The Root & The Fruit - JJ Vasquez

Okay, you guys ready to get in the message today? Me too. If you have a Bible, you can open up to the book of Matthew chapter 13, and we are in part two of a sermon series we started on Easter called Planted. Somebody say Planted. Planted. Man, if you have the Bible, you can open. If not, you can read with me. On the screen. Matthew 13, three. Then Jesus told them many things in parables. Parable is a story. Saying, a farmer went out to sow his seed, and as he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Verse five, and some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow, but when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no, say this last word with me, please, roots. They had no roots. Now, the disciples who are hearing this parable, this story, they don't understand the meaning of it, so they do a little after talk with Jesus to figure out what he meant. Jesus breaks down his story to them in verse 18, so we're gonna jump to verse 18. Listen, then, to what the parable of the sower means,

what the meaning of this story is. When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. I wanna pause here for a second. Just if you just started coming to Journey Church or you started coming in the last couple of months, it's important for you to know what our mission statement here at Journey Church is because it's based on this Bible verse right here. We believe that Jesus should be accessible to anyone. Here's what that means. I think if someone rejects Jesus, it's not because Jesus isn't beautiful, it's because Jesus wasn't presented in the biblical way. When we present Jesus for who Jesus is, I almost feel like it's impossible to read. He's just so beautiful, and so our job is to really get out of the way, show you who Jesus is, and we do that in the way that we greet you, in the way that we seat you, in the songs that we choose to sing, and even in the way that I choose to communicate the story of Jesus is in a way just to make him accessible so that you can make the decision to follow him and you can receive him and receive this word. However, receiving this word is only a part of it.

As you're gonna continue to read, there are some things that have to happen after you receive this word, and that's what the next three weeks are gonna be about in this series, because look what happens if all you did was receive it and something else didn't take place. Verse 20 and 21, the seed falling on the rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word at once and receives it with joy, amen, they received it, but, but, next verse, but since they have no, say it with me, roots, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes, because of the word, they quickly fall away. How many people know it's one thing to receive it, it's another thing to be rooted in it? Verse 23, but the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. It gets rooted inside them, and this is the one who produces a crop, yielding 160 or 30 times what was sown. I wanna speak to you today a message titled the root and the fruit, the root and the fruit. On Baptism Sunday, I have to preach an abbreviated sermon, they give me 20 minutes, all right, 25 minutes, and we're already at 16, so it goes fast. So I'm not gonna have the chance to expound on everything I'd like to expound on,

so I've gotta give it to you in one sentence, and then we'll break it down, okay? So this is my one sermon and one sentence for you. Here's what I wanna talk to you about today. What gets planted must be tended to be rooted or you'll never see the fruit of it. Say it one more time. What gets planted must be tended to be rooted or you'll never see the fruit of it. All of us in this room today have a job at growing in Christ. It is my job to sow the seed. It is God's job to grow the seed, but it is your job to put down roots. You've gotta put down roots. For the next three weeks, we're gonna talk about what you must practice so that you can stay planted, so that you can finally produce, because here's what I've learned being a child and now having children is that everyone wants to grow up fast. 13-year-olds want cell phones, 16-year-olds want cars, 18-year-olds wanna move out and get their own apartment. Everybody wants the fruit of maturity, but few people are willing to invest in the root of maturity. We want the blessing, but we don't responsibility. We want the phone, but we don't want the phone bill. We want the car, but we don't wanna pump gas. We want the apartment, but we don't wanna wash dishes, vacuum, or pay rent.

