So now my friends, let's stand for the reading of God's holy word. It is found in the Gospel of Luke beginning in chapter 9 verse 28. As I read, listen and imagine the scene in your own heart and mind as the Lord reveals what took place. Now about eight days after these things, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white and behold two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the loud cloud saying, this is my son, my chosen one, listen to him. And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Lord our God, thank you for your word, thank you for the power of it, thank you for the truth of it, thank you for the fact that the Spirit has chosen to use this word uniquely in our lives. May it be so this morning. In Christ's name we do pray, amen. A number of years ago in Washington, D.C. on the metro in Washington, the subway there. One morning a young man with a violin case went down into the bowels of the metro while thousands of people were going by. He spent one hour there and during that one hour he opened the violin case, he took out his violin and he played and during the time it was estimated that perhaps a couple thousand people went by. One, a few people stopped and listened. One man stopped and seemed to listen for a little longer but then he hushed on to his appointments. Children were very interested apparently. They wanted to stop and listen but their moms and dads would tug them along because they were going to be late to school. About $32 was thrown into the violin case over the course of that hour. Not too much for Joshua Bell who was one of the foremost violinists in the world and that's who was playing. He was playing a Bach Contata that was one of the most difficult pieces of music to play and he was playing on an instrument that cost three and a half million dollars. Now what's the point? The point is that oftentimes we don't know what we're listening to. We sometimes are not able to listen. We find ourselves thinking we're hearing one thing when in fact we may be hearing something else all together and we have not sharpened our ears always to be attuned to what it is that we are to hear. In fact it's a fairly obvious point that most of us don't know how to listen very well. It's estimated that 50% of human communication is not received by the person who hears it with the meaning that the person who says it intends. Now that portrays difficult things for both marriages and preachers. The 50% of our communication is not understood the way we mean it to. If you think about it listening is really a way we honor people by really listening to them. It's an expression of love. But so often I miss that because when you're speaking I'm just waiting. I'm thinking about what I'm going to say when you have to stop and take a breath and I'm going to jump in in the middle of your breath and get my word in there. That's not listening is it? It's just getting ready to talk. I know someone who knows another friend of ours and he says of this man when you were with Don you feel like you're the only person in the world. Isn't that a wonderful thing to say if somebody? You know you just feel like you're the only person in the world because of the way that person is listening to you. Sometimes we might say thank you. Thank you for listening to my heart. That also expresses this idea of a deeper kind of listening. You know in the Bible there's a connection between two things that you might not immediately put together. One is listening and the other is mountains. Listening and mountains in the Bible come together. God has two books of revelation. The first book of revelation is that of creation, the book of creation, the earth, the sky, the sea. The other book is the book of the word and that's the book of Israel, the book of Jesus, the book of Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all things. And when you and I go to the mountains more often than not it's in order that we might read from the book of creation. That is to say to enjoy the beauty of the earth and to be refreshed by that beauty well and good. But in the Bible people went to the mountains more often than not to listen to the book of the word. That's why mountains are so important in the Bible. Mountains are always places where revelation takes place. There's almost no mention of any by any mountain in the whole of scripture where God does not speak on that mountain top where Jesus doesn't. There are places where we get glimpses of God by listening to His word. Mountains are places where God reveals Himself where people hear and sometimes they see the wonder, the beauty, the truth, the love of God. Mountains are places where God discloses His character. He demonstrates His majesty and above all His glory is shown on mountain tops. Think of Moses going to Mount Sinai to receive the ten words as the ten commandments are rightly called. It wasn't the commandments themselves written on stone that made the difference. It was the words of God spoken to Moses that defined His reality and invariably the reality of the whole of Israel. Remember Jesus teaching on the sermon on the mount. He opened His mouth, it says, and He taught them that's a little interesting expression in Aramaic. He opened His mouth. It literally means He spoke to them hard to heart or even quite literally mouth to mouth, which is a way of saying He really spoke and they really listened on that particular mountain top. All places in scripture where God reveals Himself where He is known on the top of a mountain there are two realities. One is that God's presence is perceived, visually perhaps in many cases, but there's an overwhelming reality of God being present there. The second reality is that the words of God are spoken which interpret that perception. You get that? Always you see, God is perceived, but the way in which He's perceived is by the words which are spoken on top of the mountain. In other words, there's no meaning of these appearances of God without hearing what God Himself says about them. That's true here on another mountain where God allows Himself to be known where He speaks His word. He takes Peter, James, and John, the Lord does to this mountain of transfiguration as we call it. And there is His whole person who is transfigured. He's gleaming white. His clothing is wider than any bleach can ever make it. The parallel version in Mark puts it. He is seen as one for whom He really is. John in His gospel, the very John who's here now, John in His gospel