Trust Me and Multiply

Welcome, Summit Church. Happy Lord's Day weekend here at all of our campuses. Happy Halloween weekend for those of you who worship the devil.

No, I'm just kidding. I do know that we have people of different kind of convictions in the church about how they ought to handle an event like that. I will just encourage you, if you're one of those who feels, yeah, I don't really like to participate at all in that, that there is no other weekend of the year where people come literally to your doorstep or night.

But you don't give the cheap candy, but you give the good candy. And to you, Duke football fans, I just want to say sincerely, I am sorry. I think we can all agree that you got wronged. So rejoice for those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. We weep with you.

Let me catch you up. If you were not here last weekend as a church, we are taking a few weeks to consider where God is taking us as a people. God has blessed us, Summit Church. And with that blessing, we know comes a responsibility to use that blessing to bless the world. And so we're asking the question, where has he blessed us? And what does he intend for us to do in multiplying that blessing in the world? I'm also presenting that question to you personally. Where has God blessed you?

And what does God intend to do with that blessing to multiply it for the blessing of others? I am doing the unusual thing of asking you in this series to come for every single week. I know your habits and I love you. And I know that you come for two or three weeks and then you want to take a week off. Some of you were hearing this one. For the first time because last weekend was your week off. I get that.

I'm not judging you. But I think for this series, if at all possible for you to be here every single week, I'm not saying that these sermons are going to be the most awesome things you have ever heard. Just that I believe that the next few weeks are going to be a defining moment in the life of our church. I believe that they are going to change us as a church in two different ways. The first is God is going to extend our reach and multiply our ministry. He's going to give us a glimpse of that. The second video that you just saw talks about one aspect of our vision of planting a thousand churches in our generation around the world.

Our vision is really two-fold. On one hand, we want to equip you, the Summit Church, to better reach your friends and your neighbors and your families for us to be the church here. Leading up to this Multiply series, we baptized 340 people in our community.

Every single one of those was connected to one of you as a friend, as a family member, or as a neighbor. I have asked God to let our church baptize 50,000 people by 2050 here in the work that we do. That's one aspect of what we want to do, multiply to reach our neighbors and our family around us. We also want to ask God to multiply us in places where the church doesn't exist. It's going to change us.

It's also going to change us personally because it's going to challenge each of us to re-ask what our engagement in the mission of God looks like. I don't know about you, but I feel like my heart is like a car severely out of alignment. If you've ever had a car out of alignment, you know that if you take your hands off the steering wheel, it just kind of veers into the ditch. Well, those two ditches for me are self-sufficiency and self-centeredness. The moment that I take my hands off of the wheel of my life, I just veer into one of those ditches. If you're like me, periodically we need to re-ask ourselves, each of us, what are you doing with the time, the treasure, and the talents that God has given to you?

Are you using them in faith and sacrifice for his mission and not your own? That's one of the ways it's going to change us. Let me remind you that Commitment Weekend is going to be November 21st and 22nd here. I'd love for you to be here that weekend as we covenant together as a church to take this step together to follow God where he is leading us.

If you missed last week and you're like, I'm not sure what's going on, there was a great video presentation that just summarized what's in front of us, you can check it out on our website and be all caught up. Let me encourage you now, if you will, to take out two things. One's your Bible, the other is your multiply notebook that you got either last week on your way out or this weekend on your way in. There's a place in that notebook for you to take notes on today's message.

It's page 42. If you want to open it there, I cannot prove this, but I'm pretty confident that taking notes on sermons in church will increase the square footage of your mansion in heaven. I can't prove that, but I'm pretty sure it says it in Deuteronomy somewhere, which is where preachers always go when they want to make stuff up because nobody ever looks in there. It's what it says in Deuteronomy, I'm confident. Open your Bible to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12, we are looking at the life of one of the most important figures in human history, a man we now call Abraham, to see how God multiplied his life for eternal significance. Maybe more importantly, we're looking at the path that God led him down to accomplish that because, listen, this is a path that you and I will have to walk also if we want our lives to multiply for eternal significance.

I asked you last weekend, isn't that what you want? Don't you want to go through life and get to the end and know that you did more than just pay bills and occupy space and consume resources? I know that you do.

