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In the movie, Remember the Titans, the coach pushed the students to the brink of their abilities. Some accused him of trying to ruin them and break their spirits. But by pushing them - he made them stronger. It prepared them for a difficult season of football - and in the end they went undefeated and won the championship. If he hadn’t pushed them, they would not have pushed themselves. A team without discipline ends up weak and soft - unprepared for battle. And so, like a coach that pushes his players - God pushes us for our good. People can blame God for being too extreme all they want. And they will. “God took my son - so I won’t come to church. He told me I was going to hell. I can’t believe in a God that would punish in hell. He told me I couldn’t divorce my lazy husband. I can’t follow a Lord like that. That’s too extreme. ” But the Lord continues to push. Why? Because the stakes with God are not just winning a state championship. An eternity of either bliss or fire is at stake.
Last year, a particularly dark film came out entitled Children of Men. It is about the world in the year 2027 where no children have been born for 18 years. Imagine a world like that. A world with no need for toys. Churches with no children or youth. The doors of Kenyon College closing because no children are growing up to take the place of the current students. No children’s laughter or playgrounds. No hope for the future. But injected into this film, shot with grey and brown as primary colors, is a pregnant girl. Her name is Kee, and she is the key to the future of the world. The plot of the film is to get Kee and her baby out of the present world situation and onto a mysterious, and considered by many to be an purely mystical, ship owned by an organization known as “The Human Project.” The protagonist is interestingly named Theo, the word for “God.” Kee names her baby after Theo’s son, the metaphor being that he is the son of God. In the film, all who see Kee’s swollen belly are shocked and exclaim with surprise: “Jesus Christ!” Profanity turns to prophecy. The film ends with the Human Project’s ship pulling alongside the little rowboat where Kee is sitting holding her baby riding the waves, like Mary riding on a donkey. Theo is also in the boat, but he has been killed in his attempt to bring hope to the world. And we are left with only hope and anticipation of what this baby will mean to a barren and hopeless world and what will happen as a result — a symbol of Advent.
One of the things which makes the film interesting is that the two sides, which are fighting and killing off an already dying race, are each trying to use the baby for their own purposes. They want the baby so they can get the remaining masses to come over to their side. Neither are content to allow the baby to simply be a baby. If we had read just one more verse in our Gospel lesson for today, we would have heard Jesus say, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). The kingdom of God is often forcibly opposed by violent, hostile people. There are always those who want to use Christ for their own political purposes and ends. But nothing can hinder or hold back the kingdom of God. It would be like trying to stop the sunrise, trying to stifle Spring or hold back the harvest. As Isaiah said, the crocus will suddenly spring out of the icey mud, the desert will blossom, sorrow and sighing will flee away and everlasting joy shall be upon our heads. The Promise of Advent is on his way, and nothing in earth or hell will be able to stop his coming. The light shines in the world’s darkness, and all the world’s darkness cannot overcome it (John 1:5).
Karl Eckhoff
If some of you are like me, you’ve been waiting with a bit of anticipation for the final segment of J.R.R. Tolkiens, The Lord of the Rings, to be released to movie theatres some time in the near future. If you’ve been following the story on the screen or reading it from the pages of a book, you’ve been introduced to a rather unique character by the name of Gollum, who once possessed a ring forged by the evil Sardon, and now in the possession of Frodo Baggins, who knows that it ultimately must be destroyed in order to spare the world untold evil and destruction. The trouble is the ring has a history of driving those who possess it raving mad, a truth beginning to show itself in Frodo, but clearly witnessed in Gollum who appears totally consumed with the ring, calling it, as others owners have, “His precious.”
It’s really quite despicable to see a creature so absolutely driven and obsessed with something so evil. Perhaps it’s even more troubling when we recognize that this is us, every time our sinful human nature brings us to speak with a sharp and bitter tongue or act out our hateful or lustful desires which we’ve concluded to be more “precious” than the will of our God.
But I want you to keep that image of total consumption, of whole-hearted attention, of obsession in mind. Keep it there because as much as humanity is caught-up in sin, as negatively consumed and driven as Gollum was towards that symbol of evil; our God is positively consumed with us. In God’s eyes our lives are to be treated with the utmost care, so that even our deaths are a precious thing. “Precious in your sight, O Lord, is the death of your saints.”
Our God is not consumed with personal gain, but with ours. He’s not consumed with His own well-being, but with ours. He’s totally wrapped up in the troubles that confront us, death being the culmination of them all. He’s completely devoted to pouring out its remedy. Our life and that which threatens to destroy it completely in hell has our Lord’s whole-hearted attention. It’s His precious.
C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, writing, of course, as an elder devil to a younger devil,
"One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with a rather oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Y...
Video Clip - “Little Nicky” Start: Chp. 3 - 9:16 - Stop: Chp. 3 - 10:15 = :55
I. THE PLACE: What is hell?
That clip and that movie, like a lot of movies, comedians and even some Christians, deals with the subject of Hell and Satan, very lightly. I think that’s because in some people’s minds this whole concept of punishment in a place of eternal torment is just not feasible, it just can’t be real.
