Forrest: Hey, I'm Pastor Forrest, and welcome to the Multiply Church Podcast.
Forrest: Each week we open God's word together to help you meet God and multiply good in your everyday life.
Forrest: We're so glad that you've taken time to join us for this week's sermon.
Forrest: And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and follow us on social media so you never miss a message.
Forrest: Now, let's dive into this week's sermon.
Forrest: We're in this series, Faithful, and we're looking at the values in this house.
Forrest: We have 10 value statements here that were discovered of what it's like to be a part of Multiply and the culture here.
Forrest: You can read them out on the wall outside, but this series we're zeroing in on four of those values that center on faith.
Forrest: And you know it's kind of interesting for believers sometimes that we can sometimes get embarrassed by things that sound crazy or sound impossible.
Forrest: But if you think about it, at times it seems like this whole thing is crazy.
Forrest: We believe that God spoke and there was light.
Forrest: We believe that the Red Sea was split in two and God's people walked on dry ground.
Forrest: We believe in a virgin birth.
Forrest: We believe that Jesus walked on water.
Forrest: We believe that five loaves and two fish fed thousands of families.
Forrest: We believe that a guy named Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, got up and walked out of his grave.
Forrest: And at the center of what we believe in our entire faith is that Jesus Christ was executed.
Forrest: He was buried, and three days later he got up.
Forrest: And the apostle Paul knew what this sounded like because in 1 Corinthians 1.18, he says the message of the cross is foolishness for those who are perishing.
Forrest: This is what it says.
Forrest: The message of the cross is foolishness for those who are headed to destruction, for destruction.
Forrest: But we who are being saved know it's the very power of God.
Forrest: It seems like in this passage and in this letter, Paul isn't really interested in making Christianity sound respectable and normal.
Forrest: He says that they think it's foolish.
Forrest: And there's a quandary at times with a modern Christian that can believe that Jesus walked on water and believe that miracles happen, and believe that God delivered his people out of Egypt and miracles that have happened.
Forrest: And for us to believe all that, but then for us to construct a life where almost nothing happens that we cannot explain ourselves.
Forrest: What I'm asking is this what happens when people actually expect God to act?
Forrest: When we have that level of expectation.
Forrest: And it's our value, we know it's crazy.
Forrest: This is what it says.
Forrest: Multiply, it's crazy in all the best ways, and we know it.
Forrest: Amen.
Forrest: We are crazy enough to believe God wants us to do more than we can even imagine.
Forrest: We will trust God to provide something from nothing.
Forrest: We will dream big and pray bigger, knowing Jesus is waiting for us to ask Him to do what only He can.
Forrest: We know it's crazy, Matthew 17, which is where we're going today.
Forrest: You know, for us to be accepted by polite society and for us to, you know, have stature and standing, as believers, a lot of times what we are, what we feel like we need to do is be reasonable.
Forrest: We need to be reasonable people.
Forrest: We need to have a great plan.
Forrest: We got to know all the risks beforehand.
Forrest: We got to know all the variables that we have to have all the resources before we do something.
Forrest: We got to get it right, we got to know the right people.
Forrest: And I mean, you all know me.
Forrest: I like it, I love a plan.
Forrest: I'm a planner.
Forrest: But there's times when the plan, the wisdom can become our preference of an explanation to never actually have to depend on God.
Forrest: That we could just, if we could just see the entire path and have the plan and how it all worked out, then what exactly are we trusting God for?
Forrest: And we're gonna we're gonna see in Matthew 17 today, in this chapter, and talking about Jesus and some stories of Jesus, does some bizarre things happen that people aren't able to do things that can't explain it?
Forrest: It was a reminder of earlier this week, I got to speak to 10 Southland church planters who are now planting churches across the state over the last few years.
Forrest: Of multiply, which was the first one of the bunch.
Forrest: And even one of them on the call this week was uh Dylan, who's in two weeks gonna launch at Moorhead University.
Forrest: And I was talking about church planting and starting a church and the crazy faith that it takes to begin a work, and I was reminded of that crazy faith because I went back and I listened to a podcast interview I did back in 2022.
