(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

All right, amen. Well, we're going to talk about the herd mentality this evening, the herd mentality. I got this idea a few years ago. Our church went through the Gospel of John and specifically in chapter eight. We're going to look at the story here in a minute. I had some things written down, so I wanted to put that together and get this off my list to preach. Now the herd mentality, what is that? Well, the herd mentality describes how people can be influenced by the multitude. That's what we're going to talk about this evening. Now you're in Amos chapter number one, and we're going to come back and talk about some stuff about Amos because as we just read the chapter, you'll see that he was a herdsman himself. So this is a subject that he greatly understood. And I believe it's one of the reasons why God chose him to be a prophet and especially to preach the messages that he preached. You want to talk about a hard preacher, about somebody who definitely caused offense and looked no farther than Amos the prophet. Now keep your place right here in Amos chapter number one, but go to Matthew chapter number eight real quick. Matthew chapter number eight. Now I think that this is a very important subject for our time because I think that like in no other time, our culture being media driven, being just consumer driven, whatever you want to call it, is just really starting to intensify. There's a lot of false information that is very prevalent. It's very easy to spread that false information in these days like never before. And so we need to be on the lookout for things like this and be careful about just going with the flow, just going and doing things because other people are doing them. I think it's very dangerous. And I think a good example of that is here in Matthew chapter number eight, when Jesus cast the demons out of these individuals here, let's take a look at this here. So Matthew chapter eight, look at verse number 31. So after Jesus cast these devils out, look at what the Bible says. It says verse 31, So the devils besought him saying, if thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into, and look at that word, herd, into the herd of swine. Now we're gonna read the next verse here in a second, but before we do, I just wanna mention that these things are in the Bible for a reason. This pictures so many different things that we just don't have time to get into this evening, but it definitely pictures what we're talking about, the multitude, okay? Now look at the dangers and look at the picture that the Bible gives us of this herd. Look at verse 32. And he said unto them, go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine. And behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea and perished in the waters. And that is definitely a picture of what we're seeing today in society. Now, obviously, you know, the devil can't create anything. So anything that he does has already been done before. But what I'm saying and what I'm submitting to you this evening is that you're gonna see this intensify as we get closer to the day. So go back to Amos chapter number one. So I think what that picture there could definitely be teaching us there is that the multitudes by and large are almost always wrong. Now let me give you a quick disclaimer, okay? Now I'm not saying this, okay? You're headed to the mall. You know, you wanna go in there and get something and you see 50 people running and screaming out, okay? That's probably a pretty good indication you should maybe heed that, okay? So I'm not talking about the physical multitudes like that, okay? I'm talking mental, okay? That's what we're gonna be talking about this evening. We don't wanna be following the multitudes mentally just because, you know, this is so tempting to do, okay? Because we as humans have this innate desire to want to feel accepted. And when you go against the grain, when you go upstream, there is resistance every single time, okay? There's resistance, it's difficult, it's hard, it's a fight. And you guys coming to this church and just being a part of this fundamental movement know that very well, okay? Things are not easy. The easy route would be to go to the sugar cookie church where everything's just laid out for you and they tell you what you wanna hear, they scratch your back, they tickle your ears, they play games with you, that's easy, okay? But standing up for truth or being a guy like Amos, that's difficult. That is hard to do, but that's what God needs from us. So now that we got that disclaimer out of the way, we're obviously gonna look at some dangers of the herd mentality. We already kinda saw one, okay? We see that the wicked one, what does he do? He's hell-bent on destruction. It's so interesting to me that when Jesus cast these devils out of these guys, that the devils are just like, we've gotta destroy something, okay? What's the closest thing? What's the largest group that we can take over? Well, there's some swine. Let's just go into there and they lead them right off a cliff, okay? And so again, keep that picture in your mind as we're studying these things out here tonight. So that being said, let's look at Amos chapter number one and see what we can glean from this prophet here. I think it's interesting, like I said originally, in the very first verse that Amos tells us that he was among the herd men, okay? You don't always see that with a lot of these prophets. So that's in there to cue you onto something, okay? I think