FBC Adult Bible Study

I wasn't planning to be here today.

Chris and I had originally planned on a nice six -day backpacking excursion, and we

ended up changing that a few weeks ago for various reasons.

And glad we did.

We did go out a couple of days, Thursday and Friday, and

realized there's this age you get to where you have to be in a certain level of

physical conditioning before you try something that extensive.

So anyway, we're glad for the time we were able to get out and get some hiking in,

but not the duration we expected.

So anyway, Ron Burnett's here today, and he's going to come and teach and trust to be a blessing to us.

Well, it's good to be with you again.

We always enjoy coming up here to Sterling.

And one of the things I enjoy is the ride up here, just to drive, come up 40.

And there are some beautiful scenes along the way of farmland, and I

appreciate it.

We used to live in Colorado, and you think, colorful Colorado, and a lot of beautiful scenes

there.

But I tell you, there's a certain beauty to the Midwest farmland, and I really enjoy that.

And it's good to just enjoy seeing the corn grow.

Mine's taller than I am right now.

And our son's in -laws,

one of our boy's in -laws farm, and they always have a 4th of July picture they take of the

family out along the cornfield to show you how tall the corn is at this time

of year.

Of course, it's way beyond knee high.

And so I just enjoy the Midwest and the

farmland.

I enjoy seeing the crops grow, the farmers getting things ready, the crops growing.

And then I enjoy the harvest time, too.

Just a great time.

So we enjoy the ride up here, really, really enjoy that.

One of the studies I've done recently in our Sunday school at Germantown Hills

is the attributes of God.

We did a 13 -week study in which I took a different attribute of God each week, and we

taught about that, what it was.

Sometimes I felt like it was a seminary class, but everybody seemed to

enjoy it, and I think we profited from that.

The attributes of God are a tremendous subject, and I'm perhaps enamored by them

and enjoy my study of them.

And previously here, when I taught a class here, one of the last times I talked

about the fact that God is

omnipresent, that he is present at all times in all places in

his entirety.

And so I promised that if I ever came back and taught Sunday school again, we'd do another one of the attributes of God.

And so here we are today to do another one of them.

And this time, I had a hard time telling pastor this morning what the title of this was.

I had a really hard time getting this out of my mouth.

Immutability.

Actually, I can say it easier than that, immutability.

And in this world in which we live, it seems to us that nothing is more certain than

that things change.

God never does change.

He is immutable.

Some years ago, when I was attending a Moody grad school in Chicago, I would fly in

from Colorado Springs, stay over the weekend in order to get a good airfare

and so forth, and I would stay with Vicki's aunt and uncle in Wheaton.

But one time, I decided that I wanted to change things around a little bit, and on the weekend, I decided that I would

come over to the Morrison area and visit relatives, family.

Morrison's where my mother in that area was raised.

And so I arranged to rent a car and drive over there.

But I had a little bit of problem renting a car.

I had not renewed my driver's license.

In Colorado, you got 90 days on either side of your birthday to renew it, and it was on the other

side of my birthday, and they just said, well, this is Illinois.

And you can't rent a car from us.

So I got a hold of my aunt, who lives in a little town of Fenton.

I'm not sure if you know where that's at, near Morrison.

And I called and told her what my problem was, and she said, well, Roger and I will come and get you.

And so I arranged to take a bus to Rock Falls, and they came over to Rock Falls and picked me up

and took me over to Fenton.

Along the way, they took me by, they took me through the little town of Linden, where I had lived as a child.

And as we drove through Linden, I just remembered a lot of things there.

But on the other hand, everything had changed.

Everything, everything seemed changed.

And it has been said that the more things change, the more things change.

I guess that sounds like a redundancy, but it is a truth.

So from one day to the next, the world in which we live is a little bit different than it was the day

before.

And it will be a little bit different tomorrow.

A fifth century philosopher, Heraclitus, claimed that it was impossible to step into the

same river twice.

His point was that by the time you climb up out of the river, up the bank, and

then back down the bank and into the river, that it was no longer the same river.

The water had kept flowing all that time, and so it was a different river.

Well, life is a continually flowing stream of constant change.

And that's why I believe that the immutability of God is an important thing

and a wonderful thing.

When we affirm that God is unchanging, we call that his immutability.

We believe scripture teaches that God is unchanging.

And as the theologians say, he is immutable.

Now, that word immutable comes from two Latin words, mutare, meaning

to change, and im, m, meaning not, and thus, together,

they mean not changing.

Because God clearly says, I change not, in Malachi 3 .6, we see that God

is immutable, and by which we mean God does not change.

I wanna go over to the book of Psalms here for a moment, and Psalm 102.

In Psalm 102, I wanna look at verses 25 through 27.

And there it says, of old, you lay 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.

I don't know about you, but I'm glad that God does not change.

And so here's a definition of immutability.

God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises,

yet God does act and feel emotion, and he acts and feels differently in

different situations.

The reason that God does not change is that he's perfect just the

way he is.

There is neither need to change, nor the possibility of God

changing.