I know that's what burns in your heart of hearts. And so we're looking at the path that you've got to walk to get there. And today we're going to talk about a very important part of that path called trust.

Trust. It would be great. It would be great if Abraham's choice to follow God at the beginning of Genesis 12 resulted in an unbroken string of obedience, a dazzling succession of faith victories.

But that's simply not the case. Before Abraham even gets out of Genesis 12, he's just about giving away the whole farm. Genesis 12, verse 10, God sends a famine to the region where Abraham was staying. So Abraham has to detour down to Egypt because Egypt is the only place that has food at that time.

Verse 11, when Abraham was about to enter Egypt, he says to Sarai his wife, I know that you're a woman beautiful in appearance. And when the Egyptians see you, they're going to say this is his wife. Then they will kill me.

But they will let you live. So say you are my sister that my life may be shared for your sake. In other words, somebody there that's powerful is going to look at you and say she's hot, even though she's 70.

She's hot. And I really want her to be my wife. And then they're going to have me killed so they can have you as my wife. So I want you to say you're my sister. That way you can still be their wife. At least I won't lose my life. What do you call that?

What do you call that? Is that a lack of faith or is that your answer to why I ought to be featured on The Jerry Springer Show? Abraham, do you not believe that the God who promised to make you a great nation, don't you believe he can at least keep the Egyptians from stealing your wife and then killing you? This scene is strangely comforting to me because my life has hardly been an unbroken string of successes since I became a Christian. It seems like each epic of my life has been marked by wavering faith in high school. I just could not be satisfied with God's opinion of me after I became a Christian. I was still felt like I had to prove myself to everybody else.

It just flat wore me out in college. I wasn't content with God's timing. I wanted to have a girlfriend. Then I wanted to be married. Then I wanted to get out into the world. When I first became pastor here, I wasn't content with the ministry assignment that God had given to me. I wanted the church to be bigger.

I wanted to have more impact. I would look at things that God was giving to others of my friends and thought, why didn't he give that to me? I look back through my life and I see how every single stage has been characterized by wavering belief. I look here at Abram's life and I can count at least five instances where he pretty dramatically drops the ball. We've got this first one here in Genesis 12 where he lies about his wife. You're going to have another one in Genesis 16 when he gets worried several years later because he's like three decades in and God still hadn't given him a son. He follows Sarah, his wife's lead. He says, sleep with my house servant Hagar and then maybe you can get pregnant through her.

Well, that's lapse number two. He does that. Hagar gives birth to a son named Ishmael through Abraham. And you would think, hey, success. Sarah's happy. Abram's happy.

Everybody's happy. Do you really think that? Do you really feel like that was good for Abram's marriage? Guys, put yourself in his position. You and your wife can't have kids. And so one night in frustration, she says, oh, why don't you just sleep with our maid and see if you can get her pregnant? So you do and she does. You think your wife is going to be happy about that? Anybody that dumb that would raise their hand and say, yeah, I think that'd be good for our relationship?

No. Sarah is ticked. So she starts abusing Hagar just for doing what Sarah asked her to do. And Abram's spineless wonder that he is at this point says, OK, you girls work that out.

And he lets Sarah abuse her and drive her out. That's lapse of faith number three. Genesis 17, God reappears to Abram to renew his promise to give him a son through Sarah. And Abram laughs at God. The father of our faith scoffs in God's face.

Failure number four. Finally, Genesis 20, Abraham runs into another king who scares him. And he lies again, again about Sarah being his wife and says she's my sister so the king won't kill him. This one is weird because it brings us back full circle to the beginning. I know somebody who was reading through the life of Abraham just as we're doing this series and they got to the end and they were like, did I already read this? Like I'm having deja vu or it's in there twice.

It's the same situation that he repeats twice. It's almost as if the author is saying Abraham's no better at the end than he was at the beginning. He's still having the same struggles of faith when he's an old man in the faith as when he was a less old man in the faith. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a lot better about my life right about now.

Aren't you? Here's what we learn from Abraham's journey here. Four things. Number one, God grows our faith by testing it. God grows our faith by testing it. Right after Abraham started to follow God, God caused the famine so that Abraham would have to go to Egypt, a place where he knew Abraham would be scared for his life. God was testing Abraham and trying to grow his faith.

