Our Last Battle (14)

 Fourteen – A Treasure

Chapter Eight of The Last Battle begins with a shadowy creature moving in the forest, grotesque in appearance, sickening in smell. After it passes Tirian’s cohort realizes with shock that it is Tash, the god of the Calormenes. The Ape Shift and Ginger the Cat have called upon Tash in their lust for power and their prayers will be answered. Tirian observes, “It has come to dwell among us.”

The Chronicles of Narnian begin with Aslan dwelling among His People; sometimes His Personal Presence is with them, most often the Spirit of His Presence permeates Narnia. In the final book of the Narniad, Aslan has been replaced by Tash – for most.

What began as an almost laughable deceit by a vain, manipulative, and evil Ape, is morphing into evil incarnate living in Narnia. Who would have thought that a nervous and trembling donkey in a lion’s skin could be mistaken for Aslan? Who would have thought that the commands of the Ape could be mistaken for the righteous and just commands of Aslan? 

But this, my dear friends, is what happens when Jesus is no longer our everything; for if Jesus does not mean everything to us, then Jesus means nothing to us. Biblical Christianity is Jesus, and Jesus is Biblical Christianity. When Jesus is no longer enough for us, we manufacture and merchandise dead lion skins and compete with each other as to who has the most fashionable religious wear. 

It is as if we construct our own Paris fashion shows, parading down the runway to display our methodologies and novel understandings and latest music and worship programs and ploys, and church-growth marketing strategies, and our naturalistic philosophies, and leadership paradigms. O, and let’s not forget how we market Bibles, now producing translation after translation, with one Bible being marketed to this category of people, and another Bible being marketed to another group of people, and yet another Bible being marketed to people of another category. Even the American Bible Society now has a Bible that supports the Imperial Cult (The Faith and Liberty Bible, with 813 articles and quotations from people in American history) – I would have never thought this possible. 

Soon we will have Bibles produced for football fans, baseball fans, hockey fans, and poker players. O my! I just saw that the American Bible Society has a hockey New Testament. 

O friends, we are to hear and see Jesus and only Jesus – we have lost our minds and we have lost Jesus as our center of gravity! The Father says, “This is My Beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; hear Him!” (Matthew 17:5). 

When Jesus is not everything, Jesus is not anything. 

The Christian world in the United States is like one huge trade show, everything is for sale, including the souls of men. 

But there are two more important elements to note in this chapter, one concerning the Lamb and the other Roonwit the Centaur.

As Jewel the Unicorn recounts his experience as a prisoner facing death, we are told that he didn’t know what happened to the Lamb. 

The young Lamb Jewel is speaking of is the one who spoke up to the evil Ape with the question, “What have we to do with the Calormenes? We belong to Aslan. They belong to Tash.” 

What indeed happened to the Lamb?

If only the Narnians had heard the Lamb, “We belong to Aslan.” If only we heard our Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, “We belong to the Father. I have purchased you with My blood.” 

However, we are too sophisticated to accept such a baseline proposal. We have become wiser than God (1 Corinthians 1:17 – 31). We have to keep up appearances within our religious world and also in the world of this age. Let us move on to Roonwit.

The chapter concludes with the cohort meeting Farsight the Eagle who brings tragic news. The first news is of the destruction of Cair Paravel, the capital of Narnia, the throne of the King. Narnians lay slaughtered by a surprise attack by the Calormenes.

The second news is that Farsight came upon a dying Roonwit, with a Calormene arrow in his noble body. 

“I was with him in his last hour and he gave me this message to your Majesty: to remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.” 

“So, said the King, after a long silence, “Narnia is no more.”

“Noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”

These words are nonsense in our Christianity, in the West at any rate. 

In the beginning of our collective story as the Church, we rejoiced in suffering for Jesus, we gloried in dying for Jesus and our brethren. Now, in the United States, we hide in the hills as the Israelites of old; worse, we form alliances with elements opposed to the Kingdom of our Father and Lord Jesus…and justify these perfidious covenants. We seduce ourselves and others with terms such as, “The greater good. The lesser of evils. But it works.” 

Can we not hear blessed Polycarp before the Roman magistrate, facing execution, “For eighty-six years I have been His servant, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”

Are the echoes of Hugh Latimer in our ears, as he exhorted, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as shall never be put out”?

Does Jim Elliot make sense to us? “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

We pay lip service to Bonhoeffer, and we make money off movies and books about him, but we dare not take him seriously when he says, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” 

Do we hear Jesus saying, “He who loses His life for My sake and the Gospel’s the same will save it”? “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies it brings forth much fruit.” 

All worlds come to an end, as Roonwit says. All nations come to an end, all of them. Only the Kingdom of God endures forever. God is shaking all things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain, may be manifested (Hebrews 12:25 – 29). How foolish to seek to prop up that which our Father has decreed for destruction (Daniel Chapter 2, Psalm 2). How very foolish to sell our souls, and the souls of others, in such a futile endeavor. 

We are called to live as the sons and daughters of God, as citizens of the eternal Kingdom. The creation is groaning for us to live as who we are in Christ (Romans 8:18 – 25), and yet we dabble with mud pies, with our hearts and minds and hands making bricks to build the temples of idols. We are even prostituting the Bible with the Imperial Cult. 

In Revelation 21:8, the list of those who have a part in the lake of fire is headed by “cowards.” I suppose this should not surprise us, for Revelation is a book of courage, the courage of the Lamb, the courage of those who trust in the Lamb and who follow Him wherever He goes. The courage to lay down one’s life so that others may live eternally. 

When Athanasius was told that the entire world was against him, he replied, “Say not that the world is against Athanasius, say that Athanasius is against the world.”

This is a critical element of Our Last Battle, one that Lewis elegantly and poignantly portrays on the lips of the dying Roonwit:

“Noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”

Are we living this in Christ?

Are we teaching this to our people? 

If Jesus isn’t everything, then He is nothing. 

“Noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”

Biblical Interpretaton and Communication

 Good morning, 

Some thoughts as I wrestle with some things...if we are off on our navigation when we leave the harbor, we will be far off from our destination. 

I am sure we mean well, but to replace Biblical epistemology and hermeneutics with a system that anyone can learn, including those without the Holy Spirit, to essentially throw out 1 Corinthians Chapter 2 and what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room, is to invite confusion...and I see a lot of confusion...I see humanism today in places where I would not have thought possible. This is not to say that we don't do other spade work...as we are able, as we are gifted...but it does mean that we have no warrant to depart from the foundation of Scripture. 

John 5:39; 6:33.

We are not immune from the errors of the Pharisees. Yes? 

I think perhaps one day we will be in the place of Alec Guinness in Bridge Over the River Kwai, when after willingly serving as a slave to the Japanese (and inducing others to do so), he says something like, "My God, what have I done?" 

Much love,

Bob

Biblical Hermeneutics

Look for Christ Jesus in the passage. How do I see Him?

How do I see the Body of Christ in the passage?

How do I see the Whole Christ (Augustine)?

How do I see Christ in His Body?

How do I see Christ in me, and myself in Christ?

How am I called to obediently respond to this passage?

How are we, as the Body of Christ, called to obediently respond to this passage?

Christ Jesus is our hermeneutic, our epistemology, our message.

“For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).

“In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).

“Its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev. 21:23).

The Cost of Witness (10)

“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning” (John 15:26 – 27). 

When we arrive, the Lord willing, at John 16:5 – 15, we will explore more of the Holy Spirit (see also John 14:16 – 17); at this point let’s note that the Holy Spirit testifies of Jesus, forever and always the Holy Spirit testifies of Jesus Christ. This testimony expresses itself in two directions, the Holy Spirit speaks to the world, and the Holy Spirit speaks to the Church. 

In the context of John 15:18 – 16:4, our present passage, the Holy Spirit speaks to the world as we speak to the world. In 16:8 – 11 we see the Holy Spirit working in the world. When we arrive at John 16:12 – 15 we see the blessed Holy Spirit speaking to us, the People of Christ, His Body, revealing Jesus Christ, always revealing Jesus. 

In Revelation 19:10 we see that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” and in Revelation 12:17 we witness the dragon making war with those who “keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

While the “spirit of prophecy” may have a predictive element to it, the term really speaks to us of the Living Word of God, as Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing, the words that I speak to you are Spirit and are Life” (John 6:63).

Actually, the predictive element may often be in the testimony of Jesus but seldom recognized because we are not looking for Him. We are looking for news of coming events, we are looking for our curiosity to be satisfied, we are looking for entertainment. We are not interested in transformation in Christ through the Cross.

