4. What Is Beyond Your Wardrobe? Series

“Discovering Nania – 4. What is beyond your wardrobe?”

Gladstone Baptist Church – 12/2/06 pm

Tonight is the last night that I want to talk about the Narnia movie and the message that it contains for every single one of us. If you haven’t been with us over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been on a bit of a voyage of discovery – finding out that our situation here is just like that which the characters of Narnia find themselves in. Just like Narnia, our world if cursed. It is not how God created it to be and certainly not how he would like it to be. But we are all under a curse of sin and because of that, we are condemned to be punished as each of us deserves.

Then we looked at Edmund – the traitor. He sold his brother and sisters out to the White witch for a couple of pounds of Turkish delight. He did it in innocence, I know. He didn’t know it was so serious – – all he wanted was some more Turkish delight. But the fact remained that he still committed the act of betrayal and his actions nearly cost the lives of Peter, Susan and Lucy. He didn’t know either, the consequences of his actions for his own future. But by his act of betrayal he condemned himself to death. We are guilty of a kind of betrayal also which has a dramatic impact on others and on our own destiny. We are all lawbreakers and our actions impact others around us in negative ways, but they also mean that we also stand condemned before God. We have to pay the penalty for the crime and the penalty is death.

Last week we looked at the character of Aslan. He is the saviour of Narnia and Edmund and he is a picture of Jesus. Jesus in a similar way to Aslan, offers to give his life for you and me though we don’t deserve it. We are guilty, yet Jesus offers to pay the penalty for our sins and die in our place. That is an incredible sacrifice because Jesus didn’t have to do that. Yet he loved us so much that he wanted us to live and have a relationship with him. So Jesus died. But just like Aslan – he rose again and conquered death.

We finished off last week by saying that Jesus will return and rescue those who are loyal to him and destroy those who oppose him. There are two groups of people here – those who are loyal and those who oppose - and you will find yourself in one of them. For or Against. 2 groups of people with 2 completely different destinies.

Tonight I want to explore with you a little more what your ultimate destiny is by asking what is beyond your wardrobe.

In the "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" a big old wardrobe was the door between the real world that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy knew and another world – a very different world to the one they knew.

Have a look at this clip. [Show clip from movie or trailer of the children entering the wardrobe]

I don’t think that there is a wardrobe in the attic of some old house in London that is the doorway for us to another world, but I do think that there is another world that operates in parallel to ours. And there is a doorway to that world that we will all walk through one day.

Let’s have a look at the characteristics of this other world, before we look at the doorway to get there ….

Recognising the Spiritual World …

Tonight, I want you to understand that there is a parallel world to ours that exists and is very real. The Bible reveals that there is a spiritual realm in which God has created beings of a supernatural order.

But it is difficult to know too much about it because it is Invisible – We can’t see it, we can’t smell it, we can’t physically hear it, we can’t touch it and for many, that means they don’t believe it exists, but it does. Just like when you see the light come on when you flick the switch – you know there is electricity running through the wires. You can’t see it, but you know it must be there because you see the effects of it. I know there is a spiritual world, because I see the effects of it. Some of the effects of this world are negative, because the spiritual world has some evil beings in it.

Satan and his demons are active in this spiritual world. We read in 1 Pet 5:8 that Satan is a roaring lion roaming around seeking to devour us. We are in a battle against the evil forces of this spiritual world and Eph 6:10-12 says