The Ebeneezer Stone

It is common for people to build monuments as a commemoration of something historical, some person that was important. So we build these monuments, and every place you go. You know, if you go downtown Franklin, downtown Nashville, there's monuments to people and events so that we'll remember their contribution. We'll remember what they did to help Nashville. If you go to Washington, D.C., you've got the Lincoln Memorial and the, you know, the Washington Monument. They're there to commemorate the events and people that helped shape our history. A grave marker is a type of a memorial, a marker, a stone that reminds us of a person. We also sometimes will raise up types of monuments to inspire us about the future. It's interesting in, if you've ever been to the Statue of Liberty, the Statue of Liberty was given to the United States by France to inspire the fact that at that point in time, in the late 1800s, people were coming here because there still was a lot of empty land in the United States. They were coming here and they were coming here to immigrate into this country. And they would come through New York, they would see that statue, and they would go to Ellis Island where they were actually, they had to go through a process to be allowed to come into the country. Thousands of people were sent back to different parts of the world because they had certain diseases, and they had no way of dealing with those diseases back then, so they would send them back. So these people came, and France, in order to look forward, commemorate the United States, its future, what it was, its concept of freedom, they actually gave the United States that incredible statue. Now, if you've seen it today, it's green. It was bronze at the time. It's been oxidized so that it's actually green. It wasn't green. I mean, from a distance, it looked like it was gold. It would just shine. I remember 1986, they were restoring it and trying to clean up some of that oxidation. And they actually got down to part of it that was down to the bronze, that bright, incredibly shiny bronze. And they scraped off a small amount, and they cast it into two statues of the Statue of Liberty. And then the U.S. government, because it's always figuring out ways to make money, took the two statues and put it up into space. And it orbited around the earth a couple times. They brought them back. One of them is in some government building someplace. The other one, they melded down, and they made tiny little just round plates with the seal of the Statue of Liberty on it. And for $10, you could buy one. Yes, and I bought one.

I found it the other day, and I thought, why did I ever buy that? But my grandkids were interested. That's what it looked like, because it's such bright, you know, it's such a bright, beautiful color that bronze is. So that was supposed to commemorate, it was a memorial to commemorate the future.

There is a commemoration stone, a monument that's mentioned in 1 Samuel. And I want to talk about why, and just go through the story, we're going to take about 15 minutes, go through the story of why this monument was created. And then I want to take it into, show it, not that it meant that at the time, but it's an allegory. It can be used to show us a memorial that God has given us today. There is a commemorative memorial that God has given us that we should be very, very aware of. So let's go to 1 Samuel 4.

First Samuel 4, this time in Israel's history, they were under the rule of Judges. Samuel was the judge. And Saul had turned against God. The country was not obeying God overall. And God has turned his back on the nation of Israel because they just weren't following him. And Samuel had told them that, that they needed to repent.

They needed to turn to God. And that God had rejected Saul. So we pick up here in verse 1 and chapter 4, and the word of Samuel came to all of Israel. So he went and he told the people, and it was passed around, that they needed to turn back to God. But then the rest of verse 1 says, now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines and encamped beside Ebenezer and the Philistines and camped at Ephech.

Now, the Philistines were a sea people that come into, they weren't into the land. They weren't part of the original people. They settled into what is now basically the Gaza Strip around there.

That's where these sea people came in. And they were very warlike. And they were oppressed. The Israelites, all during the time of Judges, clear up into David's time in the time of the kings, there was always this oppression between the Philistines who invaded there and the Israelites. And they came together, Israel sent out an army, and Israel was defeated. They were devastated. We're the people of God. Why would God abandon us? So they figured out what they should do. Let's go to verse 3. And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?

Why did God allow this to happen? Where is people? This shouldn't have never happened. Let us bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us, that when it comes among us, it may save us from the hand of our enemies.

Now, Shiloh was a place where they had set up the tabernacle. The Ark of the Covenant, this is the same Ark of the Covenant that had been built during the time of Moses. So look at how they're looking at the history of this. We have the Ark of the Covenant that's in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle in Shiloh.

