The Lord Calls the Individual to Stand Against the Multitude

Lord, we thank you for the word of God, how we need you to help us and to teach us. Give us ears to hear, give us eyes to see, and a heart to understand what your word says. And help us, Lord, tonight, even this night, to grow, and to make firm decisions in the way that we follow you as we look at Exodus 23. We ask these things all in Jesus’ name, amen.

The verse I wanna look at is verse number two, and I’ll just read it one more time to get it down into our mind a little deeper. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to rest judgment. Now, this idea of rest, that’s the root of the word wrestle. The idea is you rest judgment, you rest the scriptures.

In other words, you fight with it to disregard it, right? To pin it down so it has no use or value to you. And in this case, it’s talking about resting judgment, resting evil, that is doing contrary to what the Lord says. That’s the idea of resting judgment. So the first word I want you to see in this is the word multitude, is the word multitude. Because in both cases, this is, again, a parallel construction.

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shalt thou speak in the cause to decline after many. So in this passage, you have two mentions of the word multitude, or two mentions of the idea of a multitude. Now, think about a multitude. When you talk about a multitude, that’s obviously a group of people. It’s not a single individual. And I wrote in my notes here, and this is one of the main things I want you to see, is what I call the multitude effect, the multitude effect.

People act funny when they get together. People act funny when they get together. And they do different things when there’s a group more than when they are alone. Have you noticed that? And I’ll refer back to this in a minute, but you no doubt have seen videos of what’s happening in Minnesota, right? On the news, social media. Well, it doesn’t take much. You don’t have to look far.

It’s all over. Any news channel has stuff about Minnesota. You notice how bold those people are that are standing in front of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement vehicles? You notice how bold they are? You notice how brazen and outlandish some of the things they say to these officers and things? But then when they’re by themselves, they’re not nearly as bold and brazen. Have you noticed that? I’ve noticed that whenever in evangelism, whenever someone comes to oppose the person who’s preaching or witnessing, it’s usually, there’s often a loud mouth, but the more there are, the rowdier they are.

And a lot of times in that crowd, if there’s not a multitude, those individuals that comprise the multitude really aren’t willing to do what they’re doing. But when they’re together, they’re a lot more bold to do it. It’s what I call the multitude effect. The multitude effect. So what causes a multitude to do evil? In verse number two, you have the multitude doing evil, declining after many to rest judgment.

So in this case, there’s a group of people who are set together as a group, as a collective, set on doing evil. But why, what causes that multitude to set their mind and heart on doing something evil? Sometimes, and here’s the reality, the multitude is often, I’m speaking multitude in broad terms, groups of humanity. Multitudes are often easily influenced and persuaded. In other words, if you can, you ever seen this, you know, sometimes when you see the crowds, when crowds gather in real close quarters, you know, you’ll have one person, you know, sometimes police do it when there’s riots, they can push one person and it causes all of the crowd to fall.

And that happens on a social level as well. One person or a small group of people are influenced by some power, some idea, or whatever, and that spreads, it’s the multitude effect. That’s why the effect of stars, you know, I could not care less what Taylor Swift thinks about anything. I mean, I could not care less. Most politicians, I don’t care what they think. Most, you know, important people on TV or in social media or whatever, Mr. Beast, or you know, some of you know, Karen’s like, I have no idea.

Yeah, some people in here know what I’m talking about and some people have no idea. I could not care less what those people think as far as how it influences the way I think. I don’t think, oh well, Beyonce thinks this and so oh well, then that’s something I need to think about or, you know, brother Ari might, but you know.

We don’t care about that, but a lot of people do. Truth is, a lot of people do. Those people have influence. That’s exactly why they click like or follow on their Instagram or on their Facebook with those people. And they have millions of people because they care. They care. The multitude is a group that is easily influenced by people and the devil uses that in his power too because if he can get a hold of, if he can get that one influential person to sell their very soul to him, then he then has power over the multitude, right?

