HEAR ME OUT | Silent Generation | Ben Anderson

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Redeemer.

If we haven't had a chance to meet before, my name is Ben Anderson, and I'm one of the pastors here, and it's so great to spend a little time with you this morning.

Hey, before we jump into our sermon today, there's a special group of people that I want to say a special welcome to, and that's our first-time guests.

If you are joining us for the first time, we are so glad that you took the risk and joined us.

I don't know what brought you here.

Maybe someone invited you, gave you one of our September Fest cards, maybe you went on our website, maybe you drove past and thought there's some cars there.

Let's see what's going on.

Whatever it is, I am so glad you're here.

And I want you to know this.

If this is your first time or your first time in a while, you have picked the absolute perfect weekend to be here.

Because whether you know it or not, it's September Fest here at Redeemer.

We celebrate the fact that summer has come to a close, and that was great, but now fall is here.

We have cooler weather, school's back in session, and all the parents say Amen.

And and Vikings are starting, right?

Like, so like we have football season starting, college pros, all that.

And so it's just a great time to be alive.

We want to celebrate that for you guys, for our community.

We want to be a blessing to every single person who steps foot on our property today.

And so after service, head outside.

You are gonna have all sorts of things.

The list is so long, I can't share it all, but here's some highlights for me: free coffee, free food, free petting zoo, there's a car show.

The list goes on and on and on, right?

So it's gonna be absolutely amazing.

And here's one of the best parts about it for me is the Vikings don't play until three.

Which means we aren't gonna miss anything.

Now you might be wondering, Ben, where's your jersey?

It's in my office.

I wasn't bold enough to wear it during a sermon.

I do have my Viking socks on though.

So that's as far as I felt like I could take it without getting too many emails.

But it is a very, very special day.

In fact, as you sat down, we want to make this day just a little bit more special.

In in your seat, there is this little tiny card which asks for your name, phone number, email address.

That's not to spam you, that's actually to give you something.

A few weeks ago, we had somebody walk into our office and say, I have two free tickets to a Timberwolves game.

We thought instead of just keeping them for the staff, we would give them away to one lucky person.

So today, someone who joins us for service is going to walk away with a set of Timberwolves tickets for the upcoming season to check out the new look Timberwolves.

Now, that is very exciting, but here's what makes it even better.

I checked where the tickets were.

These are not crummy tickets.

These are not where my family normally sits at the very top where you can hardly see the players.

This is lower deck tickets.

And so bring your bride, right?

Bring your boyfriend or girlfriend, bring your kid, whatever it is.

In fact, maybe you're thinking, I don't have anyone.

Take those tickets, use it as a catalyst to meet somebody.

I do weddings, it's gonna be a whole thing, right?

It's gonna be absolutely perfect.

And so sign up as you walk out, drop it in the box.

We would love to bless uh one of you with that today.

But here's another reason I think that today is going to be absolutely great is we're starting a new series called Hear Me Out.

And this is a series built on conversations that I wish we had more of.

And that's the conversation between generations.

Because this is what's true of every single one of us.

We all do this.

We gather with people who are like us.

We gather with people who look like us, sound like us, think like us, have the same life experiences as us, and oftentimes who are those people.

It's the people within our generation.

And when those things happen, I think we really miss out.

In fact, sometimes we we get in groups of our generations and we kind of make fun of the people in the other generations.

Sometimes we complain about people in the other generations.

That we might get in a group of people and we complain about the silent generation.

I mean, they just got they won't move forward with technology.

They still have checkbooks.

I mean, they they still have landlines, I mean, they're just kind of stuck.

In fact, last night I was kind of working through my sermon, and my daughter was in my office with me, and I was saying those words, and she says, What are those things?

Like, she didn't have any context for landlines or checkbooks.

I'm like, well, the checkbook is the thing that I use once a year when you play trouble basketball and I write a check because that's what they still accept.

Right?

Or maybe it's not the silent generation, maybe it's the baby boomers.

Right?

We've all had this happen.

We've had a baby boomer print out an email and hand it a paper copy to us before.

And we're like, you know, you could have just like clicked forward and it's email, okay.

Anyways.

Right.

Then we have Gen X.

Gen X is famous for going home.

There's no parents there, the latch key kids.

They rode bicycles without helmets.

I mean, they're just a tough, tough generation.

That's why they don't need counseling.

