________________________________________________________________________

When God directed Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, they were instructed to follow the visible pillar of His presence that appeared to them in a "cloudlike form." It would be their direction giver and all they had to do was to follow the cloud. God's Spirit still wants to guide our lives and lead us. We should still follow the cloud, but some people spend their life instead following the crowd. I would like to preach to you this morning about "following the crowd."

No doubt most of you have at least heard that the Pope died this week. Even if you are not Catholic, it's hard to get away from because it seems that every media outlet is streaming news of his funeral and life and about the election of the new pope. It's the latest "media buzz." Forgotten is last week's buzz about the lady on life support. Now everything is about the pope.

The Pope's funeral has become a "big deal" all across the world even messing up the planning of the royal wedding of Prince Charles of England. As of Friday, Italian officials estimate that over 4 million people have come to Rome to "just be there" when the Pope is buried. It caught the local officials off guard. They finally had to close the entrance to the Vatican after 300,000 people jammed into it just to gaze at the Pope's window. I saw a news photo this week of a young woman who couldn't be more than twenty years old standing in the square weeping as if she had lost her own loved one. She had been sleeping on the sidewalk for three days just to have her spot, and three days later she is standing there crying her heart out. For someone that she probably never met personally and didn't really "know." When they started the funeral Friday, it was interrupted by a few people beginning to shout what translates to "Sainthood Now." Over 10,000 people picked up the cry and the funeral had to be delayed almost 10 minutes because of the shouting. The crowd was demanding that the Catholic Church declare the Pope a "saint" so that people can pray to him and worship him. It's been a week of crowds in Rome.

________________________________________________________________________

I can't help but be reminded of another crowd that assembled outside of a judgment hall in Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago. It was the Passover celebration and over 2 million Jews were crammed into the city and it's immediate surrounding area for the celebration. The Romans back then knew the power and danger of crowds and mobs. The ancient Roman teacher Lucius Annaeus Seneca who just happened to be born the same year as Christ wrote:

If the millions of Jewish people had joined together in a crowd mentality, even with all of the Roman army in town, there would have mayhem and trouble, so the Romans had devised a system where they released one Jewish prisoner every year at Passover. The timing wasn't an accident because usually these were political prisoners that may have been very popular with the Israelites but who got in trouble with the government. Releasing one such prisoner every year kept the crowds from rioting and getting out of control.

But this year when the crowds paused in their chores and made their way to the courtyard of the judgment hall for the annual tradition, things were different. When Pilate tried to use the situation to avoid having to kill someone whom he knew was innocent, the Pharisees and Sadducees stirred up the crowd into screaming about Jesus "Crucify Him." They then began to cry for the release of the hardened criminal and murderer, Barabbas instead. I want you to understand very few in the crowd even knew that Jesus had been arrested. They certainly knew nothing of the charges brought against Him. Almost every individual in the crowd, if you would have gotten them by themselves and asked them "would you rather the miracle worker Jesus Christ released to you, or the murderer/robber Barabbas?" would have answered "we would much rather have Jesus roaming the streets than the other. But they were not alone, they were together and so with the frenzy and irrational thinking that only comes from a fevered crowd, they shouted "Crucify Him" about the One who only days before had been healing their sons and daughters and raising their dead. And when Pilate proclaimed Jesus' innocence, they foolishly shouted what they did not know would become prophetic: "His blood be on our hands and on our sons and daughters." Very few of them had any problems with Jesus, but they were just following the crowd.

It's in human nature to just want to "follow the crowd." There is something within all of us that wants to belong and wants to be a part and wants to fit in. Someone once said this:

It's easy to be influenced by the crowds and hard not to just go along. Human beings have a "herd mentality" where they want to conform and join in. It's part of our psyche. We want to join the party. We want to be in the majority. We want to follow the crowd.

But God warned about the dangers of just following the crowd. In our other text in Exodus, He said through Moses:

Or in the English Standard Version:

God warned of just following crowds because there is a great danger in doing so. Crowds will carry you further than you intended to go. They will influence you to do things that you said that you would never do. They will impart their will onto your will. Psychologists say that most addictions whether it be drinking, smoking, or drugs are started by the influence of a crowd on an individual. Everybody else was passing it around and so you felt pressured to join. Even though some people never learn, our inclination to just go along with the crowd usually brings us nothing but trouble.

________________________________________________________________________

Let me preach to you today about why the Scriptures speak out against the dangers of "following the crowd."

