Series; Advent Narnia Series
Message #2 Encounter the Power
Introduction:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a story about great powers arrayed against one another. The power of the White witch is indeed great for she has made the Emperor’s land always winter and never Christmas. Her power is manifested through her magic wand and with it she rules all of Narnia with an iron fist. She is a dreadful character with great power and a formidable foe of all that is good. All who oppose her she turns into stone statues. Indeed, all of the entire land of Narnia is under her spell, the spell of sin and death. The title of last week’s message which captures this thought…always winter but never Christmas!
But there is another power in the story of Narnia, a power for good and not for evil. A power that is mightier still. Aslan, the beloved Son of the Emperor beyond the Sea has invaded Narnia and directly assaulted the Witch’s Kingdom.
From the earliest pages of the story, the witch’s power and reign over Narnia begin to weaken because “Aslan is on the move.” As you read through the pages of this first book in the series, you quickly understand that the power of Aslan is greater than the power of the White Witch. And as these two kingdoms battle it out you see poignant references to the superiority of Aslan’s power.
These vignettes give us incredible insight into the Christmas story found in our Bibles this morning and I want to cover four of them. We’ve already discussed the first sign of God’s superior power in last week’s message. Father Christmas showed up and spoke of Aslan’s presence in Narnia. The thaw has already started and signs of springtime were all around. But there are other wonderful images captured in this book that are worth examining this morning.
Power to rescue us and give us a hope and a future.
In the story you have to remember that there are four main characters; Peter, Lucy, Edmund and Susan. Edmund enters Narnia one day and comes face to face with the white witch. She seduces him with her “Turkish delight” and Edmund gives his employ to her service. His task, to betray his brother and two sisters and ultimately Aslan himself. What Edmund doesn’t realize is that he has just sentenced himself to certain death under the witch’s rule in his life. Later on in the story, Edmund is rescued as the witch is about to take his life. Aslan restores him to his brother and sisters and the story goes on to tell us that he becomes one of Narnia’s great kings. It is a story of redemption, of what Christ does for each one of us by…
rescuing us from our darkness,
redeeming us from our sins and
restoring us to God Himself.
But at what cost does all this good come into our lives? Oh, but at great cost to God Himself.
For there was a deep magic at work in the land of Narnia, an unshakable natural law, firm as the roots of the mountains themselves. According to this magic, any act of treason leads inevitably to death. Anyone who overthrows or subverts absolute allegiance to the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea and his son automatically forfeits his life. Moreover, every traitor’s blood belongs to the witch-as she knows all too well.
A similar magic has been built into our own world. God warned Adam and Eve about it in the Garden of Eden:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
As in Lewis’s invented world called Narnia, this deep magic must be appeased. To ignore its demands is to invite the destruction of the world itself.
But there is another magic bubbling at the core of the Narnian world. It erupts in a burst of unexpected glory when Susan and Lucy hear the loud crack of the Stone Table as it suddenly collapsed. The girls feel its earthshaking energy when, at the sound of a mighty shout, they turn to see the great Lion Aslan – The Lion who voluntarily took Edmund’s place has now been restored to life and is laughing in the sunrise.
In that very moment, the witch’s magic is overturned. The Deep Magic is trumped by an even deeper power. The rule of forfeiture and fair returns is swallowed up in the prior principle of grace, mercy, and atonement. And death itself, as Aslan triumphantly declares, begins to work backward.
C.S. Lewis has captured for us one of the most foundational Christian truths in an allegorical way. Here’s the truth. Christ, like Aslan, has died in our place, and risen again on our behalf. By His sacrifice, He has broken the spell of sin and death. But that’s not all. What is every bit as important, but far less obvious, is the fact that His atoning death was neither an after-thought nor a hastily adopted provisional measure-a kind of plan B thrown together at the last minute as a way of dealing with unforeseen complications. On the contrary, it flows out of the oldest and most profound of all the Creator’s designs and plans: God’s original, primeval intention to lay down His life for His friends…In the end, the deepest magic of all is the magic of God’s redeeming and self-sacrificing love, the love that is in itself the soul of creation, the hub of the wheel, and the fulcrum upon which everything moves and turns.
Finding God in the Land of Narnia, pages 45ff
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it way, nailing it to the cross.
Col. 2:13-14
The story of Narnia is the story of our world. Two great rival powers are pitted against one another for the control and destiny of the creation. This story reminds us of the power of Christ to rescue us and give us a hope and a future. But it also speaks of the…
Power to overcome death itself.
After the rescue of Edmund the White Witch comes to Aslan demanding the blood of the traitor Edmund. She appeals to the Deep Magic as her right to her lawful prey.
“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he’d been through and after the talk he’d had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn’t seem to matter what the Witch said.
“Well,” said Aslan. “His offence was not against you.” “Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch. “Let us say I have forgotten it,” answered Aslan gravely. “Tell us of this Deep Magic.”
“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the trunk of the World Ash Tree? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”…”and so,” continued the Witch, “that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.” (Friends this is the law that God put into place from the beginning of the world, the law of sin and death.)
The story goes on to tell us that Aslan met with the witch, just the two of them and worked a deal to appease the Deep Magic. How? Aslan was going to give his life for Edmund’s and offer his blood to appease the Deep Magic from the beginning of time. In great detail, the story is told of how Aslan submitted to the ropes and cords which held him fast to the great Stone Table and how the White Witch so cruelly put him to death. But the story doesn’t end there.
