Ebenezer The Stone Of Help
The speaker at our senior’s lunch at my church this week mentioned this verse in regard to the fact that we should remember the times that the Lord has helped us in the past and that He will do it again. Here in chapter 7 of 1Samuel verses 3 to 6, Samuel leads Israel to repentance and to put away their strange gods and serve the Lord only. Once they did this Samuel prayed for them and they repented for their sins. Israel then defeated the Philistines. After that Samuel took a stone and set it up. He called the stone Ebenezer (the stone of help), the Lord helped us. The Israelites realized that their victory came from God.
This is what we need today. We need God’s help, but we need first to cry out to Him for help and repent of our sins and get rid our all our false gods. Today most of them are material possessions, money, etc. but we do have many foreign gods in our lands now too. We must not worship any of these but our God, Jesus Christ only. We cannot succeed without His help and at some point, we are going to realize this. There are so many changes happening in our world today and much uncertainty. Many things seem impossible to fix or change but with God all things are possible. We are to be obedient to our God. Through our faithful obedience He accomplishes His purpose in our lands. When we are obedient, He can use us in many outstanding ways and we can accomplish amazing things, our stone of help is with us always.
We are living in critical times and many things are likely to happen that will be very scary and confusing at times. When this happens, I find Proverbs 3:5-6 good to have memorized and say out loud, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” So many things are changing right now and at times we feel like we are continually in a battle against evil in this world. Unfortunately, this will continue to happen until the Lord returns and defeats His enemies.
Christ is the living stone in this battle we are in today and we are being built up with Him in His spiritual house. “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner,And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;” (1Pet. 2:4-9). He is not a stone of stumbling to us like He is to those who are disobedient.
He is our Saviour and our Lord and “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