This was designed personally by God, because we know all about it. The book of Exodus tells us how it's supposed to be designed. So they have this Ark. It's covered with gold. Inside it are the two tablets of stone that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments on it. In it is the Rod of Aaron, which was just a piece of wood, but it had actually grown into a live plant that never died.

And it was still there. It still kept producing buds. They put it in there. And it had some jars of manna. The food, the miraculous food God had given to those people hundreds of years before. And they had a tabernacle where this sat in the Holy of Holies, where the high priest would go in once a year during the Day of Atonement. And this had been going on for centuries. So lo, let's go get the Ark. God lives in the Ark.

God will protect us because the Ark will be with us. And remember, when God did come into the tabernacle in the wilderness, He always came down that cloud, the pillar fire or the cloud, would come down into the Holy of Holies. That's where they would see this come down, which represented the presence of God.

So God's in the Ark. And so what happens is they bring the Ark, and when they bring it in, the people shout. The people are so excited. The soldiers of Israel are so excited because God has come among us in the Ark. And so the shout is so loud that the Philistines hear it. And here's what the Philistines conclude for 7.

So the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God has come into the camp. And they said, Woe to us, for such a thing has never happened before. Woe to us, who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods. They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness.

Hundreds of years later, it's been passed down not only in Israel, but throughout the Middle East, the story of how Israel was brought out of Egypt because God destroyed the Egyptians. And there was a special place where he would come and visit his people. And so the Philistines were absolutely afraid of what was going to happen. Well, when you read what happened, is what happened that they went out to do battle, and the Philistines destroyed Israel's army.

The ark was taken. The two priests that served under the high priest, Eli, his two sons, the two great priests, they were killed. Eli, when he was so shattered to hear what had happened to his sons that the ark had been taken, he actually was sitting on a throne. He was a very heavy set man, fell over backwards and broke his neck and died. Israel's religion was gone. Their army was gone. Their government was gone except for Samuel. Everything was gone. But I want you to notice something about this story.

They didn't say, let's go repent before God and ask God to help us. Let's go get the box God is in. Bring the box and God will save us. Notice what the Philistines said, who were pagans. All know they brought the box of their God. And their box does amazing things from this box. And we will be defeated by their God. In other words, this wasn't a concept of repentance before God. It was actually a superstition. It was nothing more than superstition. And God allowed that to happen. This would go on, it would be 20 years before the ark was actually brought back into Jerusalem. This story would go on. We're just going to get a small part of it. So now the Philistines have the ark.

Now let's look at chapter 5 verse 1. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Now this Ebenezer, we've already read about that in the first part of chapter 4. Ebenezer was a place. No one knows exactly where this place was. They do know that it's on a certain plane because some of these towns and so forth that are mentioned are still there. But no one knows where Ebenezer was. But it was a place, a town, a village that was there. People knew it was there. So it ends up this is where the Israeli army camped outside of Ebenezer. Ebenezer is an interesting word in Hebrew. Eben means stone, like a rock, a stone. Azar means help or aid. In other words, you get help. If you translate it in English, literally, Ebenezer means the stone of help. Now that doesn't seem to be important at this point. Of course, Ebenezer is only mentioned three times in the scripture and it's mentioned all three times in this passage. So the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Ashdod was one of the great of the five cities, great five cities of the Philistines. And when the Philistines took the Ark of God, they brought it to the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. Dagon was one of the, considered the most powerful of all the gods of the Philistines.

The Philistines put the Ark in front of Dagon, probably had a big ceremony and everybody went home to sleep. When they came in the next day, the Ark was sitting there, but the huge statue of Dagon had been knocked over and torn up in pieces. And they said, oh, the god's still in the box. So they moved the box out of the temple. And they tried to decide, now, what do we do with it? Well, let's sort of parade it through the, you know, through all the cities and let's let everybody know how great we are, how great our gods are. Wherever, every place that they took, the Ark of the Covenant, people had tumors and they began to die from these tumors. And then plagues of rats began to show up. And finally, everybody just kept saying, we don't want it in our town. Now get it out of here. And they didn't know what to do with it. So what they decided to do was take the Ark, put it on a cart, put a team of oxen in front of it, and just step back and he can go wherever the god of Israel who lives in the box can go. And off they went. And they went right into Israel. So the oxen took the Ark across the area and went into Israel. They weren't sure what to do with it now either. And so it ends up on this man's property where it ends up for a long time. So we have the story. Now Israel gets the Ark back, the Ark of the Covenant. And Samuel says, now what we have to do is repent, we have to go. We have to sacrifice, we have to go to God, we have to be humble, ask for His help, and then have faith that He's going to help us. So it's interesting. He gathers Israelites to do this. And what do the Philistines do? The Philistine army shows up. So now you've got the two armies facing each other again. And in chapter 7, we have verse 10.

