It’s the Christmas season. Now is the time we like to think about the manger scene, the baby, “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”. Today, however, I want to project you 30 years after that 1st Christmas, to Jesus the fiery preacher. He’s warmed up today…
(Read Luke 12:1-7)
I don’t usually put much significance in my dreams, but this one I dreamed several weeks ago is interesting enough to tell. We are on our family farm. I’m driving a sort of open vehicle like a golf cart. My wife and children are with me. There are lions running all around. They are running, milling, stirred up by something or someone up on the hills to the South. My feeling is that these are tame lions. They’re not going to hurt us, but then one lioness begins to follow closely behind the cart. There’s a hungry look in her eye, and I wonder for a moment, just how safe are these lions?
While lions and tigers can be hand raised and “tamed” to a point, any animal trainer will tell you they’re never as completely tame as your housecat. Just ask Sigfried and Roy!
I think that very fact may be the reason that C.S. Lewis chose a lion to be the god figure in his classic children’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
You’ve seen the posters, and the TV ads. Disney and Walden Media coming out with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe on Dec. 9. I’ve been waiting for this movie for 30 years. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was written by C.S. Lewis, a theologian and one of the sharpest Christian minds of the 20th century. He wrote Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, Surprised by Joy, and The Screwtape Letters. Then in 1950 he published the first of 7 books for children: The Chronicles of Narnia. These books has been read by millions around the world for more than half a century.
In the book, four children go through a wardrobe and enter the world of Narnia, where there are talking animals, giants, centaurs and unicorns, and, of course a lion and a witch. The lion, whose name is Aslan is the god and creator of this world, and is said to be the “son of the Great Emperor beyond the sea.” He is the Christ figure.
When the children first hear the name Aslan they have curious reactions. Three of the children--Peter, Susan and Lucy—have positive responses. “Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.” But their brother Edmond, who has gone down a path of sin and betrayal, has quite a different reaction. He felt a “sensation of mysterious horror.”
Then when the children find out that Aslan is a lion, they are all struck with fear. They are talking with Mr. Beaver and they ask him “Who is Aslan?”
Then Lucy asks, “Is—is he a man?”
“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King. I tell you.”
In one of the later books in the series another character says of Aslan, “It’s not as if he were a tame lion.”
What I love about Narnia’s Aslan is that he flies in the face of much of our modern thought about God.
Have you ever heard someone say, “Well, I just can’t believe in a God who would condemn anyone to Hell or allow an infant to be taken from its mother.” Or “My God, would not create someone one way and then expect them to behave in another.” “My God is a God of love who accepts everyone and wants people to be happy.” The way they say “My God” makes it sound like, rather than being a fearsome lion, God is a trained kitten on a leash. One modern writer who claims to be a Christian actually wrote that Jesus was like an alley cat who just moved in and took up residence. That’s not God. That’s a pet. It’s certainly not the God of the Bible.
You can search from Genesis to Revelation and you won’t find God portrayed as a house pet. What you will find is a God who is to be feared.
Lev. 19:14 – “You shall fear your God, I am the Lord.”
Ps. 19:9 – “The fear of the Lord is pure”
Ps. 111:10 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Pr. 1:7 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
Pr. 14:27 – “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.”
New Testament examples – 1 Peter 2:17: “Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
Rom. 3:18 – In Paul’s indictment of fallen mankind separated from God by sin he says, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”
I know we’ve been told for years that “the fear of God” doesn’t really mean being afraid, but, rather, “reverent awe”. But I should point out that the Hebrew word used in these verses means literal “FEAR” or dread.
Look what happens when God or one of His representatives shows up on the scene. What’s the most often heard phrase when this happens? “Fear not”. Kind of an unusual greeting, don’t you think, unless there’s something to really be afraid of?
Isaiah 6 – “Woe is me. I am undone.”
Exodus 3:6 – “Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.”
When the angel shows up at the tomb of Jesus in Matthew 28:3-4 we see terror in the reaction of the guards: “His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. [4] The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.”
What about the reaction of Peter and the other disciples after Jesus calmed the storm. Mark 4:41 They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"
This doesn’t sound much like “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” It’s more like “Dangerous Jesus, strong and wild.”
Where did we get off track in our view of God? When did we begin looking at God as this big cosmic pushover…a sort of grandfatherly character who tolerates our sin and indulges our every whim? Whatever happened we know it started a long time ago. Almost half a century ago the great American preacher and modern-day prophet A.W. Tozer wrote: “The God of the modern evangelical rarely astonishes anybody. He manages to stay pretty much with the constitution. Never breaks our by-laws. He’s a very well-behaved God and very denominational and very much like one of us…we ask Him to help us when we’re in trouble and look to Him to watch over us when we’re asleep. The God of the modern evangelical isn’t a God I could have much respect for.” (Quoted in: Who Will Be Saved? Edited by: House, Paul and Thornbury, Gregory. Crossway, 2000, p. 47.)
I’ve often thought that many of us treat God as a sort of homemade wooden deity, who will look the other way at our sinful attitudes, and our rebellion, as long as we attend church once in a while and drop something in the offering plate. Someone has said, “The carnal mind seeks to create its own god which loves everyone, puts up with all matter of evil and foolishness, and gives in to the will of evil men who cry “Inequality!” (Duane Edward Spencer, TULIP, The Five Points of Calvinism in the Light of Scripture, Baker, 1979, p. 21)
As Pastor John Piper has said, “God does not like to be taken for granted. It flies in the face of His eternal purposes – that He be known and loved and praised and enjoyed. And it makes us superficial people…When the main thing is missing, what’s left is distorted and superficial, whatever it is. If someone says, “Oh, that’s just religion,” I answer, “It’s not religion. It’s reality. God made the world and everything in it. He owns the earth and everyone on it. He is the main actor in the world. He is guiding the history of every people and nation to their appointed goals. Everything, without exception, has to do with God and gets its main meaning from God. And not to show this, but to take this for granted, is to be superficial.” It is simply impossible to overstate the importance of God. And He des not like being taken for granted. The psalm does not say, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be taken for granted.” It says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised” (Psm. 96:4).” (God is a Very Important Person, Sermon, May 11, 1993, www.desiringGod.org.
1. God is an awesome and fearsome God.
I don’t want to say “God is like Aslan”, but rather “Aslan is like God,” in that He is to be respected and even feared. As Jesus said, (Luke 12:5) “I’ll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill people and then throw them into hell.”
But the thing I love about Aslan (and God) is that for all that fierceness and awesome power and terrible wrath, there is a tender side. Aslan is not only a fearsome force to be reckoned with, but he is also someone people are drawn to.
Author Thomas Williams writes about an encounter a girl named Jill has with Aslan in another book in the series, “The Silver Chair”. Jill is alone and desperately thirsty in unknown woods, she comes upon a stream, but between her and the water sits the great Lion. Aslan tells her that she can drink, but the terrified girl wants assurance that she will not be eaten. When he refuses to promise, Jill determines to find another stream, but He tells her, “There is no other stream.” Aslan wants her to have the life-giving water, but she wants it on her own terms. She wants fulfillment without God. Aslan ignores her desire for safety, insisting that she take the risk of encountering God, who is the ultimate satisfaction of all needs and desires. God wants us happy, but as Lewis explains elsewhere, “It is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there.” Williams concludes: “It would not be loving for God to let us off the hook when our desire for comfort and safety causes us to avoid him….“No, Aslan is neither safe nor tame, but in every instance his severity is ultimately revealed as love. When he greets the penitent Lucy after her failure to follow him, he kisses her, breathes his sweet breath on her and enfolds her tenderly. Such scenes fill the pages of Narnia, giving us a picture of God so magnetic and appealing that it’s no wonder many children (and adults too) fall in love with Jesus after meeting Aslan.
(The Heart of the Chronicles of Narnia, W Publishing Group, 2005, pp. 8-9)
There’s a scene in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in which Aslan invites the two girls to play with him: “all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”
Remember when asked if Aslan was “quite safe” Mr. Beaver replied, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King. I tell you.”
2. God is good and you can trust Him with your life.
Our problem is that we all too often confuse love with kindness and goodness with tolerance. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in his book “The Problem of Pain” “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. …Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.” As a God of love, God is more concerned about our character and our spiritual growth than about our comfort.
Tuesday morning I was reading Psalm 145, and I was struck by the contrasts portrayed in this Psalm with regard to the character of God:
Psalm 145:8-9 The Lord is kind and merciful,
slow to get angry, full of unfailing love.
[9] The Lord is good to everyone.
He showers compassion on all his creation.
Psalm 145:13 For your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.
You rule generation after generation.
The Lord is faithful in all he says;
he is gracious in all he does.
Psalm 145:17 The Lord is righteous in everything he does;
he is filled with kindness.
Psalm 145:19-20 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them.
[20] The Lord protects all those who love him,
but he destroys the wicked.
CONCLUSION: God is not a tame God. You can’t put Him in a box, or keep him on a leash like a tame kitten. He is the Lion of Judah, the ultimate force to be reckoned with. BUT He is also gracious, and loving, abounding in kindness and mercy, and He wants you to come to him. BUT we must come on His terms, remembering that He is God, and it’s all about Him.
UNBELIEVER: Come to God on His terms through His Son, Jesus Christ. Repent, ask Him to save you.
BELIEVER: Don’t ignore or take God for Granted. Invite him into every room, every area of your life. Pray and seek His face.
