May almighty God be with us once
more this evening. We turn again together to his
word. Tonight we'll turn to the first
book of Samuel and chapter seven and reading verse three. The first book of Samuel and
chapter seven and verse three. Samuel spake unto all the house
of Israel saying, If you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts,
then put away the strange gods and astrothem among you, and
prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only, and
he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. One character that perhaps fascinates
and intrigues many in the Word of God, particularly for children,
is the character of Samson. Samson, we find in the Book of
Judges, was raised up by God to deliver the Israelites at
that time from the Philistines. Samson, of course, is a fascinating
character, an exciting character, who does great exploits and shows
amazing strength at times. He is mightily used of God and
blessed. But Samson was also flawed. He was a sinner, like the rest
of us. And he was blessed with great
strength. but it was not of him, it was
a blessing of God. Samson was a Nazirite from birth,
that means he was dedicated unto the Lord from his very birth,
and one of the parts of being a Nazirite meant that his hair
was not to be cut. And as we all know, in the account
of Samson, that time comes when he is with Delilah and he finally
gives away the secret as to why he is so strong, that he's been
a Nazirite from his birth and that his hair should not be cut. And then cutting it would be
a breaking of his Nazirite vow. Well, that sad time comes when
the Philistines through Delilah shave his head and he awakes
out of his sleep and we read these tragic words. He said,
I will go out as at other times before and shake myself and he
wished not or he knew not that the Lord was departed from him. Samson thought that he would
always be strong and he thought he would be able to shake off
the ropes that were binding him as at any other time. And he
didn't realize that the Lord had left him. And notice, it
doesn't say he didn't realize his hair was cut. He didn't realize
the Lord had left him. And because the key for Samson
wasn't so much in his hair, The key was God. It was the Lord
who gave him his strength. And Samson had forgotten that. He thought that he was strong
and he would rise up and he would win the day as he always had
before. But he didn't realize the Lord had left him. And that is one of the saddest
texts of Scripture. He wished not that the Spirit
of the Lord had departed. Well, why do we speak of Samson?
Well, you see, we see a similar thing in the accounts that we
read in the first book of Samuel. Here we have Israel. And Israel
are going to battle with the Philistines in chapter 4. And
they go to battle and they are defeated. And so they question
as to why they've been defeated. and they come to the conclusion
that what they need is the Ark of the Covenant. Now this morning
we considered the blessedness of the Ark. We considered how
wonderful it was as a picture of the presence of the Lord in
their midst, that the Lord was with them. We considered how
wonderful it was as it showed forth the holiness of God and
of his law, but also of mercy as the high priest entered in
with the blood of the offering. we considered how wonderful it
was that the ark was not only of God's presence amongst them,
but also God's presence going before them as the ark led the
journeying children of Israel. And the children of Israel had
been blessed with the ark for many years by the time we come
to this account in Samuel. But the sad thing is that they
had stopped looking to the Lord and had simply started to look
to the Ark. They had begun to trust in the
Ark, in the physical Ark itself. And like Samson, they had forgotten
the God. It was through him and his strength
and his power that any victory was to be known. And so we see
the wrong use of the Ark. the wrong use of the Ark. You see they bring the Ark out
having been defeated by the Philistines and the Philistines are afraid.
They remember all that had happened to the Egyptians before and they
say God has come into the camp, woe unto us. And so the Philistines,
they equate the two. They believe that the Lord is
now with the Israelites because they have brought the ark into
the camp. But instead of fearing and running
away, the Philistines, they strengthen themselves, ready for the battle.
And so they join in the battle again. Now Israel were remembering
their history. and they were remembering the
river Jericho, sorry the river Jordan. They were remembering
how the river became a dry land as the ark was in the midst.
They were remembering Jericho and how they followed the ark
around the city those times and how the city walls fell. They were remembering these great
battles where the presence of the Ark was such a vital and
important thing, and they were assuming that the same would
happen again. They were remembering it was
the Ark before, now all we need is the Ark again, and then we
will win the battle. What we need is the physical
ark in our midst. That's the problem. That's what's
missing. And if only we'd done that the
first time, we would have won the battle. You see, the Philistines come
and they smite the Israelites. There is a very great slaughter.
