Steve,
Below is the text of an excerpt from a sermon by C.H.Spurgeon.
Please print and read it sometime. I would like to discuss it with you.
Danny
Let us proceed, thirdly, to speak of imaginary blessings. There are such in the world. From them may God deliver us!
"Oh that You would bless me, indeed." Take the Pharisee. He stood in the Lord's House, and he thought he had the
Lord's blessing, and it made him very bold, and he spoke with insincere self-complacency, "God, I thank You that I am
not as other men are," and so on. He had the blessing, and well, indeed, he supposed himself to have merited it. He had
fasted twice in the week, paid tithes of all that he possessed, even to the odd farthing on the mint, and the extra halfpenny
on the cummin he had used. He felt he had done everything.
His the blessing of a quiet or a quiescent conscience. He was a good, easy man—a pattern to the parish. It was a pity
everybody did not live as he did. If they had, they would not have wanted any police. Pilate might have dismissed his
guards and Herod his soldiers. He was one of the most excellent persons that ever breathed. He adored the city of which
he was a citizen! Yes. But he was not blessed, indeed. This was all his own arrogant conceit. He was a mere windbag—
nothing more—and the blessing which he fancied he had, had never come.
The poor publican whom he thought accursed, went to his home justified rather than he. The blessing had not fallen
on the man who thought he had it. Oh, let everyone of us here feel the sting of this rebuke, and pray—"Great God, save
us from imputing to ourselves a righteousness which we do not possess. Save us from wrapping ourselves up in our own
rags and fancying we have put on wedding garments. Bless us, indeed. Let us have the true righteousness. Let us have the
true worthiness which You can accept, even that which is of faith in Jesus Christ."
Another form of this imaginary blessing is found in persons who would scorn to be thought self-righteous. Their delusion,
however, is near akin. I hear them singing—
"I do believe, I will believe
That Jesus died for me,
And on His Cross He shed His blood,
From sin to set me free."
You believe it, you say. Well, but how do you know? Upon what authority are you so sure? Who told you? "Oh, I believe
it." Yes, but we must mind what we believe. Have you any clear evidence of a special interest in the blood of Jesus? Can
you give any spiritual reasons for believing that Christ has set you free from sin?
I am afraid that some have got a hope that has not got any ground, like an anchor without any barbs—nothing to
grasp, nothing to lay hold upon. They say they are saved—and they stick to it that they are—and think it wicked to
doubt it. But yet they have no reason to warrant their confidence. When the sons of Kohath carried the ark and touched
it with their hands, they did rightly. But when Uzzah touched it he died. There are those who are ready to be fully assured.
There are others to whom it will be death to talk of it.
There is a great difference between presumption and full assurance. Full assurance is reasonable—it is based on solid
ground. Presumption takes for granted and with brazen face pronounces that to be its own to which it has no right
whatever. Beware, I pray you, of presuming that you are saved. If with your heart you trust in Jesus, then are you saved.
But if you merely say, "I trust in Jesus," it does not save you. If your heart is renewed, if you shall hate the things that
you did once love, and love the things that you did once hate. If you have really repented. If there is a thorough change of
mind in you. If you are born again—then have you reason to rejoice—but if there is no vital change, no inward godliness—
if there is no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then your saying, "I am saved," is but your own
assertion. It may delude, but it will not deliver you.
Our prayer ought to be, "Oh that You would bless me, indeed, with real faith, with real salvation, with the trust in
Jesus that is the essential of faith. Not with the conceit that begets credulity. God preserve us from imaginary blessings!"
I have met with persons who said, "I believe I am saved because I dreamt it." Or, "Because I had a text of Scripture that
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applied to my own case. Such-and-Such, a good man, said so-and-so in his sermon." Or, "Because I took to weeping and
was excited, and felt as I never felt before." Ah, but nothing will stand the trial but this, "Do you abjure all confidence in
everything but the finished work of Jesus, and do you come to Christ to be reconciled in Him to God?"
If you do not, your dreams, visions and fancies are but dreams, visions and fancies—and will not serve your turn
when most you need them. Pray the Lord to bless you, indeed, for of that sterling verity in all your walk and talk there is
a great scarcity. Too much, I am afraid, that even those who are saved—saved for time and eternity—need this caution!
They have good cause to pray this prayer that they may learn to make a distinction between some things which they think
to be spiritual blessings, and others which are blessings, indeed. Let me show you what I mean.
