I often find that the Bible is a glistening treasure map that the Holy Spirit loves journeying through with me. He knows where all the secret, buried treasure is hidden because He has searched out the depths of the Father and is as eager as a child to reveal the mysteries of eternity to everyone who follows Jesus the Messiah. The deeper I dig into His word and unveil the culture, history, language, geography, prophecies, symbolism, and how everything written connects seamlessly from beginning to end, the more in love I fall with the One who inspired it all. The following is a window into one of those moments I had with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus and His “Secret Place”
Recently, I felt led to take another look (perhaps for the 50th time) at the Mount of Transfiguration scene that plays out in Matthew 17:1-9. This is the point where Jesus invited 3 of His closest friends (Peter, James, and John) to join him at Mount Tabor. Once at the top, He becomes transfigured before them and becomes as bright as the sun. He talks with Moses and Elijah (prophets thought long dead for thousands of years), and Peter, trying to “play it cool” and not urinate himself I imagine, suggests that they make tents, or places of worship, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. It was then that God overshadowed them in a cloud and told the now terrified disciples that Jesus was His Beloved Son and that they needed to listen to Him. After, Jesus told the three not to tell anyone what they saw or heard until after He had resurrected. It was to be kept secret.
As I meditated on this story and about what the Lord was trying to show me, I had an epiphany, and this epiphany led to many more subsequent epiphanies, of which I will try my best to unwrap.
Throughout the Gospels, it was recorded several times that Jesus would often withdraw to pray and talk to the Father (Mt 14:23, Mark 6:46, Luke 6:12). There are three main similarities in all of these recorded instances:
He went to talk to the Father alone.
He went to a mountain.
What He was praying and what He was doing on that mountain was a secret.
Jesus once said “When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:6). Jesus was no hypocrite. We see that He had a “secret place” of His own where He talked to His Father privately, which for Him was a mountain far away from the clamor of the crowds and even His own disciples. However, breaking pattern, He invited His 3 closest disciples up to the mountain with Him to let them in on what was happening in secret, and what had happened in secret would be shared openly at an opportune time.
Moses’s Secret Place: An Old Testament Parallel
Something I’ve been learning in the last year is that if you read about something happening in the New Testament, you can almost always find a parallel in the Old Testament that foreshadows that exact event. Knowing this to be true, I immediately scoured the Old Testament for a parallel to the “Mount of Transfiguration” scene, and it took no time at all to find that Moses had a similar experience. He too had a type of “secret place” where He would talk to God. That place was also a mountain where no one else was invited. It was called Mount Sinai.
God, through Moses’s leadership, had successfully led His people out of Egyptian captivity and they began their long trek through the desert to the Promised Land. They camped near Mount Sinai, where Moses was called by God to ascend the mountain and receive the tablets of stone, later to be known as “The 10 Commandments” (Exodus 24). It’s interesting here to note the levels of “closeness” to God the people had in this scene, both in physical proximity and in fellowship, as demonstrated by where they were in relationship to the mountain. The people of Israel were stationed at the base of the mountain. Aaron, his sons, and the 70 elders of Israel were halfway up the mountain. They weren’t allowed to go any higher, but instead, they were allowed to eat and drink in His presence from a safe distance. Moses and Joshua (Moses’s assistant) were allowed to go up a little higher, but after a few days, it was only Moses who was allowed at the top of the mountain and into the cloud of His fiery presence to receive God’s laws. Later, it would be said of God’s relationship with Moses that He “spoke to Moses face to face (intimately), as a man speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11).
Unfortunately, Israel would immediately break the law and Moses, in his anger, broke the stone tablets, so he went up to the mountain once again to meet with God, intercede for Israel, and get another set of tablets. It was during this time that God revealed Himself to Moses in ways unseen since Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden of Eden. While on the mountain, Moses made a special, daring request:
“Please, show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18).
God honored this request. It was then that He moved Moses to the cleft of the rock and revealed Himself in a way that no one had seen Him before, and no one had seen Him since—until Jesus, the image of the invisible God Himself—arrived on the scene thousands of years later (Colossians 1:15). Moses privately asked God to reveal a secret to him on the mountain, and God’s answer to this simple man He shared a deep friendship with was “Yes”! Later, Moses received the stone tablets a second time on the mountain, and after that experience, the other leaders of Israel couldn’t bear to look at Moses’s face because it had shone so brightly with the glory of God. He had to wear a veil over his face when speaking to them (Exodus 34:30-31). One could say that he came out of this secret place “transfigured” by the glory of God, as it were. The Connection and The Implications
God found a friend in Moses, so much so, that he was the only one out of God’s people allowed to ascend the mountain. While on the mountain and out of view from the people, not only did he receive the Law (The Ten Commandments), but he saw the glory of God and God revealed Himself to Moses. The glory that he saw changed his face in that it shone so brightly that no one wanted to come near him, so he had to veil his face for a time. In the case of Jesus, we see a similar pattern. Jesus would go to the mountain by Himself to talk to the Father. At the right time, He invited three of the twelve disciples—Peter, James, and John—into His secret place. This invitation wasn’t extended to all of the disciples. These three were considered Jesus’s closest disciples and part of His innermost circle. While on the mountain, Jesus revealed Himself to them in a way that no one else had seen. Suddenly, “His face shone like the sun, and His clothing became white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). Then, guess who appears? Moses, and also Elijah. Both spoke with the transfigured Jesus as the three disciples trembled in awe. Both of these Old Testament figures Jesus was speaking with had already known Him before He took on flesh (see 1 Kings 19:11-13 for Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb). While the similarities of both instances are important, the differences between the two are equally as telling. In Moses’s case, the Law was received, and he had to veil his face when speaking to the people because of the glory that radiated from his face. In the case of Jesus, the disciples beheld the glory of the Lord with an unveiled face. The Law that the Israelites received at Mount Sinai that they could never fulfill, Jesus fulfilled perfectly in His sinless life, revealing to His disciples a part of the glory that would last forever in light of the New Covenant He was establishing not only with believing Israelites, but now any Gentile from any nation who would believe and follow Him. Paul explains the implications of these differences this way: “But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness excel in glory. For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory” (2 Corinthians 3:7-11). Conclusion
At this point, the reader might be asking “How does this have anything to do with ‘the secret place,’ and how does this apply to me?” Historically, we can conclude that the “secret place” was a place that only a select few were allowed to enter. These select few saw the glory of God in ways that no one else got to see at the time; but just like Peter, James, and John were invited to go up the mountain to be with Jesus in His secret place, all of us are now invited to meet with Jesus in the secret place. Anyone who He calls a “friend” is allowed to enter, and who does He call a friend? Jesus says: “You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you,” (John 15:14-15). Anyone who listens to Jesus and does what He says is His friend, and as His friends, He shares everything He hears from the Father and makes it known to us by His Spirit (John 16:13-14). Jesus even challenges His followers to not be like the Pharisees who don’t know how to be alone with God, saying “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you,” (Matthew 6:6).
While your secret place may not be the top of a mountain, one thing is sure: wherever you decide to meet with God alone, God is waiting to reward you by revealing His glory to you in ways you never dreamed. It’s a glory only reserved for His friends. It’s a glory reserved and waiting to be revealed to you.
What are you waiting for?
The Secret Girl
Good word.