You see, we don't just make a one-time decision to follow God and then move on. God has to grow and test our faith because faith is our most important spiritual muscle. Faith, you see, actually works like a muscle. They say that you can only strengthen a muscle when you strain it. When you work and strain a muscle, they say, you produce thousands of tiny little tears in the muscle and then it grows back stronger.

That's the science of exercise. That's how God grows our faith. He puts us in situations where he tears us so that he can grow us back stronger.

Y'all, I see this happen so regularly in people's lives. I would say it is the standard experience for every new Christian without exception. You come to Jesus and pretty soon you're going to go through an experience where you're going to start asking questions like, well, how is God going to provide for me now?

I know people who when they become Christians and they get serious with God lose their jobs and they look at heaven and they're like, is this how you reward me? Is this how you're taking care of me? No, he's testing your faith. Or you say, am I going to be able to make it through this difficult season of my marriage? Man, I thought things were going to be different.

I thought things were going to be a lot smoother, but instead you're in the middle of this trial. Is God going to be able to provide for me here or he will allow people to turn on you? It seems like quite often when I see a high school or college student come to Jesus, a lot of their friends turn on him. A lot of their friends turn on him and turn their backs and it's like God is behind that asking, do you value these?

Do you trust these more than you trust me? Faith is the most important muscle in the Christian life and God is committed to strengthening it in you. Faith is your core muscle. Faith is not just how you begin the Christian life. Faith is the whole thing. We say that faith is not the diving board off of which you jump into the pool. Faith is the soil in which everything in the Christian life grows. So God is committed throughout your whole life to testing your faith and stretching it and growing it, which leads us to number two. In testing our faith, God often brings us to the very brink.

Think about this. God could have given Abram a son immediately. After he followed him in Genesis 12, it could have been like the very next month or the very next week, Sarah gets pregnant, but he doesn't do that, does he? He waits, get this, 25 to 35 years. And Abram is already 70. He's got a lot of life behind him. Why would God wait that long?

If God's determined to give him, why wait three decades to actually fulfill the promise? Well, let's go back to the illustration of the muscle. Workout specialists talk about something called muscle failure. And they say that when you really want to strengthen a muscle, you've got to push it until it can't go any farther, until you literally can't lift anything else.

And only then when you go to muscle failure will it begin to multiply in its capacity. That's exactly what God does to your faith. He pushes it to the brink. He pushes it to faith failure. Only then will he multiply it in you.

Listen to this. You see, if God had given to Abram a son immediately, it would have made Abram rejoice, but it would not have grown his faith. And God is not just after giving you joy.

He does want that. The most precious possession he says you have, more precious than gold itself, is the faith. And so he is committed to increasing that in you, and he is going to push you to the point that it tears and it breaks down so that he can grow it. Abraham had to feel his total helplessness in the face of sterility. He had to feel his hopelessness in the face of Sarah's barrenness if he was to cast himself utterly upon the arms of divine promises and really grow in his faith.

Here's my question for you. Is God doing that with you right now? Is God pushing you to the brink? Listen, the way that you become an Abraham is not pleasant. It's not through listening to me preach the sermons. You're like, this is what I want to do.

I want to preach sermons, and I want to take notes, and I just want to be an awesome critic. If you want to become a great person of faith like Abraham, it's not going to be a pleasant experience. He's going to lead you through the valley so that he can show you that he can indeed provide for you there. He's going to send you into the storm so that you can see his ability to walk on water above those storms.

He's going to surround you with conflict so he can demonstrate that he can indeed prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies. God is serious about teaching you to live by faith because faith is not an addendum to the Christian life. Faith is not a part of the Christian life.

Faith is all of the Christian life. Listen, in order to multiply, if you really want to multiply to eternal significance, you are going to have to learn to exercise faith. Last week I showed you where Paul compared everything that God has given to us like a seed.

Think of that in three major categories, what God's given to you, your time, your treasure, and your talents. I told you there are two things you can do with a seed. Most seeds you can grind up for food and eat like grain. Or you can take that same seed and you can plant it, but here is the catch, if you will. When you plant it, you remove your ability to eat that seed for food. Because once you put it into the ground, you can't get it, access it, and eat longer. And so there's an inherent risk in planting because you're taking your hands off of what you could use right now, and you're hoping that in planting it, it will come back multiplied.

