Sermon Central
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Narnia: How The World Went Wrong Series
Contributed by Randall Bergsma on Dec 1, 2005 (message contributor)
Summary: Sin has frozen our world in it’s grip and without outside help we are lost. Our fundamental problem is the presence of evil which is only defeated by the presence of God
Intro: Like Lucy, Edmund finds his way into Narnia through the wardrobe. But he doesn’t meet the nice faun, Mr. Tumnus. Instead, he comes face to face with the most feared being in that world: Jadis, the White Witch.
What Edmund doesn’t realize is that he is, in fact, a being that she fears. She wants to know if he is a “son of Adam”, a human. You see there is an ancient prophecy in Narnia that says when 2 sons of Adam, and 2 daughters of Eve sit on the 4 thrones of Cair Paravel, her rule of winter will be broken. Imagine her terrified surprize when she finds out from Edmund that he has 2 sisters and a brother!
She quickly hatches a plan to seduce Edmund and the rest and to keep the land under her frozen rule of eternal winter. “Always winter, never Christmas.” She plays on his desire, and soon he has agreed to betray his family into her hands.
Lewis has given us a picture of Genesis 3:
An evil being seduces Adam & Eve through their desires.
The land is forever cursed.
But there is a prophecy that the offspring of Adam will destroy the evil one. It is, in fact, the first prophecy of the coming Christ.
So the Chronicles of Narnia are once again, telling us the Christmas story.
1. My rebellion is what ruins my world.
It is our sin that stains our lives. All that we know that is not good can be traces in some fashion to the selfishness of human beings.
A. Edmund and Gen 3 is the story of what went wrong.
Why would a boy betray his brother & sisters for mere candy?
Why would a man betray his wife for mere “eye candy”?
Why would a man & woman betray themselves and their life in Eden for the taste of 1 stinkin’ piece of fruit..
But first remember that for things to go wrong, they must have been quite right before hand. God did not make us this way.
The Heidelberg Catechism puts it like this:
5 Q. Can you live up to all this perfectly?
A. No. I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor.
6 Q. Did God create people so wicked and perverse?
A. No. God created them good^1 and in his own image,
that is, in true righteousness and holiness.
7 Q. Then where does this corrupt human nature
come from?
A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise.
This fall has so poisoned our nature
that we are born sinners--
corrupt from conception on.
Sin is our fault as a race, and our fault as individuals. Our first parents gave us original sin, and everyone of us adds to it with actual sin.
Again, in the words of the Catechism:
10 Q. Will God permit such disobedience and rebellion to go unpunished?
A. Certainly not.
He is terribly angry
about the sin we are born with
as well as the sins we personally commit.
As it is written: “There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no-one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12, NIV).
Rom3:23 (say it after me...all have sinned...)
Think of ...
David getting his glasses steamy over another mans wife.
Peter acting like he didn’t know Jesus, the most amazing friend he ever had.
Paul, headhunting Christians from city to city.
The first bad news is, we cannot go comforting ourselves that we’ll just be good boys and girls and everything will turn out alright. -There are no “good boys and girls.”
B. At it’s heart, sin is rebellion against God’s good ways. It is wanting myself, more than anything. Sin always happens when we get lost in ourselves.
The White Witch played on Ed’s cravings for pleasure and importance. She magically gives him enchanted Turkish Delight, and the more he eats, the more he wants.(anybody been there?) She promised to make him a King of Narnia, and then he could eat all the Turkish delight he wanted. (Sound familiar? Gen.3:5-6)
There’s another thing about sin; it’s always a distortion of God’s good plan.
Edmund was destined to be a King of Narnia. Jadis knows it! The Witch promised him the same thing, but by the wrong route.
In a similar way, we go looking for good things, but in all the wrong ways, contrary to God’s design. Sin is rebellion vs the recipe of God. When you don’t follow the recipe, you don’t get the cake, the purring engine, etc.
Maybe you try to find significance in a company title, moving up the corporate ladder your willing to make your life one steady stream of work, no time for God, rest, or his gifts.