[0:00] Then Samuel said, Assemble all Israel at Mizpah, and I will intercede with the Lord for you. When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord.
[0:12] On that day they fasted and there they confessed, We have sinned against the Lord. Now Samuel was serving as a leader of Israel at Mizpah. When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them.
[0:30] When the Israelites heard of it, they were afraid because of the Philistines. They said to Samuel, Do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.
[0:43] Then Samuel took his suckling lamb and sacrificed it as a burnt offering to the Lord. He cried out to the Lord on Israel's behalf, and the Lord answered him. While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle.
[1:01] But that day, the Lord thundered with a loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites. The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth-kar.
[1:18] Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, Thus far, the Lord has helped us.
[1:30] So the Philistines were subdued, and they stopped invading Israel's territory. Throughout Samuel's lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines.
[1:42] The towns from Ekron to Gath that the Philistines had captured from Israel were restored to Israel, and Israel delivered the neighboring territory from the hands of the Philistines.
[1:52] And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites. Samuel continued as Israel's leader all the days of his life. From year to year, he went on a circuit from Bethel to Gilgah to Mizpah, judging Israel in all those places.
[2:09] But he always went back to Ramah, where his home was. And there he also held court for Israel. And he built an altar there to the Lord. May the Lord bless the reason of his word.
[2:22] Thanks, Favour. Please do keep that open before you, as we spend time in God's word together. I don't know if you've ever noticed the plaque at the top of the stairs.
[2:37] Has anyone noticed the plaque at the top of the stairs? Hands in the air, some. Yes, some of you may have been here when it was put up. There's a plaque at the top of the stairs recognizing a momentous occasion in the life of the church when this first floor was built back in 1979.
[2:56] And apparently they had to stop the traffic out in the street to get the various building materials in. And it was a significant moment because it has been a great blessing to the church family over the years to have an upstairs and a downstairs.
[3:11] And the plaque, in a sense, is just a moment in the life of the congregation for them to pause and to give glory to God for where he had brought them to.
[3:23] And I think what the inscription and the plaque says, something like this, glory be to God our Savior. And there's a mention of a lady by the name of Mrs. Johnston who had been a member in the church for 50 years.
[3:36] And she was the one who officially unveiled or opened this upper floor. And it was a significant moment. It was a moment to pause and to say, this is how far God has brought us.
[3:49] And glory be to God. It's interesting if you've ever been in a meeting like I was recently where it is people who don't believe in God. And when the meeting comes to a close, I found there was this very strange silence at the end of the meeting because I'm used to being in meetings where people pray at the end of the meeting and thank God for how the meeting has gone and commit themselves to the Lord.
[4:15] But at the end of this meeting, it was just silence. And then people just started chatting. And I was thinking, something's missing here. There needs to be a pause to reflect and to praise God for how far he has brought us, even if it's only in this particular meeting.
[4:34] Now, in 1 Samuel 7, I don't know, did you spot on our way through this little pause in verse 12 when Samuel takes a stone, and I presume it was bigger than this stone that Samuel took.
[4:47] He took a stone and set it up in, where did he set it up, between Mitzvah and Shen, and he named it Ebenezer, saying, Thus far the Lord has helped us. This pause in the life of God's people, this acknowledgement of God's faithfulness and kindness to them in getting to this place.
[5:05] And we want to be able to say the same thing in our lives. And so we just want to ask this question of the passage this morning. How do we see God helping these people in 1 Samuel's day?
[5:19] And it helps us to reflect on how we see God helping us to this point. The first way in which we see God helping his people in 1 Samuel 7 is that he helps them by dealing with their sin.
[5:35] By dealing with their sin. So they have sinned before God. We see that in verse 6, where they confessed, We have sinned against the Lord. What they had been doing was trusting in other things, other people, other gods, trusting or depending on something other than God, that their life might go well.
[5:56] And you see that all around you. In our day and age, the things that people will trust in, so that their life will go well, their work, their health, their money, their bank balance, and the temptation is there for us as well.
[6:09] That when we wake up tomorrow morning, we think, what is going to make my life go well? Well, it's my own effort. It's my own work. It's my own ability to relate to people.
[6:20] What these people in Samuel's day were recognizing was that trusting in anything other than God for your life to go well was not good. And so they are confessing this sin as a group of people.
[6:34] We're used to thinking of people and individuals rather than groups of people. But from time to time, you come across people thinking as a group or thinking corporately.