that's in there because God is trying to let us know that this guy here is onto something. He's spent, you know, up until this point of being called into the ministry, so to speak, he's spent time working in the world. He understands the herd mentality. Now obviously he's herding animals, okay, get that? But that's gonna be the perfect guy to actually paint this picture because as you're gonna see, you know, Amos, he preached against everybody. Like you read chapter one, chapter two, he calls out like seven or eight different nations. He's calling out the heathen nations. He's calling out Israel. Like most of the book is about the northern kingdom of Israel, but he calls out his own nation. I mean, he spares no one, okay? He takes the word of God and he literally runs with it, okay? And I think what gave him that courage, now obviously it's God who gave him that courage. I get that, I understand that. Obviously Amos had proper fear, okay? That's definitely something you'll see in this book here. But I think his background is just absolutely perfect for this mission that God gave him. You know, I think it's just absolutely fitting because, you know, as a herdsman, you know, he can tell how easy it is to herd, let's say the sheep, right? He can herd the sheep to dinner or he can herd them to slaughter. And he sees people the same way. And you know what? He's definitely right about that. Let's look at verse number one. So the Bible says this, the words of Amos who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. Now, very interesting cake because Tekoa was probably, if you look on a map, you're gonna see that it's generally depicted south of Jerusalem, okay? So here's a guy who was a herdsman in the southern kingdom of Judah, okay? And he's called to go to the northern kingdom of Israel and vocally preach against their government, against the religious system and against their own people and against their leadership. And he does it without hesitation, okay? Look, that by itself could preach for a week. I mean, that right there is a picture of what God is looking for in his children. People that are willing to go against the grain, people that are willing to look back and say, hey, what are the facts? What information do we know? Okay, and I say this from time to time. You know, anytime you're struggling with trying to figure out something that's unknown, we always move from the known to the unknown, okay? We never wanna just bypass what's known, tuck that away for a little bit and just spend all of our time over here in the unknown. No, we take the facts, we take the information that we're taught and then we make decisions based off of that. We don't cover it in a blanket and say, oh, everybody's going this way, they must be right. There's no way that many people could be wrong, okay? Those are the thoughts that go through our heads. When we see all these people taking a position, it's so tempting to be like, man, there's no way that many people could be that stupid. But guess what? There is a way that that many people could be that stupid. That's usually the case. Now, I bet as you guys are reading this, some people are thinking, oh, Gaza, right? He's talking about Gaza in here. We're not gonna be even, I'm not even gonna bother that tonight, okay? Go over to chapter number four, chapter number four. And I wanna start off here with a quick message that Amos preaches here, okay? To the northern kingdom of Israel. And then we're gonna look at the response to this message. Because remember, Amos the prophet here, he's a herdsman. He understands herds, he understands going against the grain and the value of that. And of course, anytime you do that, like I said, you can expect resistance, you can expect problems, you can expect conflict. Which by the way, we all know can be very tiresome. It can get weary, okay? So how do we overcome that? Well, you're gonna see that here in a little while. So Amos chapter number four, real quickly, we're just gonna look at five verses. Look at verse number one, okay? So remember, he's from the southern kingdom of Judah. God called him, God chose this farmer, this herdsman, said, you're gonna go up north, okay? By yourself, you're just gonna go up there. Here's my word, here's my message, go get him. Without hesitation, this guy goes right up there and does it, okay? He doesn't say he hired bodyguards, doesn't say he went and stored up a bunch of munitions or anything like that. No, he took the word of God, he went up there and faced these people. And look at what he says here, okay? Chapter four, verse one. Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink. Okay, ye kind of Bashan. When you do a study on that word kind, first of all, you're gonna find it paired with cheese in a place or two, butter. And so what does that mean? Well, that means he's talking about, cause kind can be used, if you look it up in the dictionary today, it'll say, well, kind's referred to cattle, it could be male or female. But what he's actually referring to here are the female portions. So that's what you're gonna see in the Bible when you study that word kind, because obviously cheese isn't gonna come from bulls. Okay, in fact, in Psalm chapter number 22, there's a passage, I think it might be, I don't know, verse 12, somewhere around there, okay? Where it talks about the bulls of Bashan. So Bashan was obviously loaded with cattle. So why am I saying this stuff? Well, to get you to understand what Amos is actually telling these people. He's calling them, he's calling these inhabitants, cause look at the first three, first four words, hear this word, ye. He's not preaching to cattle, he's preaching to the people and he's calling them basically cows, well-fed cows, well-fed fat cows, that's what he's saying here. Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink. So what's going on here is that Amos is calling out the fact that these women in the Northern Kingdom of Israel are actually trendsetters. What they're actually doing is setting trends, setting culture and basically hurting the multitudes. And that's what's hurting this nation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Because most of these people, instead of saying, hey, what are the facts? What's the word of God say? Hey, well, what does God think about the religion that we have here, that Jeroboam, the son of Nebat established? What does God think about the fact that our government is yoking up with the world? Instead of doing that, what the men are doing is they're following what these women and this nation are setting. And this isn't a sermon to bash women, okay? You're gonna see this trend throughout the Bible. Typically when a nation is about to be wiped out, the Bible says this in Isaiah chapter three, and this happens to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, women get in power and so do children. Children basically run the parents and the women basically are given the authority. And that's not the way that God designed his program. And so Amos is basically exposing that and he's calling them out for that, okay? Verse two, the Lord God has sworn by his holiness that lo, the day shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks and your posterity with fish hooks. Now I believe this to be a reference to when the Assyrians came in and actually took them out of land. History tells us, and I could definitely see this, that the Assyrians were very brutal, a very brutal nation, that they would come in and they would take people and they would basically chain them together or even put hooks through their skin, put hooks through their mouth and basically road march them to their destination, okay? So definitely very disturbing, but Amos is saying that to these people, okay? Now you already know what the culture's like, okay? Right now at this present time in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they're living fat and happy, okay? They're not seeing necessarily the consequences from God yet for their actions. So therefore they don't believe it, okay? They're like, well, everything's going well. We have prosperity. We've got good weather. We've got all these other nations wanting to work with us. I think things are going pretty good. So you're crazy, Amos. We don't believe what you're saying, okay? That's the mindset of the herd. That's the mindset of the multitude. And you know, you can see this even in your own life, okay? We're guilty of doing this. For example, sometimes we'll be driving down the street here and we'll see like a coffee shop. Be like, man, you know, we've been wanting to try that one out. There's a lot of people in there. And you know, sometimes we'll be driving down another street and see another coffee shop. And you know, that was not very busy all the time. You know, which one do you think we're gonna go to? Well, the one that has the most people, okay? That is a form of the herd mentality. Now, obviously that's silly. Obviously that's just something that's kind of worldly, but that's how deep this can go, okay? So just think about that. It doesn't mean just because most people go to Dutch Brothers that Dutch Brothers is the best. You might find a little mom and pop shop that doesn't have as many people, but their coffee might be way better and taste better and heck, may even be cheaper. I don't know, it's definitely possible. Let's look at verse number three. So verse three says this, and you shall go out. So Amos is saying this, he's continuing his message here. And you shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her, and you shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord. So again, you know, his name calling. See, I don't get what the big deal is. People make fun of, you know, say, oh, you know, you're pretty aggressive calling people names. Is that what the prophets would do? Is that what pastors do, call people names? Look, I got it from this guy right here. I like this, okay? That's my style. I will call people names. There's a time and a place for name calling, okay? And in this type of situation, it's definitely called for. Look at verse four, okay? And now, you know, we talked about sarcasm, Paul's sarcasm on Sunday. Look at his sarcasm. Come to Bethel, okay? Remember Bethel, okay, northern kingdom of Israel. He says, come to Bethel and transgress. At Gilgal, multiply transgression and bring your sacrifices every morning and your tithes after three years and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven and proclaim and publish the free offerings for this liketh you, oh ye children of Israel, sayeth the Lord God. Now again, that definitely depicts America today. You know, America today. I want religion my way. I want politics my way. I want everything the way that I want it, okay? Now, the elite have herd mentality figured out. They really do. This is why they are able to get people in masses to buy, subscribe, and watch things on a large scale. And if they can't, they will find out a way to get that to happen. One of the ways they do this is by paying people that are