HEAR ME OUT | Baby Boomers | 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 I move on, before I forget, if you are a first-time guest with us this morning, I'm so glad you're here.

And I hope you have a great experience.

But if this is your first time or your first time in a while, I have to tell you, you missed out last week.

Last week was September Fest, which is this big party that we throw for our church, for our community, for anyone that you invite as we move out of summer and move into fall.

And so it was a great time.

We had uh petting zoo, car show, free food, list goes on and on and on and on.

But but one thing we did that was unique this year is we gave away free Timberwolves tickets because someone gave us some free tickets and we wanted to bless somebody with them.

And so I've had a number of you ask, well, who won the tickets?

Well, the answer is Lily Strunk.

Now, if right now you're thinking, who?

Uh don't worry, I'll fill you in.

Uh Lily is the fiance of Tristan who was just on the announcement video.

Now they're getting married in October, which means this is probably the best wedding gift that they will get, right?

That's pretty great.

So couldn't have gone to a better couple, and so congratulations to Lily and ultimately Tristan.

So very, very, very cool.

But as great as last week was, I believe that this week can be even, even better as we enter back into this new sermon series, as we connect with one another.

In fact, after every one of our services, that's what I'm hoping.

We have free donuts and coffee, and that's just a time set aside so you can get to know each other, maybe get to know somebody from a different generation, maybe get to know somebody who's new to get to know their name and their story.

Now, right now you're thinking, what are we gonna talk about?

If if I don't know somebody, what are we gonna talk about?

Well, it is fall.

Talk about the Vikings, right?

Do they like the Vikings?

Do they hate the Vikings?

Maybe you'll run into somebody who's a Packers fan.

And if you do that, and when you do that, just put your hand on their shoulder and say, there's always next year.

It's gonna be okay.

Well, today we are going to jump back into our latest sermon series, Hear Me Out.

And I believe this is a series I think anyone can enjoy.

It doesn't matter where you are on your faith journey, it doesn't matter where you are on your life journey, whether you consider yourself old or young.

This is really something for everyone.

And this is the idea of this series is we want to have conversations throughout the generations.

We want to learn from each other.

Because oftentimes, isn't it true that we hang out with people who are just like us?

They look like us, they sound like us, they have the same life experiences as us.

And oftentimes, when that is the case, we end up with people of our generation.

And then we miss out.

Because there's so much to learn from each other.

And that's especially true within the church, because what do we believe within the church?

That if you are a follower of Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living in you.

And hopefully you have the Holy Spirit speaking through you.

Which means you can be the youngest among us, and the Holy Spirit can speak through you.

You can be the oldest among us and the Holy Spirit can speak through you.

And I'm sure that's been true in your life, it's been true of my life.

Because time and time again, the Holy Spirit has spoken to me through different generations.

Through my grandpa who was from the greatest generation, through my parents who were baby boomers, through my brothers who are in the Gen X category, or just my peers, my friends, my other millennials, or from my coworkers, who many of them are Gen X.

I learned a lot from them.

I even learned from my kids who fit into the category that maybe you've never heard of before, which is Gen Alpha.

I mean, my son, my daughters, they teach me stuff all the time because that same Holy Spirit that lives in them speaks through them.

And man, we miss out if we don't connect with each other.

And so that's what we've been doing.

We've been looking at the generations throughout the series.

We've been asking ourselves this question: is what is like the pinnacle thing, that one lesson that we can take from each generation and then see where it aligns with scriptural truth and really find the heart of God in those things.

So last week we started with the silent generation.

If you missed that, go online, watch, or you know, check that out.

It was definitely worth your time.

But today we're going to move on to the baby boomers.

So, baby boomers, are you ready?

If so, say okay.

I know that was a grown-worthy joke.

In the first service, they all said okay.

Now, afterwards, once they got it, I think they were kind of irritated with me, but that's fine.

I deserve it.

But let's talk about the baby boomers.

I love the baby boomers.

You were born between 1946 and 1964, which means if my math is correct and you are in the room and you are a baby boomer, you were somewhere between the ages of 62 years old to 80 years old.

So, baby boomers.

Thank you for being here today.

But this is how you got your name.

After the greatest generation and the silent generation battled through the world wars and the Great Depression, they wanted stability, they wanted calm, they wanted to settle down, and that's exactly what they did.

They settled down, they got married, and they had a bunch of kids, and that is you.

To the tune of 76 million babies were born during that stretch in America.

Unbelievable.

