Multiply | April 12 2026 (Part 1)

Good morning everybody. Great to see you today.

If you brought a Bible with you want your turn with me to

Matthew's gospel, Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

If you're not familiar with the Bible's first book in the New

Testament, make your way there. Matthew 13.

I hope you've had a good week. I hope you have them quite

gotten over Easter weekend, our celebration of the death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ absolutely changed the world,

turned the world upside down and changing the lives and it

changed my life, continuing to change my life.

I hope it's that he is changing your life.

Last week I said that millions of Christians are gathered all

over celebrating Easter. Actually, I meant to say

billions of Christians, 2.4 billion Christians around the

world right now, to be precise, well, roughly precise to a lot

of people. And he's still changing lives

today in keeping with the immensity of the event of

Christ, death and resurrection. I want us to wrap our minds

around something today. I want us to wrap our minds

around a pretty big idea, an idea that we can't, can't really

address. It's, it's, it's too big for one

sermon. So we are making this into a

series that we've entitled Multiply.

You know when the good news woke me up?

Been in church all my life, university stage completely

rejected Christianity altogether.

But when the good news of Jesus Christ woke me up, when I came

to realize how loved I am by God and that even in the midst of my

resistance of Him and trying to live my own life, He was

pursuing me. And that He had given His life

for me when I woke up to that. And that He had given heaven to

me for free, that I didn't have to earn it.

Here I am trying to be good, trying to be trying to be good,

and actually thinking God wasn't very good and then realizing no,

he is so much better than I ever realized.

When I realized that Heaven's given as a gift for free, it

absolutely blew me away. Totally blew me away.

And I what was on my mind is what's the catch?

This is too good to be true. Heaven for free, being loved

like this, it's too good to be true.

And I remember the guy, the man, the gentleman by the name of

Brent who led me to Christ and who is discipling me.

Remember this conversation that we were having?

And I'm just sharing with him like, what's the catch?

What's the catch? You saying there is no catch,

but the more that I read the scriptures and the more the

conversations that we had, I'm realizing there is a catch.

I have to now go and share this good news with other people and

that didn't excite me very much at the beginning.

That was a catch to Brent. It was like, no, this is the

core to what this good news is all about.

You know, you haven't quite got the good news if you're not

ready to be sharing it. Be in the aroma of Christ to the

world, over time growing in my understanding and appreciation

of the goodness of God. Come to realize, you know what?

This isn't? It's not about me.

It's not just for me that, yeah, I am meant to receive and enjoy

the love of God for myself, but it's one that is meant to move

me to this place a passing it on to another, another person.

You know, I've been touched by the love of God.

Can you say that? You've been my my life has been

has been utterly transformed. He's continuing to transform me.

But I've been touched. And it was all the result of the

influence of another person that God moves through other people.

And if it wasn't for someone passing on that touch to me, I

just, I wonder, where would my life be?

Where would it be right now? You and I have been invited into

the greatest venture that the world has ever known.

There's there's nothing that compares to it.

The Church of Jesus Christ. Now, it may not look so great,

like it might not look like much, but this is the greatest

venture that the world will ever know.

But through the eyes of faith, we can come to realize the

potential for world change. There's no other way that the

world is going to change then through this plan that God has

called the Church of Jesus Christ in passing on the good

news of, of, of Jesus. In the early 80s, John Scully,

who was the president of Pepsi at the time, he was asked to

join a tech startup operation out of someone's garage.

And that garage happened to belong to Steve Jobs.

And Steve was working at the beginnings of the Apple

Corporation, which I'm sure we all know about.

Anyway, Scully turned him down. He says, you know, my office is

bigger than your garage, right? Total rejection.

But Steve Jobs didn't give up and he kept persisting.

And at one point, he just, he, he put the pitch.

He says, he says, he says. Do you wanna sell sugar water

for the rest of your life or do you wanna join me and help

change the world? And Scully recognized that there

was a purpose that could be higher that he was being called

into. Now that's just business.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is inviting each one of us into a

venture with him. Come and join me and let's

change the world together. Today I want to introduce this

big idea to multiply. That's that's simply all I'm

gonna be doing today. Now, when you think of the word

multiply or multiplication, what comes to your mind?

You might think immediately times tables and elementary

schools like, OK, what's 6 * 7? Quick, quick.

It's like, you know, freeze, right?

Some of us have nightmares of remember, we haven't fully

memorized or at least we've forgotten the times tables or

whatever. Others of us, you know, maybe as

we relate multiplication to church, we might think, you

know, maybe if we're a little bit on the cynical side, we say,

oh, that's all about numbers and getting big and, and, and more

money and all that kind of stuff.

