Come Out of the World Part 2 of 4

I'm going through a series of Come Out of Her, My People. This is Come Out of Her, Part 2, Countercultures of Darkness. Come Out of Her, Part 2, Countercultures of Darkness. Let's review. Let's go back to Revelation, Chapter 18, and verse 4. And it says, And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, unless you receive her plagues. Why is it, have you ever asked yourself this question, why is it when you walk into a natural food store that you seem, what seems to be the mainstream cultural views, some of the oddest people on the planet, brightly colored hair, tattoos covering their bodies, body piercings in these strangest places, and a look of anger or depression?

I'd like to read from an article from Vertical Thought magazine, God, Goths, and Emos, posted on May the 2nd, 2008 by Randy Steiver. A lot of the research I have today came from training at summer camp because we have to dive into this to deal with the teen issues. So this is really a teen and young adult sermon. Why am I giving it to the entire congregation? Why don't I give it to them?

It's important for all of us to know and recognize what is going on. All of us will relate to some portion of this sermon because I'm gonna go all the way back to the 1960s hippie movement, peace out, because that's where our modern counterculture started. And all of us can relate. Those of us with gray hair can relate to the 1960s and 70s. And I'm gonna draw a line starting at the 1960s all the way through to today and show how counterculture started and what it's doing to the youth and why the youth participate in it, which is incredible that we had the sermonette today, which was on the very same topic.

So here's from the article, God, Gods, and Emos. Quote, Does God care who you call your friends? Does he care how you dress or how you cut or dye your hair? And if you paint your face white with black rings around your eyes? And if you get yourself tattooed and pierced all over or if you cut your body? Is God concerned if you feel like you don't fit in or if you experience emotional pain of abuse from the immature craziness of a dysfunctional family? Do you think that God cares one way or the other if you feed your mind with songs of death, depression, and suicide or with horror films and internet games glorifying evil?

Does God care if you immerse yourself in countercultures of darkness? The question is, does God care about you at all? End quote. So today we're going to discuss countercultures of darkness and what they are and why, why our youth, our teens, and our young adults are so sucked in. And if you have gray hair and you remember the 1960s in America or England or France because this hippie movement went around the world, you will be able to relate to this sermon.

There was a PBS documentary called the 1960s, Teenage Rebellion Examined, and they talked about the hippie cultural rebellion. Student activists equal political rebellion. And the hippie movement, or the quote-unquote free love movement, gained its power through an anti-war rebellion. So the hippie movement was intricately joined with a second counterculture movement, the anti-war movement.

Now not everybody who was anti-war was a hippie, and not everybody who was a hippie was anti-war. But the hippie movement gained its power because of the political overturn that was happening in the United States. And the hippies were all about breaking boundaries and testing limits. And that is what you do by nature, by human nature, in your youth.

And there's a quote from Greal Marcus, a former student of Berkeley in 1964, and he's talking about watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show while he was in the common room of his dorm. Normally, when he would go down to his common room, there would be five people arguing about what to watch.

When he went down to catch the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, he wasn't sure whether or not he was going to get to watch it, because somebody else might be watching something else. To his surprise, he found out there were hundreds of people in the room, all there with one common goal, to watch the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. He said, quote, the music was something that we could talk about with your friends, and you couldn't talk about it with people who were older than you.

And that gave people a sense of generational solidarity, a sense that they were different, a sense that the rest of the country, a sense different from the rest of the country, different from any generation in American history, that they were in some way special and blessed, and it gave them a sense of being embattled, of being considered outsiders, reprobates, bad people. The youth rebellion ignited one of the most pervasive cultural shifts in the United States and around the world.

In the hippie movement, appearance was of utmost importance to that generation. They went to great lengths to make sure that their appearance flew in the face of conventional standards. They had to look un-groomed and unwashed. Yes, it was a uniform that they had to wear. They had to look like that they had just rolled around in the dirt.

And it was important to them that they looked that way. Why did they do that?

They had to have bad breath and body odor. Not all of them, but most of them. Because they wanted to fly in the face of traditional culture that to them seemed shallow and surface. Hey, man, you know, you're so far out.

You've got to cut your hair short. You've got to brush your teeth, but you can't get along with anybody. Right? None of that matters. It's all about love and acceptance. And that was the hippie movement.

Their appearance was very important to them. Men had to have long hair, and they couldn't look in place. They had to feel out of place. And by pretending not to care about their appearance, they showed a great underlying insecurity that they actually cared very much what other people thought about them.

The hippie movement was noted by its immoral behavior. They loosened the boundaries that the generation before them stuck closely to. Hippies believed in sex out of wedlock, and that became very commonplace. And the main fear of pregnancy that prevented most people from engaging in that dangerous behavior was removed in the 1960s when the birth control pill was introduced into society. And all of a sudden, there was a free sex revolution going on in America. The use of marijuana not only separated teens and young adults from their parents, it also separated them from their good sense. Author Levine, a former student of Brandeis University, talked about his time growing up in the 60s, and he spoke about his first year in college. So here's this young guy, clean cut. His parents, he describes his parents, dropped him off at college and just left. And now he's standing there in his brand new dorm, and there was all this wild stuff going on around him, and he was in shock. There was music blaring, sexually explicit music he didn't even know about sex yet. Some guy in the hallway was wasted in writing on the table. He was completely high on drugs. At the time, they called it LSD or acid. He was completely high on drugs, and I don't mean he was writing on a piece of paper on the table. He was writing on the table, and he was just over overwhelmed.

And he said, quote, the stimuli out there were so many, and there were so many things to try and do. Every time I tried one, I began to ask myself, who am I? What am I about? And this is key to discovering why our youth dive into the counterculture.

Back into the quote. Ask myself who I am and what I'm about. And I remember going through some severe depression trying to figure out the answer to that question, skipping down in the quote. I remember one day sitting on the beach talking to friends when I realized I understand it all. I comprehend the whole world and its workings. That lasted for several days before I realized you don't understand any of it. The cultural tension became called the generation gap. In a PBS documentary titled The Day the Sixties Died, I learned that the values of this revolution based on the guise that one should be happy, that being happy was a goal in and of itself. Rebellion was packaged and sold as love and happiness. Like when you buy a product in the store based on its packaging. The package says it's the greatest products in sliced bread, but when you get it home and you open the package, it's a completely different scenario. It wasn't what you were expecting. You find out that the product isn't what you expected at all and then you have buyer's remorse. You regret buying the product.

Never buy a product based on its package and don't buy into the counterculture based on its slogans. The catchphrases and social media memes are not what the counterculture is all about. What are the actual ingredients? What is counterculture all about? And what is its end result? In a documentary, the 60s, the years that shaped the generation, they described paying a price.

That counterculture paid a price for its rebellion. At the end of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s, music heroes Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison died young due to the use of illegal drugs. Here, they were writing all of these songs about tripping on acid, which means taking LSD, and songs about free sex. And they died young. The hippie movement raged through the 1960s and it gained its power through the anti-war demonstrations against the Vietnam War. But the anti-war movement came to a dramatic end.

And so the hippie movement faced extinction, and this is where we get into what happened today.

On May 4th, 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a violent student protest, resulting in four students being killed. And that was in Ohio. I believe that was Kent State University? Kent State, yeah. In Ohio. And what had happened the night before this riot had started, and they burnt down an ROTC building on campus. They burned it to the ground. They intentionally threw torches on it until it lit on fire and burned this thing to the ground. And the governor came in all, you know, with all his swagger, and he called in the National Guard. And in retrospect, that may not have been the best action that he could have taken. However, that action did stop the hippie movement. This event stopped the hippie movement. It didn't stop it immediately. It took about one year for it to die out. But this was the beginning of the end of the anti-war movement, and therefore the beginning of the end of the power that drove the hippie movement.

And the hippies didn't die out. They morphed, and we'll get into that in just a second.

So that fall, after the National Guard opened fire the next day and killed four students, the state grand jury indicted 25 students for starting the fight with criminal intent, and they absolved the National Guard of any wrongdoing. And that marked the beginning of the end of the anti-war movement. Students moved on. They got jobs. They started to live normal lives. The anti-war movement drugged on for another year, but eventually fizzled out. And the war didn't end for another three years after that.

The hippie students and the war protesters seemed to be defeated. And in 1972, just to put the last nail in the coffin of the anti-war movement, President Nixon was re-elected as President of the United States by winning 49 of the 50 states. Only the state of Massachusetts voted for McGovern. That was the nation's overwhelming response to the counterculture. Many had hoped that the rebellion of the youth would end, but the counterculture movement lived on. It simply just changed form. Hippies, the epicenter of the hippie culture was in San Francisco at this one particular intersection, Hoyt and something, I don't remember the name of the two streets, but if you said those two streets of that intersection to anybody in the 1960s, they would know you were talking about San Francisco. And the hippies were very urban at the time. But after the anti-war movement died out, the hippies left the cities. Most of them got jobs and became their parents. They did. But they didn't change their counterculture attitude. But they did become their parents. However, some of the hippies went out onto farms and lived off the land and lived organically, man. That's why when we live organically, we call ourselves hippies, even though we're really not. I have short hair, nobody would mistake me for a hippie, and I would not be accepted in any counterculture that I walk into. I was in a counterculture restaurant, just as an aside, yesterday. I needed a bite, and I knew hippies have good food.

