The "Social Winds" of Deception
a sermon by David Horvath,
Sept. 17, 2016
https://www.ucg.org/sermons/the-social-winds-of-deception

As I get older (and I am not old, by any means), but I will be turning 50 in a matter of months, with kids.  I have got children that are millenials.  These things often cross my mind, and certainly this political season kind of makes me think about certain things.  There is no doubt that the youth are the future of the world around us, and of course within God's church.  Demographers of course, like labels.  The word, "millenials," generally refers to the age group 18-35.   I've got 3 children, my wife and I, in that age group. So, personally, what is kind of interest to me in this subject.  And that group represents 24% of the population of the United States.  Basically, the same size demographically as the baby-boomers, which are of course moving into retirement and obviously, just life-expectancy ... obviously, that group will eventually go away, and be replaced by the decision-makers, the politics, the business leaders, and so forth, of the millenial group.  

If you would, turn to 2 Corinthians 6:14. I'd like to read this passage.  As it relates to all of us, not just millenials, we can see it's obviously applicable to every man, woman and child on earth, and certainly us as Christians.  (Quotes 2 Cor 6:14-18.)

"Therefore, come out from among them and be separate."  It's not often a line that we like to hear.  We don't like to think that we're better, and we're not better, but there is a separation that should take place.  It's not just the (what do I call it?), the common sins, the typical sins.  Often with look at things and we say, well, stealing or lust or lying, adultery, pride, anger, greed, profanity, drunkenness:  these are sins of course; I need to separate myself from within the world.  

It certainly goes beyond that, to thoughts, ideology, the processes, how people think.  It's not just those typical sins.  We have to be careful more so how we're tainted in the way we think, the way we view things, the systems that we live in:  education, health care, government:  all these things can have an effect, but seem soft to us.  They don't seem pressing as a sin, but we can be conditioned.  

Which would be more dangerous to you?  A roaring lion, or a crippling breeze or wind?  Personally, I would rather have to defend myself from a lion that I could see.  I could prepare myself, I could defend myself.  But something that may be constant, subtle, but dangerous, a poisonous gas that sort of just builds in the wind ... carbon monoxide, you won't even know it -- it would kill you.  A lion, at least you would see it.  You would understand your enemy.  And that's how oftentimes thoughts around us can be.  We can be ... I can think of millineals in an education system that is dominated a liberal thought process.  We can prove it statistically:  It's there.  So they're bombarded by certain things, and that is what we are going to talk about today.

Recently, (my family and I) went to Ventura, California, where Cassidy and Simon are living; beautiful place!  I can't say too much nice about it because I will be in trouble with my wife. She wants me to say nothing but bad things about Ventura, even though the weather is perfect, (laughter) ... okay, enough.  But, she wants me to always say, "It's a terrible place!  Don't encourage her!"  But we went to the mountains right there (Ventura backs up right to the mountains and the ocean).  And we went up there to a park that is just a bluff overlooking Ventura.  And all the trees were leaning one direction.  From the trunk, all the branches, everything was leaning one direction.  Of course, that direction was inland because the wind, the constant wind that had been blowing for centuries, millenia there, has made them grow that way.  None of those trees naturally grow like this.  They all want to be upright, strong, straight, but they're all leaning in a certain direction.  And that's how the society around us can have an effect on us.  It's that soft, blowing wind, that soft beat of the drum, that never goes away.  

And you become accustomed to it.  The world around us has these social pressures, these social "winds," if you will, that are constant, well-packaged, deceptions that we're subject to -- each one of us.  But the fight for that millenial generation, the youth, is even greater.  Why?  'Cause the rest of us are going to die off.  It's hard to take and transform things quickly.  Like that tree -- if a heavy, strong wind came, it would just snap and break it -- no value to that.  But if you keep a constant, ongoing pressure on it, you'll get what you want as a society.  And Satan knows that.  

And so the most commonly used thing that never stops is that wind.