Goolum – “My Precious”
Who’s seen Lord of the Rings?
• Who is your favorite character?
• My favorite character is Goolum. I love the scene where the two personalities are arguing
In the movie we are introduced to him as this weird looking creature bearing little resemblance to a normal human being
• Is this how Goolum started off? Normal person
• So what had happened to him in the intervening period? Become consumed with “my precious”
• His life revolved around that little circle of gold. It had become his consuming passion – just had to have it
• He loved that little circle of gold so much he didn’t seem to care or mind that the rest of his life was going to pieces his appearance, his clothes, the way he slunk around, the way he ate
• In fact in the end, it was this obsession with the ring that led to his death
• The ring had this effect on anyone who handled it
• Instead of them ruling it, the ring ended up ruling them
• So this obsession with “my precious” changed Goolum from a normal human being into this poor miserable pathetic creature and it eventually killed him
Goolum is an interesting character, but in a way there is a little bit of Goolum in all of us
• We too have our obsessions,
• we too have our consuming passion
• we too have something in our lives that we could term “my precious” that we are desperately hanging onto while we know it is hurting us
We are going to watch a little bit of the “Lord of the Rings” to see the type of impact the ring had on people
• While we’re watching this clip, want you to be thinking about some of the things in our society that people allow to consume or dominate their lives
Want you to get into small groups of four or five
• Want you to do two things
• First, put together a list of things that people in our society allow to consume their lives
• Let me give you an example
• Have this packet of M &M’s. Going to offer some to you. But here is a condition to accepting it. If you accept it, you have to eat the whole packet, non stop, right now
• So who would like an M & M?
• Why not? Bad for you, don’t want to get fat!
• So what is the obsession? Food!
• Is eating food wrong? Its the misuse of food – gluttony or greed
• Know a lot of people who are chocolate fiends
• Okay so that is one example, you make your own list of some of the things that our society allows themselves to be consumed with but is also slowly killing them
• Second can you think of examples in your own life or the life of your friends where someone has misused one of these things on your list
• Get you started let Susan give you an example – drugs
• My wife works as a receptionist in a doctors surgery and she sees drug addicts come in who are so consumed with getting their next fix, normal care for the rest of their lives is totally forgotten – showers, eating, teeth falling out at 20
• Life revolves around getting their next fix
List
• Power, Image, status, sex, pornography, drugs, alcohol, money, food, clothes, cars, relationships, grudges, jealously
• Possible stories - Mulberry tree, liche nuts, Shannon and shoes, Mr Reg you look like a walking billboard, converse shoes, quicksilver shorts and Billabong shirt
Stories of how these things have been misused
• Any one of these things if misused beings to rule our lives instead of us ruling them and will eventually kill us
• The Bible has a term for all of these things we talked about – “sin”
• God wants us to let Him rule our lives and anytime we allow anything else to rule our lives like these things we just talked about we will start to die
• In fact God said, the wages or payment for sin is death Rom 6:23
• Now I said earlier that we are all a bit like Goolum. If we are human, the Bible tells us there is something in everyone of our lives that is slowly killing us
• It says, Romans 3:23-25 (NLT) For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
• Unless something changes, we all going to end up as “dead meat” like Goolum
• But don’t panic….there’s good news
Another character in the Lord of the Rings is Froddo, the hero
• On the shoulders of this little hobbit rests the hopes of the good people of Middle Earth; hobbits, man, dwarfs, elves, ents
• He is the only one who can save them
• And the plot of the story revolves around this little hobbit as he willingly trudges towards an uncertain fate at Mount Doom
• Mankind today also has a hero. His name is Jesus Christ
• Jesus is the Son of God and came on a mission to this world to save you and me from certain death
• He like Froddo, willingly trudged towards a cross on which He was to die so that you and I wouldn’t have to
• This is what the Bible says about what Jesus did for us
• Rom 3:24 Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. 25 For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us.
• Not only did Jesus pay the death penalty for us, He also says He will give us the help we need to overpower whatever it is in our lives that is slowly killing us
• In a way, its like having Gandalf fighting our battles for us, but Jesus is much more powerful than Gandalf
• So God can take someone who is just as poor miserable and pathetic as Goolum and turn him into a son of God
But we have to do something
• The way to be set free from whatever it is that is slowly killing us is to “believe” in Jesus Christ
• ….We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us.
• You have to acknowledge Him as the one who can save you
• If we ask Him to, He will come into our lives and start the healing process
• You can do that any time and if you would like to talk some more about doing that, come and talk to me later
