Date: 28-Dec-2024
Name: Ola
Topic: EBENEZER
Content:
I Samuel 7:9-13
9 So Samuel took a young lamb and offered it to the Lord as a whole burnt offering. He pleaded with the Lord to help Israel, and the Lord answered him.
10 Just as Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines arrived to attack Israel. But the Lord spoke with a mighty voice of thunder from heaven that day, and the Philistines were thrown into such confusion that the Israelites defeated them.
11 The men of Israel chased them from Mizpah to a place below Beth-car, slaughtering them all along the way.
12 Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Shen, He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us!”
13 So the Philistines were subdued and didn’t invade Israel again for some time. And throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the Lord’s powerful hand was raised against the Philistines.
· Israel turned away from God. They began losing battles to the Philistines for a while to the extent that the ark of God was even taken away from them.
· Raising up an Ebenezer is an act to acknowledge that God is the stone of help.
· This shifts the human perspective – acknowledging that our help is from God (Samuel refuse to share in God’s Glory). Being that it’s being a while the Israelites won a battle, its very easy for them to believe that Samuel was the author of the victory.
· This is putting a mark in the present season to separate the past from the future.
· Throughout the remaining days of Samuel, peace was established all through Israel
Raising an ebenezer requires us to do something in the physical realm to remind us that if God can bring us this far, He is more than able to take us farther. If He was able to win this battle for us, there is no doubt he will win the next for us.
This is total acknowledgement of our weakness being turned to great strength simply by trusting in God.
Two ways to raise an Ebenezer
1. Singing Praises to God
Psalm 124
“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,”
Let Israel now say—
2 “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
When men rose up against us,
3 Then they would have swallowed us alive,
When their wrath was kindled against us;
4 Then the waters would have overwhelmed us,
The stream would have [a]gone over our soul;
5 Then the swollen waters
Would have gone over our soul.”
6 Blessed be the Lord,
Who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
7 Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers;
The snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
2. Testimony – This is simply relating what God has done in the past. It serves to boost faith to believe God for other seemingly impossible situations.
Revelation 19:10b - Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
Prayer Points: