It's a Trap!.

I just wanted to really quick before we jump into the message, touch on one of the announcements that Pastor Abbie talked about today, and that's our diaper drive. Diaper need is a really big thing that we don't always think about.

Some fun facts I've been learning this week: 44% of young children in Wisconsin are born into low-income families. On average in childcare centers and things like that you have to supply your own diapers. If you don't have diapers to bring in for your kid, your kid gets sent home. Parents miss an average of four work days a month because of diaper need. For one child, it costs 70 to 90 dollars a month for diapers.

This is a really easy, cool way that we get to step in and support families right here in our community. We're going to be donating all of these diapers to a local diaper bank that's here in Madison that serves families all over the state of Wisconsin. Our goal is to collect 500 diapers. This is a really easy way to serve our community, so I really do want to encourage you to donate some diapers this month. We're going to be collecting them every single Sunday through the month of May for this really great organization that I'm excited for us to be able to partner with.

Am I the Problem

This week we are wrapping up our "Am I the Problem" sermon series. We've talked about Moses and anger. Last week, Pastor Abbie Sawczak taught us about Abigail and Leah and comparison. This series has been all about coming to terms with the reality that sometimes we're the problem in the situation. Sometimes there's no one and nothing else we can blame except ourselves. Sometimes we suck. And it just kind of is what it is.

Our so what for this sermon series is: am I the problem? Maybe. Am I stuck this way? No.

We've been discussing that there are four ways we don't recognize that we are the problem. The first one is that we justify our behavior. Then we don't have a community of accountability. We don't slow down long enough to reflect. And pride. Today we're telling the story of a guy named Peter.

Peter is a really important guy in scripture and in the Christian faith. If you take a church history class ever in your life, you'll find that everything comes back to Peter. When we first meet Peter, also called Cephas, he's a fisherman. Jesus calls him to himself to be one of his 12 disciples. Peter walks with Jesus for the entirety of his earthly ministry.

Two people walked on water: Jesus and Peter. Peter is the one that runs to the tomb when the women claim that Jesus has risen. Peter is among the first people to see and experience the power of Jesus' redemption post-resurrection. After having denied Jesus three times, when the risen Jesus sees him again, he redeems him. Peter is the rock in which Jesus builds his church. The history of the global church traces back to Peter.

Peter's Problem

Join me in Galatians chapter 2, verses 11 through 14:

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas, Peter, in front of them all, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

Galatians 2:11-14

When we think of Peter, poor guy, I think we automatically tend to think about all of his shortcomings. We don't think about the fact that he walked on water. We think about the fact that his foot slipped. We don't think about the fact that Jesus redeemed him. We think about the fact that he sliced someone's ear off. He did have anger issues. We think of his faith faltering, falling while walking on water. And we think about him denying Jesus.

But one of Peter's shortcomings that we don't talk about all the time is that he was a people pleaser. That's our problem this week.

After Jesus ascends into heaven and the Holy Spirit falls on the disciples and others, they experience a transformation. Peter included. He goes from being a disciple of Jesus to being an apostle, meaning that he's now going out and planting churches and leading this early Christian movement.

Many of us are familiar with the apostle Paul. This passage is him talking about Peter. Paul was called to the Gentiles with the gospel. All the apostles kind of separated and went and were called to different people groups. Well, Peter was called to the Jews. He was called specifically to reach Jewish people with the gospel of Jesus.

In this passage, Paul comes across Peter. Instead of reaching the Jews and being swayed by them, Peter had a community of accountability. Paul came in strong. The Jews were circumcised, and they believed that circumcision was a mandate for salvation. The gospel tells us that we are no longer under the law, but Peter, for the sake of pleasing the people, succumbed to their opinions and affiliated himself with the circumcision party, becoming a hypocrite to the gospel that he himself had been preaching.

Fear of Man is Idol Worship

We call it people-pleasing, but can I tell you what's happening in reality? It's called the fear of man, and it's actually a form of idol worship. It's placing people in the place of God. This can play out in the form of being easily influenced, succumbing to peer pressure, codependency and people-pleasing.

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

This verse in Galatians is telling us something so important. It's telling us that we have to choose pleasing God or pleasing people, but we cannot do both. Looking back to one of the teachings of Jesus in the book of Matthew, you cannot serve two masters. Either God is God or people are God, but it cannot be both ways.

Fear of man will prove to be a snare. But whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.

Proverbs 29:25

Fear of man will prove to be a snare, a trap. Fear of man is a trap. Why is people pleasing a trap?

People Pleasing is a Trap

I have three reasons for you why people pleasing is a trap.

The first one is this: you don't see it for what it is. Traps are often camouflaged. The naked eye can't tell that it's a trap. It's disguised as something else. People pleasing, the fear of man, is the same thing. It's camouflaged. It doesn't look like an idol. It looks like serving people well.

It doesn't look like you're making that person's opinion of you a God in your life. It looks like love. It doesn't look like you're serving two masters. It looks like you're trying to be like Jesus.

And remember that whole justifying our behavior thing? Here's the phrase every people pleaser says when they get called on it. I'm guilty of it too. What's so bad about wanting people to like me? And the justifying starts. Wanting people to like me isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. I don't want to be at odds with people. Nothing is wrong with being likable.

I can almost hear Peter justifying his actions. I'm called to the Jews. It's important that they like me. I'm not called to the Gentiles. That doesn't have anything to do with me.

