The Post He Keeps Re-Setting

It is the corner post on the west line and it has been in and out of that hole four times.

The first time was legitimate. It came up in a wet spring and it needed doing and he did it, and he did it right, and anybody would have.

The second time he told himself the ground had not settled properly.

The third time was two years later and there was a lean on it that he could see from the house, or thought he could, and Marlin is honest enough with himself to admit that when he got down there with the level the lean was about a degree and a half and would not have bothered a fence in a hundred years.

The fourth time was in March and he has not got a story for it.

He is sixty three. He has built fence his whole life and there are corners on that place his father set that have not moved since the Kennedy administration. He knows how to set a post. Nobody in the county would question it.

And there is one hole out on the west line that he has been back to four times, and there is one thing in his life that he has been back to God about more times than he can count, and he made the connection about a year ago standing right there with the shovel in his hand.

He believes it was dealt with the first time. He would say that to his pastor without hesitating.

If there is a hole you keep going back to, this is written for you. And I want to give you two words out of a verse in Hebrews, because they name exactly what got abolished, and it is not what most people think.

Needeth not daily

Here is the verse.

Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.

Needeth not daily.

Now, the writer could have said a number of things there. He could have said the old sacrifices were wrong, and they were not. He could have said they were insincere, and many of them were not. He could have said God was displeased with them, and He was not, because He was the one who commanded them.

He says they were daily.

That is the thing being named. Not the offering, the frequency. The whole old arrangement carried an unavoidable rhythm of return, and the return was built in, and it was built in because the arrangement could not close the matter.

And what is abolished in the new one is precisely that rhythm. Not the offering, which happened. The daily-ness.

You have had a rhythm of return abolished rather than an offering taken away. Hebrews 7:27 names the daily as the thing that is no longer needed, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a written abolition and makes it real in a person, so this does not rest on how much of it lands on a fence line.

Now, a man who has been back to God about a thing for years might hear that as a rebuke, and I want to be plain that it is not one.

Nothing here forbids you to bring it. God is not weary of you. He does not sigh, He does not look at the ceiling, and He has never once received you with anything but attention. Bring Him whatever you want, as often as you want, for the rest of your life.

The verse does not touch the may. It touches the must.

You have been released from an obligation rather than corrected on a habit, and the difference is the whole of this. It is written as a statement about what is no longer needed, and His Spirit is the one carrying a lifted obligation into a life, which is why it holds on an evening when you did it again.

First for his own

There is a phrase in the middle that most people read straight past, and it is worth stopping on for any man who takes responsibility seriously.

First for his own sins, and then for the people's.

The old priest had to deal with himself before he could deal with anybody else, every day, without exception. His own standing had to be re-established before he could act on behalf of others, and it had to be re-established daily, because it kept lapsing.

That is exhausting to think about and it is exactly the mechanism a conscientious man runs on. Get right, then be useful. Get right again, then be useful again.

And the writer says the new one had no such requirement, because His standing did not lapse.

Which means the whole business of re-establishing yourself before you can be any use to anybody has been abolished too. That is not a small thing for a man who has been quietly running his life on a daily settle-up.

You are working from a standing that has never once lapsed and does not need re-establishing before the day starts. Scripture contrasts a priest who had to go first for himself with one who did not, and the same Spirit at work in that letter is the one testifying inside a person now.

Something belongs here in the middle where it cannot be skipped. If the going back has grown into something that runs your days, if the nights have been getting long, or if the thinking has traveled out past regret and toward wishing to be gone, get a person alongside you. Ring your doctor. Sit down with a counselor. If tonight is a dark one, call or text 988 or a crisis line and let another human being be in it with you. That is not a smaller road than prayer and it is not a soft spot in anybody's faith. God has always worked through people.

For this he did once

And then the last clause, and it is the one to take home.

For this he did once, when he offered up himself.

I want to point at the word this. It is doing something quiet. It refers back to the whole business just described, the daily rhythm, the first-for-his-own, the entire arrangement, and it says: that whole thing, He did, once.

Not one part of it. The whole apparatus, collapsed into a single act, and then finished.

So there is no remainder. There is not one piece of the old rhythm that was left running for people to keep up on their own. It was all in the once.

You have the whole of it done in one act with no remainder left running. Hebrews 7:27 gathers the entire arrangement into this and puts it in the past, and the Spirit takes what is written and makes it living in a man out on a fence line.

Now I am not going to tell you that you never touch that hole again. You have been setting fence for fifty years and habits laid down over that long go at their own pace, and if you find yourself down there with the level in October it would not mean one thing has failed. Anybody who hands you a date made it up.

You are clean right now, and today's visit changed nothing about it in either direction. It is written and it is finished, and it is His Spirit rather than the strength of your agreement who makes a finished thing real in a body.