There are many interesting and powerful names given to God in the Bible.

Jehovah-jireh, God who provides, was said of God by Abraham when he was called to sacrifice his son Isaac.  This is an incredible passage.  Abraham has just demonstrated his great faith by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.  He passed the test and then God stopped the whole ordeal.  What a relief.  Then at that moment Abraham looks around and sees a ram that he sacrifices to God and decides to name the place, Jehovah Jireh, "The Lord will Provide".  Incredible. (Genesis 22:1-14)

Another great one Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals, is a name God gives to himself as part of an exhortation to his people in Exodus 15:26.  I don't know about you, but I want to be close with Jehovah Rapha when I experience any kind of physical, emotional or spiritual disease.  Doctors are great and I am thankful for them, but no one can heal like Jehovah Rapha.  No one.

Today I want to ascribe another name to God that I believe is aligned with His character:

Jehovah-Rabah - The God Who Multiplies

You won't find this exact name given to God in Scripture, but you do see God multiply things and also call us to be multipliers as well!

Question for you:  what is the first thing God said to man in Genesis 1? 

Answer: "Be fruitful and multiply..." (Genesis 1:28). This was one of the first "tasks" given to man.  Have families that will multiply the number of people on the earth so that you can subdue it.

It is easy to see how powerful multiplication is in the context of population growth.  If you start with a small group and the number of people doubles every generation (each couple has four children) how long will it take to reach one million people?

If you start with 2 people you will pass the one million mark in the 20th generation.  See the math here.

Now.... let's talk about Abraham.  In Genesis 17:2, God says to Abraham, "I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly."  This is also the passage where his name is changed from Abram which mean "The Father is Exalted" to Abraham which means "The Father of Many Nations".

So God is going to multiply Abraham.  However, it was not an auspicious start while Abraham was alive.  With his wife Sarah he only had one child so technically his family is shrinking at this point in his life.  And his son Isaac only has two sons, so the family is only breaking even during this generation. 

In the next generation though we get a BIG multiplier.  Jacob has twelve sons; and by the time all of Jacob's family moves to Egypt to flee the famine and be with Joseph the household has grown to seventy (Genesis 46:27).

By the time the Israelites leave Egypt some 430 years later the number of just the army, men 20 years old and older, is 603,550.  Even a conservative estimate of all the people of Israel would be 1.5 million.

And this is only the nation of Israel.  Remember Abraham's son Ishmael born from Sarah's handmaid Hagar?  He had 12 sons just like Jacob that became a nation. (note Hagar gives God a cool name in Genesis 16:13, El Roi, "The God who Sees") 

We also know that the nation of Edom came from Abraham through Esau and that he had several other sons with Keturah who Abraham married after Sarah died.

How many people came from Abraham's lineage?  No one knows exactly, but we do know it was a BIG number and that Jehovah-Rabah, the God Who Multiplies, fulfilled His promise.

Do you remember the story in the gospels when meal time rolls around and Jesus decides to feed the entire multitude of 5,000+ people?

It's been a long day and Jesus essentially asks His disciples, "What's for dinner?".  Phillip seems to panic a bit as he calculates how much it would cost to buy food for 5,000 people.  That would be quite a tab!

Andrew on the other hand starts to look around for what they have on hand and finds a boy who planned ahead and brought some food!  He brings this boy to Jesus and we learn that there are five loaves and two fish for Jesus to work with.

With this small amount of food Jesus basically serves up an all you an eat buffet for five thousand people and still has plenty of left overs.

So how many times did Jesus multiply this single meal?

The answer: many many times!

For fun let's make some very simple assumptions and calculate it.  If everyone just got the same meal the boy started with we have 5000 times.  Technically in Matthew 14:21 we learn that the 5,000 number was actually just the men.  If we assume there were an equal number of both women and children present we get another 10,000 times.

And after everyone has eaten and are satisfied there are enough left overs to fill twelve baskets.   If I were packing a picnic in a basket I'd expect that it would hold a bucket of fried chicken from KFC and a few biscuits.  So let's assume the basket could hold four meals. Boom... we get another 48 times.

Based on this scenario Jesus multiplied the single meal by 15,048.  

Obviously the exact number doesn't matter.  The point is that Jesus took something very small, multiplied it and turned it into a very large quantity.

Jesus, the God Who Multiplies. ✅

Not only does God multiply things he wants us as his followers to multiply things.

First Jesus wants our faith to grow exponentially.   Jesus uses the metaphor of a mustard seed to illustrate this.  

A mustard seed is really small.  Like the size of a few grains of sand, but it grows into a large bush that birds can nest in.

This is exactly how Jesus wants our faith to grow!  It starts off tiny, like a mustard seed, but grows exponentially into a great faith that Jesus says can move mountains!!  This is the kind of growth I want, both for myself and for you!

One last example that also uses the metaphor of seeds and plants is found in the parable of the sower.  The seed that falls on the good soil germinates and grows and eventually yields fruit - some thirty fold, some sixty and some one hundred.

This is what happens when we follow Jesus and produce fruit.  It has a multiplicative effect!

What is fruit that the christian should be multiplying?  That question probably deserves more thorough treatment, but I'll give you a couple quick examples in scripture.  First, fruit was tied to bringing people to salvation and making disciples (see I Corinthians 16:15).  Second, Titus tells us to be devoted to good works so that we will not be unfruitful which indicates that simple good works serving others is a type of bearing fruit (Titus 3:14).

Here is a really interesting question.  If every christian brought thirty people to Christ, the lowest multiplier in the parable of the sower, how long would it take for everyone in the world to become a christian?  Can you imagine the revival we'd experience?? 

I know that not everyone that hears the Word will receive it and decide to follow Christ, but I do believe we have a real problem if our number here is zero.  We are expected to multiply and bear fruit (see John 15 for more discussion of this topic).  And honestly the closer we draw to Jesus the more we'll do this out of delight rather than duty and it won't even feel like work!

I'm sure we could some up with several other examples of God multiplying things, but I hope you see this as an accurate part of how God operates.

Just as he multiplied Abraham's descendants and Jesus multiplied the meal, he wants us to be multiplying our faith and our fruit so that others can see our lives and glorify God.  And as we bring the gospel to people and make disciples and the pattern is repeated thats when exponential multiplication happens.

And it is incredible!

I am praying that Jehovah Rabah, The God who Multiplies, will bless your faith to grow in this way and that the fruit of your life is multiplied many many times!!