"From Eden to Eden -- Exploring the Saga of Salvation History"

Part I: The Truth About Star Wars

Sermon Presented by Dale Wolcott

September 9, 2000

(All scriptures are from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.)

The other day I went to an internet search engine and typed in "Star Wars," and was I in for a surprise! I found a list of Star Wars websites that are nothing but indexes of other Star Wars websites --- Star Wars fan clubs; Star Wars merchandise; Star Wars memorabilia; Star Wars chat rooms, and on and on.

It was over 20 years ago that the Star Wars science fiction movies made the names of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader into household words in America, probably just about as well known as John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr.; maybe even Abraham Lincoln.

And now, just this last year we had the prequel (I don't even remember the name). I suppose there are about as many people who have seen a Star Wars film as there are people who have television sets. Now before I get into this message titled "The Truth about Star Wars," I'm very happy to tell you that I'm not one of those people. I've never watched one, and don't intend to. I have better ways to use my time and mental energy, and the more serious you get about becoming well acquainted with this Book, [referring to the Bible] and with the Jesus of this Book, the more you'll understand why I say that.

On the internet I discovered that last year the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., had a major Star Wars exhibition on display. So I took a ten-minute virtual tour of the Star Wars stories. And I learned that those blockbuster George Lucas stories are almost --- not quite, but almost --- a parable, or a parallel, or probably a better word would be a counterfeit, of the original, genuine, reality Star Wars story in the Bible, which we're going to look at in a few minutes.

I was intrigued to see that this made-up story of the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance had so many Bible elements woven into it; good and evil, trials and redemption, sacrifice and atonement, and even a resurrection; all skillfully twisted just a little. (Don't even try to get your theology from a Hollywood movie!)

This morning we're beginning a year-long exploration of the ultimate-reality Star Wars saga, a true story more gripping than any celluloid trilogy. We're going to do this once a month from now until next June, mostly on the second Sabbath of each month (with one or two exceptions including October when I'll be involved in the Dan Collins crusade in Mt. Pleasant).

Each month we'll focus on a pivotal episode in the story we sometimes call the Great Controversy, or the Story of Redemption, or the Plan of Salvation.

We'll take a virtual journey together from Eden to Eden; and on this Bible journey you are going to find the tools you need for your personal journey to the ultimate destiny God has in mind for your life. I hope you'll come each time, and bring a friend.

The story we want to look at today is the story that's behind all the Bible stories. This story is mentioned or referred to in many different places all through the Bible, but the place we find it spelled out most clearly is in a book we don't often get into; open with me to the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 28.

While you're finding it, let me ask you some questions that you may have asked yourself: "Why do lovers quarrel, and nations go to war? Why do babies starve in Somalia, and why do children carry guns to school in Michigan?" Why did your pastor's nephew fling himself onto the floor of a hospital delivery room just a few weeks ago, crying out to God, because the baby his wife had just delivered wasn't breathing? Why at this very moment is that precious little bundle, whose name is Larissa, all hooked up to tubes, with a flat EEG and a broken hearted mother and father spilling their tears onto her face?

Why has your life been turned upside down? Why have your youthful dreams perhaps been shattered against the ice-hard realities of a world that can seem cold as steel? Why has the Golden Rule been so twisted out of shape that in today's world it seems to read, "He who has the gold makes the rules?" Why does evil always seem to come out on top? And will life always and forever go on that way?

This story in Ezekiel 28 is the background story that makes sense out of the rest of the Bible stories. And it's a story we need to understand in order to make sense out of our own stories too. This story gives the best answer I know to the age-old question that thinking people have to ask: "If God is good, why is there so much bad? If God is in control, why doesn't He take control?"

You have a worksheet in your bulletin that says, "Four Keys to Coping with Trouble and Evil." Before we look at this story to find those keys, let's pray:

Lord, as we close our eyes to the things that are seen and temporary, we want to open our hearts to the things that are unseen; some of which are also temporary, and some of which are eternal. Speak, Lord, right now. We're choosing to listen. Amen.

"Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre," Ezekiel 28:11, 12a.

God gives the prophet a song; a funeral song ("lamentation") for a king: the king of a wealthy, wicked, heathen city, the city of Tyre. But as we read the words of the song, we can tell that God is drawing back the curtain of human history and telling us there's a story behind the story, some other superhuman prince behind this King of Tyre.

Notice as we read in verse 13: "You were in Eden;" this is not the King of Tyre! "Every precious stone was your covering;" here is a beautiful being with "timbrels and pipes;" a musical genius. And it says, "You were created" ---that's very important; we'll come back to that.

Note verse 14: "You were the anointed cherub who covers." So this brilliant being is a cherub, an angel. Several Bible passages describe God as the one who "dwells between the cherubim." (Psalm 80:1; Isa. 37:16; etc.)

