Te Reto a Bailar | Pastor Jeremy DeWeerdt

Hello City First Church, how are you all? It's so good to see you all. Welcome to the church. Say hello to all of our localities. Welcome to all of you. For most of you that grew up here a long time, you probably know that I grew up in the 80s. For those of you that were not alive around the 70s, you probably know that it was the best decade. I know you may disagree, but I have to say that it was the best decade, in my humble opinion, but correct. That was before cell phones, before the internet. If we had to do something crazy, you would spend all of your time with your friends 24 hours a day. Fridays and Saturdays at night, those of you that grew up in Rockford, with me or around me, let me be a little specific about my experience. We used to jump in cars and we all used to go up to the parking lots all over the city. We used to go to Taco Bell, we used to go to Little Caesars, to Big Farouk. If you're not from Rockford, you don't know what that is. McDonald's, Rococo, sometimes we were literally 100 of us in the parking lot. We used to fight, and on an exciting night, we used to fight. You know, we used to go to the movies, we actually went to the movies, we didn't watch them at home. If you didn't go to the movies, you'd go to Blockbuster. Who remembers those Blockbuster places, renting the movies? You know, one of my uncles owned a Blockbuster. He owned a Blockbuster. You know, we had to go to the movies, we had to go to the movies. Here in Medford, we had one where you drove in the car, and you saw the movie in the movie theater, and you had to pay per person to get into those drive-ins. And so, because we didn't have money, there was like three of us, we all used to get in the trunk car. And then, you know, we didn't have money, and they let us out of the trunk car, so that way, we didn't all have to go to the movies. We were still in the generation of MTV generation. In fact, I remember when I was in school, when we were in school, I was ready to go to lunch,

and I remember going to the cafeteria, and someone said to me, hey, did you see that new channel called MTV? MTV, you know, we were kind of the MTV generation. Music, if you're local here, if you're into pop, you would listen to WCOK, if you were local, you would listen to WCOK. And I remember watching MTV, and we were watching Downtown Judy Brown, and her show, Club MTV, I remember watching her, and Frank Zappa, I remember watching Frank Zappa one day in spring, in Daytona, in Florida, at that time. But we had our own little club, here in Rockville, in the south, in San Diego, it was called Lazers. Some of you remember Lazers? Do you remember Lazers? Some of you are like, I don't know if I should raise my hand. No, Lazers was a team dance club, so they served alcohol, and they were teenagers. They didn't serve alcohol, so as a teenager you could go. And the place was booming, it had lights, it had, wow, lights, smoke, everything, and everyone was dancing and acting like fools. It was fun. I read an article, when I was on vacation, and it got interesting about dance,

and the article was about a study that was done, and in a part of America, it's kind of interesting, they said young people, actually a little reluctant to dance. And it went on to say, in the study of this article, is that now everyone has a phone, and they're filming everything, so people don't want to dance, because they don't want to be the next meme. And I said, that's sad, because in the 80s, there were no cell phones, no one was recording us. If you had to record a video, you had a camera that was the size of a box. So it's interesting, how this article, the author said, that maybe our nation, and our culture, we've become prisoners of this word, panapticon. You've never heard that word before. In English, panapticon is a term it's an architectural design. an architect of a prison in the Middle Ages. Maybe you've seen it. It's like, there's a cell or you could say a wall around it and there's the guard tower and it was invented in the 18th century,

more or less in the 18th century. And well, it was invented by this man and he proposed that the prisons could be built in the middle and it may actually save money because it would maintain order in the prisons. Here's a prison called Penobscon from Joliet, those who saw the movie The Blues Brothers, you may remember this. And the design is the 18th century, the design of that 18th century, it was like a glass where the guard could be in the air and this tower in the middle where the guard could see and the prisoners don't know if they're seeing them or not. So the British philosopher said, well, we're going to create this environment where the prisoners won't do anything because they don't know what they're going to do because they don't know if they're seeing them or not. And in 2026, there are people out there, sociologists and such, who are wondering if, as a culture, we become prisoners to the cultural Penobscon, this round prison, cultural. We're not living because we're afraid of what people are going to think and people are always watching us. So today, I've entitled my message,