There's an inherent faith required in planting, and that is always a little terrifying. I read this story about some farmers in the Midwest who, 100, 150 years ago, had all moved out there because of these incredible produce that could be gotten from the American Midwest. And so after moving out there, they went through, in Oklahoma, one of the worst droughts in American history.

It was like 10 years of no rain. And so many of these farmers, they say, by that last year, after a decade, had used up all their seed and are just surviving on it with their family. And so many of them had about a year's worth of seed left. And in order to plant, you had to plant about six months of it.

So here's the catch. If you plant six months of it, you've got only six months left to eat, right? So if you plant in the fall, and then you plant six months, when you get done eating, there better be a harvest there. Because if not, then you've got nothing, and your family's going to starve, and you've got no money. So these farmers in 1939, this excruciating choice of, well, are we going to plant, or are we just going to hold onto this and survive?

The ones in 1939 who actually did plant, the rains came back that year, and they had one of the biggest crops that they'd ever seen. God continually does that with you. He puts you in those situations where He says, are you going to trust Me enough that you release these things to Me to give Me a chance to multiply them? During this multiply season, He is going to call some of you to give and to sacrifice in ways that honestly are going to scare you.

They may not be that huge in terms of a balance sheet, but for you they're big. And the question that's going to be asked to you is, do you believe that God can multiply what you give to Him, that He can take care of you and bless the world at the same time? Because the only way, listen, the only way that you and I will multiply is when we begin to live and give by faith. So I see S. Lewis, I quoted this last week. He said the only safe rule when it comes to your generosity, if you want to rule, the only safe rule is to give until it scares you, because only then do you know that you are living by faith. If you are after a nice, safe, neat, tidy life where you just kind of do Christian things and you come listen to Christian sermons, I'm not talking to you right now, but if you want to have a life that matters for eternity, you want to have a life of eternal significance, you can only follow Jesus with total abandon and you have got to live, whether it's your time, your treasures, and your talents, you've got to do so in a way that just says, God, here is the seed, and you're going to have to multiply it and take care of me and bless the world at the same time.

The only way, the only way to follow Jesus is with total abandon. There was a place I used to go with some friends of mine before I got married several years ago. It was when I lived in upper state New York. It was called Split Rock Canyon.

Nobody except locals knew it was there, so they showed it to me. You'd have to pull your car off the side of the road on the interstate, kind of walk through this little path about 300 yards into the woods when all of a sudden the ground just dropped away and there was this little stair-step waterfall. The first part of it was about 25 to 30 feet and it dumped in a pool and then another few feet, there was another waterfall and it was about 35 feet into another pool and then the canyon along the side just went, you know, it stayed the same height. And so some of my friends showed me, they took me out there and they're like, if you run off of this side of this canyon and you just jump with all your might, you can land in that second pool down there about 75 feet away. Now here was the catch though, here was the deal. If you were to measure the amount of distance horizontally you had to cover, you could never do it in a broad jump.

You could never do it. But because you were in the air so long, the trajectory would carry you safely into the pool. But the deal was you couldn't just walk off to the side and just step. You had to just run with total abandon and just leap. You say, JD, did you do it? Heck no, I did not do it. Actually, I take it back.

I did it not that trip, I did it later trips, but I was so terrified in it, I cannot claim any manliness at all. But it was just, you can't do it if you hedge your bet. It is also true with the Christian life, you cannot walk forward and multiply if you're going to hedge your bets.

You have to run and jump with total abandon. So that leads us to a question. Where in the world do you get that kind of confidence? Where do you get the courage to plant the seed that you have?

Where do you get the courage to jump? Question number three, or statement number three, confidence to risk for God comes only from comprehending the commitment of God. Abraham shows us that confidence to risk for God comes from comprehending the commitment of God. We know that Abraham eventually got this. How do we know that? Well, Genesis chapter 22, we're not going to look at it today.

We'll get more in depth to it a little later. But after God finally gave to Abraham this promised son, Isaac, after he gave him the son, he asked Abraham when Isaac was about 15 years old, he asked Abraham to offer this son up as a sacrifice. Now, we're going to go more into depth in this later, but Isaac was not only what Abraham most loved in the world. It was not only his most treasured person, possession, whatever. Isaac was Abraham's only hope for the future of his family and his nation. He doesn't just represent what he treasures most.