In the book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to build an earthly model of the heavenly sanctuary, God's dwelling place. In the Most Holy Place of this sanctuary, Moses placed the sacred chest containing the Ten Commandments, the foundation of God's government. Its lid was called the "mercy seat," representing God's throne. And standing at each end of the mercy seat were golden models of two angels; the "covering cherubs."

So this "anointed cherub" in Ezekiel was the angel closest to the throne of God.

Now note verse 15, "You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you." Did God create the devil? No; iniquity "was found" in Him.

The naturalistic, secularist philosophies that saturate our society today don't help people cope with trouble and evil because they either deny that there really is such a thing as evil, or they assume that it's a permanent, inevitable part of reality.

Key Number 1 for coping with trouble and evil: The Bible shows us that evil has a personal source, and that source is not God.

God created a beautiful, holy being. There's a parallel passage in Isaiah 14:12, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning." Lucifer was later called Satan, "the accuser" or devil, "the opposer." That doesn't mean we can cop out for our own bad choices or bad dispositions by saying, "The devil made me do it." But it does mean we are not the automatic, inescapable victims of some inexorable biological accident or preprogrammed genetic code that destines us and everyone around us to live by "the survival of the fittest."

Lucifer made a choice; he made a devil out of himself, and he has infected this planet with his destructive thought patterns. (That will be our story next time: "God's Grace at Edengate.") But because evil has a personal source, you can do something about it because you too are a person! That's a fundamental Bible truth.

When God created the angels, and later the human family (and Bible evidence indicates there are many other worlds with intelligent created beings also [Job 1; Hebrews 1 and 11], and none of them fallen into sin), He chose to make not machines but persons; not toys or puppets, but friends; not things to use, but people to love. And love isn't love unless you don't have to love.

This leads us to Key Number 2: God wants us to understand this story of where evil comes from, but eventually we have to admit that evil is unexplainable. The Bible says simply, "iniquity was found in you." 2 Thessalonians 2:7 speaks of "the mystery of lawlessness" (King James Version "mystery of iniquity").

It's easy to blame God for what has happened, and what is happening. My favorite author outside the Bible puts it this way: "Sin is an intruder, for whose presence no reason can be given. It is mysterious, unaccountable; to excuse it is to defend it. Could excuse for it be found, or cause be shown for its existence, it would cease to be sin." [Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 492]

God didn't cause it; He didn't want it; He didn't intend it. But He took the risk of creating someone capable of love and friendship, knowing that love is only love if you don't have to love.

Twelve or 13 years ago, when my family and I were living in Red Bluff, California, I tuned in the network news one morning and couldn't believe my ears; Red Bluff was on the CBS World News Roundup. A man had just been arrested in Red Bluff for imprisoning a teenage girl seven or eight years earlier, and holding her as a slave and sexual companion all that time. The next morning the local newspaper had all the sickening details. This was a young man with a terribly twisted mind; so desperate for a wife, for somebody to love him, that he had kidnapped a total stranger, and then kept her in a locked trunk under his bed except for the times when he allowed her out for necessary activities and for his own pleasure. As time went on he started letting her take little trips to town; apparently he actually thought he had gained her love or at least her loyalty. And one day she went to a local Baptist church and told the story to the pastor, who took her to the authorities and she was free again.

Whenever I hear someone wondering out loud why God would create a being who would later rebel against Him, I think of that story: love cannot be forced. Genuine love is only possible where there is a true choice to love, or not to love.

God took that risk. And Lucifer exercised his power of choice in a negative way; and so do we. Why? Ezekiel 28:17 gives a partial answer: "Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty." It was pride, self-centeredness. But ultimately there's isn't any good answer. Sin is stupid!

Let's move now to the Third Key for coping with trouble and evil. Another natural question to ask is, why has God allowed evil to go on for so long? Why didn't He nip it in the bud, kill it before it could spread? What on earth, what in the universe is God doing about this problem? It may seem like He isn't doing much. Wars keep popping out in unheard of places; Kosovo; Chechnya; Timor; Fiji; and who knows where next. Hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires seem to get worse every year. New volcanoes erupt; earthquakes shake cities that never had earthquakes before. And closer to home: when good people pray, bad things sometimes just seem to keep on happening to them.

Our Third Key: We can believe that evil is controllable; we can be confident that God is doing everything an Almighty God can do to win back our friendship, our loyalty, our freely chosen love, because of what Jesus has done.

Back to Ezekiel 28: Note verses 16 and 17, "By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze at you."

If you're using the old King James Version you notice that in the middle of verse 17 it switches from past tense to future tense; nearly every other translation puts it all in past tense. Remember, this is a funeral song; it was written as if it were to be sung at the funeral. We haven't had Satan's funeral yet; some of this hasn't happened yet; which is why the King James Version puts some of it in future tense.

There are actually three stages of Jesus' action in dealing with evil, with Satan: we get information from other parts of the Bible to go with what we find here. Revelation 12 tells us about the original war in heaven; the dragon was cast out, "that old serpent."

