Unchanged and Unchanging
Attributes of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 29 viewsPeople change, and weare never quite sure whether we can trust them. But God never changes, and His trustworthiness is never a question.
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While I was in Haiti last year, I had an abscessed tooth and needed emergency dental treatment. After having watched a local “dentist” work with a set of pliers and a bucket to catch the blood, I knew there was no way I would ever make it through such treatment.
Gladys had been in terrible pain for a couple of weeks before the dentist finally came to see her, and when I walked into the yard of her home and saw what was going on that day, I understood why she had put things off so long.
Without being too graphic in my description, I’ll simply say that the dentist was standing by her with a set of pliers, and she had a bucket between her knees, and between moans she would spit blood into it.
So when my abscess happened, I searched and was able to find a dentist in Port au Prince who had modern dental equipment and who came highly recommended.
Then our Haitian director, Gary, and our driver, Dago, whom some of you met when he visited America last year, headed to the dental office in Port au Prince.
It was in a five-story building that had something I’d never seen in Haiti — an elevator.
As we entered the small elevator, I looked over at Gary, and from his expression I was certain he had never been inside one before. I wondered what he must have been thinking, but Gary is a man who keeps many of his thoughts to himself, and it probably would have been too hard for him to communicate them with me, anyway, considering my poor command of Haitian Kreyol.
We rode the elevator in silence, and I was reminded of the old story about the man from backwoods Tennessee visiting the big city for the first time. He found himself in a similar position as Gary as he stood outside an elevator in one of the city’s tall buildings.
As he stood there, an old and haggard woman stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed behind her.
Pretty soon, though, the doors opened again, and the man was shocked to see a beautiful young redhead step out of the strange room with the sliding doors.
Turning to his young son, the man’s eyes lit up, and he said, “Billy, go get your mother!”
People change, and they don’t always change in the way that we would like them to change. In fact, many times people seem to change for the worse, and we find ourselves unable to trust them.
But I have good news for you today: God never changes.
We’ve been talking in recent weeks about the attributes of God. We’ve learned that His holiness gives Him a beauty that attracts us to Him, while also making it dangerous for us to approach Him in a manner that is unworthy of Him.
We’ve learned that we can rely on His omnipresence and omniscience to help us recognize that nothing escapes His attention and that there is nothing beyond His ability to accomplish.
We’ve learned that His transcendence means He is completely apart from us, while His immanence means He can also exist and work within us. And we’ve been humbled by what we’ve learned about His matchless grace and his boundless mercy.
The attribute we’re studying today, immutability, should bring us comfort, because it tells us that none of these other attributes of God will ever change. He will always be holy, He will always be omnipresent and omniscient, He will always be transcendent and immanent, and He will always be characterized by grace and mercy.
His attributes will never change, nor will they ever be diminished.
Turn with me, please to the prophet Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, and let’s take a look at what God says about His unchanging character.
Now, Malachi was a prophet to the people of Israel after they had come home from their exile in Babylon.
Many of them did, and they began to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. We read in the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah about the rebuilding of the temple and the city’s walls.
When the Persians conquered Babylonia, King Cyrus decreed that the Jewish people could then return to their homeland. Many of them did, and they began to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. We read in the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah about the rebuilding of the temple and the city’s walls.
And then we read in the books of the three post-exilic prophets — Zephaniah, Haggai and Malachi — about the spiritual rebuilding that needed to happen among the people. Even after 70 years in exile, their hearts had not turned to God. The priests had been unfaithful, and the people had been unfaithful, even after the punishment of exile.
That’s the background for Malachi’s prophecies, and it’s the setting for what God is about to tell His people through the prophet Malachi.
We’re going to look today at the first few verses of Chapter 3, where God describes His plans for Israel, and, indeed, for all mankind, through the promised Messiah.
1 “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the Lord of hosts.
Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, God had been promising a Redeemer, one who would come and deliver mankind from sin.
He had promised Abraham that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. He had promised Moses that He would one day raise up another prophet like him and that this prophet would have the very words of God in His mouth.