In his book, On the Attributes of God, A .W. Pink writes,

he cannot change for the better, for he is already perfect.

And being perfect, he cannot change for the worse.

Altogether unaffected by anything outside himself, improvement or deterioration

is impossible.

He is perpetually the same.

And so God cannot suffer loss, or decay,

and nothing can be added to God, and nothing can be subtracted from him.

He is incapable of being better, for how can you improve

upon perfection?

God is incorruptible, and therefore he cannot and will not change.

Now, I just wanted to look at a couple of other verses here for a moment, going over to the book of Romans, in chapter

one, and verse 23.

Romans chapter one, verse 23.

And then after that, what we're going to do is we're going to go over to the book of 1 Timothy, and chapter one,

verse 17.

So let me kind of get to both of those here real quick.

Chapter one, and there we go.

All right, in Romans one, and verse 23, it says

concerning, he's talking about

the men of the world, and how they have corrupted themselves.

But he contrasts that.

It says that they changed the glory of the incorruptible God

made like corruptible man, or into an image made like corruptible man.

So look at the word incorruptible.

We go over to 1 Timothy chapter one, and verse 17, and there it says, down to the king

eternal, immortal, invisible to God, to God who alone is

wise, be honor and glory forever and ever.

And when we look at the words immortal there, and the word incorruptible in

Romans, those words, frankly, are the same in the Greek, ephthartos.

It is a word that means undecaying.

So hence it means imperishable, not subject to decay, and thus ever the

same, unchanging, and incorruptible.

God is immutable.

There are some really interesting pictures in scripture about our

unchangeable God.

And we want to look at two or three of them.

The Bible uses several different pictures to portray the fact that God is

unchangeable, or that he is immutable.

And some of those explain what he is not like, and

others explain what he is like.

So the portraits that the scripture painted of God are in stark contrast to

the gods of the heathen, who were constantly changing their minds.

You know, they acted on caprice.

They would say one thing, and then they would do another thing, and they were unreliable to make a promise,

and not keep them.

And that's where the gods of the heathen, or the idols, the way they were perceived.

The heathen, or the heathen mind, always changing.

So one of the first things that we noted as I read this morning from Psalm 102,

in verses 25 through 27, is that God is unlike worn

-out clothes.

You know, in other words, he, well, I should probably go over there and read that for you.

Back in Psalm 102, get it here quickly.

So we have it before, Psalm 102, verse 25 to 27.

And he says, "'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 have no end.'".

And so in that passage, he is kind of describing this fact that God is the

same, and that he does not change, with a garment

that grows old.

You know, day after day, we rise from our sleep

only to discover that, first of all, the earth is still there, and the sun is still in the sky,

regardless of how many rainy days have obscured its hue.

And yet, the psalmist says the heavens and the earth will perish.

They'll perish like clothing.

You know, clothing has a way of, as you wash it and wear it and so forth,

it wears thin.

I think one of the things that wears thin on me very quickly are my socks, you know?

They just kind of wear out.

They wear out in the heels, they wear out in the toes, and pretty soon, you just gotta throw them in the trash can.

You know, they're done for.

I would ask my wife to darn them, but she doesn't know how to do that yet.

That's not a thing her mother taught her.

So anyway, I'm not sure her mother knows how to do it either.

So anyway, we used to talk about, you know, darning socks, and you'd fix them.

But they just, because they just wear out.

They wear thin.

And eventually, our clothing that wears thin, and sometimes our clothing gets too small for

us, or maybe we get too big for it, whichever way you wanna look at that.

And so, we have to get a new wardrobe.

God is compared to clothing that wears out.

God says that he is, I am that I am, and I would conclude that that,

amongst other things, that that means that he is the unchanging one.

I am that I am.

So God is unlike worn out clothes.

Another picture you might find in scripture, it's on in Deuteronomy, chapter 32.

Deuteronomy, chapter 32, and verses three and four.

And there it says, for I proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God.

He is the rock.

His work is perfect.

For all his ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice, righteous and

upright is he.

God is much like a rock, and we're going to say that he is an eternal

rock for us.

And as you look through scripture, you oftentimes find God being described as a rock in a

great number of passages.

And I've written several of them down here.

Well, let's take a look at one of them.

Let's go back to, well, let's go over to 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, and verse four, a New Testament passage.

1 Corinthians, chapter 10, and verse four.

Just to look at one of those passages.

And there it says, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they

drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.

So you'll find places where Christ is like a rock, and God, the Father, the first person in the Trinity,

is like a rock.

In the Hebrew of the Deuteronomy passage, the word rock comes

first in the sentence.

Is that important?

Yes, it is.

Because coming first in the sentence, it gives the word rock the greater place of

prominence.

In other words, it's something that is being emphasized.

It comes first in the sentence.

And so the word rock speaks of an unchangeable refuge.

God is our rock, an unchangeable refuge, a place that we can always safely go in

times of difficulty, turmoil, or stress, or disappointment.

We can go to our rock.

