Defense Wins Championships
I’ll start off by saying congratulations to the Alabama Crimson Tide for winning the BCS National Championship. That was one of the most dominant performances I think I’ve ever seen, especially in a bowl game of that magnitude. Not that any of you REALLY care, but I did not have a dog in this fight, as I am an Oklahoma Sooner fan first and an Arkansas Razorback fan second. But I love college football and it was the last game of the year. I won’t get into how jacked up the BCS is or the fact that these two shouldn’t have been playing again in the first place. Email me if you wanna go there. But if you did happen to watch this game last night, you’ll notice that is was a shut out. That doesn’t happen much at the college level, and definitely not between two teams of this skill level. But Alabama had such a strong defense that LSU couldn’t cross the 50 yard line until there were only 4 minutes or so left in the GAME! Even then they only got a few yards in and got turned away. As a fan of seeing lots of scoring and offense, you thought this game was horrible! We saw pretty much this same game from them back in November and didn’t want to see it again. If you like defensive strategies and seeing a team respond to the only loss the took on this season, then you loved what you saw. I was amazed at how strong, dominant and impenetrable that front 7 was for ‘Bama.
Okay, I’ll tie it all in now. There has been a trend for a few years now where it seems that the average Christian is losing the ability to defend their faith. We got stuck in the Sunday school portion of our learning and some of us didn’t go much past that so it seems. That’s why we can have the joke that when we were younger you could pretty much always answer ‘Jesus’ to a question and be right. 20 years ago people didn’t question Christianity and the Bible as openly as they do now. The thought across the board was that Jesus was enough so people didn’t really feel the need to go deeper than that. Now we get to an age where people are questioning if Jesus is really enough and what’s wrong with Buddha and Mormonism or even just believing what I feel. They aren’t running into much opposition because we as a people didn’t have much. It was as if we stood up Jesus cutouts and the rest of the world finally realized that was all that was standing in front of them. It was as if we had the strongest defense in the nation and they just never moved.
In the end, Jesus really is the answer to all the questions about other religions. He is the best defense that we have. I think Paul describes my thought process best in this passage in 1 Corinthians 2:
1 And I, when I came to you, brothers,t did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling,4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
The base of our defense is just that: Jesus and him crucified. I think where in the past the defense has looked shaky has been in the execution. The key comes from verse 5 of that passage. Our faith should not rest in our own wisdom, but in the power of God that is shown throughout His Word. If the kids down in Tuscaloosa are going to pull off what they pulled off last night, they have to know their playbook inside and out. The coaches make them sleep with them, carry them everywhere, and then they test them to make sure they are reading and studying them. It is one thing to say they have a plan to stop the run. It’s totally different when you show us how you do it. That comes from immersing yourself in the plan and having someone who coaches you through the strategy. In the same way, we can say that Jesus is our defense against all the things that stand before us. “He just is” is not quite strong enough to make people see and understand.
We have a powerful playbook that most of us have not read through. Our strategy is well chronicled if you we would take the time to look at it and pour through it. The power of God is a very intricate and complex defensive scheme that was carefully woven to not let anyone else through. Today people think that maybe Christ isn’t all that He’s cracked up to be. I would step out and say that He’s more than that. But we have been placed out of position and that creates holes in the defense.
When we as a people start to dig into the plan and really get an understanding of this playbook we have called the Bible, we will see that the answers that we have always needed were already there. We just had to look for them. Once we put that book deep in our hearts and minds we will realize that we have a reason to worship. It’s not about we could have done on our own. But in the spotless lamb who came to take away the sin of the world. That defense is airtight. I promise. And when you get to a point to where you can share that with confidence, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
So, this turned into a sermon. But I had to set up what I believe will become a recurring theme throughout this year. If we can properly deal with what Christ did for us and the importance of that in today’s world, it will truly transform the way we worship Him.
