Thursday, July 17, 2014

Our Great Privilege to Bless the Blesser

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,  even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.  (Eph 1:3-4)

God blesses us; let us bless him.… It should be our life to bless him who gave us our life.  It should be our delight to bless him whom give us all our delights.  So says the text, and so let us do: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Our first occupation, at this time, will be that of Blessing God.

But how can we bless God?  Without doubt the less is blessed of the Greater.  Can the Greater be blessed by the less?  Yes, but it must be in a modified sense.  God blesses us with all spiritual blessings; but we cannot give him any blessings.  He needs nothing at our hand; and if he did, we could not give it.  “If I were hungry,” says the Lord, “I would not tell you: for the world and its fullness are mine.”  God has an all-sufficiency within himself, and can never be thought of as dependent upon his creatures, or as receiving anything form his creatures which he needs to receive.  He is infinitely blessed already; we cannot add to his blessedness.  When he blesses us, he gives us a blessedness that we never had before; but when we bless him, we cannot by one iota increase his absolutely infinite perfectness.  David said to the Lord, “I have no good apart from you.”  This was as if he had said, Let me be as holy, as devout, and as earnest as I may, I can do nothing for you; you are too high, too holy, too great for me to be really able to bless you in the sense which you bless me.

How, then, do we bless God?  Well, I should say, first, that this language is the expression of gratitude.  We say with David, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” and we say with Paul, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  We can bless God by praising him, extolling him, desiring all honor for him, ascribing all good to him, magnifying and lauding his holy name.  Well, we will do that.  Sit still, if you will, and let your heart be silent unto God; for no language can ever express the gratitude that, I trust, we feel to him who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus.  Praise him also in your speech.  Break the silence; speak of his glory.  Invite other to cry with you, “Hallelujah!” or “Hallels unto Jah!”  “Praise to Jehovah!”  Ascribe greatness unto our God.  Oh, that all flesh would magnify the Lord with us!

This language is also the utterance of assent to all the blessedness that is ascribed to the Lord.  After hearing how great he is, how glorious he is, how happy he is, we bless him by saying, “Amen; so let it be!  So would we have it!  He is none too great for us, none too blessed for us.  Let him be great, glorious and blessed, beyond all conception.”  I think that we bless God when we say concerning the whole of his character, “Amen.  This God is our God for ever and ever.”  Let him be just what the Bible says he is; we accept him as such. Sternly just, he will not spare the guilty.  Amen, blessed be his name!  Infinitely gracious, ready to forgive.  Amen, so let it be!  Everywhere present, always omniscient.  Amen, so again do we wish him to be!  Everlastingly the same, unchanging in his truth, his promise, his nature.  We again say that we are glad of it, and we bless him.  He is just such a God as we love.  He is indeed God to us, because he is really God, and we can see that he is so, and every attribute ascribed to him is a fresh proof to us that Jehovah is the Lord.  Thus, we bless him by adoration.

Charles Spurgeon, “Blessing for Blessing

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