Jesus — the King
Text: Revelation 19: 9 – 16
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 15 December, 2002

IN MIDDLE EARTH the inhabitants of The Shire have lived in peace and plenty for many years. But the seeds of conflict are in their midst. Bilbo Baggins has a Ring, one of the 9 Rings, a Ring with magic powers. Whoever controls the rings controls the world. And the rulers of the evil Kingdom of Mordor already have eight of them.

This is the story of The Lord of the Rings. It is the story of Bilbo Baggins’ nephew Frodo, as he travels to destroy the Ring. It is the story of terror in the Shire as the Ringwraiths, black-cloaked, evil riders, scour the countryside seeking the Ring. It is the story of the adventures of a small but gallant band as they struggle with the temptation to use the Ring to their own advantage.

That is the rub: they could win by using the power of the Ring, but, in the process, they would lose their own soul.

If you haven’t seen any of the movie series, The Lord of the Rings, you’ll need to see episode I before you go on to episode II, which opens in Sydney on Boxing Day.
I loved The Lord of the Rings when I first read it in 1969. Two years ago, the book was voted near the top of the Top 100 fiction books of the 20th Century.

Why do people love this book, these stories? Isn’t it because they tell about the world we know? In the past three or so years, the Ringwraiths have come to our own land, riding in the darkness to seek out the treasures of our way of life, aiming to steal the good that we have and to turn everything to their own ends. Saruman, the evil magician, seeks to place everything under his own control. We long for Gandalf the Grey to arrive, to set things right, to put us on the path to salvation.

The Lord of the Rings is a myth. It is a powerful story, a tale of gods and magic-workers, a tale that explains our world to us in ways that we can all grasp.

How does it explain our world?
Haven’t we lived in peace, knowing that there is evil out there somewhere, but knowing that it isn’t close to us?
Don’t we have what the forces of evil desire and hate us for having? Don’t we have propserity, peace, freedom? Who is Saruman, but Usama? Who is Frodo, but George W? Who is Gandalf?

You might watch Lord of the Rings thirty times and never make those connexions. But they are there, and you know it, somewhere in your heart. You sense that the good is under threat from the evil, and that what we have could be taken and used to destroy everything we have built.

Come with me to Iran or Afghanistan — wherever Usama bin Laden’s men are.
Listen to their story.

Once upon a time, the Ottoman Turks maintained a great, good and wealthy empire. All the people lived in peace, obedient to the laws of Allah.
But powerful forces built up, evil forces. They overthrew the good empire, and now spread sordidness, sexual licence, drug abuse, idolatry across the land.
Saruman represents George W Bush, seeking to destroy all that is good in the world. Frodo is the underdog, Usama bin Laden, the man who gives all that he has to help the cause and to protect the people.

Do you get the picture?
The Lord of the Rings is a great book and a great movie. It helps us understand our world. It was written soon after England was threatened by the Kaiser’s Germany. It appeared at a time when the British West and the dark forces of Central and Eastern Europe intensely mistrusted each other. It helps us to see our world. But it is not the only myth or even the best.

Sometimes we talk about the ANZAC myth. We all know that the Gallipoli landings took place. We know that Australian men acted with immense bravery when they found that the beach they had been sent to was about as wide as your living room and backed by cliffs with machine guns atop. The events are all true. The myth is the way that the story helps us explain ourselves.
We are the bronzed ANZACs. We fight hard, but we're fair. We respect our enemies. Our grace for ne’er–do–wells like Simpson transforms them into great men. We are loyal even to those who scarcely deserve our loyalty. We know who we are by the stories we tell of ourselves.

One function of religion is to define who we are.

Buddhism’s defining stories are about Gautama, the man who separated himself from all passion and desire so that he could be free from the cycle of Karma and attain to Nirvana, to nothingness. The Buddhist people will become great when they can accept everything without reaction.

Judaism’s defining myths are about the kind of people they became as God brought them out of their Egyptian captivity, and settled them into the land of promise, and then how he brought them from Babylonian captivity and returned them to their land. It’s a mythology of captivity and return. For the Zionist, God has brought His people back from the nations where they were scattered and has made them a nation again!

Islam is about how a small band, led by the Prophet and submitted to the will of Allah, fought back against overwhelming opposition, defeated the forces of evil, conquered half the world and established an empire of sharia law to rival Rome’s splendours. That world will return one day!

What stories do we tell ourselves? What are the defining accounts of Christianity? Are we subject to a Lord of the Rings mythology, or is there something better?

If we have nothing more than The Lord of the Rings, we have an impossible situation.

