Prince Caspian: Calling For Help, And The Unexpected Answer Series

Prince Caspian: Calling for help, and the unexpected answer

Jeremiah 32:42-33:3

Faith is called faith because we have no proof. We believe in God and we accept His presence in our lives, not because we can say what He looks like and how tall He is, but because we rely on the evidence of our hearts. We do things and say things that reflect our belief in His presence, even though our senses give us nothing to go on. We must trust Him.

(Show Prince Caspian clip - Prince Caspian blows the horn of Susan, the Pevense Children come to Narnia)

The God who comes in dark times

Pevense kids lived in a dark time in England, a time that showed little hope. They lived in the country-side away from London and their parents during the war. In the movie, they are giving up hope that they will ever get to go home again.

In the same way, Jeremiah is prophesying that the encroaching Babylonians will win the war and the Jews will be exiled. But that is not the end of the story for the Jews. God will call them out of Babylon and they will once again buy and sell property and settle in their homeland.

God is promising that His promises are as good as His threats. Just as He judged the people, He will also restore them and the whole territory of Judah and Benjamin from the East to the West will be reopened and free. We can see from the book of Haggai, written many decades later, that God was as good as His word. When they came back, He began a systematic process of seeing them built back up as a people and as a nation.

Jeremiah himself was being held as a prisoner in the courtyard of the palace guard. He had been rescued from certain death from hypothermia and deprivation in a filthy, muddy cistern where he had been dropped and abandoned. His current situation was better, but he was still a prisoner.

Things look dark, but notice how God introduces Himself:

he who made the earth, the LORD who formed it and established it—the LORD is his name

God is introducing Himself as being bigger than the problem. It doesn’t matter which problem you consider, the problem of Jeremiah imprisoned, the problem of the Jews in exile, the problem of the bombing of London ... God is bigger.

Can not the God who made, formed, and established the earth set it to rights?

To Jeremiah he is saying, "Can not the God who did something so overwhelmingly huge, intervene in your life?"

In Jeremiah’s dark time God makes a mysterious promise

"Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’

(Jeremiah 33:3 TNIV)

God was already making specific promises that seemed far away and difficult. But here He is saying something much bigger. My answers to your prayers will move forces that you are completely unaware of and cannot even imagine. What is more, I will reveal them to you.

Prince Caspian was frightened and in desperate need. He blew the horn of Susan to gain the legendary and unspecified help it was said to bring. All through the story, first the dwarf Trumpkin, then Caspian himself are surprised that the help brought was four children. The fact that they were also the kings and queens of Narnia from times long past did not seem to matter. Their appearance caused them to be drastically underestimated, and everyone was surprised and their startling ability to lead and to help.

• They were hoping for powerful adults

• They were hoping for something magical

• They were hoping perhaps for Aslan himself

What they got was, to all appearances, completely inadequate to the problem

But the Pevense children were more than just four kids. Trumpkin fenced with Edmund and lost, He competed against Susan’s bow and lost. They were people who had lived an entire life in Narnia and had become powerful heroes. Their looks were irrelevant.

• Consider the vision of Judah’s future God gave Jeremiah

• Consider the vision Jesus gave Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus in all His glory

• Consider the vision God gave John on the Island of Patmos, that resulted in the book of Revelation

When God’s people called on Him and trusted Him, He gave them incredible views into not just what was, but what would be. Not just what things looked like, but what the spiritual and supernatural underpinnings of their reality looked like.

God comes through in ways we don’t expect

• Just as the Pevense children showed up when Caspian blew Susan’s horn

• Just as a pagan emperor of Persia released the Jews from their Babylonian exile