That night, as Lucy and Susan watched on, they heard a deafening noise as the Great Stone Table was cracked in two and they came face to face again with a living, breathing, resurrected Aslan. In their wonder and amazement Aslan explained to them …
“…that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. I Cor. 15:20-26
Through Christ death we are rescued and through His resurrection, we are granted new life. The power to rescue me and give me life speaks of God’s great love for you and I in Christ. But there is another aspect to the power of Christ which is good news for all of us this morning, it is the…
Power to break the witch’s spell and destroy the witch herself.
After his resurrection, Lucy and Susan jump on the back of Aslan as He races toward the witch’s castle to rescue those who have been turned into Stone by the power of the witch’s wand. When the children arrived in the courtyard of the White Witch Lucy said…
.”What an extraordinary place!” “All those stone animals-and people too! It’s like a museum.” “Hush,” said Susan, “Aslan’s doing something.”
He was indeed. He had bounded up to the stone lion and breathed on him. Then without waiting a moment he whisked round-almost as if he had been a cat chasing his tail-and breathed also on the stone dwarf, which (as you remember) was standing a few feet from the lion with his back to it. Then he pounced on a tall stone Dryad which stood beyond the dwarf, turned rapidly aside to deal with a stone rabbit on his right, and rushed on to two centaurs. But at that moment Lucy said, “Oh, Susan! Look! Look at the lion.”
I expect you’ve seen someone put a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny streak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now. For a second after Aslan had breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back-then it spread-then the colour seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper-then, while his hind-quarters were still obviously stone the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stoney folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn. And now his hind legs had come to life. He lifted one of them and scratched himself. Then, having caught sight of Aslan, he went bounding after him and frisking round him whimpering with delight and jumping up to lick his face.
Of course the children’s eyes turned to follow the lion; but the sight they saw was so wonderful that they soon forgot about him. Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs, and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squelings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.
Isn’t this a wonderfully told story of how Christ’s power changes our very lives? This story reminds me of how in the gospels, people flocked to Jesus as God’s healing power touched their lives. They mobbed him because this miracle working Rabbi had authority over their diseases, their infirmities, their illnesses, the paralysis. Every time he entered a town and the news about Him spread, droves of people flocked to Jesus.
“…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.” Acts 10:38
But this story also reminds me of the spiritual transformation Jesus works in our lives. Our hearts had turned to stone, we were frozen, enslaved, encased in the hardness of our own hearts rebellion toward God. But God’s mercy through Christ touched our lives, his breath thawed us out, unlocked the stone hard hearts of our lives and set us free to love Him and serve Him. That’s power my friend. What I was unable to do for myself, Christ stepped in and gave me life. His power has set us free!
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Heb. 2:14, 15
The story goes on to tell us of the final battle where Aslan’s forces meet the evil forces of the White Witch. As Aslan quickly pounces on the White witch she is gone and her power has come to an utter end. The armies of Aslan triumph on the field of battle and the resurrected lion Himself overcomes all that once opposed him. The Witch is no match for the resurrected Lion.
And having disarmed the powers and authorities he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Col. 2:15
I love Paul’s choice of words about the final coming of Christ upon the earth as he faces the Last battle for supremacy in order to restore all things.
Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. 2 Thess. 2:8
That’s real power my friends. That’s real power. Power to rescue us from our sin. Power to defeat death and grant us a new life. Power to destroy the law of sin and death which is arrayed against us. And finally…
Power to raise us up to lives of meaning and significance.
The final chapter in the book details the enthronement and royal lives of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. Aslan himself seats each of them on one of the four thrones and grants them each scepters to rule all of Narnia from the castle by the sea named Cair Paravel thus fulfilling the ancient prophecy …
When Adams’ flesh and Adam’s bone
Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,
The evil time will be over and done.
Meaning and Significance for the Now
Friends, God has called you and I, just like he did Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy, to be agents of God’s restorative work on earth. He has called us to join the battle, given us gifts and graces in order to prevail and granted us a purpose greater than ourselves. Did you hear that? A purpose greater than ourselves. He has also promised that we, through Christ, will share in His victory!
In my Life Journal this Friday, I was reading in the Book of Romans these words…
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer.
After reading that verse in 12:12 it hit me, that’s how you and I are to live our lives. Always rejoicing in the hope of our promise in heaven. Always patient in the afflictions of this life because we know they don’t have the last word. And always faithful to pray because it is one of the greatest gifts (weapons) God has equipped us with.
Think about it for just a moment. If this doesn’t have meaning and significance then what does? Imagine living your life, going to work every day, punching the time clock, mastering your world, accumulating your resources, building your life and that’s all there is. Tell me what kind of meaning and significance that has compared to what is promised to us as God’s children who are charged with the task of asserting the Lordship of Christ upon the earth. Friends, there has to be more besides living our lives, working hard, retiring and dying.
Paul’s testimony before King Agrippa…I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Acts 26:18
God isn’t just sending Paul my friends, He is sending us as well. So that we may receive “a place” – significance and meaning – among those who are sanctified by faith in Christ. What a place!
Meaning and Significance for Eternity
But there is more good news. The meaning and significance of this life in Christ and service to the King is nothing compared to the eternal significance of our heavenly reward where we…like, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy will rule on thrones as well. God set it up that way from the beginning. We are destined to rule and reign over creation.
The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever.
Rev. 22 3-5
Conclusion:
Do you know the power of a changed life?
Have you experienced the power of a rescued life?
Have you crossed over from death to life and been freed from the spell of sin and death and liberated through Christ?
Do you want a rich and meaningful life, one crowned with significance both now and forevermore.
It is possible through the work of God in Christ. All that can be hoped for is found in Jesus by having a personal relationship with God through Christ.