very famous, well known, to wear certain products, say certain phrases, dress a certain way. That sets a trend. And then the ignorant masses see that and they're just like, well, you know, if they're blessed because they're rich and they're famous, well, I'm gonna go ahead and do the same thing. If they took that needle, well hey, they're still running around. I'm gonna do it too, okay? No, dangerous, okay? Very, very dangerous. Now, before we move on here, this is just my introduction. Go to Amos chapter number seven. I wanna show you the rebuke here that is attempted by a false prophet to the prophet Amos. So look at the attitude that this guy has here. We're gonna look at verse number 10. So obviously Amos up there, he's preaching the word of God. He's preaching the message to these people and it gets to the king's inner circle, so to speak. And there's this guy, he's a priest of Bethel. Now remember, okay, Bethel was the home of the false religion that Jeroboam set up. Remember Jeroboam, the son of Nebat? Instead of allowing people to go to Jerusalem after the kingdom split to actually worship God, what he did is he said, no, I'll go ahead and create a golden calf, put one in Bethel, one in Dan, and that way we don't have to travel, we can just do it. What happened? The herd followed him. They ignored the facts, they ignored the information, and they did what he said. Where did that get them? That got them, their nation taken away from them forever. That's what it got. So Amos preaching, he's tearing it up. Look at the response from the religious government here in Bethel. Look at verse 10. Says this, so after he's preaching these things, it says, then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel. Now this is not Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, this is Jeroboam 2, okay? It says, then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. Okay, you notice the language there, the land is not able to bear all his words. So Amaziah is speaking for everyone in the nation, and he's even saying like, look, the ground, the trees, the shrubs, the insects, the land in general, can't tolerate these words, they're too offensive. We can't have offensive things here, okay? We would just, we have to deal with this. But furthermore, he's conspiring against you. Now is that what Amos is doing? No, absolutely not. What he's doing is he's preaching the word of God. He's trying to help them, he's warning them. He's saying, look, if you don't stop doing what you're doing, guess what? You're done, you're going away, and you're never coming back. So right away, we have the world here lying to God's people, verse 11. For thus, Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land. So you see that there? They don't believe the message, because it goes contrary to the way that they want to flow, verse 12. Also, Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there. Isn't that what people tell us sometimes? Hey, don't knock on our door and bring that stuff here. Keep that for your own church when people come and visit. You don't have to go around here and knock on people's doors. It's very offensive, right? It hurts their feelings. You don't know what people are going through. You shouldn't do this. There has to be a better way. You should just go out there and tell people that Jesus loves them. I had this woman call me a couple of years ago, and this is one of the few times I actually called this person back. And she basically said, like, you know, which you need to do, okay? Like, everything you're doing is wrong. Your whole invite is very wrong. All your stuff is wrong. You need to get a black card with red letters that says Jesus loves you. And you need to go out there and ask permission to stick down on people's doors and just put a phone number under there. And that's how you build your church. Because the church I go to has thousands of people, and I looked, and you don't. I'm like, yeah, we never will because we don't have the herd mentality. We don't follow the herd. We learn the facts, and we stand by the facts, and we go against the grain because that's the way it is. Now, obviously, I didn't say it to her like that. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it's probably not worth repeating anyways. So look at verse number 12 again. Also, Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread and prophesy. Verse 13, the prophecy, not again any more at Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. So the false priest here of Bethel, he doesn't like these words. He doesn't like the Bible. He's not a fundamentalist. He don't want the King James Bible. He doesn't want post-trib pre-wrath. He doesn't want soul winning. He doesn't want no altar calls. He doesn't want no selling in church. He wants the opposite of everything that God wants. But look at the guy who's not willing to follow the herd, the guy who understands how herds work. He gets this mentality because he is a herdsman himself. Look what he says. Then answered Amos and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son, but I was an herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And the Lord took me as I followed the flock. And the Lord said unto me, go prophesy unto my people Israel. Verse 16. Now therefore hear thou the word of the Lord. Thou sayest prophesy not against Israel and drop not thy word against the house of Isaac. Therefore, thus saith the Lord thy wife. Now this is harsh. Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword. And thy land shall be divided by line and thou shall die in a polluted land and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land. So again, just like the picture that we got in Matthew chapter eight, where Jesus cast the devils out of those people and they looked for the herd. They went to the herd of swine and they violently ran that herd off of a cliff and choked and drowned them. It's literally what you're seeing here. It's all throughout the Bible. There's all kinds of stories that we could go to to expose this, okay? But what I want you to do is go to John chapter number eight. In John chapter eight, we're gonna learn a few, just a couple of really important principles to deal and discern the herd mentality. So definitely if you want some hard preaching, you feel like reading some good sermons, look no further than the prophet Amos and you will definitely be edified for a long time. So John chapter number eight, the famous story of the woman caught in adultery. Let's take a look at this here, John chapter eight. Look at verse number one. So the Bible says this, Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives and early in the morning he came again into the temple and all the people came unto him and he sat down and taught them. So here, very good. You know, this would definitely be a multitude that you would want to follow. You're following people that want to learn from the Lord, but you have to understand in this situation, this is definitely the minority in what's left of Israel at this time, okay? So verse three, and the, okay, and pay attention to these next three words, scribes and Pharisees, okay? So what do you have going on here? You have the word of God, you have Christ giving out the word of God, giving out facts, giving out information, giving out truth. That's what you have going on in verse number two. Now, verse three comes the herd, okay? And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they, okay, pay attention to that word, they say unto him, master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. So they make sure and have to state that, okay? They're really trying to get him going here. They're trying to move him. They're trying to trap him in what they have for him. Look at verse five. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? Now, before we move on here, okay, let me just say this. Anytime I read this, I like to just mention some facts about the culture of this time here, okay? This is not necessarily, I mean, it's what's left of Old Testament Israel, but it's not the same. Remember Old Testament Israel, 12 distinct tribes, okay? It was the Lord and then they had their judges. And then further down in history, by the time you get to obviously Samuel, the system of the judges goes out and then it's the Lord, the kings and the priests, okay? Then the kingdom splits, okay? Northern kingdom gets taken away first. And then the Southern kingdom gets taken away. They lose their kingship. They don't have an earthly king anymore. Now they basically get passed on to the next three or four, what is it? Four, yeah, four world empires, okay? And so now they're at the fourth one and Rome is in control of them. So really you went from 12 tribes, a nation of 12 tribes down to just a province, which is referred to as Judah, okay? So they don't have the right to enforce the laws that God once gave them. So it would be illegal for them to just pick up stones and stone this woman, okay? The Romans would not allow it. They wouldn't have it. They know that, okay? They know that, but they also hear what Jesus is teaching and how he's all about the word of God and the Bible in doing miracles and they hate it. They don't like it. So they think, oh, well, we can trap him here because we're oppressed right now. We can't follow the law, but he's teaching the law. So we'll try to sandwich him in between those two things and see what happens and we'll trap him and we'll get him. Okay, so that's where they're at. So verse five, here's the challenge. Now Moses in the law commanded us, okay? There's the information, okay? That's a little clue for you there, okay? They have the facts, they have the information, okay? But keep in mind, these guys are trendsetters. They don't like the fact that Jesus is coming along and preaching against them in their customs and their traditions, okay? But they know, they know some truth. So they say this. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? Okay, what sayest thou? Now you might be thinking, well, what in the world? What's he gonna say next? Well, look at verse number six. This they said, tempting him, that, here it is again, they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. Which by the way is a good technique and a good tactic when you're faced with some sort of herd mentality, you know, silence is golden. Okay, think about it, it's hard to do. It's hard for me to do. It's hard, you know, to just sometimes not respond to people. Okay, it's definitely a struggle, but this is what he does in this situation, okay? So, so far, what have we seen? Well, we've got Jesus teaching the word of God. People are wanting to learn. They want information, they want facts, they want truth. That's what he's providing. Now you have these clowns that are threatened because someone's coming along and going against their system, okay? So they're trying to rally the herd. That's why I keep saying they, they, they. So you have these scribes and Pharisees and them that are with him, okay? And they think that they've got him