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 In the final book of the Narniad, Aslan has been replaced by Tash – for most.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.