YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND FOREVER -- Pastor David Tsai

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.                                    (Hebrews 13:1-8)

Growing up in the 80’s, there was a Christian bookstore near my house, called New Life Christian Bookstore. Before the coming of the Internet, as some of you will remember, the local Christian bookstore is where you went to get Christian books. You could get Christian books, teaching supplies for Sunday Schools as well as church office supplies. It also sold a moderate amount of Christian home décor—mostly Precious Moments (remember Precious Moments?). They also sold plaques. One day as I was waiting to pick up an order, I spent time on the floor looking at the plaques. One of them had Hebrews 13:8 on it: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” This one was different. The word “yesterday” was in a Victorian font. The word “today” was in a popular 80’s font, something like Comic Sans. The word “forever” was in futuristic computer type. I can still see it in my head as if I am still holding it in my hands. It brought home to me in a new way that Jesus Christ had not only been with me in the past but would go with me into the future, even the impossibly far-off 21st century.
Hebrews 11 describes so beautifully the great cloud of saintly witnesses. Hebrews 12 brings that home with an invitation to us to follow in their footsteps:
You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel…Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for indeed our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:22-24, 28-29)
Hebrews 13 asks the very practical question: “Now what?” Now that we have come to Mount Zion and been enrolled with the righteous and received the kingdom, how should this affect our daily life? Our reading for today picks up a little beyond what the author writes in the previous two chapters.
​Love each other, the writer of the Hebrews says. Show hospitality. Minister to the imprisoned and persecuted. Be faithful in marriage. Use your money and possessions wisely. Honor and listen to the saints that have gone before. The writer goes on (13:9-19): don’t be “carried away” by strange teachings and over-scrupulousness about worship, but praise God, share with others, do good, obey your leaders, and pray. Not a bad set of recommendations for the Christian life, in fact.
Why? Well, if the readers need more explanation than Hebrews 1-12 has already provided, the writer reminds them that Jesus has been with them in the past and will go with them into the future. Jesus “also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.” the author of Hebrews writes (13:12); so, trust Him, go to Him, and look for “the city that is to come.” (13:14).
Here I am in the impossibly far-off 21st century, decades after I beheld that plaque. I have tried to love others and do good and pray. I have looked for the city that is to come. Sometimes I have failed. Jesus has never left me.
My father, who is now among the saints, used to use Hebrews 13:20-21 as a benediction. I leave it with you today. I leave it with you today:
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.