The Immutability of God

We all know how ridiculous Canadian politicians can be. Well, if there’s anything more ridiculous than a Canadian politician, it has to be an American politician. The following is the actual text of a letter sent by one American politician to another. The date is 1829. The writer of the letter is Martin Van Buren, Governor of the State of New York. He’s writing this letter to Andrew Jackson, who happens to be the President of the United States. The subject of the letter is “Why Railroads are Bad for America”.

Dear President Jackson,

The canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of transportation known as railroads. The federal government must preserve the canals for the following reasons.

One, if boats are replaced by railroads, serious unemployment will result. Captains, cooks, drivers, hostlers, repairmen, and lock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for horses.

Two, boat builders would suffer, and towline, whip, and harness makers would be left destitute.

Three, canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the United States. In the event of trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move the supplies so vital to waging modern war.

As you may well know, Mr. President, railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 mph by engines which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock, and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.

Sincerely Yours,

Martin Van Buren

Governor of New York

We live in a world that is constantly changing. And it seems that we have always had a hard time accepting change.

Think about some of the changes that we have witnessed in our lifetime. Some of you were born back in the 1920’s. In 1924, two airplanes took off from Seattle, Washington and became the very first aircraft to fly all the way around the world. It took them 35 days! Now, the Space Shuttle routinely circles the earth in 90 minutes.

I was born in Montreal in 1952. At that time, my family did not own a TV set. We had just one telephone in our house—a heavy black, rotary dial model. Our phone number was Pontiac 8-9746. (Do you realize that there is a whole generation growing up today that has never even seen a rotary dial phone?)

Nowadays, the average household in Canada has 2 or 3 TV’s, a VCR, a camcorder, 3 or 4 telephones, and an automatic system for answering phone calls. Some of the telephones are cordless and some of them will work anywhere - in the car.

In 1952, there were only a handful of electronic computers in existence anywhere in the world, and they were the size of small buildings. Nowadays, almost every family owns a computer. And the computer that you have on your desktop has more processing power than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon.

Change is all around us, and the pace of change has become so rapid, that even trying to predict what life will be like just a few years into the future can be a risky business.

I have several books in my library that deal with change and the future - books with titles like Megatrends 2000, A Church for the 21st Century, Lifetrends, and so forth. Several of these books were written just a few years ago by people who are considered to be experts in “futurology”. They make their living forecasting the future.

And yet not one of the books in my library that were written in the late 1980’s even mentions something that has totally changed the way we live in the late 1990’s. I’m talking about the Internet. The ability to instantly connect and access information anywhere else in the world, we take for granted. Yet this revolutionary change was not even foreseen just ten years ago.

Change is everywhere. Change is in the workplace. A few years ago, it used to be that the longer you stayed with a company, the more secure your job would be. Now, it’s just the opposite. The longer you stay with a company, and the more seniority you have, the more in jeopardy you are of losing your job.

Eventual retirement for today’s workers is a fading dream. Futurists talk about the graying of the population. Increasing lifespans are making care for the elderly a major issue.

Change is in the education system. Educators are now seriously talking about year-round schooling for public school students. Block scheduling, values education, whole language learning, home schooling—lots of changes from the way things used to be.

Futurists say that the information available to us today is only 3% of the information that will be available to us ten years from now.

Change is buffeting the family as well. More and more children are being raised in single parent homes. Adult children with their children are moving back in with their parents. Many grandparents are being called upon to raise their grandchildren. Our society and our legal system is struggling to define exactly what a family is.

We are like little sailboats caught in a hurricane of change.

In the midst of all that, we come to the Bible and we find that God tells us that there is one thing that does not change—God himself.. He tells us that he is immutable. He does not “mutate”—he does not change from one thing into another.

If you would take your Bible and the sermon notes that you will find in your bulletin this morning, we will look together at what the Bible says about a God who doesn’t change. I will be referring to many Scripture verses this morning, because the doctrine of God’s unchangeableness permeates the whole Bible. It is from beginning to end.

