If you want to open your Bibles,
back to Acts chapter 20 and verse 35 will be the focus of
our remarks this morning. In everything I did, of course
this is Paul speaking to those elders from the city of Ephesus,
the church in Ephesus. In everything I did, I showed
you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak. Remembering the words the Lord
Jesus himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Now these words from our Lord
Jesus Christ, quoted by Paul, are among the very rare cases
of a quote from the Lord Jesus that is not found in any of the
Gospels. You know, John said that what
he had written, he said that the Lord did and said so many
wonderful things, that were they all to be written down, he supposed
that the world itself could not contain all the books. We have
in the four gospel accounts those deeds and words that the Holy
Spirit considered necessary for our understanding of that portion
of our Lord's life and ministry. But then he did inspire, at least
Paul, to speak concerning some things. And I don't know whether this
quote from the Lord Jesus, that he heard it from somewhere else,
or if during that three years after his conversion, when he
was taught personally by the Lord Jesus, that the Lord Jesus
said it again. to him personally. But whatever
it was, this is a quote of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we do
not set one portion of scripture above another. Every bit of scripture
is inspired by God. The Greek word means God breathed.
God breathed. And men set apart for this very
purpose, wrote down the things that God inspired them to write. So no matter whose hand penned
the words or whose mouth they came out of, it's God's words. Nonetheless, there does seem
to be a particular attraction, at least for me, a particular
attraction to those things that our Lord Jesus Christ himself
said. I've got a red letter Bible. I didn't order it as a red letter
Bible, it just came that way. But when you look at those things
which are marked in red, which are supposed to indicate the
things that the Lord Jesus himself said, it has a special effect
on me. And here are some words of the
Lord. It is more blessed to give than
to receive. Actually, this morning's message,
this whole subject came from some of those Facebook Reels
that you could watch, most of which were originally TikTok
videos. And whoever had that TikTok account
just migrated them all over to Facebook Reels as well. They're
little short videos. And there are several people
who have a practice of going out and doing good, sometimes
remarkable good, for people. Charitable works. Now some of
it, you know the person's showing off. They just want to get it
on video how good they're being, but I ignore that part of it.
I just enjoy watching the joy of the person who is receiving. There's one fellow in particular
that I enjoy his videos, and he finds homeless people. You
know, the Lord said, don't give to those that you figure can
give back. He'd say things like, the Gentiles
do that. And of course, he was using the
word Gentiles to indicate those who have no knowledge of God,
no knowledge of the true God. He said, even the Gentiles can
do that. If you give only to those who
can return the favor, what good is that? That's not a gift. That's a trade. Well, you go to the homeless. They've got nothing to give back.
And you give to them, you aren't likely to be getting anything
back, at least nothing of monetary value or anything like that.
And what I enjoy so much about this is I do sympathize and empathize
with those who, for whatever reason, are in a homeless state,
in abject poverty, have no place comfortable to sleep. And I know
the argument is, well, they could go out and get a job. Some of
them are that way. Or there are homeless shelters
they could go to. Yes, there are some that way.
But you know what's the most pitiful case and most pitiful
thing about many of them? They are homeless because they
are mentally ill and prefer to be out there on the streets rather
than in a home. Their perception of reality and
their emotional makeup is such that were you to give them a
house, they wouldn't want to live in it. Now, what kind of
worse state of homelessness can one be in? To prefer homelessness. Does it remind you of anything?
When the Lord found us, we were, spiritually speaking, homeless.