So I'm trying to lose weight. I don't want to get something out of a drive-through window. I went to a hippie place, and I had an excellent meal. Let me tell you, I was so out of place. You know, dress slacks, dress shoes, a nice shirt on, clean haircut, my beard is trimmed. You're like, dude, you do not belong here. I might as well add a neon sign flashing above me. This guy does not belong. I mean, you know, anyway. But they did. Some of them moved on to farms.

But most of them moved back into mainstream society. So if Dad owned a hardware store, the son got married and went back and ran the hardware store. But he maintained that spirit of rebellion. Why? Why was that so appealing? Well, part of it's easy to see. Lust. I mean, it was given to your lust. That was the packaging, right? Free everything. Free drugs, which makes you feel good. Free sex, which feels good. And no consideration of the consequence. The death, disease, pain, unwanted pregnancies, broken relationships, all the negative things that come with it, which is why God said not to do it. All of that was ignored.

And it was sold, but there was another major reason why teens and young adults flocked to this counterculture movement. Well, the hippie movement didn't die. It re-emerged as women's rights and the gay rights movement. Psychedelic drug music gave way to punk rock. And in the late 70s and early 80s, punk rock was the child of the hippie movement. From a June article, Vertical Thought magazine, June 2008, titled God, Goths, and Emos, he quotes, the shallowness, unfairness, and downright cruelty of society drive people away. And this is getting to the reason why. Dysfunctional families, meaningless school and work, and mind-numbing entertainment of our modern culture. So subcultures like Goth and Emo arise and offer alternatives to the hated and hateful pop culture. Sometimes they offer, and here's the key, acceptance and tolerance. And that's the main appeal to the youth. They're looking for purpose in their life and acceptance from other people. And it looks like they're rejecting other people, and they're rejecting society, and they're rebelling against everything. When in actuality, what they admit, and eyewitnesses in all of these things that I have researched, eyewitness accounts say, they did it for acceptance. They did it to find out where they belonged. Even the drug use.

Why did they do drugs? Oh, because it makes you feel good. Well, that was one reason.

But that wasn't the main appeal. The main appeal in the 1960s of using LSD and acid was to alter their way of thinking that they might find purpose.

They were looking for purpose, and they looked for it by fulfilling their lusts, which doesn't bring purpose. Reading on in the article, sometimes they're offered freedom and creative expression, and sometimes they're offered nothing but anxiety, anger, and being tired and bored with life. There is no point in making generalizations, he goes on in the article, except one. Like every other culture and counterculture in human history, yes, believe it or not, this isn't new. When you read the history of ancient Israel and you go through the judges specifically, you will see culture, counterculture, culture, counterculture throughout the entire history of ancient Israel. And when they got into counterculture, if you would look at them and look at their behavior, you would call them hippies. You would. It is identical. Reading on. Like every other culture and counterculture in human history, people cannot find what they seek in goth or emo subcultures either. But there is a revolutionary and rarely practiced culture that achieves what no other can. So this world's countercultures proposes that nothing is good. Here's the fundamental proposition and appeal of the counterculture. And this is why it's so appealing. There's nothing good. Your life isn't good. Your family isn't good. Working isn't good. Nothing is good. Health isn't good. Athletics aren't good. Nothing is good. Now, they'll come back in and they'll put parts back in, like the hippies wanted organic food and some people reject athleticism and others get into yoga and athleticism and health and all kinds of spirituality. So they will bring parts of good back into their subculture. But fundamentally, the fundamental belief is nothing is good and therefore you don't have to be good. You are quote unquote free to do anything you want to do. I've got news for you. God said you were free to do anything you want to do. He simply said there's consequences for it. In other words, what goes up must come down. You can throw the egg up in the air if you want to, but eventually it's going to drop and it's going to smash.

And what the subculture preaches is you can throw the egg up in the air. What it forgets to mention is it's going to drop and break.

So the hippies took this nothing is good philosophy and they were all about free love fornication. The drug revolution, LSD and acid trip. Music was called acid rock. Why was it called acid rock? LSD. It was drug music. And they had the spirit of rebellion. In other words, on occasion they sang about peace, but most of the time they were raging against the man, which was authority.

The anti-war movement was the fact that the philosophy that human nature is basically good, so why are we fighting each other?

