Sermon Tone Analysis

Text :

Sermon Title : Follow that Star - BTS…

Occasion : English Youth Service

Location : Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School Agape Hall

MPP : We need to have the right posture of being ready and pointing people to God while waiting for God’s return

<Pray>

Hi guys…

This morning, I am going to share with you how to follow the star…

And talk about BTS…

Talk about BTS?

Yes talk about BTS…

And if you’re thinking about these guys when you hear BTS… <slide>

Well, you are partially correct…

And why I’m talking about BTS?

Well, firstly, I kind of made a promise with someone over here who is a big fan of BTS and I kinda promised her I would preach as sermon at least mentioning BTS…

So, here I am, a man of my words, fulfilling my promises…

And if you are not familiar with who BTS are,

They are a South Korean boy band that was formed in Seoul in 2013,

Have 7 members in the band, and had taken the world by storm…

They have sold more than fifteen million albums and they are the best-selling artists in South Koran of all times…

They have a huge fan base, have more than 17.7 million followers on their Twitter account alone,

Mentioned nearly 600,000 times a day on Twitter alone…[1]

Of course, BTS is not the only ones with fan base,

There are soccer stars with fan base,

actors with fan base,

musicians with fan base,

computer gamers with fan base,

even politicians with fan base…

And of course being fans,

many of the fans would like to meet those celebrities…

And while I couldn’t find the statistics on the fans actually being able to see those celebrities…

And while I couldn’t find any information on how long the BTS fans have to wait to meet their stars,

but a check with one website gives you a step-by-step guide on how to meet your stars…

and from what I can see in the websites, fans really put in a lot of effort and work in communities to be able to meet their stars and engage in lots of strategies…

and for the BTS, there’s even a Tweeter account called Chasing BTS to give them possible information to be able to catch their stars…

Nevertheless, most fans have to wait for hours and sometimes overnight at a location where they are rumored to appear…

and even so, they are not even able to be sure they get to meet them…

sometimes only to be disappointed…

and I kind of know how that kind of disappointment feels like…

and no… it’s not that I was looking for stars and celebrities,

but during the day after national day this year,

when Singapore had the de-centralised celebration on the 10th of August,

the military vehicles were going to drive past one of the main roads near my house,

and while I was preparing my sermon,

I was determined to catch the drive past…

So I was tracking the movement of the convoy on the google app that they set up,

and I calculated such that I had enough time to go walk the distance to the road and catch the convoy…

but one thing I didn’t anticipate…

I didn’t do enough research and didn’t realise those heavy tanks were able to move at that speed and hence by the time I got to the main road,

I could only see the last vehicle while I was still a good 400m away…

I missed pretty much the entire convoy…

Unlike those fans who did their research, prepared themselves,

And go themselves ready,

I didn’t prepare myself sufficiently to catch the convoy…

I wasn’t prepared and I missed out…

That’s why this morning, I would want to teach us all this morning how to catch the star,

By following BTS…

But I’m not talk about the pop group…

but am going to use their acronym to bring home three points for us to take home today…

and as to telling us to catch the star,

this is significant at this time of the year,

Because we are now in the season of Advent…

Which comes from the Latin word Adventus which means “coming”

And hence the season that we are in right now is to remember how the birth of Jesus Christ was the fulfilment of the prophecy of the salvation by the prophets…

But it is also of Jesus Christ will come again in the final victory and end all the sufferings and pain in the world today…

And if we’re not prepared and not careful…

We’ll be like how I missed out on being able to see the military convoy because I wasn’t prepared…

And we don’t want to be unprepared…

And to prepare ourselves, we’re going to go all the way back to the birth of Christ and the passage that we’re going to look at today is from …

We’re going to read from Joshua’s favourite translation, the Passion Translation

“Jesus was born in Bethlehem near Jerusalem during the reign of King Herod.

After Jesus’ birth a group of spiritual priests from the East came to Jerusalem and inquired of the people, “Where is the child who is born king of the Jewish people?

We observed his star rising in the sky and we’ve come to bow before him in worship.”

King Herod was shaken to the core when he heard this, and not only him, but all of Jerusalem was disturbed when they heard this news.

So he called a meeting of the Jewish ruling priests and religious scholars, demanding that they tell him where the promised Messiah was prophesied to be born.

“He will be born in Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,” they told him.

“Because the prophecy states: And you, little Bethlehem, are not insignificant among the clans of Judah, for out of you will emerge the Shepherd-King of my people Israel!” Then Herod secretly summoned the spiritual priests from the East to ascertain the exact time the star first appeared.

And he told them, “Now go to Bethlehem and carefully look there for the child, and when you’ve found him, report to me so that I can go and bow down and worship him too.”

And so they left, and on their way to Bethlehem, suddenly the same star they had seen in the East reappeared!

Amazed, they watched as it went ahead of them and stopped directly over the place where the child was.

And when they saw the star, they were so ecstatic that they shouted and celebrated with unrestrained joy.

When they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, his mother, they were overcome.

Falling to the ground at his feet they worshiped him.

Then they opened their treasure boxes full of gifts and presented him with gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Afterward they returned to their own country by another route because God had warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod.” (, TPT)

In this story, we have a group of Magi who came from the East to Jerusalem to look for Jesus Christ,

and worship him…

but who are these Magi?

Well, what we do know about them is that they came from the East of Israel

So, let us look at the map of the Middle East,

Now this is Israel over here…

This dot over here is Jerusalem

So, which means that East is anywhere this direction right?

Now, if we go back to the 722BC, we know that the kingdom of Israel became conquered by an increasingly strong empire,

the Assyrian Empire who came and took the people of Israel and deported them all across the Assyrian Empire…

this was read in which says

<point to map><slide>

“Finally, in the ninth year of King Hoshea’s reign, Samaria fell, and the people of Israel were exiled to Assyria.

They were settled in colonies in Halah, along the banks of the Habor River in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.”

(, NLT)