Blessed to Be a Blessing
October 31, 2004
Timothy Thompson
Introduction
· Home stretch of series; 3 on deliveries, 3 on gifts, now three on blessings and then a celebration.
· A helpful way to think about how God equips us to deliver love & invitations:
o Gifts – abilities. Don’t use them up when you use them. E.g. the gift of encouragement. You don’t have less “encourage” left over when you use the gift.
o Blessings – resources. E.g. money, time. When you “spend” them, there’s actually less remaining.
· Vision statement says use our gifts & share our blessings.
Today, there is one thing I want you to understand about blessings
If you hold onto your blessings, or hoard them, or refuse to share them, you will ruin them.
Blessings are like the blood in your veins – they have to flow for your life to go.
I’d even go so far as to say that an unshared blessing becomes a curse.
You can see this in “The Pipe”
You can also see it all throughout the Bible.
Manna – everyone had enough. No one had too much and no one had too little. When hoarded manna became foul and wormy.
Echoed in the Lord’s Prayer – daily bread. Not hoarding or trying to hold onto more than you need.
Jesus says this explicitly in the story of the rich man with the big barns. He certainly looked “blessed”. He had so much stuff he had to spend his time trying to make room for it all. But then he dies and God says; You fool! You had all this stuff but where’s your life?
Jesus said it this way: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
Then he says; “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
Having a lot is not the same as having a life.
Do you see it? There’s the real blessing – to be “rich towards God”. You get rich towards God not by getting or by having, but by giving. By sharing your blessings.
This is exactly where we find Zacchaeus.
He has lots of possessions, but not much of a life. His wealth is more like a curse than a blessing and he’s hated in his own community. By the end of the story, he has less money (a lot less) but now has become truly blessed. Jesus even says that salvation has come to his house. Why? Because he’s discovered that he’s blessed to be a blessing, and he becomes a blessing when he shares.
Proverbs 11:24 puts the choice beautifully. In the words of Eugene Petersons’ the Message it reads
The world of the generous gets larger and larger;
the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.
Zacchaeus was a little man trapped in his wealthy little world, until he learned to share – and then his world exploded into life and largess.
This is the pattern you see all over in the Bible – to give, to share – even when you have nearly nothing yourself – causes the world to explode into life and abundance.
This is precisely the story of God’s own experience with us.
God so loved the world that the Father gave his only son. There was only one, and the Father shared him with us, and we killed him so the Father went from one child to none. Zero. But this sharing produces the explosive blessing of more and more children for the Father – as well as the life of the Son returned!
If the Father had “hoarded” Jesus….. held onto him….. kept him for himself…. Where would the blessing be? But he didn’t, and that’s why we’re here.
Think of all the times Jesus demonstrated this, feeding thousands of people with a few loaves and fish. I love the story of the boy with his fish and bread lunch – hardly even enough for him – but this possession becomes a blessing when he shares it and Jesus feeds the crowd. I’m sure that boy ate his fill, and probably went home with more in leftovers than he had at the start.
And this is nothing new. Nine hundred years earlier the prophet Elijah met a destitute widow and her son. They were down to their last handful of flour and a dribble of oil for food during a famine. He asks them to share it with him, they do, and from then on their flour and oil supply never runs out. It sustains them for three years until the famine has passed.
Do you see how it works in God’s blessing economy? When you share your blessings, obviously the person you share them with gets something out of it. But it’s in the sharing – not the having – that you yourself become blessed.
The Prophet Isaiah sang that song for us in thrilling words. Listen to this; God’s people were not sharing their blessings and it was poisoning their hearts, their lives and even their worship. God declares that he wants them to share their bread with the hungry, their homes with the homeless, and their clothes with the naked. And what will happen – aside from people in need getting food, shelter and clothing? It says
your light shall break forth like the dawn,
your healing shall spring up quickly;
your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you
satisfy your needs
make your bones strong;
you shall be like a watered garden,
Your ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
You are the one who is blessed when you share your blessings.
This is God’s economy. This is God’s reversal of the way the world thinks and lives.
Jesus boiled it all down to these final words for us this morning.
Matthew 16:25
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Be like Zacchaeus. Share your blessings wildly, generously, even sacrificially, and watch your world and your own life explode into more fullness than you ever could have imagined.
Amen.