And the worst part about it was, That's what we preferred. We weren't there because we were
lazy. We weren't there because just
some circumstances had befallen us, and this is just a temporary
transition. And, you know, we're living in
our car right now, but, you know, we're looking for a job, and
soon enough we'll get some, and we can gather some money and
get some. That's not the condition we were in. We were like those
that you find living under bridges, filthy, and so mentally disturbed. I understand many of them are
schizophrenic. They can't relate to the world
right. And they're out there because, quite literally, they
cannot do any better, what we would count better. And they
don't even want to. But this man goes out there and
he greets them, and he greets them as you would greet a peer,
as you would greet someone like you. You know, we talk to children,
and when we talk to children, we talk down to them. We talk
to our pets, we talk down to them. And also, you know, we
have this tendency when we see those who are in a social status
or social strata different than us, if we're not careful, we
can find ourselves talking down to them. But that's not what
this fellow does. He greets them as though he were greeting anyone
else on the street. And then he says, what can I
do for you? What can I do for you? And most
of them are kind of taken back. And so he has to make some suggestions.
Would you like something to eat? Or do you need some clothes?
And no matter what they say, he'll say something like, well,
come with me. Or if they're not inclined to go, as some of those
with a mental illness, they don't want to leave their spot. Or
they just don't want to go out among other people. He will go
and if they say, well, I'd sure like some lunch, something decent
to eat. Well, he'll go out and he will
get them something decent to eat. He'll also run over to Walmart
or something like that, get them some new clothes, maybe some
toiletries, a better sleeping bag. He's bought tents, everything. And when he brings it back, and hands them all that stuff
absolutely free. No strings attached. It's remarkable
to see how those people respond. Now, I know they're only going
to show the ones that work out good, but I am sure most of them respond
like the ones you see right there on the video. They're overwhelmed
with gratitude. Many of them break down in tears. They can't believe that someone
treated them good. Now, you look at a scene like
that, and you say, well, in that case, it was better to receive
than to give. As I watch those things, and
I assume this man, whoever he is, or really for whatever reason
he's doing it, Can you imagine the joy he receives from doing
that? Have you ever, and I know you
have, but I'm posing this question as a rhetorical question, have
you ever done something for someone just out of kindness? So often we see those like the
homeless, And our first thought is, well, you know, they might
need something, but who knows? Maybe they're like that just
because they refuse to work. And it wouldn't be right for
me to support that. Well, if you knew that was the case with
them, yeah, it's not appropriate to support someone's laziness.
In the United States of America, particularly right now, if you
want a job, there is one. You can get two or three of them
if you wanted to. And Paul did say, if a man doesn't work, neither
should he eat. But so often we use that, or
I've heard of people using that, I don't want to impute you with
what I've heard otherwise, but we use that excuse to relieve
ourselves of what we perceive as a responsibility to give to
others. I bet you he's a drug addict,
that's why. He's probably just going to take
it and buy a bottle of wine. Well, you actually don't know
any of that for sure. And even if that was true, and
here's the thing to understand, even if you give to someone whose
poverty is, shall we call it unjustified,
you know what I mean. That does not diminish the value
of what is given if it is given out of love and for Christ's
sake. For such gifts, while handed
to a person, are gifts as it were unto the Lord. But if we take what our Lord
says and take it Just as he said it, you are more blessed in the giving
than your benefactor was in the receiving. Especially if you do it out of
true love and sympathy for their case. And this fellow that I
watched, and some others, And this will surprise you, it's
one of the things that caught my mind. There was, and I don't know if
it was the same guy, but there is one that'll go out and he'll
ask these people to do something for him. He'd come up, and I
saw him, he'd come up to a fella, and I mean, you know, the old
scraggly beard, You know, he looked like he was 70, but he
might have been only 40, who knows. He'd obviously had a very
rough life, was in tough circumstances. And he came up and asked, he
said, I need some money for something. Could you share it? Well, the
guy didn't have that much money. But he eventually, the fellow reached in his wallet
and handed, now this was the homeless person, reached in his
wallet, handed this guy his last $10 bill. Isn't that remarkable? And I
find that is true. When it comes to giving, it's
quite often the most needy who are ready to do it. I remember, well, this happened
in one of our sister churches. When it was formed, one of the
members was in all likelihood a multimillionaire. And he was
with the church for several years. And all that time, probably everybody
but the treasurer thought that he was the primary financial
supporter of that church. Well, something about that church
bothered him, and he quit. And they didn't even notice a
difference. It is the needy. who are most
prone to give. And so I said, this guy, he would
ask for help. And if the person was willing
to help, he found someone of generous spirit, I think he handed
the guy $500. And you imagine how that guy
was taken back. He says, here's your 10 back.
