's intentional solitude. Intentional solitude. Now that sounds really churchy, alright?  I get it. All right? But here's what that means. We live in such an incredibly instant society, to where we want everything now, we want every bit of information you want to fact check every single quote that I have, every single verse, I get it, we're an instant info society, but sometimes God just wants you to sit with Him. He wants you to sit with Him. And notice the two words that I put on this is intentional and solitude.  The word intentional literally means that I plan it. I plan it. This could be absolutely life changing for some of you. Do you know that you need to plan your time alone with Jesus because if you don't plan your life, your life will plan for you. It will.  You plan the things that matter most to you. If you don't plan your time with Jesus, if you don't put it on your calendar, if you don't put it in your phone, if you don't put it on your refrigerator calendar or your family whiteboard, however you function if you don't do that, if you don't plan it in your life, you're not going to do it. You're just not. If you don't put a pole in the ground and say, this is my intentional moment, when somebody says, acn you do this? You're like, no, I got something going right now.

It's my time with God. But the second word is solitude, right? And what is solitude?  To me, it just means you're alone. It just means it is you and it is God. It is you are disconnected. You have turned off all the other stuff. There's no news on in the background. You're not scrolling the ESPN app, you're not looking to see what she wore yesterday. It is you and God in this intentional moment where you're looking at God saying, God, I am here and I'm with you and you alone. It's intentional solitude. But there's number 2, and this one's equally important. It's a prepared heart. It's a prepared heart. I'm not giving you a system. I'm just giving you some nuggets that need to be there.  You say, Matt, prepared heart, that's kind of a theory? It really just means this. It means there's a moment where when you have sat down in your intentionally alone place, that you come before God and you're just transparent with Him. God, I'm here and I'm hurting. God, I'm here and I'm struggling. God, I'm here and I'm mad at you. But God, I need you to work in my heart. I need you to move in my heart, you not worried about anywhere else yet? See, most of us when we sit down in our time alone with God, what are we doing? We're praying for grandma. We're praying for that other person down the road. We're worried about the world affairs.  We're trying to call down, revival, where God's going, no, no, no, that's not the start. The start is you need to prepare your heart. Why? Because what happens in here determines what goes on out there. What happens in here. It's a prepared hardest, it's that moment where you go, God, I need you to speak to me. I want a heart that needs to follow you. And here's what happens when we intentionally get alone and when we begin to prepare our hearts. Here's what happens. God listens. He listens to us.

But then there's number 3. It's the Word of God. It's the Word of God. This is the 3 prong. Every single person when you spend time with God, intentional solitude, prepared heart leads to the Word of God.  And it's where,  what do you do?  You open up scripture and you hear God speak to you by reading the wisdom and the knowledge of God and He gives you that transforming message that you want to have. Can I just tell you that when these three things meet, when these three things mean, over time, with consistency, one degree at a time, your life will be changed. It'll be changed. I can promise you..  Will it change tomorrow when you do it? Maybe, maybe not.  Will change next week when you do it?   Maybe, maybe not. But if you will commit, I'm telling you, if you'll commit to be intentional about this every single day, if you miss it, nobody cares, right? God doesn't care. He's like, hey, I got you, alright?  But just get in the groove of having this part of your life because in time with consistency, big things happen. Now I get it when you read the story, you're like, Matt, how's this working out? Well, it's working out like this.  These guys, what are they doing? They're having this intentional moment with Jesus. How's it intentional? Because Jesus is there with them. Right? They kind of got a little bit of an advantage, they're with the Word of God. The Word became flesh. It's Jesus. Right? He is the Word. All right? Is their heart prepared? Oh, yeah. Their heart is prepared. Why? Because they're walking with Jesus. I mean, it's hard not to have your heart prepared when the Messiah is walking in front of you. You get the message, right? But look, let's keep reading the text. Let's keep bringing it right here. I told you we're in this passage for the next three weeks. We're not going anywhere fast. Here it is. After six days, Jesus took with Him, Peter, James and John the brother James and He led them to the high mountain by themselves. Now I want you to see the plan right here. The plan is incredible. Why? Because Jesus, He always has a plan. He's not just floating around just kind of thinking of something to do. Jesus always knows with them and with us what to do, how to do it, why to do it.  He always knows who He wants to be there, how?  Because He's God. He's God and there's 3 stages of Jesus's plan right here that it's the same as our life and the same plan that He wants to walk with us. I mean, number 1, the first stage is that Jesus just chose them. Chose them to walk with Him. Can I tell you something? He's chosen us to walk with Him. If you're a believer in this room, if you've given your life over to the Lordship of Jesus, He has chosen you. What does it say in John chapter 15:16?  It says this, "You did not choose me, but I chose you",  this is Jesus talking, "and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit-fruit that will last-so that whatever you ask in My name, the Father will give you."  Jesus chooses these guys. 

They already knew Jesus as Savior, but He chooses them to walk with Him in this special, incredibly special foundational way. Now the idea here is that the all powerful, all knowing, all present God, He calls us to walk with Him, He calls us to be with Him. Why? And this is huge because He's Lord and He's in control. This takes so much pressure off of us that God calls us to be with Him. He calls us to walk with Him. This got me thinking this week,  I mean I ask questions when I'm reading the Bible. I just ask questions. I don't know why. It's just who I am. It got me thinking this week.   Would God have chosen me out of the disciples?  Or would  I've been kind of one of those with a little bit of FOMO, right? I would have been one of those guys back ast camp going, well, I wonder where those guys are going? How come they get to go? Can I tell you why they get to go? It's pretty simple. They were the ones that were closest with Jesus. He chose them. They made themselves available. Here's the question.  Are we making ourselves available to Jesus so He can fully speak personally to us? He chose them but He didn't stop there. I mean, secondly, he led them. He chose them and He chooses us. He led them; Peter, James, John, they had no idea where they were going.  Jesus is like, hey, let's go, right? I mean, it just told us He chose him. Jesus took with them. But look at this in verse 1 it says, after six days, Jesus took with him, Peter, James, John, the brother James, and led them. It's the second part of the plan, right? If you don't hear anything else that I've said today, hear this.

I alone cannot go to the mountain with Jesus. I gotta be led by Him. You know what that tells me? I try to live the Christian life so much on my own and I can't.  I just fail at it. But Jesus, what is He doing? He's offering the life that I can live with Him. This takes so much pressure off of me. Listen to this quote by Thomas Young, he kind of describes what it means to be led. He says, "To be led by Jesus means that we see our selfish motives for what they are. We reject them and we focus our hearts on the one who deserves every fiber of our affection and loyalty. Therefore, we boycott our self seeking agenda. We lay aside our own desires, wants and personal quests, and we drive toward the heart of God." What does this mean? It means to be led by God means that we just submit to His love and to His power. It means that we ask Jesus this idea of Jesus when you call I say, yes, it's a spirit of this incredibly complete obedience to go Jesus, I'll go with You wherever You want me to go. It's this posture in our lives, we're saying, Jesus, I don't really know how this is gonna work out. I don't know if this seems like the best thing but if you're saying we need to go, then we need to go.  You see so many times we come to God and we beg God.   God I just need You to move in my heart. I need You to move in this nation. I need You to do something big I need You to, I'm pleading with you God and all Jesus is waiting on us to grant that request is that we allow Him to lead us. We allow Him to take control over us. Look at Jesus He number one,  He calls them. He's calling us to walk with him personally.

Number 2, He leads them into submission and they're like, okay, Jesus, You say we need to go to the mountain. We need to go to the mountain. They don't know why they're going to the mountain. A lot of things that Jesus calls us to we don't know why. And look, we don't have the right to know why. The number 3, I love this. Number 3 shows them. He shows them something that they never could have imagined. They get to the slope of Mount Harrab this 9000 plus foot mountain in Israel. It's kind of cool in Israel, you can wakeboard in the water and snow on there, you can ski on the mountain all in the same day, all at the same moment. Get to this mountain and listen to what happened. After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John, the brother of James and led them to the high mountain by themselves. There, He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun and His clothes became white is light. 

Incredible event,  transfigured is literally from this Greek word metemorphothe , which we get our word metamorphosis from.  It just means that we're being changed from the inside out. Jesus changes Himself from this earthly suit that He had been living with being limited in his divinity. And what does Jesus do? He shows them what He would be in the post resurrected Jesus.  He shows them His glory, He begins to fulfill Matthew 16:28 where Jesus tells them, "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom."  And here's the thing these guys they thought they knew Jesus, right? They've been walking with Jesus. They've been spending time with Jesus they did. They knew a lot about His love and His peace and His mercy and His grace and His miracles.  They'd seen Him heal people, they'd seen Him raise people, they'd seen Jesus Himself, calm the sea, and walk on the water. But all of that was them seeing Jesus as a man, at this moment, in the stillness of this private moment with Jesus away from the crowd, away from public away from the service away from the temple, all of them, what does Jesus do for them? He gives these guys a fuller picture of who He is, and His glory, and I hope you're feeling the weight of this. There's so much more we can say about transfiguration. We're gonna get there. I promise you, we're in this for a couple weeks. But here's what Jesus wants us to see. He wants to do the same for us, but it happens in the private moments of life. The private moments.   Can you imagine the scene? They're walking up the mountains? He's like, hey, pause for a minute. He transfigures Himself, before them and shows His glory. His glory. Have you ever thought about the fact that this event, it just seems to me with my earthly thinking it would have been so much more powerful at the feeding of the 5000, right? I mean, really, we're not like sacrilegious, but wouldn't it have?  Jesus all of a sudden 15,000 people there, all of a sudden transfiguring Himself.

Incredible. 