[6:48] I remember back in, I think, the late 1990s, I read an article by, or an interview with the actor Brendan Gleeson, I think it was, and he was reflecting on Ireland as a country, Ireland as a nation, who had been through this economic boom.
[7:03] And he made the point that the way you measure a country is not by how wealthy they are, but how they care for those who are more vulnerable in their society.
[7:16] And as he reflected on how we had done that as a nation over the economic boom, the health service and areas like that, he said, we haven't done well.
[7:28] And he was speaking of us as a nation so that even though there were exceptions to that, he could say, we as Ireland have not done well in this. And Israel here as a country, as a nation, they are admitting their sin before God.
[7:43] They hadn't always done this. In the last couple of chapters, you'll know that they hadn't owned their sin or admitted their sin. But it's actually God helping by bringing them to this place, by bringing them to the place where they're willing to admit their sin.
[8:00] How has he done that? Well, the way God has done it is by allowing them to feel the effects of their sin. He has allowed them to feel the effects of their sin.
[8:11] And we see that in the community. So in verse 6, it says, Samuel was serving as leader of Israel at Mitzpah. If you look down at the little footnote there in the church Bible, you'll see that it says Samuel was judging Israel at Mitzpah.
[8:28] And when it says that, it doesn't mean that they confess their sin and then they get judged for their sin. What it means is they confess their sin. And now Samuel is judging them in the sense of bringing about justice and fairness and righting the wrongs that had been done as they had sinned against God and against others.
[8:48] There was this recognition that their sins had affected others in the community. And so they want that to be put right with Samuel judging them in that way. You think of Zacchaeus in the New Testament, when salvation comes to Zacchaeus, what does Zacchaeus do?
[9:04] I'm going to pay back fourfold what I stole from people. He's wanting to put right what he had done wrong, not so that he would be saved, but because he has been saved, he wants to right the wrongs as much as he can of his sins.
[9:23] And so you see the effects of the sins of the people in the community here implied by Samuel judging them. You also see the effects of the sin in the wider world with outsiders.
[9:38] So the Philistines in verse seven here that Israel had assembled at Mitzpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them. So this has happened before.
[9:49] Back in chapter four, the Philistines had come to attack Israel and Israel lose a devastating loss. And back in chapter four, the Israelites recognized it's not so much the Philistines that have defeated us.
[10:03] It is God who has defeated us. And so here again, the question is, is this again us feeling the effects of our sin with these outsiders, these Philistines?
[10:19] And so the question for them is, are we going to lose more of the blessing of the promised land that God has promised to us? And so there's this effect of their sin with outsiders.
[10:33] And there's also an effect of their sin, of course, in their hearts. So in verse seven, you see they are afraid because of the Philistines.
[10:44] We were not made to be afraid. God didn't make us to be fearful people, but we are fearful people because of sin, sometimes our own sin and sometimes the sin of somebody else.
[10:59] For the Israelites, they were now faced with the prospect of the Philistines again attacking them. And it wasn't plastic swords that they were using.
[11:10] The last time they had attacked the Israelites, they had killed 34,000 of their soldiers. And so Israel are understandably afraid. Many of them will have seen their brothers or their family members or their friends slaughtered not long before this.
[11:29] And so they are understandably, and it makes sense for them to be afraid as they are facing the Philistines. But this is an effect of sin in their hearts.
[11:43] They will feel weaker now having lost 34,000 of their soldiers. And so you see these effects of sin in the community with outsiders and in their hearts.
[11:56] And you realize this is actually how God has brought them to admit their sin. When they feel the effects of their sin, this is how God brings them to admit their sin.
[12:09] This is a severe mercy of God, as one has put it, that he allows them to feel the effects of their sin. You think of what C.S. Lewis says, this famous quote from C.S. Lewis, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.
[12:30] It is his megaphone to rouse a deft world. Now, in this case, it wasn't that God was shouting to them in their pain that was being suffered innocently. It was that God was shouting to them in their pain that they were experiencing as a result of their sin to bring them to a point where they might admit their sin before God.
[12:55] It's interesting that how this happens is through Samuel. Remember Samuel? Samuel, who Hannah had prayed for all those years before this little boy, now grown up, walking with the Lord, and it is through Samuel that the sin is acknowledged in verse 5.
[13:12] He says, I will intercede with the Lord for you. It is through Samuel that this justice is brought about in verse 6 as he judges the people of Israel.
[13:24] It is through Samuel that the wider effects of sin are starting to be dealt with. As he cries out in verse 8, they say to him, do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us that he may rescue us from the hands of the Philistines.