I just want to level all that stuff out today and talk about

multiplication, just just how natural it actually is.

We're coming up to dandelion season.

It's, it's, it's almost here, friends.

Now if you, if you know, if you look out onto a field as you're

driving through the country and you see this, you know, this sea

of yellow, it's gorgeous. But if you own a lawn, you hate

dandelions, right? You hate them.

Why? Because they multiply like

nobody's business. You know when they get ready,

when those seeds get ready and the wind blows, or if you kick a

dandelion, what's happened? You get 1000, right potential

like 20,000 seeds go out from one dandelion.

They just multiply like crazy. Living things grow.

Living things multiply. That's that's, that's that's

what we're meant to do. And multiplication is a

completely biblical idea. You know what?

The very first words that God spoke to human humankind or the

very first words, Genesis chapter one, verse 28.

Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it.

Why fruitfulness and multiplication are very

important to God. First words out of His mouth.

Why? Because He wanted us to fill the

earth with His goodness. We are image bearers of the

living God, and so we are, you know, every single one of us.

We're similar in the fact that we're human, but every single

one of us looks different. There's no one person that's

completely like in each one of us is reflecting the image and

the beauty and the goodness of God just by who we are and just

I want to fill the earth with more of the goodness that's

going to make a difference in this world.

But you know what? The last words that Jesus spoke

to his church. Matthew 28 Go and make disciples

of all nations. Go and multiply the number of

disciples on the planet. That should tell us something.

Multiplication is very important to God, multiplying the number

of disciples in the world. What are we talking about?

We talk about disciples. We at Forest View, we talk very,

very simple. The disciple, we defined it in

three ways. They abide, they love, they bear

fruit. That's what it disciple is.

The disciple is one who loves God, who loves people, and who

passes it on. If something's missing there,

that person is not a disciple. That pass on part is the part

that many Christians and many churches just haven't got yet.

We've got a lot of work to do when it comes to the passing on,

and that's what we're going to focus on in this series.

We're going to look at some parables of Jesus.

The parables of Jesus talk about they, they kind of encapsulate

their little stories where they encapsulate his main teaching

about the Kingdom of God. You know that there's no other

topic that Jesus talks about more than the Kingdom of God.

That is the rule of God, the reign of God.

Everything that happens in the dominion of God, which is all

about his love and his goodness. It's all about his healing and

his wholeness and his restoration.

All of that is about the Kingdom of God.

Where the Kingdom of God is things are being done right,

wrong is being made right, lives are being made whole and Jesus

is teaching us about the Kingdom now.

Number of years ago just hit me like a ton of bricks reading

through the parables and realizing almost all of them are

about the expansion of the Kingdom of God.

It's all about growth. We're going to see this through

through through this series and we're going to look at a couple

today, but actually only we're gonna be in we're gonna be in

Matthew chapter 13 and we're gonna start at verse 31.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

And, and Lord, as we, as we look at your word today, we pray that

you would open our eyes, Lord, that you would instruct our

minds, Lord, that you would soften our hearts to the things

that are important to you. Holy Spirit, come minister to us

through your word this morning in Jesus name, Amen.

OK, Matthew chapter 13. Now Matthew chapter 13 begins

Matthew 13 · chapter mention Matthew 13 · chapter mention

with a description of the kind of the context and that is that

Jesus is speaking to a great crowd and a lot of people and

he's telling them a number of parables.

And so we're going to pick it up.

In verse 31, he told them another parable.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took

and planted in his field, though it is the smallest of all seeds.

Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows it is

the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds

come and perch in its branches. So we'll just pause there.

First parable that we're going to look at today is just really

about the mustard seed. Anybody held a mustard seed?

And this is how big a mustard seed is.

It's like the size of the head of a pin.

It's very, very small. Now, the mustard seed was not

the smallest seed ever, but Jesus was using the common seeds

that that farmers would know and that farmers would be using.

Like there's poppy seeds that are smaller.

They're orchid seeds that are smaller, but what Jesus

emphasized is from this very, very small seed is gonna come a

Bush, a tree, and take a look at this like they, they go up there

like 4 meters high out of this minuscule little seed.

So Jesus is talking about how the Kingdom of God, the rule of

God, the way that it enters into the world starts very small.

Now this would have been a mind Bender to the Jews at this time

because to think about the Kingdom of God, it's like man,

the majesty of God, the power of God coming to the earth, you'd

think this big splash. But no, that's not how God comes

to us. He comes gently.

He starts small and then he grows.