There were some good things in the hippie movement. They did want peace. They had no idea how to get peace, but they did want peace. They wanted equality. And that's not a bad thing. They had no idea how to gain equality, but they did want it. And they were into feminism, which is actually not equality, it's competition, and the occult. Big, big time into anti-God. Let's dive into paganism. And interestingly enough, as we will see in just a moment as this morphed from punk rock into goth, and then goth into emo, which I'll explain in just a minute if you don't know what goth and emo are, but interestingly enough, the same occult that they use today is almost identical to the occult that they've used in the past, including ancient Israel. It's the same exact type of gods or type of deities or types of things they worshiped, and it's the same way that they worship them with free sex and drugs. And that was the appeal of idolatry, was you go up on a high hill and you have a big sex party or a big drug party. And yes, they had drugs back in ancient Israel.

In fact, the word witchcraft comes from the word that today we get the word pharmacy from, because it was intricately connected with drug use.

So the hippie movement morphed into the punk rock movement, and you remember those people in the 80s, right? Leather jackets with spikes and the mohawk hair, right? I had friends like that in high school. I had an interesting experience in high school. I was the head photographer for the yearbook, which meant I had to go everywhere and photograph every aspect of student life.

So the geeks, the nerds, the intellectuals, those people who were on the school council, the president, I knew them all by name. I would walk down the hall, hey, Rod, how's it going? Oh, good. Yep. I was never really popular, but everybody knew me. It was ironic. I knew all the athletes, right? Basketball, gymnastics, track, baseball, football. Hey, Rod, how's it going? Yeah, I'm here to shoot the game. Oh, cool. Make sure you get this one pass I do. Yeah, okay, okay.

I knew all the—back then, the counterculture, we didn't call them hippies, and we didn't call them punk rockers, we called them potheads. I knew all the potheads. I knew all of them, and they knew me by name. Hey, Rod, how's it going, dude? Oh, good. How you doing? Because I captured student life, and it's the average normal people. And I got to see all of the different cultures, and I gained valuable insight that, just like me, they wanted to be accepted, no matter where they were, no matter what culture they dived into. If they were in the chess club, they all had a uniform. They all dressed alike. They all buttoned all the way up to the top, you know. They all combed their hair neatly. They all talked the same way. If they were athletes, they all had the same swagger.

They were all part of the same team. They dressed the same way. They talked the same way. If they were potheads, they were all introverted and depressed, and they all had to have shabby hair. But when you talk to them, hey, they were really nice to you, they just wanted acceptance. And so did I. I thought, oh wow, we want to be accepted by people.

Well, all of that, in the 1980s, morphed into the Gothic movement.

And they want to counter success and athleticism. The Gothic movement embraces sadness, darkness, and pain. They dress in black with contrasting white skin makeup. Sometimes they'll put black rings around their eyes. And this is men and women, by the way. Even the guys in the Gothic movement would wear white makeup on their faces, just to look like they were the walking dead. That's exactly why they did that. Like the hippie movement, sex was anything goes, and sexual orientation became vague. And that was very popular in the Gothic movement. Now they started breaking down the barriers of sexual orientation. So it didn't matter which way you go, it didn't matter what team you were on. The uniform had to be one of anger and rebellion, but they all had to dress alike. Drugs and cigarettes and anything that altered your mood was their choice. And the Bohemian lifestyle. In other words, the intellectual, art-oriented view is what they had. And the Gothic movement lives on emotion. Literature is dark and obsessed with pain and death. Literature is dark and obsessed with pain and death. Punk Rock is still the music of choice in the goth movement. They love vampires and horror movies.

Why are the young people drawn into that? Because they want to fit in a crowd somewhere.

They feel like they don't fit, they're looking for who they are, and they find somebody that will accept them for what they believe is who they are.

Why are they attracted, like the hippie movement before them? They're just looking for purpose, a sense of propriety. They have no sense of morals, no sense of God, so they attach themselves to some subculture. Brethren, our young people have a purpose, which is the reason I'm giving this sermon, is that we help them see their purpose, that we help them see their acceptance, and that their acceptance is not dependent upon you and me. They have to see beyond that, and that's a huge step, but one that they are capable of making. The goth movement, they were excessively vain, and this is where they depart from emo. Now, emo comes out of goth, but in goth, they are vain. When they go on the dance floor, they want a mirror. They want to watch themselves in the mirror. They'll check their makeup, you know, every two hours to make sure they still look dead. They never smile, they always brood, and they blow everything way out of proportion, and this is at the heart of the goth movement. They are overdramatic, but they're very passive-aggressive. In other words, they won't jump out in your face. You'd look at them and think, wow, that's a scary dude, I'm going to avoid them. They're actually not the kind of people that in general, their culture is not an attacking culture. They'll go out and key your car.