I am reminded again of the story of the twelve spies reporting back to Israel on the edge of the Promised Land. Two of them -- Joshua and Caleb -- said that God would help them get the land. Ten of them voiced the voice of doubt and so the majority went with the crowd and before long all of Israel except for these two men were in confusion and doubt and worry and had decided that they would not go into the Promised Land. The vast majority of them were just caught up in what the crowd was doing, but the crowd was not doing the will of God.

We cannot base what we believe upon what everybody else is doing in the world. There are some that decide their spiritual beliefs on what the majority opinion of the day happens to be. But Jesus said that strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life and "few there be that find it." The broad way which the crowd took, was the way to destruction. Jesus was warning against believing something simply because the crowd believes it. There are those who are Catholic because of the logic "there are millions and millions and Catholics in the world." There are those who preach a watered down gospel because that's what the vast majority of denominations preach. Somehow they think that there is safety in the crowd. It's almost like they think "well, even if everybody is wrong, because there are so many of them, God's not going to let so many people be lost is He?"

Let me remind you of a man named Noah! Noah preached a very narrow minded message. It was "get on the ark of safety and enter through this one door, or you will be lost." That's a pretty narrow message. If Noah preached that today, he would be branded as a "fanatic" and as "too close minded and strict." What nerve that he would insist that only his boat and the door that he preached about was the only way. But there was just one other thing: Noah's plan was based not upon the crowd's decision of what was right or political correctness, but upon the inerring God's Word. And when the rains came and the floods washed them all away and Noah and his family were the only ones "left behind" and saved, it became very obvious that the narrow door and the "exclusive message" of Noah was the correct one!

And can I say this? If your definition of salvation includes the majority of people and embraces the modern-day opinion that there are many ways to be saved and that "you can believe your way and I believe mine and we will all still make it" then what do you do with the story of Noah? Jesus said "as it was in the days of Noah, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." When Jesus comes back it will become obvious that there was only One door and that is Jesus Christ! When Jesus comes back it will be obvious that there is only one ark and that it is the church built upon everything that God's Word said and not just the traditions of the crowds. I would say that -- if you believe scripture -- then if the majority of people in the world believed something, I would be careful to check it out in the scriptures before I jumped on board. Because following the crowd is usually going the opposite direction from the will of God!

When I was a kid, I used to try to get my parents to let me do some things by the logic "but mom, everybody's doing it." To which she always replied "no, everybody's not doing it, because you're not going to be doing it." And then if I whined a little bit she would say exasperatedly "Robert, (she only called me "Robert" if she was aggravated with me) if everybody jumps off of a cliff, are you going to jump also?" And then "there just some things that is not right for a Christian to do even if the rest of the world says that it's okay. You are not everybody else, you are a Spirit-filled little boy and therefore, you must learn that what everybody else says does not matter, but what matters what God says and what we say: you are NOT doing that."

I think my mom needs to preach a little this morning! Somebody needs to realize that what the crowd does is a poor indicator of what we should do. What matters most is what our Heavenly Father has said in His Word. If the rest of the world believes in three, six, or twenty gods, are you going to go along with that? The Word of God says "Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord." Some of you here today would never travel and gather around the Vatican like the countless multitudes have done this week, but you will do so in your spiritual beliefs. It was the early Catholic church in the 300s that came up with the idea of there being a "trinity" and three "persons" in the Godhead. I challenge you to find that in the Bible. Neither the word "trinity" nor the word "persons" in reference to God is there. Not one time. Sure the Bible uses titles such as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to help explain how God relates to us, but it always comes back to the fact that there is only One who is not divided in any way. That one God created the universe and humanity and so we can refer to Him as our Father. That one God became flesh and was born of a woman and so we can refer to His incarnation as "the Son." That one God works among humanity and even comes to live inside of His creation to make us holy and more like Him and so we can refer to Him as the Holy Spirit. But don't stop there. That One God also heals us and so we refer to Him as the Great Physician. He ensures that we have all that we need so we call Him "Our Provider!"

Some would say "but almost the entire world believes in a holy trinity." That logic is basically saying "but everybody's saying that." The real question should be what does God's Word have to say about it?

