d the seal was added when
Jesus Christ died. 'Blessed be God who _hath_ given.'

So, then, we may not only draw the conclusion which the Apostle drew,
'how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' but we can
draw an even grander one, 'Has He not with Him also freely given us all
things?' And we possess them all to-day if our hearts are resting on
Jesus Christ. The limit of the gift is only in ourselves. All has been
given, but the question remains how much has been taken.

Oh, Christian men and women, there is nothing that we require more than
to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has
been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or
farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his,
years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth
belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul;
and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn up
in workhouses, all in rags, and with deposit-receipts for L200 or L300
stitched into the rags, that they get no good out of. Here are we, with
all that wealth, paupers still. Be sure that you have what you have. Do
you remember the exhortation to a valiant effort in one of the stories
in the Old Testament--'Know ye that Ramoth-gilead is _ours_, and we take
it not?' And that is exactly what is true about hosts of professing
Christians who have not, in any real sense, the possession of what God
has given them. It is well to ask, for our desires are the measures of
our capacities. It is well to ask, but we very often ask when what is
wanted is not that we should get more, but that we should utilise what
we have. And we make mistakes therein, as if God needed to be besought
to give, when all the while it is we who need to be stirred up to grasp
and keep the things that are freely given to us of God.

III. In the next place, notice the one place where all these blessings
are kept.

'Blessed be God who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
heavenly places.' 'In heavenly places.' Now that does not merely define
the region of origin, the locality where they originated or whence they
come. It does do that, but it does a great deal more. It does not
merely tell us, as we often are disposed to think that it does, that
'every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down'--though that is perfectly true, but it means much rather that