the fruit of maturity while at the same time neglecting the root of maturity and I feel like it is my responsibility to let you know as a preacher of the gospel that you cannot have fruit without root. I gotta speak to the preachers in the room and the preachers watching online and to myself is I think sometimes as preachers we make the mistake we go real heavy on the fruit of following Jesus and the reason why we do that is because the fruit is real and we want you to take on Jesus. Love is real. His peace is real. His joy is real. Eternal life is real. His deliverance is real. All of his fruit is real but we do you a disservice, dare say malpractice, if we only tell you about the fruit of following him but at the same time don't challenge you to root yourself in him because you cannot have fruit without root. They do not work. They do not coincide. If all you hear is the fruit of following Jesus then when following Jesus gets tough you wither because nobody prepared you for that. We hyped you up but we didn't prepare you and so I want to prepare you to root yourself in him and this message is as important to the new believer as it is to the person who's been following Jesus for 30 years because here's what I have discovered in my journey of following Christ that is that there is a difference between being spiritually alive and spiritually fruitful. They're different. They're different. I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna illustrate here by just by doing a little thing here. I've got this little plant that we got from somewhere. I don't know from wherever you get plants from. Okay and I got this plant. It's got a little bit of dirt on it. If I put this plant in this bowl, if I uproot this plant and I water this plant in this bowl and I take it back after a couple days and put it in the soil and I water it here, it'll stay alive and if I let it stay for a couple days then I pull it out again and I put it in here and I water it. Let it stay there for a couple days. Put it back here for a couple days. Did you know that the plant will survive? It will survive because it's around the soil enough to survive but it hasn't grown in it enough to thrive. It'll be alive but it won't produce one flower. It'll be alive but it won't produce one fruit. It's alive but it's not thriving. It's surviving but it's not producing and it's not becoming everything that God called for it to become. Now in our spiritual life, it's like this a lot. They're one of three ways we kind of exemplify this in our life and I'm probably going to touch it like an area that you identify with and we'll know that it's you because you'll either say amen or you'll be really really quiet and that's how we'll know I'm speaking to you, okay? But I think one of the ways is, you know, we're serving God. We're at church. We're kind of

doing the thing and then it doesn't happen all of a sudden but it happens suddenly. Life just starts lifing. The kids need you. The wife needs you. The car breaks down and then you kind of have to take care of life and so you kind of put God off to the side and you do life and while you're focusing on life, everything's good, everything's chill until your leaves start to turn brown. Then when your leaves start to turn brown, when trial hits, when tragedy hits, when life gets hard, all of a sudden we're like, shoot, I gotta get back to church. I was good out here but now that it's time, I gotta get back to church. I gotta get back connected to Jesus. Some of y'all are here today because all hell broke loose in your life and you were like, I gotta get back to church right now. I've been out for too long. I can see my leaves withering. I gotta get connected. There's another group of people who are the opposite. We're here and we're serving God or we used to serve God but what happened was we went through something tragic and when we went through something tragic, we uprooted ourself away from God because we thought God must not be working because if I can be plugged into him and still be suffering the way I'm suffering, this must not be working and we leave God but when we do that, we're making the same mistake that Pastor Liz and I made when we bought our house 10 years ago. When we bought our house 10 years ago, we had to clean up the backyard and there was this dead tree off in the corner of our yard and we uprooted it and we got rid of it. After that, our neighbor came over and was welcoming us to the neighborhood and he said, we cannot wait till spring and I was like, that's a weird thing to say. I was like, yeah, I guess we can't wait till spring either and they were like, no, no, you don't understand. Your orange tree in the backyard produces the best oranges. He said, everybody in the neighborhood knows about your orange tree and they all come here, come springtime to get the oranges from the orange tree and I was like, what tree is that and they're like, the one in the corner. The tree that had no leaves, the tree that had no fruit, we had no idea. What we thought was dead was just out of season. Be careful when you go through a trial or a struggle, as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, that you do not uproot, because you think something is dead when it's really just a tough season. It's just a tough season.

And in fact, I'll take it one step further. In the winter, when the tree loses its leaves and it loses its fruit, do you know that its roots actually grow deeper in search for water? In other words, a trial will only have two results on your life. It will either uproot you from Christ or it will root you deeper in Christ. When you go through a difficult season of life, you either walk away. I've only seen it. I've been a pastor now for 10 years. I've been serving Jesus now for over 30 years. Every time someone goes through a difficult time, loses a baby, parent dies, gets into a car accident, gets diagnosed with a disease, a divorce, that person either walks away from Jesus or they fall more in love with Jesus than they've ever fallen in love with him before. Only one of two happens. That's the second group of people. The third group of people is actually probably a lot of us here. And I don't even have to preach it really hard because you're gonna know it the moment that you see it. It works like this. Ready? Sunday, we're here.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And we're around the soil enough to survive, but not in it deep enough to thrive. And then we wonder why we're not growing. Because our faith was not designed to be a Sunday thing. To be a Sunday thing. It is a seven-day thing that we celebrate on Sunday, but we can't just plug in some day. We gotta be plugged in every day. This is what we were talking about two months ago when we talked about growing in your faith. And I said, when you wanna grow and become like Jesus, there are things that God does and there are things that you do. And I told you about this series. I told you that we're gonna be talking about training because there's some things that you have to train in except because now we're in a garden series called Planted. I'm gonna switch the metaphor up on you. So instead of training, the thing that you do is tending. Instead of training, I wanna give you the language, the word, tending. You have to tend this garden. You have to work on this salvation. Now, I know you hear, if you've been at church sometime,