The person that blessed me, I was going to bless. handed that guy
that wad of money, and he looked at it, and you know what he was
going to do with it? That man, living there in what
we would call squalor, he looked at that 500 and considered his
other needy friends. He didn't shove it in his wallet
and say, well, I'm set. I'm going to live in this homeless
state for the next two months on this money. No. He began to
share. And why would someone like that,
who is so needy, and had gotten a windfall gift, why would he
be so ready to pass some of it out? Well, I don't know if that
man knew the Lord or not, but he obviously understood the concept.
It's more blessed to give than to receive. We had nothing. Spiritually speaking,
we had absolutely nothing. In fact, it was worse than that.
We were so heavily in debt that there was no chance that we would
ever be able to get our spiritual heads above water. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
to us. And as Paul said, in another
place, in one of the Corinthian epistles, as he's speaking about
giving, he says, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
how that though he were rich, yet for our sakes he became poor. that we, through his poverty,
might be made rich. Now God has not called on us
to impoverish ourselves financially in order to make others rich,
but he sets forth the example of our Lord Jesus Christ who
did exactly that. And it's not just that he gave
up his own life, that's enough. But remember what he gave up
just in coming here. Here he is, God the Son, the
Son of God. And as God, he had absolutely
everything he wanted. I mean, that's just the nature
of God. He was there, and we're talking
about the mystery of the Trinity here, and I'm not going to try
to explain it because I don't understand it myself. Nonetheless,
there is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And the Son had
the full favor, love, and affection of the Heavenly Father. All the beings of heaven. worshipped him day in and day
out. And he consented to leave that
condition to live in this world. And we may mention his poverty
as a child born to peasants first in the
little town of Bethlehem and then later raised in Nazareth,
and say, oh, how much he gave up. Friend, if he had come down
and lived in the largest and most sumptuous palace of a king, he still would have given up
what cannot even be compared to that. It was not that he was
born of poor parents that indicates his condescension. It said he
was born at all. The uncreated God came here in
the form of a created being. As Philippians says, he who was
in very nature God made himself of no reputation. made himself condescended to
be someone whom in his new address, so to speak, people counted him
insignificant. And then he went on. He condescended
even more. He who is the Holy One of God,
he who knew no sin, he who is the giver of all life, he who is the sovereign. Submitted
himself. Submitted himself. Says he took
on the nature of a servant and the form of sinful flesh. One thing about that guy that
was going out to the homeless and giving them money, and I
applaud him for doing that. But he was dressed in decent
clothes. He didn't go out there and live
with them. He did not become one of them. Our Lord became
one of us. And the absolute sovereign submitted
himself unto death. The living one submits
himself to death, even the horrible, ignominious, disgraceful, cursed
death of the cross. Though he were rich, yet for
our sakes he became poor. Do you think our Lord in that
experience would say, it's more blessed to give than receive? Would you look at him in all
his giving And all that He gave us, all that He endured in giving
these things to us, would you say of Him, He was more blessed
as the giver than we are as the receivers? Well, it was the Lord Himself
who said it. He said it's more blessed to give than receive.
And if you go on in that passage from Philippians I was referring
to, it says, wherefore, because he who by nature was God, nonetheless
made himself of no reputation, took on the likeness of sinful
flesh, was formed like a servant, became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross, wherefore, because of that, God highly exalted
him. gave him a name above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, every tongue
confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father. And among those, or among that
multitude made up of everyone who's ever been conceived, there
are some who bow down and call him Lord with tears of gratitude, with hearts filled with honest
worship, love, adoration. Do you think that our Lord is
presently in heaven saying, I don't know if it's worth it after all.
