“See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed.”
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
C.S. Lewis published the first installment of his "Chronicles of Narnia" the year I was born. I didn’t even know about them until years after he passed away (the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, in case you haven’t heard). When I did begin to read them I was frankly a little bored at first.
I was, after all, an adult and this read as a children’s yarn.
Then Lucy’s hand felt ‘something soft and powdery and extremely cold” and I was hooked.
I was more than hooked. I was awakened. Not that I wasn’t already a Christian; I was.
I was a student of Theology. I was a ‘follow the cold rules’ kind of Christian, trudging along under the weight of a sincere but joyless religion.
Lewis taught me to believe in magic again.
I know Christians these days cringe just a little at that word. Maybe more than a little. But one of Webster’s definitions is ‘an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source’. And that fits my King just swell.
Bible students of the centuries, when coming to this mysterious letter called The Revelation to John, have stretched their power of imagination to a mind-snapping limit trying to get a sense of what the Apostle was experiencing as he received these visions.
There have been movies, books, many of them bad, and some pretty bad sermons also, trying to explain things that I really don’t think God intended us to try to explain when He gave John this information to pass on.
Personally, when we’re all finally gathered there when ‘the term is over, the holidays have begun’ (from “The Last Battle”), I think we’ll all get some pretty good chuckles thinking back on speculations we made and heard made in reference to the book of Revelation.
But there is something early on that is made very clear and there’s nothing symbolic or veiled about it.
Our King, our Aslan, has overcome. Fought, the fight, the battle won.
ALWAYS WINTER
“Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!” - Mr. Tumnus
Let’s take our story back to the beginning to get the full picture.
If you were to ask any red-blooded American kid what they’d think of the most special day of the year being permanently postponed; and I word it that way because to some it’s Christmas, to some Hanukka, and so forth; I think you’d get mostly a blank stare and maybe then an expression that says, ‘What? Are you crazy?’
I mean, to a kid the coming of winter is the sign that Christmas is near. It’s the whole point!
In Narnia the evil White Witch had made it always winter but never Christmas.
By this imagery C.S. Lewis very successfully conjures up a sense of despondency and futility. Of suffering without hope of relief. Of gloom and cold with no future warmth of Spring to look forward to.
Anyone who has ever gone through a period of intense physical pain, of depressing, long-term illness, of sustained financial destitution, of cruel oppression, or any of the many ills and trials that plague mankind, knows that what gave them strength and encouragement to go on was the knowledge or at least the promise that there would be an end and that better times were ahead.
We call it light at the end of the tunnel. Help and hope lying round the next bend. Whatever; it’s just something to look forward to that’s better than what we have now.
But when a person is in the midst of these troubles if he or she has no reason to hope for change, nothing to look forward to, they think that this is all there is and it will never get better, that’s when they give up.
Friends, that is the plight of every man, woman and child of Adam’s race apart from Christ. In his letter to the Ephesians the Apostle Paul tells his readers that before they believed in Jesus they were ‘without hope and without God in the world”.
In I Thessalonians 4:13 he uses the same terminology to describe those outside of Christ, who have no hope for a resurrection.
When the serpent successfully tempted the man and the woman in the Garden sin and death were introduced into the world, bringing the winter of spiritual death to Adam’s race.
It only took one generation for man to graphically manifest the evil that was in his heart and his hatred for righteousness.
Men began early on to invent their own little gods and go their own way. Why not? They had no hope. They groped in their own spiritual darkness for some small flame to ward off the chill of an endless, merciless winter in their souls.
Always searching but never finding. Looking for something to fill the void in their lives but never seeking after God.
If you are hearing this or reading this and you have never come to Christ in the obedience of faith, if you have never considered His claims and confessed that His death was for you, then there is something you need to know today.
Sin is not the things you do. Sin is an entity. It drives you to do the things that you do. It is like the White Witch’s Turkish Delight which she gave to Edmund. The more he ate the more he wanted…needed…but it never satisfied. Instead it bound him to her will until finally he betrayed his loved ones to her.
Another form of imagery employed by Lewis is that of statues. Those under the Witch’s spell were turned to statues and adorned her courtyards.
You don’t feel sinful. You don’t have a sense of being cold and dead. Maybe there are times, your soberest moments, when you get just a glimpse. You feel empty and as though everything in your life is ultimately useless.
Then you occupy your thoughts with something else or just shake it off and go on, chalking it up to a bad mood.
But those are the most real times of your life; fleeting as they are. Those are the moments that, just for a moment, just for a little while, you recognize your true condition.
I have to tell you today that it is your eternal condition. Always winter, no Christmas, until you come to believe in the Christ of Christmas and let Him bring you to life.
FATHER CHRISTMAS
“I’ve come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.”
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Jesus Christ
(Jn 10:10)
Christmas really did finally come to this world. It was the day that was promised long ago and spoken of more clearly as time went by until finally through the prophet Micah God announced:
Micah 5:2
2 “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity.”
