Raise Your Ebenezer

One of my favorite hymns is “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” a beautiful song of praise which reminds us of the wondrous God we serve and our own tendencies to wander from Him. As the hymn closes, there is a request of the Lord to bind our hearts to Him and keep us from wandering. Every time I sing that last verse, I am reminded of how forgetful we can be. We so often lose sight of the magnitude of who our God is and what He has done for us. 

There’s a line in the second verse that reads: “Here I raise my Ebenezer.” This line refers to the stone erected by Samuel in 1 Samuel 7:12 after the Israelites were delivered out of the hands of the Philistines. Samuel names the stone Ebenezer, which means “stone of help” in Hebrew, and says, “Till now the Lord has helped us.” This stone was to be a stone of remembrance for the Israelites. When the Israelites looked upon this stone, they were to remember what the Lord had done for them. 

The Israelites were a very forgetful people. They would lose sight of the Lord and become distracted by the gods of the day. Time and time again, the Lord would work in their lives in great and magnificent ways, yet time and time again, the Israelites would forget what the Lord had done and who He was. They would stray from the His commands, following other gods and the passions of their hearts. The Lord, in His providential grace, would continue to deliver them and remind them of who He was amidst their constant forgetfulness.

As we look throughout Scripture, we can see the Lord consistently reminding His people who He is and even commanding them to place things throughout their lives as reminders of Him and His glory. In Exodus 12:4, God implements the Passover, saying: “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.” God knew that the Israelites would forget how He had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians, performed many miraculous works, and made His name known to the nations, so He commanded them to celebrate each and every year. Every year, they had a time focused on remembering.

In Exodus 16:32, the Lord commands the Israelites to keep some of the manna He had provided for them, saying, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.” God was putting in place a physical reminder of His great provision. 

All throughout Scripture, the Lord puts reminders in place for His people so that they will not stray from Him. This culminates in the Lord’s Supper. In Luke 22:19-20, we see Jesus institute this wonderful time of remembrance. “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’.” We celebrate this meal in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. We remember His perfect life, His broken body, His spilled blood, His violent death. We also remember His resurrection that sets us free from the power of sin and death and secures for us an eternal relationship with our God. 

The Lord wants us to remember who He is and what He has done for us. We are to have Him at the forefront of our minds constantly, every waking second. However, we are just like the Israelites. We forget. We lose sight. We turn to the gods of the day. We listen to the promises of this world and our flesh. 

As we recognize our own forgetfulness, as we see that our hearts are prone to wander, may we, in response, remember the Lord and erect Ebenezers in our own lives. May we set times throughout our days and years to remember the Lord. May we place physical reminders around us that direct our minds to Him. 

May it not be said of us that we forgot the Lord, but may we praise the Lord and glorify Him in all that we do, remembering the magnificent God who has saved us.

For more resources related to 1 Samuel, check out our current sermon series.