[13:40] It is through Samuel that the heart fear is being dealt with. As he offers this burnt offering in verse 9, he takes a suckling lamb and sacrifices it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord.
[13:55] It is through Samuel that the effects of sin are being dealt with for the people. I worked some years ago in a turkey farm on the run up to Christmas, which was a busy place to work, and there were three rooms that we were working in.
[14:12] So the first room was the room where they killed the turkeys. The second room was the room where they plucked the turkeys, took the feathers off them, and then the third room was where they processed and packaged them.
[14:24] I was working in the second room where they plucked the turkeys, and that wasn't a pleasant job. But they would never let us into the first room, even though it was done professionally and humanely as possible.
[14:37] They would not let us see it because it was so shocking and saddening to see it. And as Israel gathered around Samuel and he has this little lamb, there would have been this somber silence descending over the people as they looked on and as the lamb was becoming more and more distressed and bleeding and agitated.
[15:04] as they realized it is our sin that Samuel is offering this lamb to God for in our place.
[15:17] And as the bleating stopped, there would have been a silence and then what they would have heard was the sound of armor because it tells us in verse 10, while Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines threw near.
[15:38] And so the silence is overtaken by this noise, this rattle of shields and swords as the Philistines draw near. But what the Israelites realize, having admitted their sin, having Samuel pray for them, having this lamb offered for them, is that now they are in a good place with God.
[16:01] Now they are at peace with God. It is a somber moment, but it is also a moment of peace because their sin has been acknowledged and dealt with by God.
[16:11] God has helped them by dealing with their sin. And so as they are hearing the Philistines move towards them, we want to ask the question, when is the battle? When is the battle in chapter 7?
[16:24] You might think it is in verse 11. The men of Israel rushed out of Mitzpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth-car. The Philistines had acknowledged in the previous chapters that they were guilty before God, but they wanted to get rid of God.
[16:42] They wanted distance from God. You might think that is when the battle happens. But the battle in verse 7 is actually in verses 5 to 9. That's when the battle is won and lost.
[16:55] When they acknowledge their sin before God, when they admit their sin before God, when they find peace with God, that's when the real battle is won and lost.
[17:06] It's interesting that only a verse is given to the military battle. And all this time is given to God helping them to deal with their sin.
[17:19] And so Samuel can say, thus far, the Lord has helped us by dealing with our sin. I remember years ago chatting to a friend who had met a man who had come to know Jesus quite late on in life.
[17:36] He was in his 50s. He had a really dramatic story of coming to know the Lord. And my friend said to him, oh, it would be amazing to have a story like yours of how God has turned your life around and how he has called you to be his own at this age.
[17:56] And the man turned to my friend and said, you know, I wish I didn't have a story like this. I wish I had come to know the Lord sooner.
[18:09] I wish I hadn't committed all this sin. I wish I hadn't faced the effects of all this sin in my life. And the effects of sin in his life had been significant.
[18:21] He said, I wish I didn't have dramatic testimony. And you can understand what he was saying, can't you? That he wished that he had lived a different life for God, that he'd come to know the Lord sooner.
[18:37] And yet, even as he was saying that, he was also able to say, thus far the Lord has helped me. Even as I have felt the effects of sin in my own life, it has been a severe mercy on the part of God because it has brought me to the point where I can admit my sin, where I can pray and seek forgiveness before him.
[19:01] And so here we are, the 16th of November, 2025. And we're not going to screw another plaque to the wall and we're not going to raise a stone here in the pulpit.
[19:14] But as you look back, maybe over your whole life, and you remember the things you've said, the things you've done, the experiences you've had, maybe you look back with regret.
[19:28] Or maybe you look back with shame, or maybe you look back with nostalgia, you wish you could relive it. We want to be able to say with Samuel, thus far the Lord has been our help.
[19:43] Thus far the Lord has helped us. And as we look to the future, whatever fears we may be facing, it won't be Philistines, but we have very real fears at times.
[19:57] Very real fears for ourselves, for our children, for our community. As we look forward, we will know thus far he has helped us and he will continue helping us.
[20:08] We could continue screwing plaques to the wall over the years to come if we so wanted. Samuel is able to say thus far the Lord has helped us in dealing with our sin.
[20:23] And the second portion of this is that God has helped us by giving us peace. You see, in dealing with the people's sin, there is peace between them and God.