It says, Now as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the Lord thunder with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel. And the men of Israel went out from Mitzvah and pursued the Philistines and drove them back as far as Bethkar. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mitzvah and Shen and called it Ebenezer, saying, Thus far the Lord has helped us.

Now this is very interesting. It's not the town of Ebenezer. It's a monument. It's probably a very large stone. Probably carved on it is the story. We don't know, because it hasn't been found. Although it is amazing, the study of biblical archaeology and what they keep finding. They find things all the time. That shows that the Bible story is true. There's whole sections of the Old Testament that just 50 years ago, and especially 100 years ago, many historians said this made up. It's not true. And now they know it's true, because they have found all kinds of archaeological proof. This hasn't been found. It maybe doesn't exist anymore. But this is what I want to zero in on. Now I've given you a story. This isn't bait and switch. I told you the story to set up something else, okay? Because I want you to think in terms of what they've been through. They set up a monument for the past and the future, because where he sets this up—now they do know where Mitzvah was, they know where some of these towns and villages were—he basically sets it up almost halfway in between the first battle that they lost and the second battle where they won. Now there's a reason for putting it here. This monument was to make them remember what God happened to them in the past when they didn't turn to God. What happened to them later when they did turn to God, so that gives them a direction for the future. And it's a monument. It's like the Statue of Liberty. It's like the Washington Monument. It's a monument that they were to have there to remind them. This is what God did here, and here's what God did here. What I want to do now is move a little different direction here on purpose, because I was thinking about what monuments does God give us? I mean, we don't have any big plaques when we come in here, big rocks that we have carved on it, you know, what God has done for us. Does He give us monuments? And actually He does, because we have days, you know, that are set apart in society as what one of them is called Memorial Day, right? It is a day that's a monument to look back, in that case, on soldiers who have died in defense of the country. When we look at all the Holy Days, they are monuments. They're memorials to everything that God has done, not only in the future, but what He's going to do in the past, but what He's going to do in the future. So they are the both kinds of memorials, ones about the past and ones that aim us toward the future. All the Holy Days are monuments. They're just days. Well, I want to talk about a day that is actually one of these commemorative monuments. We live in the present with it. We see its future, but it actually points us towards the past and the future. Exodus 20. Okay, so now you've all figured out where I'm going. Exodus 20. But I want to set that up because I just find that example, that story, so interesting that Samuel sets up this monument to remind everybody. Like I said, it's probably just a big rock, huge stone, and it's the stone of help. The stone of help. When God helped us and when God didn't help us, okay, it's the stone of help.

So there are days that can be commemoratives. Or is there a day that we could say is the stone of help? Okay, Exodus 20, verse 8. You all have this memorized. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now what I find interesting, we've always talked about, he says, remember this. He doesn't say, remember not to steal. That law is so, you know, do not steal. But this one says, you got to remember this one because there's a remembrance to it. In other words, it brings back actually a remembrance and he actually will tell them what it is. Remember this day. Six days you shall labor, do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. You know your son or your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger who is within your gates. Okay, so we see it's a holy day. That's special. That means it's different than any other day. It's made by God for human beings to interact with him because only God can make something holy. So it is a time when holy people, people are set apart by God, are to do certain things and not do certain things in order to be in a relationship with him. So it's very special. But notice verse 11. Four, okay, this is why, this is the reason, four, in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Here he says that the Sabbath day was created at creation. It predated Israel's existence. It predated Abraham. It predated everyone but Adam and Eve. He said, this day, remember it, it is for you to do because God made it part of creation.

