We're starting a new series here today, Dreams for a new year,
and we're going to be doing that for the rest of January, I think
maybe the first Sunday in February as well.
I have a confession to make though.
The sermon I'm preaching today was not originally intended for
this series. It was intended for our Wicked
for Christmas series and but I tweaked it so it would fit in
this series because Paisley worked so hard to sing, to learn
the song popular to sing to us. And then we got snowed out on
the 14th when she was scheduled to sing and she has such a
beautiful voice. I wanted to be able to right
then I fell because you were going to do it last Sunday and
then I fell. So we got bumped again.
So she's been bumped twice and and we're very, very excited
that she's going to be singing for us today.
And and I I had to tweak the sermon.
Not a whole lot. It still fits.
And but as we're talking about the new year, and I know new
beginnings, New Years, they always seem to inspire dreams
and, and imaginings of what the future might hold.
And sometimes those imaginings and dreams are exciting and
sometimes they're terrifying. But we're going to talk a little
bit today and for the rest of the month about these dreams for
the new year. And the question today is, do
you dream of being popular? Is that one of your dreams for
the new year of, of having more folks like you, more people that
follow you on, on Facebook if you're my generation, or, or, or
Tiktok if you're, you know, younger than 30, I don't know
Tiktok 35. I'm not sure where the Tiktok
generation starts, but it's definitely younger than me.
Do you dream of getting more likes of more follows, of more
love, of more popularity? You know, popularity is a very
nice thing and, and it matters how popular we are.
It really does matter. We're going to talk about that
in a minute. But there are some risks to
popularity as well. Now in the the movie Wicked, the
two main characters, Glenda and Alphaba, Glenda was popular.
She was incredibly popular. Everyone liked Glenda, everyone
admired Glenda. Everyone wanted to be like
Glenda. Everyone followed Glenda's
advice and tips and guidance. She was the trend setter setter.
She was the standard setter and she and Alphaba became
roommates. And nobody liked Alphaba, at
least nobody at school. Most people didn't like Elphaba.
She was the the epitome and definition of unpopular.
And Glenda felt that the greatest gift that she had to
offer Elphaba was to teach her how to be popular.
And popularity matters. In spite of what our parents
tell us growing up, sometimes it doesn't matter.
Popularity matters it It matters whether people like you or not.
It matters whether people approve of you or not.
It affects your social life. It affects your friendship
network. It affects sometimes your self
esteem. It can affect jobs that you get
and a career path that you may or may not have it.
It can affect how well you do at your job.
We, we've all heard the expression it's not what you
know it too, you know, And that's another way of saying
that popularity matters. Who likes you, who respects you,
who admires you? Who is Who is following your
your your family, or following your career or following your
education? Following what you're doing,
following your successes and your failures.
Popularity. Popularity can determine whether
we get the raise, whether we get the promotion.
Popularity can determine how we feel about ourselves.
Popularity can determine how well our kids do in school and
whether school is a blessing or a curse.
Popularity matters. The problem comes when we place
too much value and too much importance or the wrong kind of
value and the wrong kind of importance on popularity because
popularity, because it matters. Popularity is also a trap.
One of the the well, the Scripture on the opening slide
is, is that you know that seeking the approval of people
is a snare, but God lifts up those whom God approves.
The snare is this. Once we decide, it's one thing
to recognize that popularity matters.
It's another thing to live for popularity, to make that the
goal of what we do and the reason why we do things.
Once we live for popularity, once we make that the goal of
what we're doing and the reason why we're doing it, then
popularity has us and it holds us because now we belong to the
people who approve or disapprove.
Social media is the easiest way to see this and the the culture
of influence and influencers that has grown up on social
media over the past decade or so here, because once you start
gathering followers, you have to please the followers or you'll
lose the followers. And so now you can't choose what
you say just because to say what you say or, or do what you do
just because it's important to you, because you have to gauge
how people will react to that. Because if you lose followers,
then you lose influence and you lose influence and you lose
advertising and you lose advertising and you lose money.
And worst case scenario, you get cancelled and you get a, a, a
plague of negative attention on social media or in real life.
This was true long before social media.
And we know that everyone here, I, I'm sure, I hope, I think
probably knows who Michael Jordan is.
And, and I'm not a basketball expert.
I still think Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball,
greatest basketball player who has ever lived.
But Michael was a businessman as well as a basketball player.
And his deal with Nike was a revolutionary kind of deal.
And he has made a lot of money selling sneakers and tennis
shoes throughout his career and, and his life and, and early on
in his career. And when his trajectory was
really high and he was at the, you know, reaching and, and, and
achieving the height of his popularity, there was, as there
always is in this country, political turmoil.