Forrest: I think it's the only podcast interview I've ever done, actually.
Forrest: And it was a few months after we launched in the movie theater, and I was reminded because I was listening back to the stories that I was talking about at the time, and it reminded me when we first moved to Frankfurt in the beginning of 2021, and we had dinner with Jordan and Leslie Burke, and there was just a handful of people who at that time were a part of the launch team, literally, like I don't know, maybe five of us at the time or less, people who were moving to Frankfurt.
Forrest: We knew two families in Frankfurt, one of them being the Burks.
Forrest: And Emily and I were like, I played football with Jordan, we grew up with Leslie, and Emily and I, when we moved to town, we were praying, God, please let the Burks be a part of this church.
Forrest: And we asked them to go have dinner at Goodwood, 2021, early 2021.
Forrest: And we were sitting in the car, Emily and I, we were like, okay, now we're gonna go in there and have dinner.
Forrest: But we are not gonna bring up the church.
Forrest: We are just gonna be friends.
Forrest: We're just gonna get to know what's going on.
Forrest: And we sat down for dinner, and the Berks brought the church up three times, said they'd been praying for something like this to start in Frankfurt and basically pitched themselves and recruited themselves onto the launch team.
Forrest: And as the months went by, there were many times as God was providing in crazy ways that Jordan would look at me and say, Multiply, it's crazy.
Forrest: And we'd say it back and forth to each other.
Forrest: You know, this morning, now five years later, uh, their oldest daughter, daughter Nora, is gonna be baptized today.
Forrest: But we're gonna get to witness that.
Forrest: Praise God.
Forrest: Something from nothing.
Forrest: We believe in a God like that, but there's a tension.
Forrest: Because we believe that God can do the impossible, but then we build lives that barely require him to do it.
Forrest: You know, we we as good Christians, we can say, well, you know, you know, I believe God can do anything, but then don't actually expect him to do it.
Forrest: We believe Jesus rose from the dead, but then we're getting nervous about believing if God might intervene in the situation that we're going through right now.
Forrest: And so we're going, where we're going today is this question for all of us, which is what does it actually look like to believe God is able?
Forrest: Everybody say able.
Forrest: This is my question for us today, and where we're going.
Forrest: What does it actually look like to believe God is able?
Forrest: Matthew 17 begins with a father who has a son that is in really rough shape, is in terrible shape, needs healing, needs deliverance.
Forrest: Disciples go and are trying to help him and trying to deliver him from this evil, and they can't do it.
Forrest: And Jesus shows up and he intervenes, and Jesus heals the boy.
Forrest: And the disciples go to Jesus on the side privately and they say, Well, why couldn't we do it, Jesus?
Forrest: And he responds, because you have so little faith.
Forrest: And that's where our text starts today.
Forrest: Jesus in Matthew chapter 17.
Forrest: If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew 17, you want to see it.
Forrest: If you have the Bible on your phone, I hope you do, pull up Matthew chapter 17.
Forrest: We got uh a few verses for you to highlight.
Forrest: Jesus says, You don't have enough faith, Jesus told them.
Forrest: I tell you the truth, that if you had faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it would move.
Forrest: Nothing would be impossible.
Forrest: Jesus gives an example of something gigantic, this mountain and this tiny little seed of a mustard seed, just to prove the point that the size of the obstacle doesn't determine the ability of our God.
SPEAKER_00: But we struggle.
Forrest: We struggle to have that kind of faith because we're trying to, we're wondering, oh, you know, we want to move, but it's like, ah, I need more clarity.
Forrest: I need to make sure all the I's are dotted, the T's are crossed, gotta have all the resources, gotta have the confirmation.
Forrest: God, just tell me what to do.
Forrest: God, I want you to show me how this turns out.
Forrest: Can you show me where the money's gonna come from?
Forrest: Can you show me what's gonna happen in five years?
Forrest: Show me how it's not gonna fail.
Forrest: Then, God, I'll move.