I challenge you to dance. This is not a footloose song like in the 80s. I'm not asking you to get loose whatever the modern day is in the Lollapalooza or whatever other dance club, but what I'm saying is about how some of us are so overtly concerned and fixated on other people's thinking that actually are limiting your life and our Christian life, especially. And it doesn't matter if you are 16 years old or 66. We all care about what people think about us and some of us, we don't care much. Some of us have downgraded faith. Some of us have downgraded that way of thinking because we're afraid to say certain things because we're afraid. And we don't want to say what we think because we don't like to be filmed. In fact, some of us are a little afraid because maybe we don't want to say something incorrect and maybe some of us are afraid because if we say it, we know that someone at work, a neighbor, a friend, someone in the family, or someone, might actually become toxic towards us

or adversarial to us if we say what we really think. It takes no courage with what culture agrees with but it takes a lot of courage to stand to what the Bible says or what the Bible says and it takes a lot of courage and it can be very backlashing. And you know, what's interesting, I've seen this actually in the last few years. I read a lot about goals and dreams and things like that, especially in church and faith. And it's interesting that there's actually a rise of American church, especially the younger generation, that are actually growing up and they're saying, I don't care what culture says, I want to be there for God. This is going up in percentage. So in 2 Samuel chapter 6, we're going to talk about a man of God named David and he didn't really want to look through the eyes of some and he decided to be faithful in the eyes of God.

And we can learn a lot from him in our culture, especially in social media and a lot of criticism and hateful, you know, attacking each other online and all the adversarial things that are happening right now. We can learn from him because David is known as one of the most prominent kings in the Old Testament. In fact, today if you go to Israel and you talk about him and how he speaks about the King David, it's like Abraham Lincoln from America. They look to him and they say, this person was a great leader and an incredible man. And it's one of the stories of his life. If you've never studied David's story, study it. It's fascinating, but it's also a revolutionary way of understanding how to live for God. It's not perfect, but he had a heart after God. And before I start the story, I've got to go back 20 years before the story. I've got to go back in time. The Israelites, those are gods, are fighting against the enemy of the Philistines. And the Israelites, the people of God,

well, I'd say this, they're not really following God. They kind of had spirituality, let's say, about God, but not really committed at all to God. And so they're in this battle with the Philistines and the Philistines, and they're like, you know what, we're going to take the covenant to the bow field of God. And amazingly, the relationship Israel had with God was one that if they were in trouble, they'd reach out. Or if they got in good luck, they'd reach out. And people even today, people in 2026, they don't think about God until they're in trouble. And so really what Israel was wanting to do in the story was to take the bow of the covenant to God. It's not like the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. That's the Hollywood version. This golden box, there's a replica behind me. It's not the real thing, but it's a replica. And it has holy things. It also had the magical presence of God. If you touched it, you immediately died. Because it was holy, because the presence of God was there. So the Israelites, they weren't following God, but they brought the bow of God to the battle. And they're like, you know what, this is going to give us good luck. And what do you think, they lost. The Philistines won. The bow didn't bring them luck because their heart wasn't connected to God. And the Philistines, the Philistines were like that.

And they actually bring it back to its place. And they put it in a pagan temple to their god. And they sat in there. Long story short, a lot of crazy things started happening in this area. There was like plagues, and there was like sorcery, and things like that. And it's the reason, why? Because they had this bow of God, this holy thing. And they're not following God. They're following pagan gods. And after about seven months, the Philistines, put off by this, put off with all of that. And they actually give back the bow of God to Israel. They're like, you know what, this is going to give us bad luck. So it comes back to Israel. And they say, well, they just send it to somebody's private home. In someone's living room. Well, 20 years goes by. And David now becomes the king. And he has a heart of God. And he wants to worship God. And he wants to bring this bow to the covenant. And he says, well, it's in Joe's house. Literally, that's what happened. And so what he does is, okay, I'm going to bring the bow of God back to the city of Bethlehem. I'm going to put it in Jerusalem.

