The Immutable, Unchanging God
Notes
Transcript
Good morning!
Today we continue in our journey in our series of messages together entitled “The Heart of Worship” to discover more clearly what the true nature of worship is and looks like, taking Jesus’ word to the Samaritan women at the well in John 4 as our guide where he told her that the Father is seeking worshiper who will worship Him in spirit and truth.
Today, we are going to delve into Part 6 of this series, a sermon entitled "The Immutable, Unchanging God".
In a world that is constantly changing, where uncertainty often reigns, there is one constant, one absolute truth we can always rely on - the God of the Bible is immutable, unchanging.
His love for us, His grace, and His mercy remain steadfast. His promises are unbreakable, and His Word endures forever. As we explore this profound truth today, let us open our hearts and minds to the comfort and assurance that comes from knowing our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Let's delve into the scriptures, seek His wisdom, and draw closer to the heart of worship. Amen.
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
This statement implies that the most important thing is having the knowledge of God. It suggests that true worship is not based on outward actions (such as sacrifices, burnt offerings, and formal liturgy) but rather is grounded in the crucial matter of knowing and loving the true God.
God desires that we know Him. The knowledge of the true God, provides the intimacy of acceptable worship.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
No one is wise until he knows God; no one has even the slightest understanding until he has personal knowledge of the Holy One. Without the knowledge of God, all worship is worthless and equivalent to the worst kind of idolatry.
To often when we think of idolatry we think of some ancient civilization bowing down to some statue or shrine to a god of his own imagination. However, idolatry is thinking thoughts about God that are untrue of Him, or entertaining thoughts about Him that are unworthy of Him.
These things you have done, and I kept silent; You thought that I was altogether like you; But I will rebuke you, And set them in order before your eyes.
Progressive Christianity has lowered God to a level that has robbed Him of majesty and holiness. They have made a false god in their own image and likeness. In their thinking about God their minds and reduced God into something He is not.
A. W. Tozer wrote,
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base, as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most sinister fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.
The most basic truth in worship is the worshiper’s understanding of God.
So the question is, can we understand God? Well, the Bible says that we can. Now, we can never fully comprehend Him, as we have already seen when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity.
But we can certainly understand true things about Him, because of His revelation of Him self can be clearly seen in Creation and more specifically in His Word.
The scripture does inform us that those who seek Him will find Him (Matt. 7:7)
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
Solomon wrote Prov.2:3-5
Yes, if you cry out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding,
If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, And find the knowledge of God.
The primary quest of you life needs to be, to know God and understand all that is revealed about Him and make the knowledge of God the most important thing in your life.
If you are consumed with money, fame, power, if you are devoted to the pursuit of success, if you are seeking anything else more than you desire a true and accurate knowledge of God, you will never deeply understand Him or see His glory and thus, never true be worshipping God in spirit and truth.
Let us talk briefly about the difficulty in knowing God
THE DIFFICULTY IN KNOWING GOD
THE DIFFICULTY IN KNOWING GOD
Worship: The Ultimate Priority 6. The Unchanging, Omnipotent God
No one perfectly understands God. Again, from the very outset we must confess that God is incomprehensible; He cannot be confined to the capacity of even the largest human intellect; He cannot be limited by any kind of human definition. Although He has revealed much about Himself to us, everything we know about God we know in the most primitive terms.
1. We get into trouble when we try to make God too much like what we know.
When we use human symbols to describe God, we must remember that He is the ultimate, infinite pattern and not the copy. No metaphor can fully explain God.
For instance, our comprehension of God’s love is based on our experience with human love. However, if God’s love doesn’t mirror human love, we shouldn’t conclude that there’s something wrong with God’s love. Doing so would mean we’re setting human love as the ultimate standard and evaluating God’s love against it.
Worship: The Ultimate Priority 6. The Unchanging, Omnipotent God
It is often easier to think of God in negative terms. We live in a world that is so opposite God that we frequently have to grasp what God is like by saying what He is not like, because He is unlike anything we understand. For example, when we say God is holy, we mean He has no sin. We cannot conceive of the essence of absolute holiness—all we have experienced is sin. We cannot comprehend eternality or infinity, but we understand boundaries, so we say that God doesn’t have any limitations.