In Genesis we find that same serpent in the Garden of Eden. Isaiah said, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer." Jesus Himself said "I saw (past tense) Satan as lightning fall from heaven." So God dealt with the rebellion in heaven. Lucifer and one-third of all the angels were cast out.

But let's look at John 12:31-33: "'Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.' This He said, signifying by what death He would die." Jesus said that it wasn't until He died on the cross that Satan was really permanently cast out of heaven.

The Book of Job indicates that in Old Testament times Satan still had a certain limited access to heaven. But then God Himself --- the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ --- left heaven; became a helpless human baby in the arms of a young Jewish woman; walked the dusty roads, healed the sick, lived His Father's love, chased demons out of helpless victims and even forced them into the lake by the legions.

And then Lucifer, in desperate anger, turned around and schemed to have this in-the-flesh demonstration of perfect love nailed to a cross. And at that point, Lucifer had no more sympathy from any of the angelic beings or anybody on the other worlds. That's why Jesus' last shout on the cross was "It is finished."

Now, at that point, the prince of this world was cast out; the prince behind the prince of Tyre was "cast to the ground" (Ezekiel 28:17).

I want to give you my personal testimony: I can't figure out everything about this Great Controversy. I'm not sure why 2,000 years needed to elapse between the cross and the second coming (although I have some ideas). I don't fully understand why some of my prayers are answered wonderfully and other times when I pray, it doesn't seem to make a lick of difference. I don't always have answers for heartbroken parents who wonder why their child was stillborn, or deformed. But when I see that the very same One who cast Satan out of heaven then turned around and followed him to this earth; when I see that God Himself was willing to suffer right along with us, was willing to take the very worst that Satan has ever thrown at anyone; and then that Jesus chose to hang on that cross when He could have called any number of His holy, loyal angels; His heavenly majority, those two-thirds that stuck with Him in the original rebellion; He could have called them to come and set Him free; when I see Jesus dying for me when He didn't have to do it at all, I'm persuaded that I can trust Him with my heart, with my loyalty.

That's what motivates me to activate my personal power of choice to choose that I'm going to be on His side; that I'm going to follow that Jesus no matter what; that I'm going to stay in this battle until it's over, and I'm never going to give up. That's when the prince of this world is cast down off the throne of my heart.

Romans 8:37 says "We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." That's YOUR key to coping with trouble and evil! Every story in the Bible is a story about Jesus.

Now back to Ezekiel 28 for the final phase of what Jesus is doing about evil, which is the Fourth Key for coping with trouble and evil: we'll read verses 18 and 19, using King James Version verb tenses. "You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your trading; therefore I will bring fire from your midst; it will devour you, and I will turn you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who knew you among the peoples will astonished at you; you will become a horror, and shall be no more forever."

That's the end of the story, and today we're just telling the very beginning. But don't you love that last phrase? What a promise: You shall be no more forever!

Key Number 4: We can rejoice that evil is temporary; God and good are eternal.

Years ago a wheat farmer on the Midwestern prairie stepped out the front door of his farmhouse, looked toward the horizon and saw something that brought terror to his heart: A prairie fire; and the wind was blowing it his way. Hurrying to the barn, he harnessed up the team and hitched them up to the big plow he'd used earlier that season. Swinging in a tight circle around the house and the outbuildings, he plowed a furrow, 360 degrees, all the way around his family and his home. Then he headed several rods out beyond that furrow, and plowed another wider circle, 360 degrees, all the way around. Then he took a match and stepped into the ripening wheatgrass between those two bare-earth furrows, and set it on fire.

As the fire took hold, he went to the house and gathered his family on the front porch for prayer. And when the prairie fire came, it burned all around them but it never touched them, because they were standing where the fire had already been.

This Book pulls back the curtain of history and reveals that there's a fire on the horizon for Planet Earth. Lucifer, the original rebel angel, knows that his end is near, and he wants to take this whole planet down with him in the final episode of the Real Star Wars story.

The wages of sin is death. That fire is a certainty, though long deferred.

But the good news is that you and I can stand where the fire has already been. On the cross, Jesus took the penalty for my sins and yours. (We'll spend a whole service on that later in this series: "The Day God Went to Hell for You.")

This morning He wants to come into the choosing-places inside your mind and just let Him burn off whatever stupid choices, whatever sinful stuff may be lingering there. He'll do it right now if you choose to invite Him, and He'll do it daily as you keep choosing to trust Him. Then, someday soon, the Star Wars are going to be over, because evil is temporary and God and good are eternal, and He says you and I can be eternal too if we keep making the choice for Jesus.

I'm looking forward to conversing with some of those angels who've watched this whole thing from beginning to end. And you know what else, they are looking forward to listening to you tell your personal Star Wars story to them; how you faced the enemy and how Jesus made you more than a conqueror because you made the choice to trust Him with your heart. I want to give you an opportunity this morning to make that choice in a very definite way.

If you know that you have not made a definite choice to be on Christ's side of this great controversy, and you know that you want to do that, I invite you to just step forward and meet me here at the front as we sing the hymn of response.