Bible Wonders - Is It Better to Recieve Than To Give

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? Today on Bible Wonders I'm going to wonder about if it might not in fact be more blessed to receive than it is to give. And the idea here is that by receiving you obviously allow the giver the joy of giving.

So as would be the case when we receive our salvation. I'll tell a story that kind of illustrates this when I was crushed between the two jeeps and had all the surgeries on my leg. I was in a wheelchair for a period of time and you know I was kind of a baby Christian at the time and I belonged to a Sunday school class at Calvary Baptist Church and they got together and decided because my wife was struggling to get me in a wheelchair I had to slide down the stairs of my house every day kind of on my butt in order to get out in the wheelchair to get in the car to go to the doctor or whatever. So they came out to my house to build a wheelchair ramp. And they paid for all the wood and because my deck was up so high and the way it was going out I mean this wheelchair ramp was you know probably 150 feet long.

It was a long wheelchair ramp. And so as all these people are out at my house you know they're working out and doing this all for free and all. My Sunday school teacher's name was Mike Ham and I said Mike I just don't understand I've never done anything like this for anybody.

I mean what did I do to deserve this. I'm just so grateful that you guys would come do this. And he said Robbie we would do it a lot more but people rob us of the blessing because they won't let us do anything for them. And I've never forgotten that little conversation there and it so illustrates something that the relationship between two Jewish letters or Hebrew letters the dalad and the gimel. So the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the gimel and it looks sort of like a foot.

And the reason they say it's a foot is because it's the rich man that is running to give alms to the poor man. The other interesting thing is that the dalad which is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet so you see that you're connecting this idea of the gimel and the dalad. The fourth letter the dalad it literally does mean a poor person. And I don't know if you ever put this together it's absolutely beautiful when you think about it that David King David's name is dalad right that D sound and then above meaning as we always talk about sort of a hook to heaven which King David clearly was.

It's absolutely a beautiful name and it ends in a second dalad. Right. And so the idea of blessed are the poor in spirit.

Right. For theirs is the kingdom heaven I mean it's like David's name because he was poor. And so you can be poor in three different ways. You can be poor in more ways than this. But this is what I think Jesus was getting at when he said Blessed are the poor in spirit. But you can be poor physically like you don't have any money but you can also be poor emotionally.

I'm sure you've seen people that were poor emotionally. And then you can be poor spiritually. And so the concept of tithing really works really phenomenally well within all three of these.

And the way that this association of tithing really works really phenomenally well within all three of these. And what they say is that when the gimel is chasing after the dalad to give him his 10 percent the alms that the dalad is giving the gimel a huge favor by receiving that 10 percent because now the gimel is going to be blessed 10 times more so that it can give even more. You've probably heard that you can't give God. Well one of the ways that you can give is when you receive you're allowing the person that gave you a blessing of God of 10 times more than they gave you.

Of course all these things can be obviously made for bad but that's not what I'm talking about. That what my Sunday school teacher was telling me that day is I would receive this. It gave them a blessing and again 10 times more blessing than that. And so it even works and I've seen it work with jokes.

Okay. Another interesting little lesson that I've never forgotten is when I started doing devotions at the nursing home in Mocksville about 22 or three years ago. Somebody told me that if you'll give them something on a piece of paper then you know it will mean the world to them. So my mother would always send me these emails with these jokes that made me laugh. You might guess my mother has a similar sense of humor to my own. And so I would take these jokes that my mother would send me and other people would send me and I would write them you know essentially type them out and hand these jokes out that I taught. You know if you wonder what happened in Kingdom Pursuits and my riddles it all is based out of this. So when I started to give out those sheets of paper with those jokes on it. Right. I began to receive thousands of jokes from people in my email.

I don't know how. I mean it was like the joy that God allowed me to give to these people through these jokes. He now poured 10 times more jokes into my world.

I've never forgotten it. And I know that the same thing works that when God teaches you something like what I'm explaining right now if you'll give it away he's going to give you 10 times more. Right. And and thus is the idea of blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom. You know but because if you will realize that you need it desperately then you give somebody or something an opportunity to give you something of God and you get it 10 times back. So today again you know I wonder if you will wonder with me if it isn't in fact better to receive. I know it blesses God's heart when you receive his son. OK. I wonder if it isn't in fact better to receive than it is to give.