Destroying Our gods Opening hymn 7 Responsive reading 821 Closing hymn 305 Clive Staples Lewis was born November 29, 1898 in Belfast Ireland. His father was an attorney, and his mother was a promising mathematician. She died when CS Lewis was nine years old. His education began in his home. the house was large and there are many rooms, some sunlit, some shady, some mysterious. He was also surrounded by books. he described his house by saying "books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the hall, books two deep in the great Hall, books in the landing, books in the bedroom, and books of all time reflecting every stage of my parents interests, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for children, and books most emphatically not. CS Lewis went to several boarding schools. the first of them was to close and the headmaster was sent to an insane asylum. At the next school he developed respiratory problems and after that was sent to a health resort town where he attended prep school. It was the age of 13 that he abandoned Christian faith and became an atheist becoming interested in mythology and the occult. this state of affairs lasted until he was 31 years old he. He cited as one of the strongest arguments for atheism, that if God designed the world, it would not be a world so frail and faulty as we see. In his writings CS Lewis describes his young self as being paradoxically very angry with God for not existing. When World War II came CS Lewis enlisted in the British Army and arrived at the front line of the Somme in France on his 19th birthday. That battlefield was to see 1,000,000 casualties. He was wounded, but lived through trench warfare. He did suffer some depression as he was healing, due in part to missing his home. While he was training for the Army CS Lewis became close friends with another cadet he called that Paddy. The two had made an agreement that if either died during the war the survivor would take all of the others families. He was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother and friendship very quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met and Jane, who was 45. His friendship with Moore was particularly important to C.S. Lewis. As he was recovering from his wounds in the hospital, as his father refused to visit him. After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted Christianity in 1931. Following a long discussion and late-night walk with his close friends J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson he records making a specific commitment to be a Christian. ..... Lewis considered himself entirely orthodox Anglican in the end of his life, reflecting that he had attended church only to receive communion at first and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honored to worship with men in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns. C.S. Lewis in later life met Joy Grisham, an American writer with a Jewish background and a convert from atheistic communism to Christianity. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend and agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so she could continue to live in the United Kingdom. His brother wrote, "for Jack the attraction was the first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman who had met who had a brain who matches his in suppleness, and the width of interest, and an analytical grasp, and above all humor and sense of fun." Joy was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer after suffered a painful hip and their relation grew to the point that they sought Christian marriage. A friend Reverend Peter Bride perform the ceremony at Joys hospital bed in 1956. Surprisingly Joy's cancer went into remission, although briefly, and the couple lived as a family until her eventual relapse and death in 1960. Lewis in his book "A Grief Observed" describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw impersonal fashion that Lewis originally released it under the pseudonym in W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. However so many friends recommended the book to Lewis is a method for dealing with his own grief that he made his authorship public. Lewis continue to raise Joy's two sons after her death. In 1961 Lewis began experiencing medical problems and was diagnosed with kidney inflammation which resulted in blood poisoning. His health gradually improved he went back to school, but on July 15, 1963 he fell ill and was admitted to the hospital. Is there he suffered a heart attack and lapsed into a coma but awakened and was discharged He returned to school but he was too ill to work. As a result he resigned his post at Cambridge. By mid-November he was diagnosed with end stage renal failure and died on November 22, 1963, the day that President Kennedy was shot.. I would like to share with you a few quotations from CS Lewis as he described his return to Christianity. In the Trinity term of 1929, I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed; perhaps that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what now the most shining and obvious thing: the divine humility which will accept such a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son least walked home on his feet. But who can duly adore that love which will open the gates to the prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; yet properly understood, they plumb the depth of the divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man and his compulsion is our liberation The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in effect offered what now appears a moment of holy free choice. In a sense. I was going to Pennington Hall on the top of a bus. Without words and, I say, almost without images, a fact about myself somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay or shutting something out. Or, if you like, I was wearing some stiff clothing like corsets, or a suit of armor, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given free choice: I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or a promise was attached to it either, though I knew that open the door to take off the courset meant the incalculable. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say I chose, yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand I was aware of no motives. You can argue that I was not are free-agent, but I'm more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most I've ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom and perhaps the man is most free when, instead of producing motives, you can only say "I am what I do". Then came the repercussion on the imaginative level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back, drip, drip, and presently trickle, trickle. I rather disliked the feeling. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark was demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even all or nothing. I think that stage had been passed on the bus top when I unbuckled my armor and the snowman started to melt. Now the simple demand was all. People who are naturally religious find difficulty in understand a horror such a revelation. Amiable agnostics will cheerfully talk about a man's search for God. To me as I was then, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat. The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that the sort of thing is either God or complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think your a poached egg, and you're looking for a piece of toast to suit you, you may be sane. But if you think you are God there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that he was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce the effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects: Hatred. Terror. Adoration There was no trace of people expressing mild approval. We must accept or reject the story. The sayings he says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, this is the truth about the universe. This is the way you ought to go. But Christ says, I am the truth, and the way, and the life, period. He says, no man can reach absolute reality, except through me. Try to retain your own life and you'll be enevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you'll be saved. He says if you're ashamed of me, if, when you hear the call you turn the other way, I will also look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever that is happening is keeping you from God, whatever it is throw it away. If it is your eye, pull it out. It is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first you will be last. Come to me everyone who is carrying a heavy load, and I will set that right. Your sins, all of them are wiped out, I can do that. I am rebirth. I am life. Each me, drink me I am your food. And finally do not be afraid, I have overcome the whole universe. That is the issue. As we look over the things that CS Lewis wrote, we find the two basic issues of life. I have titled this sermon destroying our gods. I could've spent time talking about television, overeating, illicit sex, substance abuse, worshipping money, mistreating other people, ignoring God's commandments, spiritual pride, and on and on. Perhaps you might have felt very good about a sermon like that. But I can spend the next 40 years going over specific actions. I could rake you over the coals, and probably make myself feel quite good about my self righteousness, but you see God's voice is not in the storm or in the fire. It's in the still small voice that comes in the night, that talks to us while we're driving, that impresses us while reading a book. The still small voice that convicts us that we need to surrender to our Lord. Jesus made it very clear himself Mat 4:19-20 "Then He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." {20} They immediately left their nets and followed Him." Mat 9:9 "As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, "Follow Me." So he arose and followed Him." Here our Lord says that there is no occupation that is to come between us and him. Mat 8:22 "But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead."" Here Jesus is saying that there is no person this to come between us and him. Mat 16:24 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." Here Jesus is saying that no desire is to come between us and Him. Mark 10:21 "Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."" Here he says that there is no amount of money or treasure should come between us and him. Mark 10:27-30 "But Jesus looked at them and said, "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible." {28} Then Peter began to say to Him, "See, we have left all and followed You." {29} So Jesus answered and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel's, {30} "who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time; houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life." In this passage he promises us that we cannot possibly give up more than He can restore to us. John 21:21-22 "Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, "But Lord, what about this man?" {22} Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me."" This passage tells us that it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing. Each one is called individually, the particular way that Jesus wants him to respond. You see, you have two choices. You can follow Christ, or you can go your own way. You can say wrapped up in what you think, what you want, what you feel, or you can seek out what Christ wants, what Christ thinks, what Christ feels. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Ethics, put it this way: "The tree of knowledge of Good and Evil produced the ability to choose our own good or our own evil." Both choices may take us equally distant from God. We have a third alternative, God's will." Oh and by the way, you can't destroy your gods. Only Jesus Christ can do that for you. Oh yeah, another point. Did you realize that this is a stewardship sermon? You see what our Lord wants is not what you have. He wants you. Body. Mind. Soul. Spirit. He wants everything that you have to be dedicated to him. He wants everything that you do to be dedicated to him. He wants every relationship that you have to bring glory to him. He wants every thought acceptable to Him. As we conclude today, I need to ask of each person here the question, have we dedicated everything to Jesus? I'm not asking if you have joined a church. I'm not asking if you're a religious person. I'm not asking if you do good things. What I am asking is have you made Jesus ruler and King? Has he become the most important part of your life? Maybe you have made that commitment once before but have gone astray from it. Perhaps you know there something in your life is standing between you and God and you're ready to let it go. Perhaps or something in your life between you and God and you can't let it go but you're willing to let God take it from you. Maybe never in your life have you really surrendered. Maybe pride stands in the way. Maybe fear stands in the way. You know it's time to let it go. SC Lewis was right when he said we had to either accept or reject the claims of God. Either he was God or he was a devil. If He is God, then we must choose to follow or be lost. There is no half way. No middle ground. You have some pieces of paper. Is there something that you have been unwilling to let go of that you know God wants, just write something on that paper that reminds you of that thing, that attitude, that feeling. Don't write it so everybody else can understand. This is just between you and God. Now I'm going to ask you to bring it forward, and give it to him. Not me. Not the church. Not the elders. To your Lord. Bring it forward and put it in this basket. Next, I'm going to ask if the Lord is asking you today to give yourself to him, If you feel that is the case, I want you to write on the paper ME. And if you desire to join the church or be baptized I would like for you to add your name along with that and bring it forward. Take just a moment right now to see what the Holy Spirit says to you. Then give your response and bring it forward. Most of information on C.S. Lewis taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cs_lewis Also: Surprised by Joy and other C.S. Lewis works.