Popular preaching or sermons puts you in the centre, makes you feel good, and tells you that God is going to solve your problems and bless you.
True Biblical preaching or sermons, on the other hand, focuses on God, makes God’s Word the authority on which preaching is done, proclaims that God judges sin but shows mercy to the sinner who repents and turns away from evil.
Popular preaching or sermons, is about motivational stuff, how you can rise up in life; it does not preach sin and judgement, and makes you feel good about yourself even when you live in sin. There is no call to repent.
Preaching or sermons which is empowered by the Spirit of God, on the other hand, tells you how the blood of Jesus shed on the cross is the power of God to save you, and it will ask you to repent and turn away from all that is in your life which is not pleasing to God.
Popular preaching will send you on the highway to hell while God-centred preaching will ask you to travel the narrow road that leads to heaven.
Unless God is put at the centre and made the focus of sermons, preaching is simply about making you feel good which makes it no different than a well done motivational speech.
But true Biblical preaching helps to change lives and helps people to live lives which puts God on the throne of their heart and life. It helps you meet with Jesus who alone has the authority to forgive you your sins.