I was speaking to a high school rising senior.

He was discouraged, he was despondent, and as I began to probe, and he was not kind

of forthcoming right away, why he's despondent, why he's so discouraged, and feeling bad,

and finally I got to the bottom of it, and it was just simply this.

He was not what you call a of it, and it was just simply this.

He was not what you call a great athlete, and his father pressured him to play in a certain

sports team at school.

And being not a great athlete, the coach would not put him there very often, but the

occasions in which the coach put him into play,

he was not doing very well. But his father persisted. Why can't you play like so-and-so?

Why don't you succeed like so-and-so? Why don't you watch so-and-so and imitate? Why don't you do,

see how so-and-so gets the applause. And then in the end he said, you know, I finally figured out that my

father's ambitions for me is to be popular, and I can't be. I probably learned from that

experience, learned from this young man, that popularity at any

price lingers deep in people's spirits.

There are some people long for that more than anything else in the world.

It is not by accident, therefore, that the second temptation by Satan of Jesus has to do with popularity at any price.

When Satan failed to induce Jesus to use His divine power for self-serving purposes, to serve his own needs, his own purpose,

and rebel against God the Father, Satan now tries to get Jesus to exchange the approval of God

the Father for the approval of people, to exchange the applauds of heaven for the applauds of men, to exchange a supernatural

for the sensational. And so, he tempts Jesus to go for the temporary popularity and put

the father to the test. We're at right smack in the middle of the series of messages.

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