And so we follow teachers and preachers who produce a steady diet of speculation in the guise of teaching us the Bible, we become followers of people who do not point us to Jesus Christ, but to their particular brand of fast food and to themselves. Today we see the sad fruit of decades of this nonsense, for we go on our merry way undisturbed by our abandonment of Jesus in the professing church. 

If we abandon the testimony of Jesus we will live in darkness – this is the kind of predictive element we need but reject because we are not looking for it, we are looking for entertainment. I find few Christians who will speak to me of Jesus, why is this? They will speak of worldviews, of their doctrinal distinctives, of politics, of the economy, of religious marketing so their churches will grow and grow, but few will speak of Jesus. Is this not strange? 

Well now, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will testify of Him and that we will also testify of Him. While we note that Jesus says, “for you have been with Me from the beginning,” let’s also note what Jesus says in Acts 1:7 – 8: 

“It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

When the Holy Spirit comes on the Day of Pentecost, He comes to live within the entire Church, the Body of Christ (see also 1 Corinthians 12:12 – 13). Therefore, while those “who have been with Him from the beginning” stand in a special place, they do so as the foundation stones of our witness of Jesus Christ (see Ephesians 2:19 – 22) equipping us for the “work of service” (Ephesians 4:11 – 12). 

We are ALL to be His witnesses, we are ALL to share Jesus Christ with others. We are to be those who “keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” 

To be sure we need one another to do this, and hopefully we all have one or two or five brothers or sisters whom we can journey with, hopefully we can find others who love Jesus. 

I also want us to consider that there is a sense in which we can also be among those “who have been with Him from the beginning.” We can go there in His Word, we can go to Genesis 1:1, to Proverbs 8:1, to John 1:1, and to 1 John 1:1 – 4. This is not a stretch at all, for we are raised up with Him in the heavenlies in Christ (Ephesians 2:6) and have been blessed in Christ in the heavenlies (Ephesians 1:3). 

As we learn to see the things that are unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18), the communion of the saints becomes more and more real to us (Hebrews 12:2, 22 – 24). 

Indeed, throughout the Upper Room Jesus is drawing us deeper and deeper into the Trinity, and this is a koinonia where words fail us. 

In John 15:26 – 27 our testimony of Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s testimony of Jesus are melded, we become one with the Holy Spirit, indeed we are “one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:17), crying “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15).

There may be times when we stand alone, or among the few, to testify of Jesus; just as Jesus stood alone to testify of the Father. I think this is one of those times.

What a high calling, to be faithful to Jesus. 

O Jesus, capture our hearts. Let us love you in pure devotion and simplicity. (2 Corinthians 11:1 – 3). 

Our Last Battle (13)

 Thirteen – Reality Check

When A False Aslan Means No Aslan

In Chapter Seven of The Last Battle, Tirian’s cohort frees a group of Dwarfs from Calormene slavery. Then Tirian displays poor old Puzzle to the Dwarfs, showing them that they, and others, had been deceived by the Ape. 

When Tirian draws his sword to attack the Calormenes and deliver the Dwarfs, he does so saying, “The light is dawning and the lie is broken,” for he is certain that when the Dwarfs see the lion skin over the donkey that they will rejoice and be glad in the true Aslan. Tirian’s expectation is that it will “be a beautiful moment” when the Dwarfs see the truth. 

Instead he hears the Dwarf Griffle saying, “I don’t know how all you chaps feel, but I’ve heard as much about Aslan as I want to for the rest of my life.” 

When Tirian tries to reason with the Dwarfs, he is asked if he has a better imitation of Aslan and told that the Dwarfs have been fooled once and they are not about to be fooled again. The Dwarfs demand that Tirian show them Aslan.

Then Tirian makes a mistake, for out of his mouth come the words, “He is not a tame lion.” These are the very words Shift used when manipulating the Dwarfs and others, and the Dwarfs instantly recognize it. 

The Dwarfs reject everything Tirian, Jill, and Eustace have to say. They reject Tirian’s motive for rescuing them, they reject Aslan, they reject “silly stories about other worlds,” and from that point on, the Dwarfs will be for themselves, the Dwarfs will be for the Dwarfs. The narrator tells us that the Dwarfs, “tramped off into darkness.” When we reject Aslan, we indeed tramp into darkness.

However, let us acknowledge Poggin the Dwarf, who manages to separate himself from the other Dwarfs and return to stand with Tirian and Aslan. It is better to die with the few faithful than to live in darkness.

Now we come to the crux of Lewis’s warning in Chapter Seven, we come to an excruciating element of Our Last Battle, something we will face time and again…if we are faithful to Jesus. 

“Tirian had never dreamed that one of the results of an Ape’s setting up a false Aslan would be to stop people from believing in the real one…But now, it seemed, he could count on nothing.” 

In The Last Battle, we see some Narnians remaining faithful to Aslan, we see others embracing Tashlan (actually Tash), and we see others, such as the Dwarfs, rejecting all notion of a deity and other worlds. 

In Our Last Battle, those who reject Jesus are not necessarily sarcastic, nor are they necessarily selfish, nor have they ill will toward others. In fact, many who reject Jesus do so with broken hearts, with much pain and sorrow, and even in their pain they seek to serve others, to alleviate the suffering of others. 

Of course, they are not rejecting Jesus as much as rejecting dead lion skins, but they don’t realize it. They see the blatant hypocrisy of the professing church and they can bear it no more. The very idea of “going to church” is repulsive, and the church’s refusal to confront its hypocrisy and sin and its insistence of justifying itself is more than these people can continue to bear. 

The notion that, “Well, the church isn’t perfect,” is seen for what it is, a smoke screen, a ruse so that we don’t have to confront the truth about our departure from the Gospel and the Person of Jesus Christ. 

We know a person, a group of people, a leadership group, by its nature. We know the nature of a thing by the way it behaves, by its actions…not solely by its words. We see the Nature of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. If Jesus is the Head of His Body, the Church, then we will know the true Church when we see that Body displaying the Nature of Jesus Christ. 

A church, any church, which sexually abuses others, be they children, adolescents, or adults can hardly be the Body of Christ. Nor can a church which engages in cover up and facilitates the continuation of this behavior. Have we lost our minds to think otherwise? We see this nefarious behavior across traditions. 

Many whose hearts are broken by dead lion skins see the myth of the Prolife Movement. They see that while many professing churches claim to be Prolife, that they are really Probirth, for once a child is born they care little, if anything, for its actual life. They don’t care about health care, safe housing and neighborhoods, decent education, reasonable employment, healthy food – all they care about is birth – from that point on baby and mom and dad and family are on their own. Why do we not have the courage to see this?

Nor do those who profess to be Prolife advocate for the men and women and young people who have the courage and love of family to seek shelter within our borders. We will send (we say) missionaries to others, we will send (we say) medical supplies to others, but should God send others to us we will send them back to God, and whether they live or die is of no concern to us. 

Others whose hearts have suffered, puzzle at Christian Nationalism, when they thought they had been taught that we are to worship the Trinity and the Trinity alone. When they had been taught that the Kingdom of Jesus is not of this world. When they had been taught that the Kingdom of God is without borders. Many who had been raised in so-called conservative churches which criticized so-called liberal churches for a social gospel, now see conservative hypocrisy in propagating a political and nationalistic gospel. 

 A shocking reality of Our Last Battle is the realization that Christians don’t really care about dead lion skins. They don’t much care if what they believe is true or not, or whether their image of Jesus is true or not. Some will hold onto dead lion skins no matter what, and others will decide that since they’ve been taken in once, they won’t be taken in again. 

In the latter group, some separate themselves because of hurt, others out of anger, perhaps most out of both. In the former group, I suppose peer pressure plays a significant role, from pastors to seminary professors to Sunday school teachers and small group leaders, to those in the pew who are expected to pray and pay and conform.

For many Jesus is only a figurehead, for others the ideal of Jesus is a dream shattered, for a remnant He is the holy Lamb of God seeking to draw humanity to Himself.

Our Last Battle can be discouraging, indeed it can. Let us keep looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).  

We can always count on Jesus. 

The Cost of Witness (9)

 

“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin [guilt], now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’” John 15:22-25.

To have some measure of understanding of this passage, it needs to be read, and reread, and reread, and pondered. What goes before it needs to be absorbed, and what follows it ought to be considered, it is all a package, a whole, an unity. For the experience of Jesus Christ is also our experience in Him. As we saw in John 15:1 – 5, He is the Vine and we are the Branches, we draw our Life from Him, we are called to abide in Him. 