Yes, we face evil in the world. Yes, there is value in loyalty and mateship, in perseverence, in hardship.
But what happens when we see ourselves as the goodies and the others as Satan’s minions? What happens when we are governed by a world–view which says that our goal in life is to destroy the followers of Saruman?
We line up at Helm’s Deep, we go into battle at Medina or at Hastings or Gallipoli or wherever our mythology places us.

And the enemy does the same. Because we are Satan’s minions, we are the ones to be destroyed for the good of the world.

Years ago, a popular song said,

Think of all the hate
There is in Red China —
Then take a look around you
At Selma, Alabama;
Oh you may leave here
For three days in space,
But when you return
It’s the same old place
The pounding of the drum
And the frightened disgrace
Hate your next door neighbour —
But don’t forget to say grace

And you tell me,
Over and over again, my friend
That you don’t believe
We’re on the Eve
Of Destruction.

How close to destruction are we? If we are lining up for the Mother of all wars, what will we achieve?

The basic story is wrong. The understanding our world has is an evil understanding. Satan has fed us lies, lies about ourselves, lies about the enemy, lies about the way to tackle the problem. And he lolls back on his lounge, watching CNN, and laughing at our stupidity!

When Revelation was written, Christians were a despised, persecuted minority. A city the size of Marrickville might have 40 Christians in it — 1:2000 in the cities. But out in the pagus, out in the countryside, there was barely a believer to be found. That’s where we get the word, pagan, from.
Christians had no armies to support them; they had no hierarchy to present their needs to the Government; they had no power in this world except the power of their faith and of their testimony to Jesus.
If the troops came to arrest them, all they could do was speak the truth and submit to their punishment.
If you think of any of the evils that Christians had to face in the closing days of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, or in Ambon in the last year, that was what Christians faced in the days of Nero. And they had no more power than the Ambonese Christians had.

What was the Christian answer?

REV 19:11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

This is no call to arms! This is a revelation of Christ when all seems lost. It’s the King, come to save his people! It’s the Ruler of Heaven’s armies, coming in the nick of time!

When Hitler’s plan to invade England failed, he turned his attention to Malta. If he could capture Malta, he would strike at English sovereignty, he would have a key access point to Africa, he would control the Mediterranean.
Day after day, waves and waves of German bombers pounded the tiny island.
And all that Malta had was some anti-aircraft guns and four cloth-and-string Gloster Gladiator fighters. These Gladiators were 80 or 100kph slower than a German bomber and nearly 200kph slower than the German Messerschmitt fighters.
Day after day, they sent up three of the Gladiators, and kept the fourth one for spares. How could three old rag and wire biplanes do anything? Well, the Messerschmitts had to turn back for fuel soon after the bombers reached Malta, so the Gladiators only had to keep away from the Messerschmitts for a few minutes. And the bombers had to slow down for their bombing runs.
The RAF in Malta knew they couldn’t win. All they could do was let the Germans know that they weren’t going to give up. And, along they way, they kept the bombers from bombing accurately.
In the end the three Gladiators were even being fixed with bits chopped off the German bombers they managed to shoot down.
But, when it seemed that all was lost, a ship carrying Spitfires to Africa had to turn back. And twelve Spitfires were dropped off that ship in Malta. The tide turned: Malta finally had a defending force!

That’s the image here. The same Jesus who came among us as the Word of God, who came to call a people for himself out of the rebel Kingdom, is now revealed as the King of Kings, come to rescue his people, arriving at the darkest hour and bringing liberty and relieve when we most felt defeated.

We are not the good minority facing an evil force coming from outside. We are not the Army of God, fighting the forces of Satan, no matter how much our political leaders might like us to believe that tale.
We are the redeemed minority; forgiven rebels, called out of a rebel world where Satan is the Prince of the Power of the Air. We are soldiers who fight not against flesh and blood, but

...against the principalities and against the powers and against the world rulers of this present darkness and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Don’t let the world’s rhetoric deceive you. Don’t fall into the trap. We will not destroy evil when it assembles its forces for battle.

REV 16:12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. 13 Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.

The kings of the earth might rise up and gather together against the Lord and his Messiah, but they come together because of lies and they assemble to fight against God. But they can never win! There is a King whose power is above that of all kings. Hear God’s word:

REV 16:16 Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.
REV 16:17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18 Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. 19 The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. 20 Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. 21 From the sky huge hailstones of about fifty kilograms each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.

When the powers of this world assemble in defiance of God, it is the anointed King sent by God who dashes them in pieces like a pottery jar. It is the King of Kings who rules over them and before whom they bow in homage. It is he who will lead them in a triumphant procession.
We have a king... we have a God. We are on the victory side forever more!

Praise God! Hallelujah! And Amen!