And that’s how he’s always done. That’s how he’s done with kings. It’s the influence upon the group of people. The multitude is also a group of people that are manipulated and I sent something to Sam. You know, if you’ve ever seen these on social media, they put together different creators and things. They put together newscasts. Well, they’ll take a recording of a newscast, right? I mean like Channel 4, Channel 7, whatever.

And they’ll put the newscasts in boxes. Now, like the Brady Bunch, but it’s a bunch of them. And they’ll play them all dubbed on top of each other. And this is real. And what, you know, there might be 24 or even more newscasts that are all playing simultaneously and they’re all saying the very same words.

How is that possible? How, you can hear it. I mean, it’s a jumbled mess, a denim sound, but you can hear, you can actually make out what they’re saying because they’re all saying the exact same thing. Why? Well, it’s a mind control game. They’re being fed the lines to say, that’s disseminated through the networks and then the newscasters are just reading the prompt and they’ve been told what to say.

And so they’re saying it, you know, who’s hearing it, you know, who’s seeing it, millions of people who are watching TV are being controlled with the same message, like to the word.

That’s manipulation is what that is. That’s a kind of manipulation. You see, the multitude is not to be trusted because people are easily manipulated. And the truth is the reason why the multitude is so easily manipulated is because the vast majority of people want group approval. They live for group approval. They fear the disapproval of the group and the ostracizing that comes from being different. And so they long for it and that’s why they go along with it and they kind of parrot it and they’ll say the same things even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

This is the danger of the multitude. In our verse, what do we see the multitude doing? The Lord saying the multitude is doing evil. The multitude is resting judgment. In this case, the multitude is doing evil. The multitude is resting judgment. So the multitude is taking things that God says is evil and the multitude is saying, no, those are good. And so let’s do that thing that God says is evil.

The multitude is calling evil good and good evil. Look if you would at Isaiah chapter five real quick. You know this verse, I’m sure. Isaiah five, verse number 20, shows you how the multitude works.

Woe unto them, Isaiah 5 20. Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. That put darkness for light and light for darkness. That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. We don’t need to go far to understand this.

Let me give you a dated issue, okay? Gay marriage. Gay marriage. That is a lost cause in our country, politically, right? It’s a lost cause morally. It’s a fight everybody’s given up on. I mean everybody, I’m speaking about the multitude now.

They’re saying love is love, it’s good. They’re calling something that is actually an abomination to God. Good, right? Who’s doing it? It’s the multitude. And the truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, Republican, religious, non-religious, they all think the same thing about this. Well who are we? I mean who are we? Love is love. I mean what are we to say about two consenting adults and what they do in the privacy of their life?

That’s how it goes. This is like 70% of our country across the political spectrum has basically said, yeah it’s fine, it’s good. Really? The multitude is now calling good evil good. And that’s just one example. One example. One issue.

That put darkness for light and light for darkness. That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Now I want you to remember that verse because we’ll come back to it. But this is how the multitude works. You see when people get together and their ideas and their thoughts start bumping together, they develop their own sense of what’s good and evil. In the group now. Not an objective measure of good and evil, but within the group they develop their own sense of good and evil and then once they all have come to agreement and they all affirm that sense of morality, that standard of morality that they have, then that then changes the way that the whole group thinks.

Because they look at everyone else and everyone else is saying and believing the same things and to them, listen now, to them that is very persuasive. To most people, and this is the way most people work. This is why the multitude effect is so powerful. Most people draw what they think about a thing based upon what other people think about the thing.

Well that’s deadly. That’s deadly. The fact that other people, many other people in their orbit or world believe or think that thing to them is a strong reason to consider it. Maybe it’s good. Hey, I’ll give you an example. Barack Obama, Barack Obama used to be against gay marriage.

Right? He was. At one point he was. And then he was for it. There’s all kinds of people in our political life that used to be against all the things they’re for. What changed? You know what changed? The multitude. The multitude changed its ideas and all of a sudden the things that they repudiated and said were wrong and immoral and all, they are now embracing them. Because after all, once they started hearing everyone around them affirming those things and approving of those things, they’re like, well maybe, maybe it’s not.

