How Can We Bless God?

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessing 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 1:3-4

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 do: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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,” saith the Lord, “I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine, and the fulness thereof.” 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, “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 which Thou dost bless me. How, then, do we bless God? 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. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2266.cfm

For Our Soul’s Benefit

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

If sin had been blotted out so readily, and nothing more said of it, what effect would that have had on us in the future? I think that everyone who has felt the burden of sin, and has stood at the foot of the cross, and heard the cries of the great Sacrifice, and read God’s wrath against sin written in crimson lines upon the blessed and perfect person of the innocent Savior-every such person feels that sin is an awful thing. You cannot trifle with transgression after a vision of Gethesmane. You cannot laugh at it, and talk about the littleness of its demerit, if you have once stood on Golgotha, and heard the cry, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” The death of the Son of God upon the cross is the grandest of all moral lessons, because it is a lesson that affects the very soul of the man and changes his whole idea of sin. The cross straightens him from the desperate twist which sin gave him at the first. The cure of the first Adam’s fall is the second Adam’s death-the second Adam’s grace, which comes to us through His great sacrifice. We love sin till we see that it killed our best Friend, and then we loathe it evermore. I say, again, that if the great Father did forgive you, and said, “There is nothing in it; go your way, it is all over;” you would have lacked that grandest source of sanctified life which now you find in the wounds of Him who has made sin detestable to you, and has made perfect obedience, even unto death, the subject of you soul’s admiration. Now you long to be unto the great Father, in your measure, what your great Redeemer was to Him when He magnified the law and made it honorable. This is no mean benefit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2207.cfm

Christ’s Unknown Sufferings

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin… – 2 Corinthians 5:21

God cannot look where there is sin with any pleasure, and though as far as Jesus is personally concerned, He is the Father’s beloved Son in whom He is well pleased; yet when He saw sin laid upon His Son, He made that Son cry, “My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” It was not possible that Jesus should enjoy the light of His Father’s presence while He was made sin for us; consequently, He went through a horror of great darkness, the root and source of which was the withdrawing of the conscious enjoyment of His Father’s presence. More than that, not only was light withdrawn, but positive sorrow was inflicted…What were the pangs, which Christ endured? I cannot tell you. You have read the story of His crucifixion. Dear friends, that is only the shell, but the inward kernel who shall describe? I doubt not that the Godhead within gave a peculiar sensitiveness to the holiness of Christ’s nature, so that sin must have become even more abhorrent to Him than it would have been to a merely perfect man. His griefs are worthy to be described according to the Greek Liturgy as “unknown sufferings.” The height and depth, the length and breadth of what Jesus Christ endured no heart can guess, nor tongue can tell, nor can imagination frame; God only knows the griefs to which the Son of God was put when the Lord made to meet upon Him the iniquity of us all. To crown all there came death itself. Death is the punishment for sin…whatever over and beyond natural death was intended in the sentence, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” Christ felt. Death went through and through Him… “He became obedient to death, even to the death of the cross.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

Christ Volunteered to Bear Our Sins

…the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. – Isaiah 53:6

It has been asked, Was it just that sin should thus be laid upon Christ? We believe it was rightly so, first because it was the act of Him who must do right, for “the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Jehovah, He against whom the offense was committed, and who has ordained that the sin of the people spoken of should be laid upon Christ. To impugn this, then, would be to impugn the justice of Jehovah, and I pray that none of us may have the hardihood to do that. Shall the potsherd venture to strive with the potter? shall the thing formed contend with the Creator of all things? Jehovah did it; and we accept it as being right, caring not what men may think of Jehovah’s own deed. Remember, moreover, that Jesus Christ voluntarily took this sin upon Himself. It was not forced upon Him; He was not punished for the sins of others with whom He had no connection and against His will; but He His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, and while bearing it said, “No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.” It was according to His own eternal agreement made with the Father on our behalf; it was according to His own expressed desire, for He had a baptism to be baptized with, and He was straitened until it was accomplished; and therefore whatever of injustice might be supposed, it is removed by the fact that He who was mainly concerned in it was Himself voluntarily placed in such a position. But I would have you remember, beloved, that there was a relationship between our Lord and His people, which is too often forgotten, but which rendered it natural that He should bear the sin of His people. Why does the text speak of our sinning like sheep? I think it is because it would call to our recollection that Christ is our Shepherd. It is not, my brethren, that Christ took upon Himself the sins of strangers. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0694.cfm