It would have been so powerful at what, the Sermon on the Mount right? Tons of people, giving the best sermon that we've ever read and all of a sudden, He transfigures Himself, but he didn't do it. It would have been so powerful in the streets of Jerusalem on a healing crusade all of a sudden, just to transfigure Himself, but he didn't do it. He didn't, why?  It was at this private moment with these 3 guys that were absolutely pointing their lives to Jesus making themselves available to Jesus, that Jesus, He rocks their world. And it's such an incredible example to us to this. Man, public worship is incredible. But it's when Jesus calls us to the mountain in our lives, to those moments in our lives, that He changes us. He changes us. You know what's so cool about the story? These guys think they knew Jesus. But it was in this moment that Jesus pulls the veil back. I just wonder how many of us are so lackadaisical with our time with Jesus? Because we think we already know Him. But Jesus is just waiting for us to spend time with Him to continually show us who He is. I want to give you a couple walkways before we leave today because I know that a lot of this is just kind of factual and a lot of this is like, hey, spend time in the word.  I want to give you 3 things that when you spend time in the word, what happens. I don't know if I've ever heard anybody say this before. Because my whole life, I've heard, you need to be with Jesus, you spend time with Jesus, you need to be personal with Jesus. But what happens when we do it? Number 1, check this out. When we spend time with God, personally, he shows us number 1, a fuller image of who He is, every time.

You know what this looks like, this looks like every single day, He just drips a little bit more into us. He just drips a little bit more of Himself into us. We learned a little bit more about Him, we see a little bit more of His wisdom, we see a little bit more of His power and day after day, one degree after another after another after another. What is He doing? He's showing us a full image of who He is in us. And this doesn't happen, if we just kind of check in on the weekends. Number 2, it acts as a catalyst of a life of hope and purpose. It just acts as a catalyst. What does that mean? It's the beginning,  a catalyst is something that sets something in motion. When we spend time with God, what does it do? It begins to give us a life of hope and a life of purpose that we cannot have any other way. We try to find it in so many other ways. We try to find it in our church attendance, we try to find it and how we watch the news. We try to find it and fulfilment from our husbands or from our wives. But Jesus is saying, hey, look, you want a life of purpose. You want life of hope.  You have to spend time with me, because I'm the giver of life and hope, right?

What happens when we spend time with Him personally, with just hit Him and here's number 3. I love this and we're coming full circle. It's the fuel or it fuels the worldwide movements that we so desire. What do we say at the beginning of the day, and we have such a desire for a revival in our country, revival in our city, revival in this land? What's the fuel for that? The fuel for that, is that when believers hearts are changed. And what do we see?  The unveiling of Jesus in our lives. Is God going to heal our land before he heals us? Is God going to reveal Himself to the nation before believers began to say, God, I need you to do something? Probably not.

What's today looking at?

Looking at the side of the public life of Jesus is incredible. But I need you to feel that the private moment of the transfiguration happened in a moment with 3 guys that set themselves apart and chose to be with Jesus personally. Here's the walkout question this morning. Are you praying more for the nation than you're praying for God to change your heart?

If you are, and that's a pretty prideful spot to be standing in. Because all that saying that God has got I've got it figured out. I just need the rest of these people to get it figured out. There's a second one.

Has there been a time in your life where you have just planted yourself in a prioritizing intentional solitude with a heart that's pointed toward God in just dividing and devouring His Word?

If not, could today be that day? Where you realize that He called you He's leading you, and He wants to show you himself?  

Lord Jesus today, in Your mercy in Your power, God, I just pray God that You show us how we can spend more, transform time with you. God, I just can't imagine what you would do in a place like this, if that was a part, a serious part of a large portion of this church's i heart. God, I have a feeling the revival would break out, because you'd have a whole bunch of believers walking in the Spirit and the power of the transformed Jesus. Lord Jesus, if there are people in the reigns of my voice this morning that need to meet you, for the first time. God may they reach out to us today and just say I need Jesus they can do that by just following the prompts on the screen. They can do that by grabbing one of us after the service. But God if there's people that this morning just need to get to a point in their lives where they need to surrender their hearts and lives to you because God they're never going to hear you until they give their life to you. They're never going to be led by you until they submit their hearts to you.

May they come to the point in their lives where they confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God You rose them from the dead. That You rose from the dead Jesus. God, maybe there's some other people here that they know You and their whole life has been a struggle of spending time alone with you. God let them know that they're not alone. They're not the only one. God it's a constant struggle for most believers. And God may today just be an inspiring moment where they see that you want to meet them at the mountain every day. Thank you, Lord Jesus for events like this, that we get this pullback and see how You want to change us.

God it's in your name. we pray. Amen. 

Hey, listen, thank you for being here today. Thanks for being a part of today. If you're looking to jump into a small group next week, if you will just shoot a message to this next steps text right here, we'd love to connect you.  And if you need to give your life to Jesus today, if you'll do that same thing, if you'll text that somebody will follow up with you today. Or maybe by Tuesday, give us a little grace as it's a holiday tomorrow. Or maybe, maybe just maybe you want somebody just to show you what it looks like to spend time in the Word. I'm just gonna be honest with you. And a lot of us we live our lives faking it, don't we? And can I just tell you, we would love love, love to come beside you and to walk with you and to show you how that can look for you. Just to do it with you. And, man, if you'll just text that same number at some point this week, somebody will reach out, I guarantee you over time, it'll change your life. Lord bless us today. Walk with us today as a church. It's in your name Jesus that we have met.

Amen.  You're dismissed. Have a great week.