It’s like a thought. Maybe it’s not. Maybe. You know where they’re getting their standard? They’re getting it from each other. Whoever controls the multitude controls the people. And it’s the fact of the number of people who believe a thing is very persuasive. After all, they can’t all be wrong.

You think of how, you think of this trans ideology, this trans insanity, you know, it’s kind of, have you noticed it’s kind of cooled off? Why? I mean, if people were born in the wrong body, then why, why has it cooled off? If that’s true, then why has it cooled off? If I was, if I, if I claimed that I was born in a woman’s body, a man’s body, but I’m actually a woman, then why has that changed?

Shouldn’t I not be able to go into a woman’s locker room and compete against the women? And I know these are political issues and stuff, but there’s a moral element in all of these things. What has changed? You know what has changed? The multitude. All of a sudden, it’s not nearly as cool as it was two years ago to be involved in the trans insanity. And so everybody’s kind of like, well, you know, because they’re getting their morals from one another.

Look at Romans chapter three real quick. After all, with all these people thinking and saying the same thing, I mean, it can’t all be wrong. Actually, that’s exactly what they could be. Romans three, four.

You know what God says in this verse? I know it’s, he’s talking about something else, but the statement still stands, which is this. If every person disagreed with God, then they’re all wrong. It doesn’t matter how you add the numbers, none of them add up to more than the one that God is.

Even if they’re all wrong. So that tells you that the group think multitude effect is something that we should be very, very wary of. Now, going back to Exodus 23 verse two, notice in verse two, you see the word thou shalt not. Neither shalt thou. Thou, what do we know about the word thou? That’s a good King James word. What do we know about the word thou?

It’s singular. Now, if it wasn’t thou and just said you, it would be ambiguous. You wouldn’t know if it’s singular or plural, unless perhaps you looked at the verb and the verb made it clear. But in our Bible, it says thou, and that tells us God is speaking that is a singular pronoun.

Isn’t it funny that God speaks to all of the nation concerning his laws in the singular? He directs his commands to them in the singular, even though he’s talking to them all as a collective. He doesn’t always do that. Let me give you a few examples. Look at verse 28, because he changes it. He goes back and forth. Verse 20, most of the time God’s commandments in Exodus and other places in scripture are in the singular, but sometimes he switches it.

Look at the chapter preceding, chapter 22, verse 28. Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people. Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy liquors, the firstborn of thy sons. Thou shalt thou give unto me. Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen and with thy sheep. Seven days it shall be with his dam. On the eighth day, thou shalt give it me.

And then 31 switches. And ye shall, that’s plural, be holy men unto me. Neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field. Ye shall cast it to the dogs. You see how he switches? You know what that tells us? The fact that God switches it means he’s saying singular on purpose, right? And then you get to verse two, he’s back singular. Thou shalt not follow multitude to do evil.

God is speaking to the individual. That’s the key thing I want you to see from here. He is speaking to the whole congregation, but he is expecting us to hear it as individuals. It reminds us that the Lord speaks corporately in his word, but we as individuals have an individual and personal responsibility concerning his commands, right? So he says, thou, speaking to us as individuals. Now, this is especially, this truth is especially important in verse two, because in verse two, you have a distinction made between the individual and the multitude, the thou and the many in verse two.

And in verse number two, God commands the individual to not follow the group. He says, thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to rest judgment. So the Lord speaks to the individual and says, it doesn’t matter what the group does, you, thou, you have a responsibility before me not to follow them. This is a, and listen, if you’re going to obey this command, when the Lord says, don’t follow them to evil, to rest judgment, that means that you and I as individuals have to be able to identify what is evil, right?

If we’re going to identify the direction of the multitude and what they’re intending to do, we have to have a clear-eyed understanding, scriptural understanding of what is good and what is evil, because the multitude doesn’t, because they’re getting their cues and their morality and their truth from the voices they’re hearing around them. And the Lord says to you, man, he says to you, woman, he says to you, individual, he says, you need to know what is good and what is evil, you yourself, not what they tell you, because this multitude thinks good is evil and thinks evil is good.