When we are deficient in our understanding and knowledge of our unity in the Trinity, we cannot but help to be deficient in our witness, for our witness is to be from Jesus, in Jesus, and unto Jesus. We are His Body, His expression, in heaven and on earth. Witnessing to Jesus Christ is not a matter of technique, it is a matter of expressing His Life and of being His Presence. It is less a matter of what we do, and more a matter of who we are in Him. It is less a matter of communicating knowledge, in the way we typically think of that word, and more a matter of sharing love and grace and mercy. 

What is Jesus saying to us in John 15:22 – 25? How does this relate to our witness?

Let’s begin the answer by reminding ourselves that 15:18–16:4 begins and concludes with us being hated and rejected as Jesus was hated and rejected. A servant is not above his or her master, if the master is hated the servant will be hated. If we claim to be the servants of Jesus Christ, and never encounter opposition and rejection, then either Jesus is mistaken in what He says, or we are not who we think we are. Jesus even says that people who kill us will think they are doing the service of God. 

As I’ve written, one of the reasons I deeply regret using a certain book and course on witnessing in churches is that it taught how to avoid the Cross, how to avoid rejection, and therefore how to avoid true identification with Jesus Christ. What a fool I was. I wanted my congregations to learn to share Jesus, and I employed the wrong means. I wanted to help my dear people, but how could I help them if I was teaching them – in ignorance, but that is no excuse – to avoid the Cross and its offense? 

And as a warning, one of the reasons the book in question was popular, is that its author was the pastor of a “dynamic” and growing church, which had spawned a network of similar churches; how can we argue with “success”? Also, on a regional level, people who I knew and trusted endorsed the book and its methodology, good people, well-meaning people. I wanted people to know Jesus through the witness of my parish, I wanted my folks to know the joy of sharing Jesus. I love being part of a team, I love working with other pastors and churches. I love Jesus and I love people. 

What is popular is seldom the Truth. 

Now then, the picture Jesus gives us in 15:22 – 25 is not only a picture of His ministry on earth some 2,000 years ago, but also a picture of His Incarnational ministry in His Body since Pentecost. Jesus continues to speak, Jesus continues to do works which no one else did prior to the Incarnation, for we are His Body and He expresses Himself through us. 

I would add that of all His works, there is no work quite like the work of laying down His life for the world and His brethren. For us, there is no work like the work of giving oneself for the salvation of others, serving as agents of reconciliation between man and God. Jesus Christ did this in the Father, we continue this work in Jesus Christ. 

Paul writes, “For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10). 

John 3:16 is a continuing action of the Father within the Son. 

Then we have the enigmatic statement, “They hated Me without a cause” (John 15:25; Psalms 35:19; 69:4). 

I write “enigmatic” because such hatred doesn’t make sense, at least on the surface. Here is Jesus, wanting the best for everyone, loving and giving and serving and suffering, showing mercy and kindness; and what does He receive in return? Abandonment, torture, and death. Does this make sense to you? 

The same crowed that shouted “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday cried “Crucify Him!” on Good Friday…beware of what is popular, within and without religion, within and without “Christianity.” 

If people hated Jesus without cause, they will hate us without good reason. We can’t really explain it when these things happen. Of course, there are times the reason is obvious, when we won’t lie at work, when we insist on treating all people with equity and kindness, when we share the Gospel. But there are other times when the hatred will not make any sense, and we ought not to be surprised when it happens. If it happened to Jesus, it will happen to us, for Jesus Christ lives within us. 

Yet, we should not give up on others, even when they hate us. 

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons [and daughters!] of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous…Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:44, 45, 48). 

During an extended KP (kitchen duty) assignment in the Army, I had a supervisor who did not like me, and I didn’t know why. He talked to me sarcastically and gave me some nasty jobs, including the chore of cleaning out the grease pit. I got along well with everyone else in the mess hall and normally said “grace” before meals with others, but this man did not like me and I just didn’t know why. 

One afternoon I was outside, cleaning out the grease pit, and I was singing about Jesus. I still recall the song:

“Jesus, O Jesus, do you know Him today? Please don’t turn Him away. Jesus, O Jesus, without Him how lost I would be. Without Him I would be nothing. Without Him I surely would fail. Without Him I would be drifting. Like a ship, without a sail.” 

This supervisor came outside and heard me singing, but he didn’t hear what I was singing. He came over to me and sarcastically said, “O, now you're singing? You think you can sing while you work? Well then, why don’t you sing what you were singing to me. Let’s hear it.”

And so I sang to him about Jesus.

And his heart melted.

Maybe I reminded him of the faith of his parents or grandparents. Maybe the hope of Jesus touched a man in turmoil. Whatever the reason, the words of the song penetrated his heart, and our relationship changed. The hostility evaporated. 

There isn’t much in this life that we can really understand, but I hope we will come to understand that Jesus Christ is the Light of the world and its only hope. I hope we will understand, in some measure, the high calling we have to be faithful to Jesus, to be His Presence to those around us. 

Our Last Battle (12)

 

When I first looked at Chapter Six of the Last Battle I saw it as kind of a bridge, a setup to move the story forward...for things accelerate in Chapter Seven. While it is a setup for encountering the Dwarfs and their unexpected response in Chapter Seven, Lewis continues to deal with anger, contrasting Tirian's anger with Jill's mercy and understanding. 

Tirian falls back into the anger of which he has already been convicted. 

Tirian is about to commit another murder in cold blood, of which he has already been convicted.

When we drink the poison of this world, it takes us a while to unlearn our habits, our thought patterns, our self-righteous emotions. 

Most frightening is when we contaminate others with this poison.

Perhaps the greatest danger is that we think, "That can't be my tribe. It's those other people!"

That, my friends, is almost a guarantee that we are wearing dead lion skins.

(I've worn more than one!).

Love,

Bob

Twelve – Which Spirit?

In Chapter Six of The Last Battle, Tirian, Jill, and Eustace arrive at the Stable to rescue Jewel the Unicorn. Tirian captures the lone Calormene sentry, who leads him to Jewel, being held behind the Stable. 

While Tirian is freeing Jewel, Jill goes into the Stable and makes a startling and, to her, a funny discovery, “Aslan” is nothing but a poor old donkey draped in a lion skin.

For his part, Puzzle is ready to be released from his captivity in the Stable and gladly goes with Jill.

When Tirian, Jill, and Eustace are reunited, along with Jewel, and Tirian is confronted with Puzzle, the King reaches for his sword to “smite off the head of the accursed Ass.”

Here we see that Tirian has not yet learned to fear his anger, for he is on the verge of making what would be another costly and sinful mistake. Once again we see how anger clouds our thinking and poisons our hearts. He murdered a Calormene, and now he is about to murder Puzzle. 

Jill’s quick plea for Puzzle saved his life, and may have saved Tirian’s soul, for what happens to a man’s heart when he descends into hatred, anger, and murder? And consider how merciful Aslan had been to Tirian up to this point. 

To begin with, Tirian mercifully realized his sin when he and Jewel killed two Calormenes without warning. This was a double sin, for not only did Tirian commit murder, but as King, he led Jewel into murder. Yet here he is about to murder once again. 

Aslan was merciful when Tirian prayed for Aslan to take his life, but to save Narnia – a work of mercy and grace and servant – leadership was working in his soul.

Aslan was merciful when He sent Jill and Eustace in answer to Tirian’s prayer. 

Aslan was merciful when Tirian rescued Jewel.

Aslan was merciful when Jill rescued Puzzle.

Yet Tirian was about to commit murder, he was about to murder a foolish and frightened donkey. What blood would have been on his hands had he done so? Had he done so, how might the story have unfolded? Tirian would have been transformed into the image of Tash rather than the image of Aslan.

O my dear, dear friends, when we drink of the cup of the world and Satan, our souls are warped, our hearts poisoned, our minds confused – we forget who our Lord Jesus is and who we are in Him. It may be that Satan’s most subtle and toxic temptation is for us to respond in kind, forgetting that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal or natural (Ephesians 6:10 - 17; 2 Corinthians 10:10 – 5; 2 Timothy 2:24 – 26). 

Is it possible that there is blood on the hands of the professing church in America today? Is it possible that our anger and alliances with political powers and our humanistic systems of thought (across the theological spectrum) have wrought spiritual death on those around us, to the point where many unbelievers are saying, “If this is Christianity, then I want nothing to do with it”? Is it possible, that as James and John, we do not know the Spirit which we are of, but have rather adopted the spirit of this age and the ruler of the prince of the air (Luke 9:51–56)? 

O dear friends, there is a heresy of the mind, but there is also a heresy of the heart – we can’t really separate the two, one will poison the other. 

As Jill points out regarding Puzzle, “He didn’t know any better.” 

