Ebenezer: Remembering how the Lord has helped us

Outline

1. The story of the Rock called “Ebenezer” [1 Sam 7:3–14]
2. Paul’s “death” and “resurrection” story [2 Cor 1:1–11]
3. Paul’s new insights
4. Four things we can learn from Paul

Trouble is a fact of life. Job 5:6–8

For affliction does not come from the dust,
nor does trouble sprout from the ground;

but man is born to trouble
as the sparks fly upward.

As for me, I would seek God,
and to God would I commit my cause.

Trouble is a fact of life

• Matt 6:34
  “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”
• John 16:33
  “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

1 Samuel 7

9. …And Samuel cried out to the LORD for Israel, and the LORD answered him.
10. As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the LORD thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion, and they were routed before Israel.
11. And the men of Israel went out from Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and struck them, as far as below Beth-car.
12. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Til now the LORD has helped us.”
13. So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.

The story of the Rock called “Ebenezer”

1. Israel turns from idolatry (vv. 3–4).
2. The enemies are defeated, when Israel cries to the Lord (vv. 5–11).
3. Samuel erects a memorial (vv. 12–13).
4. Peace (v. 14).

• Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Til now the LORD has helped us.”

A Recent Commentator

“Perhaps Samuel named the stone after the place-name “Ebenezer” with the earlier experience in chs. 4–5 in mind, so that the people might always be reminded of God’s special help in this time and at this place.

The name ‘the stone Ezer’ is not unusual as a place-name, and it is certainly a reminder of God’s powerful intervention in the history of Israel….”

Tsumura, 238

This is a picture found throughout history.

1. Turning from idolatry.
   • Hebrew. word for repentance is “turn.” (shuv)
   • There is a mental process involved, But “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”
   • Repentance has taken place when idolatry is renounced and we take another path altogether.
2. Continual dependence on God.
3. Believers remember who has delivered them.
4. Peace and rest.

The book of Judges demonstrates what happens when the pattern is broken.

1. Israel only turned and cried to God when they were desperate.
2. But once they were delivered, they forgot.
3. The result was that there was no lasting peace, only chaos.

Outline

1. The “Ebenezer” theme in Scripture—remembering how the Lord has helped us
   1. We are in trouble
   2. God delivers us
   3. We remember what he has done (Ebenezer)
2. Paul’s “death” and “resurrection” story [2 Cor 1:1–11]
3. Paul’s new insights
4. Four things we can learn from Paul

Background to the Corinth Story

• The trouble. A group within the church had fallen under the influence of the “super apostles.”
• 2 Corinthians 11:

4. For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough.
5. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these superlative apostles.
6. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not in knowledge; in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.

Background to the Corinth Story

• The trouble. A group within the church had fallen under the influence of the “super apostles.”
• Paul didn’t show up as promised
• They wanted to undermine his credibility—and that of his gospel
• Paul’s reasons for delay were

1. to avoid shaming them, and give them time to repent
2. He almost died

2 Corinthians 1:

8. For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.
9. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death……

• mini deaths and resurrections
  • lead up to the “big death” and “big resurrection”

Paul’s “resurrection”

8. For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.
9. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead;
10. he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

1. He’s not specific about his death-crisis
2. But delivery was like a resurrection
3. Most important: this pointed him to the final resurrection (v.10)

Philip Hughes, 21:

“This is, indeed, a theme which provides a key to the whole epistle…. This was a principle to which even our Lord submitted in procuring our salvation, for he was crucified through weakness, but is alive through the power of God (13:4). It is a theme, therefore, which points to the unity of this epistle, and in which, in particular, links the concluding to the opening chapters.”

3. Paul’s new insights

• This resurrection-like experience gave Paul new insights: An insight into God himself.
• This insight is expressed by a new name for God: “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.” —James Denny
• “All comfort” is every kind of comfort that is appropriate for the occasion. There are lots of occasions, but for everyone there is an abundance of comfort.
• The names of God = the revelation of God.
• All the names of God are revealed by way of the experience of believers.
• We never experience God in the abstract, and Paul would have never understood God adequately if he had not “died”.

God is called “The Father of mercies”
Psalm 103

13. As a father pities his children,
          so the Lord pities those who fear him.
14. For he knows our frame;
          he remembers that we are dust.

“The God of all comfort.”

• For every situation
• Superior to other sources of comfort.

Jeremiah 2:12–13:

12. Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
          be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord,
13. for my people have committed two evils:
          they have forsaken me,
                the fountain of living waters,
          and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
                broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

Paul’s New Insights

1. God’s comfort is not meant to terminate on ourselves
   v.4 For I wrote you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears,
   not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.”
2. A new appreciation for those who suffer.
   • We “feel sorry” those who suffer
   • But Paul goes beyond that. He does feel, but he also brings hope

John 16:33

“I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace.
In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

• “This statement, spoken as it is in the shadow of the cross, is audacious.
  The cross would seem to the outsider to be Christ’s total defeat. [But] He sees it as His complete victory over all that the world is and can do to him.
  He goes to the cross not in fear or in gloom, but as a conqueror.” Leon Morris (714–15):

The story of salvation is being worked out in us:

1. We have turned from idolatry.
2. But the enemy is still active.
3. There is deliverance.
4. We remember.

In the wilderness Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8

2. And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not.
3. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

• Jesus remembered! and so resisted Satan
• So we are called to remember

Having the same view of God as Paul

1. In the present: God is “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.”
2. In the future: God is the raiser of the dead
   v.9 “Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
   We know that he will raise us because of our death-experiences in this life.
3. It’s in our death and resurrection experiences, we are being made like Christ
4. Christ has overcome the world, so we can overcome too!
   “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Rom 8:37

Ebenezer theme

His love, in time past,
  Forbids me to think
He’ll leave me at last
  In trouble to sink:
Each sweet Ebenezer
  I have in review
Confirms his good pleasure
  To help me quite through.
John Newton

• Job 5:8: “As for me, I would seek God,
  and to God would I commit my cause.”