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
• Just as Jesus gave Peter his tax money from the mouth of a fish
God comes when we call, but He comes in His own way.
Charles Cowman and his wife were missionaries to Asia. He became fatally ill and they returned to their homeland. For six years he battled his illness. Mrs. Cowman says,
... each time when the testings had reached their utmost limit, God would illumine some old and familiar text, or a helpful book or tract would providentially fall into our hands, which contained just the message needed at the moment.
The help from God that an ill person would naturally seek is healing, whether it be through medicine, supernatural means, or a doctor with an epiphany. What one does not necessarily expect to find is the strength to carry on in the illness from random inspirational thoughts, one of which simply fluttered across their path as they walked on the beach.
The treasures that carried them through were developed after Cowman’s death into the classic devotional book Streams in the Desert, which has given inspiration to people all over the world for the last 50 years.
I personally have found God in my life in many ways:
• something I read (in the Bible, yes, but other places too)
• music I heard (Christian music, yes, but other music too)
• a conversation with a friend
• finding a lost item that I needed
• a quick and startling answer to prayer
• a reminder of something I had forgotten
God has promised that He can be found and even, on some levels, understood all around us in creation. That is not to say that God is, in some way, the same as nature, it is simply to say that creation reflects the creator. I personally am moved by the complexity of God’s imagination in the flight of birds, mammals and bugs. There are hundreds of ways that animals naturally fly, and, as smart and inventive as we are, we can’t do it without major economic and engineering help. God’s conception of natural movement is reflected in His creation of so many ways for animals to fly.
This week, look for God in unexpected places:
We have given you a note paper. Take it with you this week in your purse or in your pocket. Intentionally and regularly look for something in your surroundings that reminds you of
• God’s presence
• His power
• His love
• His beauty
• His justice
Or anything else that God chooses to call to your attention. These intrusions of God into your daily life we sometimes call "God sightings". Find not just one thing but multiple things and make notes of them on your note paper.
Especially, I encourage you to include prayer in this process. If you pray for something specific, look to see how God is answering you. It may not be the exact thing you asked for, but it will be the exact thing He wants for you. Write down answers to prayer as well as random God sightings.
Bring the paper with you next week and we will post your God sightings in the sanctuary. Share with your friends the many ways God revealed Himself to you.
This is not just a one week exercise. It is meant to raise your awareness of God in your world and in your life. Start this week, but make it a devotional habit to find God in ways that you would not normally expect to see Him.
He is there in ways you recognize and in ways you don’t
Strengthen your belief by looking for His appearances in your life
He is there, all around you ... all the time
Look for Him.