Is it certainly a blessing to get an answer to your prayer after your own mind? I always like to qualify my most earnest
prayer with, "Not as I will, but as You will." Not only ought I to do it, but I would like to do it, otherwise I might
ask for something which it would be dangerous for me to receive. God might give it me in anger and I might find little
sweetness in the grant, but much soreness in the grief it caused me. You remember how Israel of old asked for flesh, and
God gave them quails. But while the meat was yet in their mouths the wrath of God came upon them.
Ask for the meat, if you like, but always put in this—"Lord, if this is not a real blessing, do not give it me." "Bless
me, indeed." I seldom like to repeat the old story of the good woman whose son was ill—a little child near death's door.
She begged the minister, a Puritan, to pray for its life. He did pray very earnestly, but he put in, "If it be Your will, save
this child." The woman said, "I cannot bear that—I must have you pray that the child shall live. Do not put in any ifs or
buts." "Woman," said the minister, "it may be you will live to rue the day that ever you wished to set your will up
against God's will."
Twenty years afterwards, she was carried away in a fainting fit from under the Tyburn Gallows tree, where that son
was put to death as a felon. Although she had lived to see her child grow up to be a man, it would have been infinitely
better for her had the child died, and infinitely wiser had she left it to God's will. Do not be quite so sure that what you
think an answer to prayer is proof of Divine love. It may leave much room for you to seek unto the Lord, saying, "Oh
that You would bless me, indeed."
Sometimes great exhilaration of spirit, liveliness of heart— even though it is religious joy—may not always be a
blessing. We delight in it, and oh, sometimes, when we have had gatherings for prayer here, the fire has burned, and our
souls have glowed! We felt at the time how we could sing—
"My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this,
And sit and sing herself away
To everlasting bliss."
So far as that was a blessing we are thankful for it. But I should not like to set such seasons up as if my enjoyments were
the main token of God's favor. Or as if they were the chief signs of His blessing.
Perhaps it would be a greater blessing to me to be broken in spirit and laid low before the Lord at the present time.
When you ask for the highest joy, and pray to be on the mountain with Christ, remember it may be as much a blessing—
yes, a blessing, indeed—to be brought into the Valley of Humiliation, to be laid very low and constrained to cry out in
anguish, "Lord, save, or I perish!"—
"If today He deigns to bless us
With a sense of pardoned sin,
He tomorrow may distress us,
Make us feel the plague within—
All to make us
Sick of self, and fond of Him."
These variable experiences of ours may be blessings, indeed, to us, when, had we been always rejoicing, we might have
been like Moab, settled on our lees, and not emptied from vessel to vessel.
It fares ill with those who have no changes. They fear not God. Have we not, dear Friends, sometimes envied those
persons that are always calm and unruffled, and are never perturbed in mind? Well, there are Christians whose evenness
of temper deserves to be emulated. And as for that calm repose, that unwavering assurance which comes from the Spirit
of God, it is a very delightful attainment. But I am not sure that we ought to envy anybody's lot because it is more tranSermon
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quil or less exposed to storm and tempest than our own. There is a danger of saying, "Peace, peace," where there is no
peace—and there is a calmness which arises from callousness.
Dupes there are who deceive their own souls. "They have no doubts," they say, but it is because they have little heart
searching. They have no anxieties, because they have not much enterprise or many pursuits to stir them up. Or it may be
they have no pains because they have no life. Better go to Heaven lame and maimed, than go marching on in confidence
down to Hell. "Oh that You would bless me, indeed." My God, I will envy no one of his gifts or his Graces, much less of
his inward mood or his outward circumstances, if only You will "bless me, indeed."
I would not be comforted unless You comfort me, nor have any peace but Christ, my Peace, nor any rest but the rest
which comes from the sweet savor of the sacrifice of Christ. Christ shall be All in All, and none shall be anything to me
save Himself. O that we might always feel that we are not to judge as to the manner of the blessing—but must leave it
with God to give us what we would have! Not the imaginary blessing—the superficial and apparent blessing—but the
blessing, indeed!
Equally, too, with regard to our work and service, I think our prayer should always be, "Oh that You would bless
me, indeed." It is lamentable to see the work of some good men, though it is not ours to judge them, how very pretentious,
but how very unreal it is. It is really shocking to think how some men pretend to build up a Church in the course of
two or three evenings. They will report in the corner of the newspapers that there were forty-three persons convicted of
sin, and forty-six justified, and sometimes thirty-eight sanctified. I do not know what besides wonderful statistics they
give as to all that is accomplished. I have observed congregations that have been speedily gathered together and great
additions have been made to the Church all of a sudden.