The Kingdom of God grows and expands, and it's gonna have a

reach. You know, its branches are gonna

stretch out and so that it's gonna provide shelter for many

people beyond its boundaries. There is a concept here that God

wants, Jesus wants to get us to understand, and that is that the

Kingdom, those smart starting small.

It's going to expand, it's going to grow, it's going to multiply

in the earth. Let's take a look.

Verse 33. He told them still another

parable, the Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took

and mixed into about 60 lbs of flour until it worked all

through the dough. So this this little parable is

about yeast. And as you know, yeast if you if

you have bread, if you have flour and you have water and you

mix it together, all you got is mucky paste.

But if you include yeast, it's going to allow the dough to rise

and make bread. Beautiful thing.

And just a handful of yeast here and like 60 lbs of power feed

about 100 people. Again, something has very small

beginnings is going to permeate. This is what yeast does when

you're working into the dough. It permeates through the whole

thing, multiplies. It, it, it, it, it, it expands.

This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, no?

In Jesus's time, yeast was often used in a negative sense, as

sort of a description or a metaphor for evil, the way that

it spreads to the world. But then again, Jesus is kind of

he's turning, turning things on its head, and he's saying no.

Now I'm talking about the goodness of God spreading

through the world, multiplying. How does it spread?

How does the Kingdom of God spread?

How does the rule of God, how does the healing of God, the

love of God, spread throughout the world?

It's passed on very personally. It's not it can't be done on

mass. It's something that's done very,

very personally. It's something that's

experienced by each one of us. I think of the about the

testimonies have happened just over the last last while at

Forest View, people that have testified about their faith from

this platform. I think of, of, of Holly and

Jackie and Chloe and Tucker and Tiffany and and Rachel speaking

about how the goodness of God had touched their lives,

realizing that their, their, their experience of grace, that

they're not defined by their past mistakes.

They're not defined by the expectations of others, that

they're not defined by the sins that may have happened to them,

but they're defined by the love that God has for them and that

their love just as they are. And that God is in the in the

process of healing them and using them in the most beautiful

way to be instruments of transformation in the lives of

other people. It's a very, very personal thing

and it's passed on through our relationships with one another.

Jesus knows this. The Kingdom of God is gonna be

spreading as we are intentional about loving people with the

love that we've been given. Every single one of us has been

influenced by somebody. Every single one of us has been

influenced. The good news necessitates the

passing on of that good news. That's what it's meant to be

stingy, to be, you know, to, to not do it.

It would be stingy, right? It's just for me.

It's just for me. It's just for me.

I said no, no, it's it's not. And in fact, part of the beauty

of our lives, part of the thing that's going to grow us up, part

of the things that's going to be given us more joy than more than

more joy than anything else, is to have that privilege of

passing it on and seeing the life of another person be

changed. You and I were made to multiply.

We were made. We were made for it.

Every single one of us has a part to play in Jesus grand

venture invited to be world changers.

Now let's just take an honest look at this.

That seems impossible to many of us, right?

The mission of God changing the world through this simple

message of God's love for us. It's like it's, it's, it's, it's

unattainable, this, this mission to transform the world.

But just think about it. It all started with one man

named Jesus of Nazareth with a little band of disciples.

And what happened? I mean, the world was literally

turned upside down as a result of that.

Always start small and you might think, OK, well, I'm not Jesus

and you're not right? We're not, I'm not like the

disciples. I'm not, I'm not like Rob Who

says what he thinks and everything's everything's

alright. I'm not like Jacob who can

articulate the message so clearly.

I'm not like Lisa, who is so relational and it has no problem

sharing exactly how she's feeling and how God has made her

feel like. I'm not like that and I'm not

like that. I'm not like any of that.

Like each one of us is so unique, but I've been made to

multiply. And if you're a follower of

Jesus Christ, you have been made to multiply.

God's inviting us to trust him in this.

He's, He's inviting us this. This is what the whole call is

all about. Matthew.

Sorry, Mark. Mark chapter one, verse 17.

Jesus says this. Come follow me, and I will make

you fishers of men. Come follow me and I will make

you fishers of men. I will make you.

This is incredibly comforting to me.

He, Jesus, does not call people that are already made.

It isn't called made people. He calls people any to himself,

just as they are, just as we are, and he's gonna make us into

fissures of people. Chris Hemsworth.

You may know him as Thor. Chris was not for before Thor.

I don't know if you've seen pictures of Chris before Thor.

Good looking guy but scrawny and compared to 4.

But the casting director saw Chris and said he's got the

frame that could be made into Thor, all right.

And so this massive dietary in in infusion of food into his

life and pumping iron and everything, and suddenly he

becomes thorn. We know him, know him is that he

was made into Thor before he was Thor.