Boy, I suffered a lot, I gave a lot, and look, there aren't
that many people believe on me. It says in Isaiah 53, he shall
see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Are you satisfied with anything? Probably not. You may have learned
that spiritual grace of contentment. But contentment's different than
satisfaction. Satisfaction means I have everything
I want. Contentment is, well, I don't
have everything I want, but I can still be happy under these circumstances.
There's a difference. Our Lord is satisfied. I hear
preachers say, God wants to save you. If he did, he would. God is not going to be weeping. Our Lord is not going to spend
eternity disappointed that he did all that work and yet many perished. Are you not greatly blessed by
what our Lord did? Imagine this. He's even more
blessed. If you want to get some concept
of what our Lord was, what meant by this, just think of this.
He counts himself more blessed in his giving than you and I
are blessed. in what we received from it. And we don't want, I'm gonna
look at this spiritually in a minute, but I don't want us to miss the
very real, this life perspective of what our Lord said. Because
his primary meaning when he said this, and the way Paul is applying
it is this. You and I, blessed by God, enriched
by God, We now, in this life, are more blessed in giving than
we are in receiving. And I'm saying that pretty bold.
I wonder whether my actions will back that up. I wonder if I'll give. Maybe give to the point, you
know, as Americans, We are so wealthy compared to
most of the rest of the world that we could give a good bit
of money and not really be suffering. Our Lord taught us, he said,
with food and clothing, be content. That's enough. Doesn't mean you wouldn't want
more, couldn't use more, but if you've got that, you should
be able to live a content life. Americans, I don't know if they're
ever content with anything. They're certainly not satisfied. But it seems, and this is probably
a human trait, but probably the United States, the people of
the United States, have been more successful in this particular
attitude than any other people before. Our overall concept is
more. How much do you want? More. And
it doesn't matter how much we have. We want more. A couple of quotes from Henry
Ford, you know, the guy that, he didn't invent the car, but
he found a way to make it so that a lot of people could buy
one. And he became a fabulously wealthy man. And they asked him
once, well, how much is enough? He said, just a little bit more. And he sought a little bit more
all his life. He was also quoted as saying, I don't want all the
land, I just want what's next to mine. That's what's in us. Do we give
to the point that we feel the natural loss in giving? In other words, in our giving,
have we ever given up anything? Well, in the context in which
these words were written and spoken, that was a time when
people, man, just about from sunup to sundown, they worked
just to put food on the table. And when they gave, that meant that they were probably
going to maybe suffer a little bit. I mean, they'd have enough
food to survive on, but, you know, You could have had a nice
steak, but now you're down to hamburger. To give to the point
of giving up is the kind of giving that our Lord is speaking of. Because notice how Paul describes
it. In everything I did, I showed you by this kind of hard work,
we must help the weak. He goes so far as to say, We're
not called on to work just enough that we can provide for ourselves. If we could labor more in order
to have enough to help others who need it, that's what we ought
to do. However, Nothing our Lord said
or exhorted us to do came from any other place than
His own character and nature. And if He said to us it's better
or more blessed to give than to receive, it's because that's
what His nature is. And having been the great giver
of all things, he knew what he was talking about. And when you look in the scriptures,
here's one thing you find out about Christ or we could say
God in general. He is a giver. Spurgeon put it this way. It
is more blessed to give than to receive, and none shall be
more blessed than God ever. So we can be certain that He
will always be the bigger giver than us. He sets the example. Note these things that God has
given us. You know, everything that we
have from the hand of God is a gift. We haven't earned any of it.
And I'll be honest with you. I spoke earlier how people say,
well, we need to be cautious about who we give to, because
maybe they're going to go out and do the wrong thing with it.
Or maybe they're drug addicts, and that's why they're in the
mess they're in. And that's their fault. Let them sleep in the
bed they made. Or I know there's jobs they could
get. You realize that every one of
those is spiritually applicable to us. The needy condition that
we were in before the Lord saved us was all our fault. And yet the Lord gave without
taking into account our troubles were our fault. He didn't say, well, you know,
I told them how to get into my favor. All they have to do is
do what I told them. I gave them a list of rules.
