Men who crave popularity will shy away from the very thing that will make them useful. Men who are admired and followed are usually men who stand firm in what they believe and fight for what is right. Often this makes a man hated in his time and admired in history, or loved from afar and despised close to home. Everyone loves the prophets when they are dead and gone, even the Pharisees. But a prophet at home cannot be tolerated. Everyone loves hard and bold preaching from the visitor at a Bible conference, but not so much when they hear it too often from their own pastor who actually knows their sins.
Men who love and crave applause will fold like a cheap tent when it hurts book sales, conference tickets, and seminary dollars. Faithfulness is costly from a worldly perspective but yields great rewards. Applause is costly from a spiritual perspective, and those who seek it will loose in the end.
John Brown wrote about the temptation to be swayed by popularity in his Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians .
"The change which took place in the estimate formed by the Galatians of the apostle at different times suggests important instruction to the ministers of religion in every age. It teaches them not to be unduly elated by popular applause ; and not to be unduly depressed when it is withheld or withdrawn. It is a minister's duty to use every proper means to stand well in the estimation of those to whom he ministers, and it argues not magnanimity, but stupidity and ingratitude, to be insensible to the pleasure which the successful use of these means is calculated to excite. But he is a fool who makes the attainment of what is usually called popularity a leading object — he is worse than a fool who, in order to secure or retain it, conceals or modifies, in the slightest degree, his conscientious convictions, either as to faith or duty. The present approbation of conscience, and the anticipated approbation of his Lord, these are the objects the Christian minister should continually keep in view. When popularity is gained along with these, it is really valuable, for it insures the probability of usefulness ; but the hosannas of the crowd are dearly purchased at the expense of one pang of conscience — one frown of the Saviour. It is obviously, however, equally the interest of ministers and people that a cordial attachment should subsist between them, and that on both sides everything should be avoided that has a tendency to diminish and alienate mutual affection. It is very difficult for a minister to do his duty in a right spirit to a people when he has reason to think they have little or no attachment to him, and it is all but impossible for a people to derive spiritual advantage from a minister whom they do not respect and love. Happy is that Christian society when the minister loves his people, and the people love their minister " for the truth's sake," and when they manifest their mutual affection, not by warm protestations, but by his honestly and affectionately performing every pastoral duty, and by their " walking in all Christian commandments and ordinances blameless."
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