I mean, he's not really Thor. He's the actor and he does a

really good job of being for Jesus is calling each one.

He's the casting director and he's saying I've chosen you.

I've chosen you. I've chosen you and I'm gonna

make you into a fissure of people.

I'm going to use you to spread my Kingdom to this earth.

I'm going to empower you to pass on the greatest news through

your life, not just a message, but the way that you live with

other people. And we're going to change the

world together. Now you might think, OK, can't

do it. My life is too full.

I don't have time for this. Or I, you know, I, I mean, I'm

just trying to keep my head above water.

I just don't have the emotional capacity to be worrying about

that kind of stuff. I get that.

I totally get that. And that's why Jesus gives us

this invitation. Come and follow me.

I know you got tons of doubts. I know you don't think it can be

done. I know you don't think it's

gonna be attainable. But come and follow me, and I'm

gonna make you. That's a, in order to respond to

Jesus's statement like that, that is a, that's a act of

trust. And that's what it means to

follow Jesus. I'm going to follow you.

And I don't know exactly where this is going to go.

I know it's going to be good because I trust you.

And I don't think it's gonna, you know, I've got problems,

Lord, but I'm going to follow you and I'm going to trust that

you're going to take me by the hand.

You're going to walk me through. Because even when we're going

through the worst of times, God can use us to do mighty things,

beautiful things in this world. All of us have problems and

some, and if we don't have problems now, we're going to

enter into problems. So we've just come out of

problems. Problems.

That's just what life is about, it says.

Come follow me. You who's troubled, he's got

tons of problems, and I'm gonna use you.

And even your problems I'm gonna use to make my goodness known to

the people around you. So it starts with just two

things. Starts with a yes.

It all begins with a yes. Lord, I am willing to follow you

now. If you're a Christian, that

means that you've made a decision to follow Jesus.

That means that we have made a decision to be one who passes

on, who multiplies. And that part of it, what it

means to be a disciple is it might be a bit of a a bit of a

challenging thought to us right now.

But can I trust God enough to say I'm going to follow you and

I'm going to be made into the kind of person who's going to

multiply and I'm just going to trust you with it?

That is so critical. It all begins with a yes.

Secondly, though, it all starts small, and this is the

encouraging part to me. And you know what?

It never gets big. It's always meant to be small.

But God knows how overwhelmed with life we can be.

And so He has made it in such a way that we can participate in

His Kingdom work and be multipliers just by keeping it

small. You may have been told way too

late that if you invest $50.00 a month when you're 18, you'll be

a millionaire by the time you retired, right?

Was that a laugh over there? Yeah, just a small amount every

month and watch it grow. That's a Kingdom principle,

investing a little bit and watching God make it grow.

I mean, God, God's, I'm not talking God's the big banker in

the sky. I'm not talking about that.

Talking about these are these are Kingdom principles.

Jesus showed us how this works. Think about it, the Son of the

living God came to the earth to change the world and what did he

do? He invested in a few men.

That's what he did. He invested in a few.

He preached to the multitudes, but he invested his time and

energy into just a few people. Eugene Peterson put it this way.

He said Jesus, it must be remembered, restricted 9/10 of

his ministry to 12 Jews because it was only because it was the

only way to reach all Americans. Thought that was well put. 9/10

of his ministry went to 12 Jews because it was the only way to

reach all Americans. That is counterintuitive.

We gotta win the world. We gotta do it big.

No, Jesus says this day we're gonna do it small and we're

gonna stay small. And I want you to invest in just

a few people and watch that multiply, many of you.

So I mean, this is how, this is how Jesus started, right?

He started by addition. He's calling.

Come follow me. I'll make you fishers of men,

but then eventually it gets to know you go and you make

disciples. You go fish for people.

Addition turns to multiplication for for for those of you who

have done Discipleship essentials, read that book by

Greg Ogden and it's a tool that we use to for for for our, for

triads. You may have seen a chart that

looks like this. I've just taken it from the,

from the, from the first chapter and I, I couldn't fit the whole

chart in there. But if you look at the work of

an evangelist, a very powerful evangelist that's leading, think

of yourself as leading an individual to Christ every day.

That's a, that's a huge impact, right?

Every day. And you see the work of

evangelists. And so 365 days in the first

year and then the next and then the next.

But if you were to disciple someone to maturity and you took

one year for one person, it starts small but by the time 16

years goes by look at the difference.

If I was to lead someone to Jesus one every day after 16

years it be 5840 disciples. But if I was disciple 1 person

to matricial maturity and help them to be able to pass on the

faith like you're passing that on to them and you continue to

do that one every year, you'd have 65,536 disciples made.

Jesus says we're starting small, friends, start small.