The Catholic Church said that God is a trinity of three persons in one God and that Jesus Christ is a part of the Godhead. But the Bible says that the Godhead -- all of it -- is in Jesus:

The Catholic Church said that Jesus was somehow a different person than "God the Father." But the Bible says:

My wife and I are two persons joined together in marriage as one family. Even though two have become one in matrimony, we are still two persons in unity. Some try to use such an analogy to explain "the trinity." But the Bible says:

"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." You can't say that if you've seen me that you've also saw my wife also, because we are two separate persons. It's very obvious that Jesus and the Father cannot somehow be "two separate persons in unity" because Jesus said that when you see Him, you have seen the Father. It's just easier to believe the scripture that Jesus said was the most important to understand and obey of every commandment:

There is but one God. He was Father to us in Creation and through the New Birth experience. He was Son in redemption of being born of woman to shed His blood. And He is the Holy Ghost coming to live inside of us. But those are titles referring to the One God and His name is Jesus! Paul said it like this:

The same church group that declared that was three, three centuries after the Apostles died off. Also decided that water baptism wasn't necessary for salvation and that it didn't matter that in scripture the disciples always baptized "in the name of Jesus." That same church group also decided that the miracles and baptism of the Holy Ghost weren't for us today. That same church group is now declaring that you can pray to Mary to make intercession for us and a whole bunch of other saints. That same church group now promotes idolatry as a normal mode of worship despite what the Word of God has to say about it. And there are many, many people that have just gone along with their decisions. The crowd has said many things, but what does the Bible say? You'd better be careful, because there is great danger in just following the crowd!

________________________________________________________________________

When the Jewish people were carried away in captivity into Babylon, we find that the king tried to make them become Babylonian. When Daniel and his friends got there, they were instructed to eat the king's food and drink the king's wine and they refused to do so. Everybody else was doing it, including the other Jewish captives, but they knew that they could not compromise their walk with God by eating this food of the idolatrous king!

When King Nebuchadnezzar later decided to put up a statue of himself and commanded everyone in the kingdom to worship it or die, we find that they set up the image and they played the music only to find out that three men, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, wouldn't bow. The entire country was doing it, but these three men said "we're not going to do what the crowd is doing." When they were thrown into the fiery furnace, not only did God cause them to not be hurt or burned, but He joined them in the fire! God wasn't present in the crowds, but only with the indivduals who would do His will rather than what everybody else was doing.

Things haven't changed so much today. The world still puts up an image that it expects you to bow to and idolize. It says that to be happy and fit in, then you must live up to it's norms. But this world's image is far from what God considers right. It's image is that unhappy marriages with selfish spouses bickering and fighting constantly is normal. It's image for your life is that sitting and watching sin and murder and sex and cursing and violence on a screen in front of you is normal and not going to teach your kids anything or affect your life. This world's image is that you need it's fashions and it's immodesty and it's lifestyle in order to be beautiful and succesful. This world's image is that faithfulness to marriage both before you are married and while you are married is ridiculous. This world's image says that homosexuality is an alternate lifestyle and something that should be legalized. This world's image is that everyone needs an addiction and that everyone needs "a cold one" some time and an escape. This world's image is that you should sacrifice your family time and your time with God to have more things and to accumulate worldly wealth. This world's image says that God should be relegated to just one hour once a week and anything more than that is "too much " and "extreme." This world's image is that it's normal to talk non stop on your cell phone and yet only spend fifteen minutes a day on the heavenly line we call prayer. This world's image is of a hateful, spiteful, unforgiving, bitter human being with a chip on their shoulder and only their personal interest in mind.

That's the world's image and it is saying "you must bow, everyone else is doing it, and if you don't bow, we'll turn the fires of persecution and ridicule up seven times hotter!" But God is saying "I'm not interested in the crowd, I'm interested in somebody willing to stand up for what is right!" If you will stand up, you will find that whatever you have to face, God will be there with you! God is not in the crowd, but He'll be in the fire of the person who chose to obey His word rather than bow to the image of this world!

God calls individuals. Think of Daniel in the lion's den. Think of Noah building the ark. Think of Moses standing up against all of Egypt. Think of John the Baptist. Think of Gideon and then Deborah facing armies on their own. Think of Samson versus the Philistines. Think of little David versus the Philistines. Think of Abraham who left his homeland to journey alone toward what God had said. Think of Enoch who of him alone was said in his generation: "he pleased God." Think of Elijah with hundreds of prophets of Baal and all of the children of Israel on one side and just the old prophet and a lonely altar on the other, but also remember which side God was on! It was never the side of the crowds, but with the one who would stand up for truth!

I think back to Caleb, who had to wait forty years after he and Joshua had stood firm for God, but after all of the doubters had died off, finally got to enter into the Promised Land. Few people ever preach the rest of the story. Forty years earlier when the crowd had been consumed with doubt, the main fear was the giants that were the "sons of Anak" that were there. It was the sons of Anak that the other spies said "we were in our sight as grasshoppers to them."