They won't do it in front of your face. They'll do it behind your back. They're passive-aggressive. They're overdramatic. You do something to them, they'll go brood about it, and they'll think about how to get you back. That's goth. They focus on death and depression. In fact, the one emotion that represents goth the best is depression. You would think it's anger, because they are very passive-aggressive and they are angry. But actually feeling low is the feeling that makes them come together as one. Yeah, I'm so bummed. Yeah, me too. Hey, you want to hang out? Yeah. Let's hang out and be bummed together. And here's the progression. And music is music. Satan uses music to drive a lot of this. So here's how it progressed into emo. The punk rock music represented rebellion, rage, rage, rage against society. Industrial rock was then the next, if you will, evolution in the counterculture. And industrial rock represented anger. And this is according to the training from Randy Steiber that I received when training for summer camp. The goth movement then became, believe it or not, sadness or depression. And then that moved into emotive punk rock, which were these extreme sounds focusing on pain and death. And emotive is where we get the term emo. It means emotion. All right? And emotive, or emotive rock, which was this really extreme sound, morphed its way into emotive pop. And I've heard emotive pop music. It actually sounds good. You listen to the music, it's got a catchy, almost dance beat to it, and it's got a nice melody. And most people who grew up from the 60s on, who grew up with rock music, would actually enjoy emotive pop until you listen to the words or watch the music videos. And then you're repulsed if you're a Christian because they focus on suicide, there's caskets and being tied up by people and drowning and chopping people's heads off in blood. And it's all this emotive pop music. So the emo movement then grew or was born out of the goth movement. Interestingly enough, emo rose and died and then was had a rebirth. So it rose up in the late 80s and then it died in the 90s. And then it had a rebirth in the 2000s because of social media. It was the very first subculture that was actually born online.

So what is emo? How do you recognize emo? And when you see a teen, how do you know if a teen is goth or emo? How do you know if one of our own is suffering, trying to gain acceptance, and they're choosing a culture, a counterculture of darkness? How would you recognize that?

Right? If they're all walking around depressed and sad and they dress down, that's goth. Here's emo. Death, pain, and sadness. Emo is more about death and pain than it is about depression. Emo goes farther than actually goth goes in a way.

But goth is also about death, pain, and sadness. And you know what? Let me just back up a little bit. There's actually a scripture in Ephesians that describes the goth movement. And it describes the emo movement as well because emo takes goth a little bit further. But in Ephesians 2, verses 2 and 3, it describes the goth movement. Ephesians 2, verses 2 and 3. This is amazing. This is close to the hippie movement, too. They're very similar. Which tells you that this was going on way back in the first century. This goth hippie movement is not new. And God addresses it here through the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 2 and verse 2. In which you once walked in the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. So the don't tell me what to do crowd, the rebellion crowd, and what did they do? Among whom, verse 3, also we once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind. And that describes all of the countercultures that I've been talking about today, hippie, goth, and emo, and the punk rock movement. Among whom also you conducted ourselves according to the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. And what is the result of fulfilling all of your lusts? Anger, sadness, pain, wrath. This is goth. This is emo. Overblown emotions, very dramatic, and into wicca, which is simply a rebirth of the Celtic paganism, which is what ancient Israel was into throughout its entire history. It simply morphed and changed names throughout time. Unlike the hippie movement, which got its power from the anti-war movement, goth is actually non-political, and they're into political correctness, but they don't really support any worldview. They don't have a worldview. Pretty much music is their worldview.

And then the emo movement, emotive rock or emotive punk rock. They tend to look like those people that don't fit into the main crowd, and some of our youth are vulnerable to this. So it started in the 80s, it died in the 90s, and then it was reborn in the 2000s. And from Wikipedia, it says, emo has been associated with the stereotype that includes being particularly emotional, sensitive, misanthropic. Misanthropic means the dislike or distrust of human beings or human nature. It's a general distrust of people. That's emo. They're shy, introverted. They have angst, or they're angst-ridden. It also has been associated with stereotypes like depression, self-harm, and suicide. So suicide is the big theme in emo. Whereas it's just depression in goth, it's not just depression in emo. It's actually a obsession with suicide. Here's what they look like. They're stereotyped with, and you have seen this, tight jeans, long bangs swept to one side, or straight bangs, and they look sort of like a Vulcan or a Romulan in Star Trek. Right? You've seen those. They have the boys, they wear button-down shirts, but they're really, really tight. It's not like just a nice shirt, you know? It's got to be tight on the body. The girls wear super, super tight clothing. Depression and self-injury and cutting on the body. They tend to wear long sleeves and long pants, even in hot weather, because they're covering the marks that they have cut into their skin. They're preoccupied with pain and suicide, and they're preoccupied with pain and suicide, and many of them in the culture have multiple suicide plans. They actually think about it so much that they think about different ways they're going to do it.

Why emo? Like all other countercultures before it, the youth are involved in looking for a purpose.