I mean, they have lived through the tough times.

They are a sturdy butch.

And then we have the millennials, which is my group, and we are definitely worth some mocking from time to time.

We do things like this.

We go online and we post something called adulting, which is just doing everyday common grown-up chores, but we make it a big deal, like taking out the trash, driving our kids to the sporting event.

I mean, we're really special like that.

Let's not forget Gen Z, right?

You're you're not alone.

Everyone's getting picked on today, so just hang with me.

Don't worry, I love you all.

Gen Z, right?

They're Gen X, they're raised by Gen X parents who didn't want counseling, and now Gen Z all they want is counseling for every single thing.

Especially if someone has the audacity to call them on their phone instead of texting them, right?

That's a very serious issue.

But here's the thing.

Hopefully you guys are all hearing that in fun.

We we love the generations within our church.

In fact, we are a multi-generational church.

But here's the thing: despite that, sometimes we still fall into this trap.

We hang out with people only like us.

We talk around each other, we talk past each other, and I think when that happens, we really miss out, especially when it happens within the church.

Because what do we believe as Christians?

We believe that every follower of Christ has the Holy Spirit living in them.

And hopefully every follower of Christ has the Holy Spirit speaking through them.

Which means the same Holy Spirit that lives in the silent generation lives in Gen Z, Beta, Alpha, and all the rest.

Every generation has the Holy Spirit living in them and speaking through them, which means if we're only talking to ourselves, we are missing out on what the Holy Spirit wants to say to us.

So today, uh, we are gonna start this journey where we are gonna travel from the silent generation all the way to the youngest generations within our church.

Study that generation, look at that generation, see what the Holy Spirit has done in that generation connected to Scripture, and hopefully every single one of us can use it in our lives.

So, like I said, today we're gonna look at the silent generation.

Now, if you're wondering what that is, let me give you a little backstory on that.

You are in the silent generation if you were born from 1928 to 1945, which means if my math is correct, you are somewhere between the range of 81 years old and 98 years old.

That would put you in the silent generation.

And I have to say this, as I was studying this generation, you guys have endured a lot in your lifetime, especially your younger years.

You battled through the Great Depression as children.

You watch your parents, you watched maybe some siblings, you watched maybe an uncle go off to fight in World War II.

I mean, you went through some incredibly chaotic times.

Financial chaos, global chaos.

And when someone experiences a lot of chaos in their life, what do they want?

The answer is they want stability, they want peace, they want calm, they want things to just stay the same.

And that's why Time magazine titled This Generation, The Silent Generation.

Because oftentimes they didn't speak up or speak out because what were they hoping for in life?

They just wanted calm.

They wanted peace.

And I think we all get that because if every one of us in this room, if we all went through that exact exact same experience, the Great Depression, World War II, all that instability, what would we all crave?

We would crave stability.

We would crave peace.

So today we are going to look at the silent generation, and we're gonna talk about this uh idea of steadfastness or being steady.

Because when I think about the silent generation, when I interact with you who are in the silent generation, this is what I think of.

These are some of the most steady people that I know.

And this is a silent generation thing.

But it's not just a silent generation thing, it is a God thing.

In fact, we're gonna look at the book of James and see just that in James 1.

So if you have your Bibles, you can follow along.

Otherwise, you can look up on the screens.

This is how it begins.

It says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this is the author, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.

Greetings.

So as we step into the book of James, we encounter the writer, which is James, and early tradition and most modern scholars will say, This is James, the half-brother of Jesus.

If you're not catching that, same mother, different dad, not God the father, Joseph.

All right, now we're all tracking.

All right, so this is Jesus' brother.

Now, if you are a skeptic in the room, and you've always wondered, like, is Christianity real?

Or maybe you're sitting on the fence?

I think James and his story is incredibly profound and helpful to me when I battle against my own skepticism from time to time.

Because what would it take for you to believe that your brother is the Messiah?

I mean, what would it take for you to believe your sibling is the son of God?

The answer is a lot, right?

A lot.

And when we first encounter James in the Bible, this is who James is.

He is a skeptic.

He is a critic.

He thinks his brother is kind of off the reservation, right?

He is struggling.

This is who James sees Jesus as.

But then something happens and everything changes.

See what happens is his brother that he grew up with predicted his own death and resurrection and pulled it off.

And James encountered the risen Christ.