And Jordan was asked and pressured by people around him
to take a stand. And in this particular case,
just take a stand for the Democrat candidate for president
during that particular election. I'm not even sure which election
it was, but to take a stand and promote them.
And he refused to do it. And people asked him why and he
said this is an interview. I think you can find it on
YouTube somewhere. And they asked what why and, and
Jordan's response was, is because Republicans buy sneakers
too. And, and, and that's a good
business decision. It's also a reflection of what a
trap popularity can be. Now, I'm not trying to throw
stones at Michael Jordan. I, I don't know what his
politics are. I don't know any of that.
I don't know what I, but if we're in a spot where, where
we're saying, I can't say this because I'll lose my customers.
If, if what that thing is is something that doesn't really
matter and isn't really important or is really a
secondary issue, then fine. You know, I, I, that's cool.
But if, if we find ourselves saying I have to hide who I am,
I have to pretend my beliefs are something other than they are
because I don't want to lose popularity.
Now we're in that trap. We're in that trap.
Speaking of that, we're going to see, are we ready?
Awesome. Come on up.
Now it's time to hear the song. At this point in the sermon,
Paisley Partlow sang Popular. She did a beautiful job with the
song and I wish I could include it here, but due to technical
limitations, I could not get a good recording of her singing.
You can, however, find Ariana Grande's version on YouTube and
all major music platforms. Now back to the sermon.
All right, good job, well done. Thank you, Paisley.
Very well done. Popularity is a trap is a trap
and and the singing of it can be a lot of fun.
But living for popularity keeps us under the thumb of the people
whose opinions we are craving all the time.
To stay popular means we have to keep pleasing the crowd.
We have to keep doing what we think we'll be admired for
doing. And we're we've become bound to
maintain that popularity. One of the pieces in this in, in
one of the realities of our modern culture is that that we
are have very, very clearly become tribalistic.
And there it's rare to find, you know, back in the days like in
the 80s, seventies and 80s, you knew what you were doing, I
think, wasn't it? It's weird that I can still
remember this. I think Tuesday night at 8, you
remember Happy Days. Tuesday night at 8 and everybody
watched Happy Days and, and everybody watched The Waltons
and, and, and God help us, everybody watched Hee Haw on, on
Saturdays. Everybody knew what the popular
shows were on television. Now we're spread out all over
the place and and my kids watch stuff on YouTube that I
absolutely know nothing about and get really confused by when
they say, Hey, would you mind? This happened with what our our
son when he was home. He hates when I talk about him,
but he won't be listening to this.
So the the the he said, Hey, do you mind if we watch this
YouTube? Who builds aquariums?
And we spend an hour watching a guy build an aquarium on YouTube
and he loves that stuff. I'm going, OK, that's
interesting. I don't get it, but it's kind of
cool. We're fragmented and within
those tribes we have no problem typically making people in other
tribes angry. We see that in politics very
clearly, the rage baiting and, and all the kinds of the things
that happens where we try to get the people in the other tribe to
look bad while we look good to our tribe.
And our mind can tell us that we're being righteous when we're
doing things like that because it's OK if those folks don't
like me. The problem is when we're
popular, when we're seeking popularity, even if it's just
within our tribe, it's still a trap because no tribe, however
good they are, whether it's a political tribe or a social
tribe or whatever kind of no tribe is perfect.
And sometimes we have to look at our own tribe and say this is a
problem with us. But if we're if we're again, if
we're living for the popularity, we'll never be able to do that
because when we criticize the people that are praising us, we
risk losing the praise and losing the popularity.
So how do we avoid this trap? Popularity matters.
It affects us, it affects our lives.
It affects the lives of our kids.
It affects politics, it affects religion, it affects all of the
different parts of our lives. How do we avoid the trap while
living in this world where popularity matters?
By living for an audience of 1. The key to avoiding the trap is
to do what Paisley told me she needed to do this morning.
She said when I sing, I just need to be singing to God and
God needs to be happy with me. It doesn't matter whether other
folks are. And I said, you just preached
the sermon. We'd have been done by now if
you'd been here earlier. Just saying, followers of Jesus,
to avoid the popularity trap, we need to live for an audience of
one understanding the God sees everything clearly, God calls
out what's real, and God holds us accountable in a way that no
crowd or culture can. We don't have to worry about
cancellation on one side. We don't have to worry about
being popular and having all the likes and all of the views and
all of the love and all of the influence on the other.
If our focus is just on, is this pleasing to God?
For whom am I doing this? Why am I doing this?
Worship is a great tool for this because that's what worship is
about. One of the reasons the church
gathers and worship every week is to make sure that we keep our
focus on our audience of one who is God.
We don't do this for us. I mean, there's a sense in which
it's good for us, just like exercise is good for us.
