Ebenezer
When someone asks you how you are, how do you respond: “Great” “Fine” or “So, so”? I have a friend who answers, “Ebenezer.” This word literally means: “The stone of help” or as the prophet Samuel says: “till now the Lord has helped us.” (I Samuel 7:12) Samuel gave this name to the place where the Lord delivered Israel from the Philistine armies. He placed a large stone there to commemorate this victory.
Twenty years earlier, Israel had been defeated two times in this very location. Thousands of Hebrew soldiers had died and it was where the Ark of the Covenant had been captured. Because of the corruption of the priesthood and the sin of the people, God had not been their help and that time. The glory of the Lord had departed from their midst and Israel was destitute and broken.
Under the leadership of a new priest and judge, Samuel, the people began to cry out to the Lord. They repented by putting away their foreign gods and, once again, God delivered them from their enemies. The victory at “Ebenezer” was supernatural. God fought for them. The stone that Samuel erected marked the place where this restoration began. It was there to remind the people of judgment, repentance, mercy and restoration. The Ebenezer stone represented a fresh beginning. It was the place of remembering to not go back, but to go forward.
Samuel knew something about human nature. He knew that man is forgetful. Let a generation or two pass by and they would return once again to their sinful ways. Others, in the Bible, also set up reminders, for future generations, of God’s faithfulness and His covenants. Joshua set up a memorial with stones on the banks of the Jordan River to remind the children of Israel of God’s deliverance from slavery and their return to the Land of Israel. Two times God met Jacob at Bethel and each time Jacob set up stone pillars to remember him and others of these encounters and the covenants that God made.
Maybe we should set up an Ebenezer stone to remind us that we have been forgiven and delivered from sin. Our sins have been cast into the depths of the sea. Let us put up a sign that reads: “No fishing allowed.” Philosophers from Socrates to Burke have said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Here at Ebenezer, Israel could stand next to this stone and remind themselves that they serve a living and mighty God, whose mercies endure forever. He is our Rock of help. We can run to Him and be saved. By remembering the suffering that our sin has caused and the benefits that God’s salvation has brought, we can look back and say, “Never again,” and look forward as say, “Thank you, Jesus, here I come.”
Scriptures to meditate on:
I Samuel 4:1; 5.1; 7:3-12; Phil. 3:13-14; Gen. 28:28-29; 35:14-15; Joshua 4:1-7; Psalms 103:2