Love Jesus 13

Except from  Charles Spurgeon sermon.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” — Ephesians i. 3, 4.


But how can we bless God? Without doubt, the lesser is blessed of the Greater. Can the Greater be blessed by the lesser? 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,” saith the Lord, “I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof.” God has an all-sufficiency within himself, and can never be thought of as dependent upon his creatures, or as receiving anything from 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, “My goodness extendeth not to thee.” 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 thee; thou art too high, too holy, too great for me to be really able to bless thee in the sense in which thou dost bless me.  

PRAISE
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 honour 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 to his glory. Invite others to cry with you, “Hallelujah!” or “Hallels unto Jah!” “Praise unto Jehovah!” Ascribe ye greatness unto our God. Oh, that all flesh would magnify the Lord with us!

Say Amen When ..
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 glorious 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.

Thy Kingdom Come
We also bless God in the spreading of his kingdom. We can win hearts to him through his mighty grace blessing our service. We can fight against evil; we can set up a standard for the truth. We can be willing to suffer in repute, and every way else, for his name’s sake. We can by his grace do all this, and thus we are blessing God. Surely, dear friends, if it is well-pleasing in God’s sight that sinners should repent, if it makes heaven the gladder, and makes joy in the presence of the angels that men should repent, we are in the best and most practical way blessing God when we labour to bring men to repentance through faith in Christ Jesus.

Love One Another
There is also another way of blessing God which, I trust, we shall all endeavour to practise; and that is by the doing good to his children. When they are sick, visit them. When they are downcast, comfort them. When they are poor, relieve them. When they are hard pressed by outward adversaries, stand at their side, and help them. You cannot bless the Head, but you can bless the feet; and when you have refreshed the feet, you have refreshed the Head. He will say, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” If they be naked, and you clothe them; if they be sick, and you visit them; if they be hungry, and you feed them; you do in this respect bless God. David not only said, “Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee;” but he added, “but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight.” You can be good to them, and in that respect you may be blessing God. He has done so much for us, that we would fain do something for him; and when we have reached the limit of our possibilities, we long to do more. We wish that we had more money to give, more talent to use, more time that we could devote to his cause, we wish that we had more heart and more brain; sometimes we wish that we had more tongue, and we sing,—

“Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise!”

This word “blessed” is an attempt to break the narrow circle of our capacity. It is an earnest endeavour of a burning heart to lay at God’s feet crowns of glory which it cannot find: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”