Morning By Morning #364

Samuel took a stone and…named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far has the LORD helped us.”

1 Samuel 7:12

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

The words “thus far” appear to be a hand pointing to the past. Whether twenty years (see 1 Sam. 7:2) or seventy—“Thus far has the LORD helped us”! Through poverty and wealth, through sickness and health, at home and abroad, on land and at sea, in honor and dishonor, in difficulty and joy, in trials and triumphs, and in prayer and temptations—“Thus far has the LORD helped us”! Just as we delight looking down a long avenue of trees that forms a lush, green temple, with its branching pillars and arches of leaves, we enjoy looking back on the long aisles of the years of our life. View the green boughs of God’s mercy overhead and the strong pillars of His loving-kindness and faithfulness that lift our joys heavenward. Do you see the birds singing in the branches? Surely there are many and they are all singing of the Lord’s mercy received “thus far.”

But these words also point forward, for when someone marks a certain place, it means he is not yet at the end and there is still some distance to travel. We must cross more temptations and joys, more trials and triumphs, more prayers and answers, more weariness and strength, and more battles and victories. Then will come old age, sickness, disease, and death, but will this be the end? No! We will awaken to much more—the likeness of Jesus, thrones, harps, songs, psalms, robes of righteousness, the face of Jesus, the fellowship of the saints, the glory of God, infinite happiness, and the fullness of eternity.

0 believer, be of good courage and, with grateful confidence, set up your Ebenezer stone as Samuel did, for:

The Lord who “thus far” has helped you

Will help you all your journey through.

John Newton, 1725-1807

When the words “thus far” are read in heaven’s light, what glorious and miraculous prospects they reveal to our grateful eyes!

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

When Samuel “took a stone…and named it Ebenezer,” he was doing what the Israelites often did to commemorate a time of God’s blessing. For example, when Israel crossed the Jordan,

Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

Joshua 4:4 – 7

Likewise, our lives are to be living memorials to the Lord, for Peter wrote,

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.

1 Peter 2:4-5