It represents all his hopes for the future. And God says, offer it as a sacrifice. And Abraham in Genesis 22 does it. God doesn't actually let him go through with it. We'll get into that later. He stops him before he does it. Abraham is willing to put that thing he loves the most and that thing he trusts the most on the altar.

The question for you is, what is that for you? We'll get into more of that later. But here's my question now. After failing again and again and again, after being the kind of guy who would throw his wife under the bus, not once, but twice, how does Abraham finally get the confidence to do that? I think I know.

I think I know. You got your Bible, go there. Genesis 15, verse 3. Abraham is in one of his doubting moods. God reappears to him and says this. Genesis 15, 3. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield and I am your exceeding great reward. And Abraham says, verse 4, Woo, thanks, God. That's awesome. You taught me a new worship chorus.

I'll be happy to sing to you. No, it's not what he said. It's actually kind of rude. After God reveals this to him, Abram says, behold, you ain't given me no son. That's all he says. This is what Abram's response is. You ain't given me no son. Where's my son?

I'm like, 90. So God takes him outside and he shows him the stars and says, as many as these stars are, that's how your offspring is going to be, Abram. And then occurs that famous verse where the apostle Paul says, shows us how we get saved. Abram, Genesis 15, 6. Abram believed the Lord. And it was credited to him as righteousness. By the way, people say, well, how are people saved in the Old Testament? Same way they were in the New Testament. They were saved by believing on the Messiah.

Abram believed that the Messiah would come. We believe that the Messiah has come. They believe forward. We believe backward.

The direction is different, but the object is the same. Abraham believed God's promise that God would keep his word and God credited it to him as righteousness. Just like God credits us as righteousness when we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. All right, Abraham believed what God said.

So at this point, Genesis 15, 6, we're like, woo, way to go, Abraham. But then, after the most famous verse on faith in the whole Bible, Genesis 15, 6, Abram said, verse 8, but, Lord God, how will I know? In other words, he doubts again. Now, he's doubting two different things here. And these two components always form the substance of your doubts. The first part of the doubt is, God, how do I know I can trust you?

It's been like two decades, God. Are you really going to keep your word? The second component is, how can I trust me? God, you know I've proven to be pretty unreliable.

What if I screw this up too? Those are the two pieces of what causes a doubt in you. God, how do I know I can trust you?

How do I know I can trust me? You want to know what God's answer is? It's pretty awesome.

It's probably not what you're expecting. Verse 9, chapter 15, and I'll summarize it instead of reading it. God says, you want to know how you can trust you and how you can trust me? Okay, go get five animals.

A cow, a goat, a ram, a turtle dove, and a pigeon. I want you to find a ditch, and I want you to cut them in half, and I want you to put either half of them on either side of the ditch so that their blood flows down into the ditch and makes a river of blood. And you're like, what? Okay, we live in a written age, so when we want to guarantee, we ask for a written contract. So when a contractor, for example, quotes you a price to work on your house, if you are smart, you ask for it in writing.

So when he comes back to you, or if he comes back to you and says, actually, I've decided to charge you this amount instead, then you say, ah, here's your name on the contract, guaranteeing this other price. Well, in those days, instead of signing a contract, they cut a few animals open and walked through the river of blood so that the blood splashed up on their robes, saying, if I don't keep up my end of the covenant, may this, this blood, may it happen to me. The Hebrew word for covenant literally means to cut. They would say, you cut a covenant. We say, sign a contract, they say, cut a covenant. Honestly, I feel like this would just be more effective with my contractor. How much are you charging me for the painting? I don't think so, my friend. The blood on your pants says differently.

I feel like it'd be more effective. Well, they're supposed to make this covenant at sundown. So verse 12, as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. A dreadful and great darkness fell upon him, and a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. By the way, exact same words to use to describe the presence of God in Exodus when God came down at Mount Sinai.

The fire of his holiness and the light of his presence passes between those pieces. On that day, watch this, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, but who didn't walk through that river of blood?

Abram didn't. You know, in those days, when the king made a covenant with a servant, it was customary for the servant to walk through the river of blood alone because it was assumed that the king would keep up his end. This is the only covenant in recorded history where the king goes through and the servant does not.