[20:34] And then this peace starts to permeate different areas of their lives. You see that they have peace from their enemies. In verse 13, the Philistines were subdued and they stopped invading Israel's territory.
[20:49] So the Philistines, unprovoked, had come to fight them but now they are subdued. And it says that throughout Samuel's lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines.
[21:01] Now of course, God doesn't have hands but this is a vivid way of showing us that it was the Lord that was keeping them at bay. You can just imagine this big hand keeping back the armies of the Philistines.
[21:15] Not only is there peace from their enemies but there's peace in the sense that God is restoring the losses that they have incurred as a result of their sin.
[21:25] In verse 14, the towns from Ekron to Gath that the Philistines had captured from Israel were restored to Israel and Israel delivered the neighboring territory from the hands of the Philistines and there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.
[21:44] There's this glimmer of what God had wanted for his people that they would be living in the land at peace with the surrounding nations under God's rule and reign so that the surrounding nations could look at them and say, wow, we want this for ourselves.
[22:02] we want this peace with God. They had peace with the Amorites. There's a little taste of how God is bringing peace through the restoration of what they had lost.
[22:18] And you see, there's peace among the people as well. You'll remember Samuel was bringing justice and fairness as he judged the people earlier on and in verse 15, Samuel continued as Israel's leader or judge all the days of his life.
[22:33] From year to year he went on a circuit from Bethel to Gilgal to Mitzpah judging Israel in all those places as they brought their issues to him, as they brought their concerns to him, as they brought their injustices to him, as vulnerable people in the community cried out to him and said, please write this wrong.
[22:52] Samuel brought about justice and fairness and there was a sense of peace among the people as he judged them wisely. And you realize that Samuel the whole way through this is so instrumental.
[23:05] This one whose mum Hannah had prayed for him long before he was born. And you realize that Hannah's prayers from all those chapters ago, all those years ago are being answered in ways far more than she could have asked or imagined as Samuel is playing this instrumental part in the lives of the people.
[23:32] And yet even as we read it, there's this kind of hopeful slash ominous note. It says, throughout Samuel's lifetime in verse 13. And it kind of leaves us begging the question, well, Samuel isn't going to live forever, is he?
[23:48] What happens when Samuel dies? And it leaves us searching. It leaves us looking for another like Samuel and there will be others like Samuel as the story continues.
[24:02] But it leads us on a longer search to thousands of years later. Thousands of years later, we encounter a man by the name of Peter.
[24:13] And Peter is standing by a charcoal fire, afraid for his life. Now, Peter isn't facing Philistine armies with shields and swords.
[24:26] He's facing a little servant girl who says to him, hey, you're one of those Galilean guys who've been following this Jesus around, aren't you?
[24:38] We read about this story in the Gospels, the servants and the officers had made a charcoal fire. Peter also was with him standing and warming himself as he gets questioned in this way.
[24:49] And you can imagine that suddenly Peter is starting to feel a lot warmer than the fire can make sense of. As she asks him these questions, gives him this pretty light grilling, but he is afraid for his life.
[25:02] He smells the smoke from the fire of the charcoal, and then he denies Jesus. Three times he denies Jesus. No, I don't know what you're talking about.
[25:14] He starts calling down curses on himself. And there's the sin that Peter commits. There's the sin as he denies his Lord, and then the effects of the sin start to ripple out.
[25:31] Imagine this servant girl. If he had started to speak to her about Jesus, she might have heard the hope of the Gospel. Let me tell you about Jesus.
[25:42] I'm not afraid to tell you about Jesus. He's changed my life. The effects of the sin for Peter and his role.
[25:53] He was going to be the leader of the apostles. The effects of Peter's sin in the life of the community. And all this going on while Jesus is being led like a lamb to the slaughter, willing to go to his death.
[26:12] And it is no wonder that as Jesus catches Peter's eye, Peter weeps bitterly because of his sin and the effects of it. And Peter had no peace. He had no peace.
[26:24] He weeps bitterly. All is lost, he thinks. And now Jesus has gone to his death and I am lost in my sin. And I wonder at some point, at what point did Peter remember that Jesus had said something to him, that Jesus had said to him, Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.
[26:55] Did that come back to Peter's mind at some point? That just as Samuel had prayed for the people of Israel, that Jesus prayed for Peter, that just as Samuel had offered a lamb to deal with the sin of the people, Jesus offers a lamb.
[27:15] But that Jesus is the lamb. Jesus is the spotless, sinless lamb of God who goes to his death to deal with Peter's sin, to deal with our sin.