As Jesus prays, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

So we are to live.

When we were God’s enemies, Christ died for us, to reconcile us to Himself (Romans 5:8 – 11), demonstrating His love for us. This is our calling, to love others as our Father and Lord Jesus love us. 

Often people do not know what they are doing. They have been taught to wear dead lion skins; the skins are often tailor made, and I imagine that all traditions and movements have their own style of lion skins. They have been taught that Jesus wants them to wear their special skins. Then they are taught that Aslan and Tash are really the same person.

So let’s not be too harsh on the Puzzles of the professing church, in one sense they don’t know any better. Even their pastors, I think, often don’t know any better. Even those who have taught their pastors may not know any better. After all, we’ve been at this a long time. This is what we know.

An element of Our Last Battle is whether we will live by the Spirit of Christ, or by the spirit of the enemy. Will we give life, or will we take it? Will we live in anger or in peace and merciful love toward others? 

If all Jill Pole did in this book, The Last Battle, was to save poor Puzzle from the lion skin and from the tyranny of Shift the Ape, hers would be a story worth telling. 

Do we have such a story?

The Cost of Witness (8)

 

“But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me” (John 15:21).

Have you ever wondered why people could be so angry with Jesus? Here was a man healing people, delivering folks from demons, touching the untouchable and loving the unlovable, and teaching us to be kind to one another, to love one another, to forgive one another. Yes, for sure He was a threat to the religious establishment which had abandoned the essence of Law and the Prophets. Yes, He was a threat to Jewish nationalism, as He still is. 

But when we step back and consider the blessing that Jesus was to so many, and His kindness and gentleness, His service to others, how could the massed hatred of a people crucify Him? Pilate recognized that this didn’t make sense, he didn’t have the courage to do something about the insanity of it all, but he recognized the incongruity of religious people crucifying a good man, a very good man. 

Mother Theresa served in a Hindu country, yet she was not crucified. Jesus served among His own people according to the flesh, and they crucified Him. 

On the Cross, Jesus was saying to the Father, “Forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

While He is saying this, what are the people and the Jewish rulers doing? They are sneering at Him and saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.” (See Luke 23:33 – 43). 

The rulers and people acknowledge that Jesus saved others, that He has been a blessing to others, and yet they are murdering Him by a hideous torture. These are certainly fine upstanding religious leaders, such as we often find within Christian history and within contemporary Christianity. (We would rather be aligned with earthly power than with the Lamb of God.)

How is it possible that the people could not see the incongruity between professing to follow and teach the Law of Moses and the Prophets, and crucifying a man, any man? How is it that the religious leaders could engage in Satanic activity and not realize the depths to which they were sinking? Afterward, how could they not ask, “What have we done?”

(I cannot help but ask why we, professing Christians, become so enamored of the latest and greatest “Christian” programs to attract people and make us popular among ourselves and others, when Jesus says, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way” Luke 6:26.)

Jesus says that when we are rejected and persecuted, which we will most assuredly be to one degree of another if we follow Him, it is because “they do not know the One who sent Me.” This is the baseline reason. There may be other reasons, but they all flow from the headwaters of others not knowing the One who sent Jesus Christ. 

We must not try to avoid the reality that the Cross is an offense; it is a stumbling block. (Galatians 5:11; 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:2). The course on witnessing which I’ve referred to in this series, sought to remove the offense of the Cross, just as Peter sought to remove the Cross from Jesus (Matthew 16:21 – 23). 

The Cross brings us low before God and devastates our pride and self-centeredness and sinfulness and self-reliance. Those who submit to the work of the Cross find eternal life in Jesus Christ; those who reject the Cross descend into the abyss of self-centered sinful darkness and rebellion. The Cross is the Way of Life in Christ to those who embrace Him (Galatians 2:20). 

When we live lives of witness, we live in the Cross and out from the Cross, for to witness we must pass through the Cross, giving ourselves to Christ and others, witnessing cost us our lives, there is a Cost to Witness. 

Witnessing also means that we present the Christ of the Cross to others, for if we have not presented the Cross to others, we have not presented Jesus Christ. Hence Paul writes, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). 

The therapeutic and sociological “Christianity” which is engulfing North American Christianity puts Delilah to shame in terms of the art of seduction. But lest you misunderstand me, legalistic and tribalistic Christianity is also an enemy of the Cross (Philippians 3:1 – 3; Galatians 3:1 – 5). 

Through all of this, we can have supreme confidence that the Gospel is the power of God and that we ought not to be ashamed. As Paul writes, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). When we share the Gospel, we can trust God with the results. 

O friends, the more I ponder the course on witnessing that I used in my congregation, the more I regret it, for it avoided the Cross and encouraged a way of self-preservation, and as Jesus teaches, the way of self-preservation is the way of death (Mark 8:34 – 38). It will cost us our lives to share Jesus with others, it requires the surrender of our will, it requires our own crucifixion with Christ (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:3 – 11; John 12:24 – 26; Philippians 3:10).

Well now, dear friends, shall we follow the Lamb wherever He goes? (Revelation 14:4). 

Our Last Battle (11)

 Eleven – More Real Than Ever

“The wonder of walking beside creatures from another world made him feel a little dizzy: but it also made all the old stories seem far more real than they had ever seemed before…anything might happen now.” The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis, page 694, One Volume Edition.

A while back my friend, Michael Daily, introduced me to the writings of Geerhardus Vos (1862 – 1949), through a collection of six of his sermons preached at Princeton Seminary chapel, titled, Grace and Glory. While I appreciate all six sermons, Vos’s message on Hebrews 11:9 – 10, Heavenly Mindedness, captured my heart and mind, and resulted in me doing a blog series on it. This was one of the longest series I’ve written over the years, with the current Upper Room series, an early series on C. S. Lewis, and one on Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, probably being the only ones of greater length over the past 15 years. 

As we’ll hopefully see later in our reflections on The Last Battle, there are places in which the inside is greater than the outside. We see this in the manger, the Cross, the Upper Room, and I experienced this with Vos’s Heavenly Mindedness, as he experienced it with Hebrews 11:9 – 10. Vos took me on a transcendent journey with him, a journey of communion with the saints, a journey that captured the essence of not only Hebrews 11: 9- 10, but also of Hebrews 12: 22 – 24:

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angles, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.” 

Heavenly Mindedness was an expression of Jesus’ words to the Sadducees, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” To Vos, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not only living, but we can also experience the communion of the saints with them, we can experience Hebrews 12:22 – 24, we can live within a heavenly mindedness in Jesus Christ and with one another. 

As I worked through Heavenly Mindedness I was continually amazed at the experiential transcendence of Vos’s message and I wondered what his original audience heard and saw as they listened to him. It also struck me that his preaching departed from what most of us find acceptable in today’s Evangelical circles, for it is most certainly not the product of the historical – grammatical method. This is not to say that Vos didn’t do his homework, far from it; it is not to say that along the way Vos did not do his grammatical or his historical work, but it is to say that the life and vision and trajectory of Vos’s preaching far exceeded any method which, at its core, is humanistic. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if Vos, had he been a seminary student, would have received a passing grade for his sermon. 

(My apologies if you are not quite following me, I will try to follow this up with some posts that try to flesh this out, but I do have a point, so please be patient. And besides, it doesn’t hurt to touch on things difficult to grasp.)

To Vos, Hebrews 11:9 – 10, was not a text, it was a life, and that life led him to the City of Hebrews 12:22 – 24, a City that was as real to him as the city or town where you live is real to you. Except, that City to Vos was more real, more permanent, and more assured that any of our earthly cities and towns and villages – for its Builder and Maker is God. 

So much of our theological education, and our Bible teaching material, Sunday school and small group material (whether printed or video), our commentaries, our preaching and teaching, is akin to people reading cookbook after cookbook, recipe after recipe, looking at photo after photo of dishes on a table – but without ever preparing and eating the food. 

What may be worse, is that we look at folks who prepare delicious meals that their grandparents taught them to make, using recipe cards with faded pencil on them, or instructions on old notebook paper which is disintegrating, and we think that they don’t know what they are doing – even though they are making tasty food and we are simply reciting recipes again and again without ever producing anything that gives life. We may even have fancy kitchen gadgets while others may have old cast iron skillets and muffin pans and hand-powered eggbeaters – and we think we are better equipped…even though we produce nothing to give life to others, nothing to truly feed the souls and spirits of others. 

There is joy in their cooking…there is taste…there is texture. People eat their food with conversation and smiles. 

These unrefined (to our thinking) folk can look at a recipe in a popular best seller and see the errors and instantly know what makes sense and what doesn’t. 