There fell of Israel 30,000 footmen and the ark of God was taken. The very opposite to what they
expected. They brought the Ark into the
battle in order to win and in fact the Ark of God was taken
by the Philistines. And the field is littered with
the bodies of thousands of dead Israelites. You see they had come to a superstitious
view of the Ark. A wrong use. What relevance has this got for
us today? What does it teach us? Well, the sad reality is that
really we are no different, so often, from the Israelites. We have a propensity in us, it
seems, to always look to the outward and to stop looking to
the Lord. to keep looking at outward things
and set, it would seem, an almost superstitious view on them instead
of the Lord. And you know, the devil is more
than happy to have us worshipping the outward. The devil is more
than happy, if you like, for ever worshipping the Ark, so
long as we do not worship the Lord. And this is something we
can all fall into. And it comes very close to home.
And I want to speak very, very carefully this evening. And I
don't want you to have a wrong impression of what I say. Because the Lord has given many,
many wonderful gifts to his people. We have many great blessings,
in our age particularly, that the Lord has given to us. We
have, in normal times at least, the freedom of worship. We have
a public gathering and we hope that we soon will be able to
have public gatherings of the churches again. A great blessing. We have the ordinances of the
Lord's house. We have the blessing of the Lord's
table, where we can remember him and we can give thanks for
his love, his suffering and death. We have the preaching of the
gospel. No, we have the ministry of his word, and those who open
up the scriptures to us, and we are thankful for it. We have
the means of grace, we have the singing of his praise, we have
the fellowship of his people, and all of these things are wonderful
things, and things to be immensely thankful for, to praise the Lord
for, and these things are so often used by God to bless his
people. The Lord uses the ministry of
the Word. It is through the foolishness
of preaching. The Lord uses the singing of his praise, often
to the blessing of our soul. The Lord uses the ordinances
of his house to the blessing of his people. You see, the Lord
speaks through these things, and we are so thankful for that. It may be that through these
things we might say, well we have a particular place that
we associate with the Lord's blessing. We may be able to look
back in our testimony, in our life, and remember a particular
place. Perhaps it's a particular church
or a particular service that we attended where we were blessed.
Perhaps it's a particular place in the world or particular time
whatever it is and we remember the Lord blessing us in that
place. Perhaps there's a particular
preacher. and we can record the Lord's goodness in a particular
service, and we can say, yes, it was through the ministry of
that man that my heart was blessed. I remember it distinctly, I remember
that preacher, I remember that service. Perhaps it's through
a singing of a particular hymn. And we all have, don't we? Often
hymns which are special to us. They have spoken to us in our
circumstances. They've come where we were. The
language of the hymn writer has been our language. And we've
been blessed through the truths expounded in the hymn. And so
we give thanks for these things. We give thanks for that place
where the Lord blessed us. We give thanks for his servant
through whom he spoke to us. We give thanks for the hymns
and so forth. But it may well be that we go
with some expectation to hear that particular minister again,
but there's nothing for us a second time. We go expecting the blessing
to follow again, but there's nothing once. And we're perplexed. I enjoy this ministry so much,
I got so much from it last time, why not a second time? Perhaps it's when we open our
hymn book and we sing one of our favourite hymns and yet we
seem to have come to the end of the hymn and it's not spoken
to us at all. Maybe that we've been blessed
a particular time of year. We've just come past Easter time,
haven't we? And we often look forward to Easter. Is that a
time to remember the Lord's death and resurrection? And perhaps
we've had blessed Easter's before, and yet we've come to another
Easter time, perhaps this year, and there's been real no blessing
in it. But what's happened? Why is that?