The meaning is very clear. God is saying, if I fail to keep up my side of the bargain, I will pay with my blood. But if you fail to keep up your side of the bargain, I also will pay with my blood. I'm going to be responsible for both sides of the covenant. I want you to really think about that. God made himself responsible for God's part, and God made himself responsible for Abram's part.

I'll pay the penalty if I don't keep up my end, and I'll pay it if you don't keep up your end either. That, of course, is going to give us one of the clearest pictures of Christ in the Old Testament. Just like Abram fell into a deep sleep, or in the deep, dreadful sleep of sin. The gospels tell us that when Christ died, a dreadful darkness descended upon the whole earth, and Jesus' blood flowed out of his side like a river. Was God's son dying because God had not kept up his end of the bargain?

No. He was dying because we had not kept up ours. That's why we sing things like, he took my sins and my sorrow and made them his very own. He bore my burden to Calvary, and he suffered and died alone. I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to be the one dying. But he died in my place because he made himself a guarantor, not just for his part.

He put his life on the line for my part. So what else do I have to say but how marvelous, how wonderful, and my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me. That is exactly where Abraham got the faith that he showed in Genesis 22, when the offer was called on the offer of Isaac. That scene assured him, that scene assured him of what God would do, and it assured him of how committed God was to seeing this promise through to the end, even after Abraham had faltered and fallen again and again and again. Abraham would fall. Abraham was unfaithful. But God would always be, and God would cover both parts of that covenant. Y'all, it is true, even after this scene, Abraham's gonna struggle with doubt. But throughout Abraham's life, you see this conviction beginning to settle in. And you're gonna hear him in Genesis 22. You're gonna hear him quote, basically saying, God is gonna take care of this, even where I mess it up.

See, listen, write this down. True confidence does not come from within us. True confidence comes from what was done for us. Courage, listen, courage is not a character quality. Courage is a consideration of God's commitment to us shown at Calvary. You wanna know where you have courage? You wanna know where you have faith? It doesn't come because you're an awesome person of faith or because you're just a person of great courage. It comes from understanding the commitment that God showed to you in his irrevocable covenant that he gave you at Calvary. In the cross, we see God's commitment to see it through. And that becomes our anchor to boldly go forward with him because not only will he keep up his end, he's gonna make up for whatever I mess up.

Would you just reflect for a minute on how comforting that is? God's commitment to my family is greater than mine. You know what that means for me as a dad?

It means that I am not worried about where, if I only get everything right, God is gonna make up for what I mess up, that where I falter, he stays committed. God's commitment to this church is greater than mine. I love this church. My wife and I depend on this church. God's commitment to you is greater than my commitment to you because God purchased you with his blood.

I never done that for you. God's got more invested in this church than I do. So I'm not having to persuade God to bless the church that I'm a part of, it's his church.

I just gotta say, God, do in your church what you wanna do. God's commitment to my growth in Christ's likeness, y'all, is greater than mine. God's got more invested in my life than I have invested in my life because God purchased me with his blood, which is why, by the way, I don't obsess about discovering his will.

I used to. Back when I was just obsessed about it, I felt like the will of God was this thing for me that he kept in a lock box and this is sort of his posture toward me. I'd be like, God, what's your will? He's like, I ain't gonna tell you.

You're gonna have to figure it out. And I hope you get the combination right because if not, you're just gonna screw up and I'm gonna laugh. And I'd be like, oh, God, please tell me your will. Please tell me your will. Oh, God, was that feeling your will?

I'd be obsessed about all these things. And then I finally realized it was the greatest burden that came off my back. I'm like, you know what? God has more invested in my life. God is not up in heaven going like, I hope he doesn't discover his will.

I'm gonna make it hard for him. God says, man, I want you to know my will more than you wanna know it. So you can just rest in me because my commitment to you exceeds your commitment to you.

You know what that means, y'all? It means no matter where you are, how badly you've stumbled, you can get up and you can go onward in faith because God's commitment to you has never subsided. You took your hands off of God and you fell flat on your face, but guess who didn't give up? God didn't give up.

So Proverbs 24, 16 says it this way. Listen to this. The righteous man falls seven times and gets back up again every single time. I think I've asked you this before.

You know how strange it would be? Think about walking behind somebody who fell seven times. The first time they fall, what do you do?

They fell, right? The second time they fall, you slowly pull out your phone and you film it. The third time you shoot it to some friends because this is gonna be, the fourth time you post it on YouTube. The fifth time they fall, you feel bad.

I should not be filming this guy because he clearly has got a problem. The sixth time you call 911. The seventh time you're trying to give the God mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Seven times. The righteous man spiritually and morally and in his faith falls seven times.

By the way, seven in the Bible is the number of completion in Hebrew, which means this is all that fool does is he falls. His whole life is just one fall after another. Abraham fell five times. He didn't show his righteousness by never falling. He showed his righteousness by what he did when he fell. Every single time he got back up after he fell because righteousness is a declaration. Listen, righteousness is a declaration that even when you falter, God will remain faithful and God will complete the work that he has started and what he has purposed for you.

You know what that means? That means no matter where you are or how you fall, you can get up. You can get up because God has never subsided.

He still has a plan. I know some of you have messed up badly. Get up. Getting up is a declaration of faith that God has not given up on you. Getting up is saying, I understand what he proved in Jesus Christ.

Getting up is your faith declaration that he still has a plan to bless and multiply your life and use it for good. Did you mess up your marriage? Did you fall back into porn?

Did you make a really bad mistake? Get up. Get up. He walked through Calvary alone and he will never give up on you. And so you reflect on what he did for you at the cross and you, like Abraham, you fall and you get up and say, I messed it up. He's still got a plan. And that's the path to righteousness and that's the path to multiplied blessing.

Number four. You see from Abraham's life that multiplying power comes through faith. Watch what happens here. Flip over to Genesis 17 real quick. Genesis 17, God appears again. Now at this point, Abraham is 99 years old.

No kidding. God appears, chipper. Abram, no longer should your name be called Abram, daddy. Your name shall be Abraham, big daddy. For I made you the father of many nations. And Abraham's like, I ain't got no kids.

It's an interesting picture here. In changing his name, all God added was one little Hebrew letter. In Hebrew, it's called a hey, H. It's the same way we would pronounce an H in English. It's just an aspirate.

That's pretty much all it is. It's just a breath he added to Abram's name. It's like he put breath into Abram. Abram went to Abraham.

This might be pushing it too far, but I'm pretty confident it's not. It's like God is putting his spirit into Abraham. The Hebrew word for breath, that sound is ruach, which also is translated spirit. Abraham, God puts his spirit into Abram, and immediately after this, immediately, Sarah got pregnant. God put the multiplying power of his spirit in Abram when he persisted through in believing. I don't know about you, but I want the breath of God in everything that I do. I want the breath of God in me as a parent. I want the breath of God in my Christian life. I want the breath of God as your pastor. Maybe you could call me Jay Hurdik.

Maybe that could be my new name, right? If you want that multiplying power, it only comes through bold, reckless, audacious faith. God will only multiply that for which you wait for him in faith.

Are you single? You finding it hard to wait for marriage? Well, can you trust God and let him grow you during this season?

Because what he will do is he will breathe his breath into your character, and he will multiply your character and multiply your joy in this season if you'll trust him. I know of people in our church who've gotten pregnant at the wrong time. They weren't even married. And now they find themselves in a difficult situation, and they're thinking about an abortion.

Here's my question for you. Would you trust God to provide for you in the baby? But I messed up. I know, but God ain't giving up on you. And if you will trust God in this, he will breathe his breath into that, and who knows what multiplying power God is going to bring forth through that child that you let live and you trust God to help you take care of. Maybe God's called you to go overseas. He's called you to go overseas, and you're asking a question. I bet I got kids. How's this going to work? How are my kids going to be taken care of?

What's going to happen with my retirement? What if you just obey God and just let him multiply you in faith and say, God, what you called me to, you'll put your breath in and you'll take care of. You see, in this season, God is asking our church to take some huge steps. Both you individually and us together as a church. And in order for us to achieve this multiplying power, we are going to have to put ourselves in a place where we respond with faith and say, God, we want the pouring of the Spirit. But it comes through bold, obedient faith.

