Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2289
“But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the LORD.” Psalm 115:18.
IT has been truly said that if the members of our churches were in a right condition of heart, the work of the pastor towards them would be no more difficult than that of a commanding officer to his troops. A general, or a captain has never to study eloquence—he has simply to give the word of command tersely and plainly—and himself to lead the way. So, if our hearts were right in the sight of God, we would not need illustrations to win attention or arguments to urge us on—we would only need to know what is the special duty of the hour and, helped by the Divine Spirit—we would, with alacrity, seek to perform it.
Well, now, let us hope that this is our condition tonight! God grant that it may be! Certainly it ought to be our condition in reference to the duty which is taught us in the text. I shall but, as it were, give the word of command in my Master’s name—and I trust that the Holy Spirit will be working in all our spirits, causing each one of us to say, “Ready, yes, ready, to bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord.”
You noticed, while we were reading the Psalm, that it contained a piece of cutting sarcasm upon the gods of the heathen which are unable to do anything for their worshippers. Albeit that they have the outward semblance of the organs of life and sense, yet in those organs there is neither life nor power. Their mouths cannot speak; their eyes cannot see; their ears cannot hear; their noses cannot smell; their hands cannot handle; their feet cannot walk. But our God is declared to be the living God who is in the heavens and who has done whatever He has pleased. Well, that being so, a living God should be worshipped by a living people in a living manner!
This is one of the rules of Christian worship which we should never forget. Let us come before the Lord, not as mere bodies, fancying that it is enough to put in an appearance in the place where prayer is known to be made, but let us bring our living selves, our souls, our hearts, into God’s worship—and whether it is in prayer, or in praise, or in the proclamation of His Truths, or in the listening to the Gospel message—let us do it with all our life! Let the praise be full of life! Let the prayer be full of life! Let the ministration of the Truth of God be the lively oracle of the living God! And let the ear, the heart’s ear, be all alive while we listen to the Gospel!
There is nothing more that is acceptable to God in the mere routine of Christian worship than there is in the turning of the windmills of the Tartars, when they put their prayers upon the mill and they revolve with the blowing of the wind! If true life is absent from our service, though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels, though we have the richest music, though we have everything that heart can devise to create a charm, yet it profits us nothing, and brings no Glory to God. “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” is a text which may be applied to dead services as well as to dead men. May the Lord, in mercy, send to some religious services a resurrection! May He be pleased to put a living heart and soul into them, for if there are not these, He will not accept a dead sacrifice at men’s hands! A living God must be worshipped in a living way by a living people!
In the context we see, also, that as it is true with the heathen’s idols, that, “they that make them are like unto them, so is everyone that trusts in them,” so ought it to be with us in reference to our God. A living God should have a living people and a blessing God should have a blessing people. He has blessed us with unspeakable favors. He is always blessing us! It is not possible for us to compute the amount of blessing which He is constantly bestowing upon us. Therefore, “Bless the Lord, O my Soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” If He exalts you with His favor, take care that you exalt Him with your praise. If He enriches you with His blessings, bring your blessings and offer them at His
feet, as the wise men brought their gold and frankincense and myrrh and laid them as tribute at the feet of the newborn King. Bless a blessing God! What can be more congruous? As the echo answers to the voice, so let our blessing of God answer to the blessing we have received from God, even as Paul puts it, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.”
This, then, is the work that is to occupy us tonight, and the work in which we shall continue, I trust, from this time forth and forevermore. Living unto the living God, time and eternity will be spent in blessing the blessing God.