Well, we must acknowledge the Lord is sovereign. He blesses
as he will, in different ways and through different ways and
means. But could it also be that we
have fallen into the trap of becoming so formal, in the sense
that if we do this, then we think that we are guaranteed to receive
the Lord's blessing. If we invite that preacher, then
we will be blessed. If we do such and such a thing,
then we will be blessed. If we go to such and such a place,
then the Lord will bless us. It's as if we think we can manipulate
the Lord in order to get him on our side, and if we will just
do this and this, then we can guarantee the blessing of the
Lord. You see, isn't that rather like
the wrong use of the ark? They thought they could guarantee
victory through an outward means. Now the reason I say I want to
speak carefully is because in no sense do I speak against attending
the services, in no sense do I speak against reading and singing
of the hymns or any of these things. This is through the means
in which the Lord does bless us. But the key is the means
that the Lord blesses us. It is not the thing itself. We must look to the Lord. his
blessing. Maybe we've fallen into the trap
of thinking the other way around, and that is that the Lord has
not blessed us because we have not done such and such a thing. And how the devil would have
us to think like this, how he loves to tie us into knots, how
he loves to cast us down, and in saying, well, you have not
known the Lord's blessing because you haven't done enough reading,
for instance. Or you haven't known the Lord's
blessing because you haven't prayed for long enough. It was
only five minutes yesterday, it should have been 10. Or you
only read two chapters yesterday, you should have read three. If
only you had done a little bit more, then the Lord would be
more happy and ready to bless you. And so we add duty upon
duty upon duty to try and earn the favor of God instead of looking
unto the Lord for the blessing. You must be very careful. And
these are very hard things to assess and to analyze. but may
we not fall into the trap that they fell into, this wrong use
of the ark, a wonderful blessing, a wonderful thing, and the Lord
had blessed them through it, and it had been a great encouragement
to them, but just the physical presence of the ark on the battlefield
did not bring them the victory. Like Samson, they wished not
that the Lord had departed from them. And so we see then firstly the
wrong use of the ark. But the encouraging thing is
that the God of the ark has not changed. Because then as we go
into the following chapters, which we didn't read, but the
account follows on that how the Israelites, sorry, the Philistines
take the ark, they put it in the temple of their God Dagon. And then when they bring it into
the house of their God, that the next day Dagon had fallen
upon his face to the earth before the Ark of the Law. And so they
took him and set him in his place again, and the next day the same
thing has happened, and on this occasion his head and the palms
of his hands are cut off. And there is Dagon on the floor
in front of the Ark. We then have the accounts of
how the Lord strikes Excuse me, it strikes the Philistines with
emeralds or with tumours. So many of them die and become
very sick. And so they pass the Ark around into different cities,
to Ekron, to Gath and to different places. And it seems that the
judgment of the Lord follows the Ark wherever it goes. The
people are struck down with these illnesses. You see, as the Ark has been
taken out of Israel, it doesn't mean that the Lord is not still
on the throne. It seems that the Lord is actually still more
at work amongst the Philistines than he is amongst the Israelites.
He is showing his wonderful power to the Philistines when the Israelites
have forgotten him. He is still the all-knowing God.
He is still the all-powerful God. He's still all-reigning
and all-sovereign. And the God of the Philistines
is being ground down into the dust. on the floor of the temple,
as the Lord omnipotent reigneth. See, the ark may have been taken,
but the Lord has not changed. And what encouragement today.
The Lord has not changed. Look at the world around us today,
with all this virus and all the lockdown in so many nations.
Do we not see the mighty hand of God? Do we not see his work,
his power? Do we not see of his judgments
upon the earth? Do we not also see of his mercy
unto his people and his blessings even in the midst of these trying
times? We see the Lord is still on the
throne. The Lord is still reigning supremely. He is still over everything
in this world and every nation and every man and woman and child. And so you may look out on the
nations and in the world today and you cannot deny the existence
in the hand of God. You cannot deny how he has put
his hand on the world and he has turned it upside down in
a moment. You cannot deny how he has changed
society and our very lives in a moment. So you look and see the hand
of God, but do you long to know it yourself? It's as if he's
working amongst the Philistines. But you need to know it in Israel.
You long to know that the Lord is with you. What about me? may be your crime. What about
me? Oh, that the almighty God who
has every event of the world in his hands might come to me. Oh, that the almighty God might
bless me and save me and speak to me. Remember that man that Jesus
came to at the side of the pool at Bethesda and how the angel
came down and touched the waters Someone would go into the waters
before him to be healed, and Jesus comes to him and he says,
So I have no man when the waters are troubled to put me into the
pool, why I'm coming another separate down before me? You can almost feel the man's
pain, can't you? You can almost feel his sadness. But time after time, when I get
up to go, another one gets there first. When I get up, they receive the
blessing, and I have to go back to my place and wait again. Yes, you see, for this man, there
is every evidence that God works. He had seen healings. He had
seen someone being healed in the waters. He had witnessed
it. There was no denying a God who heals. There was no denying
the miracles that took place. But he hadn't known it. Why not
for me? Why can I not get there? Was
his question. It may be for us that we hear
of the Lord's blessing in others. We hear of the Lord saving hell.
