Well, it's Friday already again, and today on Things Unseen we're coming to the last

of what I've called texts that shaped me, and I've appreciated being able to reflect

with you on verses that have shaped my own life.

But if this is your first time listening, I need to reassure you these podcasts are

not all about me.

I'm going to close out the week with words I imagine are familiar to all of us.

Hebrews chapter 13 verse 8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

The author of Hebrews was inviting his readers to think about those who had been their leaders,

and just as he had done after reminding them of the great heroes of the faith in Hebrews

chapter 11, he tells them you got to fix your eyes on Jesus, and he points them away from

all others to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, leaders come and go, but Jesus, he

says, is the same yesterday and today and forever.

I suspect these words are sometimes maybe even often read as, more or less, the equivalent

of saying Jesus is eternally the same.

But there's more to the words yesterday and today and forever than that.

So what does this statement really mean?

Well yesterday here doesn't just mean merely the day before today.

It's referring to yesterday from the point of view of the writer, to what he had called

earlier on in Hebrews, the days of Christ's flesh that's in chapter 5 verse 7.

He's talking about what Jesus was like during those years, Jesus as we read about him

in the gospels, the Jesus who preaches the kingdom of God, who calls men and women to

repentance and faith, the Jesus who shows the power of his kingdom in works of grace and

...