But when Joshua stood with the people after Jericho and a few other victories and they were trying to decide how to divide up the land and what to do next. Caleb -- at eighty five years old -- jumped up and said:

He's eighty-five years old and yet Caleb jumps up and says "I know the part of the land that I want: I want the part that has those giants living in it and the worst of the walled cities! "If the Lord is with me, I'll be able to drive them out!" And then we find this scripture which is just a little verse and yet says so much in the next chapter:

Just one man who wouldn't listen to the voice of the crowd, but who stood up for what God had said! And God backed him up! There's power in not following the crowd. With the crowd, you may have the multitude with you, but without the crowd and with God's Word, you've got God backing you up! The world may push the power of the multitude, but God is interested in the one who will stand!

There can be positive power in following the crowds. I've seen people only come to the altar when everybody comes and end up being filled with the Holy Ghost and blessed. I've seen young people that could live for God when everybody else was on fire for God but who struggled when some turned away or moved. We go to men's conference or ladies' conference or youth camp and it's easy to get lost with the crowd and really worship God with a liberty that we have never done before, but it's easy to do so there because that's what the crowd is doing. It's easy to say we commit to God there. It's easy to worship with everything there. Why? Because God is stronger there than He is here? No, it's because the crowd is seeking after God so just by "going with the flow" you end up in the presence of God. That same God is here, but now you've got family around you and friends and situations that are going the opposite way. Here you've got to fight against the crowd. If you are to touch Jesus, then like the woman that was healed of the issue of blood, you will have to make your way and press through the crowd, rather than just flow along with it. Like blind Bartimaeus, you will have to cry out despite what the crowd around you says, rather than because of it. Back at home, you no longer have the crowd flowing toward Calvary with you.

God allows that to happen for a reason. He is not interested in a mob serving Him, but rather individuals that will choose to do so out of their love for Him. We danced at conferences because the scripture says that we should praise Him in the dance. But that same scripture applies here. What's the difference? Here back at home in our own environment, we have to face the multitudes that are not obeying that scripture. But does it make it any less the Word of God? Think God for the conferences where we "turn aside" to see the burning bush and see what is possible in God when we commit to Him and give Him everything. But that same walk with God is available everyday here at home, but now you don't have the crowd leading you into it, but you must make the choice.

It's easy to pray when everybody else is praying. It's easy to dance when everybody else is dancing. It's easy to do what is right when everybody else is doing what is right. Because it's easy to follow the crowd. But what if everybody else decides not to do so? Will you follow the crowd, or will you stand upon the Word of God?

Thank God for the faith of a crowd, and there have many people touched by it. We find in scripture the story of the ten lepers who cried out to Jesus to heal them. Jesus commanded them to go show themselves to the priests which was required under Moses' law for them to be able to return into society. Jesus didn't heal them and then send them, but rather commanded them and the miracle only came when they began the journey. They all went and so just going along with the crowd, they were healed. Thank God for the faith of a crowd, because sometimes being with others that believe the Word of God causes us to receive blessings and things that we would never have received on our own.

But the scripture then records this:

Only one of the cleansed lepers broke out of the crowd and returned to give Jesus thanks. And in return this leper was "made whole." The other lepers had the disease stop in their bodies but were left with the scars and disfigurments for life. But the one who broke away from the crowd was the one who was completely restored to what he had been before his illness. He was the one who was "made whole."

Even if the crowd is going the right way, there will only be so far that you can go based upon "following the crowd." To stay with the crowd is to limit yourself to the level of the crowd, when God has personal blessings and healings and anointings for your life that will only come when you make up in your mind that "no matter what the crowd does, I will worship Him and I will serve Him and I will thank Him and I will love Him!" To be made "whole" and everything that God has for you, we must be willing to do what is right and not just be content with "following the crowd."

God is looking for someone who will step out of the crowd and get your eyes on Jesus! Remember the voice that boomed at Jesus' baptism? "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased?" There were multitudes standing on the bank and even religious authorities, but the only opinion that mattered was that of God's opinion! God is looking for someone who will live their life not cowtowing to please the voice of the crowd and not bowing with the crowds to the image of this world, and not using what everybody is doing as an excuse as to your lifestyle. But God is interested in somebody who will be more concerned about pleasing the voice of God in their life and who will focus on that more than the voice of the multitude!

Your goal is to get to heaven, but God wanted to remind you that you can't get there just by following the crowd. Somebody stand up and do what is right and get your eyes on Jesus! It's time to follow the cloud of God's Spirit and will and to stop just following the crowd!