We hear of his miraculous grace. We hear of his mercy and of his
love. We hear of them joyfully receiving the blessing of the
Lord. And we say, but where is the blessedness for me? I know the Lord is at work in
the Philistines. He's at work amongst others,
but has he departed from me? Well, the encouragement is the
Lord has not changed. The Lord is still sovereignly
on the throne. He is still working mightily
and still will work mightily. Because the time comes that the
ark returns. And they have this wonderful
and beautiful account in the sixth chapter of 1 Samuel of
how the Philistines set the ark upon the clarter and the ark
goes under direction of God back to Israel. And the people of
Beth Shemesh, they look up and they see the ark returning. We read they were reaping their
wheat harvest in the valley, they lifted up their eyes and
saw the ark and rejoiced to see it. Oh how amazing that scene
is to consider. Here's God's people, the ark
is gone, they've been defeated in the battle and yet they are
going about their daily business, they're reaping in the fields
and they look up Imagine the wonder on their eyes. Imagine
the sight. Here comes the Ark. He's coming down the road on
this cart and they rejoice. The Lord, if you like, the God
is still with them. He's still their God. He's still
amongst them. And he is returning in this symbolic
sense. We sing sometimes, don't we?
For a season I withdrew, and thy heart was filled with pain,
but my mercies I'll renew. Thou shalt soon rejoice again. The Lord does not always and
permanently abandon his people. He will not forsake them forever.
They are still his people, his peculiar treasure, his precious
bride, and he comes to them. He returns to them. He does not,
he cannot give them up. The Lord has not changed, though
the ark was removed. But then thirdly, in this account,
we see a new battle for Israel. There is a new battle to be fought
some 20 years later, that they come again to a battle with the
Philistines. Is this going to be any different? Are they going to do the same
again? How is the Lord going to be sought? Will they just
look to the outward presence of the Ark? or will they now
seek the Lord himself? Now the Christian proves there
are many battles to be fought. And we learn the hard way often
our weaknesses and failures in those battles. And as soon as
we are over one, we think that all will be well and easy now,
and before long we find there's another battle to fight. And
the sad reality is we do not always learn the lessons that
we should have learned. But the answer that Samuel gives
to the children of Israel for this battle with the Philistines
is an answer for us. How are we to fight our spiritual
battles? How are we to enter into that
Christian warfare? Where are we to look to win the
victory? Samuel Spake unto all the house
of Israel saying, if you do return unto the Lord with all your heart. The key is to the Lord. Return to the Lord. They are
to be in dependence on him, on their God himself, and their trust And all their
hope for the battle must be centred in God. Total dependence upon the Lord. Not on their own ideas and devices,
but on Him. And this is the wonderful truth.
You see, our religion must direct us to a person. It must direct
us to God. It must direct us to Christ.
And this is what we look to, the blessings that he's given
to us, the means of grace, they point us to Christ. They point
us to our God. We must look up to him. But he
is the focus of our worship and our adoration. And he is our
trust and our hope for all that we need. And so let's just look
for a few moments at how Samuel says we are to fight the battle,
the spiritual battles. First of all, he says, you must
turn to the Lord with a heart. If you do return unto the Lord
with all your hearts, you must personally seek him,
he says. Turn to the Lord. I wonder where are we this evening?
Have we lost our personal walk with the Lord. Oh, our outward
look is as good as it ever was, our outward walk is as respectable
and Christian as it always has been, but our heart that no one
can see if we are honest, is far from him. Is that true this
evening? I think the Lord's people can
always, at some point, understand this. I hope we're not there
tonight, but we can probably understand what it is like when
our heart, that no one else can see, it's far from the Lord. Yes, we're serving him, but our
heart is hard. And the reality is that the Lord
is not as precious to us as we would have him to be. And the
reality is that we're walking through a wilderness in this
world which does not give us spiritual life or liveliness
and we're starving. We're growing weaker and weaker
and more and more entrenched in the world as our heart for
the Lord has grown weaker and weaker. says turn, return unto the Lord
with all your heart. This isn't just reform yourself,
this isn't oh you just need to get more involved in a certain
mission work or you need to do more of this and of that. You
need to turn to the Lord he says, don't just appease your conscience
with a couple more activities, turn to the Lord. Yes, you seek
the Lord through his word, you seek the Lord through prayer,
but not because there are duties to please him, but because you
are trying to find him, the fountain of joy, the fountain of living
waters. Turn to him from the heart. And you know what it means to
turn to him from the heart? It means to come as you are. You know, our simple nature would
have us always think that we need to reform ourselves before
we can come to the Lord. I need to be better, and I need
to be stronger, I need to be holier, and then I can turn to
the Lord, because I've made my heart a little bit better. But
turning to Him from the heart is to turn to Him just as we
are. You know, He already knows where
you are. He already knows the state of
your heart. Tell him about the hardness of your heart. He already
knows. Tell him about the struggles
you're having with the world and the flesh and the devil.
