God Is Unchangeable

All right, well we are working our way through our knowing God series right now and

We're trying to do this. We're calling it foundations knowing God

We're trying to do a foundation series every semester a short series on on theology really and on knowing God knowing Christ knowing scripture

All sorts of things like that. So of course we're working through

doctrine of God here and tonight we come to

The statement that God is unchangeable. So we're gonna think about that together. God is unchangeable

Let me pray and then we'll dive in. Lord we ask for help as we think about you

And we know God that we can't know you unless you reveal yourself

And so we give thanks for your revelation and we also ask for

illumination that the Holy Spirit would help us in our hearts to know and see and

Learn and grow in the light of our fellowship with you. And so tonight teach us Lord

What you mean by the fact that you are unchangeable speak through your word to us and show us the implications and the reality of

The fact that you don't change and so we ask for that help in Christ's name. Amen

All right, so we're

doing the series because

First down one we know that we have fellowship with God and we want to know the God that we fellowship with and

Just like any anytime you are in a relationship

You don't you don't progress in that relationship

Without knowledge of the other of the person that you're in relationship with and so we're in covenantal relationship

That's the way we think about our relationship with God

And so we want to grow in our knowledge of him and part of that is

Engaging the mind so in this series and all these foundation series. We're really

Listening to the command of Jesus when he tells us

The old commandment in a new form love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength

So Christ gives a very clear

command that

The mind of the Christian actually has to be engaged in the knowledge of God just like the will the emotional life

All of it has to be engaged in the knowledge of God

So we're thinking about this and really trying to grip the mind in order to change our affections as well

So let me start by saying this

It is difficult to talk about God

It's difficult to think about God and it's difficult to talk about God and that's actually a good thing not a bad thing and

What I mean by that is two things one that God is so other

so

absolute in

Contrast to our creatureliness

That when we talk about him we must do it in inadequate ways we have to

We can never capture him with our speech with our reflections with our thought and so a lot of times the theologians will

Stay stuff like this that you can never

Comprehend God you can only apprehend and that's a way of getting at this distinction between

Knowing God as God knows God which is completely something that we can't even imagine and

Knowing God as we know God which is a very creaturely way of knowing God

And so that that's the first thing the second thing is this at the same time

Our knowledge of God is completely inadequate in one sense and at the same time we say true things about God also and

Both of those things are true actually simultaneously

And that's been kind of the Christian confession for century after century

That we know we say true things about God because God has told us what to say about him

Right, so how do we know that we speak true truly of God because God tells us what to say

And he tells it to us in the revelation of God and mainly in holy scripture and in the revelation of Jesus Christ, right?

so

the Bible

Is it's very important to think about the Bible in this way because the Bible is God's word to us about him in

human words

Right, so we don't believe the same thing that Islam believes about the Quran right where the Quran is actually

God's word directly dictated an angelic speech

Rather we think that the Bible we know that the Bible is God's word in the form of human words speaking

through human beings

By way of inspiration and so John Calvin when he talks about that

He says that every single sentence of the Bible everything every single thing that God says to us about himself is

Baby talk that's Calvin's really exact way of putting it

He said that anytime you read a statement about God in the Bible and read any word in the Bible

It is God

Lisping to you like a mother

Talks to their baby

It's kind of him getting on one knee and saying look you can't understand the adult talk

Which is how God knows himself, but let me give it to you and baby talk and so our

Artheology in some sense is baby talk. It's baby talk about God because it's creaturely and he's absolute

And so only he knows himself as he truly is fully and we know in very limited ways very limited ways

And yet we know truly at the same time because it's God who gives us the baby talk

Okay, so that's what we're doing here and

That's actually a good thing because it means that God is absolute and we have a God that we can depend on

He's that big. He's that great that our speech about God is inadequate if it wasn't then he would be a God we could capture

And contain all right now that leads us directly into what we're saying today

I want to just give you three things three things

We confess we believe that God is unchangeable

Unchangeable and so let me say three things that that means and why it really matters for us three things

Okay, so first let's read together. We'll just have a verse for each of these and we'll flip around

so

I think we have Bibles out somewhere if you'd like to grab a Bible there's some of these chairs over here if you want one

