RAISING YOUR EBENEZER

Yea and verily (and various other archaisms most people don't understand!), Rudi and I have been busy refining our The Unfaithful Bride & The Faithful Groom book (See Amazon). Here's a wee quote (followed by a link to a great hymn brilliantly done): 

Israel, and so the bride of Christ of all time, needs to be reminded of two aspects of God’s relationship with them. Firstly, God is awesome, majestic, powerful, gracious, faithful and great like no other God. He elected His people to be His own. Secondly, they are sinful and inclined to walk in sin. Put these things together and we sing the hymn,

                                                    O to grace how great a debtor
                                                   Daily I’m constrained to be!
                                                    Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Psalms, Hymns and spiritual songs can be powerful. Little wonder then that Paul writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16)…

The Bride of Christ is so much the poorer for neglecting to sing the Psalms which remind us of the covenant faithfulness of God who tramples His enemy underfoot. They remind us of our unfaithfulness so that we are bound to constantly confess our sins before Him. We are called to rely on His mercies to fulfil our responsibility to bring honour to His Name till the end of this age. We need to sing, “A mighty fortress is our God”. To this we can add “Stand up! Stand up for Jesus!”, “Who is on the Lord’s side?”…

If we may be permitted to, as it were, “kill two birds with the one stone” (no pun intended), in the hymn quoted above, Robert Robinson goes on to sing, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, Hither by Thy help I’ve come”. Raising an Ebenezer (as mentioned elsewhere in this book), is in reference to the Israelite practice of placing stones of help, stones of remembrance, stones of testimony, witnesses to great events in history, i.e., God’s mighty works, such as Israel’s crossing the River Jordan to enter the Promised Land (Josh. 4:1-7; 19-24). Spiritual songs, like these stones, are reminders, historical landmarks, to us of His mighty works. Yes, setting stones and singing songs has long been the practice of God’s Church. For, even in the beginning the angels sang when God laid the earth’s corner stone (Job 38:6-7).

Of Jesus at His Triumphal Entry, we are told that “the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, saying: ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the LORD! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, ‘Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.’ But He answered and said to them, ‘I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out’” (Luke 19:37-40). Whether stones of help or hymns of praise, we must not remove reminders of the mighty works of God done in the Church’s past. Therefore, psalms and old hymns need to be included as part of the contemporary bride of Christ’s repertoire, lest we forget by Whose help we have come hither. In the ancient, the old, and the new, we must continue to raise our Ebenezer.

Link to Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing brilliantly done by Celtic Worship:

Come Thou Fount (Official Music Video) | Celtic Worship - YouTube