[This sermon is contributed by Hal Seed of New Song Church in Oceanside, California and of www.PastorMentor.com. Hal is the author of numerous books including The God Questions and The Bible Questions. If you are interested in The Bible Questions Church-wide Campaign, please visit and watch Hal’s video at www.PastorMentor.com.]
Note: For those who have the capacity to show PowerPoint presentations, suggestions for picture slides are given in parenthesis inside the sermon’s text. Words in bold italics are suggestions of slides to be made of Scriptures and other quotes and shown while being quoted during the message. All Scripture quotes are from the NIV.
Good morning everybody!
If you have a Bible, turn in it to Isaiah 40:26.
One night the prophet Isaiah went outside and looked up at the sky. As he was looking at the stars, it occurred to him that the One who made that sky must be an amazingly powerful God. So he wrote,
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
-Who created all these?
-He who brings out the starry host one by one,
and calls them each by name.
-Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
(Isaiah 40:26)
This weekend, Disney Studios released a film that they believe will be their most widely-watched film in history.
The movie, “Narnia” is based on C.S. Lewis’ children’s tale, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (show picture of the book’s cover) While it’s based on a children’s book. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is all about power.
So we are going to talk about power this morning, power that can change your life.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was written in 1950. So far, 86 million copies have been sold, with more than 1 million being purchased every year from that day until this.
For those of you who haven’t read the book or seen the movie, I’m going to take a perverse pleasure in ruining it for you by telling you that the book is about four children who find their way into a fairy tale land called, “Narnia.” (show picture of Narnia,)
Narnia is a place where animals walk and talk, and the land is ruled by a wicked witch (show picture of witch – scanned from book cover) whose magic spell keeps the entire land always winter, but never Christmas. – Can you think of anything worse than that?
The four children who discover Narnia are Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy (show picture of them). This may sound a little strange to those of us who haven’t experienced the story yet, but the children discover Narnia by walking through an old English wardrobe (show wardrobe) that is a kind of secret passageway into this alternative world.
Lucy discovers Narnia first. And then Edmund. On Edmund’s first visit to Narnia, he stumbles into the White Witch, who pretends to be his friend and feeds him large doses of Turkish Delight and promises to make him a king.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the children, Edmund aligns himself with the witch and plots to bring his brother and sisters to her. Unbeknownst to Edmund, the witch intends to turn them all into stone.
The first animal the children meet in Narnia is Mr. Beaver. Mr. Beaver is an affable little character, who plays a heroic part in the movie. It’s Mr. Beaver who introduces them to the most important character in the movie, a lion named, “Aslan.” Aslan has an amazing effect on everyone.
Let me read you a portion of the story. Mr. Beaver says,
“They say Aslan is on the move – perhaps has already landed.”
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something you don’t understand, but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning – either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or 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.
Did you ever have a dream like that when you were little?
I have a couple of them tucked in the recesses of my mind. Especially around Christmas time, I want to get back to a place where everything is good and safe and warm. Where there is no war in Iraq and no trouble in the world. Just peace. Just goodness. Aslan has that effect on people. Aslan has that kind of power.
So the children journey to meet Aslan at a famous landmark in Narnia called the Great Stone Table, all but Edmund.
Edmund sneaks off to find his friend the witch. Only this time the witch doesn’t treat him as well as she did the last time. She’s furious with him for failing to bring his brother and sisters to her, and even more furious to learn that Aslan has entered Narnia.
The story climaxes with Aslan and the children and the witch and Edmund meeting at the Stone Table. The witch reminds Aslan that, according to ancient law, all traitors belong to her and she has the right to kill them.
So Aslan offers her a trade. – His life for Edmunds. And in a dramatic scene, the witch has Aslan the lion tied down and shaved and put to death on the Stone Table.
The children are in despair. All hope is gone. How could this happen? How could One so powerful have something to awful happen to him?
