Dispensing The Life Of Christ

[0:00] Welcome. Thank you for choosing to listen to another faith-building message by Pastor David Entry. Faith comes by hearing and by hearing the Word of God.

[0:11] May your knowledge of Jesus Christ increase as you listen. Be blessed. The scriptures say, Fall an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.

[0:30] He said, This work I am doing, this work on my life as an apostle, is according to the promise of life. And where is the promise of life in Christ Jesus?

[0:43] You can't be in Jesus and not have life. This is the, we are talking about the eternal life of God, the uncreated life of God, the divine life of God, which brings into us the nature of God.

[1:03] That is what makes us be able to overcome sin. That is what makes us be able to cast out devils. That is what is able to make us to pray for the sick and then be healed.

[1:16] That is what is able to make us to even understand the Word of God when we read it. That is what is able to make us do the work of God. The work of God, which we do, is on the platform and the basis of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.

[1:33] And so if you flip back one chapter, 1 Timothy 6, 12, fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on it. You have to fight and lay hold on eternal life.

[1:44] Grab it. Take over it. Seize it as your possession. It should be your driving force. Lay, because the life of God is in Christ Jesus.

[2:00] So when you are in Christ, or when you have Christ, or better still, when Christ has you, because there are people who are trying to have Christ, but Christ does not have them. It's because they have not repented.

[2:12] You are so proud. You are so full of yourself. You are so unrepentant. It's like the tax collector who saw Jesus went. He said, when I came, you didn't give me water to wash my feet.

[2:24] This one is using her tears. You didn't anoint my head. My head. You didn't anoint. This one is anointing my feet. They're very expensive. And you want to condemn this one. Wow.

[2:36] So, I pray that God will help us to embrace the promise of life. which is in Christ Jesus. Having underscored this point, that according to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus, Paul, an apostle of Christ, according to the promise of life.

[2:54] I am an apostle. I'm a pastor. We are church leaders. What we are doing is based on the promise of life. So that the life of Christ, I'm going to use the word here.

[3:06] Don't forget that word. It's a very good word, but you don't hear it in our normal church life. But a very good word when it comes to the things of God. It's the life of Christ that we have. We dispense.

[3:18] Dispense it into people. So, the essence of a church leader is to dispense the life of Christ. When someone says, I'm a minister, it means that I'm a servant.

[3:32] When they say, I'm a minister, I'm a servant. And every Christian is supposed to be a minister, servant. What do you serve? There's only one thing that we can serve that will make the church of Christ grow, that we can get a reward for.

[3:45] And the only one thing that every Christian is called to serve is we serve Christ. So what have you got to offer? I've got Christ. Can I ask you, what have you got to offer?

[3:56] I've got Christ. Any preaching in the name of God, in the name of Christ, that doesn't offer Christ. It's a man, Justin, it's a killer. It's a killer.

[4:08] So, we offer Christ and the promise of life is in Christ. So, that's why I minister to you. My objective and my purpose is to dispense.

[4:19] Don't forget this word, okay? Dispense. To issue out. So what I'm doing now is supposed to be dispensing Christ into people. Dispensing Christ so that God can work himself, more of God, into you.

[4:34] He's working himself into you. It gets to a time when there will be less of you and more of God. John the Baptist said, I must decrease and he must increase.

[4:44] Why are you decreasing? You are rather increasing and when you came to Christ, the small Christ you receive is decreasing. Hey. It's decreasing. John chapter 3, he said, he must increase and I must decrease.

[5:00] That should be the statement of every genuine Christian. Christ must increase. I must decrease. The essence of preaching in the church, the essence of ministry, Christian ministry is to dispense Christ into people.

[5:17] So the more people hear you, the more you fill them with Christ. I'm going to show you something in a minute. We have to feed people. If you love God, it ends up feeding people.

[5:29] You end up feeding. You can't feed people with anything but with Christ. You issue Christ. You issue out Christ. You are dispensing Christ. It's like when you are on the plane and the flight attendants come to serve you food.

[5:44] That's what dispensing has to do. The food is there. They bring it to dispense. So those who are serving, what they give you is what is on the menu and when it comes to church, what is God's menu is only one.

[5:57] It's Christ. that's all that is supposed to be served in church. Served amongst the people of God. Served by the people of God. We receive Christ and we serve Christ.

[6:09] We dispense Christ into people. Actually, because every human being is meant to receive. There is a space in you that can contain God, that can receive God.

[6:20] So that's what God told Adam and Eve. It's the tree of life so that Christ, who is the tree of life, can enter you. They didn't eat it. So now, that Christ is in us.

[6:30] When we come to church, all that we are doing is to keep feeding people with Christ, dispensing Christ into people. I see you being saturated with Christ. I see Christ saturating your inner man.

[6:45] Spreading into your soul and body in the name of God. In John chapter 21, Jesus has appeared to them twice already.

[6:58] The first one, Thomas was not there. The second one, Thomas was there. Jesus could have waited and come at the time Thomas was there. He just showed up.

[7:08] It's not like he traveled. He doesn't travel. He just shows up. After the resurrection, he showed up. So he could have waited when Thomas was there and showed up. But Thomas had just gone out to go and saw something and I'll buy something and he showed up.

[7:22] God wanted to give Thomas a better opportunity. That's why he came at the time Thomas was not there. And then when Thomas came, they told him, we have seen the Lord.

[7:34] Do you know what he said? He said, never, unless I see him one and look at the wounds of the nail and put, if someone has had wounds three days ago, why would you put your finger inside?

[7:45] three days ago, just resurrected. You saw him crucified three days ago. Three days, this guy said, I'm looking for him and you know, they pierced him on his side with the sword.