It just says, yes, I'll go, and you'll take care of it. That's why I keep repeating C.S. Lewis's line, the only safe rule when it comes to generosity, whether of your time, your talent, or your treasures, is that you do it in a way that scares you. Because only when you obey in faith will God multiply in the power of the Spirit. He can only multiply what you give to him in faith. You know, listen, because Abraham trusted God, because Abraham trusted God, God filled him with the Spirit. And Sarah had a baby who would have a baby who would have a baby who would have a baby that would give birth to Jesus Christ. And because of that, you and I are here today. Literally, we are sitting in this church because Abraham trusted God and multiplied. Here is my question for you to consider. Who is going to point backwards to you from eternity and say, because he or she trusted God? Because they were bold and daring and extravagant, God multiplied them, and now I'm in the kingdom because of what they planted, because of how they jumped, because they took what God had gave them and they obeyed and just said, I'll go. And I'll just go with abandon and I'll say, yes, Lord, it all belongs to you and this is the seed you've given me.

Here it is to be multiplied. Some in church, God is serious about teaching us to live by faith because it's the only way that he multiplies the power of the ministry through us. You see, before God can do something through us, he's got to do something in us. He has to multiply faith deep within us before he can multiply the ministry wide through us. So where is it right now this weekend that you need to trust and wait on God?

Where is it? Is it in a personal situation? Is it in a relationship? Is it in your career? Is it in what you're doing with your time, your talent, your treasures?

Are you living by daring faith in those things? So see, you ask, you're like, why are we doing this multiply stuff again? And I'll tell you what I told you last week.

There's two reasons. Number one, we've got a bunch of new people at this church. Like 3,000, give or take, new people since the last time we did something like this. And the last time we did this, there were 3,400 families who began to give to the kingdom of God for the first time. And so for those of you that are already in, you're already engaged, don't you want those people to join us?

Don't you want to give them an invitation to live by faith? Of course you do. That's why we do this. But here's the second reason, and it's probably even more important. The second reason we do this is because I feel like I need to be challenged again to live by faith. I'm that car that's severely out of alignment, that always goes to self-sufficiency and self-centeredness.

And you know what? You are too. If you're the kind of person, honestly, who doesn't need to be challenged again and again to live by faith and to live with sacrifice, then you are fundamentally different than me. And by the way, congratulations, you're fundamentally different than Abraham. Because Abraham fell five times, that we know of.

This is like every chapter of his life. If you're the kind of person who says, God was challenged once five years ago and I've done it ever since, then congratulations, you're awesome. The rest of us are not. So if you will just condescend for a little while in your weakness and let us, who are sinners and know it, deal with this, then it would be a big help to us. We do this because we know that we naturally gravitate towards self-centeredness and self-sufficiency.

So I would make no apology for saying from time to time, we've got to come back and ask the question. Are we trusting God? Are we living by faith? Are we living with sacrifice? Are we living for His kingdom and not our own? I told you the dilemma of a living sacrifice that God calls us to be. Sacrifices are usually dead.

When you've got a living one, they keep trying to get up off the altar. So we continually say, God, have I said yes, Lord, and am I doing it with faith? What barriers are there to you living all out for God by faith?

What barriers are there to you giving extravagantly by faith? In fact, would you do this at all of our campuses? Would you just bow your heads with me right now? I want you to, as you bow your head, take your multiply book that you've been taking notes in, or if it's sitting beside you, pick it up. There's a little card in the front of it. Just take that card out.

If you don't have the card, just hold the book. Either one, just hold that in your hands. Would you let this represent, just with your head bowed, let it represent what God is going to call you to in the next season, with your time, your talent, and your treasures. And would you just say to God right now, God, whatever you say, I'm ready to do. Wherever you lead, I'm ready to go. Whatever you ask, I'm ready to give. Identify what barrier there is to you living recklessly by faith. Maybe it's concern over your kids or your marriage or your future, your savings, your career.

Would you identify it? And just say, God, help me to trust you more than I fear these things. I'm just going to leave you for a minute to soak in the Holy Spirit. Just let him minister to you. I want you to pray. Identify those barriers and pray through them. In just a minute, at all of our campuses, our worship teams, our campus pastors, they'll come and they'll lead us to reflect on the promises of God. Would you take a minute with your head bowed and you just pray through these barriers and ask God for Victoria's overcoming faith.