Now, for generations that wanted stability and not chaos, I don't know if adding 76 million babies into the mix uh produces less chaos, but we are glad that you're here.

But as those kids got older, when they were kids, when they were teens, when they are young adults, here's some of the things that they experienced.

They lived through the assassination of JFK, Beatlemania, the Jesus Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Moon Landing, and of course, Woodstock.

The baby boomers were raised to respect traditions.

When they were young adults, they pushed against them, they challenged those traditions, and in the end, they became the gatekeepers of traditions.

And I think this is true of every generation.

Isn't this true?

We push against what our parents are teaching, and then ultimately, as we get older, we look a little bit like our parents because we see how wise they actually were along the way.

I call this the boomering effect.

I think it happens to every single one of us.

But here was what the typical boomer experience was, right?

Not for every boomer, but for most boomers, they really got to experience the American dream.

This idea of get an education, get a job, meet someone special, get married, buy a house, have kids, work hard, and then retire with some money in the bank.

This is and was a hardworking generation.

And I can tell you that because my dad was a boomer.

All my first bosses, boomers.

Right?

You are a hardworking group of people.

You're a hardworking generation.

So today we're going to explore this idea of being diligent or being hard workers and how that connects with scriptural truth, no matter the economic realities, and no matter the payoff that we might receive.

And so I'm going to bring you to one of Christ's most famous stories.

It's in Matthew 25.

If you have your Bibles, you can open them up.

Otherwise, the words will be on the screen.

But we're going to start in verse 14, and this is what he says.

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey.

He called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them.

To one he gave five bags of gold, to another, two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability.

Then he went on his journey.

Now, like I said, as we step into Matthew here, we're stepping into one of Christ's most famous parables.

And Jesus was always teaching with parables.

In fact, in Mark 4, it says he never taught without using a story.

Now, why did he do that?

Well, the answer is actually a few reasons.

One is he wanted to reveal truth.

He wanted to take complicated things, especially about the spiritual life or the kingdom of God, and make them more digestible for people.

But also, this is also true, he wanted to conceal truth.

And this is what I mean.

He kept them somewhat complicated.

He kept them somewhat challenging because he wanted people to do the work.

He wanted people to wrestle with this.

He wanted people to talk with their friends and their family and figure these things out.

And the other reason he used stories is he wanted them to be memorable.

Because this is true in your life.

When you hear a story, it's just easier.

It sticks with you, it rattles around your brain.

And he wanted these truths to rattle around in people's brains, to wrestle with them, to figure it out, and hopefully use it in their life.

And so that's what we're gonna do today.

We are gonna wrestle with this passage of scripture, and hopefully it's going to reveal truth to us.

Hopefully we're gonna remember it, and hopefully we are going to live it out.

So let's unpack this.

We got some main characters here that we need to talk about.

We have the man, and we know that he is rich based on how much he is handing out.

So we have a rich man.

Now, of course, this is a metaphor.

Who's the rich man?

It's Jesus.

Jesus is the king.

And then we have the servants.

Well, who are the servants?

Well, that's me, that's you, that's everyone who has a heart beating in their chest, everyone who's lived on planet earth, we are the servants.

And in contrast to the rich man, what is true about us?

We really have nothing except that which has been given to us.

Our life, our talents, our treasure, personality, all these types of things ultimately come from the rich man, which is God or Jesus Christ.

Now, most of us, if you grew up in church, everything I just told you over the last couple minutes, none of this is new information.

Especially if you are boomers, because boomers, you're raised by the silent generation and the greatest generation, and they told you every Sunday, where are you gonna go?

You're gonna go to church and you're gonna go to Sunday school, and you're gonna sit in this room, and they were gonna hold up, hold up, open up what was probably a King James Bible at the time, and they were gonna use that technology where they put pictures of people on the blue stuff, which is called the flannel graph, right?

All my boomers know that.

In fact, I even know that because I had baby boomer Sunday school teachers who were still using it when I showed up.

But they would teach you these stories.

But today, I want to take you beyond maybe what you remember by actually syncing our minds with what a first century person would have heard as they heard this story from Jesus Christ, because it's a lot different than how we might hear it as a 21st century mind.

So, what's the things that they might catch that we don't?

Well, first of all, when they would hear the word servant in the first century, they would actually think of what we would say as a slave.

Somebody who has no personal autonomy or freedom whatsoever.

And in the end, no matter how hard they work, guess what they're not getting?

They don't get a paycheck.

Right?

