Rooted 1 - The Unseen Essential

For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth. (2 Peter 1:12)

Spiritual growth doesn't come from chasing the new and original, but from being deeply rooted in essential truths reminded again and again.

We Are Competitive by Nature

At the end of this week the 2016 Olympics will begin, and what ends when they start is a long two-year process of qualifying. More than 10,000 athletes have worked hard to find their place at the opening ceremonies in Rio. For some, simply making it there will be the highlight of their lives. But for a select few — 306, to be precise — there will be the opportunity to step onto the highest platform, hear their nation's anthem played, see their flag raised, and have a gold medal placed around their neck.

These sixteen days of competition reveal something about our nature as human beings: this innate drive to win, to be number one. You don't have to be an elite athlete to want it. Whether you're a teacher, a stay-at-home parent, or anything else, we all have this competitive drive — even pastors.

When I say every human being is competitive by nature, someone always comes up afterward, or emails, or messages me on Facebook to say, "No, Pastor, I'm not competitive." You may be that one in a million, but I don't buy it. That competitive gene is in there somewhere. Maybe it's been hidden, maybe it's been conditioned into you by years of losing so that you simply stopped competing. But here's how I can test it: take the most docile grandma from the pathways group, sit her at a card table with a handful of dice, and start a game of Bunco. In a matter of minutes the spirit of Usain Bolt rises to the surface, and you see Michael Phelps manifested in a five-foot-tall grandma right before your eyes. We are competitive by nature.

Even Pastors Want to Be First

What does this have to do with 2 Peter? Pastors are competitive too. They want to be first. Though our aim is to be moderate and spiritual, that competitiveness still shows up — especially as a pastor prepares to teach. He goes through the Scriptures trying to find that truth, that gem no one has ever seen before. He wants to be the first to say this original thing. That's why pastors like books like Haggai — nobody studies through Haggai, so maybe there's some pay dirt there, something no one has ever seen.

On Friday, as he's writing the message, he's thinking, "Oh, people are going to be shocked and stunned by this truth they've never examined before." He imagines someone coming up afterward to say, "Pastor, that was amazing, I've never heard that before." He imagines a group going out to lunch, sitting around their double-doubles — because Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays — saying, "My, my, did you hear that today? I'm so filled with the richness of that original sermon I can't even eat this double-double." That's what's going through the pastor's mind on Friday. Monday is a different story — pastors have this depression thing going on — but Friday it's, "No one's ever seen this before."

Peter Was Willing to Be Redundant

Look again at the verse: "I will not be negligent to remind you of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth." This is the theme verse of this small three-chapter letter, written by the Apostle Peter about thirty-six years after Jesus ascended into heaven. Peter had been following Jesus for nearly forty years of his life. He had seen and experienced a great deal, traveling almost the entire known world of his day preaching the gospel and making disciples. Now, late in his life, coming to the last mile of his race, he writes these words.

In these words there is a change in Peter. In his earlier years he was very competitive. Like the other followers of Jesus, he wanted to be the greatest — that's what they argued about every day, who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And Peter had a competitive edge. He was one of the first to follow Jesus and give up everything. When Jesus gave a pop quiz in Matthew 16, it was Peter who got the answer right. It was Peter who walked on water. He was one of only three with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17, one of the three present when Jesus raised a young girl from the dead, the first to preach a message in the first church in Acts 2, the first evangelist to see a mass of people come to faith and be baptized. Two thousand years later, millions call him the first pope.

But something transformed in his life. As he nears the end of his race he says, "I will not be negligent to remind you of these things." Two things stand out. First, Peter was no longer working for the greatness of his reputation but for the growth and building up of other believers. Second, Peter was not afraid to be redundant. He wasn't trying to be original or first to the plate. He simply spoke truths that would build people up — even if at the end of it you mock him.

Isn't that how you know you've been redundant enough — when your children start mocking you every time you say it? It's like our vision here at Cross Connection: "life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus." There are people on our leadership team who roll their eyes, "Life in connection — yeah." Just ask Marco Rubio; he learned that the hard way earlier this year. This is why parents of toddlers never feel cool: all they do is repeat the same thing over and over — "Stop hitting your sister, stop hitting your sister."