says, we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten. And that is in all probability a reference to this happening on top of the mountain. They see Jesus for who He really is with His outward splendor regained. He had lost this outward splendor. Remember, in obedience to the Father when He became man, He lost as it were not the essence of being God's Son, but He lost the prerogatives, the privileges of being God's Son. He laid down His scepter of power. And that's why it's so significant when God gives through Jesus the great commission on another mountain, probably the mount all of it. When the great commission is given at the end of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, all power has been given to me. And given there probably means restored. The power that He gave up as it were in the incarnation is now restored to Him. Peter, James and John go to the mountain to see who He really is and to listen to God's voice. This is my beloved Son. Like Moses did earlier, Peter says something quite silly when confronted with the presence of God perceived. He says something like this. Lord, it's great to be here. And it's so nice that Mr. Moses, you have joined and Mr. Elijah, you have come as well. We're so glad that you're here. This is really something. And why don't I build three tents, one for each of you? And that way, you know, if it rains, you can continue your conversation. You know, we don't really know the full meaning of what Peter was saying, but the point is he didn't either. And that's precisely what is said in the text where it says, for he did not know what he was saying. He simply didn't know what to say. And that at that very moment is when the Lord steps in and says, Peter, Peter, this is God speaking from heaven. Be quiet. This is my Son. Listen to Him. And like Peter, we know we come to the Lord with all of our spiritual projects with all our attempt to be useful to the Lord, to build little tents for him. But really, what we have to do is stop trying to convince God with our words, how spiritual we are, and instead we need to learn to be not useful to God, but first a little useless. That is to say, usefulness is not the most important thing we offer to God. In fact, it may not be important at all compared to our willingness to receive, to just say, Lord, I'm here. I'm listening and I will take my direction from your word. The point of the transfiguration is not that Peter, James and John would see the Lord in his eternal glory. No, the point is that they would see in a certain way. And that this way is only discernible in language, by language. That is to say, by God's own words, which makes sense of what is seen. And the point, therefore, is that we cannot understand what we see or what we perceive or what we think about God without the book of the word. Repeatedly, Scripture tells us that the ear is governed by the eye. Now follow me here. It may sound like a little bit of a side shoot, but actually I think it's quite compelling when you understand this. God's words are given in order to define all of our perceptions. Let's take Eve in Genesis 3, Garden of Eden. She's the prototype, really, of this priority of ear over eye. And the prototype of someone who fails to get it right. Why? Because when Eve saw that the fruit was good for food, when she perceived that it was beautiful to her eyes, when it was desirable to make her wise, when she perceived that, what did she do? She ignored God's word. And she took and ate. And the consequences we live with to this day. In Exodus 3 on another mountain, Horob, famous for its burning bush, the call of Moses there. It's the appearance of the Lord in the bush is overwhelming. And Moses is quite confused by it. He wants to turn aside and look at this marvelous thing. And God speaks to him from the bush and says, don't turn aside. Don't look. Don't look. Your looks, looking will deceive you. You cannot understand what you were perceiving apart from my word. And then what does God say? I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. In other words, the meaning of what Moses perceives can only be grasped from the meaning of the words that accompany it. Another high watermark in Scripture, the annunciation to Mary, right? The announcement to Mary that she will bear a son, Jesus, the son of the most high. And the announcement is from Gabriel, an angel. Imagine, here's a young girl, an angel appears to her. Some people think angels are nine feet tall. But it's not the appearance of the angel that compels Mary's attention as much as it is the words of the angel. The Lord, God, will give to you the throne, give to your son the throne of his father, David. And he will reign over that house of Jacob forever and his kingdom. There will be no end. And Mary asks an honest question, how can this be? And the angel answers, the power of the most high will overshadow you and what does Mary say? Be it done to me according to your word. That's why some of us think Mary is the prototype disciple in the whole of the New Testament. She is the first one to really understand. She is the first one to listen and obey the word of God, even at great cost to her. There's another Mary. Remember her? Martha's sister? She, this Mary sits at the Lord's feet while Martha is busy preparing dinner. Now the Lord does not criticize Martha for preparing dinner, even as it were for her being distracted. But he does say that Mary has chosen the best part. There's only a few things necessary. The Lord says, and she has chosen the best part. That is to listen to Jesus. One more, if I may, Acts 9. This one is really fascinating. The conversion of Paul. You remember the story. Paul is going to Damascus and he's going to arrest Christians and even kill them and the light from heaven flashes around him. And he falls to the ground. It says, he hears a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why have you persecuted me? And the appearance of the Lord in the flash of the light stuns Saul. It blinds him. You can't see for three days. But it is the voice that gives meaning to the light. It's the voice of God. This is my son. Why are you persecuting him? It's that voice that makes sense of it all to Paul. So Eve stopped listening to God's words and then she made a bad decision, indeed. Moses had to stop trying to investigate God in the bush but instead to listen to him. And Mary, the first disciple of Jesus, only had to hear the words as it were of the angel in order to know that she is to respond accordingly. And Mary, Martha's sister, had to become