All they gotta do is do them, and they'll get everything they
need. He didn't say that. He just gave. He gave to us when
we were so spiritually insane, we thought we were doing fine.
He gave to us as we spit at Him. So confused in our spiritual
state, we did not understand the glories of the things He
held out to us. He gave to us when we said, get
away from us. He gave to us as we rejected
everything He gave. And in His good time, He gave
to us the sanity to see the wisdom of His gifts and the willingness
to receive them with gratitude. Oh, He gave. What did He give
first? Well, He gives life. He gives
natural life, everybody who has ever been alive. Where'd that
life come from? God gave it to them. You know,
when teenagers are all full of teenage angst, you know, and,
oh, this is, they're just upset that things aren't going the
way they're going to go, you know, well, I didn't ask to be
born. Well, of course not. Before you were born, before
you were conceived, there wasn't a you to ask. And people will Complain about
their life listen if you have life God gave it to you And he sustains it right now
our Lord is sustaining the lives of many who hate him People all over the world that
never even heard his name He gives them life. He's providing
for them. It's all a gift and We have that
life from Him. We also have eternal life as a gift. Paul
said the wages of sin is death. Our death, we earn that. But do we have eternal life?
That was a gift, an absolute gift. given to us before we needed
it, before we wanted it. And it wasn't until we had it
that we realized what a blessed gift it is. In Matthew chapter 11, 28, and
I've got a lot of things. I'm not going to get to all of
them. I just wrote down a lot of them and figured I'd choose
from among them as I felt inclined to do so while I'm preaching.
Matthew 11, 28, come all you that are weary and
heavy burdened and I will give you rest. He didn't say come work for me
and I'll give you a shorter work day. He didn't say come to me and
I won't add any more burden. He says, you come to me, I'll
remove that heavy load that you can't bear. And I will not put
another load on you. I will give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you. Yep, there's the work right there.
No. That's not a work at all. He says, take my yoke upon you.
You know what a yoke is. That's how you join two work
animals. so that they can both pull. Take my yoke upon you and
learn of me and you will find rest. Now how could we ever find
rest if we're in a yoke? Just the same way a little child,
and I remember this happening as my dad was trying to teach
me to mow the grass. He was up here at the far end
of the handles and I was in front of him and I had my handles my
hands on the little crossbar about halfway down, and we're
walking along. Dad's doing all the pushing.
I'm just walking along. I was by the mower's handlebars,
yoked to my father, but I wasn't doing any work. Our Lord gives rest, spiritual
rest, rest from our labors of trying to please God and gain
His favor by our works. And in John chapter 14, verse
27, He says, My peace I give to you. The fruit of the Spirit, says
the Scriptures, is peace. Now that doesn't mean that our
minds are always at peace, because our minds are afflicted with
the flesh as well as the testimony of the Spirit. But he says, I will give it.
I will give you my peace. And what is his peace? Well,
it is his peace with the Father. And it's the peace that he has
in the sure and certain knowledge that he is loved by the Father,
blessed by the Father, accepted by the Father, and that no harm
can come to him. See, our Lord's at perfect peace.
And he says, I give you my peace. The world, it'll cause you trouble,
and we experience that. But no trouble ever comes to
us directly from God. It's all peace. James chapter four, let it turn
that, because this is one of the ones that really stuck out
to me, and maybe will be a real blessing to you. Maybe it'll
apply so well to your present circumstances. Now James talks in the fashion
of Jews, and sometimes what he says sounds harsher than we would
think to say it, but that's just kind of the way they talked.