He already knows. Tell him the badness, the vileness
of your heart. He already knows it. The fact is that he would have
us confess our sins unto him, that he might show the magnitude
of his grace. He would have us confess our
vileness, our wretchedness, our hardness of heart, that he might
show the greatness of his love. Psalm 51, that Psalm of repentance
of David. Psalm is really a prayer from
the heart, isn't it? It's a confession of who he is
as a sinner, that in sin his mother conceived him, that he
desires truth, that purity in the inward parts. Turn unto the
Lord with your heart. Yes, as despicable and as wretched
as it is, Come and show him and tell him what it is. This is
what it is to turn to the Lord. You must turn to the Lord with
the heart. But he also says you must put
away the strange gods and the astral from among you. Put away
the gods. Israel so often fell into idolatry. They fell into the worshipping
of the Philistine gods and others as well, the Baals and the Asterods.
And Samuel says, you must put them away. You must turn unto
the Lord wholeheartedly and completely. What idols have we got? Don't be quick to answer that
question. Don't be quick to say, well, I don't have idols. There's
nothing that has hold of me. You know, we don't have to look
far and find that we easily cling to idols. But does something
tonight have a hold on you? Is there something that has got
hold of you and you don't want to confess it's got hold of you
because actually you quite like this idol. You want to keep hold
of it. You want to keep enjoying it.
It's bringing you some fleshly pleasure. You don't want to give
up this idol, but the reality is, I am sure, that that idol
is taking you away from the Lord. It is hardening your heart against
the Lord. It is affecting your fellowship with him. But perhaps we're still carrying
on in the Christian path and we are doing what the Lord has
said we cannot do. You are trying to serve God and
Mary. You're trying to hold both in
your hands and think that you can continue in a healthy spiritual
life with the Lord. You don't want to give the Lord
up, but you don't want to give your idol up either. You want
to hold them both in your hands. Maybe, in our desire to know
the Lord's help and strength in our spiritual battles, maybe
we need to take some drastic action this evening. Maybe we
need to do something which is going to be painful, but yet
good in the long run. Moses, we thought this morning
when he comes down from the Mount Sinai and he sees the calf, he
needs to take drastic action. He doesn't take the calf and
just put it on the outside of the camp. He doesn't take the
calf and put it inside a tent and say no you mustn't worship
that. He will not allow it to exist unless they go back to
it. He destroys the calf, grinds
it into powder. Maybe we need to this evening
even destroy that idol. Our heart doesn't want to, but
we must. Maybe you need to take it and
cast it out the house. We need to burn it. Perhaps you
need to press the delete button. I don't know, whatever it is. Put away the strange gods. You see, part of turning to the
Lord with all the heart, may well include confessing how hard
it is to do. You see, if we turn to the Lord
from the heart, then we are confessing all of the innermost thoughts
of the heart. And part of that is saying, Lord,
I've got this idol and I'm struggling to give it up. Lord, I've got
a temptation and quite frankly, my flesh enjoys it. And turning
to Him with the heart is to say, Lord, I need Thy help. I need
to be given a holy determination. I need to be given a singleness
of eye unto Thee, to see of Thy glory and of the blessings that
flow from a closer walk with the Lord. Turn unto Him. Put away the strange
gods. Another thing they would do is
that they must confess. And they fasted. They gathered
together, verse 6, they poured out the water before the Lord
and fasted on that day and said, we have sinned against the Lord. They confessed their sin. Apostle Paul in the Epistles
of the Romans, he speaks in that chapter 7, he speaks of his sinful
nature, doesn't he? The battle that goes on between
that new man and that old man. And his final conclusion is,
oh wretched man, that I am, that I am, it was what I had in my
nature, oh wretched man, that I am. You see, the natural man doesn't
confess this before the Lord. The natural man does not in a
meaningful way confess his sins before the Lord. He doesn't acknowledge
it before him. A real confession is a wonderful
blessing. A real acknowledgement of sin
before a holy God is a wonderful thing. It's a gift of God. And
we're given a wonderful promise. And if we confess our sins, he
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. But you see, with
forgiveness comes confession. To be forgiven comes following
confession. And the people here, they came
unto the Lord and they said, we have sinned against the Lord.
