“Then the fire of the Lord fell and
consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked
up the water that was in the trench” (I Kings 18:38).
Hey Gang: When in high school, every team in
the State wanted to play my high school football team, Mountain Lions, on Home
Coming Day. It doesn’t take a brain
surgeon to figure out why – we were the patsies of Pennsylvania. Then one day
the miracle of miracles occurred, we beat a perennial power house! And, on that day, I gained a compulsion to
root for the underdog. I love it when
the number one seed gets clobbered by Podunk College from the back country of
Appalachia.
We are, again, in that time when all the
sports buffs’ minds are being glued to the up-coming ranking of football teams. As I listened to a group of guru’s, who were
certainly the “in crowd” who knew all there was to know about pig-skin mania, I
thought it might be worthy of my time to kind-of-relate the excitement of
sporting events to the Bible.
There is no question that final-four madness,
whether it be football, basketball or basket weaving, dictates that such things
as chores around the house by placed on hold.
Why? Because every game has the potential for a giant to fall.
So, here’s the question for you to ponder, “Was
Jesus an underdog?” I could fill this epistle with names of those
who qualify for the Underdog Club, listed throughout the Bible. David certainly qualified when he took on
Goliath with a sling shot and a stone.
How about Jacob, Joseph and Daniel? They each had a common denominator,
they were winners in the face of being underdogs and, I would suggest, the odds-makers
of Las Vegas would not have given them much chance.
But what about Jesus? Did He not snatch
victory out of the jaws of defeat when He came forth from the tomb? At the same time, defeat was never really
an option. All along, God knew that Jesus would win- even over the cross
and death. It was all part of God’s eternal plan to fulfill “For God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). And why did He do that? Simply stated, because of His tremendous love
for His creation!
Does that mean that Satan was the powerhouse
and Jesus was the underdog? Not in your
sweet bippy! Jesus could have called down a barn full of angels and blew them
all away. But- notice the “but’, “He chose to die for you and me”!
Do you think Satan was sitting in his big
padded rocker smoking a Havana cigar and
watching smugly as they placed Jesus in the tomb and rolled the huge stone in
front of the opening? I wonder if he
did not cancel all sick days and vacation times and order all his fallen
angels, demons, and principalities to the tomb- with orders to keep Jesus in
the tomb for at least four days.
So, troops, I ask you, “Is Jesus an underdog today?” The world
believes He is a pussy cat that can be pushed around like the Altoona Mountain
Lions. I believe Satan has purchased a
new carton of Havana cigars and is sitting smugly in his padded rocking-chair
watching all that can be shaken, being shaken and believes his day is nearing
when he will enter the temple and declare, ‘I am god!”.
But as Paul Harvey would say, “We know the rest of the
story.” John gives us a vivid picture of the defeat of
the Satan, his super powers and his minions.
Is Jesus the underdog? Perhaps to
the world, but not to the sheep of His pasture”
Blessings,
Gramps
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