“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpeh and Shen and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”.
I Samuel 7:13
by The Rev. Wm MacLean M.A.
(Preached in St Jude’s Glasgow at the Harvest Thanksgiving service on Wednesday evening 21 November 1962. The sermon, which was taken down by a hearer, was revised by Mr MacLean).
The people of Israel at this time had to an alarming extent forsaken the Lord. Their priests Hophni and Phinehas were ungodly and immoral. The Word of God declares that they were the sons of Belial, and that they knew not the Lord. When the Philistines made war on Israel, it was Hophni and Phinehas who brought the ark of the Lord to the battlefield, expecting thereby to get the victory over the Philistines. In doing so they were but provoking the Lord. Instead of victory the children of Israel were smitten before the Philistines with a very great slaughter, both Hophni and Phinehas were killed and the ark of God was taken. When Phinehas’ wife heard that the ark of God was taken she travailed and gave birth to a son whom she called Ichabod, saying, “The glory is departed from Israel; because the ark of God is taken”. Then we have an account of the hand of the Lord being heavy upon the Philistines. They came to realise that the hand of the Lord was upon them because of the ark. They therefore, took two milch kine, tied them to a cart, shut up their calves at home, and laid the ark of the Lord upon the cart. The milch kine wended their way to Bethshemesh. We are told how irreverently the men of Bethshemesh dealt with the ark of the Lord. They looked into the ark, and because of this the Lord smote them with a great slaughter. Before they could look into the ark they had to remove the lid of the ark — the mercy seat, upon which the blood of the sacrifices offered as an atonement to the Lord for the sins of the people was sprinkled. The ark of the covenant was a type of Christ in His two natures, and the blood-sprinkled mercy seat, the atonement which he was to make. In removing the mercy seat they were setting aside the atonement and exposing themselves to the curse of the law. And in how awful a manner the wrath of God came upon them. From Bethshemesh the ark of the covenant was brought to Kirjath-jearim. “And it came to pass while the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim that the time was long; for it was twenty years; and the house of Israel lamented after the Lord”. We find Samuel saying to the house of Israel “If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines”. They assembled and fasted before the Lord and confessed that they had sinned against Him. While they were thus engaged the Philistines came up against them to Mizpeh. When the children of Israel heard it they were afraid and said to Samuel “Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines. And Samuel took a sucking lamb and offered it for a burnt offering, wholly into the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him”. As proof that his sacrifice and intercession for Israel was acceptable to the Lord, “The Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines and discomfited them and they were smitten before Israel”. Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpeh and Shen. and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”. Samuel’s burnt sacrifice and his intercession on behalf of Israel typified and pointed to Christ’s sacrifice as the Lamb of God and his all prevailing intercession.
We have reason this evening to set up our Ebenezer anew to the goodness of the Lord to us in His providence and to confess, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”.
In seeking to make a spiritual use of these words, we may notice in the first place that there is help in the Lord, salvation in the Lord for helpless sinners as He Himself declares: “O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thine help”.
In the second place we will make a few remarks about those who have this confession “Hitherto, etc.” The people of Israel had experience of the deliverance of the Lord from the hands of their foes on the ground of the sacrifice and intercession, and the Israel of God in every age and generation entertain the hope that in their own souls’ experience they know something about this deliverance.
In the third place there is encouragement for the future implied in the words “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”. “The Lord of us hath mindful been and He will bless us still”.
Under the first head we may notice, as it is written, “O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help”. We destroyed ourselves in Adam our first covenant head and we have been destroying ourselves by sinning against God. This is the indictment the Lord brings against every individual of our fallen race. The blame and the guilt of our destruction, ruin and hell-deservedness lies at our own door. We are not only self-destroyed, but helpless to deliver ourselves from the ruin and misery of the Fall. Our case is hopeless as far as the help of man is concerned. “None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him”. The glory of saving sinners from their lost and ruined condition belongs to the Lord alone. “Salvation is of the Lord”. “For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of god”. We may notice Ebenezers in the truth which opens up to us what the Lord declares. “O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help”,
The memorial which Christ set up in the night in which he was betrayed, when He instituted the sacrament of the supper is an Ebenezer. It is a memorial of His atoning death apart from which there would be no hope for any sinner, for “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin”. The Lord’s people in publicly giving obedience to the Lord’s command, “This do in remembrance of me, for as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come”, are also setting up their Ebenezer to the goodness of the Lord that He has hitherto helped them. There is in this solemn ordinance a voice to Christless sinners, “O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself but in me is thine help”.
The divine memorial of Christ’s resurrection from the dead is an Ebenezer. His resurrection is proof that he finished the work given Him to do, that He paid to the uttermost farthing the debts of His people. He rose triumphantly over death and the grave and the Sabbath is now an Ebenezer, a memorial stone of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. It is a type and an assurance to the Lord’s people of the eternal rest which awaits them in heaven. As a memorial it has a voice, every Sabbath day proclaiming to sinners out of hell, “O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help”.
The sacrament of Baptism is an Ebenezer. We are baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. This holy ordinance brings before us on the one hand that we have a nature which is depraved, deceitful and desperately wicked out of which nothing clean in God’s sight can come, and on the other hand that, however vile and unclean we may be there is infinite merit and efficacy in Christ’s precious blood to wash the foulest sinner clean.
