The Lord has helped me!

[AI translation] In this chapter of the Bible, from which I've just taken the basic verse, a great battle is described: the camp of the Lord clashes with its ancient enemy, the Philistines. This was one of the great trials of the people of the Old Testament, in which they experienced the miraculous grace of God. In memory of this, the prophet Samuel set up a great stone along the roadside as an everlasting reminder of God's miraculous deliverance and named it Eben-Haezer, or the Stone of Salvation, because he said, "So far the Lord has helped us." Let this be a reminder to those who pass this way of God's gracious help and an encouragement to continue the journey. This Sunday, in every Reformed church in the country, we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the liberation in the light of the Word. Looking back with faith in God on the ten years since the great historic turning point, we can only say what the prophet Samuel inscribed on the memorial stone: "The Lord has helped us until now! May this testimony of faith be for us a grateful reminder of God's grace and an encouraging encouragement to continue our journey in hope.The Lord has helped us - above all by judging us! He judged our sins in a harsh, mighty, divine way! Standing in the light of the Word, it is impossible not to humbly acknowledge that we deserve this judgment, that the Lord God has beaten us with a rod to repentance, to the way of conversion, to the recognition and repentance of our sins. Even in child-rearing, there are moments when a kind word, a loving caress or a stern, harsh voice no longer works, only the rod! I remember, at the age of 24, thinking back with such gratitude to my parents' just chastisement, writing a letter from far abroad thanking my Father for every spanking he had ever given me, because I myself, with a mature mind, saw what a loving hand had taken that rod! Can we see God's judgment with such maturity of faith as His gracious help? Our sins and failures were so great that the Lord could look no further: He had to take a rod in His hand. Where would a nation be led by its own wickedness, by the prevalence of its sins, if God were to set it free, let it go unpunished, and then not scourge it severely? Well, we have felt that God cares for us, loves us, for behold, he has chastised us! Our land, our home, our life became a battlefield of terrible judgment, and yet, looking back on it a decade later, we can see more and more today the merciful, loving fatherly hand that held the rod. For this judgment could have ended in the death of the nation burning in Vörösmarty's fever dream! Let us remember, ten years ago, when the earth shook in the wrath of God and the trusses of the then world came loose and the ruins fell on each other: we felt that for us life was over. And here we are! We are alive! God has judged us only for our sins, but He has not cast us away! On the contrary, he has given us a place in a changed world, he has given us a task in the great work of a worldwide transformation of human life, he has given us the great grace of a new beginning of life. Just think, where were we ten years ago and where are we today? Then we may have been sadly cleaning up the ruins of our houses, or burying human and animal corpses in our gardens, and now we are dressed in our festive clothes, praising God in church. Then we may have wandered somewhere, wasted and homeless, but today we have a home. Then we were hungry and miserable, now our table is set every day. Then the anxieties of damp cellars weighed heavy on our souls, now we look up to the spring sky with hope.
Someone told me the other day that he was visiting a friend's beautiful, tastefully decorated apartment and noticed a worn tin cup in the glass cabinet, which in no way fitted in with the many precious things. She asked him how the junk had got there. The hostess said: "Ten years ago, I used this cup for weeks to measure out my daily ration of water for leaching and washing. And now, when I feel dissatisfied with something, or when I take the apartment I live in for granted, or the good food I eat, or even my life itself for granted, I fill this cup with water and drink it slowly. This then brings me back down to earth again from the world of imagination!"
We too could do with a tin cup like this from time to time, so that we don't despair, so that we don't despair, so that our lips open in gratitude instead of complaint. Anyone who saw our capital ten years ago, who today, when he takes a tram, or crosses a bridge over the Danube, or enters an office, or closes the door of his apartment in the evening, will remember that all this is not so obvious, that it is natural, that it was different, and could be different! Remember that the Word is true: the Lord has helped us greatly!
And indeed the Lord has helped us as a church. For our Church, too, the last ten years have been a time of judgement and mercy. In other words, I could say that it has been a time of impoverishment and enrichment. And here it is very important for us to know which one we see as dominant, whether we lament so much about impoverishment that we cannot be grateful for enrichment. The Church has become impoverished, first and foremost in terms of authority: it has had to step down from a shelf of public dignity which, let us be frank, was not its place. Our Church has had to learn the painful lesson that he who wants to be great must be last and he who wants to be first must become the servant of all. It is a lesson that everyone learns with difficulty and sighs, but it is a lesson that has never hurt anyone, only used, because it is Christ's task! The church has become impoverished in material goods, our material income is no longer guaranteed by legal paragraph and state execution. We are no longer a school church. Many of our familiar ways, many of our old forms of church life have fallen out of our hands. We have been judged as a church - and the painful thing about this judgement is that it is not we ourselves who have judged what was wrong, what was unchristian, but God has judged us by the inevitable force of history!
And now, looking back over the past 10 years, we see more and more that this impoverishment was only to make us richer. So let us not lament over the loss of the things we are used to, but let us accept with gratitude the enrichment of 10 years of God's teaching us the greatest of all: walking by faith! This has been the most significant and blessed enrichment of our Church over the last ten years. It is that God has taken the church out of the boat of earthly assurance - like Peter in his day - and is walking on the waters - We are not insured with any earthly assurance, but must truly rely on the uncertain-seeming factor of faith. God has taken the strongholds out from under us and placed us on the ground of faith. There is a strange beauty in this for the believer: that we have stepped out of human assurances, or at least those we thought were secure. We have stepped out of the convulsive effort with which we ourselves wanted to establish our future, and now we are free to experience that we have a mighty and gracious God, by whose power we can walk on water. A believer does not mourn the old and tremble for the new, but at the call of Jesus, steps out of the boat, sets sail and has a happy experience of walking on the waters. The water is not only walkable ground under the feet of Jesus, but also under the feet of a church that looks up to Jesus in faith.
Along with this, of course, the responsibility of each of us has increased unheard of. A great responsibility falls on us, as church members, to proclaim and listen to the Word, to pray, to give examples. For as long as there are external supports - material goods, state guarantees - it is possible to shift the responsibility for the life of the Church to others, to laws, to external circumstances, but if there is only one foundation, faith in Jesus Christ as our Saviour, the responsibility is ours - and here again we can say with great gratitude that this responsibility is awakening in us. Today, we need a more concrete, more realistic preaching of the Word than we did a few decades ago. Today we know better that the Church has only one real enemy and one real danger: the indifference and unbelief of its own members. Today we love our church more than ever, search our Bibles more hungrily, and ask God for the bread of life more than ever! Today we feel more like brothers and sisters with Christ-followers of another denomination, living in another part of the world, than we did in the past!
The etch of God's judgement cuts hard and sharply into the soil of the Church's life - but the ground is ploughed up before the new seed is sown, and behold the first germs of the sprouting seed! Oh yes: it is impossible not to think with great gratitude that the Lord has helped us all this time! More than we deserved!
May the sight of God's gracious help encourage us to go on with hope! Grace always obliges! It obliges us to fill the life given to us with Christian content in every way we can. It commits us to look to our Lord and to listen to His Word. To walk in humility and to serve in obedience. It commands us to reach out to all people with an open heart and to let no colour, race, language or ideology stand in the way of our outpouring of love. It commits us to become, through our faith and prayer, instruments of God's redemptive plan for the survival of all humanity, for a more beautiful and happier future!
The Lord has helped us so far, because he has been merciful to us for the merit of Jesus Christ, and we believe that the Lord will help us again!
Amen
Date: 27 March 1955.