When people say, well, we don't have to keep the Sabbath because it's the law, we don't have to keep the law anymore. No, it's actually built into creation. It's part of creation. And one of the reasons we do it is a memorial of who God is. You know, we live in such a world. I mean, God opened the Red Sea for Israel. After watching three action hero movies, God had opened the Red Sea and we'd go, oh, that's pretty cool, right? I mean, it wouldn't be a shock. We're used to having such stuff in and date our minds. We don't remember what God has done and He is creator. He is why everything exists. And He created all things through Jesus Christ.

Now, I've often wondered, there's been times in my life I've asked God, help me get a bigger glimpse into you. And every once in a while I get a little bit and I find it's too much. Oh, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, it was real late at night. I thought, oh, it's on before I go to bed. And I turned on YouTube. And, you know, of course, my feed comes up and it's all religious stuff. And there's a guy, a scientist, he's a mathematician, talking about the 10 dimensions. See, Einstein said there were 10 dimensions. He said, okay, that's interesting. So I put it on. He talks about how we live in four dimensions, right? Depth, height, length, and time. We really can't think outside those dimensions. Well, mathematicians have put together mathematical formulas and said, basically, for everything to function, there has to be other dimensions. Wait, that means a sense. How could there be other dimensions? There would be dimensions we can't see, we can't smell, we can't touch. They're not there. And suddenly he became religious in all this. And he said, well, he says all these dimensions exist and God exists in all of them. And I thought, oh, that's sort of interesting. Yeah. That's why we talk about Jesus coming into our experience. He lives outside that and inside it. This is why Jesus could walk through a wall, and this is the example I used, by the way, walk through the wall and they think, they say, oh, you're just a ghost. And he says, no, you're touching me. Feel me. And they did. And they could touch him. They could feel him. He could hug them. And then he walked back through the wall and he said, that's because he lives in all the dimensions. When he enters into our dimension, we can see him. When he walks out of it, we can't. That's why God can be everywhere and on his throne at the same time. By this time, I'm certain. I'm like, oh, my head hurts. My head hurts. And then I start to think, no, there's actually scriptures in the, that support that concept. And then he said, let's put it this way. If you had a cartoon character that were alive, so they're on a piece of paper. They're only two dimensional, right? There's no depth to them. They have no concept at the time, but they talk to each other. They move around on a piece of paper. And the person who drew them took a pencil with an eraser and started to erase part of the picture. Living in a two dimensional world, you couldn't even see the eraser. You couldn't see the hand of the person with the eraser. You could only see things disappear. Now, I'm not trying to get philosophical here, but isn't that what God does all the time? He enters our world, does things, and we go, whoa, and he was there all the time.

There's angels in this room, I'm sure. They're here. That's not asking the show off, okay?

And must be at least seeing and experiencing something about the dimensions we live in, but we don't live in their dimension.

Now, the only reason I bring that up is because it's like, that's not important. I'm saying there is some truth to that, and that means you start thinking about that, and you realize God is so much greater than we can even imagine. And one of the reasons for the Sabbath day is we're supposed to look at Him as Creator.

We're supposed to look at what God does. We can't understand how He does it, but we have to look at what He does. And on the Sabbath, we're supposed to stop or run around doing whatever we think is important. Bigger car, more money, you know, friends, this, that, all these stuff that we have, and so forth. And we're supposed to stop. So, wait a minute. Think about, let's go back to when He made the Sabbath so that you and I would have a special day for a relationship with Him. And He said, you know, we're going to relate all the time, but I want one day that's just for you and me, and for others that are in contact with me. And that's what this is. It's our memorial, or God's memorial, to when He made it, to when He created everything. You know, I've tried to make myself lately, every once in a while, especially early in the morning, go out and sit on the porch, maybe sip my coffee, and just look at all the birds. But here's what I do after about five minutes.