(And again with apologies, but I want to make this point; Vos’s preaching reminds me of the Fathers, it sees Scripture holistically in Christ, it is transcendent, lifting us above the earth and its humanistic gravity. You cannot teach someone to preach and teach like Vos and the Fathers, you can model it, but you simply cannot teach it, there is no method to it, it is born of the Spirit, and it requires a marriage of the Word and the man or woman – the two become one in Christ. It is organic.)

Now, what about Tirian? 

“The wonder of walking beside creatures from another world made him feel a little dizzy: but it also made all the old stories seem far more real than they had ever seemed before…anything might happen now.”

We are called to live in the reality of “anything might happen now.” Isn’t it time we live in the awe of the “old stories” being more real than ever? 

Our Last Battle includes the battle of living in presence of Jesus Christ and His saints today; not looking back at history as simply history, and not looking forward to a future that may or may not unfold in certain ways, but living in communion and friendship with Jesus Christ and His saints today – living in the reality of Hebrews 12:22 – 24, living in connection with “creatures from another world.” 

Yes, it can make us dizzy, and the numinous ought to do that. Yes, it ought to humble us. Yes, it means that the Word of God must master us, instead of us being so foolish as to think that we can master the Word. 

Yes, if we live as strangers in this world, we will be a bit strange. 

Ah, but what joy we will have with Jesus, with Abraham, David, Paul, Peter, Augustine, Fenelon, Vos…and with one another.

The Cost of Witness (7)

 

As we ponder John 15:18–16:4 and the Cost of Witness, let’s recall that Jesus says, “A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” (See also John 13:16). When we follow Jesus, we are identified with Jesus, in rejection, in suffering, in death, in resurrection, and in ascension. If we realize that this is a “given,” then we will not be surprised when we face hatred, rejection, and persecution. While we do not seek these things, we do seek to be faithful witnesses and we learn not to be surprised when we encounter opposition, in fact we learn to rejoice in being identified with our Lord Jesus Christ. 

We remind ourselves that Jesus says, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18). 

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you” (John 15:19). 

When I think about the course on witnessing that I referred to when this series began, one of its dangers, that I did not see at the time, was not only its failure to explore what Jesus is saying in John 15:18 – 16:4, but also its foundational premise that we can make friends of the world, get the world to like us, blend in, and have a group hug. To do this, we must abdicate our identity in Jesus Christ, we must cross back over from the Kingdom to the world. 

However we cannot use the ways of the world to reach the people of the world, and I think a fair reading of 1 Corinthians 1:17–2:16 supports this statement. As Michael Green points out in his book, Evangelism in the Early Church, it is when the Church has been the most unlike the world, that it has reached the people of the world. And please, let us not be deceived when we see large numbers in churches, nor small numbers in churches; we are called to make disciples, not to gather crowds. Are people devoted to Jesus? Are they living out Mark 8:34–38? Are they making disciples? Are they obeying all that Jesus has commanded us? 

When our gatherings resemble nightclubs and entertainment venues shrouded in darkness…what have we done? Are we not to be people of the Light?

Are we living as a distinct community in Jesus Christ? 

Furthermore, as we read John 15:18–16:4 and the Cost of Witness, are we facing rejection and persecution for Jesus? Let’s be clear about this, and let’s be honest, if we are not experiencing rejection and persecution, then something is wrong…or Jesus and Paul are mistaken. Let’s not forget 2 Timothy 3:12, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” 

The Cross is an offense, and if we remove the Cross from our message, we have removed our witness and we have rejected our identity and our dear Lord Jesus. 

Is our identity in Jesus Christ or is it in the world? It cannot be both. We cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:19–24). It seems to me that we need to settle this question, to affirm one another in our identity in Christ, and to be unambiguous in our witness to the world. 

The politicization  and nationalization of professing Christians and churches is a denial of our identity as God’s distinct People in Christ (from Russia to the United States and everywhere in-between.) Yes, this can be a hard thing. It was a hard thing when Jesus said it, when Paul and the other Apostles taught it. It has always been a hard thing, this Cross that Christ calls us to carry and live by for His glory and the salvation of others. But Jesus does not want us to be surprised by it, and so He says, “But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them” (John 16:4a). 

I suppose there is an element here of Jesus saying, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” 

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). 

“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:15- 16). 

I don’t think we teach this very well, if at all. We don’t want to offend people; I’m talking about church people. I think there may be folks who don’t know Jesus who may be relieved to hear this, relieved to hear that all the marketing and advertising they are bombarded with is a lie. I think there are laboring men and women who are just trying to put food on the table and house their families and keep them safe who may be comforted by the fact that the Great American Dream is a mirage and that it has nothing to do with desiring the Kingdom of God. 

I think people may be set free to learn that it isn’t what is in our wallets that matters, but rather what is in our hearts. Others may be glad to learn that the cruise line that really matters is the Ark of Jesus Christ. 

I live in a community of mostly retired folks. We are from all over the East coast and the Midwest. Many of us have one sad thing in common, we are still impressed by money and possessions. Isn’t this foolish? We are all close to death and we haven’t learned about the lies we’ve believed, and in which so many of us have invested ourselves. What is maybe worse, we have passed this stupidity on to our children and grandchildren. We talk about how much money our grandkids make and their possessions, rather than about their character. And what about Jesus? 

Of course church folks generally do not want to hear about their relationship with the world because if you offend us we’ll either just go to another church or we will stay home. We want a Christianity without the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ, and this includes Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Leave us alone to pursue our own agendas and affirm us in our materialism and alliances with the world, and for goodness sake have the good sense not to call us adulterers and adulteresses! 

Do we love the people of the world enough, the people held captive by the world system, to share Jesus with them? To maintain our identity in Christ and His Cross and to love them and serve them and speak to them as citizens of heaven? Do we love our fellow professing Christians enough to do the same? 

I have a friend who was responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in assets over his career. He worked with clients who were exceptionally wealthy. One of the keys to his success, he thinks, is that one hundred million dollars made no more impression on him than one dollar. He was no more impressed by a client who had millions of dollars than a client of more modest means, or by a man or woman working as a groundskeeper in his firm. In fact, he could often be more impressed by the integrity and earnestness and compassion of the groundskeeper than by clients of substantial means. 

Why was this?

Because my friend learned in Christ that he is in the world but not of the world. He learned in Christ that the world in passing away. So as Joseph could speak to Pharoah, and as Daniel could speak to Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, my friend could speak truth to his clients without being intimidated by power, position, or wealth. His clients had nothing that he wanted, in fact, he wanted something for his clients…for them to know Jesus. 

Who can we share Jesus with today? 

Our Last Battle (10)

 Ten – Children?

In Chapter Five of The Last Battle, Jill and Eustace appear in Narnia to help the King. They arrive as Aslan’s response to Tirian’s cry, “Let me be killed. I ask nothing for myself. But come and save all Narnia.” 

God moves when we place others before ourselves. He moves when we take the place of others, when we enter into intercessory prayer and when we live intercessory lives. This is the Way of Jesus, and there is no other Way to live than by Him and His Cross.

Our prayers are often answered through others. When Daniel prayed God sent messengers in response to his prayers. When Paul and Silas struggled over what direction to take in their mission, God gave Paul a vision of a man saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." When the Ethiopian wrestled with reading the Prophet Isaiah, God sent Philip to him. God answered Cornelius’s prayerful alms by sending Peter. Jesus sent Ananias to heal Paul’s blindness, confirm Paul’s commission, and baptize him. 

Jesus seemed to always be directing Paul to new friends and new friends to Paul, his letters are full of reference, praise, thanksgiving, and prayers for coworkers – men and women. Doesn’t this make sense? For didn’t’ Jesus surround Himself with followers who became disciples, with disciples who became apostles, and with apostles who became friends?  

The very nature of life in Christ is the nature of Divine relationship in the Body of Christ, the Bride, the Church, the Temple, the Family of God. We want others to have koinonia with us so that they may have koinonia with the Trinity (1 John 1:3). Are we living in the reality of Hebrews 12:22 – 24? Is the “communion of saints” the fabric of our lives, or is it only a phrase of the Creed that we hopefully recite? 

One challenge of praying is receiving, and I don’t think we do this very well, at least I know that I don’t. We want to define and shape and qualify the answers, and if we don’t see what we want then we think God has not answered us. (I have explored this more fully in our Upper Room series). 

Aslan sent two children in answer to Tirian’s intercessory prayer for Narnia. Were it not for the fact that Tirian had heard stories of children coming from another world, time and again, to save Narnia, would he have immediately accepted Jill and Eustace? 