Just before dawn, they sneak back to the now-deserted Stone Table and untie the ropes around Aslan’s dead body. His body is mangled and mutilated, but a few minutes later, they can’t believe it, as life actually returns to him, and they witness his resurrection.
Aslan explains that, while ancient law dictates that all traitors belong to the Witch, an even more ancient law dictates that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery is killed in the traitor’s place, that Death will work backwards and restore the life of the innocent victim.
Aslan then deals with the wicked witch, throws a huge party, and all of Narnia lives happily ever after. – Especially Edmund, the wayward boy whose life was saved by the innocent lion.
The Bible says
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
Romans 11:33-34
Maybe the most famous Christmas verse of all times would be John 3:16 which says that
"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17
The story of Narnia is a compelling one. Disney studios are betting over $100,000,000 that it will become their best-selling movie of all times.
Why is the story so compelling? Why have so many read the book, and why will so many more see the movie?
Because it’s a story rooted in history. It’s a story that really happened. It’s the Christmas story.
It’s also the story of C.S. Lewis’ life. In the movie, Edmund Encounters the Power. In real life, C.S. Lewis Encountered the Power.
This past spring, I did a study of Lewis’ life. (show picture of Lewis)
C.S. Lewis was an amazing man. Some would call him the greatest author of the 20th century. He published over 40 books while he was alive. 20 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 more famous person in all of England. Second only to Winston Churchill, who offered Lewis a special medal of recognition following WW II.
Those lectures that Lewis gave for the BBC were later published in a book that is titled, “Mere Christianity.” Some would say that it is the most powerful explanation of Christianity outside of the Bible itself.
Lewis was born in Northern Ireland. His mother died when he was 7 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 5 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.” C.S. Lewis
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 2 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 summer of 1929, he became convinced that Jesus Christ really was an historic figure, that he really did die on the Cross as a substitute for 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)
When Lewis decided to follow Jesus, when he encountered the power of Christ, that power changed him forever.
He began reading the Bible, attending church, and helping the poor. For the rest of his life, he donated 2/3s of all his book royalties to widows whose husbands had died in WW II.
In his late 50’s, he became friends with an American author named Joy Davidman. Joy had two young sons. After Joy was diagnosed with cancer, Lewis married her so that her sons could continue on in English schools. If you’ve seen the movie Shadowlands, you’ve seen the story.
In Hebrews 11 in the New Testament, the Bible gives a long list of heroes of the faith who all died before the birth of Christ. It says
All these people were still living by faith when they died…. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. Hebrews 11:13-14
After Lewis became a Christian he said, “I realized that all my life I was like that. I was looking for a country of my own.”
The rest of the passage says,
If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:15-16
Lewis said that in Christ, he had found a “better country.”
See, C.S. Lewis wrote The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe out of personal experience of what it meant to have someone die in his place.
His encounter with the power of Christ not only changed his life, it changed his eternity. It opened a better country for him, the country of heaven.
The story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is so powerful because it is the story of mankind. It’s the story of Christmas. It’s your story. It’s my story. It’s the story of a God who so loved the world, that He came, on Christmas, to open a better country for us.
Don’t you just long sometimes for a better country?
One of the things that convinced C.S. Lewis that there must be a heaven was the sense in his heart that there is more to this world than just this world.
There was a tug inside of him for something more.
Some of you know what I’m talking about this morning, don’t you? Because that tug is going on inside of you. When you think about it, you just know that there is something more in this universe than what you’ve experienced so far.
Well, the Bible says that there is a power in the universe that is available to you. It describes it as “…[God’s] incomparably great power for us who believe. It says, That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead…” Ephesians 1:19-20
Some of us… most of us… feel very powerless to change the circumstances of our lives. We lack the power to end the war. We lack the power to bring our military home. We lack the power to give our children the kind of world we want them to have. We lack the power to give them everything they want for Christmas.
How many of you feel like you have less power in your life than you’d like to have? (raise hands)
We have very little power.
