The Unchanging God: July 12th 2015

How do you view our ability to change? As positive or negative. But what if God were subject to change? How could you trust him.

The Bible tells us God never changes, and that is great news for all sorts of reasons.

You can download sermon summary notes in English here and in French here.

Or you can read them below.

The Unchanging God

We tend to see a refusal to change as bad. But we also don’t like it when those we love change for the worse. But what if God could change? If he could, the basis for faith would unravel. However, the Bible tells us God never changes. Theologians call it his immutability.

The Everlasting Rock

The mountains are possibly the most enduring things we can imagine. But Psalm 102 says even these change. And so do we. But God never changes. He never grows older, weaker or wiser. You cannot improve God. We are always becoming something else, God is all being.

This is why we will only find true satisfaction in God. When everything else changes we need a constant. God is that rock.

But what God is like also never changes.

His Unchanging Character

Our characters can change, for better or worse. God’s character never changes. His name is I AM WHO I AM. He could never become less loving, truthful, faithful, or just. His character never changes. That means he will never love you less. His unchanging character means we have nothing to fear, even though we fall short and need to change.

It is because of his unchanging character that God is infinitely worthy of our trust. Everything else we might put our trust in is subject to change. But the giver of these good gifts never changes (James 1:17). We should put our trust in him, not his gifts. And when these good things are taken away, we know this his love and faithfulness to us have not changed.

His Unchanging Truth

Sometimes, we have to eat out words. God never does. God’s opinion on something never changes. He never has to go back on what he said. In a culture that is constantly shifting, you can wonder, ‘what should I think about this or that?’ The first place to start is with God’s unchanging word. But his unchanging truth also means he never withdraws any of his promises. His truth is what our souls can cling to when everything else is shifting.

His Unchanging Purposes

If God’s word never fails, neither do his actions. He never acts out of character. His purposes – for you and for the world - never change. And that is deeply challenging, because if our faith does not match that of the Old Testament heroes, but God is the same God, what does that say about us? And what about our inconsistency in the faith?

When we see ourselves as we are, we can despair. But we shouldn’t. Jesus Christ never changes, and neither does his purpose to transform us into his likeness. Because he loves us, the eternal Son of God entered our world and became subject to change, even the ultimate change of death. The One who had known unending loving relationship with his Father, endured the terrible change of alienation from him as he bore our sins on the cross. He did it so that we might know the never-changing, but life-transforming love of God.