And what has become of them? Where are those churches at the present moment? The dreariest deserts in Christendom
are those places that were fertilized by the patent manures of certain Revivalists. The whole Church seemed to have
spent its strength in one rush and it ended in nothing at all. They built their wooden house and piled up the hay, and
made a stubble spire that seemed to reach the heavens—and there fell one spark, and all went away in smoke. And he that
came to labor next time—the successor of the great builder—had to get the ashes swept away before he could do any
good. The prayer of everyone that serves God should be, "Oh that You would bless me, indeed."
Plod on, plod on! If I only build one piece of masonry in my life, and nothing more, if it is gold, silver, or precious
stones, it is a good deal for a man to do. Of such precious stuff as that, to build even one little corner which will not
show, is a worthy service. It will not be much talked of, but it will last. There is the point—it will last. "Establish You
the work of our hands upon us. Yes, the work of our hands establish You it." If we are not builders in an established
Church, it is of little use to try at all. What God establishes will stand—but what men build without His establishment
will certainly come to nothing. "Oh that you would bless me, indeed."
Sunday school teacher, be this your prayer. Tract distributor, local preacher, whatever you may be, dear Brother or
Sister—whatever your form of service—ask the Lord that you may not be one of those plaster builders using sham composition
that only requires a certain amount of frost and weather to make it crumble to pieces. Be it yours, if you cannot
build a cathedral, to build at least one part of the marvelous temple that God is piling for eternity, which will outlast the
stars.
I have one thing more to mention before I bring this sermon to a close. The blessings of God's Grace are blessings,
indeed, which in right earnest we ought to seek after. By these marks shall you know them. Blessings, indeed, are such
blessings as come from the pierced hand—blessings that come from Calvary's bloody tree, streaming from the Savior's
wounded side—your pardon, your acceptance, your spiritual life—the bread that is meat, indeed, the blood that is
drink, indeed—your oneness to Christ, and all that comes of it—these are blessings, indeed.
Any blessing that comes as the result of the Spirit's work in your soul is a blessing, indeed. Though it humbles you,
though it strips you, though it kills you—it is a blessing, indeed. Though the harrow go over and over your soul and the
deep plow cut into your very heart—though you are maimed and wounded, and left for dead—yet if the Spirit of God
does it, it is a blessing, indeed. If He convicts you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment—even though you have not
up to now been brought to Christ—it is a blessing, indeed. Anything that He does, accept it. Do not be dubious of it.
But pray that He may continue His blessed operations in your soul.
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Whatever leads you to God is, in like manner, a blessing, indeed. Riches may not do it. There may be a golden wall
between you and God. Health will not do it—even the strength and marrow of your bones may keep you at a distance
from your God. But anything that draws you nearer to Him is a blessing, indeed. What if it is a cross that raises you? If it
raises you to God, it shall be a blessing, indeed. Anything that reaches into eternity, with a preparation for the world to
come. Anything that we can carry across the river—the holy joy that is to blossom in those fields beyond the swelling
flood—the pure cloudless love of the brotherhood which is to be the atmosphere of the Truth of God forever—anything
of this kind that has the eternal broad arrow on it—the immutable mark—is a blessing, indeed.
And anything which helps me to glorify God is a blessing, indeed. If I am sick and that helps me to praise Him, it is a
blessing, indeed. If I am poor, and I can serve Him better in poverty than in wealth, it is a blessing, indeed. If I am in contempt
I will rejoice in that day and leap for joy, if it is for Christ's sake—for then, it is a blessing, indeed. Yes, my faith
shakes off the disguise, snatches the visor from the fair forehead of the blessing, and counts it all joy to come into various
trials for the sake of Jesus and the recompense of the reward that He has promised. "Oh that we may be blessed, indeed."
I send you away with these three words—"Search." See whether the blessings are blessings, indeed, and be not satisfied
unless you know that they are of God, tokens of His Grace and earnests of His saving purpose. "Weigh"—that shall
be the next word. Whatever you have, weigh it in the scale, and ascertain if it is a blessing, indeed, conferring such Grace
upon you as causes you to abound in love, and to abound in every good word and work. And lastly, "Pray." So pray that
this prayer may mingle with all your prayers, that whatever God grants or whatever He withholds you may be blessed,
indeed.
Is it a time of joy with you? O that Christ may mellow your joy and prevent the intoxication of earthly blessedness
from leading you aside from close walking with Him! In the night of sorrow pray that He will bless you, indeed, lest the
wormwood also intoxicates you and makes you drunk. Lest your afflictions should make you think harshly of Him. Pray
for the blessing, which having, you are rich to all the intents of bliss—or which lacking, you are poor and destitute,
though plenty fill your store. "If Your Presence go not with me, carry us not up hence." But, "Oh that You would bless
me, indeed." Amen.
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Glorify your Father Who is in Heaven (Matthew 5:16)
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