1. The Bible tells us that God’s LIFE does not change.

We often sing the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. The words go like this:

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father.

There is no shadow of turning with thee.

Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.

As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.

And the BIble confirms the truth of those lyrics. In Psalm 102, the Psalmist says to God…

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

Perhaps the most changeless things in all of our experience are the earth beneath our feet and the sky over our heads. And yet the Bible says that, compared to God, these things are as transient as last year’s fashions. God’s life does not change.

He doesn’t get old, even though he has lived from everlasting to everlasting.

G.K. Chesterton said something memorable about him in this respect. He said…

Children have abounding vitality because they are in spirit fierce and free. Therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again” and the grown up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we are.

Our Father is younger than we are. His life does not change.

2. God’s CHARACTER does not change.

As human beings, we are constantly changing in character. A child grows through adolescence to adulthood and, in the process, develops and matures in character.

Paul says “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” Our opinions, our views, our feelings are constantly changing. Our tastes change. Our moods change from moment to moment and day to day.

But God is not like us in this respect. He never changes in character. He is always the same. Theologian Arthur Pink put it this way: “He cannot change for the better for he is already perfect. And being perfect, he cannot change for the worse.” You see, any change in God’s character would have to be from worse to better, or from better to worse, and that is impossible in someone who is perfect.

James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

So that means that when God tells us that he loves us, he’s never going to change. He isn’t going to suddenly decide that he doesn’t love us anymore. And anything that we do is not going to cause him to change in his attitude toward us.

2 Timothy 2:13 if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

There are times in our lives when we really blow it—when we do something that we are extremely ashamed of. And we can barely look ourselves in the face. And we find ourselves thinking “How could God still love me after what I have done?”

Listen, God said that he loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). And because his character never changes, that will always be true. He will never change in his feelings toward us.

That means that there is nothing that I could ever do to make Him love me more. And there is nothing that I could ever do to make Him love me less.

3. God’s TRUTH never changes.

When God makes a statement about something, that statement is true forever. It is not going to someday become less true, or untrue, or irrelevant.

Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.

Psalm 119:89 Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.

The word of man is constantly changing. Take the world of nutrition, for example. A few years ago, the doctors were telling us to drink milk and eat eggs to build strong bones and healthy bodies. But then somebody discovered that milk and eggs had cholesterol, and cholesterol was bad for you, so you’d better eliminate milk and eggs from your diet.

But then a few years later, another medical researcher discovered that there were two kinds of cholesterol; a good kind and a bad kind. And milk and eggs had ‘em both, so maybe some milk and some eggs would be okay. And so it goes.

Man’s truth is constantly changing. Sir Isaac Newton formulated some basic laws of physics which stood unchallenged for hundreds of years. Scientists regarded them to be absolutely true. Until Albert Einstein came along and showed them to be false.

Yet the truth that God has revealed to us in his Word does not change. Jesus said in…

Matthew 5:18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

He said in John 10:35 that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”

So what if the word of the world proves to be different from the word of God? What if the world says: “Well, it doesn’t matter whether a marriage is between a man and a woman, or between two men, or between two women, just so long as they are committed to each other.”

What if the world says “If you’re pregnant and you don’t want to be, you can abort that child in your womb, because it is just a mass of tissue. And besides, whose business is it what a woman does with her body anyway?”

What if the world says “Go ahead and follow a leader whose character and background and personal integrity are a little “iffy” because that really doesn’t matter. That’s irrelevant to a person’s competence to lead.”

Whose counsel is going to prove in the end to be true? The world’s counsel, or

God’s counsel? The world’s truth, or God’s truth? You will often find that the world’s view of what is true is diametrically opposed to God’s view. But guess whose viewpoint is going to prove to be true in the end? God’s truth never changes.