I'll get things to do. I get things to do. And sometimes I wonder if God just said, boy, just sit there and watch this. Oh, no, I get things to do. So we do have the Sabbath as a memorial day, and He tells us what we're supposed to be looking at. We're supposed to be looking at Him as Creator. Now, I do want to mention here briefly, because people ask all the time, why is it that you keep, you know, from sundown to sundown? Instead of midnight to midnight. It's very simple if you know certain words in Hebrew. Now, you don't have to be a Hebrew scholar. You just have to know a couple of words and how they're used. It's not just knowing what the word is, but how they're used. I've thought about just giving a Bible study, you know, one time on our Sabbath Bible studies, how to use a concordance and a simple Bible dictionary, word dictionary. Not a complicated one, but a simple Bible dictionary that tells you the meaning of certain words and a concordance. You put those together, certain things become obvious. But when we go to Genesis 1, let's go there, because I...

When I started to look at this yesterday, after about an hour, I realized I had dozens and dozens of scriptures just to make this point. I'm not going to do all that. I'm just going to bring out a couple points, a couple scriptures. We know what happens here in Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. And it talks about how He formed that. And then He said, let there be light, and there was light. He saw it was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. Okay. We want to talk about the greatness of God as Creator. These are the kind of questions my grandchildren bring to me. Fortunately, none of them has on this particular verse yet. Grandpa, before there was light, how could God see? Well, you see, He doesn't have eyes. You mean He doesn't see? Yeah, but He doesn't see the way we do. Well, how does He see? I have no idea, but He doesn't have eyes. Not like we... He has no physical eyes. So He lived forever in darkness? No, He lived forever in the way God lives. And He was going to create physical things, and so He created physical light.

Before He created it, there was no physical light. There was just physical dark... There's no physical darkness. There's sort of nothingness, right? So He creates this light. And He says, okay, I'm going to separate the light from the darkness. What does that mean? I don't know.

But He did it. And so He says He called the light day, the darkest He called night. And now the next part of this verse is real important. So the evening and the morning were the first day. So there's the day means there's light, and there's the night, which means it's dark. And in Hebrew, that's what day and night means. One means light, one means dark. But then He says this very specifically. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Every major Hebrew dictionary, commentary, encyclopedia all say the same thing. And that the word Arab here, which... and that's probably not exactly right in Hebrew. That's my English pronunciation in these words. Arab means... it means divided and mixed. And all the sources say the same thing. That's evening.

That's when the sun goes down. Now, we can say there's an exact moment when the sun sets, right? But it starts to get dark before it sets. As soon as it gets to a certain point, less and less light is shining. And when it goes out, because the way the earth is designed, it's still seeing it. You can still see it, even though the sun's gone. So, its evening is or begins at that point. Think about what it says about the Passover. It's between the two evenings. So, it's in the time period between it starts to get dark, and it's dark, that's when you're to do this. The Passover. So, evening literally means sort of when light's been dissipated. Now, I'm... that's not... what I just said is what it says in Hebrew dictionaries. I'm saying it's what it means. I mean, it's when light is dissipated and goes from light slowly in the darkness, and it means the evening. Now, sometimes the whole night can be called evening. You know, it's just... it's dark, it's evening. Let me show you where... one place where it's... this word is used. Like I said, I had dozens and thought, no, I'm not going to give an entire sermon on evening and morning. Okay, that's a good way to put them all asleep. Let's go to...

Job 7 Verse 4 When I lie down, Job says, I say, when shall I arise? And the night be ended, for I have had my fill of tossing till dawn.

When will the night end? So we have morning or evening and night are connected together. But, boker, which means it's translated morning, means something totally different. Because there's no darkness in it. The evening is turning into darkness. The night is darkness. The coming of the light, boker, is the morning. And then it's day, it's light. And once again, boker sometimes can mean all day. Just like sometimes evening will mean all night. But you know, there's actual words for night and day. That's like a Ruth 3, because this is one of my favorite examples. Because it's just so obvious. On Ruth chapter 3, I forgot to mention there, when I just read in Job 7.4, the word night there is even. It's not the normal word for night, it's evening. So when will the evening end so I can wake up and get up? So the translators made it night, because evening is when the sun's going down. But it could be used that way. Now it's obvious, though. It can't be at the end of the night. It has to be at the beginning, and it can go the whole time. You have to understand what I'm saying. Let's go Ruth chapter 3, and verse 13. This is when Boaz wakes up, and there's something at his feet.