And this is huge. It's not just physically going to be hard. It actually brings the bow. But what David is doing is, he's coming to the spiritual renaissance. And God is somewhere in these skirts. And now we are going to bring God into the middle. I'm seeing how God is giving good luck. You're keeping God's presence out there in the corner. But you're not listening to him. But now you say, I'm going to bring God to the right place. He's going to be the center of our society. So David brings the bow back. And this is where we continue in 2 Samuel 6, 12 to 15. It says, Then they said to King David, The Lord has blessed the people of the house of Obed, Edom, and all those who have the cause of the bow of God. Then David went and brought the bow of God to the house of Obed, to the city of David, with great celebration. He turned to the neighbor and said, This was huge. When the men who carried the bow of the Lord saw just six steps, literally six steps, David sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf,

which was like the praise of that time. And then David danced. David danced. David danced. before the Lord with all his might. This wasn't alone. With all his might, he danced. In fact, the Hebrew word for dance, it gives us ideas of how he's spinning, he's dancing, with all his might. And it's very interesting, it says this, wearing a dress from a priest's robe. He wasn't wearing what he was wearing. He was wearing this special dress. It says, David and all the people moved the Lord's ark between shouts of joy and horns of the lamb. So imagine, this is the king, the king, the equivalent of a president or a king of a country and he's twirling and he's shouting and the horns are blowing and the horns are ringing and the horns are blowing and the horns are ringing and he's having all the battle and culture in the nation. He's not wearing his clothes. He's not in his royal attire. He's not in the garments of a priest who just keeps dancing with all his might. He's not in the garments of a priest

who's very symbolic. What he's saying is that as God is coming back into society, he's not going to wear my robe of power, rather I'm going to put on my robe of minister and serve. He was saying that, so he's like, I'm not in charge of this. So therefore, I'm going to be a minister for God. You know, kings don't dance. They're for the power. They're not going to run into a room or a place and people are going to, you know, twirl around and people don't dance. They don't have emotion because they don't have emotion. It shows their fragility. And David said, forget about this. I don't care. I am dancing for the celebration because God Almighty is going to be in the middle of our nation, not in the outskirts. He is going to be in the center of my heart. And he danced with all of his joy and actually, in Israel's history, and this was important, someone is watching David. And it was David's wife. And it says in 2 Samuel chapter 16, it says, as the ark of the Lord entered the city of David, he was named Michal. I'm going to say his name is Michal. I think it's pronounced like that. There's like five pronunciations for this name.

One says Michal, Michal, Michaela, but like a little bit of, like that voice of, I don't know how to do it. I'm not a Jew. I don't know how to say it right. So I'm going to call her Michal, okay? Michal, daughter of Saul. This is interesting, the wife of David, but she was the daughter of the previous king, Saul, who did not follow God. And actually, he was going to churches. He was not a holy man at all. He died a tragic death. And David married his daughter. It's interesting. When we read the Bible, you can't just read it just for reading it. It has much hidden meaning. And the very fact that the author is not saying that she is David's wife, but daughter of Saul is symbolic because she had the heart of her father, but not of her husband. She was not following God. And he says this, that basically, she looked down on the ground and she saw King David leaping and dancing to the Lord. She was filled with joy and dancing to the Lord. She had this thing going on.

But she was looking down at him. She was looking at him with bad eyes. Everyone was dancing. Imagine, everyone was dancing with the king as the bow of God came in. But Michal, he was high in the palace, in a window, looking down at him. This image is very powerful. She is not participating. She is looking down and despising everyone. I realize that when you and I live a life of praise to God, there will be people who will not participate and they will not like the work. in your family, in your friendship groups, in school, in your mom's group, in the gym, wherever you are. And they're going to make fun of you. They're not going to like you. They're going to look down on you. They're going to look down on your conviction. They're going to make fun of your feelings and what you believe, your beliefs. They're going to say, why do you go to church? They're going to look at your generosity and they're going to say, it's a waste of money. And they're going to sit there with your opinions and they're going to make fun of your loyalty to Jesus. So my question to you is,

will you dance anyway? Will you be like David? Will you say, I don't care? A British pastor and theologian, John, said this, persecution is simply the one-on-one beat of two systems of values that never stand. Your faith and the way of the world will never make sense to this culture. There are Christians who believe that loving people is making no one uncomfortable. Hey, guess what? Jesus made a lot of people uncomfortable. There's a difference between living a life that God has that you're going to feel uncomfortable or being rude to Jesus. I'm not saying that you're being rude to Jesus. I'm not saying that you're trying to be enemies, but my point is, your life, your values, your priorities, your convictions, there's going to be people who are not going to like your values. It's going to be very hard to be strong in your faith because throughout the last 2,000 years, we've known that Jesus has been the way he lives and that's why Christians, and especially Jesus, their lifestyles rub people around. Their world is the other way around. It's the other way around than the culture of this world. If you want everybody to all stay in peace, exist with you, it ain't going to happen.