trapped, okay? Think about this. Where's the guy? They brought the woman. They even told him, hey, caught her in the very act. Where's the guy? Where's the dude? Because does the law say that only women get punished for this? Where's the guy? Where's the man? Because guess what? He deserves the death penalty too. So if you're going to play the game, you ought to play it right, okay? Which is actually embarrassing if you ask me for these people here. They're going to the word of God, trying to condemn somebody and they don't even have their story straight. And what you need to understand is that is how the multitude almost always is. That's how the herd is. That's herd mentality for you. And what I want to say is this, it's probably the biggest point that I'm going to bring up today is that most people don't use their own information to make decisions. Think about it. They came to him and said, well, in the law, Moses commanded that such should be stoned, okay? But they failed. They tripped up. They brought the woman, but they didn't bring the guy, okay? What does that tell you? The herd don't care about the facts. What the herd cares about is whether or not you're going to follow them. That's all they want. You follow us. That's it. That's the biggest thing that you're going to see here. Again, they all know the law. They brought it up to Jesus, okay? But because they're blinded, they're ignorant because they have an agenda, they can't even see the wrong, the biggest mistake that they just made. They left the guy. What do they do? Just, oh, you're, go ahead and get out of here, man. Guys will be guys. Yous will be dudes. Yeah, you're cool. But you, you come here, girl, you know? And we're going to take you and we're going to get you stoned to death, okay? I could just almost see people in this situation looking at this. Well, there's no way that all the scribes and Pharisees and these religious leaders and these priests and these popes could be wrong. They're religious. There's no way they could be wrong, okay? That's what the herd says. And that's how they get people. That's how they add people onto the herd is because people begin to question the multitude. Wow, could this many people be that wrong? And the answer is absolutely yes. In fact, it almost always is. And the big trap here, what you need to understand is the herd will almost always cause you to ignore the facts. I mean, we learned that during the whole COVID thing, didn't we? Hey, that, I mean, think about it. All of the masses have to do, all the elites have to do, the trendsetters, the fat cows of Beijing, if you will, all they have to do is cause fear and get a bunch of people on their side, okay? And that snowball effect basically just picks people up. They just gain momentum. And people start looking and say, wow, man, they got that preacher, they got that pastor, they got that priest, they got that religious person, they got the Hindus on this, they got everybody on this. Right, and you start to question yourself, okay? And so what I want you to do is go to Psalm chapter number 33, but keep your place here. Psalm chapter number 33. Let me show you what we're gonna do about this. I'll show you what we're gonna do about this. So again, the herd will cause you to ignore the facts. It's just crazy to me that none of these people here stop to think like, wait a second here. If we're gonna be successful in this, which they never would have been anyways, we should have brought both parties. Now, some people have speculated because it was one of their own. I mean, you can speculate, we don't know. Doesn't really matter. The point is what's missing and the guy is missing, okay? Which tells us a lot. It tells us the fact that the herd do not care about the facts. That tells you, by the way, that the herd of the media and the driving forces behind them don't care about the facts. Though they seem to report facts, they don't care. Psalm 33, look at verse number 15. Here's some application real quick. Look at this. He fashioneth their hearts alike. He considerth all their works. Okay, verse 16. There is no king saved by the multitude of an host. A mighty man is not delivered by much strength. That's what the Bible says, okay? Now look at verse 17. An horse is a vain thing for safety. Neither shall he deliver any by his great strength. And of course, the Bible is full of stories of nations that had many chariots, many horses, many mighty men, many strong men, but yet God used the minority of his people to defeat those larger, greater nations. And that's essentially what this is trying to tell us here. What this is trying to tell us, you're gonna see here in a second, look at verse 18. Behold, here it is, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy. So how are people delivered? How are we delivered? How do we protect ourselves from the giants of the masses? How do we do that? Verse 19 says to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waited for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. So what I would say is check who and what you fear. Hey, anytime you're questioning, is this group of people, is this, you know, this group of people at work that's about to revolt against the boss or, you know, whatever it is, okay? Something big comes up. You know, what side do I take? Hamas or Israel, you know, what's going on? Okay, how do we make the right decision? Well, we check who and what we fear. And who do we fear? We fear the Lord God, okay? What do we fear? What's written in this book. We fear the word