And it's Ruth. He's been working all day. He went to sleep in the shed where they were doing the work. It's nighttime. He's asleep, because he's worked all day, and suddenly he wakes up. And he says, who's there? And Ruth says, it's me, your servant. We are related. And according to the law, since my husband died and you're my closest relation, you have to marry me. Now when you read through the story, there's sort of a sparks flying here into the story, okay? So he's probably not like, oh no. Although he is at one point, he says, why would a young woman want me? You know, some middle-aged guy. But, you know, he's smitten by her, but she would never have interest in him, sort of type thing. Well now, she's laying her at his feet saying, you're supposed to marry me. And he says something interesting. He says, well, according to the law, it's not me. There's another relative closer to you. I've explained why these laws in the past all are connected. These are, it has to do with the land and the protection of family and to make sure there was no poverty. The way this was set up, there would be no poverty if people went by the law. So she either was free to go remarry somebody else or to take part in that family's land or to get the land that belonged to her husband who had died, it had to stay in the family. So she says, you're supposed to marry me and give me a child. And he says, verse 13, stay this night and in the morning, okay, same word that we read there in Genesis, in the morning it shall be that if he will perform the duty of a close relative for you, good, let him do it. But if he does not want to perform the duty for you, then I will perform the duty for you. And I hope he says, no, no, he does, he, you know, as the Lord lives, lie down until morning. And then it says, so she lay at his feet until morning and she rose before one could recognize another. In other words, before it was totally light, as the sun's coming up, she gets up and leave and he tells any men, his workers that are out there, you don't tell anybody she was here.

She's protected woman. You don't tell anybody she was here. And she leaves and nobody knows. It has to be night. The morning has to be the morning. When he's beginning to get light. So when we look at Genesis, and once again, that's a whole study in itself, it becomes quite obvious that evening and morning is sundown, the sun up, and one day is day and night equals one day. It says that in Genesis. So it's here, one night and one day equals a 24-hour period. That's a unit. And that unit's called the day. The day part's called the day and the unit's called the day. And you think, well, why is that? You know, we do the same thing in English. If you ask somebody, what day is that that's happening? Let's see. It's Thursday. What time is it? Let's see, it's nine o'clock. At night or in the morning? See, we use day as a big concept. They did too. But it was cut into two parts. And so the Sabbath begins at sundown, at the going down in the sun. That's a sidebar, but I wanted to just cover that because people, I get asked all the time, why is it the Sabbath doesn't start at midnight? Where do we get this from? Just read the words in Hebrew. There really is no, there really is no argument. Okay. So it's a memorial then to God as creator. And it's a memorial of something else. And it's a memorial of something else. In fact, it's a memorial of a lot of things. Some of them we won't even get to in this sermon. God created humanity and kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden. And you've heard me mention this before because I think this is so important and we don't stress it enough. We stand up against Easter because we know Jesus wasn't resurrected on Sunday morning. We can put together the scriptures. We can show it. We're not the only people that do that. There are even some Protestants who have figured that out. Hey, that doesn't work, but it doesn't change what they do.

By looking at Christ's death and resurrection, we're able to show that He was resurrected Saturday afternoon before sundown. Three days and three nights after He was killed. That means Jesus was resurrected on the Sabbath. And do you think that was by accident?

I mean, we're told to have a memorial called Passover and we're to take the very night that He died on, or the date. You know, it's the 14th of the first month of the Hebrew calendar. But we're not, you know, which switches around, but we're to take the very night and we're to commemorate Him. It's a memorial. It's a monument to Him. All the Holy Days are monuments to different things God's doing. And it's by accident? Did God say, boy, did that work out nice? He's resurrected on the Sabbath day. No, that's part of the plan all along. Jesus was resurrected on the Sabbath. And we are to commemorate that all the time.

What sort of leads us into the last scripture we're going to go through here, Deuteronomy 5. Deuteronomy 5, the second giving of the Ten Commandments.