People-pleasing is a trap because you don't see it for what it is. If I took a poll of the room, I'm willing to bet the majority of people in the room would agree that at the root of people-pleasing is insecurity. Only an insecure person needs people's approval so much that they would make it a god. But people-pleasing is a trap because you don't see it for what it is.

At the root of people pleasing, when you sift past the insecurity, what you'll find is pride. Pride needs to be fed. And gaining others' approval does just that. It feeds that pride. And when others or that specific person doesn't approve or doesn't like it or you, your pride is starved. And you need to feed it with their approval.

The second reason people pleasing is a trap is because it's hard to get out of. The entire premise of a trap is that you don't want whatever you've captured to be able to escape. That's the point of trapping it. You want to keep it there. Traps are designed to be difficult to escape from. Once you've fallen into people pleasing, it's hard to get out of it.

The people around you are now fully accustomed to you meeting their every want and need. Everyone now expects you to agree with them at all times and never have an opinion contrary to theirs. For Peter, getting out of the trap meant two things. It meant one, losing their approval, and two, admitting that he was wrong and everyone would see it. Getting out of people-pleasing means facing the very fears that led you to it.

The third reason people-pleasing is a trap is because you don't actually get what you were looking for. A trap being camouflaged keeps you from noticing what you're walking into, but what is it that gets you to walk into it in the first place? Let's say a mousetrap. It's a little block of cheese or a blob of peanut butter. But when the mouse goes to get its treat, they don't get what they were looking for.

What lures you into people pleasing? Do you want friends? Do you want the relationship? Do you want popularity? Do you want approval? Do you want to feel seen? Do you want to feel loved?

But people-pleasing is a trap because you don't get what you're looking for. People are really fickle. Their approval is here and then it's gone in the blink of an eye. And if their love is earned by people pleasing, it's false. They don't really love you. They love the version of you that you've presented to them. They love the image of yourself that you've created and manufactured to fit their needs and wants or what you think they want. Because we're usually wrong.

And you will spend all your life recreating yourself from person to person and scenario to scenario trying to maintain the approval of people.

Overcoming Fear of Man

People-pleasing is a trap because you don't actually get what you are looking for. So how do we overcome the fear of man?

The answer is: with the fear of God.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death.

Proverbs 14:27

The fear of the Lord leads to life. Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.

Proverbs 19:23

There's safety in the fear of the Lord. There's rest there, and there's peace there. There's something about letting God be God, and putting everything else aside. Let God be God. Let God be God. Let God be God.

Naming, Addressing, Releasing

For the past couple weeks, we've been talking about naming it, addressing it, and releasing it. When it comes to people-pleasing and the fear of man, naming it is important. It's important to go beyond just people-pleasing. The people-pleasing is the fear of man. The people-pleasing is idol worship. You've made others a god unto yourself. Naming it, acknowledging that this is a problem that needs to be fixed.

And then addressing it. What's causing this? Where is this rooted for me? What do I do about this?

Releasing it. We have to surrender the fear of man. Maybe it's a specific person. Not everybody struggles with this in like the masses, but maybe it's just like one person that you just really need their approval. And if their approval was taken from you, that would just be earth shattering. Releasing that and saying, Lord, I surrender so-and-so's opinion. I surrender this situation. Lord, I surrender the anxiety I feel about what if they don't like it? What if they don't like my decision? What if they don't like my opinion? What if they don't like me?

But overcoming all of these things, but especially something like the fear of man, is not just about giving it up. It's about taking something new on. We can't just release it. We then have to turn to him and take on the fear of God and take on the reality that there is no one like him, that he's almighty, that he's king of kings, that he is God over all.

Reflection and Prayer

I would just like for us to take a moment. As we sit in silence, reflect not just on this problem that we're talking about, but on the past few weeks we've spent some time looking and reflecting and digging up and acknowledging that we got some issues to work through.

For the next minute or so we're going to take some time to do these exact things. To name it: what has the Lord been speaking to you in these past three weeks? What has the Holy Spirit been revealing to you? Where has that conviction been coming? Name it. Address it. Ask the Holy Spirit for divine strategy and how to address the situation. Release it. Hold it with open hands and ask God to come and take it. Scripture says to lay your burdens on him. Lay it down with him and then turn to him and take on the fear of God, take on the identity that we have in Christ.

Don't walk away empty because you gave up everything. Walk away full. Because when we give Christ our everything, he gives us way more.

Jesus, we thank you that you died on a cross to take on the burden of our shame, of our sin, of all these things we've been talking about where we're the problem. You died and rose again so that we would not be stuck in this. Jesus, I thank you for your grace that covers all. And I thank you for the freedom that is found in you.

Lord, I pray right now for every single person in this room. For the person who has felt shame in addressing these things, Lord, I pray that you would just flood them with your love and your grace. Lord, for the person that doesn't know what to do next, that you would surround them with community that can walk with them through learning how to get unstuck from where they are right now.

Lord, I pray for the person who, at the thought of stepping away from people pleasing, is just full of anxiety because there's a risk in choosing the fear of God over the fear of man. There's a cost. Lord, I pray that you would just fill them with the peace and comfort, knowing that in the fear of God, we're safe.

Lord, that you would fill us with the knowledge. As it says in 1 Chronicles: Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. For all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. You alone are God. There is no one beside you, none before you, none above you.

So Lord, every single idol in our heart, Lord, I pray that it be cast down and that we might take up and place you on the throne of our hearts, on the throne of our minds, and that we might find peace in knowing no one else is powerful like you. You alone are God. Lord, we submit to you and we thank you. And it's in your holy name I pray, amen.