There is a corner post on a place I know that has been dug up eleven times, and it was set right the first time.
Now, if you have never set a corner post, you should know it is the hardest work on a fence. The whole line pulls against it. You go down deep, you get it plumb, and you pour concrete around it, and then you leave it alone for a couple of days and after that it is not going anywhere for thirty years. A well set corner post outlives the man who set it and usually the fence too.
He set that one about eleven years ago and he did it properly. Took him the better part of a day.
And every spring, when the frost comes out of the ground, he goes out there with a shovel and digs down around it to check it.
It is always solid. Eleven times, always solid. He gets down a foot or so, works the dirt back from the concrete, puts his shoulder against the post and leans on it, and it does not move, and then he fills the hole back in and goes and does something useful.
His neighbor asked him about it once, in the mild way neighbors do, and he said something about frost heave, which is a real thing and happens to badly set posts, and both men let the answer stand.
Here is what neither of them said out loud. Every time he digs down around that post, he takes a little of the ground away from it. Not much. Not enough to matter in one spring. But eleven springs of working the dirt back and filling it in is not the same as eleven springs of leaving it alone, and the one thing in this world that could ever loosen that post is the shovel of the man who set it.
The checking is not maintenance. The checking is the only threat to it.
That is you with the shovel.
You've brought something to God, once, properly, and it went deep and it went plumb and it was set. And every so often you go out and dig around it to see whether it held. And it always has. And you do not come back from those trips more assured; you come back with your hands dirty and the ground round the post a little looser than it was.
The word in Hebrews is once
The letter to the Hebrews is written to people who had grown up with a system where the same thing had to be done again every year, on a set date, without fail. That is the background you need. Then this sentence lands.
For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.Hebrews 9:26
Read the first half slowly, because it is an argument and not a decoration. Then must he often have suffered. The writer is saying: if this needed doing repeatedly, He would have had to keep dying, over and over, since the beginning. And He has not. Therefore it does not need doing repeatedly. That is the whole logic, and it is airtight, and it is aimed squarely at a man with a shovel.
You are standing on something that was set once and cannot be set again, because setting it again would require a thing that has not happened, and I am not making that easy: Hebrews 9:26 argues it out in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can put it under a man's boots.
Now look at the phrase put away sin. In the Greek it is a word for canceling, setting aside, doing away with the force of a thing. It is what you do to a rule when you repeal it, not what you do to a stain when you scrub at it. Scrubbing needs repeating. Repeal does not.
You have a matter that was repealed rather than cleaned, and a repeal does not weaken between inspections, which is written into the argument of the chapter rather than into my opinion of your springs, with the Spirit of God able to get a shovel out of a hand that has held it eleven years.
And here is the part that is hardest for a working man to hear, so I will say it plainly. Your checking has not been faith. It has been diligence, and diligence is a virtue nearly everywhere, and this is the one place where it does harm. A conscience that keeps digging is not more careful than one that rests. It is only tireder, and the ground round the post is looser for it.
This holds without you, and it has held for eleven springs while you kept proving to yourself that it might not, because Scripture says once, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a place to stand rather than a doctrine to nod at.
Put the shovel down.
The post is set. It was set once, deep and plumb, and the concrete went round it, and nothing since has moved it and nothing since is going to. The thing you have been checking every spring has never once been in question, and the only force in the world with any prospect of loosening it has been the checking. Hebrews 9:26 settled that before you owned a shovel, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a man able to walk past it.
Hebrews will not let you have a second setting. If this needed doing again, He would have had to suffer again, and He has not, which means the once was a once and not a first attempt.
You are standing on a finished work and your checking has never been the reason it holds, because Hebrews 9:26 says once, in the middle of an argument built to close exactly this door, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that out to a fence line in the spring.
Fill the hole in and leave it. Go and do something useful.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice this spring has left you, and a plain one is right. The standing to say them is not something a man works up to and it does not come off his record: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by how sure you feel of the ground. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not what was set. It is the digging. Speak to that. What He does with the rest of it He does in His own way, and the unclenching is yours to do this evening.
- Digging I do every spring, you are not maintenance, and in the name of Jesus I put the shovel down. Scripture says He appeared once to put sin away, and a thing repealed does not need scrubbing at every year.
- Fear that it might have shifted over the winter, you have had eleven springs out of me and every one of them found it solid. Scripture argues that a second setting would need a second suffering, so there is no second attempt for you to worry me about.
- Lord God, You set this once, deep and plumb, and nothing since has moved it, and I am sitting here with both hands open and no shovel in them. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the settling and Your word said once, and I am received on ground You laid and not at the end of another inspection.
Hebrews 9:26
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