you go, well, I thought we got saved by grace. I didn't think there was any work required for this thing. And I'm like, well, that's not wrong. One of the most dangerous half-truths of Christianity that the devil would love you to believe, listen, is that salvation is free. Yes, Jesus died to pay it all. But the same Jesus that died to pay it all also said, and if you're not willing to leave everything to follow me, don't follow me. There's some things you gotta work on when you are saved to actually take roots, actually grow roots. It's not all faith. You gotta do something. I told you that we uprooted that tree in my backyard. That was because the tree was a mess. When we took over that house, nobody had taken care of the backyard. And you would think that a backyard that nobody took care of for a year would be dead. It'd be empty, it'd be a desert. There was things growing all over that backyard, things called weeds, things called hornets' nests, things called ant hills. Are you ready? Let this get into your heart because doing nothing still grows something. And that's how you meet, are you ready? And that's how you meet 70-year-old Christians

that are bitter and 80-year-old Christians that are depressed and 60-year-old Christians that are full of hatred and racism. How could you be growing all that on you and you've been serving Jesus for all that time because doing nothing still grows something? And you can get religious and you can get pharaceutical and you can get judgy and you can get all these things if you're not working on it. Paul said this in Philippians. He said, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. And the word work out in the Greek, you know what it actually means? It means cultivate. It means 10. And so there are some things you gotta do. We call these things spiritual disciplines. We call them disciplines because you gotta do them whether you feel them or not. Whether you feel good or not. For the next four weeks, including this week, we're gonna be teaching you the spiritual disciplines. These are things that Jesus did in his life to live a successful life and be on earth. You know a lot of them. Our nine of them, we're gonna go over them for the next few weeks. We've got community, witness, prayer, scripture, fasting, Sabbath, solitude,

service, and generosity. These are the nine spiritual disciplines. You're gonna implement these in your life, and we're gonna teach you how over the next couple of weeks. And today, I wanna start with the two, not because they're the most important two, but because they're two closest to baptism. I wanna speak today on community and witness. Community and witness. Those are the two I wanna talk about today. Community and witness. Those are things that we saw Jesus live out in his life. The Bible says this in Mark chapter three, verse 14. Jesus appointed 12 that they might be with him. That's community. And that he might send them out to preach. That's witness. Let me talk about community really quickly. How many people know that Jesus had a community, and that he got his strength, not just from the Holy Spirit, but also from his community. Matthew 26, 37, and 38, when Jesus is walking in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he's overwhelmed, he says, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow. And then he looks at his friends, and he says, can you guys stay here with me, and keep watch with me?

Come on now, if Jesus needed friends in a community, you need friends in a community. When you feel overwhelmed, is there anybody in your life that you can reach out to, and cling to when things get tough? When one of those hurricanes, I can't remember which one, came through our neighborhood, there was a tree down the street from my house that completely uprooted. It was a big tree. Thank God it didn't fall on the house of my neighbor. But all the neighbors came out. We helped our neighbor. We cut that tree down. And there was a tree in front of my house. And my neighbor said, I saw that tree wobbling and waving all night. I was looking out that window. I was ready for that thing to go, but it did not go. I said, why do you think it didn't go? He said, the reason why that tree in the middle did not fall is because there was a tree on each side of it. And he said, underneath the ground you can't see it, but the roots of the trees on the outside have actually grown into the roots of the tree in the middle.

And they've actually held onto the tree and kept it in the ground when the wind was blowing. Did you know that when two trees are planted next to each other, that their root systems actually intertwine under the ground? Now they don't shake hands like that picture shows you, but they intertwine under the ground, which does a couple of things. Number one, it keeps one tree from falling down when it's being pushed. They hold on to each other. The second thing that happens, and I thought this was really cool, if one tree gets attacked by bugs or disease, it actually begins to send a signal to the other tree that an attack is coming, and that tree actually begins to produce toxins and protective stuff on its leaves to keep the bugs and the disease away. That reminds me of prayer. That reminds me of my mom's prayers, my dad's prayers, my grandma's prayers, my grandpa's prayers, who knew that an attack was coming for me, and I didn't even feel that attack because they prayed for me before the attack ever got there. Anybody here because of their mama's prayers, their dad's prayers, their grandpa's prayers,

their grandma's prayers? The other thing that a tree will do when they sit next to each other, which I thought is so cool, is that if one tree is getting more sun and water than the other tree, this is wild, but it's science, look it up. It can actually transfer the nutrients it's getting to a tree that's not getting sun and water. In other words, this community is designed in a way that when one person is in a season of blessing, they're able to provide for another person that's in a season of not. I recently got the chance to go to a funeral of one of our church members here. Her name was Diana, and she was in charge of our outreach team here. She was a volunteer though, and she served, and she helped a lot of people, and she was out there in the community feeding the homeless, and I wanna show you a quick video of this funeral. I got permission from the family to show you just a portion of it, because it was packed to the brim. Can we show that video one more time? We're talking about standing room only, and then the line of people who are there are actually going outside of the funeral home itself. It's the only funeral I've ever been to that had an overflow section, okay?