[27:30] And you know, sometime later, Jesus has gone to his death but has risen again. Sometime later, Jesus finds Peter, they've been out fishing, they hop out of the boat, Peter goes to the shore and what does he find there?
[27:46] He finds a charcoal fire and there's the smell again, the smell that will remind him of his denials of Jesus around that fire with the servant girl and as he gets the smell of the smoke again, did it bring it all back to him?
[28:03] The regret, the shame, the guilt of his sin? And then maybe this sinking feeling in his stomach as he realizes Jesus has made this fire, why did he make this type of fire in particular?
[28:20] Is it to highlight that I am not worthy to be a leader, I'm not worthy to be a follower of Jesus, I'm not worthy to be a spokesperson for the apostles? And what does Jesus do?
[28:33] He does the same thing that God had done back in 1 Samuel 7, he restores, but he doesn't restore land in this case, he restores Peter.
[28:44] Peter had denied Jesus three times and Jesus draws out this affirmation from Peter, Peter, do you love me? I do, Lord.
[28:55] Do you love me? I do, Lord. You know that I love you. You know that I love you. Three affirmations drawn out from this gentle Savior, restoring Peter, forgiving Peter.
[29:14] One of the other disciples wrote about this incident in John's Gospel. What Jesus says to Peter is very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go and you think, what is Jesus talking about?
[29:36] And then you remember Peter had made these bold promises to Jesus. I would die for you, Jesus. But of course, Peter didn't die for Jesus. He denied Jesus.
[29:49] But what Jesus does then is restores Peter. You will die for me, Peter, but it will be at my time, in my way, with the strength that I will give you.
[29:59] I will restore you, Peter, and you will do great things for me in my strength. And John says, this is the way in which the death of Peter would glorify God.
[30:16] John, the other apostle looking on, says, this brought glory to God, the way in which Peter died for his Savior. And so Jesus restores Peter.
[30:30] He deals with Peter's sin. He brings about peace in the life of Peter. And this is what Jesus does for all who trust in him, for all his people.
[30:41] If you know and love the Lord Jesus this morning, Jesus helps us by giving us peace. Peace from our enemies, not the Philistines, but from sin, which we can say no to now because it is no longer our master.
[30:57] He gives us peace from Satan who cannot go an inch further than Jesus allows. Satan even may sift us like wheat, but Jesus prays for us.
[31:08] He intercedes for us at the powerful right hand of God. Jesus gives us peace from death, this great enemy, so that death is just a doorway into life.
[31:25] Jesus keeps us in this ongoing battle that we fight. The good work that he has begun in us, he will bring to completion. He will enable us to persevere, and Jesus will restore the losses that we have felt as a result of our sin.
[31:45] We have lost out on so many blessings because of how we have lived. Deep guilt, deep shame, deep sadness, deep regret. What does Jesus say to us?
[31:57] We are forgiven, and not only that, but we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. And you know, even in this world, there are moments when Jesus restores the losses that we have felt as a result of our sin.
[32:17] I knew a man some years ago in a different place, and he would say himself that he had been throwing away all the blessings because of what he was looking at repeatedly online.
[32:30] He was giving himself to this sin that was eating away at his soul, and he would say himself, he didn't deserve any goodness from God. And yet, when he found Jesus, he knew forgiveness, he knew victory over that sin, and not only that, but Jesus restored blessings in his life that he never deserved.
[32:51] Jesus blessed him with a wife, Jesus blessed him with a family. That's not always the way it goes, that's not always the case, but keep an eye out, keep an eye out for where Jesus restores blessings to you that you would have otherwise thrown away.
[33:13] We can say with Samuel, we could say with the apostle Peter, thus far the Lord has brought us, he has dealt with our sin, he has given us peace, we can see that tangibly at times in this life, and when we see our Savior, we will turn to each other, maybe with a wry smile, and we will say to each other, thus far the Lord has brought us, and that will be a good day.
[33:41] And so let's pray and ask God to keep us as we journey this week. Father, we want to praise you and thank you that you are our helper. Lord, you are the one who has helped us thus far.
[33:55] Lord, we praise you that you've helped us to see our sin and that you've helped us by dealing with our sin through the blood of our Savior. And Father, that you've helped us by giving us peace with you.
[34:07] And Lord, we rejoice that that peace has started to permeate other areas of our lives in substantial ways. Help us to keep our eyes open, Lord, to see how you are storing and where you are bringing blessing that we never deserved, but that we can delight in through Christ.
[34:26] Amen.