This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day two of our look through Matthew chapter 13. We're looking in the
parable of the sower at three things that stop our growth and three things that
start our growth. We began yesterday a look at the first of the three things
that stop our growth, familiarity.

Just the same thing over and over and over again, becoming familiar with the
things of God rather than excited about the things of God. There's a second
thing that Jesus says stops our growth in this parable, and it is shallowness.
In verses 20 and 21, as Jesus interprets the parable for us, he says, "The one
who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word
and at once receives it with joy.

But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or
persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. " When it comes to
what Jesus is talking about here, problems and persecution, they're certainly
not in our program for growth.

We want to grow without any problems. We want to grow without any persecution.
And when we decide they can't be in my program for growth, I won't accept them
as a part of my program for growth, then inevitably growth is going to wither
away.

Because the truth is they are on God's program. You just look at history. Where
people were most persecuted, where they've had the most problems is where they
have the deepest growth.

So you have the apostle Paul, who goes through this horrendous persecution in
his life, but also grows to be one of the greatest Christians of all time. The
difference between withering in the heat and weathering the heat, Jesus tells us
what it is here. It's roots.

What keeps my life from being shallow so I can keep growing through the tough
times? Because that's when the real growth happens many times. Jesus says it's
roots.

He talks here about a shallow soil. And shallow soil in many ways is made for
the quick germination of seeds. Because if there's a rocky layer right
underneath a shallow layer of soil, that means that the soil is going to be
hotter.

So the seeds can germinate and begin to sprout up more quickly. They also wither
more quickly. Because there's no root there to sustain the plant in the heat.

What's going to sustain your life in the heat? One of the real traps to growth
is expressed here. Would you rather spring up quickly or send down roots deeply?

If all you're about is springing up quickly and impressing other people with how
fast you're growing, then you're going to find your growth withering. When you
think about this expression of the joy that we're supposed to have in our lives,
it really does come from the roots that we put down in our lives. I know
sometimes you come to church and you feel like, "Okay, I feel more joyful when
I'm here.

" And sometimes we feel like I've got to somehow keep that joy as I leave
church. Like I come into church and I get filled to the brim with joy and you're
walking out and it's almost like, "No one touched me. No one bothered me.

No one bugged me in the parking lot. No, no, it's spilling out because of what
that guy just did. He just cut me off.

" You almost feel like when you go to a fast food place like McDonald's and you
get a drink on your way out because it's free some places, so why wouldn't you
get a drink on your way out? You want to put the plastic lid on on your way out
so you don't spill it in the car. So how do you keep joy in your life?

Well, it's not by putting a lid on it. Jesus says it's putting roots into God's
Word. That's how you keep the joy in.

How do you put down roots? That's one of the key questions to growth in the
Christian life. How do you put down roots?

Well, in one sense, you look at a plant. You do it like a plant. You do it a
little at a time.

Jesus says you put down roots into God's Word. So a little at a time, you put
roots into God's Word. You can't do it all at once.

You can't do it in one weekend retreat. You can't do it by memorizing a whole
chapter of the Bible. It's a daily process of letting God's Word to get into
your life.

That's the value of a daily devotion time or daily quiet time, sitting down and
letting God's Word get into your life every day. I've made this a habit of my
life for 30, 40 years now, and I've got to tell you there are many days when I
don't feel like having a quiet time that day. When I have to make the choice,
well, whether I feel like it or not, this is the spiritual nutrition that I need
for this day.

But in order to make that decision, to put down roots, you've got to make a
choice in your life. Do you want to be impressive or effective? I mean, the
crash diet might look really good on the outside to everyone else, but it's not
going to last.

It's the eating and exercising, that which takes time over time, that lasts. And
the truth is, it can often be excruciating to send roots down through the rocks
to reach the soil, to reach the nutrition. Growth in your life is not only what
other people can see.

In fact, most often growth is what other people aren't seeing. The most
important growth in your life is often unseen. People only recognize it when you
get in the scorching sun.

And then you can see, they can see, you spent time in God's Word. God is letting
you weather this, go through this problem, go through this persecution, because
you spent time in God's Word. You put down roots into God's Word.

