If a person who reveres, honours, pays homage to and makes offerings to the Tathagatas filling the three thousand world system and residing for the length of time of as many aeons as the sand of the River Ganges and moreover reveres etc the stupa of those Tathagatas who have gone to parinirvana and generates merit is compared to someone who enters well into the Dharma, and utters the well spoken Dharma such as ‘all phenomena are impermanent, or are suffering or emptiness or are devoid of self-nature’, Ananda, then the latter is more meritorious than the first. 

Ananda, it is like this because acts of giving other than this are accompanied by defilements and afflictions and are the cause of one wandering in samsara; while, Ananda, the treasure of precious Dharma, which has been practised for uncountable millions of aeons without material things, is unsurpassable. With it the continuum of samsara is cut. Ananda, when they hear this precious and unsurpassable Dharma, beings who are subjected to birth will be totally liberated from birth; beings who are subjected to sickness, death, anguish, wailing lament, misery, mental unhappiness and mental turmoil will be totally liberated from all of those, including from sickness up to mental turmoil. Ananda, having seen the basis of the meaning of this, both the one who respectfully expounds the Dharma, and the one who respectfully listens to the Dharma, generate many merits, thus I say. Ananda one who respectfully expounds the Dharma to a Bikshu who is seeking for Dharma, and the Bikshu who also respectfully listens to the Dharma, Ananda, both these two generate immense, immeasurable and uncountable merits.

-- The Buddha, Sadharmapundarika (Sutra)