Forrest: Then, God, I'll plant it.
Forrest: Well, except that's that's entirely backwards.
Forrest: Because the seed that's still in your hand doesn't produce a tree.
Forrest: And and faith doesn't mean that we have to walk in this certainty, but instead that we're certain of our God who is faithful to us day in and day out.
Forrest: Of what God's called us to do, what God has told us to do, that we're actually gonna do it, what God says in his word, we're actually gonna do it, what God's leading us to do in our lives, that we're actually gonna do it.
Forrest: But y'all know that can lead some good places, but also some weird stuff is stuff has happened when people say, God told me.
Forrest: Like, God told me you're gonna be my wife.
Forrest: And she says, God didn't tell me that.
Forrest: You got you gotta watch out for people who are attaching God's name to their own ambition.
Forrest: The TV preachers send the money, claim the Bugatti, declare the promotion.
Forrest: If you just believe hard enough, God owes you.
Forrest: But what we're talking about today is the faith in alignment with God's will and what he's called us to do, genuinely called us to do, not just good ideas, but God ideas.
Forrest: The supernatural that we believe from the scripture and that we sing about here on Sundays and then we forget about on Monday.
Forrest: This this mustard seed.
Forrest: This mustard seed that Jesus is talking about.
Forrest: He shifts the focus.
Forrest: It's not about the seed, it's not about the person, it's about the God and what he can do with it.
Forrest: God's ability.
Forrest: My inability does not determine God's ability in the situation in my life.
Forrest: It's God and what he's leading us to do and being obedient to what he actually said.
Forrest: I had a real encouraging call with a pastor friend of mine a couple weeks ago, Pastor Josh Roberts, who's an all people's church in Boston, and I was telling the story and multiply to him, and I kept using this particular word in the story, and he kept uh correcting me.
Forrest: I kept saying risk.
Forrest: It was a risk.
Forrest: We start when we started multiplying, we moved, we took the risk, and to come to the gross takeover to save a lot.
Forrest: It was this risk, risk to do it.
Forrest: And Josh interrupted me.
Forrest: He said, Hey, force, you keep saying risk.
Forrest: Did God call you to do it?
Forrest: I said, Yeah.
Forrest: He said, Well, why do you keep calling it risk?
Forrest: It was obedience.
Forrest: Hit me like a ton of bricks.
Forrest: And probably the reason I I say the word risk is because of all the fear that I can walk in and I can go worst-case scenario, and in the times that I was supposed to be in faith, and I need the Lord to help me.
Forrest: And when he said that, it's obedience, it just reminded me, it like bothered me.
Forrest: I was like, oh man, God, grow my faith.
Forrest: Grow my faith, God.
Forrest: Because there are times where I just want that seed to grow without ever dropping it in the dirt.
Forrest: The seeds that God has given to you.
Forrest: Things you've been thinking about for years, or the forgiveness that you've been holding back, or that conversation that you know that you need to have, or using your gifts in a way that God's blessed you with, or walking in the generosity that God's calling you to.
Forrest: Whatever that seed is, we gotta have enough faith to actually act on it in obedience.
Forrest: And what you gotta do is you gotta put the seed in the ground.
Forrest: Put the seed in the ground.
Forrest: You gotta plant the thing.
Forrest: You gotta make the move, take the step, put the seed in the ground, and let God be God.
Forrest: This series is kind of nostalgic.
Forrest: I keep thinking of these old stories of faith in our church.
Forrest: Also in the beginning of 2021, Haley and Jonathan Zeman, call him Jay-Z.
Forrest: Jay-Z just led you in worship.
Forrest: Haley's hosting our service this morning.
Forrest: Back in the beginning of 2021, Jay-Z and Haley, they got married, did their wedding in Charleston, our friends from Charleston, and then three days later they moved to Frankfurt to begin the work on Multiply.
Forrest: We were praying so hard that they would move with us.
Forrest: And they had all these options in front of them.
Forrest: They got married three days later, they moved to Frankfurt.
Forrest: Started just busting it.