He had promised David that He would raise a descendant from him whose kingdom would last forever.
Through the prophet Jeremiah, He had promised a new covenant, one that would give all of mankind the opportunity to know the Lord. Through the prophet Isaiah, He had promised a messenger who would bring this new covenant with mankind.
And here, in Malachi’s prophecy, He confirms and reaffirms all of that.
The messenger of the new covenant — the Redeemer God had promised in the Garden; the One who would bless all the families of the earth; the prophet who would be like Moses, but coming with the Word of God; the King whose kingdom will last forever; the guarantor of the new covenant; the one to whom every knee will one day bow — this messenger is coming, God says through Malachi.
The messenger of the new covenant — the Redeemer God had promised in the Garden, the One who would bless all the families of the earth the prophet who would be like Moses, but coming with the Word of God, the King whose kingdom will last forever, the guarantor of the new covenant, the one to whom every knee will one day bow — this messenger is coming, God says through Malachi.
And the people would know to expect Him by the appearance of another messenger who would come to prepare the way. That would be John the Baptist, and Jesus would later identify
You see, God has had a plan to redeem us since BEFORE the Garden of Eden. God was not surprised by the sin of Adam and Eve, and He is not surprised by your sins or mine, either.
In fact, it was because he KNEW that we would rebel against Him that God set the plan in motion by which His only Son would give Himself as a redeeming sacrifice to pay the penalty we deserved for our rebellion.
“Behold, He is coming,” God says through Malachi, reminding the people of Israel to watch and wait.
And then God describes a series of events that seem to look even deeper into the future, to the time when the risen and ascended Christ returns from Heaven to establish His millennial kingdom here on earth.
2 “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.
3 “He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.
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4 “Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Notice that Jesus will be coming to purify things, to make the people and the land holy — just as He is holy.
The refiner’s fire and the fullers’ soap both describe tools of purification. The refiner uses fire to purify silver and gold. The fuller uses soap to cleanse garments.
The priests had been offering blind, crippled, diseased, and even stolen animals for their sacrifices. And their attitude toward the offerings had become contemptible and shameful before God. Their hearts were not right with Him, so their sacrifices were not right, either.
Here, God says that when the Messiah comes the people will be cleansed of their sins so that their offerings might once again be pleasing before Him.
Notice that God had always wanted the same thing from the people of Israel: for them to love Him with all of their heart, soul, strength and mind.
The result of such a love on their part would be that they would come to Him with humility, that they would worship Him in spirit and in truth, that they would have complete trust and faith in Him.
These are the same things God still wants — our complete faith in Him through His Son, Jesus; our true worship; and our humble submission to Him as Lord.
God is immutable. He is unchanging in His person, in His purposes and in His will.
His truth never changes.
19 “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
So this promise of a Messiah, this promise of a Redeemer, this promise of a King whose kingdom would be forever was something that the people of Israel had counted upon for many generations.
But now they were back in the land of promise, and things were not going the way they had expected them to go. The great blessings of the covenant that God had made with them had not yet appeared, even after they had returned from exile.
Had God changed His mind about them? Was His promise no longer to be trusted?
It surely seemed that way to them, because He was dealing with His people in a way they had not expected.
But did that mean that He had changed?
Skip over to verse 6, and we’ll see God’s answer to that question.
6 “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
What’s most interesting to me about what God says here is that he calls Israel the sons of Jacob. Now you may recall that Jacob was the father of 12 sons who became the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. He was, himself, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham.
But what I want you to remember today is what KIND of person Jacob was. He was a schemer from inside his mother’s womb. This is the Jacob who came out of the womb clutching the ankle of his twin brother Esau. This was the Jacob who took advantage of a tired and obviously slow-witted Esau, who had offered him his birthright in exchange for a bowl of stew. This was the Jacob who disguised himself as his older twin to trick their father out of the blessing he expected to give to the eldest son.
When God called Israel Jacob, He was not complimenting the people for their righteousness. He was reminding a cynical people that they were children of their cynical father.
