Verse Ref.:
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment.
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For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
Full Text of
Followers
There is nothing particularly heroic in going with the crowd — is there? If in the street one finds masses of people moving in a certain direction, it is quite easy to move with them, just as a stick floats down the river, carried along by the eddying current. What tests our courage is battling against the tide. It’s the live fish that travel up the river; the dead fish float downstream.
Some time ago a shepherd was slowly driving a flock of sheep along a country road. Just as they reached a bridge which spanned a river, running in a rocky ravine, something alarmed the whole flock. For a moment the sheep stood still in a state of panic; then one sheep took a big jump, cleared the railing and disappeared. In a flash another followed, and another, and another. The shepherd did all he could to stop them, but it was too late. Each sheep seemed to suddenly have the idea that it must be a right thing to do since everybody was doing it. Only a very few were restrained, and in a matter of seconds the rocks below were covered with dead and dying sheep.
Do you follow the religious fashions? At present it is very popular to ignore the gospel and live as though you had no soul to be lost or saved forever, no sins to account for, no eternity to spend. There is not much virtue in being a mere follower of a popular fashion. There is a great deal of vice in following a bad one. There is a commandment, often either unknown or ignored, which says, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil” (Exodus 23:2). The biggest of crowds can’t make the wrong thing right.
If you ignore your soul and its needs — you are wrong. If you shut God out of your life, if you treat Christ as a mere historic Person of no particular interest to you — you are wrong. If you just live for your own pleasures, ignoring what God says about sin — you are wrong. And it’s no valid excuse to say, “Oh! but everybody’s doing it.”
Further, let me tell you this: NOT everybody is doing it. There is no case for which it can be said, “Everybody is doing it.” Always there are exceptions. In this matter there are, thank God, a great many exceptions. The gospel of Christ is being widely preached, and thousands are believing it.
Many are choosing Christ today. Where will YOU spend eternity? To say that people nowadays are not concerned about such matters is no answer to the question. You will still have to spend eternity somewhere. When you die, you will not be like animals that die, and because that’s so, Christ has died for you.
“There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus; who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5‑6). Seek the Mediator for yourself. There is one God against whom you have sinned. There is one Mediator who died for you. May you be a sinner who gets his sins forgiven by trusting in Christ as your own personal Saviour — right now.