Rocky Revelations
Part 2 – Knockdown vs. Knockout
I. Introduction
In part one of this series we talked about pain. Pain is inevitable. Pain is impartial. Pain has a purpose. Pain purifies us. Pain speaks to us. Pain pushes us. Pain positions and prepares us. Pain makes us rely on God. Pain determines our greatness. Then last Sunday, I introduced you to some folks who have experienced gut wrenching pain. Yet, they are great people. They have been tested and they have come out like Gold.
There is another Rocky Revelation that I want us to examine this morning. I have realized that Rocky’s pilgrimage to greatness was marked by knockdowns. In every fight, in every movie, if I am not mistaken, Rocky was knocked down at least once. But, I noticed something very interesting in the movies as well, even though Rocky was knocked down a considerable number of times, he was only knocked out once. He always seemed to be able to scrape himself off of the mat and come back for more. Great champions aren’t those who get never get knocked down. Great champions are those who get back!
II. Summary of Job
I could read to you the account of Job again (Job 1:1-10; 2:7-8). However, for the sake of time, let me just remind you that Job took some heavy blows. He lost 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 donkeys, his servants, 10 children, and his health all in a succession of hits. Most of us would have looked at any one of those individual events as a knockout punch and yet Job kept getting up. Job was a champion because he got up.
Job’s story teaches us some things about taking hits that I want us to look at this morning.
III. Rocky Revelations
a. You will get knocked down!
This is simply another way of saying, “pain is inevitable.” We all suffer knock down punches at some point in our journey. Even the strongest fighters get knocked down. Even heroes falter at times. David, Samson, Jonah, Elijah, Peter. They all had moments of doubt. All had failures. All had times of weakness. All hit the canvas. All got back up.
Chuck Swindoll writes, “Somebody needs to address the other side of Christian life, if for no other reason than to uphold reality. We need to be told that difficulty and pressure are par-for-the-course. No amount of Biblical input, deeper life conferences or super-victory seminars will exempt you from struggle. God promises no bubble of protection.”
The reality of a Christian journey is highs and lows. Mountains and valleys. Good times and bad times. You will get knocked down. Knock downs are necessary!
Romans 5:3-4:
3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.
“We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.”
You have to know that God isn’t trying to kill us, but he is trying to crush us. What crushing produces – character, anointing, patience, virtue, and endurance.
I can still remember the scene in Rocky where Mr. T (Clubber Lang) is hitting Rocky as hard as he can and Rocky is talking back to him. “You ain’t so bad, is that all you got, I’m still here, You ain’t so bad.” The knock downs produced endurance!
We all want the glory without the fellowship of his suffering! They go hand in hand and the suffering is the doorway or avenue to the glory!
Which brings me to the second lesson and that is that too often we confuse the punches.
b. Knock down or Knockout?
We confuse the punches, so we stay down when we should get up. We think the knock down is a knockout! We think the pain is fatal. We think the hurt is final. But I came to tell you that you are tougher than you think you are. If He is for us who can be against us? Get up!
In fact, I want you to look at Proverbs 24:16 –
“For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity.”
“God-loyal people don’t stay down long; Soon they’re up on their feet, while the wicked end up flat on their faces.”
Yes we go down and sometimes we go down 7 times, but we are supposed to get up!
Some of you have mistaken a knock down punch for a knockout punch! It was a hard hit, but it wasn’t a life ending, ministry ending, joy killing, walk stopping blow. Get up. Quit laying on the floor. Quit sitting on the sidelines. Quit wallowing in the pain. If you are still alive and breathing get up!
Max Lucado said it like this:
Those who can remain like the boxer are a rare breed. I don’t necessarily mean win, I just mean remain. Hang in there. Finish. Stick to it until it is done. But unfortunately; very few of us do that. Our human tendency is to quit too soon. Our human tendency is to stop before we cross the finish line.
Our inability to finish what we start is seen in the smallest of things:
A partly mowed lawn.
A half-read book.
Letters begun but never completed.
An abandoned diet.
A car up on blocks.
Or, it shows up in life’s most painful areas:
An abandoned child.
A cold faith.
A job hopper (I would add church hopper)
A wrecked marriage.
An unevangelized world.
We quit too soon. We underestimate our own ability to take a hit and that leads to staying down when we should get up! Some of you have been hit hard. You have suffered. You have been hurt. You have tasted your own blood. You may even see stars. But don’t let someone count you out. Bounce back. Don’t quit.
c. How do we guard against allowing a knock down become a knockout?
So if knock downs are inevitable and even necessary and too often we confuse the two how do we keep from letting a knock down turn into a knockout?
I want to get very practical with you. Because I believe the three things that I am going to tell you are the most underused methods to keep you from quitting!