It was packed. The funeral director actually got up and was like, I've never seen a funeral like this. He said, how many people are here from the family? And a couple people over here in the corner, family. And he said, how many people are here from the church? And it was everyone else. The church absolutely, Journey Church, absolutely flooded that funeral home, and I looked over at my wife, and I said, you know what? The church, like the Capital C Church, gets a lot of criticism nowadays on TikTok, and Instagram, and Facebook, and all this other stuff, but when the church goes right, it looks like this. A funeral home overflowing, and people were there to support one another. Now, before you get upset, because you're like, well, my aunt died, and nobody from the church was there for me. Before you get upset, I gotta ask, I'll answer that question as soon as you answer this question, and how invested into this community are you? Because one thing you need to know about Diana is that she was out there feeding the homeless almost every week. She was calling people and check it up on people when they were in the hospital They went to visit you can't complain that you're not getting out of something something that you're not putting anything into I'm all about criticism of the capital c church Every church should be criticized because every church has got to be held to the standard of looking like jesus If we're claiming to represent jesus, then we got to be held to a high standard

So criticize us, please but your criticism is invalid if you're not invested You can't not put nothing into this and then be like don't church don't give me nothing You but you're not invested You gotta actually sow in seed if you want to produce fruit Can I encourage you listen to me after finding jesus the next most important thing to find is a community It's a community And i'm gonna give you some quick ways how to practice community Just a few things that you can do to get this discipline into your life how to practice community Number one you can attend church weekly number two You can join a small group or a team If you don't like having people over your house, then just come on a team You see him on sunday and then you have to see him again. Okay, if that's your thing But number three, I think we could do this a lot more often. Listen, would you open your house and share a meal with somebody? Like just having dinner with someone jesus had a lot of meals with people he once got criticized for eating too much He did He got criticized for eating. I called him a glutton And so it just open your open your house have meals with people go out to eat with someone practice community because you need it It's a spiritual discipline. And the last one I want to talk to you about is witnessing somebody say witness Witness is telling people what jesus did in your life And it's so important I think we talk about witnessing as what it can do for others But it's so important to know what witnessing does for you One time jesus walked past a fig tree that did not witness it was not producing fruit and he cursed that fig tree And then the next day he looked at that fig tree and he said these words in mark 11 20 in the morning As they went along they stored the fig tree withered from the what from the what Listen to me lean in what doesn't witness? withers Something happens in your soul when you share your story

About what jesus did it's crazy. I remember the first time as a church We went out out to south carolina and I was we went out to it Uh to the park to tell people about jesus our story and I was just praying first time I'd ever done it. I was like 17 18 and I remember asking the lord. I was like lord, just make it easy I was like just bring I just want somebody to come up to me and be like tell me about jesus Just a random person And I went out there and I was like, all right god first person I see i'm gonna talk to you And the first person I saw started talking to him. It was this six foot drunk, dude I didn't know he was drunk when I picked him But the moment he turned around You know, I could see the alcohol smell and then the if you ever talk to a drunk person, you know the glossy eyes Eyes, super glossy and i'm just like, ah, well, I can't walk away now So I start telling this man about jesus what he's done in my life. Let's make I talked to you about jesus Sure, man. Talk about jesus I'll tell you what he did in my life. Oh, that's cool, man Do you want to accept jesus christ right now? We can make a prayer we can put our faith in him Sure. Yeah, i'll do that When it's on you holy spirit Just put a hand on his shoulder and we pray the sinner's prayer together And he starts to cry and I say amen and when I say amen He opens his eyes the gloss was completely gone. He went from drunk to sober in a second In a second Now as excited as that man was to meet jesus how excited do you think I was going back to church I was like I'll tell you what just happened. It was crazy My soul was fed something inside of me was getting rooted Because I was a witness And I know when you hear witness you get all cringy because you're like, oh, I don't like debating You don't need a debate. I didn't say debate. I said be a witness