4. God’s PURPOSES do not change.

Have you ever made plans, only to have to change them? I’m learning to write on my calendar in pencil, because chances are, I’ll have to erase it.

The Bible says that God’s purposes do not change.

Psalm 33:11 But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

1 Samuel 15:29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.”

Think about it. We saw last week that God is eternal—He dwells outside of time. He sees everything from the lofty perspective of eternity. So that means that God knows all things. He knows every eventuality; every possibility.

So when he says that he is going to do something, nothing is ever going to come up to catch him by surprise, or cause him to change his plan. His plans and his purposes are perfect from the very beginning. They don’t need to be altered or modified in any way.

But what about those passages in the Bible that say “God repented of what he was about to do.” Passages like Genesis 6:6 where it says that “God was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” Passages that seem to indicate that God may have had second thoughts about something he did or was planning to do.

These passages simply reveal to us that the way that we react to God may change the way that God chooses to deal with us. But that is not to say that our behavior somehow surprises God, or comes up unexpectedly. It is not as though we are throwing a “monkey wrench” into his plans. He knew from eternity past exactly what we would do in reaction to him.

So, for example, in the book of Jonah, when Jonah preached to the people of Nineveh about God’s impending judgment, and they repented, God relented and he did not send the judgment. God’s purposes never change.

In the book of Malachi, the people of Israel had wandered far from God. They had plunged into sin as a nation and as individuals. And God said that he was going to judge them. He said “I will come near to you for judgment.” (Mal. 3:5)

But he went on to say at the end of that verse “but do not fear me…I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.” God had promised to redeem the nation Israel. He had made promises to Abraham that he was fully intending to keep. The fact that the Israelites were sinning did not prevent him from carrying out his purpose for them. Because God’s purposes do not change.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, God has a purpose for you. His purpose for you is to make you like Christ—to conform you to the image of His Son. To supernaturally change your character so that you resemble Jesus. And he is going to rescue you from the evil one and bring you home to be with him for all eternity.

1 Thessalonians 5:24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

Because God’s purposes never change.

5. God’s SON does not change.

The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the image of God (Col. 1:15) the exact representation of his nature (Heb. 1:3). So it’s no wonder that, just as God is changeless, Jesus Christ is changeless in his nature and his character, too.

Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

That’s why “he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” (Hebrews 7:25)

The book of Hebrews says that Jesus is our high priest—our mediator, our go-between, the one who represents us before God—not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. He is our priest forever.

And because Jesus never changes, it means that he loves you just the same today as he did the day he died for you. God’s Son never changes.

_______________________

Now you may be saying “Well, what difference does the fact that God never changes make to me? I live in a world of change. I myself am constantly changing. What difference does it all make?”

Three things: Because God never changes…

1. I can always know where I stand with Him.

Psalm 100:5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

It would be pretty scary to contemplate God’s unchangeableness if I thought that He didn’t particularly like me. There would be no hope of his ever changing! But God has told me that he loves me! And he’ll always love me, with an everlasting love, because He is unchanging.

2. I can depend on his promises.

Abraham believed God’s promises, because he knew God’s character, and he had confidence in God’s purposes. And God regarded Abraham with great affection because of his faith.

When God makes a promise to you, you can count on it. His word is good, his word is true. His promises are trustworthy because he doesn’t change.

3. I can find security in him

We live in a changing world. Sometimes that change brings pain into our lives. You lose your job. You run into a financial crisis. Or tragedy strikes your family. Perhaps you are struggling with a particularly difficult relationship.

And at times like that, everything seems to be uprooted. There’s nothing familiar; no comfortable routine, no anchor to hang on to.

Ah, but there is! It is God himself, the unchanging one. We try to find peace, and security, and stability in so many other earthly things, and sooner or later they all fail, because they are subject to change. Someday, they won’t be there for us.

But God will. Because God never changes. And God’s immutability is just another reason why I need him so much. I need to know him. And you do too!

Do you know him?