1. Guard your ears!
Others will try to keep you from getting up (Mick stay down). Job experienced this. You should take the time to read past the knockdown section of Job which is Chapter 1 and most of Chapter 2. What you will discover is that at the end of Chapter 2 Job’s wife and then 3 of his “friends” show up and they stick around for the next 22 chapters trying to turn his knock down into a knockout. Job’s wife say’s “curse God and die!” Job’s friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, come to “comfort” Job. Let me give you some insight into their style of “comfort”. Zophar means “chirping” and Bildad means “Son of contention”. Their names give us a peak at their attitude. Throughout the 22 chapter discourse, Job’s friends do not waver from their belief that Job must have sinned to incite God’s punishment. As the speeches progress, Job’s friends increasingly berate him for refusing to confess his sins, although they themselves are at a loss as to which sin he has committed. The three friends continue to argue that Job must have sinned, and therefore must deserve his misfortune.
They give speech after speech trying to convince him that this is a knockout punch! I would dare say that most of us have had people who have tried to get us to stay down.
Maybe out of love and concern although misguided and mistaken they say
– stay down and you won’t get hurt anymore. You have endured enough.
Maybe out of selfishness – if you stay down I can move up. With you out of the way I will excel.
Maybe out of misery. Misery loves company. I am down so you should stay down too. If you get up it reveals my downness!
Whatever their reasons, there are people in all of our lives who will try to get us to stay down. I want to encourage you to guard your ears! According to Proverbs 18:21, there is the power of life and death in the tongue. Your ability to get up may be determined by who you listen to.
Who is shouting “stay down” in your ear? Who is talking you out of victory? Who is convincing you that you can’t take anymore? Guard your ears!
A grazing punch to the ear can keep you down! That is why it is important to have some people in your life who will encourage you to get up. You need folks who will talk tough and straight to you, but also need someone to lift you up. For every voice in your life that is saying stay down you need 3 saying get up! Just as a side note you must also remember you’re your talk can keep someone down!
2. Guard the Head
A knock out occurs when blood flow is cut off from our head. One expert in explaining what causes a knockout punch said that “something inside your head disconnects and causes you to go temporarily unconscious. When a punch is landed to the head, the circulation to the brain is compressed.”
Too many allow what would have been a knock down punch to become a knockout punch because we allow that punch to separate or disconnect us from the head!
I have watched countless people (even some of you) take a punch and allow that punch to become a knockout punch because you allowed it to disconnect you from the head (God/Jesus). Jesus is the head of the body and without connectedness to the head the body falls and stays down.
You either allow the bitterness to keep you down or you blame God and it stops you. I have noticed a peculiar reaction to punches. Rather than running to God we run away from God. Instead of running for the cover of the body we run away from the cover. We take a punch and we want to curl up in the fetal position, turn off the lights, and stay at home. We fail to recognize that in order to keep from being knocked out we have to stay connected to the head!
When we get hit we should increase the activities, disciplines, methods that we use to get closer to the head. In other words, when we take a hit we should pray more, we should worship more, we should be in every service we can be in to make sure that we guard our relationship with the head. If you are disconnected from the head your will stay down! If you are hurt, that isn’t the time to skip church! If you are hurt, that isn’t the time to break off godly relationships. If you are hurt, that isn’t the time to isolate yourself!
3. Guard the position of your hands.
How many of you have ever watched a boxing match or mma fight and you have heard the corner yelling, “Keep your hands up. Don’t drop your hands!”? They are imploring the fighter to guard their head by checking the position of their hands! When we drop our hands we expose our head. The position of our hands has a direct correlation to the ability to guard our head.
John read Zephaniah 3:17 to you last week. Remember it says, “17 The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."
We need to go back and read vs. 16 because it reveals the connection between God’s might and our hands! "Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp.”
Guard your hands and you guard your victory. When our hands go down we stay down. Does this remind you any account from the Old Testament? Moses’ hands are up Israel wins. Moses’ hands down, defeat. Our ability or determination to praise God through pain determines whether or not we allow the pain to floor us!
Our praise impacts God (Exodus 15:11 – God is fearful in praises – does wonders), but our praise also impact us (In his presence is fullness of joy and pleasure for evermore - Psalm 16:11)!
We take unnecessary shots when we fail to cover up in praise!
May I remind you of the story of Paul and Silas? In chains and beaten due to sharing the Gospel. They have taken a hit. They are in pain, in bondage, in less than ideal circumstances, but they guarded their ears, they guarded their head, and they checked the position of their hands. Their praise kept the knock down from becoming a knock out!
A knock down becomes knockout when we don’t cover up our ears from discouragement. A knock down becomes a knockout when we don’t guard our head. Stay connected. A knock down becomes a knockout when we don’t check the position of our hands! Hands up equals victory!
IV. Close
Finally I want to say this to you, “If you stay down you can’t win! As hard as it may seem, as difficult as it is . . . get up! If you get up you win! It is time for some of you to get back up!
Romans 8:31-39
31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture (not a hard hit): They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us (what have you allowed to faze or daze you?) because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
Rocky gives us a revelation when he says, “It ain’t about hard you get hit. It is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. About how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
V. Close
There are those of you have taken a big hit lately and you feel close to knockout, but you want to get up and you need encouragement – come and let us speak encouragement into your spirit!