Human Beings Are Prone to Forget

Peter knew something about human nature. Not just that we're competitive, but — point one — human beings are prone to forget. This is increasingly frustrating in my own life. I love to consume information: book after book, article after article, message after message, conference after conference. But here's what I'm discovering. This brain God gave us is an amazingly complex computer, and it has a finite amount of RAM — random access memory. When it gets full, things slow down and you can't recall things very well. If you haven't experienced that on a computer, you've experienced it in your brain. Sometimes I'm reading and I think, "Why am I even doing this? I'm only going to forget it in twenty minutes." There are some things we want to forget, but a lot I'd love to remember and just don't anymore.

Look at verses 12–15: "For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off this tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my death." I'm going to keep saying the same thing over and over, even if you call me redundant, even if you say, "We've heard that before, bring in the other preacher."

Clear messages sometimes need to be said in clear ways over and over so we can get them. Twenty-seven hundred years ago a prophet named Isaiah had this problem. God gave him a message and he kept speaking it over and over, until the people mocked him. They didn't have records to call him a broken record, so they said, "That Isaiah should be handed to the children's ministry, to those just weaned, because his message is line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little." In Hebrew it literally reads, "line, line, line, line." They mocked him because his message didn't seem fresh or original.

Here's what we need to understand: anything you hear a preacher give that sounds fresh and original — it's not. Every time I think, "No one's ever seen this before, I'm going to preach it," invariably I'll be driving home on Tuesday, turn on 107.9, and hear Raul Ries in his thick accent saying the exact same thing. Forget it.

Roots Are Unseen but Essential

So we're starting this series in 2 Peter, and it may take us a while to go verse by verse. Peter is going to hit on things that, if you've been a churchgoer at all, you'll say, "I've heard that before." And Peter knows it. Why does he remind us? Because we're prone to forget, and we need to go back to these things so we become rooted — so our roots go deep and we grow strong. That's what this series is called: Rooted. Peter wasn't building his reputation; he wanted those he discipled to grow strong, even if it meant saying the same thing over and over.

Point two: roots are unseen but essential. As I studied this week I started reading about roots — scientific journals, some really light reading. Roots serve four major functions: absorption of water and nutrients; anchoring and supporting the plant; the accumulation and storage of food; and vegetative reproduction and competition with other plants. We understand roots, but we don't usually think about them because they're under the ground. We buy a plant for what it looks like — its flowers, its fruit — not its roots. Yet roots are vitally important. Destroy the roots and you destroy the plant.

I learned this the hard way at our first home, a foreclosure where little was still alive — but a fruitless plum tree with purple flowers was. When we landscaped, I had to cut one of its roots to run irrigation, and figured it would be okay. Then we cemented a fence post nearby, and that little action killed the tree. About six months before we moved, it got cut down.

A tree that cannot put down deep, strong roots will never reach its full potential. When we got ready to move into our new home, the previous owner showed me a stick about three feet tall on the bank and said in his Southern accent, "That there's a pecan tree, but it ain't going to grow well." About eighteen inches under the surface is hard granite, and a pecan tree needs a deep taproot. Sure enough, it's not really growing.

But strong roots are phenomenal. At our first home there was a wisteria right in the middle of the front yard. We dug it out and replanted it on the back fence line, yet for the next seven years little wisteria shoots kept coming up in the front yard. Why? It had left strong roots behind. We couldn't see them, but they were still there.

Fruitful Christians Need Strong Roots

Point three: fruitful Christians need strong roots. This is why a pastor's desire to always bring something fresh and original, while good for his reputation, may not be good for the growth of the people God has committed to him. Every pastor — and really every Christian — has been commissioned by God to go and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded. It's not about my reputation but Christ's; not about my platform but your growth. So the temptation to always come up with something new might actually not help you in your walk with Jesus. Peter says, "I don't mind being redundant." Sometimes it's not until we've heard a truth for the hundredth or five-hundredth time that we actually apply it and make it part of our lives.

There is also a temptation for the churchgoer: to always find something new and never be bored by redundancy. Paul warned Timothy that in the last days people would heap up for themselves teachers, led away by itching ears to find something they'd never heard before. The temptation is not to stay in one place and grow, but to go wherever their ears are tickled — and so they never grow to maturity.

