What Does It Mean to "Bless God"?

A SONG OF ASCENTS.
Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD,
   who stand by night in the house of the LORD!
Lift up your hands to the holy place
   and bless the LORD!
May the LORD bless you from Zion,
   he who made heaven and earth!
— Psalm 134

Commenting on Psalm 134 in his book, Journey to Joy: The Psalms of Ascent (published by Crossway Books), Josh Moody writes about what it means for a human being to bless God:

How can an inferior person, a subject, bless a superior person, a king? How can a created person, a human, bless his or her creator, the God of heaven and earth? Scholars have attempted various solutions to this conundrum, because the idea of our being able to bless God does not merely occur in this psalm but is fairly frequent throughout the Old Testament. Psalm 72: 18 says, 'Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel'; and Genesis 24: 27 says, 'Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.' How can this be? How can it be true not only that 'blessed be Abram by God Most High' (Gen. 14: 19), but also 'blessed be God Most High' (Gen. 14: 20)? Or how can we not only receive blessing from God but actually give blessing to God?

Perhaps we need to ask another question: what does it actually mean to be blessed? In English the word bless means to pronounce that something is good or to confer goodness upon something in a religious sense, and the word may have its origins in the Old English word blood. A benediction, frequently used as a synonym, means 'a good saying,' coming from the Latin root meaning to say that something is good or well. The Hebrew word used here for 'blessed' may have the root of meaning to kneel before something or someone, though not all agree with that derivation.

Perhaps it is simplest to say, by analogy, that this word blessed, often used of us blessing God and of God blessing us, functions similarly to when we say that we speak to God and that God speaks to us. When we speak to God , we are speaking, and we speak human words necessarily. When we bless God, we are blessing and give human blessing necessarily. When God speaks, he speaks God's words, and when he blesses, he gives God's blessings. So the blessing of God by humans is a human declaration that God is good. What the pilgrims here are urging the priests to do ('Come, bless the LORD') and what they themselves will do ('lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!') is to live a life, to utter words and do deeds, in such a way that makes clear that God is good. They are being urged to live a life that honors God, to live a life that focuses upon God, to live for God. They are being urged to say that God is good, that he is blessed. They are not adding to the divine, eternal, complete, sufficient blessedness of God in his own person; they are witnessing to it. They are declaring, in their own experience, through their journey, that they have witnessed that a life lived for God is the happiest kind of life. They are blessing God that he is blessed and worth living for. It is their witness, their declaration.

Personal Tragedy to Apostasy

I write this post from a position of not having experienced a personal tragedy of the magnitude that would rock the foundations of my faith to the core. In a way, I speak from ignorance, and yet the lives of some of those who have gone before me seem to speak ministration on this issue.

John Calvin lost his wife and son.

John Owen had eleven children. All died in early youth, except one daughter.

Francis Turretin had four children. Only one survived.

More recently, Michael Horton discloses in "A Place for Weakness" how one of his prematurely-born triplets, when older, experienced an accident wherein this elongated toy got jammed down the child's throat. The doctor gave a grim prognosis, but thankfully, the child survived.

As a father, I have often ruminated on the idea of the Lord taking back one of my kids. The same with Him taking back my wife. I have often wondered what my reaction would be. I do not know my heart well enough.

In a way, such thoughts are unwise, for it smacks of the attempt to peer into God's decretive will, and yet it is also wise in that reflection on one's faith, on one's devotion to the Lord, on the depth of one's love for Him, at the time when all is calm, may just be one of the ways in which stability may be had when the storms do come.

There's no minimizing the devastation of losing a family member. Imagining the possibility has often brought me to tears. But should it lead to apostasy? Should it drive one to the despair that leads to destruction? If the Lord Jesus Christ is our treasure, then we should mourn for the loss of a loved one with the passion that is due that love, but then that excruciating pain must be turned sacramental. It should lead us to Christ, whose life and death have redefined "death" for the Christian, with the promise of life forever restored in the future age of glory. Even if we think that the departed is lost by virtue of not being a Christian, our affinity with Christ and His promise of embodied eternal life should prove the stronger tug to renewed rejoicing.

May I love my Lord Jesus Christ more than my wife and children, that I may love them truly while they are here with me in this present age.

What is the Nature of Your Treasure?

Living in a world besmirched by the aftermath of sin, it must then be that pain, suffering, and disappointment are inevitable. To be human is to have trouble as a constant companion (Job 5:7). However, one's soul is adversely intruded upon by trouble only when the object of one's affection, or one's treasure, is assailed or threatened. Therefore, the key to soul stability in times of suffering rests solely not on desiring that which is affected by the fallenness of the current order of creation, thus changeable, but on desiring that which transcends the world, thus unchangeable. To be at peace in whatever circumstance is to have the Unchanging One as one's Chief Desire and Only Treasure.

The nature of what one pursues as the "apple of one's eye" determines the state of one's joy. Anxiety, fear and worry must necessarily rest upon those who have purposed to find joy in the volatile; but these soul torments have no intelligent and logical basis for those whose soul-satisfaction owes itself to the One who does not change (Malachi 3:6).

John 16:33
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

The Humility of True Treasure

"Suppose He put ten million dollars into your bank account every morning for the rest of your life, but He didn't save you? Suppose He gave you the most beautiful body and face of anyone who ever lived, a body that never aged for a thousand years, but then at death He shut you out of Heaven and into hell for eternity? What has God ever given anyone that could compare with the salvation He has given to you as a believer? Do you see that there is nothing God could ever do for you or give to you greater than the gift of Himself?" - Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, ch.7, pg.119

The funny thing is that the heretical and diabolical "prosperity gospel" promises the same "millions", the same "beauty", and the same DECEPTION, but with an added bonus: A FREE TICKET TO HEAVEN!