EBENEZER
[p. 196] EBENEZER
It is important for us to consider and apprehend how prayer is used in times of great difficulty. Samuel is himself the gift of prayer, as his name declares, and he in his service toward Israel uses prayer above any of his predecessors; in fact, he introduces and proves to us the power of prayer. Other servants of God were distinguished for works of another kind; Samuel peculiarly for prayer, and hence his ways are very instructive to us. Other powers had been used and other works wrought by devoted servants of God. Samuel sets forth the power of prayer. What made man something is now set aside in Israel, because of their failure. What God can be and do for them when called on is now declared and shown out by Samuel. He came in by prayer, and his power and the secret of his successful rule in Israel is prayer. We therefore cannot fail in obtaining from him how we ought to use prayer. We prove that we have used a thing rightly by the effect it has upon us, the good fruit shows that that from which it came was good.
There is the sucking lamb offered up wholly as a burnt-offering; this represents Christ, the ground of our acceptance. It is the day of acceptance; the accepted time (Psalm 32 and Isaiah 49), a great encouragement to prayer, as well as the ground of it, and then Samuel cried unto the Lord and the Lord heard him, and as Samuel was offering up the burnt-offering the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel, but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines and discomfited them, and they were smitten before Israel. “And Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, and said, Hitherto Jehovah has helped us”. When we have received mercy from the Lord it is most important that we own it. The monument that perpetuates the mercy is not the mercy itself, but the Eben-ezer is the acknowledgment of the heart of how God has helped and succoured us. The mercy conferred was great and singular - a bright page in their history, a day ever to be remembered for the deliverance from the Philistines, and the marvellous way in which it was effected for them. But it is not the thing done, nor the way the thing was done, that is the monument. The Eben-ezer is the testimony of the heart to the unfailing help of God. “Hitherto Jehovah has helped us”. It is the thanksgiving which accompanies prayer. It is the acknowledgment that I know and own Him as my Helper hitherto. The mercy may remain or it may pass away; the Eben-ezer ever remains. I have not only received, but I know the One from whom I have received. I have a fixed judgment about Him, an Eben-ezer. It is the judgment I have come to and I record it, that is the monument, and this is the real strength of the heart. It is distinct and positive to me that it is His hand which has wrought. It is the basket of the first-fruits in Canaan. I believe souls lose immensely by not being able to record more distinctly that hitherto He has helped them. In the addresses to the churches, Philadelphia and Laodicea, two things must be noted and kept much in mind. One is how Christ presents Himself to us in order that we may have true confidence in Him, and be enabled, because of what He is, to go forward in spite of all difficulties, and the other is, that we should not have self-confidence. Our tendency is not to have confidence in Him, and though we have prayed, yet we have but few Eben-ezers, few monuments, fixed judgments in our hearts of the power of Christ, and then we seek for confidence in ourselves which easy circumstances tend to feed.
One prays largely and fully in proportion as one has [p. 198] confidence in God as He is for us, if one feels, as he must, the contrariety of things here. If I can thank Him as knowing Him much, if I have a sure Eben-ezer, I can easily and simply look to Him. The one who is doubting or questioning is only at best looking for an Eben-ezer - the one who knows Christ now as having the key of David, opening and no man shutting, is the one to whom an opened door is given. It is as he knows Christ in this power that he has the use and the knowledge of this power. If he does not know Christ as such he cannot know that he has an opened door. I cannot enter into the blessing promised to Philadelphia if I do not know Him after this manner, and if I do, I must be conscious of His help and support, and I simply own it. I am not self-satisfied, that is Laodicea. In Laodicea there is no sense of wanting or of using help. If I feel I want it, and am using it, I am not Laodicean, and if I am using it I must know the value of it, and it is simple honesty for me to own it, but this is not Laodicean. The state in Laodicea is a senselessness - at ease in one’s circumstances, a need of nothing, no sense of the use of help, for there is no sense of needing it. In Philadelphia there is a sense of need of help, and there is the knowledge of the gain of it. I am in the one case senseless, and therefore at ease with things as they are; in the other, I am using the help and the strength given me to overcome the difficulties in my way, and I therefore own the favours conferred on me. It is not circumstances which afford me ease and confidence, it is success over opposing forces, a very different thing - the results of conflict, the cheerful, but yet the known results of conflict and of aid conferred on me, while easy circumstances tend to make me self-confident and independent of God.
The great principle, as I may term it, of prayer, is that I know whom I am addressing, and I am reckoning on His help, who I know can help me, and owning it, refreshing my soul, encouraging it with the fixed [p. 199] judgment - the Eben-ezer - I have of His help hitherto. If I ask, I must ask in faith, nothing doubting; it is expecting to receive and owning that I have received. We see this principle maintained in Solomon’s dedication of the temple; 1 Kings 8. Whatever their difficulty, their eye is set on the temple that there should be help and relief, but then they knew what the temple was in its own place and glory. They owned its greatness and service as toward them hitherto while they recurred to it now again for help; you see this in 2 Chronicles 20: 5 - 10. In times of great difficulty, when the true-hearted are struggling out of the confusion, as with Ezra (chapter 9: 5 - 15), there is a full acknowledgment of how God has given us a nail in His holy place and a reviving while seeking to be more conformed to the holiness of His name. You see he had proclaimed a fast and had sought the Lord, in chapter 8: 21; now with Nehemiah (chapter 9), the day after the separation (another separation besides the one in the days of Ezra), he recounts all the wondrous ways of God with them, and confesses that their guilt was that they “refused to obey, neither were mindful of thy wonders” (verse 17), yet “many times didst thou deliver them according to thy mercies” (verse 28). The confession, it will be remarked, was consequent on the fast.
The same in Daniel 9: 21 - 23; again in Habakkuk, the Lord God is His strength. We ought to regard prayer as the prelude to blessing. I know what and how God has helped, and am expecting and reckoning on His help. I find with our Lord, that great events occurred after prayer (see Luke 6: 12 and 9: 18 - 28; so in the Acts 13: 3; 14: 23), the precursor of blessing. It is not merely to own weakness and need, but to expect help and succour. If we pray, it is because our expectations are in God; Elias was a man of like passions, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain. If we ask anything according to His will He [p. 200] heareth us. We may forget that prayer is the great medium through which, as promised us, God now blesses. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name”. It is to receive from God that I come to Him and to receive in addition to what I have already received, and hence there is encouragement of heart to pray for those who are progressing (see Ephesians and Colossians).
Prayer should be regarded as a mighty engine through which the resources of God are made available to us. As I have availed myself of this engine, and as I exercise my heart in my fixed judgment, my Eben-ezer, as touching what He has been to me, the more am I encouraged and in faith able to pray. And our prayers fill the golden censer, therefore continue in prayer with thanksgiving.