They’re chasing right now, declining after evil. You had better have a clear understanding of what is good and what is evil and not be influenced by the group think of the multitude. So you know what you have here? You have an individual who hears the commands of God and who knows the commands of God, because God’s speaking. So God’s judgment of what is good and what is evil, God’s morality, if you will, what is good, what is evil in the sight of God.

You know what that means? That means that I as an individual have a duty. If I’m gonna obey verse two, I have a duty to know and understand good and evil myself, not from them, not from everybody around me, not from you, but from God himself. You see it? From the Lord, we have to get what we understand is truth. The principles by which we live and what we believe come from the Lord himself as individuals.

And what’s so interesting is that this much of the Old Testament law is written to a collective society, a society that is not characteristically individual. You’ve probably seen that in scripture. In fact, one of the ways God would punish people who broke his law is he said, they shall be cut off from among his people. Now, oftentimes that meant they died, but the idea is they’re separated off from the group.

So the group is where the blessing is, right? And the group is the people of God. And so the Lord punished them by separating them off. But here, the Lord is saying to you and to me as individuals, you better know what is right and you better know what is wrong. You better know what is good and you better know what is evil directly from me because you have to be able to look at this multitude and know what they’re doing, whether it’s good or whether it’s evil.

And when it’s evil, you do not follow them. That’s what he’s saying. There’s a great multitude of Christians that believe what they believe because someone told them to believe that. Not because they know those things themselves, but this is exactly what the Lord wants us to do. He wants us to know what he says ourselves. That’s the only way we can obey verse two. That’s the only way we can obey verse two.

It’s like the Bereans, remember the Bereans? They searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. They found out for themselves. They did not just believe Paul, even Paul. They found out for themselves. And so you go back to verse two, I shall not follow a multitude to do evil. Sometimes then, that means we must stand alone.

And the whole crowd is going that way. And we have a duty as an individual before God, based on the scripture, to not follow them and to stand against them, even if we are by ourselves.

You know, in this is the principle of the freedom of the conscience, right? It’s kind of embedded in this. The Lord is telling a single individual, if necessary, to exercise unwavering and tenacious individualism, even if he’s by himself. He’s telling the single individual to buck the crowd and stand by himself against the multitude, just because the multitude is doing something is no excuse. Look at Exodus 32, go a little bit ahead.

Exodus 32, the Lord is telling the single individual to go a little bit ahead. And you can see this lived out, just a little piece into the future, Exodus 32 verse one.

And the people, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aram and said unto him, up, make us gods, which shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we want not what has become of him. They have just heard God’s voice audibly spoken from Mount Sinai.

They have just heard it, just a few chapters prior. In fact, Moses is up in the mountain. Literally, it’s not been 40 days. And now they’re calling something that God said is evil, good, idolatry. Who is doing this? The multitude. You see this? Multitude is so easily manipulated, so prone to change. And then in verse two, and Aaron said unto them, break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

And we know he put them in the furnace, and it just popped out a golden calf. Amazing, it’s miraculous. You know what Aaron didn’t do? Exodus 23 two. He had this huge crowd, the congregation, set on evil. And what Aaron should have done is said, I am not doing that under any circumstance. But he didn’t.

He gave into it, and he followed them to do it. And he tried to play both sides. He was a good religious, good Christian. He tried to play both sides later. But then there was another man, look at verse 21. Moses did not do that. Moses came down from the mount and found out what they did, threw down the tables of stone that God had etched with his own finger, and then took the calf by himself.

Listen, we’re talking a couple million people set on doing this. And Moses alone took the calf, grounded the powder, and forced them to drink it. And then he looks at Aaron. And Moses said unto Aaron, verse 21, what did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them? And Aaron said, let not the anger, this is just disgusting. I hate reading this verse.

Let not the anger of my Lord wax hot. Thou knowest the people that they are set on mischief. The multitude told me to do it. I didn’t have a choice. Oh yes you did, Exodus 23, two. Yes you did. Well they might have hurt me, maybe.