Forrest: For years, for years, Jonathan drove from Frankfurt to Louisville to work in property management to then help build the church.
Forrest: And while Haley, who's a nurse, drove to University of Kentucky and Lexington, weren't getting paid by the church.
Forrest: Literally week in and week out, going different directions before they had their kids.
Forrest: God provided a place for them to live.
Forrest: Last year, Jonathan came on staff full time with operations and with creative.
Forrest: But because they put their seed in the ground in Frankfurt, I'm telling you this story because the other day somebody uh somebody out and about saw Jay-Z and they said, Oh, there's the keyboardist.
Forrest: There's a keyboard player multiply.
Forrest: And I just I just laughed because I thought to myself, if they only knew, if they only knew the faith of this couple, if they only knew what God had done.
Forrest: Jesus goes on to predict his death in the next two verses.
Forrest: After they gathered again in Galilee, Jesus told them, The Son of Man is going to be betrayed by the hands of the enemies, of his enemies.
Forrest: He will be killed, and on the third day, he will be raised from the dead.
Forrest: And the disciples were filled with grief.
Forrest: And then Matthew 18 gets weirder, or Matthew 17 gets weirder.
Forrest: They arrive in Capernaum.
Forrest: There's an issue with the temple tax.
Forrest: This is a weird story, y'all.
Forrest: Y'all ready for it?
Forrest: The temple tax needs to get paid.
Forrest: Peter's got to pay it.
Forrest: And Jesus gives Peter one of the strangest financial plans you've ever heard.
Forrest: 24.
Forrest: On their arrival in Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and asked him, Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax?
Forrest: Yes, he does, Peter replied.
Forrest: Then he went into the house, but before he had a chance to speak, Jesus asked him, What do you think, Peter?
Forrest: Do kings tax their own people or the people who have been conquered?
Forrest: The tax they tax people they have conquered, Peter replied.
Forrest: Well then, Jesus said, the citizens are free.
Forrest: However, we don't want to offend them, so go down to the lake, throw in a line, open up the mouth of the first fish you catch, and you will find a large silver coin.
Forrest: Take it and pay the tax for both of us.
Forrest: How's that for some Edward Jones financial advice?
Forrest: Go down the lake.
Forrest: Throw in a line.
Forrest: First fish, open up its mouth.
Forrest: The money's gonna be in there.
Forrest: Peter says, Excuse me?
Forrest: Peter is a fisherman, remember?
Forrest: He's caught a lot of fish.
Forrest: Jesus tells him to get out there.
Forrest: And Peter, before Peter could even see it, Jesus had already provided.
Forrest: Jesus is like, you want me to pay taxes?
Forrest: I actually made all this.
Forrest: So you know what?
Forrest: Yeah, we'll get a coin, but go get it out of a fish.
Forrest: Peter couldn't see it.
Forrest: He couldn't see the provision that Jesus was about to provide.
Forrest: He just got the instructions.
Forrest: But just because Peter couldn't see it, doesn't mean that it didn't exist.
Forrest: You know, God has resources that you don't know about yet.
Forrest: He's got people and opportunities and relationships and ideas and open doors and provision for you, and you're not even able to see it yet.
Forrest: You got to open up your hand, you got to put that seed in the ground, and you got to go fish.
Forrest: Go fish.
Forrest: There's a lot of fishing in the scripture.
Forrest: This one in particular, Jesus gives the ultimate instruction.
Forrest: He gives the ultimate instruction and tells him exactly what to do.
Forrest: And Peter goes and does it, and what is produced is something that he cannot have done on his own.
Forrest: He gets the instruction, not all the details, not the whole plan, how it's all gonna work out.
Forrest: Literally, just a miracle of catching a fish with the coin already in its mouth.
Forrest: You know, things get really dangerous when we can't see the rest of the story or we don't have a good answer for what's happening, and then we assume that God doesn't either.
Forrest: God knows.
Forrest: And he's calling for us to obey him, to follow him, to have the faith, to have big faith in God.
Forrest: We would pray and know and believe, and have some crazy faith.