Psalm 102

Two verses three verses from Psalm 102

Psalm 102 verses 26 to 28 says this

Psalms 102:26–28

They will perish

But you will remain that's the earth the heavens and the earth they will all wear out like a garment

You will change them like a robe so God will change

Creation like taking off a robe and

They will pass away, but you God are the same

And your ears have no man you God are the same

So there we've got the doctrine laid out by the psalmist right really clearly

You are the same and he's directly contrasting God to the heavens and the earth

You are not like the heavens and the earth they pass and they will pass

But you are the same you're always the same

Now last week Derek taught or last week two weeks ago Derek taught that God is

Eternal and infinite there was the spirit eternal and infinite those were the three attributes that he looked at

What does it mean to say God does not change and

In some ways all we need to do is replay the talk that Derek gave two weeks ago

Actually, that would be enough to treat the statement that God does not change right

So let me I do this every time I teach here and it usually fails, but let's try

What what does it mean to change?

period

Anything anything and anything anybody can shout out. What does it mean to change?

To grow right so you move from something you're not to something you become

right so in the in older speech when it when we talk about change we think of

potential

So right to be able to change is to have potential

right so

Rock has potential to roll and you have potential to grow and we can talk about that potential in thousands of ways

Potential to grow in stature potential to grow in wisdom whatever it might be that those are all forms of change

Yeah, right. What else can we say about change anything? There's no wrong answer here

I don't it's hard to get the idea of change wrong. I think so

To become something different absolutely now

The question then is what are the conditions in which one has to be in order for change to take place and there's basically two

Conditions now this sounds complicated at first, but it's actually really really easy and obvious once you hear it

You are a creature of change if you live in space and time

Right anything that is in space and in time

Changes it has to so if you live in time, there's always change taking place

Your your taking time is changing all the always in relationship to you, which means you're also changing in relationship to it

So if you're if you are if you live in space time then you're changing

Okay, and we all live in space time

And most things do and that means that everything Derek said last week is really just the definition that God does not change

Because the doctrine when we say when we say God is eternal

Do you remember anybody remember what that means?

It means that God has no relationship to

To change to when we say God is eternal that means he is not bound by

Time and when we say God is infinite it's just saying God is not bound by space

so

Everything we say about God is basically taking who we are and what we are in negating it first

I'm bound by space and time and God is not therefore. He is eternal and infinite

and that means if you're not bound by space and time then you are

Unchangeable

And so the Bible says God's unchangeable. It means he's not bound by space and time

It's literally just to say once more he is eternal and infinite. It's really the same thing

Now actually what that teaches us to bring this point home and move on

Is that when you start to look at any single attribute of God and you tug on it a little bit

What you find is that you're actually saying the same things about God over and over again through the lens of every other attribute

So you can let's say we laid out 10 attributes of God and we picked one to talk about

Immediately we have to talk about the other nine. They're all completely connected

So to say God is unchangeable is the same thing as saying he's infinite eternal immutable and his being witness

Wisdom goodness power justice glory. I think I've got the order wrong on that

confessional statement, but we're always saying really the same things and that is to say that one of the most foundational

statements we say about God and Derek mentioned this last time

is just to say God we confess God is simple and

That is a special word in theology that refers to the fact that God is not like me

That's really what it means

God is simple and the meaning of God is simple

and the meaning of that is that he is not complex like I am and

What does it mean to be complex? It means to be made up of stuff

You know to have what are you? You're you're you're one person

Nevertheless, you are full of parts all of you

You know, you've got arms and legs. You've got hair. You've got feet

but also you've got soul and in that soul you've got

intellect will emotions

All sorts of divisions and they don't all agree with each other

You know, you know, your soul is kind of cut up in pieces when your emotional life doesn't make sense with your intellectual life when you're

crying but your reason tells you it doesn't make any sense

Right that that means that your soul is actually in some sense in pieces. It's not one thing and

God is not complex in that way. He's simple simple meaning

He is

His being just is he's not made up of a bunch of different parts and so every time we say he's infinite. He's eternal. He's love

He's justice

We're really just using human language to try to talk about something we cannot comprehend

Which is the fact that he is

And if he is then he's unchangeable

And that's what it means to say he's simple or unchangeable or infinite or eternal

They're all really to say the same thing

Okay, and of course you think about that and you say I don't understand what that means and exactly right exactly

You know what? We don't understand what that means and that's exactly the point the fact that he and so this is the first little application

and we move on a

Couple things one is

We don't understand that

Because he is absolute and we are creaturely and that is a good thing. That is good news tonight. It's good news

He's not like the other gods of the other religions

Who are graspable?