They have no worldview other than to share my pain and suffering. They desire to be accepted, and so they pretty much live for music. Their heroes are rock stars, YouTubers. Those are the people they look up to. They don't have to have accomplished anything to be a hero. They simply had to make a great video, and then they will watch that person over and over and over again. That's their hero, because they're looking for purpose, meaning, and they think that rebellion is the way they're going to get it. They also, like goth, have very ambiguous sexual orientation, and like goth, emotion rules. They have an extreme focus on themselves, and they use feeling over logic. Logic is repulsive. Emotion is everything. Pain and rejection are their values, and their poetry and art is that of suicide.

They actually, a lot of people, jump into emo because they're hurting, and they're looking for a refuge. Believe it or not, they jump into a counterculture of darkness, this counterculture of pain to escape pain. How ironic. Some actually come from fine families. Some come from either a background of physical abuse, verbal abuse, constant verbal abuse, or sexual abuse. However, some come from what we would consider a normal family, but they're not connected to each other. They look normal, but they don't feel like they belong.

And I'll just step out for a moment from the sermon and just mention, if you notice that in your children, and you don't do anything about it, what happens to them is on their head, but it is also on your head. However, all you have to do is, confidentially and quietly, come talk to me, and if not me, one of the elders. But I've got to warn you, they will eventually talk to me. Because we're not against you, we're actually on your side. We're not looking to get you, we're actually looking to help you. So if you don't feel like you can approach me, that's okay. Approach Mr. Isaac, or approach Mr. Thompson, or approach me, but talk about it. Bring it up. Bring it out in the open and deal with it, and don't let it go this far.

So why do they do this? They're looking for solace from pain, and they're trying to find a purpose in life. And it will surprise you that they will come out of a seemingly great family, but they feel disconnected. You've got to connect with your children.

So in the remainder of the sermon, get your pens ready, I am going to book through some scriptures. First of all, talking to the kids about dropping into a counterculture, and the young adults. And I know you're not kids, and I did not mean to insult you. The point here is, rebellion has a price. Yeah, you can throw that egg up, but the egg is going to drop. And God, out of love and respect for you, gives several warnings in the Bible about jumping into a counterculture of rebellion. And rebellion simply means raging against or resisting authority.

First Samuel chapter 15 and verse 23, for rebellion is as the sin of divination or witchcraft. Interestingly enough, divination and witchcraft involve drug use, and most rebellious countercultures involve drug use. So this scripture is right on the mark. Rebellion is the sin of divination.

And presumption, in other words, presuming your own authority, is as the iniquity of idolatry. And interestingly enough, idolatry is the counterculture of drug parties and sex parties.

Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, which is the solution to the counterculture, is the word of the Lord, he has rejected you from being king. Samuel was talking to King Saul at that point. Let's go to Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 11 from the New Living Translation. Proverbs 17 verse 11, evil people who are eager for rebellion, but they will be severely punished. Not only at the end, when God decides who's in the kingdom and who's not in the kingdom, will there be a punishment, there is severe punishment along the way.

Rebellion doesn't pay. Rebellion has serious consequences. Romans chapter 13 and verse 1. Romans 13 and verse 1, everyone must submit to governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. Now, this sermon is not about authority. This sermon is about counterculture and how there's a consequence for diving into a counterculture of rebellion just to get acceptance. All right? It's not just acceptance that you will receive. It's also severe consequence, which I'm pleading with you to avoid. So Mr. Thompson gave a series on authority. This is about avoiding pain, avoiding the negative consequences that come with rejecting authority.

Everyone must submit to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And those that exist are instituted by God. It doesn't mean that people don't abuse authority. They do. It simply means that ultimately, authority comes from God, and it's a good thing. It's a protecting thing, like a hedge. You go to Africa, you're going to want to hedge around your camp at night. You know why? Because the lions can't get through that hedge. You don't have a hedge. Lions will be nibbling on your toes. That's what authority is like. It's like a hedge. It's a protection. So then, reading on, the one who resists authority is opposing God's command, and those who oppose it, it will bring judgment on themselves, both today and natural consequences, and in the future when you face God. 1 Samuel 12. 1 Samuel 12. Another warning by Samuel. 1 Samuel 12, verse 14.

1 Samuel 12, 14. Now if you fear and worship the Lord and listen to His voice, and if you do not rebel against the Lord's commands, what's the ultimate authority, God? What's the ultimate authority you should listen to? God's commands. Then both you and your king will show that you recognize the Lord as your God. But if you rebel against the Lord's commands and refuse to listen to Him, in other words, if you jump into a counterculture, then His hand will be heavy upon you as it was upon your ancestors. Hosea 8, verse 7.