There isn't any of this confession in the first factor. They're
just looking to the ark. We've got the ark with us. And
now they're turning to the Lord, you see. and they're coming with
confession, an unworthiness before the Lord, a confession that they
do not deserve. They deserve his anger and his
indignation, but they come saying, Lord, we have sinned, and they
confess it before him. The confession. You know, we
have this even in our legal system in our country. If you are guilty
of a crime, and you go to a court and they tell you what the charge
is and they outline what you're said to have done, you will be
treated with more leniency if you confess, if you plead guilty,
and if you show a level of remorse for what you have done. If you
wholeheartedly refuse to accept your guilt, Despite all of the evidence against
you, that will go against you when it comes to your sentence.
You see, confession is rewarded. As parents, we would much prefer
to hear the confession of our child, the true heartfelt sorry,
than a repeated denial when we know they've done wrong. And so we appreciate it on a
natural level when people come just as they are and confess
what they've done. Oh, how much more the Lord. How much more
the Lord would hear the confession of again. You see, our natural
man thinks we need to come to the Lord as better and acceptable
and holy. And not until we've got that
point will he hear us. But he would hear confession.
He would hear an acknowledgement of sin. That's how he receives
sinners. So the encouragement here is
come just as you are, come simply as you are, and say, Lord, yes,
I am a sinner. And yes, Lord, these idols, they
do cling to me. And Lord, I cannot fight this
battle in my own strength or in my own wisdom. Lord, I've
failed before. Lord, I've stumbled before. And
without Thee, I will fail and stumble again. Lord, I rely on thy grace alone,
thy help. I come in confession of my own
sin and weakness, and I come in dependence upon thy strength
and upon thy grace. That is how Samuel says they
must go into the battle. Trust in his grace and in his
mercy. Come in confession. And then
one other last point. he comes and he offers a sacrifice. They pray unto the Lord, mustn't
miss that out, they pray, seek, cease not to cry unto the Lord
our God, that he will save us out of the hands of the Philistines,
there was a dependence there, crying unto the Lord, and then
Samuel takes this sucking lamb and offered it for a burnt offering
unto the Lord. You can see what we have here,
can't you? Here's a type of picture of Christ. How are we to fight
the battle? Look to Christ. How are we to
enter into this warfare, pleading his offering, pleading his sacrifice
again? Oh, this is not a one-off occasion.
Do not think, well, I saw the preciousness of Christ that day
I was converted. He was precious then. And now
I need to go off in my own strength and ability. Oh no, Samuel offers
the sacrifice here. That is, plead his blood again. Plead his suffering again, plead
his sacrifice again, because you're still a sinner and you're
still weak. And so you come pleading Christ
again. Oh look unto him, look unto him
every day. He who is all compassion, he
who is all love, he who is the great saviour of his people,
the great shepherd of the sheep, he who has laid down his life
that his sheep might live. When we look to Christ we see
here is a God of love, here is a God of faithfulness, here is
a God who have completed and have finished work, then here
is a God who I can who I can come to, is a God who I have
access to through Christ. Oh, I can plead for His help. I can plead for His mercy. I
can plead for His strength, because I come through Christ, His Son,
in whom He is well pleased. He is pleased with Him, and He
is pleased with His people who are in Him. This is how they are to enter
the battle. They are to come turning to the
Lord from the heart, confessing their sins. They are to come
putting away the idols, as hard as that may be. They are to come
in confession. They are to come offering the
sacrifice, that is looking to Christ. And then what happens? On that day, The Philistines,
they discomforted them and they were smitten before Israel. They were defeated because Israel
trusted in the Lord. They had turned unto him. They
had come desperate and guilty. And they had come just as they
were, looking unto him. And Samuel takes this Ebenezer
stone and he says, hitherto hath the Lord helped us. It was the Lord who had helped
them. It was he who had answered their prayers. It was he who
had appeared for them. It was he who had won the battle.
Quite literally, it was he who had thundered with a great thunder
upon the Philistines. It was the intervention of God. The Lord, hitherto the Lord,
has helped us. And so here is the answer for
our spiritual battles. the current situation even in
the world in which we currently live. May we look to the Lord
to bless us. May we look to the Lord to help
us. Not to be superstitious about the traditions and things around
us. Yes, to use them, but to use them to point us to the Lord.
To look to him who shines through it all, for he is glorious, for
he is the altogether lovely one. Hitherto to this point and therefore
hereafter will the Lord help us. How good is the God we adore,
how a faithful unchangeable friend. His love is as great as his power
and knows neither measure nor end. It is Jesus, the first and
the last. He'll guide us safely to home. We'll praise him for all that
is past and we'll trust him for all that is to come. May the Lord help us to know
him more and to come as we are through a precious Christ. Amen.