At Gateway Church in Austin, we continued our Christmas Blockbusters series with The Grinch.
Movies move us…they stir our emotions, awaken our imagination, and often point us to something greater.
In Christmas Blockbusters, we are exploring beloved holiday classics to discover how God’s truth shows up in unexpected places…through stories of love, grace, and redemption that echo the greatest story ever told.
Digging Deeper
Work through the Bible study and the discussion questions with your small group, roommates, or family.
Message Notes:
Today we’re diving into The Chronicles of Narnia, written by one of the most brilliant storytellers of the last century, C.S. Lewis. You may not realize it, but Lewis wasn’t just a fantasy writer, he was also a deep thinker, a teacher at Oxford, and close friends with another legendary author, J.R.R. Tolkien, the guy who gave us The Lord of the Rings. Can you imagine being in that friend group? Two guys just casually creating whole worlds over coffee.
But what’s fascinating about C.S. Lewis isn’t just his imagination, it’s his story. He actually grew up in church, was baptized and confirmed as a young boy, but by the time he was 15, he walked away from faith altogether. He called himself an atheist because, in his words, faith just felt too
hard and too joyless to be real. Maybe you’ve felt that way before; disappointed, disillusioned, or hurt by faith or church.
But Lewis’ story didn’t end there. Years later, his friend Tolkien challenged him to take another look at Jesus. After a long journey of wrestling with questions and truth, Lewis finally encountered Christ for himself, and it completely changed him. He wrote a book about that transformation called Surprised by Joy. I love that title, because it reminds us that when we truly discover who God is, we don’t just find rules or religion we find joy. Sometimes it’s not that
we’ve rejected God, it’s that we’ve only known the wrong version of Him.
So today, just like C.S. Lewis, I want to invite you to open your heart and your mind for the next few minutes. Maybe your story with God has been complicated. Maybe it’s even painful. But what if, like Lewis, you could be surprised by joy again?
Because this movie, The Chronicles of Narnia, paints a beautiful picture of God’s story; one of love, purpose, and redemption. It reminds us that from the very beginning, God created us for a relationship with Him and gave us the freedom to choose. Narnia is a story about what happens when God’s perfect design gets disrupted. It starts with love and family, but it takes a turn when Edmund listens to the wrong voice and turns his back on God’s story.
As you watch this movie, I want you to notice something that’s true not only in Narnia…but in God’s story too. The enemy always tries to pull us away from God’s best by getting us to believe something that isn’t true.
Remember the Turkish delight?
Edmund thought he’d stumbled onto something sweet, something that would satisfy him, but it was all a trap. There weren’t endless rooms full of candy waiting for him. The White Witch promised him everything and then betrayed him. And that’s exactly how our enemy works.
2 Corinthians 11:14 says, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
In other words, he always dresses the lie up to look good. He whispers, “This will make you happy. This will make you feel alive.”
But it’s never the full truth.
We’ve all fallen for that at some point. Maybe some of you are caught in that right now, you’re believing a lie that something else will satisfy more than God’s plan. I know I have. There was a time I thought, “I’ll just take control of my own life. I’ll make my own way.” But it didn’t take long for things to start unraveling, because the truth is, the enemy and sin always overpromises and always underdelivers.
Jesus said in John 8:44, “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
That’s who he is; he deceives, he distracts, and then he destroys. He’ll give you a morsel of truth, wrapped in a mountain of lies.
And the tragedy is this: every time we take the bait, we end up trapped like Edmund, imprisoned by something that looked good but left us empty.
What a powerful picture of what happens when we fall for temptation. Edmund was offered something sweet, but it led him straight into captivity. That’s how sin works. It looks good at first…appealing, even harmless…but in the end, it always leads to bondage and darkness. It may not happen overnight, but every time we choose our own way instead of God’s, we end up chained by the very thing we thought would set us free.
Jesus said it this way in John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
That’s the enemy’s mission-he’ll bait you with pleasure, but it always comes with a price.
Adrian Rogers (well known Southern pastor) said,
“Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay.” – Adrian Rogers
That’s the truth.