And when you experience that, you believe whatever they have to say.

James became a leader in the church.

He actually became a martyr for the church, dying because he believed that his brother was the Son of God.

But as powerful as that is, that's not the main point of what James is about to say.

See, where James takes us next is these words.

He's talking about who he's writing it to, the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.

Now, this is kind of a fancy word, but it's the word dispersion.

And this is something that uh happened to the Jewish people from time to time, where they would have these invading armies come in into Israel and Judah, and they would overwhelm them and they'd have to run for the hills to try to hide and protect themselves.

And so James is speaking to people who had experienced this type of chaos in their life.

In fact, some people never made it back to their homeland.

They were living all around the world, and this is who James is writing to, and this is what he's referring to.

But it's actually further than that.

You see, he's writing to the first century church, and so what he's alluding to is the fact that there's persecution that's breaking out against Christians at this point in time.

So Christians, just because they believe in Christ in this Roman Empire at the time, they are experiencing this tension.

They are experiencing this chaos, and they are running.

They were living in a reality that's incredibly unstable.

A reality that probably anyone in this room is from the silent generation says, I get that.

I get what it feels like to be unstable.

And this is where James goes next as he talks into this conversation.

In verse 2, he says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

You see, when you experience life, when you go through life, especially as you get older, you learn this if you reflect on life, that you grow the most, not when life is easy, but when life is hard.

And you learn the most from failure, not success.

And this is what James is pointing at, right?

He says, it's the trials or the testing of our faith that produces something in us.

Specifically, he says, perseverance, or if you have an ESV translation with you and you're looking at that, it's actually the word steadfastness, which I actually prefer, but the reason NIV doesn't use that is because that's not a word we use in our normal conversation, do me.

Do we?

I don't I don't know the last time I've used that word outside of today because I have to for a sermon, right?

I'm not using that in my everyday vernacular, but it's a great word.

It means to be steady or stable.

In other words, when we go through the trials of life, when we do those things well, we become more stable.

And the people from the silent generation are some of the most stable people that I know.

But they're also the people who've gone through the most adversity that I know.

I mean, think about this.

They went through the Great Depression.

The closest thing that I've experienced in my life is in 1998, Gary Anderson missed a field goal after not missing a field goal for the entire season, and we didn't go to the Super Bowl as the Minnesota Vikings.

That was depressing to me.

Or we have the horrors of World War II that they lived through.

The closest thing that I get to in my life is when I do a two-day shipping on Amazon and it shows up on day three or four.

Like that's pretty horrible.

I mean, they experienced something completely different.

But this is what we learn from them, and this is what we learn from James is that stability is built through adversity.

This is why James says these words consider it pure joy.

What he's doing here is he's he's changing our perspective that when life is hard, God is actually using it for our benefit to make us more steady.

In fact, this means that the longer that you live, the more stable you should be.

In fact, if you have kids or if you're around younger people on occasion, you get this.

Because sometimes if you're an older person looking down the generations, you're kind of wondering, why are they reacting so heavily to something that doesn't feel like that big a deal?

It's because they don't have the same life experience as you.

My four-year-old daughter, routinely, we have this dance that we do at breakfast where if she wants cereal, I'll get the cereal out, I'll get the milk out because she's not strong enough to hold it, and I'll pour a little bit in, and she's like, that's not enough.

So I'll put in a little bit more.

And then it's too much.

And then she freaks out.

I mean, it's just, and in my mind, I'm thinking, what are we talking about here?

This is not a big deal.

Calm down, just dump some out, or at what whatever we need to do.

And I've reflected on that.

Why does she get so worked up about things that I know that she should know are not important?

And the answer is at this point in time in her life, that's the most traumatic thing that she's experienced.

Because she's four and her experience is limited.

But for many of us, what have we experienced?

We've experienced death.

We've experienced divorce.

We've experienced debt.

And it changes how we see the world.

It changes how we navigate the world.

For many of us, we have been attested, and as a result, we have more stability in our life because of it.

Well, James isn't done, so we're gonna move on to verse five.

He goes on to say, if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

Here's a way to remember that this morning is that stability grows with wisdom.

The more wisdom that you have, the more stable you are.

In fact, right now, you're probably thinking of somebody in your life that's incredibly stable or incredibly wise.

And isn't it true that the people in your life that are the wisest, you look at them and you're like, that person is just a person of wisdom.