That's precisely why it's futile to make an idol of him

To put him into wood and stone as a medium

He's he's too big for that. He's too absolute his simplicity. Just want to allow it

And so it's good news today that we have a simple God an unchangeable God now

There's more specific reasons we're gonna come to those in the next two points. So let's go to point two

Point two and let's flip over to a nut the next verse Malachi three six

The last book of the English Bible Malachi three six it says

What does it say it says?

For I the Lord do not change

Okay, so

That's a straightforward verse for I the Lord do not change therefore you a children of Jacob are not consumed

I the Lord do not change it says now

This when we say God is unchangeable secondly

It's not just about trying to speak well about God's essence, which is what we're just trying to do we're trying to

Talk in human terms baby talk about the essence of God

It's not just about that

And this is where we come to see that that's true

We don't confess God is unchangeable just to try to do a theological exercise not at all and

Here he Malachi tells us why God tells us why through Malachi, okay?

So let's look at the context just the next verse is all really and all we need to look at for that

The Lord do not change therefore you a children of Jacob are not consumed

From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my statutes. You've not obeyed you not kept the you've not kept the law

Return to me and I will return to you says the Lord of Hosts, but you say how shall we return?

Will man Rob God let me stop there

What's the context here in which it says maybe we can have I think you can say this in just a couple words

What's that? What's the what's happening here? Why why does God say I do not change?

In response to what who's he comparing himself to there?

Us yeah, yeah, certainly us more specifically in this context, right? It's Israel already talking about Israel, but human beings

Yeah, and but more we can get more specific

He's talking about the people that he's in covenant relationship with

So he's specifically speaking here of people that he has bound himself to by a covenant an everlasting

relationship and they to him and

He's saying I don't change, but you do

Meaning you humans that I have covenanted with you know a covenant is just to say you have a religious relationship with God

He knows you and you know him that's a covenant and

and

He's saying here. I don't change

Children of Jacob my covenant people, but you do and the way you change is that you break the covenant

You break the conditions of the covenant you break the laws you don't honor me you make idols you disobey me constantly

You're a bunch of rebels and

yet

What's the conclusion I Lord do neither Lord do not change therefore you are not consumed

And you see what he's saying he's saying that because I don't change and

Because I promised and covenanted myself to you in grace and mercy

You are not consumed even though you absolutely deserve to be

So that's what he's saying here now. He's comparing himself subtly to the gods of the ancient Near East and

he's saying that

Israel know that if if you were worshiping a demonic figure which the gods of the ancient Near East often are

their capricious

their little G gods meaning they're actually rebellious spirits against the true God and

Any God that the nation's worship is a God who judges

Directly immediately

And he's saying but because I don't change I show mercy

And so in other words what what God is doing here is he's appealing to his covenant promises and

Saying that the essence of God the unchangeability of God's essence

Manifest when he comes down into the world and it becomes the fact it becomes the God who keeps covenant

And so the second dimension of the immute we unchangeability. We also call this by the way immutability

God God does not change also can be just called immutability. It's the same meaning

It's so important because it is the foundation of all covenant relationship

All right, so understand understand what we're saying. We're saying this

If God was changeable there would be no grace

If God was changeable there would be no cross

If God was changeable you would not have a savior nor salvation

But it's God's immutability his unchangeability

that

Grounds all of the covenants of mercy and grace

Because in every single one of them you break it and he keeps it

He doesn't judge you even when you break the covenant and

Jesus Christ comes through that through that covenant of grace that covenant lineage

And so his covenant faithfulness, you know, that's something we talk about that's something Christians talk about is something the Bible talks about

Covenant faithfulness is a product of the immutability or unchangeability of the living God

Which means that when God is unchangeable in his essence and he comes down into creation

He keeps it that way. He retains his attributes. He does not change

Even when he condescends

Okay, he's always unchangeable

All right, so we can give thanks for the doctrine of God's immutability

Because if you if you don't have that reality you don't have Jesus

And so it's a big deal

Grace is the product of the unchanging promise of the unchanging God. All right thirdly and finally

So God's essence is immutable God's covenant grace is the product of his immutability and then finally

I'm gonna flip over to James 117

James 117 is a very famous verse

For this idea it says every good and perfect gift is from above

Coming down from the father of lights

With whom there is no variation or shadow

Due to change

All right this verse I've always found tricky

With God there is no variation or shadow

Due to change and he is the father of lights

Do you see the metaphor that's being used here?