[8:01] He said, this one is not enough. I want to put my finger inside that one too. How can you just finish surgery and someone said, to be sure it's you. And they tell it's your voice. They tell it's you.

[8:12] Do they have to come and put their finger in where you had the operation? They said, for them to realize, oh, it's really you. At least you said that, I just want to see the wounds. But why do you have to put your finger inside it?

[8:24] It's telling you an extreme expression of unbelief. Skepticism. Sometimes you want to be so sure that's where you miss God. So Thomas said, I want to put my finger inside it.

[8:37] So Bible says, a week later, at the same, Jesus showed up when Thomas was there. Jesus, why did he show up when he was there the first time? But I'll show you why.

[8:50] Because as I said, I found out that Jesus wanted Thomas to be more blessed than the rest. Jesus Christ said to him, because you see me, you believe.

[9:02] Blessed is he who has not seen but believe. So you see, Jesus wanted Thomas to operate in the blessing the others have not operated in. Why? because he wasn't there.

[9:13] So if he had believed, he would have been blessed because that blessing without seeing is stronger in a certain sense than the ones who have seen because it doesn't any challenge you to see what you have seen.

[9:25] But Jesus wanted to give him an opportunity to be blessed uniquely about the others. But guess what? He failed because of unbelief. You will not fail because of unbelief.

[9:37] You will not fail because of unbelief. Amen. So now, fast forward. Jesus tells them, spend some time and goes, then the next time, all we could hear is chapter 21, verse 2.

[9:54] There were together Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus and Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee and the sons of Zebedee, that's James and John, and two other of his disciples.

[10:08] So you can tell that there are a few of them. Verse 3, Simon Peter said unto them, I go fishing. Hey, Peter!

[10:18] I'm going to fish. I know where I came from. I need to go back and do what I know how to do best. So after Jesus has called him that I'll make you fishers of men, he left it and he said, I go fishing.

[10:34] And guess what? This is a warning to everybody who is a leader in church or those who want to be leaders. Listen to this. Peter said, I go fishing.

[10:45] They say unto him, we also go with, you see a leader, where you take the wrong step. Wow. And they went forth and entered into a ship immediately. They didn't waste time at all.

[10:56] And that night, they caught nothing. Don't go. You won't catch anything. And then in the morning, Jesus said to the shore by the disciples and Jesus said, children, have you any meat?

[11:08] Have you have anything to eat? They answered, no. He said unto them, cast your nets on the right of the ship. They cast their nets and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude.

[11:20] They've got so much fish. Verse 7. Therefore, the disciple whom Jesus laughed said unto Peter, it is the Lord. That's John. God said, that's Jesus. For this kind of miracle, it is only him that I can tell.

[11:32] And when Simon Peter heard that, it was the Lord. He gets his fisherman's coat upon him for he was, I mean, he was naked. That dead naked means that he wasn't properly covered.

[11:44] and he cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship for they were not far from land, but it's as 200 cubits.

[11:55] Verse 9 says, as soon as they were come to the land, they saw a fire and coals there and fish laid there on and bread. Fish and bread.

[12:05] Feed him. Feed him. Fish and bread. Feed him. The resurrection life is to help us to feed people so that they can receive the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. Amen.

[12:16] We have fish and bread. And the Bible says that, and Jesus said unto them, bring the fish which you have now caught. Simon Peter went up and drew the nets to the land full of fish.

[12:27] 153. And for all there was so many, yet the net was not broken. Verse 12, then said Jesus unto them, come and dine. It's interesting how the church was built around fruit.

[12:42] around dining. But this dining is not ordinary dining. As I told you some time ago, the early church, every church, one of the prominent furniture in every church was a table before the church because they gathered around the Lord's table for meals.

[13:02] Jesus said, come and dine and none of the disciples asked questions for the new to Jesus. Jesus then cometh and take a breath and give them and fish like wine. So give them bread, give them fish.

[13:13] This is not the third time Jesus appeared to them. Now watch this, this is where I'm going to end. So when they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me more than this?

[13:25] He answered, yes, Lord, you know I love thee. Then he said, feed my lamb. He said unto them the second time, unto him the second time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?

[13:37] He said, yes, Lord, you know I love thee. He said unto him, feed my sheep. And he said unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? Peter was brief because Jesus at the third time, do you love me?

[13:50] And then he said unto him, Lord, thou knoweth all things and thou knoweth I love thee. And Jesus said unto him, feed my sheep. Have you seen where feeding comes in?

[14:02] Yeah. When they came from the shore, there was a relative that Jesus was interested in them coming to feed. And then while they were feeding and they were enjoying it, he said, hey, hey, hey, hold on.

[14:13] Your job is also to feed others. And you know what we are supposed to feed others with? Christ. What is the menu? Christ. What do we dispense?

[14:24] Christ. That's all we have got. And he said, every solid, God-loving Christian ends up feeding others with Christ. Wow. Feeding them.

[14:35] Feeding them. That's why when they came from our fishing, all they came to find was hot coals with fish and bread because Jesus said, resurrection means feeding time.

[14:47] That is one of the reasons why we engage in communion. Hmm. Because it's an aspect of feeding that binds together. Because Jesus is our eternal bread.

[14:59] Wow. He's the bread of life. The communion is a holy thing. The communion is sacred. The communion is powerful. The communion makes a difference.

[15:10] The communion can bring healing. The communion can bring deliverance. The communion can bring clarity of mind. So, the communion can bring internal strength and the communion brings koinonia.

[15:24] Find us together as a team. as a team. We feed on Christ and we feed others with Christ. Amen. In Jesus' name.

[15:36] Amen. Amen. Thank you for listening. To hear more from David Entry, follow him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Why don't you subscribe to our YouTube channel at Carish Church and subscribe to our podcast so you are always up to date.

[15:55] Be blessed. Amen.