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3. God's Blessings vs. Imaginary Blessings
Let us proceed, thirdly, to speak of imaginary blessings. There are such in the world. From them may God deliver us. “Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed!”
Imaginary blessings to the unsaved
Self-righteousness
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 unctuous self-complacency, “God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are” (Luke 18:11), 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 cumin he had used. He felt he had done everything. His was the blessing of a quiet or a quiescent conscience; good, easy man. He was a pattern to the parish. It was a pity everybody did not live as he did; if they had, they would not have needed any police. Pilate might have dismissed his guards, and Herod his soldiers. He was just one of the most excellent persons that ever breathed. He adored the city of which he was a burgess! Ay; but he was not blessed indeed. This was all his own overweening conceit. He was a mere wind-bag, nothing more. And the blessing which he fancied had fallen upon him, had in fact 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 every one 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 the wedding garments. Bless me indeed. Let me have the true righteousness. Let me have the true worthiness which Thou canst accept, even that which is of faith in Jesus Christ.”
False assurance
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 do you make 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 fluke—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 prepared the ark, and touched it with their hands, they did rightly (Num. 4:4-6,15); but when Uzzah touched it he died (2 Sam. 6:6-7). 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 thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If with thy heart thou dost trust in Jesus, then art thou saved; but if thou merely sayest, “I trust in Jesus,” it doth not save thee. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice. But, if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying, “I am saved,” is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee. Our prayer ought to be… “Oh that Thou wouldest 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 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, “Dost thou abjure all confidence in everything but the finished work of Jesus, and dost thou come to Christ to be reconciled in Him to God?” If thou dost not, thy dreams, and visions, and fancies, are but dreams, and visions, and fancies, and will not serve thy turn when most thou needest them. Pray the Lord to bless thee indeed, for of that sterling verity in all thy walk and talk there is a great scarcity.
Imaginary blessings to the saved
Too much I am afraid, even those who are saved—saved for time and eternity—need this caution, and 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 true blessings indeed. Let me show you what I mean.
Answered Prayer
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 Thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). Not only ought I to do it, but I would like to do it, because 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 hardly like to repeat the old story of the good woman whose son was ill—a little child near death’s door—and she begged the minister, a Puritan, to pray for its life. He did pray very earnestly, but he put in, “If it be thy 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 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 any proof of divine love. It may leave much room for thee to seek unto the Lord, saying, “Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed!”
Exhilaration of spirit
So sometimes great exhilaration of spirit, liveliness of heart, even though it be 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; yea, 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!2” “If today He deigns to bless us With a sense of pardon’d 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.
Calmness
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 tranquil or less exposed to storm and tempest than our own. There is a danger of saying, “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace (Jer. 6:14), 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, halt and maimed, than go marching on in confidence down to hell. “Oh that Thou wouldest 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 Thou wilt “bless me indeed.” I would not be comforted unless Thou comfortest me, nor have any peace but Christ my Peace, nor any rest but the rest which cometh 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!
Our work and service
Equally too with regard to our work and service, I think our prayer should always be, “Oh that Thou wouldest 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 and 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 convinced of sin, and forty-six justified, and sometimes thirty-eight sanctified; I do not know what besides of 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 effort after something, 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 every one that serves God should be, “Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed.” Plod on, plod on. If I only build one piece of masonry in my life, and nothing more, if it be 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 thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Psalm 90:17). 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 nought. “Oh that Thou wouldest 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, do ask the Lord that you may not be one of those plaster builders using sham materials that only require 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.
2 Chapel Library note: “Lord, save, or I perish!” is quoted from The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, when Christian descended into the valley to face Apollyon.