of God. It's a healthy fear. And that healthy fear gives you knowledge and that healthy knowledge turns into wisdom over time. That is how you check yourself. That is the system of checks and balances that God has given us to ensure that we're making the right decision anytime that we're faced with a herd mentality type scenario. Now go back to John chapter number eight. You will get ready to finish this guy up here. So verse number seven. So when they continued asking him, okay? So they're still asking him. They're asking him. He's not responding. He's silent. The Lord's like, I'm not gonna give you an answer to this right now, okay? Verse seven. So when they continued asking him, because that's what the herd will do, okay? Ignore the facts and continue to push. Continue to peer pressure. You know, a lot of us thought that peer pressure would stop when we got to junior high or when we got to high school or when we got to college. If you went to college, which I don't recommend, but you know, guess what? Peer pressure is here for life. For life. There are always people that are going to try to box you in and to get you to follow the path of the herd. It's just the way that it is. If you wanna ever see an example of this, look no further than Facebook, okay? Or some sort of social media. And you will see this in play. You'll see people, you know, maybe saying something or taking somebody's side on something and then somebody a little bit more influential and then they'll take a position and watch all those people just switch, okay? I'm telling you, it happens all the time. All these people gotta do is find the right person to pitch their idea and people will be dropping like flies. Oh, he said it? Well, how? Man, if he said it, he's got a church of 1,000, 10,000, wow, he's gotta be, there's no way he could be wrong, right? Or in today's day and age, no way she could be wrong. It's like she was wrong back in 1 Timothy 3. What are you talking about? Talk about ignoring the facts here, okay? So let's get back on track. So they're trying to get a response, verse seven. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her, okay? What I find so funny here is he doesn't even give them the opportunity to even respond to this. Look what he does next. And again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground, okay? He's like, yeah, sure. Whoever's without sin, go ahead and cast a first stone. He just goes right back to writing. He goes right back to business, okay? Why? Because he knows what they're thinking. He understands what they are trying to do to him. So he's writing on the ground, verse number nine. And this is gonna be very key for you to understand here. Okay, look at this. Because what have they been doing up to this point? Ignoring facts. They want the official narrative to move forward and to pick up as many people to add to the herd as possible. No thought. Didn't even think to bring the guy, okay? Didn't even think to bring him completely showing their ignorance to the word of God. Now, Jesus gives them a huge shot of truth, which I'm sure they weren't expecting. Says, sure, if you're without sin, go ahead and cast that first stone. He goes back to writing because he knows what's gonna happen. So he's giving this time to fester here and to grow. Now look at the response, verse nine. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. Okay, so what changed? How in the world did Jesus get this group here, okay? How did he get them to turn around and do the walk of shame? We did it because he exposed the fact that the difference between the ignorant masses and the informed minority is thinking. That's what it is. It's thinking. That, I mean, it is so simple, okay? It's so simple, but it gets so overlooked. And we often, what we do in these situations when we're faced with, do I join the herd, I'm tempted to, or do I not, is we stop thinking. We suppress the information that we've learned. We suppress the facts. We reason them away. And the next thing you know, we're swept away by that multitude and we're just carried about, okay? We have to rise above that. What Jesus does here is he gets them to think. That's the key. We wanna be like that. We want to get people to think, okay? Because we wanna see people saved. We wanna see people change their mind. We don't know how many of these scribes and Pharisees are actually there. We don't know how many of them are reprobate concerning the faith or of the John chapter 12 sort. We don't know that, okay? Typically in any, in most herds or multitudes, you're gonna have a mixed bag. You're gonna have your people that are just on their way to hell. They're reprobate, they're done for, okay? But you're always gonna have those people that are a little stiff neck, but they're still hanging in the balances. They can still be swayed. And the way that they're gonna get swayed is if you can cause that person or those people to think. That's how you change, okay? And that's the difference. The ignorant masses, they just don't think. They take the information that they gathered, that they've learned, and they just suppress it because they wanna be accepted. They wanna feel like they belong. Whereas God says, I called you to a greater purpose. I've called you to a higher calling, to go against the grain, to swim upstream, to actually stand in the face of the crowd. Why? Because the multitudes, by and large, are typically always wrong. So let's finish this up here. We're almost done. Look at verse 10. When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? Verse 