And I know some of you are a little offended by that. You know what? There's symbols on that bumper sticker. There's symbols all around that sticker. There's people who believe that this bumper sticker should not exist. So there's a sticker that you see on the cars that says the word co-exist. That is what we want to put on the cars, but that is not the reality. There's symbols, the exclusivity of Jesus, the I am the way, the truth, the path, the pieces of the other way around. And that's the world. There's going to be some people wrong. There's going to be people who take some bad ways and have an opposite way of thinking. Timothy Carroll said, if you're never experiencing opposition because of your faith as a Christian, you have to ask yourself if anyone knows you're a Christian. There will be people at school. There will be people at work. There will be people at Thanksgiving dinner. There will be people at Thanksgiving dinner. Will you be able to dance in any way? Will you dance anyway? So you're going to dance the way David danced. We'll go back to the story. He gives them gifts, food,

the Ark of the Covenant is coming into its rightful place. He's giving out gifts to people. And the Ark is put in its proper place. And it says here, in 2 Samuel 6.20, it says, when David returned home to bless his family, Micah, the daughter of Saul, he did it again, not David's wife. It's symbolically here. There's a message there. He came back to bless his own family, Micah, the daughter of Saul. He went out to his meeting and he said to him indignantly, how distinguished the kingdom of Israel looks today, showing himself shamelessly before the servants, just as any vulgar person would do. Oof, oof, oof, nothing in the scripture. You can read it. Nothing in the scripture, innuendoed at all. David was doing anything vulgar. The way he was dressed was not inappropriate. He was dressing up scandalously. There's nothing he did. Michael accuses him of something that he didn't do. Nothing he did was vulgar. He didn't do it with the intention to dance with the servants. Sometimes I realize, City First, that when someone doesn't want to participate in something, they have to somehow accuse of being wrong or less than. in our culture, you know what, you know, you hear people, they don't want to have a faith in Jesus.

They make it their mission to take away the credit of Christianity, to make the church look stupid and fool it, to talk about how the word of God doesn't exist and doesn't work. They make it their mission to just cut it, your faith, that the faith doesn't have credit. They start talking about failures. There's no failures in the word of God, but there are failures in the churches. They'll talk about this. They'll talk about the pastor that fell, but they don't talk about the 10,000 faithful pastors. They'll talk about that one church that stole money, but they don't talk about the 10,000 that didn't. You know what, planes that land safely don't come to news. Here's the thing. When planes crash and sometimes pastors crash, all of a sudden they make the world look so stupid and they'll be like, yeah, well, Christianity is a lie. No, no, the person disappointed you. You feel like that person didn't like you. You just realize that when someone goes out to discredit Jesus, sometimes the loudest criticism is just covering our struggles. When people attack your faith, you don't assume it's about you. Sometimes the argument they have is that they're disappointed with God. They're having a problem with God. And sometimes criticism isn't about your worship,

it's about what exposes your praise. This was big, what I just said. I wonder if deep down inside Michal, she maybe had pride or she was too concerned with her own appearance or there was like bitterness in her past or there was a fear, there was something. Because she goes from zero to a hundred. Like he walks in the door and he says, whoa, wait a minute. And he says the next thing. He says in verse 21, David says, look at what he says here in verse 21. He says, I was dancing before God. Look at what he says here. I was dancing before the Lord who chose me over your father and his family. He designated me as the leader of Israel, the people of the Lord, and in this way I celebrate before him. And I said, God chose someone else. No, he didn't choose someone in the family. He says, he designated me as the leader of Israel, the people of the Lord, and in this way I celebrate before him. That's right. And I'm willing to look ridiculous, my queen, and even humiliated in front of my own eyes. I love this. It's like, I don't care if I look like a fool in front of myself.