Strong Christians Grow Where They're Planted

Point four: strong Christians grow where they're planted. When we landscaped our first home, a friend gave me two palm trees, the same size in ten-gallon black buckets. We planted one in the yard; the other sat about eight feet away in its bucket the whole time we lived there. By the time we moved, the planted one was seven or eight feet tall; the one still in the pot hadn't grown beyond three feet. So we took it with us to our new home — because, of course, you have to haul palm trees everywhere in San Diego County. And this week I noticed: it's still in the black pot, and it's dead. I killed it. The identical palm we planted is standing six, seven, eight feet tall at our old home.

You will grow where you are planted. But if you keep uprooting and transplanting yourself from place to place because this guy over here has something to say, or that one over there sounds exciting, you will never grow to full fruitfulness or maturity. I've met many people who are like Christian potted palm trees, never reaching the potential God has for them because they don't grow where they're planted. If you never put down roots and gain strength in one place, you will not endure the storms, the dry times, or the heat — and they will come. Being planted in one place for a long time may mean the same climate and the same water source week in and week out, and it may feel redundant. But God has a plan for our growth, and He has placed us in that place.

Strong Trees Support One Another

Reading about roots, I came across an article citing Dillon Visser, a scientist from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who said more than 50 — maybe even 70 — percent of a tree's energy goes into its roots, not into what you see above ground. And the strongest, healthiest trees generally have root systems interconnected with the roots of other trees underneath the surface. The great redwoods in the northern part of our state, some over 200 feet tall, can grow that high because their interconnected root systems hold them together, all interlocked.

Point five: strong trees support one another. Scientists now call these interconnected root systems "neighborhoods." Trees need a neighborhood of roots to grow and stay strong. As a Christian, if you're going to grow to maturity and full fruitfulness in Christ, you need that interconnected root system with others in the body of Christ. This is why the church is so important. We don't only gather to study the Scriptures — coming to the greenhouse where we spray some nutrients at you each Sunday. Throughout the week you also need other relationships through connect groups and other ministries, so you develop that root system beneath the surface, interconnected with one another. Trees that are connected share resources and nutrients and support one another.

The Danger in Connection

But there's also a danger in this connection. In southern Utah there's a forest of quaking aspens covering about a hundred acres — nearly 47,000 to 50,000 trees, and every one of them is genetically identical, the same tree, connected through one root system. Scientists believe that one organism may be the largest organism on the face of the planet, and as much as 80,000 years old. The sad fact is that scientists also say that tree is dying — through disease that has spread to the entire forest through the root system.

This is a caution and a challenge. Within the body of Christ, interconnected through our root system, if there is sinfulness retained in my life or yours — something you think is under the surface, private, that no one sees — understand that it can infect and affect the entirety of the church. Paul said sin is like leaven: a little leaven leavens the whole lump. In the same way, hidden sin can move like a disease through the whole body of Christ.

The author of Hebrews may have had something similar in mind: "Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord, looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled" (Hebrews 12:14–15).

Fruitful Christians Need Interconnected Roots

Point six: fruitful Christians need interconnected roots. But understand that where this connected life exists, sins of bitterness, anger, wrath, sexual immorality, and gossip can spread like a disease through the whole body of Christ. So we need to be on guard in our own lives, growing through the word of God by the work of the Spirit, allowing the vinedresser — God in heaven — to prune our lives, removing things so we bear much fruit.

The very first Psalm captures it: "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." Oh, dear Lord, help us to be like trees planted by rivers of water.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would do a work in us — that You would help us to be those who are rooted, not transplanted from place to place, but set down deep in the ground. Set us down deep by a river of living water, Your word pouring forth. Set us down deep with other brothers and sisters in the body, that we would be connected with them, sharing nutrients, sharing and supporting one another.

But God, I pray that You would do a work of pruning in our lives. If there is anything causing the disease of sin to remain in us — something that could affect us and bring infection to others within the body — I pray You would prune that from our lives and remove it. Continue to transform us that we would bring glory to You, just as the prophet Isaiah said, that we would be the planting of the Lord, trees of righteousness, that You would be glorified. Make us that, I pray.

And Lord, I pray for any here today who have not yet allowed themselves to be planted in You, connected to You. You are the vine and we are the branches, and apart from You we can do nothing. There may be some who have not yet been plugged in, and so I pray that You would draw them by Your Spirit, that they would put their trust and faith in You, and that You would graft them into Your lifeline, Your body, making them a part of You to bring forth fruit. In Jesus' name, amen.