But I don't exercise either. So that's not a really helpful
analogy for me. But we, we do this for God.
The trap is, you know, there's always a trap that has to be
avoided. That the trap when you're
standing up front, whether you're a pastor or, and other
churches and worship leader, whether you're the, the pianist
or organist, whether you're, if someone that's upfront.
The trap is in thinking this is about me and, and I need to stay
popular with the folks that are out there.
The trap for sitting out there is, is thinking that it's about
you, that your customers here and the customer is always
right. And if not getting the songs
that I like and the sermons that I like and the programs that I
like, then there's a problem here.
But you're not customers and I'm not a performer.
This show isn't for us. What we do here is for God to
give God credit, to give God praise, to give God glory, to
reset our focus on God for at least an hour every week and and
hope and pray that that carries over throughout the rest of the
week. So when we're not intentionally
and directly talking about God, we're still remembering who our
audience is, whether we're at work or whether we're at school.
It's not really about pleasing the teacher.
It's not really about pleasing our friends.
It's not really about pleasing our boss.
It's not really about pleasing the customers.
At the end of the day, it's about pleasing God and making
God our audience of 1. I want to read through a few
verses. Couple of them we've already
read, but I'm going to hit them again because they're short,
because this is this theme runs throughout the Old and the New
Testament and and in a very real sense, it's at the core of our
identity. Blessed are you, Jesus said.
When people insult you, persecute you and falsely say
all kinds of evil things against you because of me, rejoice and
be glad because great is your reward in heaven.
For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were
before you, don't worry about being canceled.
Don't worry about being hated on for doing now, if you're doing
rotten stuff, then that's on you, right?
There's no blessing in that. If you're out doing rotten stuff
and people say, hey, you're rotten, then there's this is not
what Jesus is talking about. He says when you're out treating
me as your audience of 1 and doing the good that I've called
you to do. And if people are bad mouthing
you for that, that's their problem.
That's their problem. You'll be blessed.
You may be persecuted now, but you will be blessed in heaven.
John 1225 and 26. Anyone who loves their life will
lose it. Anyone who hates their life in
this world will keep it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am my servant
will also be. My father will honor the one who
serves me. Part of that loving our lives
again is popularity. If we love our life, if if we 11
particularly deadly way to love our lives is to seek popularity
and to live for popularity, to make my life all about the
approval of others instead of about serving God.
The same time, many of them, even among the elders, believed
in Jesus, but because of the Pharisees, they would not openly
acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the
synagogue. For they loved human praise more
than praise from God. 1st Thessalonians 2 one through 4
You know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not
without results. We had previously suffered and
been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know.
But with the help of our God, we dared to tell you His gospel in
the face of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not
spring from error or impure motives.
We are not, nor are we trying to trick you.
On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be
entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please
people, but God who tests our hearts.
And then the verse that we had on the opening slide, the fear
of people becomes a snare. But whoever trusts the Lord will
be set on high, hiding these words in our hearts, keeping our
focus on God, and remembering that over and over and over
again in the Scripture we see by word and by example that living
for praise from other human beings is is a a, a quick road
to hell. Living for the honor and praise
that comes from God is that straight and narrow way that
leads to life that we don't live to please others.
We don't speak to please others, no matter who those others are.
We live and speak and breathe and work and play to please God.
When we can do that, then we avoid the popularity snare.
Consider Jesus. Jesus, One of the temptations
the devil put in front of Jesus was to live for popularity.
That's what the temple test was about in the wilderness when the
devil said to Jesus, throw yourself off the temple because
God has commanded his angels concerning you that it will not
let you come to harm. Scott Blevins paraphrase there,
why the temple? Why not a mountain?
Because the temple was public. The temple was where everyone
was. It would make a big splash.
It would gain him a lot of followers.
People would admire and respect him because they would see this
undeniable miracle right in front of them.
And Jesus said, no, I'm not here to test God.
I'm not here to gain cliques or gain votes.
I'm not running for office. We see it even more dramatically
flying after me. My goodness, I must be sweet.
Did it crawl up the shirt? I just, I'm just that sweet.
Let's see. I was again hoping a little more
laugh than that, you know. But Jesus showed us even more
when at a point when he fed Bible says 5000 men, not
counting women and children. So that it you know, if arguably
every man that's there is there with his wife and they have a
kid or two, we're looking at 15. This fly is just determined to
distract me today. He's die bombing me.
My goodness, maybe I'm not that sweet and and Jesus had 1520
thousand people. That were there people that
wanted to make him a king? It is determined my my son got
an assault. He got one of those little salt
pistols that you can shoot bugs out of the air with thinking I
should have kept it for myself. Jesus left that place where he,
all those 10s of thousands of people had come to admire him
and we're admiring him and, and we're praising him and we're
honoring him and he snuck off and he left them.
