Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2266
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenlyplaces in Christ: according as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Ephesians 1:3, 4.
GOD blesses us—let us bless Him! I pray that every heart here may take its own part in this service of praise—
“O you, my Soul, bless God the Lord, And all that in me is! Be stirred up His holy name To magnify and bless!”
Sit in your seats and keep on blessing God from the first word of the sermon to the last. And then go on blessing God till the last hour of life and enter into Heaven into the eternal Glory, still blessing God! It should be our life to bless Him who gave us our life. It should be our delight to bless Him who gives us all our delights. So says the text and so let us say, too—“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I. 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 hands and if He did, we could not give it. “If I were hungry,” says the Lord, “I would not tell you: 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 already infinitely blessed—we cannot add to His blessedness! When He blesses us, He gives us a blessedness that we never had be-fore—but when we bless Him—we cannot, by one iota, increase His absolutely Infinite Perfection! David said to the Lord, “My goodness extends not to You.” This was as if he had said, Let me be as holy, as devout and as earnest as I may, I can still 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 others 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 forever 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!
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 of God. 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 more glad 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 labor to bring men to repentance through faith in Christ Jesus!
There is also another way of blessing God which, I trust, we shall all endeavor to practice, 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 you have done it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, you have done it unto Me.” If they are naked and you clothe them. If they are sick and you visit them. If they are hungry and you feed them—you do, in this respect, bless God!