Forrest: One of the lines in that value is that people believe God for more than we could even think, even ask.
Forrest: That comes directly from the scripture.
Forrest: Ephesians 3 20.
Forrest: Please memorize this verse.
Forrest: Please highlight this verse.
Forrest: Verse 20.
Forrest: Now him, now to him who is able, everybody say able.
Forrest: Him to is a who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.
Forrest: To him be all glory in the church and in Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever.
Forrest: Amen.
Forrest: Paul says, God is able to do immeasurably more than we could even ask or imagine.
Forrest: All that you could ask of God, he's able to do more.
Forrest: Everything that you can imagine right now, God can do more.
Forrest: God's able to exceed both.
SPEAKER_00: And how does he do it?
SPEAKER_00: By his power at work within who?
SPEAKER_00: Us.
SPEAKER_00: To him be glory in where?
SPEAKER_00: The church.
SPEAKER_00: God's plan A, to bring his power and his love through his people.
Forrest: So we better not be the ceiling on what we think God's ability is around here.
Forrest: What if the greatest thing that comes out of multiply church we have not even thought of yet?
Forrest: We've not even dreamed of yet.
Forrest: We're not even known to think of it yet.
Forrest: Exceedingly more, immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.
Forrest: What could God do through our church?
Forrest: What could God do through our church if we expected him to ask?
Forrest: How many families could be saved, transformed?
SPEAKER_00: How many hundreds of kids could meet Jesus in spaces that we're preparing right now?
Forrest: At K-State on Thursday, I met a young lady who has come to K-State, a wonderful young lady.
Forrest: She's brand new to K-State.
Forrest: She's from the Ivory Coast in Africa.
Forrest: She hasn't seen her family in three years.
Forrest: She's transferred here.
Forrest: She's as sweet as can be.
Forrest: Athlete.
Forrest: Here she is from the Ivory Coast, shows up to Frankfurt.
Forrest: What in the world could God do through her?
Forrest: And the years and times that she has in this city.
Forrest: What could God do?
Forrest: What could God do through students?
Forrest: Could God raise up pastors out of this room?
Forrest: Could God make one church into five or ten or fifty?
Forrest: Churches planted in capital cities across the country?
Forrest: Now I can tell you what I can imagine, but how about we believe that God is able to exceed it?
Forrest: That he's able to do abundantly more.
Forrest: And now you say, Forrest, well, Forrest, this is all well and good.
Forrest: This is a great message, but tomorrow I gotta go back to work.
Forrest: I gotta go to school.
Forrest: I gotta deal with the kids.
Forrest: I got bills to pay.
Forrest: I got difficult situations in my family I'm dealing with.
Forrest: I've got money problems.
Forrest: I've got difficult things.
Forrest: Listen to me.
Forrest: In the image, Jesus doesn't hand you the mountain.
Forrest: He hands you the mustard seed.
Forrest: He said, would you have faith?
Forrest: Would you have faith to act on what I've told you to do?
Forrest: Would you have the faith?
Forrest: And I know some of you right now, you're you're you're hard-hearted.
Forrest: You're like, church, I can't stand it.
Forrest: I'm just here because somebody drug me here.
Forrest: Maybe there was a time in your life you used to expect God to ask, but something happened.
Forrest: You prayed for something, you believed something, you asked for something, and the marriage still ended, or the person still died, or that door was closed, the answer was no.
Forrest: And now what you've done is by self-protection, you're just expecting less from God.
Forrest: Because if you expect less, well, your disappointment doesn't hurt as bad.
Forrest: If you expect less.
Forrest: Can I tell you?
Forrest: And all love, faith isn't God doing what you say, faith is doing what God says.
Forrest: We get to walk out in the call that he has over our life and the impossible things and the power that he can do, but we don't get to do anything outside of his will.
Forrest: What's obedience for us to walk with God in?
Forrest: We have the authority in Christ to walk in what he's called us to walk in, to be obedient to what he's called us to do, and for us to put the seed in the ground.