Anybody got it? What is it?

He's the father of lights and

He doesn't make shadows God doesn't make shadows

What's the contrast I

Shouldn't have asked this question. This is one of those bad. You don't do this when you're teaching moments. I always do this

the contrast here is

God and the and the lights right so what are the lights the lights are the Sun the moon the stars and

when the Sun's out and the Sun and we well we move Sun moves a little too, but we move

What happens when you're standing if you stand still in one place out in the middle of the afternoon for three hours?

What do you notice about the ground around you?

The shadows moving right so he is the father of lights the Sun men and stars and

With him there is no shadow

Meaning as God moves about he doesn't he doesn't cast a shadow

That's what it's saying

Therefore God unlike the Sun Moon and stars does not change

So God doesn't move around like the Sun and therefore doesn't cast a shadow like the Sun does

That's what it's saying there

And so this is a classic New Testament statement of the immutability of God. God doesn't change like the heavenly bodies

God's not

Cyclical he's not moving a bet round in those ways. He doesn't change

now I want to read that verse to actually create a problem for us and

Let's go to this is the one one section point three that we're gonna read just a few passages very quickly

Numbers back to the Old Testament to numbers 23

Numbers 23 verse

Numbers 23:19

19

And numbers 20 3 19 is another classic it says

God is not a man that he should lie or a son a man that he should change his mind

So it's saying that not only is God's

You can't say that God's mutable based on his condescended

Presence

So even if God is working in the world, you can't say that he's like the Sun

Casting shadows. He doesn't change even though he comes into the world. That's James

Then you come back to numbers and it says also

You can't say that he like a human being changes his mind

So he doesn't decide to do something and think God that was a bad idea and

Turn around and do it do it a different way. He doesn't he's not that he's simple

He's not composed of parts his mind is his eternal will

They're completely one thing and so it net there's no change there at all now

Maybe you can anticipate the problem

And the problem that we're gonna create for for three minutes in a dress is found in a

Bunch of places, but let me give you just two two more and

that would be

Since we're in numbers just flip back to Genesis 6. This is probably the most famous and most difficult of the passages

Genesis 6 verse 6 very famously said

Genesis 6:6

The Lord

Regretted that he had made man and it grieved him to his heart. So then he decides to judge

Heaven and earth earth with the flood

So the word there is regretted. It's also the word that in Hebrews also just repent

It's also the word in Hebrew that just means change the mind

So you can translate it that way you can say God changed his mind. He regretted

He flipped the script in his mind on this

Okay, so then you've got let's just give you let's just give one more Jeremiah

2613 it's the last one we'll flip to

Now therefore mend your ways and your deeds

Israel and obey the voice of the Lord your God and the Lord will relent of

The disaster that he has pronounced against you same word for changing the mind or repenting

So they're using a very specific translation here relented though if you if you will change the Lord will

Repent or repentance really just means to change

To he'll relent. He'll back away

He'll he'll decide to do something different than he was doing. It's the same verb. It's the same word that we have there

So numbers 23 don't think don't everything that the Lord is

Is like a man who changes his mind or repentance and

Then at least five times in the Old Testament. We've got the same verb

Being used of God

That he does do that now. What do we say? What do we do with this?