But those servant girls you mentioned will surely continue to think that I'm distinguished. He's saying, they're going to see an authenticity in my praise. They're going to realize that I was really praising the Lord and he's going to be powerful. So, this is the saddest verses in this book. It says, Micah, the daughter of Saul, never had children in all his life since then. Like literally, from that point on. We don't know why. I don't know if it was God who judged her or David said, we're not going to be together. I don't know. She remained a wife, but she didn't have children. Really, this is a story of someone who is humble and someone who is proud. That's what this story is about. And let me just remind us, City First, that pride is very dangerous. Pride wants to look selfish. Pride wants to look like I'm in control. I'm under control of everything. I'm strong. I'm successful. But nobody understands that God is sufficient. That God is in control. And any sort of, quote unquote, success in your path, it's because God gave it to you. It's because of him.

Oh yeah, but I got abilities. Who gave you those abilities? Who gave you the ability to learn? Well, you know what, I'm a self-made person. Oh yeah? Who gives you a breath in your lungs? You know, pride says, I did it. Humility says, no. God helped me do this. Pride asks, how do I see myself? And humility says, what does God see? See, some of us today, we're just worried about how we see ourselves, how we see others, what do people think about us? In fact, we go to great lengths. Some of us, you are curating our life to solicit other people's approval. Look, you're not a social media person. You're just purchasing certain things to use certain things, to do certain things, to get to certain things so that someone else says, wow, you are somebody. It makes you feel better about yourself. There's nothing wrong with nice things. In fact, City First, I hope that you all have nice things and beautiful things. That's true, that those things don't have you, that they don't grab you. It's not that I'm saying that you can't have anything nice. No, no, you can, but when God gives you nice things,

remember that he is your source. And say, thank you God for this car, thank you God for this shirt, thank you God for this job, thank you God for my family. My encouragement to us today is to ask ourselves a question. What does God see in me? Not what other people see, what does Jesus see? What does he see in my heart? What does he see in my motives? What does he see in my actions? What does he see? Because if, what if City First, if we were so concerned with God's opinion as we are concerned with other people's opinions, how would this change? It's Superhero Sunday. We are putting a spotlight on the champions and the illuminators, the champions and the illuminators, who are here, the people with special needs. You all know that our son is going to be 15 years old and he has Down syndrome. It was one of the inspirations to start the Champion's Club here in the church for special needs kids. He loves to dance. It's funny how he dances. When he went to Caden and Dakota's wedding, he danced and then we have pictures of the wedding

and every week he looks at the picture and he'll be like, he wants to go back to that moment and dance. And it's kind of interesting because Paxton really doesn't care what anybody else thinks. He doesn't care what they say about him. If he sees, you know what? He doesn't care. If you see us in a restaurant, all of a sudden, it erupts really high and he doesn't care. And I often thought, how would it be like to have zero, zero anxiety about what other people think? How would it be like to live that way? Because that's how Paxton is here. That's how Paxton is. He doesn't care. If only you and I could just focus on that way of God's approval, that we care more about God's approval than people. We spend a lot of time, who is looking at us more than we care? Who is looking at you? God. And you know what? Imagine, we have to care more about believing in God than what people say. And the greatest freedom comes when God's opinion that I care more than any other opinion of that person. Leaving here, leaving your situation,

what would it be like if you cared more about God's opinion than anyone else's opinion? So City First, today, I dare you to dance. Living in the panopticon, this panopticon, and say God's opinion. The God's opinion is the most important. His opinion is my identity. His opinion is my world. His opinion is how I'm going to live. And guess what? The people in their windows are looking at me. with disdain, well, even if it is like that, because as David said, I'm going to look even more foolish before the presence of God, but no, I don't care, because I care more about what God thinks of me. Let's pray, God Almighty Father, I pray that Jesus today, that we would care more about your opinion, we would care more about your word, we would care more about what you say than anything else. Lord, I pray that the spirit of David be within us, that we would be willing to look foolishly at the culture, but faithful in the eyes of your God. Some of us, we've been living in prison because we are too fixated

on what other people say about us. Help us to be focused on your opinion, and Lord God, on your approval. We love you, in the name of Jesus, and we all say, Amen, Amen. Give me a big round of applause for God.