And when they found out that he snuck off and left and they went
after him, that's how popular Jesus was.
And when they caught up with him, he turned around and he
said to thousands and thousands of people, the only reason
you're after me is for the free food I fed you.
You're after me for the free food.
Anyone that wants to follow me needs to eat my flesh and drink
my blood. Turned a lot of people off.
At the end it came down to everyone left but the 12.
Everyone left but the 12. Jesus was not seeking
popularity. He said to the 12, are you going
to leave too? And they said you're the only
place where we can find life. You're the only one that has the
life that we really want and really need.
And they stayed and followed and they learned that lesson that
day that carried on. You see it in the book of Acts
when, when, when they did the same kinds of things, risking
persecution, actually receiving persecution to tell others about
Jesus because they knew Jesus was the only source of life.
And it wasn't about them being popular.
It was about them honoring God. And that's how Jesus lived.
We're going to be heading into Lent real soon and we'll we'll
tell again the story of of Palm Sunday, where Jesus entered
Jerusalem and was hailed by thousands in the city as the
king, as the Messiah. And less than a week later, he
was being crucified because he refused to let them make him
king. If his kingship rested on his
popularity, then they would control him.
But his kingship came from God, and he was going to honor God
whether others followed him or others killed him.
Consider Jesus in this. Followers of Jesus need to
discipline and train themselves to live and think like Jesus.
Be more concerned with what God thinks of us than what other
people think of us. To seek God's honor and esteem
rather than the honor and esteem of others have the same mind
that Jesus had is what Paul writes to us in Philippians.
And part of that mind is a mind that says I want to honor God
and I don't care how that impacts my popularity.
We can consider Mary and Joseph too.
I this was the Christmas part, which I'll do in a little more
briefly here, but Mary and Joseph living in the small town
of Nazareth and Mary agreeing to what the Angel said.
Let it be with me as you have said, let the Holy Spirit make
me pregnant and have this baby even though I'm not married.
And she becomes pregnant outside of marriage.
She was engaged, but they hadn't been married yet.
And and the loss of honor and reputation that that caused is
difficult for us to imagine in this day and age.
And for Joseph to go ahead and marry her anyway meant him
losing honor and reputation as well.
But it wasn't about the honor. It wasn't about the reputation,
it wasn't about the popularity for them.
It was about what does God want? What is God asking us to do?
What is God asking me to do? And if that costs me popularity,
if it costs me praise, if it costs me friends, if it costs me
the goodwill even of neighbors and family, I will still do it
when I know that this is what God is calling me to do.
Because it's not about the praise and it's not about the
popularity. It's about God, It's about God.
Elphaba was not popular and and that was OK with her.
Well, no, it really wasn't. It was a cause of great distress
for her and Glenda thought that the best way to help Elphaba was
to teach her how to be popular. Not as popular as Glenda, but
popular. How to please the crowd.
How to get the boy. How to get everyone to like you.
How to get folks to laugh at your jokes.
How to get people to admire her admire you.
That was Glenda's wheelhouse, and that's what she thought
Alphaba needed. But that's not what Alphaba
needed. Alphaba didn't need to learn to
be popular. Alphaba needed a friend to stand
beside her even when she was unpopular.
Alphaba needed an ally who would work with her and fight with her
to resist the evil, injustice and oppression that was in the
world. That's what not lessons in
popularity. One of the greatest mistakes
that we can make is to think to get God's will be done.
We pray that every thy Kingdom come, thy will be done for to
for that to happen, for the church to do that is that we
then have to be popular. If we can just get enough
followers, if we can just get enough people in the building,
then we can have influence, then we can make a difference.
It's a trap. We don't need to be popular to
do God's will. We don't need to be popular to
be part of God's Kingdom coming here on earth just like it is in
heaven. We need to be faithful.
We need to be faithful to God. We need to be faithful and
loving and caring toward one another because as soon as we
start courting popularity, as soon as it becomes about the
numbers, as soon as it becomes you know how many likes or how
many clicks or how many buts are in the seats, As soon as it
becomes about that, now that is in charge and that is in
control. And that is the thing that's
driving us rather than God. And that's the trap of
popularity. It's like money in that way.
Those are two things that I, you know, I, I, I, I hear and, and,
and I feel those pressures. If I just had more money, if I
just had more thought for, you know, popularity, then then I
could get so much more done in this world for God.
Jesus died on the cross alone. And that's the most important
thing that's been done on this world since creation.
And all we need is to be like Jesus and to be faithful, to do
what God calls us to do, to make him our audience, and to let
others respond with praise or with condemnation as they may in
Jesus name. Amen.