So he says in verse four, you adulterous people, don't you
know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone
who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of
God. Or do you think the scripture
says without reason that the spirit he calls to live in us
envies intensely? Boy, you hear something like
that and you begin to think, I like the world a lot. I mean,
I like the stuff in it. I pursue it. Yes, I want to have
a nice house. I want to have the finest car
I can get my hands on. I want to be healthy all the
time, you know. I want the world to look on me
favorably. I want all these things. Does
that mean I'm not the friend of God? Well, I'll say this. The fact that you would desire
those things is not in itself wrong. It really comes down to
this. Do you want those things so much
that you shortchange God? That you pursue them at the expense
of pursuing Him? But when the scriptures speak
to us in strong words like that, and it may tend to put us a state
of fear, look what the next words are, but he gives us more grace. He gives us more grace. Here we are, and I'll tell you
right now, if he didn't give us more grace, every one of us
would chase the world at the expense of Christ. But such is
our giving God. He gives more grace, so we won't
do that. And that's the only reason we're
not doing that. And while there is a strong exhortation and warning
for us, it need not work a fear in us, because we know with the
temptation comes the grace, more grace. And if for a time we fall,
we find ourselves pursuing the world at a level we shouldn't,
then he gives more grace of forgiveness. When we're sick, he gives us more grace to endure
it. When we're old, he gives us more
grace to handle it. when we receive bad news that
breaks us inwardly, He gives us more grace. Aren't you glad there's more
grace than you've already gotten? Aren't you glad that God will
see to it you always have sufficient grace to deal with whatever's
going on. A man came up to Spurgeon one
time and said, I want you to pray for me that I have dying
grace. Spurgeon looked at him and said,
are you dying? He said, well, not anytime soon that I know
of. He said, well, then you don't need that grace yet. You'll get
it when you need it. He gives more grace. Oh, what a wonderful God we serve. Oh, I could, I've got 10 more
things, but I'm not gonna get to them all. Let me just rattle
off some. You've heard these things before,
but they can, maybe just by mentioning them, they can be a blessing
to you. God gave his only begotten son. Kind of makes us think that any
giving we do really isn't giving. He gave his only begotten son.
We preach, we endeavor to preach the gospel, and in part we do
that in the hope that others will believe, but one may preach
the gospel, the other may follow up with further instruction.
As Paul said, I have planted, Apollos watered, God gave the
increase. Friend, there's no magic formula
that brings about converts. You can send out 50 preachers
and every one of them be faithful preachers of the gospel, and
they preach, and they preach, and they preach, and the Lord
will give to one a harvest of a hundredfold and give to another
a harvest of five or six. But whatever harvest comes out
of it, God gave it. He gives. If any man lacks wisdom, says
James, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally without
finding fault. And in 1 Corinthians 15, verse
57, it says, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ. That does not mean he gives us
power to gain the victory. It means he gives us the victory.
He went out, fought the battle, won, and says, here, the victory
is yours. It's like David when he slew
Goliath. David's not a picture of us.
It's not a picture of what we should aspire to be. It's a picture
of our Lord Jesus Christ fighting a battle we can't fight. Destroying
an enemy we could never destroy. Where are we in that story? We're
back there with the rest of the Israeli army, cowering in fear. And the only time we get up and
do anything like fighting is after Goliath's already been
slain. And all of Goliath's pals, the other guys in the army, are
filled with fear and turn and run, and we chase them down and
get the spoils. We don't win a victory. He did
that and he gave us the victory. We're just collecting the spoils. It is more blessed to give than
receive. Oh, our blessed God. Both blessed and blessed is He,
and it should be that way. No one is ever given like He
has given. And I'm all too happy to see
Him receive the reward of His generosity. And God grant that
we be part of that reward and do what is in our power to bring
that reward, so to speak, to pass in our gushing thanks to
him. Heavenly Father, bless your word.
Thank you for all your gifts. Thank you for your indescribable
gift in Christ Jesus. Making our words flowery and
eloquent won't add to the glory you deserve. So just in simplicity,
Lord, we say thank you. Teach us the value of what we've
been given. In Christ's name we pray, amen.