Straight

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever — Hebrews 13:8

Hebrews talks about the end of the daily, repeated sacrifices and emphasizes the once-for-all or eternal nature of Christ's sacrifice. The former Covenant demanded that the priest stand and minister continually in the Holy Place. There was no end to it, no rest. Christ finished and sat down. He got it done — paradoxically enough, because what He did was eternal. His sacrifice was of a different kind, the blood applied to an altar outside time and space.

When Jesus began His ministry, a leper came to Him and said, "If You are willing, You can make me clean." Jesus replied, "I will". The leper was wise enough not to question the power of God or the ability of God. He knew that the One could change his circumstance, could intervene in his life, could restore and heal. The only question is, Will He? And the question is important. If one is a leper — read "sinner" — it is reasonable to ask God if He will cleanse me specifically. I may not be worthy of forgiveness and restoration. I may not be acceptable to God for some reason. The wise leper does not presume upon God, nor does he accuse God of being capricious. I have to ask God if, in my particular case given all my personal contrariness, I am in line for cleansing.

The good news is that God is no respecter of persons. Christ's work covers each and every one of us regardless of our sins or our history. As He loves each of us individually, He deals with each of us individually. Sometimes He may tell us to do something different, to head in a new direction: "Go, show yourself to the priest." He may spit on us or put mud in our eyes. He may call out our name, take us by the hand, or simply touch us and say, "I will." All of us are different. All of us are subject to change. Jesus is always the same. The differences are not in Him but in us.

We are the ones operating in time and space, influenced by circumstances, traversing various landscapes, sometimes on the mountain, sometimes in valley. We are walking by day, stumbling by night. We change with the seasons.

When the Israelites were preparing to enter the Promised Land, the Lord laid out the the lines of their inheritance by tribe and clan. With that Moses also laid down a strict rule: You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. We all need permanent markers, absolutes that we can go by, stakes that we can trust.

The original front door of my childhood home was placed where the sun would shine directly into it at exactly noon in mid-summer. They built on other rooms and porches, but everything aligned from the shadows that marked the first door. Twenty-five years later when we added a room on the front, the carpenter remarked how unusual it was to find an old house "where everything was square".

If we attempt to build our lives on the shifting sands and twisting shades of current opinions, popular culture, and the philosophies and ideas of men, we will find that things get warped in a hurry. Some thought that because it was new, it was good. Unfortunately for them, nothing is new under the golden sun; the old brass lies just get polished and re-sold. Some said, "Man is the measure of all things", forgetting that it all depends on the Man. Some say, "Everything is relative" and simply make the next cut from the last without hanging onto the pattern, magnifying each error as they go along. Others argue that the system is now too complex, too advanced, and too sophisticated for the simplicity of Christ.

No, we need the Unchanging, the Absolute, the Eternal. The more complicated our world becomes, the more we differ from the ancients, the more our technology advances, the more we need Jesus to be the same. The bigger the house gets, the more we must rely on a perfect Cornerstone.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. (Matthew 7:24-25)

The city is laid out in a square; its length and width are the same. He measured the city with the rod at 12,000 stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal. (Revelation 21:16)