God entered into the world in the form of a baby. The Word made flesh. From that moment signs of Spring began to show here and there. The ice was melting in patches. The rivers were starting to flow again. Colorful flowers were beginning to bloom in the hearts of people who witnessed.
Some shepherds. Some traveling wisemen. An old man and a faithful old woman hanging out in the Temple.
Everywhere Jesus went He gave hope and a vision of a Kingdom which had come in part and to which all who believe in Him would belong as citizens forever.
Death could not exist in His presence. Everywhere He went cold statues were coming to life.
If you read “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” you will see that although Aslan was in the land and was appearing here and there and giving help as needed, folks didn’t understand him. He was a mystery to them; especially to the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.
If you are one that I was talking to earlier, who has never met Jesus, He is a mystery to you too. Just as He was to the citizens of Galilee and Samaria and Judea during the days He went about doing good and healing those who were oppressed of the devil for God was with Him (Acts 10:38).
But though you don’t really understand, perhaps in your own heart there is some melting taking place. Maybe the words you’re hearing are beginning to flow and quench a thirst you never realized you had. Maybe there are the beginnings of a small bud or two, waiting to open and reveal the colors of a world you’re now standing just outside of, wondering what adventures await you beyond that lamppost up ahead.
A DEEPER MAGIC
“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch.
“Let us say I have forgotten it”, answered Aslan gravely. “Tell us of this Deep Magic”.
“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the trunk of the World Ash Tree? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”
Edmond, son of Adam, had betrayed his brother and sisters and therefore Aslan. The Witch was right. Because of a decree from the dawn of time she had rightful claim on any traitor. His blood was her property.
Every son and daughter of Adam’s race born into this world belongs to Satan. We were sold out by our first father and because of the nature we inherited from him we are born traitors and rebels against God.
There can be only one outcome. We all owe a death.
“…without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Says Hebrews 9:22, and the only One ever born onto this planet with the right to be exempt from that sentence of death, willingly laid His life down so that by the shedding of His own, sinless blood He might pay the debt in full for all of us. All of us!
You see, the Witch knew of the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time. But she was not aware of the Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time, as Aslan explained it to Susan and Lucy.
He said that according to a decree from before the Witch’s time, “when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
And “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” says Romans 3:23, but verse 24 goes on to say that we are made right with God “...as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus...”
That’s right. Jesus Christ came to us as a Lamb for sacrifice, and just when Satan thought he had won, when God seemed momentarily weak and the devil held all the cards, in that very moment God was working the Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time, determined in the Divine Council of the Trinity before the foundation of the world (I Pet 1:18-21), and when the first hammer struck the first spike to nail down the hands of the Savior, God was striking His blow against Satan and Sin and Death and the Grave and from that moment on Death has begun to work backward.
THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN IS THE LION WHO NOW REIGNS!
“Then with a roar that shook all Narnia from the Western lamppost to the shores of the Eastern sea the great beast flung himself upon the White Witch. Lucy saw her face lifted towards him for one second with an expression of terror and amazement.”
With one mighty leap the resurrected Aslan crushes the Witch.
When the first Adam sinned, there in the Garden of Eden, God immediately promised the coming of One who would crush the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15).
On the cross, where the serpent was really only bruising the heel of Jesus, meaning that which he had instigated and thought he was in control of was only temporary, at that moment Jesus was completing the work that would smash the power of the devil forever. He was, in essence, crushing his head. A mortal wound. That doesn’t mean the devil died. It means his power over men had been taken away, because the only authority he had over them was the decree of death due to sin.
Colossians 2:13, 14
13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Having paid that penalty in full in His own body on the cross (Romans 8:1-4), Jesus forever removed that authority from the enemy.
He went down into death the Lamb, taking away the sin of the world. He rose up bodily from the tomb, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, never to die again, offering eternal life to all who believe.
Have you believed? Have you recognized that you are as Edmund was; in the rightful clutches of the enemy of your soul and helpless to act on your own behalf?
There is one who worked the Deeper Magic and provided your release. The innocent victim who stood in your place. He broke the Table of Stone, crushed your captor’s power and now offers you life in His Celestial Kingdom.
It is a life that begins, not when you pass out of this world, but the very moment you believe.
Romans 8:15
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
When John stood with the angel looking on, although the elder said, “Behold the Lion…” John was seeing a Lamb which appeared to have been slain. And the angels all around were declaring the Lamb’s worthiness to open the seals of the last times based on the sacrifice of Himself and the blood He had shed.
But the Lion speaks of Kingship and absolute authority. And you can, if you are not already, be spiritually born into the family of the Lion of Judah today if you’ll only believe and confess.
Listen to what John witnessed near the end of his visions:
Revelation 19:11-16
11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself.
13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. 15 From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. 16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”
Safe? Who said anything about safe? ’Course He isn’t safe. But He’s good.
He is the King coming to reign, Who has purchased life for you. And you only need come into His presence to receive it.
Because death cannot exist where Jesus is; and with His breath He causes cold statues to come to life!
(all fiction quotes from “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”, - C.S. Lewis, 1950 Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York)