Young people listen to this. Older people lovingly, kindly, gently remind young people of this. Tell them your stories if you are so willing and so brave. Because a lot of young people don't realize that the refined older people that you see in the audience today were not so refined prior to joining the house of God. But they have a past. And they might even share that past with you in small bits without glorifying it. Hint, hint. We tend to talk about the past as the glory days, even though we're talking about some sinful mistake that we make. Don't do that. Face it honestly.

Hosea 8, verse 7. I love this analogy. They sow the wind. They reap the whirlwind.

The analogy of farming or gardening, sowing something. You take one kernel of corn and you put it in the fertile ground and you cultivate that. You water it and you weed around it and you let it grow. It will yield more than just one kernel of corn. It will have multiple ears of corn on it with hundreds of kernels of corn. It will yield back to you. You put one kernel of corn in. You get hundreds back in return. The consequence is greater than what you sowed.

Do you get the analogy? When you sow the wind, you're going to reap a tornado. You do a little bit of rebellion. You get a lot of consequence.

And a lot of it cannot be undone, which is the purpose of this sermon today. So be smart and avoid the danger. There is a better counterculture. Did you know that God's way is a counterculture? You want to belong to something that flies into the face of mainstream society? Join the church.

It was known as a counterculture back in the first century when the Apostle Paul was going from town to town and he was getting thrown out of towns and he was stoned and he was beaten and left for dead and he would show up in another town. They had already heard about him because he was starting a counterculture. And in Acts 17 and verse 6, they describe this counterculture, this revolution, the revolution of God. And in Acts 17 and verse 6, the Jews said this about Paul, but then they did not find him and they dragged Jason and some of the brethren and rulers of the city out crying, those who have turned the world upside down have come here too. You better believe they turned the world upside down. The problem that those townspeople didn't realize is the world was already upside down. This counterculture of God is turning it back right side up. But it is a counterculture. It's not a counterculture of darkness. It is a counterculture of light. But it is counter. And if you ever wanted to be part of a rebellion, a revolution, it's not a rebellion when God owns it, but it is a revolution. It is an overturning. You are in the right place. God's counterculture is based on people who worship Him as though He's telling the truth. Not a culture. It's not just a good culture, young people. It is THE good culture. We do judge. We are intolerant. Not of people, but of things that hurt people. Things that lead them to destruction. We believe in truth, not tolerance at all costs. Because that's simply a guise to say, there is no consequence to whatever you want to do. And there is. If you sow the wind, you reap a tornado.

A counterculture is a subculture or group within a culture that goes against the current mainstream culture. The church is a counterculture. The difference is we're not into death and pain.

Imagine that. Do you want to solve us from pain? Do you want to find a place where you belong, where you will not have pain? Eventually, join the church.

The world's cultures have become counter to God's cultures since the Garden of Eden.

And in John 4, verse 24, it says, God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. John 1, verses 4 through 9. God's culture is a counterculture of light.

John 1, verses 4 through 9. And I believe this is a quote or reference to Isaiah. In Him was life. Now, in whom? John 1 is about the Logos, which became Jesus Christ.

The Logos. In Him was life. And the life was the light of men, not the darkness, not the pain, not the suffering, not the angst, not the anger, not the feelings of suicide, but the light. And it shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Doesn't make sense.

It just seems intolerant and judgmental when it's anything but.

You want acceptance. You want to find where you're loved, where you're wanted, where someone actually wants you there. Then you need to find God. Because He wants you there. He is the one who gave you purpose. You have a choice to make. You, the individual.

Where do you choose to belong? See, God's really neat, God. He's really cool. He doesn't force you. He gives you choice. That is the ultimate respect. An all-powerful, all-knowing creator creates you and doesn't make you a programmed robot, but instead respects you as a child and says, you make a choice, whether or not you want to be with me or not. And then it's not just respect, it's also love. And He tells you to choose life, which means He wants you. He accepts you.

And back into John 1, verse 5, the darkness did not comprehend it. It was that there was a man sent from God, and his name was John. Now, John is not the light. John is pointing people to the light. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all through him might believe. And he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which gives light to every man coming into the world. God's culture is based on truth, not emotion. It's a culture of light and life, not pain and death. So how do you find acceptance and purpose? Let's go through some scriptures that show you that God wants you. He doesn't just love you as some kind of religious concept, but he actually wants you. John 1, verse 12. John 1, verse 12, yet all who did receive him to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. He wants you. Ephesians 1 and verse 5. Ephesians 1 and verse 5. I love this one. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will. Do you know what that word predestined means? It means planned out.