That's what prevents this problem of shallowness in our lives that is a growth
stopper. Now Jesus here talks about a third thing that stops our growth. The
third thing I would say is distractions.

Verse 22, "The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man
who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth
choke it, making it unfruitful. " So he says there are these weeds that grow
around the truth and they actually choke the life out of it. Sometimes as a
gardener, I love to garden and I've tried the strategy of letting the
strawberries and the weeds grow together, like the strawberries are somehow
going to overcome the weeds.

It never happens. Weeds are stronger. They choke the life out.

The answer is you've got to get rid of the weeds because weeds grow larger with
less care, even no care, than the plants. In one sense, when Jesus talks about
worries and the deceitfulness of wealth here, he's talking about the weeds of
distraction in our lives. And it's the easiest thing in the world to get
distracted in life.

A recipe for distraction today is you go and you Google the definition of
distraction. And while you're looking for that definition, you see a listing for
a YouTube video on distraction in the search list. So you go over to YouTube and
out of the corner of your eye, you see a video about a piano playing cat.

And you spend the next 20 minutes listening to Nora the cat play the piano. It's
the easiest thing in the world, in today's world, to get distracted. But the
worst of the distractions of today is not entertainment and the internet as bad
as that can be.

Jesus tells us here the two major things that choke the faith right out of us,
worry and riches. "Worry," he says, "worry gets your focus off of God and onto
the problem. " And what we need in our lives is like a spiritual weed be gone.

You know that spray stuff he put on weeds that causes the weeds to die? We need
something spiritual in our lives that can get rid of the weed of worry in our
lives so we can be growing. And the scripture tells us what that is.

In many places, the Bible says that worry is defeated. This weed is pulled out
through prayer. So when you're tempted to worry, you decide to pray.

You talk to God about your worries. When you do that, you will grow in faith.
It's a very simple step that will cause you to grow in faith in tremendous ways.

So Jesus says that's one of the things that is dangerous in our lives. And the
second one, he says, is the deceitfulness of riches. Deceitfulness.

He's saying here you can be fooled away from growth. Riches do that. You get a
larger salary, you get a bigger house, you get a better car.

It's easy to be fooled into thinking I must be growing because I've got bigger
stuff. I've got better stuff. Well, your stuff is not you.

It has nothing to do with you. And by the way, just because you have a smaller
house or a no car or you have less salary than you had last year, that doesn't
mean you're not growing. Your stuff and you are different things.

There's a difference between growing and gaining. Accumulating is not growing.
It's just accumulating.

So you've got to weed out this deceitfulness of riches. Now, how do you weed
that out? You weed that out through giving.

You're having a giving heart towards God, a giving heart towards others. And
Jesus is talking to us here about how real growth happens in our lives. And he's
helping us to understand it doesn't happen through the energy of my intent.

It happens through the power of God's Spirit in my life. Some of the most
intense, make use of every moment people that I know are caught up in these very
distractions we're talking about here. They're living their life very intently
with a lot of energy and everybody's very impressed with what they're doing.

But the truth of the matter is the reason they're so intent is they have so many
worries and their life is being driven by their worries or they're living their
life just to make more money or get more things or win the career game. That's
not growth. That's not joy.

That's not the life that Jesus has for you. Are you living just to make better
use of your time? That's actually wasting your life.

God put you on this earth to get to know him better and grow in him. And when
you and I get fooled by the deceitfulness of riches or the deceitfulness of
worries, we're missing out on the real life that he has for us. So these two
things we've talked about today, shallowness and deceitfulness, Jesus wants to
deal with both of those in our lives.

He has answers. Let's ask him to bring those answers into our life by faith.
Jesus, we ask you that when we're tempted to be shallow, when we're tempted to
go for the immediate good look, that you help us to remember to put down roots
into you day by day by day by day.

Refresh in our commitment to that today. And Lord, when we're tempted to be
deceived by worries or by riches, to let those draw us away from you where real
life is found, Lord, remind us that we can't find real life in things. We can't
find real life in our emotions.

We can only find real life in you because you are the way, the truth, and the
life. So Lord, we recommit our hearts to serving you, to loving you, to growing
in you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.