11, she said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. So again, the herd wants you to follow, not think. You gotta remember that. The herd wants you to follow and not think. What we're called to do is we're called to gather facts, information. We get that primarily from the Bible, okay? And that is how we filter things. That is how we make our decisions, okay? We're called to flee the herd. It's partially what this story is telling us. That's definitely what Amos is telling us. That's what the story of David and Goliath was telling us. Hey, you got a whole nation, and we talked about this recently, a whole nation of people just afraid. You got King Saul just hanging out under a pomegranate tree a few, you know, periods of time before that. I forgot the exact timeline. But you know, you got the whole nation of Israel sitting back, okay? Just, oh, this sucks, we're under oppression of the Philistines. And finally, one guy questions things and says, wait a second here. The reality is we serve the God who created the heavens and the earth. He can deliver us. And then David, you know what he does? He recalls his past. And he takes facts and truth from his past and how God had delivered him and says, hey, God's delivered me, you know, this time and this time in my life. Why wouldn't he do that to this nation? And he goes forth and conquers Goliath. Look again, these stories are all over the Bible. We are called to flee the herd. But going back to the story here, just because we're here, I'm gonna mention this, because people will take verse 11 here and they'll say, hey, okay, Jesus said, hey, you know, I don't condemn you, but sin no more, okay? Well, first of all, what is he gonna, supposed to say? Like, just go ahead and go back to your life? I mean, of course he's gonna say that. That's his desire, that she would stop doing that because she's wrecking her life and the life of her husband or future husband, you know, all of these, whatever it is. Obviously she's committing adultery, she's married, but you know, he's like, you're ruining your life, okay? So stop doing that, okay? We get that, we understand that, that's what that means. But what you have to understand here is that what these people did, what the herd did, is they brought, basically, if we could broaden this and just back this up, they brought condemnation to no condemnation because the Bible's very clear, there's no condemnation in Christ, okay? Obviously he had no sin, he's without condemnation. John chapter three tells us that he came not to condemn the world, you know, that the world would be saved through him, that's the idea. And so what I wanna make sure that we all understand here is that if we're in him, then there is no condemnation. And if you look at her language, she says, "'No man, Lord,' and Jesus said unto her, "'neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.'" So obviously I believe she's saved, she's a believer, she's in him, otherwise I believe the conversation would have been different. And so therefore, if we're in him, there's no condemnation in him, we aren't condemned either, okay? So there is that. But again, the big picture here and the big fact is that people, the biggest tendency that I see with people is they tend to ignore the information that they have learned, they ignore the facts, and the moment you do that, you are putting yourself at risk to make the wrong decision and follow the herd. And the herd, like I said, will typically lead you off and over a cliff. So hopefully this helps. Hopefully this is just some basic tips to just kinda help you as you're going through life, making those decisions. You got your family coming at you, you got your neighbors coming at you, you got your coworkers, and the list goes on, okay? God forbid you have Christians coming at you, but it does happen from time to time. And you wanna know how to make the right decision, and you do that by checking who and what you fear, because that is gonna keep the information and the facts fresh in your mind, and you're gonna be able to look and be like, hey, they aren't doing that. They're ignoring the facts. You know, it's just kinda like the whole COVID thing. You know, you got people dropping like flies, right? Taking injections, just power bombing those things, and just people keeling over, just dropping like flies, drop it down. And you got the media, oh, there's a new booster out, you should go get it. Like, ah, I think I'm good, okay? Look at the facts, look at the information that's out there, and just because the masses are doing it, don't let that pressure you. And again, this isn't about that. That's just an easy example to kinda grab, to kinda cement this home. And again, you know, the multitudes, they operate on fear and momentum. That's what they do, fear and momentum. In fact, this is what some people did here. You know, they came up with some lies, they got a little bit of momentum, and people ignored the facts. We're like, oh, yes, I will follow you, okay? And here we are, going good and strong, 11 months later, 10 months later, whatever it was, and you can't beat God. It's kinda hard to kick against the pricks. So, we're gonna stop right there, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Thank you so much, Lord, again, for allowing us to be able to gather here this evening, just thank you for this church. Pray you bless the fellowship after the service, soul in this week, Lord. Bring us safely back this weekend, in Jesus' name I pray, amen.