You see, Moses is a perfect example of this verse because Moses stood against the whole congregation. You know, there’s no way any of us can be a spiritual leader unless we’re willing to be a Moses. I’m serious. There’s no way to be a spiritual leader because a spiritual leader is in some capacity, large or small, set in responsibility over a group. And when the group has a bad idea and the spiritual leader, the hireling says, oh well, okay well, they wanna do it, so that is not right.

The spiritual leader has to be the person, the mom with the kids, the dad with the family, the job, whatever sphere in the church, whatever the sphere might be, the spiritual leader is the guy that has to have a clear understanding from God directly what is good and what is evil and is willing to say, and Aaron, Aaron’s problem is not that he didn’t know, is that he was unwilling.

He was unwilling. The spiritual leader is someone who has to be willing to say, no, no, we’re not doing that. Even if the group wants to do it. But lastly, there’s a cost. Go back to Exodus 23 verse two.

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, neither shalt thou speak in the cause to decline after many to rest judgment. Do you think that this, just meditate with me now, this is kind of an extension of what we’ve seen here. Do you think that this multitude set on doing evil with their custom designed morality that they have developed with one another? Do you think this kind of multitude is going to be friendly and kind to someone who refuses to go their way?

In fact, for you, the person that says no way, you know what that is? If you’ve ever done that, you learn pretty quick. That is an implicit condemnation of them. And they get it. They get it. They get it. You can be as nice, you can be as sweet as sugar, but if you say, I’m not going that way, it’s not right.

They’re gonna hate you for it. Because you didn’t have to say, you’re this and you’re that, you don’t have to insult them to their face. The fact that you won’t do it is an insult. And there’s nothing in the world, no matter what this soft and tender Christianity that is being peddled today tries to tell you, there’s nothing in the world you can do about it. They’re not gonna like it.

It’s a binary. It’s one or the other. That is, it is the fact that you will not follow the multitude is to them a condemnation of them and a condemnation of the thing that they say is good, but you say is evil. Because from, think about it from their perspective, where they switch the good and evil around. You think about the trans ideology or gay marriage, you know, the examples I brought up earlier.

The worst thing to those people now, the people that are died in the wool in that ideology, the very worst thing someone can do is not believe that. You know that. You can do literally anything. I mean, they’re actually defending child predators and trying to lay the groundwork to allow for people to carry on with children. This is actually a thing. This is how warped the mentality has become.

And they hate you for believing that that’s wrong, worse than those who do those things. I remember when we were doing evangelism, it just so happened in downtown Greenville on a day where they had, it was a gay pride festival in downtown Greenville. You know what I noticed, Ben, I can’t remember who all was there, but what I noticed is everybody was really nice. They really were.

Like I was bothered by how nice everybody was. We were passing out, oh, this is about, oh yeah, yeah, I love Jesus, da, da, da. I mean, these people are dressed in drag, I mean, the whole nine yards. Until I said something about the sin, they were not nice anymore. I mean, they turned like on a dime.

Because from their perspective, good is evil and evil is good, so I’m evil, right? That’s what that means. I’m actually evil because I don’t go with the group. So the question I have for you is this, what might be the cost for the individual addressed in verse two?

If he refuses to follow the multitude, will the multitude look upon him favorably? Certainly not. Certainly, certainly not. So the question is, is this individual then okay with that kind of censure and hatred?

Truth is, he must be okay with it, or else he must disobey the Lord. Those are the only two choices. Modern Christianity wants to ride the fence between the two, it does. It wants to somehow hold to the word of the Lord while also making sure everybody likes them about it, and that’s just not possible. There are only two choices. So in order to obey the Lord in verse two, the individual must pay a cost.

And you know what? Way back in Exodus chapter 23 are the roots of what came to be known later as persecution, because this truth runs all the way through the New Testament, does it not? It does, it runs all the way through the New, are we gonna obey the Lord or the multitude, right?

Let’s pray together.