C.S. Lewis illustrates it so vividly in this story because when we walk away from God’s plan, we don’t just make a bad decision…we step into enemy territory. Spiritually speaking, we become prisoners, held hostage by our own choices. And the Bible says the payment for that, what sin
costs, is death.
Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In other words, we all had a bill we couldn’t pay. And here’s the good news, Jesus saw it. He saw the mess, the mistakes, the sin-and instead of letting us pay for it ourselves, He stepped in and said, “I’ll take it.”
That’s what the cross was. He paid our debt with His own blood. The only thing that could cover sin was blood-and Jesus offered His. Hell isn’t a place where God sends people He’s mad at. It’s simply the place where people choose to pay their own bill. C.S Lewis famously wrote,
“The doors of hell are locked on the inside.”
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.'”
-C.S. Lewis
That’s what Hell is, eternal separation from a God who will not force His will and ways on you. Where everyone’s will is done absent from all goodness and all love.
But God never wanted that for you. That’s why Jesus came, to make a way of escape, to pay for your sin, and to set you free.
Every moment Aslan appears in this story feels sacred. He represents everything that is true about God; strong yet gentle, powerful yet loving, full of grace yet perfectly just. Aslan points us to the same God who loves humanity so deeply that He sent His Son to give His life on the cross-to pay the price for our sin. Jesus paid our debt with His own blood. It’s a truth many have heard countless times in church but haven’t fully grasped. Because if we ever truly understood what He did for us, gratitude would overwhelm us.
In this next scene, Aslan willingly gives his life for something Edmund did; he is mocked, tortured, and killed in Edmund’s place. It’s difficult to watch because it exposes both the evil of sin and the weight of our own. Yet it also reveals the greatest love the world has ever known. As we watch this next moment, let’s reflect on what Jesus did for each of us.
John 15:13 (NIV) “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
That scene is one of the most striking in the entire film. At first, it’s easy to think, “Why would Aslan do that?” Why does he have to die? After all, Edmund wasn’t exactly the most likable character. But that’s the beauty of what C.S. Lewis wanted to show that Aslan stepped in for someone who didn’t deserve it
And that’s exactly the heart of God’s story. It’s what surprised and ultimately transformed C.S. Lewis himself-that God allowed His own Son to be mistreated and to die for people who hadn’t earned it and didn’t deserve it. The truth is, none of us deserve it. Every one of us has turned our back on God in some way, and our sin was the reason Jesus had to die.
Listen to how Isaiah describes it:
But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him-our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And GOD has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off- and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn’t true.
Still, it’s what GOD had in mind all along, to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it-life, life,
and more life.
And GOD’s plan will deeply prosper through him.
– Isaiah 53:5-10 (MSG)
There has never been, and never will be, a greater expression of love than what Jesus did on the cross. In His mercy, He stepped in and said, “I want everyone back in the family-no matter what they’ve done-even the ones like Edmund. I’ll pay the price.”
And here’s the part the enemy never saw coming-Jesus didn’t stay dead. On the third day, He rose again. Early that Easter morning, before the sun came up, Mary went to the tomb and found it empty. An angel sat on the stone and declared the good news:
Luke 24:6 – “He is not here; He has risen!”
That moment changed everything. The cross paid for sin-but the resurrection gives power to overcome it. That’s the heart of God’s story: Jesus gave His life to bring humanity back to the original plan; to restore relationships, defeat darkness, and give us victory through His resurrection.
Today we’ve seen the God story…a story of love, redemption, and a Savior who stepped in when we couldn’t save ourselves. The prayer right now is simple: that every heart would open up to God’s power and love.
You might be wondering, “What do I have to do to receive what Jesus did for me?”
John 1 says it clearly: “To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
That’s God’s desire for you today. To bring you back into His family. If you feel far from God… if you know there’s a distance between where you are and where you want to be… maybe you’ve believed some lies, maybe you’ve carried guilt or shame, maybe you’ve just been running your
own way-it’s time to come home.
- This isn’t about joining a church.
- This isn’t about becoming more religious.
- This is about receiving the greatest offer ever made-God’s love and forgiveness through Jesus.