And this is important to treat because a lot of people who are questioning Christianity will bring this up

This is one of the common things

If they know if they know what they're talking about if they know the Bible very well at all

This is something that is often brought up

Now what we say what we've said for centuries now as Christians

And this was something that they were dealing with all the way back in the early church is

That we have to always remember that because God's word is God's word. We let it we let scripture interpret scripture

And so that's a fundamental rule of interpretation

And so when we come across scripture and we see at least three or four major moments

Where it couldn't be clear for the text to say

God does not change. He does not change. He does not change and he doesn't change his mind

And of course, we know that as soon as we start thinking about God that must be the case that it's a logical requirement as well

As soon as we see that then we can come back and say, okay

We've got a bit of a rule developed

Whereas we need it

We need to go and read the rest of the Bible through the lens of what we know about God and its clearest statements

And so when it comes to passages like this

It's actually a little easier to deal with I think then we might think and this is this is what John Calvin says about it

And you can never go wrong by just saying what John says John says that

John says that this is actually part of God's baby talk to us

That's how he deals with it and that's how most Christians have throughout the centuries is that we need to go across the Bible and

Let what God says in clarity about himself be true because it is and

Then we need to go through and understand that these narritival places and these are stories these narratives

these narritival places are

Are speaking to us in very very human ways Calvin says this is where God's baby talk is at its maximum to us

So in other words we can go to back to Genesis 6 and say there's no change here in the simple God when he says I

regret that I made man

instead what's being shown to us there is

That God hates sin

That's the actual doctrine underneath the statement

And so we know God doesn't change we know God doesn't change his mind

But in the way God has chosen to speak to us through that story

He's chosen to say I regret and you grieve me and

That's that's baby speech. There's no change in the God who stands outside of space and time

In that moment none at all if there was then everything else would fall down

everything we believe and

We've got clear enough statements to the contrary

But instead what's happening in that moment is God saying

Let me explain it to you like you would say to another person

That sin really is so bad that it grieves me

But it doesn't change him in other words his plan has always been the same

God knew the flood was gonna happen because his eternal will determined it from eternity

And I don't even know what that means. I don't know how to talk about it

But he doesn't change he doesn't change at all

And so we we let the clear statements of scripture determine the harder things

And especially in these narratives and so here's the last thing I'll say

I think this Jeremiah 26 passage that I read actually really helps us because here the same verb is being used God

Repents or relents or changes his mind

But what does he say he says to Israel if you will bow the knee if you'll put away the idols if you'll repent then

I'll come I'll come to you all relent from your

Exilic plight that I've put upon you now that doesn't mean that the counsel of God's will has changed from eternity

It doesn't have to mean that no not at all. It's simply God exercising the normal thing

He always says to humans right and that's be obedient

Be obedient and God honors that God wants to respond to that

But it has nothing to do with changing the God who stands outside of space and time who's determined all these things

From before the foundation of the world

That's not a problem for us at all. I don't think

now

Let me close with this. Let me close with this

One of the reasons that we know that and this is the last word one of the reasons that we know that is

Because Jesus Christ came into the world

And what we start to learn as we read the Old Testament is that

Even though there are moments where God says things like I'm repenting. I'm changing my mind

even even though he says that we realize throughout the Old Testament that the

underlying story is actually that God has never had a plan B that

That starts to come out really clearly over the course of the Old Testament and so in Genesis 50 20 you've got that famous place where

Jacob God says through Jacob, you know you my brother's meant to kill me and

There was only evil in your heart

But God intended this and he intended it for the good

And then we come to Romans 8 and we realized that everything God's done is for the good of him who purposed it all and

That maximal good is in the midst of the maximal evil of the cross of Jesus Christ

You know, there's been nothing more heinous in human history than murdering the Son of God and

nothing that's been

Nothing that's even touched upon the salvific nature right nothing that's been more good we can say in the crudest sense

than the cross of Christ and

So in the cross of Christ we realized that the plan of God has always stayed the same that he's immutable and unchangeable in his

Covenantal purposes and we can say that in Christ the unchangeable God took on the changeable

Jesus Christ is the unchangeable God who has taken on the changeable. He's taken on a changeable nature

He's taken on a changeable body. He died after all

that's a big change and

that means

That Christ is immutable from eternity the Son of God and mutable in history

And that's exactly where the immutable God chooses to save us

That's exactly how he chooses to save us

The God who stands outside of space of space and time has come into space and time and that's been his plan from the beginning

So let me leave you with this meditation one line

God is

All is and always will be unchangeable and

He is and always will be unchangeable in his love

Toward you

and

That's why it's so important

Let's pray father. We ask now that you would apply

The truth about you to our hearts that we would have assurance assurance because you are unchangeably loving to us

And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen