Everybody Loves an Underdog, But Nobody Wants to be One, Pt. 1

We spend a lot of energy trying to look like we have it all together. We rehearse confident answers and post highlight reels of the good times. But Pastor Nick Gatzke explains why God sometimes allows challenges to come into our “perfect” world and mess things up!

Let’s pray together. Father, we thank you that you are a God who continues to change lives, that you are actively involved in our circumstances, that you continue to grow people more and more into the likeness of your Son, that you bless us with a unique nearness of you, that we can express these things in worship together. Lord, we worship you as a great and mighty God. You are worthy of our praise, you’re worthy of our lives. And we pray today that as we turn our attention to 2 Corinthians chapter 12, that you would continue to do this ever-changing work in us, that you would meet us where we are today, that you would prepare us for things that will be coming in the future, and that you would be glorified as we continue to faithfully follow you. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, amen. Everybody likes an underdog, but nobody wants to be one.

Everybody likes an underdog but nobody wants to be one. Think about it. The idea of the underdog and our enjoyment of those stories really translates across multiple aspects of our society. Of course, the classic underdog stories that we often see in the media are sports-related, aren’t they? I mean, Cleveland won something. I know. Amazing. Especially for those of us from New England. But beyond that, beyond that, you can think of the underdog stories that happen with regard to race, with regard to class, with regard to gender, with regard to politics, with regard to the workplace.

Everybody likes the story of the underdog. But it’s interesting that nobody wants to be that underdog. I mean, we love to see the stories where people who shouldn’t succeed find a way to be successful. Those are the ones that we really latch on to. But when the privileged get what they think they deserve, that’s not particularly interesting to us. The six foot seven, 240 pound kid gets a college scholarship to play football. It’s like, yeah, so what? That’s supposed to happen. We want the five foot eight pudgy white kid to get that scholarship. The handsome prince gets the girl, like, yeah, I guess that’s just the way of life. We want the math geek to get the hot chick to go to prom with.

If the woman from the right side of the tracks gets the job. Yeah, okay. We really like it when the woman from the wrong side of the tracks gets the job. But the more you think about all these examples and many more, they’re fun. They’re engaging. These are the stories that we love. But even though we love those stories, you and I don’t want to be the underdogs in our own stories, do we? The same holds true when it comes to experiencing God or participating in the powerful works of God in this life. Nobody wants to be the underdog in this arena as well. And this morning we’re reminded of the words of God to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. And so I want to ask you to grab a Bible to open with me. The Lord says to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.”

“My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.” And this gives us a glimpse into how God’s power is displayed in our lives. Everyone wants to have the unique experiences of God that we read about or that we hear about from our friends or our neighbors. Maybe we’ve even had them ourselves. Everyone wants to be well equipped from an external standpoint for the works of God in our lives. But here we get a glimpse into how God’s power is really displayed and it’s a way that might be surprising to some of us. And it’s certainly a way that not many of us would ask for or even look for.

But before we get to that verse more specifically, let’s explore the larger passage. Today we continue in our series Rethinking Your Favorite Bible Verse. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 debunks a number of myths about God’s power before he gets to the substance of his power in this verse that we just mentioned. So if you haven’t opened your Bible yet, page 970, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, you’re gonna wanna follow along this morning. The first thing that we see is this. In the larger context of 2 Corinthians, there is a challenge that is before this Apostle Paul, and the challenge is this. We know that God is blessing you if we see external signs of his blessing. We know that God is blessing you if it looks like you’re being blessed. But if it looks like you’re not being blessed, well then guess what? God is not with you.

Paul starts down this path of boasting in 2 Corinthians 11. He’s boasting about his own qualifications. He’s boasting about some of the ways that he’s suffered. And then he comes to chapter 12 and he begins to tell about a very unique experience. But the point of telling this experience is to highlight that it is not in our mystical spiritual experiences that God’s power is primarily shown. Not that way. Look with me at chapter 12. It says,

“I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weakness. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth, but I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.”

So we see a mystical spiritual experience. Paul speaking in the third person and he’s talking about himself being caught up in his words to the third heaven or into paradise. This is most likely a vision of some kind that Paul had. One of these visions though, that is not just one of those things that you have, a dream in the middle of the night and you kind of wake up and you fuzzily remember it the next day. I mean, this is a life-changing type of vision. And it’s interesting that as he talks about it, that he talks about this spiritual experience in a way that moves the attention away from himself and towards something else that he’s gonna talk about down the road a little bit further. Why is he talking in the third person?

Because he doesn’t want the focus to be on him. It’s sort of like when some of you come into one of your pastor’s offices and you say, pastor, I have a friend who struggles with dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. You don’t want the focus to be on you, either positive or negatively. Let me tell you, if you come in and you tell us that you have a, we know it’s you, okay? Just get that out on the table. Paul is saying, I have a friend who was caught up into the third heaven. And he’s doing so because he does not want the focus to be on him. Or even on the event itself. It’s interesting to note that he doesn’t take this mystical, even life-changing spiritual experience on the same level to what he’s writing to these people in the church. His experience was minimized. There was no book deal following, 90 minutes in heaven.

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There’s no movie coming out, Heaven Is for Real. Paul was caught up into this vision and he tells them just a glimpse. He doesn’t even tell him what it’s about. He just gives him a little taste for the sake of saying, that was awesome, but there’s something more important and it’s coming. This last week I met a man And as we begin to talk he asked me what I do for a living told him That we just moved here a year ago. Just a year ago this last week And he said are you on crack? And I said no, we love it here. It’s been wonderful and he goes, okay. Well, what do you do? I said I’m a pastor and his whole countenance changed

[REVIEW FLAG: “Heaven Is for Real” — book title; should be italicized in formatted output. Please verify title spelling and formatting.]

And he got serious and he said, come over here. And he took me over into the corner and he says, I don’t tell anybody this story, except for a couple of other pastors I know, but I wanna encourage you with it. And I said, okay, go ahead. And he begins to tell me how he’s a Vietnam vet and because of his time in Vietnam, he’s had multiple medical complications over the years. And just a couple years ago, he was in the hospital and he almost died. And as he’s telling me the story, he says, but pastor, Jesus appeared to me in a vision when I was in the hospital.

Now, depending upon your disposition, when somebody tells you Jesus appeared to me, some of you automatically say, eh, I don’t think so. It was the meds. Some of you automatically say, yeah, okay, well tell me more. My inclination is to just take people at face value and say, okay, well tell me more. I mean, did Jesus really appear? I don’t really know, but I’ll take his word for it. So he goes on to tell me the story. Jesus appeared to me to vision and he walked me down the hallway of the hospital and he said to me, that person, his time is up and this person is gonna make it and he has a family and this person is gonna make it and this person, his time is up. And as we got to the end of the hallway, I looked at him and I said, well, what about me?

And he said, you’re gonna be just fine, keep going. And he said, pastor, I don’t tell anybody that story, but I wanted to encourage you, he’s real. You keep going in what you’re doing. And what impressed me about the man and the story was not the vision. I’ve heard of people having visions like this before and I’ve heard stories even very similar to this one. What impressed me about that interaction was the fact that this guy had seemingly a life-changing experience in which he encountered Jesus, but he doesn’t tell anybody about it. Why?

I think I know why. And we’re gonna find out in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 because our personal, even mystical, spiritual experience as wonderfully encouraging as they are, that’s not the way God shows his power in its greatest form. This is a great experience for this guy, but he knew that there was something even better that was the Lord at work in him. We see the motivation for Paul not sharing about this vision. In verse six, he says to them, I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. He doesn’t want the focus to be on him, number one, but even more than that, he does want the focus to be on his life.

How do people observe Him living? What are people hearing Him teach? These are ways in which He wants them to understand the work of God in Him and through Him. I wonder if the same could be said about you. Is that how you want people to know God? Through your life, in you, in the actions that you have, even in the toughest moments, or through you, the words that you give to those around you? I think immediately we have some form of application here. We have the propensity to accept our spiritual experiences as the highest form of God’s power. And I understand why. Because when you experience a nearness of God that’s unique.

It’s amazing. It really is. To sense his glory, to hear that nudge from the Holy Spirit, to engage him in a way that isn’t common to our everyday life, but that’s not the highest form of God’s power. There’s something higher. He goes on in verses seven and eight to point another way that God’s power is not shown in its primary force. He says God’s power is not shown primarily when we are functioning at maximum capacity. The tendency for us as Christians is to think when I am in a place when my skills are being used to the maximum, then God’s power is really evident. When I’m in a place when I feel really good physically, God’s power is evident. When I’m in a place where my gifts are being displayed, I’m maximized, then God’s power is evident. And we even use different expressions common in our communication to talk about that but here we see that this is not actually the highest point of God’s power. Verse 7 Paul says that he’s refraining from us that no one may think more of him than he sees or hears he goes on to say, “so to keep me from becoming conceited. Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations a thorn was given to me in the flesh a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. the thorn in the flesh.”

It sounds to me like this is the opposite of Paul functioning at his maximum capacity. It’s the opposite of him feeling activated. It’s the opposite of him feeling like he’s right down the middle of his gifts and skills. It sounds like there’s tormenting of some form that’s happening here. What is the thorn? Well, the short answer is we don’t know. If you ask a group of college students, and I remember having this conversation multiple times, you ask some college Christians what they think the thorn is. It’s almost comical, but it’s illustrative of how we normally look at this. All the 18- to 22-year-old men say almost always the same thing. Oh, that’s easy, pastor. The thorn is clearly lust.

Why because 18 to 22 year old men struggle a lot with lust and if you’d ask the college women What is the thorn they would say? Oh, that’s easy pastor. It’s it’s issues of security. I mean clearly he’s being persecuted He’s being threatened on all sides. Well, why because a lot of 18 to 22 year old women Deal with issues of security. I know those are generalizations But the point is is that when we look at the thorn we tend to insert our own personal struggles With what that could be and actually maybe that’s intentional He doesn’t tell us what the thorn is Because he doesn’t want to get bogged down. That’s not the most important I mean most scholars think that it’s probably some form of ongoing illness that he has But what’s more important than what this thorn in the flesh actually is is who it comes from the original language here makes clear that this Is not haphazard

If it’s not a result of his sin or it’s not a result of judgment on him, it was intentional, this thorn in the flesh. And God is the unseen initiator behind this suffering. He doesn’t tell us what it is because it doesn’t really matter what it is. The unique thing about this suffering is that it was God ordained, but it was executed by Satan himself. Another way to put it is that Satan sent the thorn in the flesh, but it was given to him by God for a purpose. Now stop and think about that for a moment.

We often attribute God’s blessing when things are going well, don’t we? We often say on the external, if the decision is made and it goes in the way that I thought, oh, God is so good, and he is. But we imply in that statement that if the decision didn’t go the way that I wanted it to go, that God isn’t good. We say, oh, I’m healthy, God must be blessing. But here we see that God actually might be blessing through pain, through a thorn.

He allows this difficulty in his life, it’s not because of judgment, it’s for his ultimate good. And in verse seven, we see that it will keep him from becoming conceited. Now, as it relates to seeing God’s power at work in our life, there are so many times in life when we think about the ways that we can engage in God’s work, but there’s a variety of difficulties that come before us. I mean, sometimes we feel like, well, I’m not trained well enough. Sometimes there’s internal tensions within side of me, there’s different life factors, there’s personal shortcomings, my schedule’s too busy, I have illness, I have a learning disability, I have physical disabilities. We’ve seen it a hundred times. And people, when they’re wrestling with whether or not they should engage in God’s work,

and they’re faced with these sorts of either internal or external difficulties, I can hear the patterns of almost two common responses. On one side, you hear the response fairly regularly, well, God isn’t blessing me, and therefore I’m not gonna serve him. And when he starts blessing me again, then I will serve him. On the other side, you hear the shortcomings used as the excuse, as if I wanna serve God, but I’m not of the right pedigree. Or I’m ill-equipped, or I’m too tired. And therefore, those people just do nothing, because they’re not functioning at 100%. And they don’t wanna be the underdog. I mean, nobody wants to be the underdog in their own story.

I don’t know about you, but I’m so thankful that Jonathan Edwards, Puritan pastor, after being fired from his church, surely struggling with despair, that he didn’t just sort of mail it in and say, you know what, I’m not functioning at 100%, I’m gonna not do anything. And I’m thankful for the Apostle Paul, that despite a thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, that it did not stop him from serving Jesus. Instead, what did he do? He prayed, he trusted in God’s goodness, he asked repeatedly that the Lord would remove this difficulty from him, and he continued to serve, even when he physically didn’t feel like it. He kept following Jesus.

* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.