And He was reminding them that it was only because of HIS faithfulness and HIS unchanging character that they had not been destroyed by Him. He had made covenant promises to Abraham, to David and to Moses, and He would keep them.
But there HAD been a change in God’s relationship to Israel, and that change was a result of their behavior, their sins.
“When we see a different side of God’s face, it is not because he has changed, but because we have changed in relation to him.” [Joel B. Carini, “God’s Immutability,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).]
1 Joel B. Carini, “God’s Immutability,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).
Think of it this way: If you’re on a moving train coming into a station, the appearance of the station will change as you pass it. Suddenly, you’ll see the other side of it. That’s not because the station changed; it never moved. You see a different side because YOU have moved.
Way back in the Garden of Eden, mankind experienced a perfect relationship with God and experienced only His blessings. But when sin entered the picture, we had moved out of fellowship with Him, and we began to see His justice. It had always been part of His character, but we had not moved into the place where we could see Him from that angle before we sinned.
After that first sin, mankind would be under the penalty of death for its sinfulness, but our merciful God always held out the offer of His gracious redemption for those who would follow Him in faithful obedience. Their obedience would be a mark of their faith.
That’s where verse 5 of our passage today comes into play.
5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.
You see, God’s expectations of us have always been the same. We are to fear Him, which means, among other things, to have faith in Him alone. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Which means not lying about them to gain advantage over them, not taking advantage of the weak and not dealing dishonestly or treacherously with others. It means helping those who are in need.
And as we come to God in faith through Jesus Christ, we find that we gain another perspective of God. Now we see His matchless grace and His boundless mercy. But He has not changed; these things have been there all along.
What changes is the fact that He can now deal with us differently, because we have been changed by the Holy Spirit that He gives to each person who follows Jesus in faith.
If God’s character never changes, then he is unchangeable in His infinite hatred of sin and in His absolute commitment to bring judgment for sin. But if a person changes his attitude toward sin — toward rebellion against God — then God must also change the way that He deals with that person.
The sin must still be punished, and it is that punishment that Jesus suffered on the cross. But God’s disposition toward the penitential sinner who follows Jesus in faith must change, because God is also perfect in grace and mercy.
“if God does remain the same in character, infinitely hating sin and absolutely unchangeable in His purpose to visit sin with judgment, then if any city or any person changes in attitude toward sin, God must necessarily change in His attitude toward that person or city. If God remains the same, if His attitude toward sin and righteousness is unchanging, then His dealings with men must change as they turn from sin to repentance.1
That’s what God tells the people of Israel in verse 7 of today’s passage:
7 “From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
1 R. A. Torrey, Difficulties in the Bible: Alleged Errors and Contradictions (Willow Grove: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1998).
“How shall WE return?”
Through Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross was sufficient to pay the debt for all of our sins.
But God’s plan
Whatever your sin, your repentance and your faith in Christ WILL bring God’s forgiveness.
Because God does not change, we can have faith that what He has said He will do. And what He has said through His Son is that salvation is available to all.
16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
What God has promised through His word is that all can be forgiven.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
These things have been true since the beginning, and they continue to be true today — whatever you’ve done, whoever you have become, you can be sure that our unchanging God is eager to change the way He deals with you.
1 Joel B. Carini, “God’s Immutability,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).
“God’s immutability is not an obstacle to human relationship to God but is the foundation for trust in Him.” [Joel B. Carini, “God’s Immutability,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).]
People may change; their plans may change; their goals or their principles or their allegiances may shift over time, making it hard for us to know what to expect or whom to trust.
21 Many plans are in a man’s heart, But the counsel of the Lord will stand.
But God is unchanging and unchangeable.
If you are a follower of Christ, rest in the comfort and the confidence of He who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
If you are not, you can have that comfort. You can have the complete and unshakeable confidence that you will never find in another person.
God will not change. But God can change you. Repent and follow Jesus, and God will make you a new creature. He will change your heart of stone for a heart of flesh.
Draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you.