Are there times we reject God’s provision and His answer because we don’t like the form they take? When Jesus says that we ought not to reject children, for of such is the Kingdom of God, maybe, embedded within His words, is the instruction that we can learn from children and from things that seem “below” us. 

As I think about my formal theological education, I naturally see areas of deficiency, areas in which there maybe should have been fewer electives and more requirements. However, I realize that one can only accomplish so much in 96 credit hours and so I think, by and large, my seminary did the best it could in most respects. 

However, I do think a 19th hole should have been added to the golf course. We should not have been given diplomas until we had served at least six months cleaning toilets as a living. Pride and reliance on methodology and humanistic epistemology and hermeneutics are dangerous things, and a reminder that we aren’t as smart as we think we are would be good for most of us, and I think quite beneficial for the people we serve. (Maybe refresher courses in toilet cleaning should also be required.)

In Narnia, children from earth grow quickly, it’s one of those strange Narnian dynamics, much like the difference between the way time is experienced in Narnia and on earth. Sometimes, if we can see God coming to us in simple things, in basic things, and if we will accept those things and seek to learn from them, those things will grow quickly from children to adolescents to adults and we will see value in them that we never considered. 

On the other hand, if we dismiss out of hand what God sends to us as being beneath us, then we will miss treasures of Christ. This is especially true of people, often the people we can learn the most from are those who are the most different from us. One of the tragedies of the American church is that we are segregated racially, economically, educationally, politically (shame on us, shame!), to name but a few barriers. We build and maintain our own prisons…and proud we are of it.

When we see anyone as beneath us, then we have risen too high. 

I once worked with a wealthy man (we’ll call him Sam) who was an executive in an international firm. He was chairman of the board of directors of a ministry I was serving. He was kind, tenderhearted, loved Jesus, and was a true friend to others. He cared about people. He was also an elder in his church. I used to meet with Sam once a week to review ministry operations and enjoy fellowship in Christ.

One week he excitedly told me about a family that had been visiting their church. After the Sunday evening service, he asked the family if he could take them to get something to eat, and they suggested McDonald’s. My goodness, what a great time my friend had, enjoying being with this family at McDonald’s, getting to know them, listening to them, sharing a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder with them. It was truly a Happy Meal (sorry, couldn’t resist). 

Most of us reading this are probably thinking, “That’s nice, but why am I reading this?” After all, most of us have been to McDonald’s more than once. 

Sam lived in a very expensive metropolitan area, and his church was in a suburb without much economic diversity. This family was of modest economic means and educational background. Yet, they had not only been welcomed by Sam’s church, Sam asked them  to dinner. When they suggested McDonald’s, Sam went right along with the idea, even though he had never been to a McDonald’s. 

Sam loved being with the family, and he was fascinated with McDonald’s. (I worked with another executive who had never been to McDonald’s.)

Let’s be honest about this, as James tells us (James Chapter 2), we do have a tendency to dismiss people who are not like us, people we think are beneath us. This is ugly but it is true. (I should note that I have seen the reverse of this, I’ve seen folks on the lower end of the spectrum dismiss folks who have more material things or education than they do, often attributing attitudes to them that are not true.)

Aslan answered Tirian’s prayer by sending children to him. 

Are we above the people that Jesus chooses to answer our prayers? 

Are we missing out on the treasures of Christ in others? 

The Cost of Witness (6)

 

Jesus says to us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13–16). The song, “This Little Light of Mine,” may be well intentioned, but it misses the point, we are not little lights, the very Light of Jesus Christ shines through us, the preservative and gracious salt of Jesus Christ resides within us and is to be shaken out of us. 

It is incumbent on you and me to be the Presence of Christ in the world, the workplace, family, and community – in Word and deed. 

I love the image that Oswald Chambers uses of us being broken bread and poured out wine, for after all, we are the Body of Christ. As we partake of Christ we are to offer ourselves to others so that they may also partake of Christ. Sometimes they may know it, most times they won’t.  Jesus says that we are to be like our Father, who causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends His rain on the righteous and unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). 

Every day ought to be a day of mission for us.

I think there are some basic principles that are critical to our witness, perhaps the most basic being, “Not I but Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Wherever we are, we are there not for ourselves but for Christ and others. No matter the pressures in front of us during the day, no matter the unknown, we are on mission, and we can trust our dear Lord Jesus to be with us throughout the day. Let’s remember that His strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), His grace is sufficient for us. 

Pay attention to others, listen to them, listen to their hearts and not so much to their words, though their words do matter. Let there be no invisible people in your life. 

Learn to speak to Jesus as others are speaking to you, and learn to listen along with Jesus as others are speaking with you. When we do speak, it is the quality, love, and concern in our words that matter, not their quantity. Most people have no one to really listen to them, just as they have no one to pray for them. 

Pray with others. I have prayed many prayers of 30 seconds with folks I meet during the day – conversation with our Father really ought to be like breathing, and including others in our ongoing conversation is a joy and privilege. Suppose I was talking to someone in Walmart and my phone rang, and while I don’t look at my phone when I am with someone, let’s say that this time I did. This time I saw that it was Queen Elizabeth (yes, I know she is dead now, but I can’t think of anyone else to use as an illustration!) 

Let’s also say that the Queen and I are old friends. So, I tell the other person that it’s the Queen and I answer the phone, and then I say to the Queen, “Ma’am, I’m actually talking with Frank in Walmart right now, can I put the phone on speaker for just a moment so you and Frank can say, Hi?

Of course she says, “Yes,” and the Queen and Frank and I have a quick conversation before she asks me to call her back when I can so we can discuss marmalade sandwiches and Earl Grey tea. 

Now of the three of us, who has the most joy in this conversation? As far as I am concerned, I have the most joy because I have connected an old friend with a new friend. That is the way I feel when I can help someone connect with our Lord Jesus and our Heavenly Father, when I can model relationship with God for others, when I can help others see that our Father is here for them. 

A year or two after I retired from business, Vickie and I were invited to a company function. While there, Al, a former employee came up to me and said, “Bob, you know I lost my mother a few months ago, I’m sure someone must have told you. It was a tough time for me. But I knew you were praying for me.” I was able to say, “Yes, I did know and I was praying.”

Al was confident that I was praying because during the time he worked within my group he saw that praying for others was embedded in my life. It was really very simple. Don’t you think so?

Tell the truth, don’t lie, don’t slander, and please don’t gossip. O yes, and please take responsibility. Lying and slander are from Satan, gossip is Satanic. I don’t care if the entire workplace is caught up in this poison, don’t do it – don’t be a fool, don’t be a tool of the enemy, don’t shame Jesus. 

I recall author and speaker Gary Thomas sharing about a workplace experience in which everyone was backbiting one another. As Thomas prayed about the situation, he decided to say good things about people, to point out positive aspects of his coworkers. Before long, the atmosphere changed from slanderous poison and gossip to one of encouragement and appreciation. Since we are to be salt and light, isn’t this what we should expect? 

I have often spoken and written about Psalm 15:4c, “He swears to his own hurt and does not change.” The man or woman who desires to live in fellowship with God is one who will tell the truth even when it is to his or her immediate detriment. I write “immediate” because it is never to our eternal detriment to tell the truth and take responsibility. When we take responsibility, we ought to be straightforward about it, not trying to justify ourselves, or excuse ourselves, or attribute some of the blame to others.

When we accept responsibility, when we tell the truth, when we do not slander or gossip, when we seek to serve others, then people will know they can trust us. Even if they do not like us, even if they are hostile or puzzled by our faith in Jesus, they will know that they can trust us. 

There will always be people opposed to the Gospel, there will always be self-seeking and plain nasty folks, but we are called to share God’s mercy and grace with everyone, to be faithful to Jesus Christ wherever we find ourselves. We can trust Jesus through all of life, after all, He is the Good Shepherd who gives His life for His sheep. 

The Cost of Witness (5)

 As we prepare to move more deeply and directly into John 15:18–16:4, I want to unpack something I wrote in the previous reflection and then make a few other Biblical notes. I previously wrote:

The world says, “To play with us you must pay the price of being with us and you must be like us, you must go along to get along and you must leave your Jesus outside.” This may not always be the case in certain seasons of life, it can be, but it might not be. Yes, it is always the bottom line with the world, but we can still make a difference, I’ll try to explain this below or in the next reflection. 

Our relationship with the world is simple, yet complicated. It is simple in that those who follow Jesus belong to Him and not to the world, we are servants of Christ and citizens of heaven, there are fundamental and constitutional differences between us and the world, irreconcilable differences for the world is in rebellion against God. Our hope is to rescue the people still in the world so that they may know the love and grace and life of Jesus Christ. At one time, we were all in the slave galley of the world, shackled to its oars, toiling.