This verse says that God wants to make His power available to us. And it an amazing type of power, because it’s a power to change us. To make us into better people, like it did C.S. Lewis. To change our future country, from an eternity without Christ to an eternity in heaven.
30-some years ago, I experienced this power in my life, when I invited the Christ of Christmas to come into my life.
On the day I invited Him in, I experienced peace for the very first time. For the first time in my life, I was at peace with the universe, because I felt the forgiveness of God for the things I had done wrong.
I felt hope. I felt like my life was meant for something, like I had a purpose.
I remember walking up the next day and feeling like I had a brand new life.
Do you know what I’m talking about here?
There is a gift available to you this morning. It’s God’s gift of power. – A power that will enter your life and give you peace, and enable you to experience real, true, deep forgiveness for the things that have troubled you from your past.
Friends, this morning, you can experience the power of God in your life. How many of you want that?
Let me show you a few verses from the Bible to explain this.
The first is John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17
God sent his son at Christmas, because He so loved you. Jesus came not to condemn you, but to save you.
The second is 1 Peter 3:18
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. 1 Peter 3:18
If you can find this verse on your message notes this morning, cross out the word, “you,” and write in the word, “me.”
“For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring ME to God.”
You can come to God today.
The third is John 1:12,
To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God… John 1:12
If you can find this verse, circle two words: “received,” and “believed.”
See, here is something that it took me years to learn.
When I was a little guy growing up, my parents took me to church. So I learned about Jesus coming to Bethlehem on Christmas. I learned that He was the Son of God, who later died for the sins of the world on Good Friday and rose from the dead on Easter.
I learned all sorts of things about Christianity, and I believed most of them. I believed.
What was missing for me was the first verb in the sentence, the “received” verb. No one ever explained to me that I needed to receive Christ into my life in order to become a child of God.
But on January 20, 1971, I did this with the help of a friend.
I believed and received. And from that day until this I have not only encountered the power of God in my life, I have experienced the power of God in my life.
Would you like to experience power today? Would you like to experience power to say no to the things that are troubling you? Would you like to experience power to forgive people for the things they’ve done to hurt you? Would you like to experience the power of being forgiven?
You can. You can experience the power of God right now. Because in just a minute, I am going to lead you in a prayer. It’s the prayer that I prayed to receive Christ, it’s the prayer that C.S. Lewis prayed. It’s a prayer that millions have prayed, with time-tested results.
So, bow your heads please, and close your eyes, so that everyone can have a moment of privacy...
In this moment, if you’d like to receive Christ, would you just raise your hand so I can see it and pray with you?
(acknowledge hands)
For those of you who raised your hands, I invite you to pray this prayer just quietly under your breath or in your mind as I pray it out loud.
Pray this:
“Lord Jesus, I want your power in my life today. So I invite You into my life today. Jesus, I have done some things that need Your forgiveness, and I have some challenges in my life that need Your leadership. So I ask You now to forgive my sins and become the leader of my life. From this moment forward, I will be Your follower. I believe in You and I receive You now, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Friends, for those of you who prayed that prayer, I want to tell you two things. One is that right now, all of heaven is rejoicing with you. Jesus said, “I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:10
The second is that we would like to rejoice with you as well, and help you live now as a follower of Christ. So, at the back of the auditorium is a spiritual growth table. When the service is over, if you will go back there, the folks at the table will give you a Bible and some material to help you grow, and a few suggestions of what you’ll want to do now that you’re a Christian.
And I’d like to congratulate you as well, so if you’d come find me up here in the front after you visit the spiritual growth table, I’d like to rejoice with you in person.
Just now, we are going to receive our offering for the morning. So I invite all of you to bow as we pray one more time…
For further research:
1. C.S. Lewis: Surprised by Joy.
2. The Shadowlands
3. Walter Hooper: C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, New York: HarperCollins, 1966.
4. David Downing: The Most Reluctant Convert, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
5. Websites: http://www.comnett.net/~rex/cslewis.htm
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/c_s_lewis.html
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/C._S._Lewis/
