Narnia: Encouter The Power Series

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.