The long suffering of God in that He has spared us in the room of mercy is an Ebenezer. We are by nature and practice barren fig trees in the vineyard of the visible church. He has not cut us down as our sins deserved and cast us into a lost eternity. He is digging and dunging around us in diverse ways that we might bring forth the fruit of repentance. How we should give an ear to the gracious question He is putting to us: “Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
The free offer of Christ to sinners in the everlasting gospel is an Ebenezer. Christ is offered freely to sinners. The offer is based not on any merit or qualification in them, for they have none and cannot attain to any. The offer is based on what the Lord says, “Look unto me and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth; for I am God and there is none else.” “Unto you O men I call, and my voice is to the sons of men.” How awful shall the eternity be of those who neglect the great salvation which is in their offer! And how solemn the words, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”! Thomas Brooks the Puritan divine says, “It is the duty of all the sons of Adam who hear the gospel preached and Christ offered to them to believe or receive Christ whether they be prepared or not prepared”.
In the second place we may notice a few things about those, the spiritual Israel of God, who have this confession from personal experience. They are sinners saved by grace. It was the Lord who gave them deliverance. In setting up their Ebenezer to the Lord’s goodness to them, their confession is: “Our sure and all sufficient help is in Jehovah’s name”. Their hope and confidence is placed in Him alone. They were brought, through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to believe what the Lord declares in his word, that they had destroyed themselves, that they were in a helpless and hopeless condition. They were brought in their own souls’ experience to the end of their own resources, to acquiesce that God in His justice could cut them off, and in His sovereignty pass them by. It is when they died they lived, and lived through Christ being revealed in them, and their souls finding rest and peace and communion in Him. The glory of His person as the Father’s eternally begotten Son, the One who is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person is precious to them. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”. All who have died to the law as a ground of hope — for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified in God’s sight — are married, as the Truth declares, to Christ in a covenant that shall never be broken. They are justified in Christ and shall be glorified in Christ. In the covenant Christ is made unto them of God, their wisdom, their righteousness, their sanctification and their redemption. Their own confession is, “Surely in the Lord have I righteousness and strength”. But although dead to the law as a ground of hope they live to the law as a rule of life. Their having a love after the inner man to the law and to the whole of His revealed will, as set forth in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is proof that the Lord is in covenant with them, and that therefore the forgiveness of sins is theirs. Hebrews 10:16-17, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after these days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more’, confirms this.
It is because they have a love to the law after the inner man that they have a consciousness of the awful sinfulness of their nature which causes them to mourn and to cry “O cleanse thou me within from secret faults, thy servant keep from all presumptuous sin”. Christ their covenant head is precious to them in His offices as their prophet, priest and king and so these profound and precious blessings are theirs by covenant right — “Whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom he called, them He also justified and whom He justified, them He also glorified”. They are a people who seek to make their calling and election sure. “It is one thing”, as Dr Owen says, “to be in a state of grace, it is another to know that this is the case.” All believers are in a state of grace. They have peace with God, being reconciled to Him by the blood of His cross, but as to what shall be the measure of their understanding of their interest in it, this is left to the sovereign grace and good pleasure of God. There are many believers who all their days never come to an abiding sense of peace with God, but are filled with troubles and exercised with fears and perplexities, so that they go sorrowing and heavy all their days. But however tried they may be by doubts and fears and unbelief, they cannot but be looking to the Lord and waiting upon Him in their poverty and need, and in doing so they have from Christ Himself, the One who has the tongue of the learned, and who is able to speak a word in season to him that is weary, that they are in His intercession. “Let not them,” He says, “that wait on Thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake; let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake; O God of Israel.” (Ps. 69:6) They are at times tempted that they shall be put to shame and confusion of face, but His promise stands sure, “But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation; ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end”. (Isa. 45:7)
“Poor creature” said the late Dr Kennedy of Dingwall in the course of a sermon, “if you are believing yourself to be so utterly worthless that you think your prayer is not worth hearing, your reading, your singing, your meditation worthless, your attendance at the means of grace worthless, my dear friend let me assure you that the day will never dawn when Christ will despise you”.
The cause of Christ in this world which is the cause of His glory is precious to them. It is therefore a cause of sorrow and mourning to them how the glory has departed to an alarming extent from our once highly favoured land, and they would desire to have in truth the prayer of the Church of old:
“To these long desolations
Thy feet lift do not tarry:
For all the ills thy foes have done
Within thy sanctuary”.
Their prayer and desire too is for the ingathering of God’s ancient people the Jews, through the promised outpouring of the Spirit of grace and of supplications. What a day of blessing unparalleled that shall be to the whole Gentile world! “The Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising”. (Isa 60:3) To the prayer of the sweet psalmist of Israel inspired by the Holy Spirit, “The whole earth let His glory fill”, the whole-hearted response of their hearts is, “Amen so let it be.”
In the third place there is encouragement for the future in the words, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”. “The Lord of us hath mindful been and He will bless us still”. Whatever troubles and trials His own have to pass through in their wilderness journey, they are assured that “all things shall work together for good, to them who love God, who are the called according to His purpose”. “The Lord is good a stronghold in the day of trouble and He knoweth them who put their trust in Him”. His own promise confirms this, “Fear not thou; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness”. They are warranted therefore to say “For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death”.
The one thing needful for us in view of death and of eternity is to be found of this people, for “they are a blessed people whose God is the Lord”.