They are enslaved.

You work hard.

That's your only option, and there's really no benefit from it for you personally when it comes to your checkbook.

But also when they would hear the story, not only would they see that, they would know that these weren't just common everyday slaves, these were high-ranking slaves.

Now, why do we know that?

Because they're not doing manual labor.

Instead, they're being handed a lot of money.

How much money?

Well, if we translate this into our modern day, think of each bag of gold being about a million dollars.

So one gets five million to work with, one gets two million to work with, one gets one million to work with.

This is not the type of money that you just hand to everyday people.

You hand this to the elite.

But don't miss this.

Who's this story about?

Well, Jesus is the rich man, and you and me, and every person who's walked on the face of the earth, we are the servants.

Which means what?

It means that in the eyes of God, you are valuable and you are elite.

Now you might be thinking, but you don't know.

You don't know me.

I mean, I'm not the CEO, I'm not even in the middle of the management, I'm like the guy who does all the grunt work that no one pays attention to.

You're still elite in the eyes of God.

But but I'm a man, I I sit on the last spot on the bench, I don't even know why I'm on the team, the coach doesn't even look at me or talk to me.

You are elite.

If you saw my report card from this last semester, this last quarter, I mean it's all C's, or just trending to be all C's.

You are elite.

Or maybe you might think, well, I'm single, but all my friends are married.

You are elite.

You are valuable in the eyes of God.

And why would God call you elite?

And how do I know that he sees you as valuable?

Because you're sitting here in front of me.

Because you're watching online.

If God has put you on this planet, you are valuable to him, and he wants to do something with your life.

Because your life is God's investment into you.

Everything that you are and everything that you have is God's investment that he made into you.

The question that I want to wrestle with today is are you maximizing your investment?

If Christ came back today, what would he find?

When he looked at your life, what would he see?

Would he see somebody who just wastes hours of their day maybe watching TV or scrolling on their phone instead of doing something that matters?

Maybe helping their spouse or engaging with their kids.

They've just kind of checked out.

Would he find somebody who maybe is cheating their way through that college course or that high school course?

So using the brain that God has given you or the creativity that He's invested into you, you're just like doing the easy stuff.

Like, I'll just send it into AI and just let's see what produces and see what happens.

Maybe I'll get in trouble.

I don't really care.

I just want to have fun.

I want to do something else.

Maybe you're a quiet quitter.

I mean, you have that job, but you don't respect your boss, and you feel like I don't get paid as much as I probably should, so I'm just gonna exist.

I'll take the paycheck and I'll do just enough not to get fired.

Or maybe you're a workaholic.

Life for you has always been about work, chasing that buck, getting that paycheck, moving up the ranks, and you work long hours every day.

You never miss, and all of a sudden the rest of your stuff, the rest of your life is falling to pieces.

Your wife wants to leave if she hasn't already, your kids don't talk to you because they feel like you don't care about them.

How have you managed what God has given you?

You see, your life is important, and how you use your life matters because God cares about how you use your life.

Okay, let's keep going on to verse 16.

This is what it says.

Now here we see our first servant.

What do we notice?

This person produces 100% profit, turns five into ten, and of course, this is amazing.

How does he do it?

We don't really know.

Maybe it's creativity, maybe it has some skill or ability, or gets a stock tip, or maybe it's just probably a lot, a lot, a lot of effort and hard work.

But here's some things that I don't want you to miss as you think about this, and maybe you've never caught these before.

Remember, these are slaves.

Which means as this person puts forth this work and doubles this money, there is no benefit to him.

It's not like he's gonna get a raise or a promotion.

He doesn't even get a paycheck.

I mean, there's no profit-sharing scenario here.

So what's driving him?

Maybe it's he's just a self-motivated person.

Maybe he he does want to impress his master.

Maybe thinks beyond the shadow of a doubt, if I if I do this really well, then maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe this never happens, but maybe it has set me free.

Well, as we get to the heart of the matter, we actually can use scripture to interpret scripture.

I want to take you to what Paul wrote in Colossians.

Paul said this: whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters.

Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.

It is the Lord Christ that you are serving.

You see, in the end, our purest motivation, no matter what we're doing, whatever effort that we're putting forward, is to please God.

Because in the end, you have an earthly boss, you have an earthly teacher, you have an earthly coach, that's fine.

But we're really trying to impress.

We're really trying to work for our heavenly boss, our heavenly coach, our heavenly teacher, our heavenly parent.

Right?