Verse 12, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 13 and 14 is just very, very similar to what was in the first giving. Now remember the first giving of the Ten Commandments, there was a second giving of the Ten Commandments, same Ten Commandments. And so we have, okay, the first two are almost exactly the same. And then there's a change. In this giving of the Ten Commandments, He emphasizes something different. In the first one, He emphasized creation. This day was created at creation. It is a special thing between me and people. Verse 15, but He doesn't say that here. And remember, this is a remembrance, this is a memorial. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. He says you keep it and you remember every time you keep it who you were and who you are. If we keep this day as a commemoration of God as creator, and then we understand this day as the day of salvation, this is the day that Christ was resurrected so that salvation can come to humanity, then this means even more to us than it would have meant to those people. That they had been physical slaves and God had brought them out of Egypt. Every year in the days of Unleavened Bread, we talk about how we were slaves to sin. Every year we talk about how Pharaoh is a type of Satan, and we lived under his rulership, blinded to the truth, and how God brought us out. And we go to the scripture which talks about how they went through the Red Sea. This is like a baptism. We have to go through baptism. In other words, all those things, important as they were, weren't near as important as what God is doing now in the terms of the lives of people. What God was doing there was important because he had to have this family to bring forth the Messiah. I mean, it had to be done. But now he's doing this in individuals that we are being freed from our slavery to sin. We have been let loose from the control of Satan. And we have a future. There's a promised land for us. And the Sabbath is to make us remember. Remember when you were a slave and you didn't know about God and you lived in rebellion against God. Remember what you used to be and now know where God is taking you. You know, we often talk about the Sabbath in terms of coming to services and doing this and not doing that and all these things. And those are important things. But there's only one way to really understand the Sabbath and keep it correctly. To know that it was created by God at creation for us, for humanity. And our relationship with Him is personal. And that this is a commemoration of that. To know that it's a commemoration of Christ's resurrection so that we can be free from the slavery that we leave behind. And that we have a promised land waiting for us. When you live the Sabbath with that motivation, then we will do what we're supposed to do on the Sabbath.

Or we'll just make it a set of rules. We'll make stricter and stricter and stricter and stricter, but we're missing the point. Now there is strictness to the Sabbath. You know that. I know that. But why? Because it has to do with understanding why it was created by God. And that's why He gave instructions twice. Instructions are the same purpose. He expands the purpose the second time.

And when Christ was resurrected, it got expanded even more.

Ebenezer erected a stone of help. What's very interesting, I said we didn't know where the town of Ebenezer was, but they can get a general idea of where the monument was put, because it mentions two towns. And the one town is where they lost the battle without God's help, and the other town is where they won the battle with God's help. And in between these two places, somewhere in between there, there was the Ebenezer stone, the stone of help. And I'm sure it was chiseled out on there that over here, Israel did not follow God, and he let them be defeated by the Philistines and lost the Ark. And here they repented and turned to God, and he destroyed the Philistines. See, that happens when you start talking too fast.

There's a joke there, but I'm going to go right by it. Okay. So, the point is, is that here's this monument, the stone, so that everybody who walks by it sees it, and they're reminded the stone of help, who the help comes from, where it comes from. So, in a very real way, this day is sort of like the stone of Ebenezer.

We're told to remember this day because, for this reason, because God is your creator, and God created all things, and that's beyond us. I don't know how many dimensions there are, but he lives in all of them. I don't know how he knows everybody's thoughts at the same time. I don't know how he hears every prayer at the same time. I don't know. It's just beyond me. And yet, that's who he is. And yet, he also sits on a throne, and Jesus Christ there at his right hand, and there's angels coming back and forth. And you know, from things you read in the Bible, the angels say, just like us, just like us, how does he do that?

Because it's so much greater. And he wants us to remember that as we come here humbly before him, because Sabbath services are commanded. Being together at a holy convocation is commanded. He wants us to remember that. He wants us to take this time and think about who he is and who Christ is. And what's created here for us? The fact that this room is full of people, and not one of us is the same. And yet, every one of us are the children of God.

Then he also wants this to be a reminder of God's great work and history, and in us. It reminds us that we were once slaves to sin, we were under the rule of Pharaoh, and we're headed towards the Protestant land. We're supposed to commemorate that today. We're supposed to come out of today with a more clear picture of what that really means. And that will guide us through the rest of the week. There's another thing that this day commemorates, and that is, it's actually a commemoration of Christ's 1000 year rule on earth. But that's the subject of another time.