They have the most stability in their life.

Their marriages are stable, most of the time their finances are stable because they are using that wisdom to create stability in their life.

In fact, right now, like I said, you probably have someone in your mind, and if you took them out to eat and you said, How are you so wise?

This is what they would tell you.

Well, I wasn't born with it.

I I learned it along the way.

And that's what James points to here.

What does he say?

When you want wisdom, what should you do?

You should pray for it and ask God for it.

Now, God provides it in different ways.

For some people, it's a supernatural moment, and maybe you've had these before.

You step into a difficult situation, you're like, I have no idea what to say.

They need some comfort, I have no idea what to do.

I have no idea how to navigate this.

But all of a sudden you start speaking, and you're like, what is this?

God's wisdom is just coming out of you.

Sometimes it's a supernatural thing.

But most of the time, it's not supernatural.

Most of the time it looks at something like this.

You pray for wisdom in a specific area.

God, I need more patience.

And He gives you an opportunity to test your patience.

That's kind of how that works.

And you learn through experience, and hopefully you pass the test and you move forward.

But here's a better way for some of you younger people in the room.

In fact, this there's probably no age limit, we should all be doing this.

Is continue to have conversations with people.

Because there's somebody in your life who's older than you who's gone through something that you haven't gone through yet.

And if you can learn from them, guess what?

You don't have to learn it yourself.

Learn about how to navigate those situations and gain from their experience, their failures, their wins.

And take that and internalize it into your life.

And when you do that, that will bring that stability that wisdom creates in your life.

Let's keep going.

On to verse six.

James continues, says, but when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.

That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Once again, James gives us this uh really clear word picture, like a wave, just back and forth and back and forth.

I mean, there's no stability in the water, there's no stability in the patterns, right?

It's just random chaos in the water.

And it's this point that he's making, is this idea of being double-minded.

That there's two things at play here.

There's godly wisdom, and then there's earthly wisdom.

And this is something that we're gonna wrestle with throughout our lives.

Do we do it God's way or do we do it our way?

Do we do it God's way or do we do it the way that I just saw on the latest TikTok reel?

And uh, I probably said that wrong, so if you want to make fun of me, that's fine.

Right?

I don't have I don't I don't know much about TikTok besides its videos.

But anyways.

Right?

Some influencer taught me like it's whatever the latest trend is, and we're pulled between these two, and this happens all the time, doesn't it?

Like, think about our finances.

The Bible says, be a cheerful giver.

But let's be honest, most of the time I want to be a cheerful spender.

Because I think if I can just get that thing that's on my wish list, if I can just buy that, if I can just upgrade my house, then I'll be satisfied.

It's godly wisdom and earthly wisdom at battle.

How about this?

Success.

God, I know that what you think of me matters more than the people in this world think of me.

I know your opinion matters more than them.

But God would be really nice if they thought I was great.

Gotta be really nice if my boss would give me the promotion.

Godly wisdom, earthly wisdom.

How about in marriage?

God, I know you've been told me to be faithful to my spouse.

But that person seems far more interesting.

That person is far more loving to me at this point in time.

And we wrestle with these two godly wisdom and earthly wisdom.

But here's what's true stability comes from conviction.

Stability comes from doing it God's way and staying in that way even when it doesn't make sense.

You know, one of the most stable relationships that I have in my life is my marriage.

And it's not because I am a world-class husband, believe me, I am not a world-class husband.

It's not because I found my soulmate.

Like somehow, in the billions of people on the planet, I just happened to run into this person at the right time, say the right words, and everything just magically happened, and I am the minuscule part of the population that maybe found their soulmate, that's not the case.

The reason this is the most stable relationship that I have is because we stood in front of friends and family and we made vows.

We made vows in front of them, but we made vows to each other.

But most importantly, this is the key part, is we made a vow to God that we're going to trust you in the good and in the bad, for richer, for poor, in sickness and health, right?

All the instability of life, God, we are going to hold on to this promise that this marriage is a gift.

It's your idea, it's not my idea.

You gave it to us, and that you can do something good through it.

And even when life is hard, we're going to keep moving forward.

We're going to trust you that you can restore, you can repair, and you can reignite this relationship time and time and time again.

We are going to trust you even when it doesn't make sense.

We hold on to our convictions.

Here's where James goes next.