The Day Will Come

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee. – Isaiah 44:22

There are times when our unbelief makes new clouds and threatens new storms. Though our sin was all forgiven at the very first, and when we were first washed we were clean every whit, so that we needed not ever afterwards to wash again, except to wash our feet, yet unbelief can revive the memories of sin, and defile the conscience with dead works, and so it can create clouds between us and God: nevertheless, when our Lord reveals Himself He blotteth out our sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud our transgressions, and again we return unto Him and rejoice in Him. We need not come under these returning glooms, and we ought not to do so; but should it happen to us that we come under a cloud, it will be a blessed thing to look up and remember that the Lord can clear the skies in a moment and turn our dreariest shades into the brightness of the morning.

The day will come when the gospel shall have been preached for the last time, when the chosen of God shall have been all gathered out from among men, and the dispensation shall be fulfilled. Then shall all the saints rise to glory at the call of God. The elect multitude shall be all there, every one according to the purpose of the Father, every one according to the redemption of the Son, every one according to the calling of the Spirit, all there; upon their faces there shall be no spot nor wrinkle, and on their garments no stain nor defilement, for they are without fault before the throne of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1240.cfm

The Great Fountain

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. – James 1:17

And I was afraid and went and hid Thy talent in the earth: lothere Thou hast that is Thine. – Matthew 25:25

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.” All that men have they must trace to the Great Fountain, the giver of all good. Hast thou talents? They were given thee by the God of talents. Hast thou time? hast thou wealth, influence, power? Hast thou powers of tongue? Hast thou powers of thought? Art thou poet, statesman, or philosopher? Whatever be thy position, and whatever be thy gifts, remember that they are not thine, but they are lent thee from on high. No man hath anything of his own, except his sins. We are but tenants at will. God hath put us into His estates, and He hath said, “Occupy till I come.” Though our vineyards bear never so much fruit, yet the vineyard belongs to the King, and though we are to take the hundred for our hire, yet King Solomon must have his thousand. All the honor of our ability and the use of it must be unto God, because He is the Giver. The parable tells us this very pointedly; for it makes every person acknowledge that his talents come from the Lord. Even the man who digged in the earth and hid his Lords money, did not deny that his talent belonged to his Master; for though his reply, “Lo, there thou hast that is thine,” was exceedingly impertinent, yet it was not a denial of this fact. So that even this man was ahead of those who deny their obligations to God, who superciliously toss their heads at the very mention of obedience to their Creator and spend their time and their powers rather in rebellion against Him than in His service. Oh, that we were all wise to believe and to act upon this most evident of all truths, that everything we have, we have received from the Most High. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0175.cfm

Victory in the Sinner’s Battle

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions…Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. – Psalm 51:1,7

Do not appeal to justice, sinner. That is against you; appeal to mercy. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness!” This prayer he brings before God is prayer tipped with a hope in the mercy of God. Go, sinner, and plead with God and fight your sins with hope in His mercy. When he had done that, he then turns to confession: “I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me.” There is no weapon to drive away guilty fears like making a clean breast of your sins. Tell your Father whom you have offended; do not plead any extenuations or mitigations. Confess that you deserve His wrath. Put yourself before the throne of God’s clemency. Confess that if it were turned to a throne of vengeance, you deserve it well. Prayers, tears, pleas for mercy, and full confession-these are weapons to conquer with.

“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Hyssop was a little bunch, a brush, used to dip into the blood-a basin full of blood, and then with this brush of hyssop the priest sprinkled the guilty man, the unclean man, and he was counted clean. The master argument in this verse is blood. Oh! how this destroys our sins, how this scatters all our doubts and fears-the almighty weapon of the cross, the divine weapon of the atonement. Let sins come on, and let them be more than the hairs of my head, loftier than mountains and deeper than the unfathomed ocean, let them come on-God’s flaming wrath behind them, hell itself coming to devour me; yet if I can but take the cross and hold it up before me, if I can plead the precious blood I shall be safe, for I shall be saved and proved a conqueror, notwithstanding all. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0972.cfm