In this video,Dr. Sinclair Ferguson reflects on why Hebrews 13:8 has become so precious to him, and how it changed the way he reads the Gospels.
What is one doctrine or truth that’s become more precious to me? I think it’s this and it’s expressed by the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 13:8, really famous text: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” If you were to ask me, Why is that text so important to you? I think I would say, I think I really realized how important it must be to me because the very last sermon I preached as the minister of a congregation—I’m old and retired now and I’m not the pastor of a church—but the very last sermon of what you might think of as my ministry was in Hebrews 13:8. And when I look back and ask myself, Why did you preach on that text? Part of the reason was because I think we were going through Hebrews in the morning services and I’d finished Hebrews, and in that evening service I thought, “I really didn’t say much about that verse.”
But the reason it’s become so important to me is I think because I’ve long felt that when Christians read those words, they think it’s a nice way of saying Jesus is eternal, the same yesterday, today and forever. And that really isn’t the point that the author of Hebrews making. The point he’s making is: you know what Jesus was like yesterday. And by that, here’s another expression for that, “the days of his flesh.” You know what He was like in the season of His incarnation described in the gospels. Exactly what He was yesterday, He is still the same today, and He is still the same for you today, and He’s going to be like that forever.
And I think one of the things that this text has helped me to do when I read the Gospels is to stop looking for myself. Through most of my Christian life, I’ve had a lot of sermons on passages in the Gospels where the driving force of the sermon has been, Where are you in this gospel story?
And in actual fact, you’re not anywhere in that gospel story because it’s not about you. So the issue here is not how are you like Nicodemus or like Zacchaeus or like the man born blind. What the gospel story is there to say is what Jesus was like to these people. And the force of that text to me, I think has opened up the blessing of reading the Gospels, looking at the different ways in which Jesus ministered to people, ultimately what He did for them, and remembering that He is exactly the same. He hasn’t changed. And to know that He is all that He was to Nicodemus the theologian or to Bartimaeus the blind man or to Mary Magdalene, that He is the same Savior and that He is the One in whose presence I live day by day, has I think invigorated and vitalized my relationship with Him.
So that’s a very, very simple thing, but it’s been, to use the word, it’s been precious to me.