In verse 9, it says, Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position, but the rich should take pride in their humiliation, since they will pass away like a wildflower.

For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant, it blossoms, its blossoms fall, and its beauty is destroyed.

In the same way the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Once again, James sets up another contrast for us.

Instead of godly wisdom and earthly wisdom, this time it's heavenly riches and earthly riches and the battle between.

Now, what I'm not saying is there's not a place for physical responsibility and wisdom.

Of course there is.

In fact, the Bible is filled with thoughts on how to use your money well.

And if you follow those principles, you will have great stability, at least as much stability as you can control in this life.

I mean, if you work hard and you spend within your means, you will have financial security.

If you save for the future and for emergencies, you will have financial security.

If you make a budget and live within it, you will have financial security.

As much as is offered in this life, but here's the problem.

Oftentimes what happens is we take money and maybe that effort, that hard work, and we take that financial stability as much as it can be in this life, and we make it our primary stability.

And this is a problem.

Because there's no amount of money that you can have that will protect you from a health reality.

There's no amount of money that you can have that will protect you from a relational breakdown.

In fact, oftentimes what I've seen is the more money you have, the more you're wondering if people are being disingenuous to you.

Because they want access not to you, but to what you have.

There's no amount of money that can save your eternity.

Because stability is not found in the things of this life.

Stability is found in God.

You see, your relationship with God is the only thing in this life that can begin now and continue throughout all of eternity.

Not your house, not your health, not your happiness.

Every single thing that you can think of will go away.

But it's God who remains the same, and it's God who gives you that stability.

Here's where James brings the whole concept together in verse 13.

He says, When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.

But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.

Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when is full grown, gives birth to death.

Don't be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

He chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

What James points out here is something really interesting is that God tests and Satan tempts.

There's a difference there because there's a difference in their purposes.

God tests because he wants you to pass the test, and when you pass the test, what do you get?

You get more stability.

But Satan tempts.

What's his goal?

He wants to tempt you, destroy your life.

Because when he wins, there is a lack of stability, there is instability.

But here's the challenge.

We don't know when we're going to be tested, we don't know when we're tempted.

We don't know if there's a hybrid between those two ideas.

But this is what we know is that when we pass the temptation, when we pass the test, when we trust in God, guess what happens?

When we hold on to Him, time and time again, we become a more stable, stable people.

This past week, I'm sure you're probably like me.

At least for a moment, you're reflecting on September 11th, 25 years ago.

25 years ago, I was in college.

I remember that day.

Some of you guys are too young to remember that day.

You know, us older people will tell you stories about it.

But I remember the news broke, and I was in college, and every every person went to the student union.

We were all watching the TV, watching the videos of the towers falling, all these things were happening.

And I gotta be honest, it's the first time in my life that I just felt like there's no stability here.

What is gonna happen?

We were getting emails from the professor saying you have to come to class, and we're like, we don't care about class, we're like, we're worried about this.

I remember going to the gas station, some of you remember this, like the lines were all the way down to the interstate.

Gas was like$12 a gallon.

And I just thought, like, what is going to happen?

It felt so unstable.

But the truth is this, every single one of us, we are gonna have a moment like that.

It might not be 9-11, it might not be a war, might be a phone call from a doctor, might be divorce papers that are slid across the table.

It might be some conversation that you never thought was gonna happen, and all of a sudden it's brought up into your life, and you're like, it just feels like your world is rocked.

But this is the beauty of what James is saying.

In a very unstable world, what do we get to hold on to?

We have a stable God who will never, ever, ever change.

And here's the beauty of this when we hold on to God, what becomes of us?

We become stable people.

We become a gift to the people around us.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much.

We thank you for the silent generation, Lord.

We thank you for the people who have taught us so much, whether they were grandparents or parents or siblings or friends, Lord.

Uh but we also think that they reflect something that is true of you.

That you are a stable God.

And so, Lord, I don't know what everyone brought into this room today, but it might feel like their world is falling apart.

And Lord, if it is, I pray that today they grab onto you.

They hold on to you.

I pray that they have a friend who is securely in Christ, that they can hold on to them.

Because Lord, that's what we should do.

We should care for each other, and we should reflect you to our world.

So, Lord, thank you for being you.

Thank you for being stable.

Thank you for being the one that we can rely on in the darkest of times.

Praise all in Christ's mighty name.

Amen.