Monday 20 July 2015

Bless the Lord every day



My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.

I will bless Your name forever and ever | Touching the King!

This is not at all a strange semantic phenomenon. 47The flames rose forty-nine cubits above the furnace, 48and spread out, burning the Chaldeans that it caught around the furnace. It is an "exclamation of gratitude and admiration" (THAT, I, 357).

Bless the Lord, O My Soul | Sislyn Stewart's From the Church House

As the Lord Jesus said, our heavenly Father knows the very number of the hairs on our head (Matt 10:30), and -- if our eyes are open to His grace -- we too will notice His provision even in the smallest details of our lives. Rather (with C. 51Then these three in the furnace with one voice sang, glorifying and blessing God:. So they sang praises with joy, and bowed down and worshiped.

It is interesting to note that the word translated "blessed" (barukh) is related to the Hebrew word for "knee" (berekh), as is the word for "blessing" (b'rakha), thus implying an association between humbling ourselves (i.e., kneeling before Him in recognition of His blessedness) and receiving personal blessing from Him. And we will thank Him for His care.

Moreover, King Hezekiah and the officials ordered the Levites to sing praises to the LORD with the words of David and Asaph the seer. Other analogies, though not exact, would be our expressions like: "I mag­nify the Lord" or "Let us exalt his name." Both of these expressions properly recognize and give joyful expression to God's magnificence and his exalted status. Indeed, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Messiah Jesus" (Eph.1:3).

Now the king’s servants who had thrown them in continued to stoke the furnace with naptha, pitch, tow, and brush. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Psalm 145:1-2,21 I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. So to bless God means to recognize his great richness, strength, and gracious bounty and to express our gratitude and delight in seeing and experiencing it.

My thesis is that in the Scripture when God "blesses" men they are thereby helped and strengthened and made better off than they were before, but when men "bless" God he is not helped or strengthened or made better off. Keller in THAT, I, 361) man's blessing God is an "expression of praising Thankfulness" (ein lobendes Danksagen), when the OT speaks of blessing God it does not "designate a pro­cess that aims at the increase of God's strength" (THAT, I, 361). A. 49But the angel of the Lord went down into the furnace with Azariah and his companions, drove the fiery flames out of the furnace, 50and made the inside of the furnace as though a dew-laden breeze were blowing through it. The fire in no way touched them or caused them pain or harm. They do not mean that we make God larger or higher. If God is the primal and inexhaustible "blesser," then he must be above all others in a "blessed" state—the fullness and source of all "blessing." If this is so, then a most nat­ural burst of praise would be "You are blessed!" That this recognition and joyful exclamation of God's blessedness should then be described as "blessing God" is not unusual.

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