A few years ago there was a TV show called Early Edition. The main character in this program would receive a paper every day that showed what was going to happen the next day. He would then set out to correct the bad things before they happened. Through a series of events in which he often put himself in harms way he would accomplish his destiny.
If we as Christians new something bad was going to happen to someone we would try to prevent it – wouldn’t we? We know hell is real and certain for everyone who doesn’t know Jesus, so let’s gather in and pray for God to motivate us like the rich man to share the truth.
GOLLUM AND THE RING
Many of us are familiar with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We cannot help but remember the character named Gollum. He was a hideous, pathetic creature who was possessed by the power of the ring. In fact, the ring was the reason for his hideous appearance. His obsession with the ring robbed him of everything else in life that mattered. Only one thing mattered now: the ring. In his raspy voice he referred to it as "my precious." At the climax of the story Gollum surprises Frodo as he stands perched on a ledge in the heart of the fiery mountain to which he has journeyed so that the ring might be destroyed. Gollum fights with Frodo for the ring, but in doing so he loses his balance and falls into the hell like flames below, all the way clutching the "precious" ring. He had finally acquired the ring, but lost his life in doing so.
In the movie, Brokendown Palace, Alice (Blonde played by Claire Danes) convinces her best friend, Darlene (Brunette played by Kate Beckinsale) to go to Bangkok to celebrate their high school graduation. There an attractive Australian man befriends them and persuades them to join him in Hong Kong. While waiting to board the plane, they are arrested for heroin smuggling and sentenced to 33 years in a hideous prison known as Brokendown Palace. Every effort to be freed and go home has utterly failed.
In our clip the girls’ lawyer made a deal with the prosecutor—if the girls signed an admission of guilt, the judge would let them go home. But before the ink dries on the paper, a court official announces that drug smugglers will not be pardoned.[32] Watch the sacrifice Alice makes for her friend, Darlene, and see how it illustrates substitution.
Show Ch. 11 (0:57:06) to Ch. 12 (0:59:56)[33]
I ask you this morning to put yourself in Darlene’s place. How would you feel about a person who would sa...
THEY'RE NOT READY FOR HEAVEN
The movie The End of the Spear tells the true story of five missionaries who gave their lives to reach the violent Waodoni tribe in the jungles of Ecuador in the 1950s. Led by Nate Saint, the missionaries were eager to reach the Waodoni people before they all died off from their intertribal warfare and vicious revenge killings.
As Nate prepares for his adventure, his family gathers around him on the dirt airstrip in front of their house. As he kisses his wife goodbye, his son, Steve, looks at the gear in the plane and notices a rifle. Obviously worried, he turns to his father and asks, “If the Waodoni attack, will you use your guns? Will you defend yourselves?”
Nate looks his boy dead in the eye and responds, “Son, we can’t shoot the Waodoni. They’re not ready for heaven. We are.” (End of the Spear, 00:32:30—00:33:48, Every Tribe Entertainment, 2006, directed by Jim Hanon, written by Bill Ewing and Bart Gavigan)
Nate Saint understood the fate of the unbeliever as compared to his own fate. He knew he could withstand some temporary pain, but he didn’t want the Waodoni people to experience the eternal pain of hell, at least not before they had a chance to hear the gospel.
(From a sermon by C. Philip Green, In the Fire! 7/30/2011)
We have been waiting for the movie called "HOW TO TAME YOUR DRAGON" to come out in the cinemas. It is a kids movie about Vikings and dragons. The amount of advertising saying that it was coming was phenomenal. Talk about good marketing! Their target audience is children. Jesus has His own marketing team in Matthew 10:7 and His target audience is the LOST SHEEP OF ISRAEL. He tells His disciples to "Go and announce to them (ie the Lost Sheep of Israel) that the Kingdom of Heaven is near."
In the movie "HOW TO TAME YOUR DRAGON" there is a dragon problem. The great Viking leader, Stoick the Vast, CAN'T SAVE THE SHEEP. The Viking leader's son is Hiccup and not exactly a dragon killer, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He invents a net and catches a dragon, but when he takes out his knife he can't bring himself to kill it. Instead he tames it.
Forgive me for the analogy but it seems to me that the world is into trying to TAME THE DRAGON too. Jesus, the Son of God, on the other hand, is into DEFEATING THE DRAGON. In Revelation 20:2 (NLT) it says "He SEIZED THE DRAGON-that old serpent, who is the devil, Satan-and bound him in chains for a thousand years." Some time later it speaks about hell as "...the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons." (Matthew 25:41 NLT) No domesticating any dragon mentioned here.
Jesus is the only one capable of saving lost sheep and it isn't because He is trying to tame the dragon! Far from it! It's about kingdom authority to CAST OUT DEMONS, heal the sick and preach the good news.
The message is simple - "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS ...
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