a little useless in order to hear the voice of God. Why don't we listen so well? Well, what has happened to us? What has happened? Perhaps we have not cultivated an inner watchfulness of the heart. Perhaps we do not engage in focused listening when we read the Bible or when it's read in church. Why? Well, there's a bunch of reasons. Let me just sort of mention one couple that are intertwined. One is we listen to passively. We don't enter in to what we are reading in our hearts. We do not listen, listen intensively to the meaning of what we already know. In fact, we think we already know it. When Jesus says, hear the word of the Lord as he does repeatedly in the gospels, he obviously means more than just passive listening. He means to listen intensively, to listen in a way that involves practice and effort. Do we ever practice listening to the Lord in his Word? I would dare say probably many of us don't even know what that would mean to do that. Long-term Christians, like many of us in the room, we think we already know what the Bible says, and so we don't expect to be surprised. We often don't realize how much we need the Spirit to show us how trapped we are by our own assumptions. Did you hear that? We are trapped by our own assumptions of what the Word says. We've read it. We know the stories and we don't listen to it as if we are really hearing it freshly and maybe even for the first time. There is so much static and there is so much distraction, as Mark said earlier, from our personal and cultural assumptions that we don't know how really to listen. Deep listening takes attentiveness as we listen. As we listen, sometimes we think that the point of God's Word is that there's a point to it. That is to say that there always is some conclusion. I'm going to read God's Word and then I'm going to have a point. Unless you're a preacher, in which case you have three points in a poem, but really there's not so much a point to Scripture after we read it, as one author puts it this way, the full power of the Word lies not in how we apply it to our lives after we hear it, but in the transforming power that does its divine work as we listen. We're so linear, we're so Western, we're so rational, we have to put a colon at the end of whatever we read and say what's the point? Well, the point is you just heard something that is transforming, that is transforming our lives. Here's the way one author put it, lovely English lady, listen to this. She said, to listen closely with every fiber of our being at every moment of the day is one of the most difficult things in the world and yet it is essential if we mean to find the God whom we are seeking. If we stop listening to what we find hard to take in, then we are likely to pass God without even noticing Him, and then interesting, we can pass God without even noticing Him. Now there is a colon and a point to this sermon and it is this and I don't really have time to develop this, but just give you a couple thoughts and then you can think about them. It has to do with what we call meditation. Meditation is the missing jewel of evangelical devotion. We believe we should read the Bible and we believe we should pray, but meditation is something between reading the Bible and praying. It's reading the Bible as it were until you pray. One person said this, meditation is simply thought prolonged and directed to a simple object. Simply put, meditation is deep listening. Now, a little experiment here that Mark taught me how to do. I saw him do this once. He got to be brave and honest. How many of you think you really know how to meditate on God's word? Just put your put up your hands. Go ahead. Be brave. Good. How many of you think you know how to worry? Put up your hands. Okay. If you know how to worry as Mark said, you know how to meditate because it's the same principle. It's going over and over again, something in your mind and your heart, turning it around, thinking of it from every angle, wondering about the what ifs, the wherefores, the who did, and what's going to happen. That kind of thing is exactly what we do when we meditate. Meditation is strictly speaking more than just reading and not quite what prayer is. May I give you an illustration? I don't know if it's a work, but let's let's try it. And then I'll be done. For this reason, we bow the knee before the Father from whom every family on heaven and earth is named. That out of the riches of his glory, he may grant you in the inner man by the Holy Spirit to be strengthened that Christ made dwell in your hearts by faith. And that you being rooted and grounded in love may come to know with all the saints, what is the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth, and to know this love of Christ, which is the on knowing that you may be filled with the fullness of God. Now, I didn't do that to call attention to myself because I memorized that passage from Ephesians 3. I did it because I want you to memorize a passage, a little one, not one even that long, just a few words, just a verse. And I want you to meditate on that verse, to think about it, to roll over, make a 3-by-5 card, put it on your dashboard, put it on the window in your the mirror in your bathroom and go over and over and over this verse. Friends in the depth of all that followed when I fell off the end of the earth seven and a half years ago, I spent one and a half years meditating on one verse. One verse, it was Romans 64, we were therefore buried with Christ by baptism unto death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so too might we walk in newness of life, that's what I needed to hear. I needed to hear that I had died with Christ and that I was raised with Christ to new life. And that's what you need to hear. You need to hear the promises of God in the gospel. You and I need to hear them deeply, reflect on them profoundly, but you can't do it if you're just gliding through the Bible, reading somewhat passively, please, please take one verse, take half a verse and own it and make it your own and turn it inside out in your heart and do it for long enough that you can tell that the words are descending from your mind to your heart. And you are being changed by the living word of God and and then watch out as to what you'll perceive. You may see a transfiguration, you may see a burning bush, but whatever you see, you'll understand what it means because God will be revealing himself to you in those ways and he'll make sense of it by his word, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.