MULTIPLY! 

Pastor Tayo Adeyemi

Senior Pastor of New Wine Church

Sunday 9 January 2011

Foundation Scriptures: Genesis 1: 26-28

We continue, this week, to explore our Dominion Mandate in order that we can be what God has called us to be. Before we get in to this week’s message, let’s quickly recap the foundations that we laid last week: You will recall that we examined the truth that each of us has been created with a dominion mandate and that the first part of that mandate is the command that we be fruitful, which means to grow, increase, produce and bear fruit. We examined five kinds of fruit that we are commanded to bear namely, the fruit of the womb (children), the fruit of the mind (ideas), the fruit of the mouth (words) the fruit of our hands (work) and the fruit of the spirit (character). We learned that there can be no fruit or fruitfulness without seed and that everyone carries seed within them because everyone has potential. We further challenged ourselves to be careful not to despise our seed, concluding that we know that we are being fruitful when we have produced something that we can put our name on.

MULTIPLY!

Today, we will look at the second part of that mandate, but first take a look at Genesis 17: 1-7. I want you to understand that God has increase on His mind; He is always thinking of increase and when He is thinking of increase, He’s thinking of you! God wants you to increase on every side. Job 8:7, Psalm 71: 21, Psalm 115: 14, John 10:10 and Ephesians 3: 20 are just five of the many scriptures that confirm without a doubt that God has increase on His mind and wants you to increase.

There are essentially two ways by which increase comes: Increase by addition, namely increase that comes by putting an extra quantity to something that already exists or increase by multiplication which is increase that comes by reproducing something many times its original quantity; this is God’s preferred method of bringing increase to His people. In the entire bible, the word “add” or its derivatives is used in relation to God less than 10 times whereas the term “multiply” or its derivates occurs almost 100 times.

So when God gave us the dominion mandate, He first said “Be fruitful” but He didn’t stop there; He followed it by instructing us to “multiply”, meaning to increase, expand, to enlarge and to exceed, to excel and to become great, to become many and to greatly abound, to be more, to have more, to gather much, to yield much and achieve much!

Fruitfulness and Multiplication Go Hand in Hand!

Now, God will not command anything to multiply unless He has first empowered it to be fruitful and you cannot multiply unless you have the capacity to be fruitful. When God created Mount Everest, He never intended for there to be more than one and never intended it to multiply and therefore He did not make it fruitful. But it is different with you – He made you fruitful so He has the right to command you to multiply. 

Fruitfulness and multiplication go hand-in-hand. You cannot multiply unless you are first fruitful and likewise, you cannot just stop at being fruitful – you must also multiply! The fact that you multiply is the evidence that you are fruitful. If you fail to multiply, you automatically negate the reality that you are fruitful. So here’s the deal: if you want to multiply in any area of your life, you must first be fruitful in that area.

Another way of saying “be fruitful” is to say “be productive” and another way of saying “multiply” is to say “be progressive”. If you want to progress in life, you must first be productive. If you want to multiply in your career, you must first be fruitful at work. Do not expect to progress at work if you are not first productive: If you are always late, or calling in sick, or fail to complete tasks and routinely avoid responsibility, don’t blame the devil if you do not get promoted!

If you want to multiply in your relationships, then you must first be fruitful in your relationships. When people meet with you, they should take something positive away with them. They should be blessed, edified, inspired and encouraged. But if you are a taker in all your relationships, don’t be surprised if nobody wants to be your friend. The same applies in your ministry, if you want to multiply, first be fruitful. Be the very best that you can be at all times and give the very best in all that you do. 

“Be fruitful and multiply” simply means if you’re given a bag of seed, return a barn full of harvest. If you’re given a vineyard, return sweet grapes. If you’re given five talents, return ten talents. Whatever is placed in your hands must grow in your hands. Everything must become better because you’re involved. When something is committed to you, don’t let it diminish in your hands. Don’t even let it stay the same.  You’ll recall from the parable of the lost talents in Matthew 25 that when the one-talent servant returned one talent to his master, he assumed that the equation was balanced saying “Look there you have what is yours”, but he forgot that he also had time invested in him. The master therefore said “If my one talent had spent the same amount of time with the bankers it would have yielded interest” and rebuked him as an “unprofitable servant!”

“Be fruitful” is a promise that you make to yourself. “Multiply” is a promise that you make to God and the rest of the world. Let me explain: If New Wine Choir decided to produce a CD and went into the studio to record and after four months, they finally finished the recording, and came up with a master-CD, that’s fruitfulness. They have captured their gifts, skills and anointing in such a way that it can be useful to others and have kept a promise to themselves to be fruitful. However, if all they do is produce a master-CD, then they have wasted their time in the studio unless they take the master-CD and make copies of it. That’s multiplication. It is at this level of multiplication that their fruit becomes available to the whole world. Therefore, if you remain at the level of fruitfulness, your influence will remain limited – you must also multiply!

Make it better! Make it more!

So, you may ask, “How can you apply this mandate to multiply in your life?” There are two simple principles that you can apply, that are equally applicable to every area of your life, whether in your career, finances, relationships, ministry or business. They are as follows: firstly, whatever is committed to you, find ways to improve its quality – i.e. make it better and secondly, whatever is committed to you, find ways to increase its quantity i.e. make it more.

How do you make things better? Simply put, be creative. I’ll come back to that in a moment, but firstly, let’s look at how you make a thing more. In order to make a thing more, you must begin by duplicating. This is the most basic level of multiplication. The starting point of multiplication is just learning how to turn one into two. Going back to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, this is all that the two-talent and five-talent servants did. They took what they had been given and multiplied it by two. This is the beginning of multiplication. The other way to multiply is to make things better by being creative.

To illustrate this point, I want to look at the familiar story of Isaac in Genesis 26 and take special notice of the elements of the dominion mandate that can be seen manifesting in Isaac’s life in this account. Firstly, he sowed and reaped (v12) – he was fruitful. Secondly, he enjoyed on-going prosperity (v 13) – he multiplied. You may wonder how it is that Isaac became so powerful that he was able to control an entire nation; how an immigrant became so financially strong that the government of the nation confessed “You have become too powerful for us” and asked to negotiate a treaty with him, as we see in vv 28-29. In particular, I want to draw your attention to three stages of Isaac’s multiplication process: Firstly, he enjoyed initial success – “He began to prosper”. Secondly, he enjoyed sustained growth “He continued prospering until he became very prosperous” and thirdly, he undertook diversification “He had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds, and a great number of servants.”Having started with crops, when he had become successful with his crops and could sustain growth of his crops, he diversified into livestock.

But I want you to notice the key to Isaac’s greatness which we have missed for many years: He was able to raise livestock because he found a way to grow crops in the midst of a famine when everyone else’s crops were dying. How? He developed a technology for irrigation which he had seen his father use when he was younger. He revived and revisited his father’s irrigation technology. Whereas everyone else was waiting for rain to fall from the sky, Isaac got creative and dug wells, going into the ground to look for water, thus finding a way to do it better.

This year, I challenge you to do likewise. Believe God to give you just one creative idea, an idea that will help you make it better and make it more. Multiplication is a covenant right which is valid whether or not the economic climate is conducive. Regardless of the economic forecast, you will still multiply and grow. I challenge you therefore....Go forward and multiply!