It is complicated in that the people of the world respond to us in different ways, and individuals can respond to us differently than groups. Systems generally do not respond well to us, because systems strive for dominance and self-aggrandizement, and Christ is our Lord, not anything within the world-system. (See Psalm 2, Daniel 2). We can work within ungodly systems and be blessings to others while maintaining clear testimonies to Jesus Christ, two Biblical examples of this are Joseph and Daniel. 

In Joseph’s case, Potiphar’s wife sought to corrupt his faithfulness to the True and Living God and his fidelity to his earthly master, Potipher. The world and its prince of darkness will never give ground willingly and without a struggle. When we are in the world we are always working from a beachhead, we are always in enemy territory…in one sense. In one sense it is enemy territory, but in another sense, we are taking back that which belongs our Father and Lord Jesus Christ, for the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. We are not here to escape or retreat, we are here to overcome so that we might set others free. 

Joesph’s faithfulness resulted in prison, but prison resulted in exaltation, and exaltation resulted in deliverance for his family and countless others. All of God’s sons and daughters are promised exaltation in Jesus Christ, as Paul writes, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). 

Within the ungodly culture of Egypt, God used Jospeh as a clear testimony to Himself and to be a blessing to others. 

Daniel served within two ungodly systems, that of Babylon (the instrument God used to judge Judah and Jerusalem and the Temple), and of Persia. He had good relationships with Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, and with Darius the Persian. Yet, he and his friends also faced danger from jealous peers within both systems; his friends faced the fiery furnace, and Daniel paid a visit to the lions’ den. (Imagine the atmosphere prevalent in both contexts, leading to these dramatic events. While Daniel and his friends may have had the favor of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, much of the atmosphere around them was bent on their destruction.)

When the Babylonian system fell in judgment, God preserved Daniel and he served God and Darius within the Persian system (and keep in mind that both systems were under God’s ultimate judgement, as we see in Daniel 2).

In order for us to be faithful witnesses in the world, we must live knowing that we are not of the world. If the world captures our hearts, it destroys our witness. As Jesus says, we are in the world but not of the world. 

I have a friend who was once on the board of directors of a state association of businesses. As with many trade associations, members of the board worked through various “chairs” and committees from year-to-year. Eventually, if a man or woman was selected as vice-president, it was assumed that she or he would be the following year’s president of this state-wide association. 

My friend worked hard, volunteering much time and creative energy within the association and was eventually selected as vice-president by his industry peers. He assumed, without a second thought, that he would be entrusted with the duties of president the following year. This is what happened, and he had a wonderful year serving the people of his industry. 

After he had served his term, he found out that there had been opposition to him becoming president, opposition of which he was not aware. The opposition came from the executive director of the trade group, this person, who worked for the association and reported directly to the president, did not want my friend to become president. Why?

My friend was (and let us hope still is!) a disciple of Jesus Christ. This meant that in meetings he was not simply interested in what was best for the businesses in his industry, but that he also wanted to know what was best for the customers of the industry, and what was the right thing to do. When he dealt with public policy and state and Federal laws, he wanted to know the truth and apply it to the common good. Equity and truth were important to him because he was a servant of Jesus Christ. In other words, he would not sacrifice people for profit. 

There was also the issue of general deportment, and this is a sensitive topic to write about. Let us say that when some people attend conventions and business gatherings that they like to “party,” and that others are mindful of morality, ethics, and common sense. To the disciple of Jesus Christ, the notion that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” is a lie from the pit of hell. Some executive directors like to party hardy, and to have a president like my friend could put a damper on such behavior at industry gatherings. (He wasn’t opposed to good meals and good wine, so don’t get me wrong. He was opposed to excess stupidity.)

When the executive director approached current and former board members, and past presidents, about selecting someone else for president, the person was told absolutely not, that my friend deserved the position and that it was in the best interests of the industry for him to have it. My friend did not learn this until well after his term as president. 

An irony of the story is that during the year my friend was president, the trade association quadrupled its membership, thereby giving the executive director more exposure and a higher profile than before. From all appearances, the two worked quite well together. 

At the end of the last board of directors meeting that my friend chaired as president, he took the time to thank people individually for their contributions, for it had been a spectacular year for the trade group. Then he thanked Jesus for helping him through the year and for the blessing that Jesus gave him in working with each person in the room. 

I am sharing this to illustrate the complexities of a life of witness. Sometimes resistance to our words and deeds in Christ is overt, sometimes it is covert, it is behind the scenes.  Over the course of my friend’s career, I know of many times he has been able to counsel and pray with business associates and employees, to share the love and grace of Jesus with them. But let us note, that our words must match our deeds, and our deeds must align with our words. The quality and integrity of our work, no matter our vocations, ought to be offered to God (Colossians 3:22–24). Shoddy work and ethics do not deserve an audience, it gives the lie to our testimony for Christ, it is shameful. 

Wherever our Father places us, we are there to be His witnesses to Jesus Christ; sources of Light and Life to others. 

The Lord willing, we’ll touch on this a bit more in our next reflection. 

Our Last Battle (9)

 Nine – The Turn

Alone, abandoned, tied to a tree, struggling with doubts and fears, reflecting back on all he had ever heard about Aslan and the history of Narnia, pondering the tales of children from another world, Tirian arrives at a forlorn hope. Even hopes that are forlorn are nevertheless hopes. 

The King cries, “Aslan! Aslan! Aslan! Come and help us now!”

The narrator tells us that, “The darkness and the cold and the quietness went on just the same.”

Tirian continues, “Let me be killed. I ask nothing for myself. But come and save all Narnia.” 

We are told that things on the outside stayed the same, but that inside the King a kind of change began to occur, and that a flicker of hope moved within Tirian. 

“O Aslan, Aslan. If you will not come yourself, at least send me the helpers from beyond the world. Or let me call them. Let my voice carry beyond the world.”

Here, my friends, we have the crux of Our Last Battle. This is the nexus of the book, The Last Battle, and it is the nexus of Our Last Battle. All of life either flows to this point, or from this point. This is our life in Christ. Without coming to this point, and without continuing from this point, our lives have no point. 

Tirian not only had to come to the end of his anger, he had to come to the end of himself. He not only had to come to the end of himself, he had to offer himself on behalf of others. 

This, my dear, dear friends, is the Christian Life, and there is no other. 

This is what it means to follow Jesus. It is to belong to Another and to live for others through Him. It is to leave our agendas and anger behind, surrendering ourselves to Jesus, laying down our lives for others as He laid down His life for us (John 15:12–13; 1 John 3:16). 

Had the Narnians known the character and Nature of Aslan they would not have been deceived by the Ape, by dead lion skins, and by the blasphemous notion that Aslan and Tash are the same. Had Tirian not been disoriented by his anger, he may have recalled the true Nature of Aslan and realized that, as Roonwitt said, the reports of Aslan appearing were lies. 

Tirian’s selfish anger blinded him to the True Aslan and to his call to serve others. 

In order to find freedom, Tirian needed to be beaten and tied to a tree. Then his heart could grow tender as he considered the welfare of the Mice, the Rabbit, and the Moles. Then his pride could be humbled as he put others before himself, and he remembered his People. Then, and only then, the King could cry, “Let me be killed…but come and save all Narnia.” 

Does this not take us back to the Stone Table of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Aslan gave His life for Edmund and Narnia, and now Tirian learns to give his life for his People.

And so Paul writes, “Death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12). 

Do we know what it is to experience Galatians 2:20?

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” 

Our lives are to be living sacrifices, and once placed on the altar they are to remain there, every moment of every day, into eternity (Romans 12:1–2). 

Our Last Battle is about the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross. Will our lives be irrevocably cruciform? Will they be in the image of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2)? Will our congregations be collectively crucified with Christ? Will our arms be outstretched to suffer with Christ, to suffer for others, and to embrace the suffering of others? Will we bear the burdens and sorrow and heartache and sin of others, that they may know Jesus Christ and His healing and wholeness and Life and Love? 

Will we cry out to our Father, “Take me, not them!”? Will our churches cry out, “Take us, not them!”? 

O friends, can we see the dead lion skins that entice us with promises of our best life now, with promises of safe religious lives that require nothing of us, that allow us to continue in our self-centered pursuits, that make Jesus a concierge rather than acknowledging Him as our Lord and our God, that would make Jesus a show horse rather than the Lamb of God slain for our sins and raised from the dead, the Victor over sin and death? 