Forrest: And for those of you who've been disappointed, or maybe you're expecting less, or you think, man, how about you recognize that this isn't about you?
Forrest: How about you recognize right now, no matter what you think of God, for the person right now who is in this space and you can't stand God because of something that happened in the past, you know what's way less important than what you believe about God?
Forrest: It's what God believes about you.
SPEAKER_00: You can believe all the things you want about God, but what truly is important is what God believes about you.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what he believes about you?
SPEAKER_00: He loved you, he died for you, he knows that you're dead in your sin, and instead of him leaving you in that state, to go into destruction, into eternity, and literally die in your place that he did not deserve so that you can fucking alive that it's humanly more than you can ever ask you.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you believe about God.
Forrest: What does God believe about you?
Forrest: Guess what?
Forrest: He loves you, he loves you.
Forrest: And you can close your mind off to that as long as you want.
Forrest: God's a gentleman, he's not gonna force himself on you.
Forrest: If if you want to have a life without God, he'll let you have that all the way into hell, apart from him.
Forrest: If you want a life separated from God, he'll allow you to have that exactly what you want, all the way into eternity away from him.
Forrest: But instead, he interrupted your story and sent his one true son to die in your place.
Forrest: What's God calling you right now in obedience to do?
Forrest: What needs to be planted in the ground?
Forrest: And really, just what I I want to call us now to is to have a mindset of say, God, increase my faith.
Forrest: Grow my faith.
Forrest: Because I was thinking about this morning and thinking about our people, and thinking about the seeds been put in the ground now for four years, five years, and I think about now, I'm like, God, what more do you want to do in this house?
Forrest: Last Sunday, there were six people who indicated they wanted to begin follow Jesus or be baptized last Sunday across both services.
Forrest: Six totally.
Forrest: Don't you?
Forrest: Man.
unknown: Man.
Forrest: We gotta go fish collectively with our faith.
Forrest: So, what I want to do now is I want us to exercise faith.
Forrest: I want you to stand to your feet right now as we pray.
Forrest: And I want you to bow your head with me right now.
Forrest: If you're in the room today and you're saying right now, and it's in your heart, that God would increase your faith and grow your faith today.
Forrest: You're a follower of Jesus, you know Christ, you gave your life to Him years ago or two weeks ago, but you want faith to grow inside of you.
Forrest: You want more faith.
Forrest: I want you to just shoot your hand up in the room.
Forrest: If that's you, you're a believer, you want more faith.
Forrest: God, right now, I thank you, Father.
Forrest: And God, I ask you right now, and in the name of Jesus, God, to tear down walls and barriers that keep us from trusting you and believing you and giving our all to you and stepping into what you've called us to, God.
Forrest: And Lord, right now, for every believer who's holding their hand up right now, God, I pray that faith would grow and increase in the mighty name of Jesus in their life.
Forrest: God, I pray that you would give them opportunities.
Forrest: Lord, that you would show them, Father, that you would give them places to exercise faith and trust and belief in you, God.
Forrest: Because God, we know that you're faithful.
Forrest: You can put your hands down.
Forrest: You're in the room today and you've not yet received Jesus as your Savior, today is your day for you to be saved, to be set free, for you to finally believe what God believes about you, and for you to ask and receive in return.
Forrest: And so, if that's you, I ask you now, if you have not accepted Christ as your Savior right now, I pray that you would ask God in your heart and mind, Jesus, save me.
Forrest: I believe that you're the Son of God and that you died on the cross for my sin.
Forrest: Forgive me, cleanse me so I can be in heaven with you one day.
Forrest: I give you my life as you gave yours for mine.
Forrest: I repent and turn to you.
Forrest: Now and into heaven.
Forrest: Thank you for saving me.
Sallie: We're so grateful you joined us for this week's message.
Sallie: At Multiply, we believe life was never meant to be lived alone.
Sallie: If today you made the decision to follow Jesus, we'd be honored to walk with you on this journey.
Sallie: Visit multiplyky.com to let us know.
Sallie: We love you and we'll see you again soon.