To be a debater. You got to have the skill of debate. You need to have a degree But to be a witness all you need is a scar What do you mean scar? I mean a scar like I got this little scar right here. My glasses covering it It's hard to see when I was a little kid My alarm clock went off and I went to shut it off in the morning and I missed it and I had left the drawer Open and so when I missed it my head went down and it hit the drawer and blood started gushing out of my head And I woke up my parents and early in the morning with blood coming down my head And my dad had to rush me in the car and he went to the doctors and he sewed me up and i'm all good now That's my story That's my scar My father saved my life I was hurting and i'm just asking is there anybody in the room who has a scar? Is there anybody here who can get with a friend and go do you see that? That was the divorce. Do you see? Do you see that? That was the abuse. Do you see that? That was when they killed me. That was when they hurt me. That was when they left me. That was when they betrayed me. But my Father found me and He sewed me up and He healed me and He restored me and He brought me through. If you've got a story, if you've got a scar, you can be a witness. Well, I don't want to convert people. You don't got to convert people. You confess to people. I was a sinner. I was addicted. I was stuck in the game. But God pulled me out. God healed me. Well, I don't like judging. You're not the judge. You're the witness. You don't got to be judgy. All you got to do is take the witness stand. Get up there and tell people your story. Is there anybody in the room today that Jesus has freed, that Jesus has delivered, that Jesus has healed, that Jesus has met, that Jesus has blessed, that Jesus has filled, that Jesus has healed? If so, then you can be a witness. You can tell your story. Listen to me. This is why I love Baptism Sunday so much. Stay standing for this. This is why I love Baptism Sunday so much. Because we baptize people a lot of different ways over the years. In the Christian history, it's changed. Sometimes they sprinkle people. Sometimes you put your foot in. Sometimes you go all in with your body.

Just so you know, we're an all-in church. All y'all getting dunked all in at this church. But one thing that has never changed in the 2,000 years of Christian history, other than the way of getting baptized, listen, is this. It's always been public. It's never been private. You can't go home, fill up your tub, and get baptized. Because baptism is a witness. It's a testimony to everybody who's watching that Jesus has changed your life. It is an eyewitness account. If you came to church today wondering if Jesus is real, don't take my word for it. Take the 200 people whose lives have been changed. I don't understand. You will try a new restaurant because 20 people gave it a five-star review on Yelp. But you won't try Jesus when I got 200 people who will tell you that He has delivered them and saved them and brought them out of darkness into light. Don't take my word for it. They got the reviews. They got the experience. They've seen it. What God has done in their life, He can do in your life. He can do it in your life. I don't think I'm the best preacher, and I don't think I did the best job today, but don't take my word for it. I've got 200 people that say, bet. Bet. And I'm telling you what He did in their life, He can do in yours. Would you stand all over this room if you're able to physically stand? If you can't, you can stay seated, but if you're able to, because we're going to stand now for the next 10 minutes before we close service. We're going to baptize a bunch of people. It's going to be awesome. If you're in this room right now, listen, and you do not have a relationship with Jesus, to all of my believers, get planted, community, witness, start sharing your story. But if you're contemplating Christ, if you're on the precipice of this decision, don't take my word for it. Take the 200 people who've left a review for Jesus.

He works. God works. God works. Every head, about every eye closed, if you're in this room today, and you're ready to give your life to Jesus, you're ready to try Him, give Him a chance, let Him change you, let Him transform you. All over this room, on three, would you raise your right hand high as a signal and a sign? You're ready to give your life to Jesus. On three. One, two, three. Right now, shoot that right hand up high. Come on, I see that hand. I see that hand. So many hands. So many hands. So many hands. So many hands. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I've been lost, and I'm ready. I had a hole in my heart. I'm ready. Come on. Amen. You can put your hand down, whether you raised your hand or not. I'd love it if everyone just joined me in this prayer together. Everyone says just, Father God, today I come empty and broken, believing that you heal and restore. Today I trust in the eyewitness accounts of everyone whose life has been changed that Jesus can change my life. I believe Jesus died and resurrected so that the old me could die and the new me could be born. And I believe today is that day. I receive you, Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen. Come on, let's put our hands together and welcome all those people. So many hands. Hey, we're JJ and Liz Vasquez, and we wanted to say thank you so much for watching and engaging in today's content. Maybe today you made the decision to follow Jesus. We want to celebrate the incredible decision that you made. All you have to do is text... to 55498, we would love to walk this journey out alongside you.

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