Invest in a few and do it well. Love the people that we're with.

Actually, you know, we have been loved by God that way, and I

want you to love the people that you're spending that time with.

I think of where my life would be if Brent Dolfo had not

invested some time in me. Like, where would my life be?

And now I think, you know, GAIL and I just marvel at this on an

ongoing basis is saying where would our lives have gone?

Like we're under no illusion that what is happening in our

life is something that we have put together.

God has done it. And I look back on the influence

of Brent. We spent all that time with me,

years time with me, discipling me.

And I think of my children and my children's children and I

think of my the the coworkers and the neighbors over the years

and pastor congregation, like all that happened from one

person investing in me. I think, wow, that is that is

that is impact, and that's just me.

So Jesus invites us, each one of us.

Let's take some ground together, let's RIP it out of the enemy's

hand. Let us build the Church of Jesus

Christ. Let's fill that.

There's no other way that the world is going to get changed

unless people's lives are touched by the love of God.

And that's what the work of the Church is all about, moving His

Kingdom. Now in this series, we're going

to be looking at some of the practices of a multiplier,

practices that we can we can apply in our homes, in our

schools, in our workplaces, in our neighborhood, in our church.

We're going to learn these things.

But all I want to do today is just for us to ponder whether

we're really saying yes or not. Am I saying yes?

Am I willing to start small and say yes to Jesus and allow Him

to lead me and make me into the person that He wants me to be?

Think about that for a minute. Just think about that for me.

Jesus is inviting us into this Kingdom work, and His Kingdom is

unstoppable. The church is unstoppable.

We're going to be talking about that through this series.

You think of 1st century Rome. Rome was out to squelch

Christianity, persecuting Christians, and what happened?

It's like kicking dandelions. 1000 pop out here and there,

right? That's what's happened.

That's what happens. Even under persecution, trying

to be squelched, it's not going to happen.

I think of China 1950s was a cultural revolution that took

place in China. There was about 4 million

Christians at the time and they put a ban on all.

They kicked all mission Christian missionaries and and

Christian workers out of the country, and everybody wondered

what was gonna happen to the church in China.

Would it still be around? Would it survive?

Well, 20 years later, the band has lifted and they realized the

church has grown by 20 million people a year.

Now it's like, I don't know somebody between 160 and 200

million people, million Christians in China, many of

which have been underground. Why it's been multiplying Wasn't

just surviving, it was multiplying.

It was multiplying and that's the call.

That is the call for us. We think of a secular Canada

trying to squelch Christianity. Silence Christians.

Not gonna happen friends. The only thing that is stopping

the church from making a dent in this world of bringing change is

Christians who are not willing to multiply.

Jesus is inviting us. Come follow me, let's join in

this incredible venture. I have made you to multiply.

That made you to multiply. I want to leave you with one

last image. This blew, blew me away.

Anybody heard of columns of creation?

This picture here is, I mean, you can't really capture it too

well, but this is from the James Webb telescope.

This image, this is about 7000 light years from Earth in the

middle of the Milky Way. And it looks like rock

formations, isn't it? But it's, it's just, it's

made-up of gas and dust, and it's really an incubator for new

stars. The the pillars begin to

collapse under their own gravity and they slowly heat up and they

eventually produce new stars. New stars are being made all the

time. I think that's just the coolest

thing that the universe that God has created continues to expand.

It's amazing. We're on this little planet and

God has gifted us with his capacity to look at everything

He's created. It's like, wow, are we ever

small and is he ever big? He is glorious and we get to

look at this kind of stuff, but He is.

Stars are still being produced. They're they're multiplying the

same voice that spoke stars into existence and he knows them all

by name is speaking to us now. It's saying I want you to join

me in multiplying and expanding my Kingdom on the earth.

Let's pray. Lord in heaven, thank you for

your Kingdom. Thank you, Lord, that you have

not let us. You have not let humanity just

completely go off the rails, but you have come after us and you

are bringing your Kingdom through individuals into lives

for transformation because you want to change the world.

Thank you for your saving grace. Lord.

Forgive us where we have not captured and and appreciated the

beauty of what you're trying to do.

We thank you for your your grace in our lives and we pray, Lord,

you give us a heart for those around us who are not

experienced experiencing that same grace.

Yeah, forgive us, Lord. Lord, we ask.

That is, we step into this series together and obey your

command to come follow You. That you would make us into the

people that you want us to be. That we would be multipliers.

That your goodness will be seen and experienced throughout this

earth. We lay our lives out before you.

Thank you for what you're gonna do.

Increase our faith for it. Lord, we prayed in Jesus name.

Hey, man.