2. Another difficulty in understanding God is that the attributes we know of Him are not all there are.
An attribute of God is anything true of God’s character. Of course, since God is infinite, there must be an infinity of truth about Him.
Some attributes of God are easier for us to comprehend than for the angels. First Peter 1 says that the angels would like to understand the truths of salvation, but they don’t. They cannot perceive the reality of forgiveness like we can, because they have never experienced it.
The angels that fell were damned. The angels that did not fall did not need forgiveness.
One thing is certain: when we get to heaven, God will be much more to us than He is now. Although we will never (even in heaven) completely comprehend the infinite richness of His attributes, He will increase our understanding and ability to experience Him. Paul wrote,
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
Nevertheless, we can know for now all we need to know about God through the revelation He has given us about Himself in His Word.
GOD IS IMMUTABLE
GOD IS IMMUTABLE
First, the scripture teaches that God is not susceptible to change. He is what Biblical scholars call “Immutable” that is he is unchangeable and unchanging.
Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed.
But You are the same, And Your years will have no end.
God does not change. Change is either for the better or for the worse. Both are inconceivable with God; He couldn’t get any better and wouldn’t change for the worse. There is nothing about Him that needs to change.
Now when we say that God does not change, what we mean is, is that He never changes His character or His will.
“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? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
God may, however, choose to react differently to man’s varying responses toward Him and who He is.
For example, God commanded Jonah to preach to the city of Nineveh that they would be destroyed. But at the preaching of Jonah, the whole city repented. The Bible says, “God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). Instead of destroying them He blessed them. Did God change? No, it was Nineveh that changed, and God responded to their repentance with a blessing, which is perfectly consistent with His unchanging nature.
Genesis 6:6 says that when God looked at the debauchery of the human race in pre-flood civilizations, He “was sorry that He had made man on the earth.”
And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
God had made humanity to be blessed and to be a blessing, but Adam’s fall turned God’s blessing into a curse. God’s will and His character were unchanged. He would reward good and punish evil. But humanity had changed, and God was sorry for what His creatures would suffer in judgment.
When the Bible says God was sorry, it doesn’t mean that He thought He had made a mistake.
The King James Version uses the word repented. That doesn’t mean He changed His mind. The Bible simply expresses in terms we can understand a divine attitude of grief over sin. It means God responded to man’s iniquity with sorrow and altered His treatment of mankind in accordance with how they were behaving. His will never changed.
God’s immutability sets Him apart from everything, because everything else changes. The whole universe is changing. Galaxies die and begin. Even the sun is slowly burning out. Our world is constantly changing. The seasons change. We grow old and die, and from the beginning to the end, all we know is change.
Not God. He is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
THE BLESSING OF GOD’S IMMUTABILITY
THE BLESSING OF GOD’S IMMUTABILITY
That God does not change is a great source of comfort to believers. It means that His love is forever. His forgiveness is forever. His salvation is forever. His promises are forever.
In Romans 11:29 Paul wrote, “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” God doesn’t change His promise.
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
Timothy 2:13
If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.
If our faith runs low He doesn’t change toward us. What a blessing that is! The security of salvation, is based on God’s unchanging character.
For the Christian, the knowledge that God is immutable is reassuring and exciting. We belong to Him, and He has promised to supply all our needs. We are secure in our relationship with Him. His love for us will never diminish; He will indeed finish the work He began in us (cf. Philippians 1:6).
For an unbeliever, however, the knowledge that God does not change can be terrifying.
God has said that the soul that sins will die. He will not alter His decree.
His Word says that the wages of sin is death, and that will be just as true at the final judgment as it was when it was written.
Even though He might display a divine form of sorrow when executing His judgment, God does not waver in any way, and He will not mitigate His stance on sin. To those who do not know God and place their undying faith, hope and love in and on Him they will all perish and experience the wrath of God, which is the second death.
How do you escape this unchanging reality? By knowing who God truly is, and placing faith in what He has said and promised. Only through Jesus Christ, His word made flesh, can you truly know. Seek Him with all your heart, and the promise is, you will find Him.
Praise God who is immutable and unchanging.