Narnia: Life Without Christmas Series

WHAT IF JESUS HAD NEVER BEEN BORN?

LIFE WITHOUT CHRISTMAS

Galatians 4:4

S: Jesus’ Importance in all of Life

C: The essentiality of the Incarnation

Th: What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?

Pr: LET US REJOICE IN THE TRUTH OF CHRISTMAS!

?: What? What should we rejoice in?

KW: Ways

TS: We will find in our study three ways God prepared this earth for Christmas.

Type: Proposition, Clarification

The ____ way God prepared for Christmas is…

I. HISTORICALLY

II. NATIONALLY

III. SPIRITUALLY

PA: How is the change to be observed?

• Realize the difference Jesus has made in history.

• Receive the encouragement to kingdom-living.

• Let Jesus change you.

Version: ESV

RMBC 27 November 05 AM

INTRODUCTION:

Have you ever read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

If you have children, I would like to say outright that it is a must read.

It is a story of four children who are transported into the land of Narnia, where they are confronted with adventures and the ultimate ruler of the world, the lion Aslan.

What is so striking about this story is that it is rooted in our history.

It really happened, for it is the Christmas and Easter story wrapped into one…

This is why we are so excited about the debut of this film that will be coming out in two weeks.

We are hearing that they really have kept to the story.

So this is an excellent occasion, for it will be a great family film with a powerful message that speaks to spiritual truth about Jesus.

Won’t you join us on December 11 for the 4:00 showing?

Afterwards, we will return to the church for pizza and discussion.

I believe this is a good evangelistic opportunity that is “not in your face” but rather engenders thought and consideration.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first book of seven of The Chronicles of Narnia series written by C. S. Lewis.

Many of you have heard of him, I am sure.

Let me give you a little of his history…

ILL Brainchild of C. S. Lewis - Hal Seed [modified]

C.S. Lewis was an amazing man. Some would call him one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. He published over forty books while he was alive and twenty more were published after his death.

Lewis was a quiet professor at Oxford University, in England. During World War II, the British Broadcasting Company asked him to do a series of lectures on the radio. People were so enamored with those broadcasts that Lewis became the second most famous person in all of England, second only to Winston Churchill, who later offered Lewis a special medal of recognition following World War II.

The lectures that Lewis gave for the BBC were later published in a book that is titled, “Mere Christianity.” It is a most powerful explanation and apologetic of Christianity.

Lewis was born in Northern Ireland. His mother died when he was seven years old. His father sent him to boarding school in England the next year.

During his formative years, C.S. Lewis learned to read classic literature in five languages. At age 19, when he took the entrance exams for Oxford, his examiner stated that Lewis’ exams were “the best even seen” in the history of Oxford.”

Before he entered Oxford, he served in the British Army during World War I, where he was wounded three times in battle.

Until he was 30 years old, Lewis was an avowed atheist. In a letter written to a friend in October 1916, he said, “I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man’s own invention.”

Interestingly, Lewis did not believe there was a God, but he said that he resented God for not existing.

But a change began to take place in Lewis while he was a professor at Oxford. Lewis became friends with two other professors, who happened to be real Christians. One was Hugh Dyson, the other was J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings.

As Lewis got to know these two, he became persuaded that their faith was real. And in the summer of 1929, he became convinced that Jesus really was an historic figure who really did die on the cross as a substitute for the sins of the world. So Lewis bowed his head and invited Christ into his life.

In one of his books, Lewis said he came into Christianity “kicking and screaming.” He said “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p. 228-229).