In the end, what we do in this life is for Christ.

You see, your effort is God's return.

When Christ told this story, it was incredibly rare for you to shift a social class.

Right?

If you were born a certain social class, it was just that was pretty much your lot in life and your kids, that was their lot in life.

That was that was the norm.

They didn't understand what we'd call the American dream.

This idea that if I work hard enough, if I produce a product, if I get creative, if I find this special little niche that people want to be a part of, that I can move up the classes.

I can go from poor to middle class to upper middle class, right, into the ultra-rich status that they would not have any concept for this whatsoever.

Now, why do I say this?

Why is this important?

It's because in our in our modern day, we tie hard work to outcomes and outcomes to hard work.

This is what I mean.

We tend to think if I work hard, then I'll get promoted.

If I work hard, I'll get the bonus.

If I work hard, I'll get the raise, and so I'll work hard.

Or sometimes we tie outcome to hard work.

And that looks like this.

Well, if they would only give me the raise, if they would only give me the bonus, if they would only give me that better job title, then I will start working hard.

In other words, we we tie our effort to what we get.

But Jesus is actually telling a story about people who are producing effort, they're being diligent, and they're gonna get nothing in return.

They were just doing the hard work for their master, for this rich person to make him more rich.

Let's move on to verse 17.

It says, So also the one with two bags of gold gained two more.

So once again, we see another servant, 100% profit, turns two to four.

And oftentimes, honestly, I've read the story so many times.

You probably read the story so many times, and isn't it true that we just kind of gloss over this person?

We just move on because it feels a lot like the first person.

I mean, five to ten, two to four, it's the same kind of mathematical equation.

But before we we move on, I want you to think about this person's experience in the story.

I mean, he wasn't given five bags.

I'm sure he knew this other servant was giving five.

He might have thought in his heart, well, if I would have had five, or I should have had five, but he doesn't go there.

Instead of complaining, what does he do?

He uses what he has been given by the master.

And I think that's so important.

In fact, this is how you can hold on to it today.

Your resources are God's business.

See, in the end, God is the one who gives you everything in your life.

He gave you the breath and your lungs, he gave you your family, he gave you your skills and abilities that allow you to produce wealth.

If you didn't have God giving you those things on loan in this life, you would produce zero.

He's invested into you.

The question is, are you grateful for what he has given you?

Because you can fall into one of two categories.

You can be grateful for what has been given to you and you can use it well, or you can be ungrateful for what God has given you.

You and you can just complain about it.

Maybe be jealous about it of other people.

Look at them and think, oh, if I had what they had, I want what they have, I want the vacations, I want the house, I want the money, I want the looks, I want the skills, I want the abilities.

So how do we not fall into this trap?

This trap that doesn't help us at all, right?

You've gained nothing in your life from being envious or jealous, right?

It's just wasted your time.

How do we avoid this trap?

And the answer is gratitude.

Let me give you a couple practical ways to put this into your life.

And is one is uh celebrate the blessings that God has given to others.

Instead of being jealous of them or wanting what they have, celebrate God's generosity in their life.

It might even be publicly.

That person whose house that you want, say, honestly, so glad God gave you that house.

It's amazing, it's spectacular.

I mean, that square footage, unbelievable.

That is so cool.

Pray for them.

God, thank you for giving them that.

Your love has no bounds.

Another thing you need to do is this remember the blessings that you have.

Instead of looking at the person with five bags of gold, what would happen if you look at the person with one bag of gold?

It's a total game changer, isn't it?

What does that look like in our everyday life?

Go to a soup kitchen.

Serve in a soup kitchen, watch people who don't have enough to eat, you'll be really happy for what's in your pantry, won't you?

Go on a missions trip.

Go into a third world country and see what they're living in, and you will be super happy about your apartment or your trailer home or your house that's smaller than your neighbors, won't you?

Get in your car after church, drive under an overpass in Minneapolis, and your whole perspective will change.

Because for every one of our woe is me moments that we have, thoughts, or things we've said, there's somebody else in this life that if they looked at your journey, if they looked at your life, if they looked at what you had, they would say, I wish I had that.

If only I had that, then I'd be happy.

Well, there's one more servant I want to look at today, and it's in verse 18.

It says, But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master's property.

So here we have the third servant.

Zero percent profit.

He did nothing.

He just buried the money.

Now, to give him some level of compliment here, I mean, he didn't steal it.

He didn't lose it.

But in the end, he he didn't produce anything from the investment that the master had given him.