It means he worked hard on his plans. Plans for what? Plans for you. He didn't just go, oh, I think I want kids today. Poof! There's my kids. He planned it out. He put effort into you. That's how much he accepts you. Talk about purpose. Talk about acceptance. You have a father who is actually making plans for you. And then in Romans 15 and verse 7, Romans 15 and verse 7, talks about acceptance. And it says, and we're supposed to do this, and we don't always do this well, but God does it perfectly, accept one another.

Then just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God, are you accepted? You may not feel accepted. You may not feel accepted in your family, but you are accepted right here in the revolutionary counterculture of light. 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 17. 1 Corinthians 6, 17. But whoever is united with the Lord, whoever joins the counterculture of light, whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Your way of thinking is his way of thinking, and his way of thinking is your way of thinking. And just like the hippie movement and the goth movement and the emo movement, where they all come together and they all brood together and they all think the same way, God's counterculture is that way. We all get to think the same way. Which way is that? It is the way of truly accepting other people. Accepting the fact that other people can even make mistakes and hurt us, and we still love them. And that's something that the hippie movement, the goth movement, and the emo movement cannot do. They preach it, but then they avoid everybody who's different from them. They rage against the people who are mainstream culture. But in God's counterculture of light, we don't think that way. We can see the intellectuals and relate to them, and we can see the athletics and relate to them, and we can see the potheads and relate to them, and love them. Because we think like God. That's an awesome counterculture. And 1 Peter, lastly, 1 Peter, chapter 2 and verse 9. But you are a chosen people. Do you know what that means? It means you have a purpose. A royal priesthood. A holy nation. God's special possession. That you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. How special are you to God?

Young and old alike, we need to remember this. When you feel like you're out of place, when you feel like you don't belong, when you feel like rebelling, like raging against the machine, if you will, and just doing whatever comes to mind, remember how special you are. My parents thought it was a really big deal to give us names. They worked hard on naming us. It was a big deal. They named my first brother, we were three boys, David Bryce Foster. And they told me why they named him this. It was important to them. They put effort, they put thought into it, like God predestined us. He pre-planned us. They pre-planned our names. And David means dearly beloved. They were so overjoyed when they had him. He was their dearly beloved. And the word Bryce meant son of a nobleman. In other words, the child of God. The dearly beloved child of God. That's quite a name.

He was important to them, and that's the point.

And then my other brother came along, the middle brother, Richard. His name was Richard Michael.

And his first name, Richard, means strong ruler who is like God. And interestingly enough, the word Michael isn't a statement, it's a question. Who is like God? In other words, his life was to be strong in leading people to see that there is no one like God. What a name! They put effort into that.

And then they came to my name.

You're gonna laugh. And it's Roderick, almost embarrassed to say it, Vern.

When I was growing up in the 80s, there was this guy named, what was his name? Warrell? Something?

Howdy Vern. Hey Vern. He started out doing TV commercial spots. And corporations around the country would hire this guy. The guy was more famous than the product he sold. And he wore a ball cap. How many of you remember that guy? Ernest P. Warrell. That was him. Ernest P. Warrell. Yeah. And Ernest P. Warrell would come out and say, Howdy Vern. And my middle name is Vern. I couldn't believe it.

And everybody would call me Vern. What does the V stand for? None of your business. Then the guy became this movie star, and they started making major motion pictures around the name Vern. I mean, are you kidding me? Oh well.

But actually, when my parents made it, Ernest P. Warrell wasn't around, and the name had a pretty good meaning. So Roderick meant famous leader. In other words, a leader of good reputation. And Vern meant green or alive or full of life.

So a leader with a good reputation who's full of life.

And it was important to them to name us.

How much more are you important to God? Because God is so much higher of a thinker than my parents. He puts so much more thought into you than they put into my name or my brother's names.

How much does God accept you? How special are you? How much effort does God go through to save you?

Well, in John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that it gave his only begotten son, whoever believes in him, should not perish but have everlasting life. I would say that makes you pretty special. But that's not all that God did. Do you know that God has planned a special name just for you? It is your name! And in Isaiah 62, verse 2, turn there and read it with me. Isaiah 62, verse 2, the nations will see your righteousness. Now this is at the end. This is when you've gone through this life and you've made the right choice. You joined the counterculture of light. And it says the nations will see your righteousness and all kings your glory and you will be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will designate. Wow!

Wow! He has thought about you so much. He accepts you so much. You are so special to him that he has a name reserved for you that you don't even know yet.

So we're going through this series, Come Out of Her, My People. In Revelation chapter 18, and verse 4, I remind you it says, and I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and you receive her plagues. In other words, when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. You don't just reap the wind, but it increases and comes back on you hundreds of times over. You want to join a revolution? God's got a revolution. Don't just join the latest fad and culture. There'll be another one after emo. There will.

Join the counterculture, God's counterculture of light. Come out of the world and truly find your purpose and truly become accepted.