Can we not see that just as the Ape made the Narnians slaves to his agenda, that just as Shift propagated the lie of Tashlan, that we are being enticed to serve the agendas of this world, a world opposed to our Lord Jesus Christ? How is it that we have been made captives of Tashlan? 

Our Last Battle is whether we will say, “O Jesus. Bring me to the Cross, bind me to the Cross, let the Cross be embedded in my soul, and let Your Cross radiate from my life.”

Our Last Battle is whether we will daily cry, “Take me. Save others!”

“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Philippians 3:10). 

The Cost of Witness (4)

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18–20). 

In the heart of the Upper Room, in the midst of Jesus’ assurance of His love for us, in the trajectory of the call to live in deep fellowship with the Trinity, we have John 15:18–16:4, with its promise (if we may call it that) of persecution, rejection, and possibility of death for the sake of Jesus. 

This passage immediately follows Jesus speaking of His joy being made full in us and us loving one another as He loves us, a love manifested in our laying down our lives for one another.

When Jesus says, “Remember the word that I said to you,” He takes us back to the beginning of the Upper Room (13:16), “Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.”

Also note Matthew 10:24-25. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!” 

Here is a sequence found throughout Scripture, suffering precedes glory, death is a portal to resurrection. “…if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Romans 8:17b–18).

At the heart of this is Jesus. Will we be identified with Jesus? With the Jesus Christ of the Cross and with the Cross of Jesus Christ? If our answer is “Yes,” then we must anticipate suffering for Him and others, it is a given; it is not an “if,” it is a “when.” It is just as much a fact of life as getting hit when playing American football or playing rugby. 

“If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rest on you…if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name” (1 Peter 4:14, 16). We are not to be ashamed of Jesus and His words (Mark 8:38). 

Is our identify in Jesus Christ? Is He the core of who we are? 

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). Do we believe this? Do I believe this about me? Do you believe this about you? Do you believe this about your congregation? 

You can live as a member of a Christian tradition and not face resistance and persecution as a way of life, but you cannot live as a disciple of Jesus Christ and avoid difficulty, rejection, and persecution to one degree or another…whether from the world or from professing Christians. The Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ is an offense.

We forget that Jesus said, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way” (Luke 6:26). Our goal must not be to go along to get along. We must not be engaged in some type of painless marketing campaign that avoids the Cross in our own lives, in our message, and in the lives of others.

To be sure, our lives as well as our words are to be a witness to the world.

“Keep your behavior excellent among the peoples, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). 

“Let your light shine before men in such as way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). 

“Prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life…” (Philippians 2:15–16a).

O dear friends, we live in a world of gossip and slander, will we refuse to partake of it and live in Christ?

We live in a world of spin and lies and deceit (in the political world, the business world, in the world at large, and in professing Christianity), will we refuse to participate in evil and instead speak the truth in Christ? I am going to talk about this below. 

We live in a world where anger animates our words, emotions, entertainment, sports, politics, relations with others, will we live as the sons and daughters of the Prince of Peace, will we live as peacemakers?

The world says, “To play with us you must pay the price of being with us and you must be like us, you must go along to get along and you must leave your Jesus outside.” This may not always be the case in certain seasons of life, it can be, but it might not be. Yes, it is always the bottom line with the world, but we can still make a difference, I’ll try to explain this below or in the next reflection. 

If we say, “Yes,” to the world, then we have accepted the mark of Revelation Chapter 13 in our souls. Do we really want to do this? 

If our churches and movements say “Yes” to the world then we have aligned ourselves with the Whore who rides the Beast of Revelation 17. Can we really be so stupid, those of us who seek alliance with the political and philosophic (worldview) and economic and nationalist movements of this world?

Well, I see that this piece had gotten long enough, so I am going to drop back in the next one (the Lord willing) and try to explain and illustrate some of things I’ve written above. Sharing Jesus with others in the workplace and in our communities is one of the joys of living in Him, and while life is a contact sport for sure, we can have wonderful joy when giving to others, in serving them in Christ. 

Sure there is a cost to witness, to share love and grace and mercy, but it is a price we ought to gladly pay…again, and again, and again. 

Our Last Battle (8)

 Caricatures Continue

Chapter Four opens with the King tied to a tree, away from the Shift the Ape and the stable and the gathering of Narnians. He has been beaten, he is hungry and thirsty. 

As night descends, Mice, a Rabbit, and Moles quietly come to the King with food, wine, water, and with care and concern. However, they cannot untie Tirian lest Aslan be angry with them, just as when Tirian was attacked by the Calormenes they dared not fight for their King, lest they go against Aslan. 

When Tirian asks them if they really think Aslan would command the killing and enslavement of Narnians, the Mice acknowledge the contradiction between Aslan’s actions and what they’d always heard about Him, but then remind Tirian that they’ve seen Aslan (Puzzle the donkey dressed in a dead lion’s skin). Their conclusion is that they must have done something really bad to deserve such punishment from Aslan.

There is a brief moment when Tirian has his own doubts about what is real and what isn’t concerning Aslan, but then he recalls the rubbish about Tash and Aslan being one and the same and that brings him back to his senses. 

The theme of caricature continues in this chapter, and with the Mice and Rabbit and Moles we see good – hearted Narnians torn between compassion for Tirian and fear of Aslan. They know something isn’t right, but they don’t know what to do because they are afraid. Yet, they have overcome their fear in some measure, if only for a moment, to give comfort to Tirian. 

As Tirian considers the danger these little ones have placed themselves in to bring him comfort, he bids them to leave him, for he would not for all of Narnia see them harmed. Here we see Tirian’s anger, a prominent feature in the story to this point, being displaced by love for others. 

Left to himself, the King begins to ponder the history of Narnia, the appearances of Aslan, and the accounts of mysterious children from another world who have appeared from time to time to save Narnia. He thinks, “It’s not like that with me…But it was all long ago…That sort of thing doesn’t happen now.” 

Here is another caricature in Our Last Battle, the caricature of the Bible, God’s Word. Has God’s Word changed? Does it no longer mean what it says? Can we trust the stories and commands and teachings of Scripture? Does Jesus still appear to His People? Does He still live with us? (This is a prominent theme in Prince Caspian and in The Silver Chair.)

Are we explaining away the Bible? Are we making excuses for not seeing and knowing Jesus as a Living Person? Are we teaching that the Holy Spirit is less than He is represented in Scripture? Are we sewing dead lions’ skins on donkeys to represent the Bible, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit? Have we exalted our rationalizations, our sociology, our humanistic hermeneutics and epistemology, above the Word of God and the Person of Jesus Christ? Just how many stables are we constructing? 

If we aren’t asking these questions, we won’t know. If we aren’t asking these questions as part of the fabric of life, we will not know. However, there is risk in asking these questions, for we may end up like Tirian, beaten and tied to a tree, abandoned. 

How often are we told, “That was then, in Bible times, this is now in our times. God has changed, the Bible does not mean today what it meant when it was written. We have progressed."

An element of Our Last Battle is whether we accept the Bible as God gave it to us, and whether we are living under its authority, or whether we are re-forming the Bible into our image. Do we have the courage to think about these things? 

Since the Bible testifies to Jesus Christ, since Jesus Christ is seen holistically throughout Scripture (a reality that we have been blinded to), these questions are critical. This is all about Jesus Christ. Our Last Battle is about Jesus, just as The Last Battle is all about Aslan. 

And this suggests another danger in asking these questions, and that danger is that even in asking such questions, we may miss Jesus. Simply to identify caricatures or chasms between what we think and practice and believe today and the Jesus Christ of holistic Scripture is not enough. Our attention must not be directed to the chasm, it is to be always directed to Jesus. As important as it may be to realize there are chasms, what is of vital importance is to see Jesus and be drawn to Him, to know Him as we’ve never known Him before.

As we draw nearer and nearer to Jesus, as our friendship with Him becomes ever more intimate and vibrant, we forget about the chasms and caricatures in the light of His glory and grace and sweet friendship. In one sense it doesn’t matter so much where we have been, but rather where we are going, “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). 

In 1 Corinthians Chapter One, Paul in essence says, “We have a Message that doesn’t cater to Jews or Greeks, a Message that doesn’t conform to the expectations and paradigms of human culture. We have a Message that is a stumbling block to some and sheer foolishness to others.

Then in 2:2 he writes, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” 

It seems to me that much of our thinking today, including in Evangelical circles, seeks to remove the stumbling blocks and foolishness of the Gospel, of the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. In doing so, perhaps we are making Aslan into Tash, and Tash into Aslan, perhaps we are creating our own Tashlan.

Well, we’ll return to Tirian tied to a tree and seemingly abandoned in our next reflection (the Lord willing), for the story is about to take a wonderful turn.