Now, many of you know where the story is going to go, but you're gonna have to sit tight because we get a long list of texts before we get to find out what happened to that servant.

But this is where we go next in verse 19.

It says, After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.

The one who'd received the five bags of gold brought the other five.

Mastery said, You entrusted me with the five bags of gold, see, I've gained five more.

His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, come and share your master's happiness.

The man with two bags of gold also came.

Mastery said, You entrusted me with two bags of gold, see, I've gained two more.

His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant.

You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, come and share your master's happiness.

Now, both these servants brought everything to the master, which I think is noteworthy.

Because they had every reason in this moment to keep some for themselves, didn't they?

I mean, they could have said, well, he went on vacation, I was doing all of his work, I deserve a cut.

Or maybe they would have thought, I mean, I worked really, really hard.

It makes sense that I just keep a little bit in my pocket.

He'll never know.

Or he is rich.

I mean, he's uber rich.

He's handing over millions of dollars to me to invest.

I double that money.

Don't I deserve a little something?

He won't even miss it.

He has so much money.

But instead, what did they do?

They hand everything back over.

And what was the return of their hard work?

They said it was their master's happiness.

You see, in this life, the ultimate reward that we will get, the only guaranteed reward that we can get, is God's happiness.

In the end, everything that you work hard for in this life, at least the material stuff, is gonna go away.

It's gonna go away.

So what lasts, what stands the test of time is everything that connects to what the master values.

And what does the master value?

What does Christ value in this life?

The answer is two things.

He values our relationship with him, and he values our relationship with other people around us.

In fact, you know that already.

Because you remember the story where the religious leaders came to Jesus and what do they say?

What's the most important law?

And he says, Well, if I had to get to the core of all the laws, it's two things.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

That's what the master values.

And if we do those things well, we get to share in our master's happiness.

Now, to be honest, I wish the story was done, but there's more, there's a cautionary tale attached to this.

So let's head over to verse 24.

It says, Then the man who had received one bag of gold came.

Master, he said, I knew that you were a hard man harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

So I was afraid and I went out and hid your gold in the ground.

See, here's what belongs to you.

His master replied, You wicked, lazy servant.

So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.

Well then you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers.

So when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

So take the bag of gold from him, and give it to the one who has ten bags.

For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance.

Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them, and throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

See, the servant fell into the trap that I think many of us so easily fall into, and that's the blame game.

If I only would have had more, if you would have only given me more, if only I was at the right spot at the right time, then I could have done what they would have done.

Right?

He blames the master.

But why is he blaming the master?

What's at the core?

Well, it's the fact that he's just lazy.

He's just lazy.

And in the end, what does he do?

He wasted his life.

Nothing was produced from what God had given him.

Now, why does this happen?

Why do people fall into this trap?

Why do we waste our lives?

I think a lot of it comes down to how you understand the master.

Who is the master to you and what is the purpose of life?

And if you're a follower of Christ in this dream, you get it.

I mean, if Jesus is the Son of God, if Jesus did die on the cross for your sins, if Jesus is the King, that changes everything.

It changes your life and it changes your eternity.

And if everything that you have and everything that you are is a gift from God alone in this life, that changes everything too.

Because it's all about Jesus Christ.

It's all about who he is to you.

And not only does it change your life and change your eternity, it changes how you work.

And it changes how you live.

Because in the end, we have one boss.

And it's Jesus.

And when we do this well, we get to share in his happiness.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for these stories that have stood the test of time.

The people who don't even go to church, I mean, they they heard these stories along the way.

They they know these stories.

And Lord, I pray that every single person in this room that we are wrestling with this stories, what does it mean?

How do we see you in the stories?

What does it mean for me?

Lord, maybe I need to pick it up.

I need to be more diligent in my life.

Lord, it's an investment from you, and I want to steward that well.

Or Lord, maybe it's a recalibration.

Maybe there's somebody in this room that they are a very hard worker, but they found out in this moment, Lord, I'm working hard, but I'm not working in alignment with your values.

I'm not working towards your mission.

I'm not working on my relationship with you.

Lord, I'm not working with my on my relationship with others.

So I have the stuff that the world produces, but I don't have what the master values.

So Lord, for every person who can hear my voice.

I pray that today is a day of recalibration.

That we can use the investment of our lives for your glory to do something that truly matters.

So that every single person in this room, when we get to the end of our journey, we get to hear these words, well done, good and faithful servant.

Now share in your master's happiness.