And he is the one who grants us a firm defense and a secure resort

by virtue of the fact that he is unchangeable and that he is

unconquerable.

So God is a rock, something imperishable and unchangeable.

He's not some kind of divine putty that is molded and shaped by the

circumstances of time.

Now, we live in a modern world where people will say things like, well, God is like this.

I think God is this way.

I think the modern mind thinks of God as being that.

He's malleable.

He's like putty.

They can shape him into what they want him to be.

But that isn't the picture of Scripture at all.

God is a rock.

He does not change.

He's not molded by and shaped by circumstances in time.

Philip Rikin has likened God, the God of heaven and

earth, to a granite boulder in the middle of a stream in the middle of rapids,

but it's actually better than that.

Day after day, you can see a rock in the middle of a stream and perhaps in the Rocky Mountains

where we used to live, we'd go and sometimes go to a park or someplace and there would be a

stream running through it.

And every time you got there, you saw that spot, there would be a rock right out in the middle of the

stream.

And every time you went there, that rock was the same.

Water just kept flowing by it, kept flowing over it and so forth.

And it never seemed to perish.

I suppose in time and if you have enough time, enough years, that it would wear down.

But as you go and see it day by day, month after month, year after year, the

granite boulder is unchanged by the swirling current,

the current of water that flows around it and over it.

Now, our God is like that.

He doesn't change.

There's nothing that changes.

Circumstances don't change him.

We don't change him.

He is ever the same.

And the swirling tide of change in our world does not affect our God as it affects us.

He does not change because of circumstances and he is ever constant.

And so no matter what our circumstances are, changing circumstances, he is our rock.

There was a young man that was one of our young people in a church in Colorado Springs.

Larry is his name.

He, a young man with a beautiful baritone voice.

He and I sang together once in a while.

And I remember one time in particular, we sang together and just blended our voices together.

And Larry graduated from high school, went to Colorado State University, earned a

degree in geological engineering.

And then he went on and got his master's degree.

Upon graduation from college, when he was looking for work, he landed a job in all

places, Florida.

And part of his job was he landed a job with a geological engineering firm.

And what they did was they built bridges and roads over swamps.

You know, that's what they did.

And a few years, Larry just became a prominent person in the engineering field.

And a few years ago, you might remember when there was a sinkhole in Florida and it swallowed up this house.

I was watching a newscast on that one night.

And as I watched the newscast, I thought, hmm, that guy standing there looks familiar.

And it was Larry.

And he was on, you know, national TV being interviewed about what happened here.

And that kind of tells you the kind of guy that Larry had become.

Not only was he just a fantastic engineer, a great intellect,

Larry had a heart for God.

He loved the Lord.

And I say he was one of our young people in Colorado.

He's 60 years old, okay?

But that was, so it was a long time ago.

But he was one of our young people there and just had a great, we maintained a relationship with him throughout the

years.

And Larry was also a musician.

And he wrote his own songs.

And he wrote a song recently that says something like, "'Lately I have desired,

"'I have been desiring to touch the face of my Savior, "'to see him.'".

Larry sang that on Sunday night at his church in Lakeland, Florida.

Friday morning, Larry went into cardiac arrest and they did

not revive him.

He and his wife have been married 38 years.

I performed their marriage a long time ago.

And they had three boys, but he's left behind his wife Connie.

Boys are grown and left his wife behind.

Could you imagine what life is like for her right now?

There's a circumstance that just changed quickly.

Larry, by the way, is the owner of MEG, Madrid Engineering

Group.

They had an engineering firm, they had a construction firm,

and a consulting firm.

God had just blessed Larry tremendously.

But life all of a sudden now has changed for Connie.

And I'll tell you what Connie's resting in today.

She's resting in her Savior, her rock.

Changing circumstances has not changed our God.

In the book of Isaiah chapter 26 and verse four, the prophet challenges us to trust the Lord forever.

Now let's go back there just for a moment.

Isaiah chapter 26 and verse four.

Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the Lord is everlasting

strength.

And the prophet challenges us to trust the Lord forever because he is everlasting strength.

Or as it literally reads, if you have a footnote in a margin, it would probably say,

he is the rock of ages.

And so God is likened to a rock.

So God did not say of himself when he said I am, he did not say I

become or I am becoming, but he says I am.

I am the eternal God who does not change.

The one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So he is our rock.

Now that brings me to another thing that I want us to look at.

Okay, so God is immutable.

God is unchanging.

What is the importance of that?

At first thought, that God is unchangeable might not seem to be of great importance to us.

And yet it is.

If God is unchangeable, then any change in him must be for the better

or for the worse.

If he changed for the better, that would mean that God was not as good as he could be.

If he changed for the worse, then God would be changing from being good to being evil.

If God is changeable, then he is not perfect at any given point in his existence,

which of course is, on the other hand, eternal.

So immutability assures us that none of God's perfections will ever

become imperfections.

You know, never will.

So number one, God is unchanging in his purpose.

And I'm going to look at Isaiah 46 and verse 10.

God is unchanging in his purpose.

Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying,

my counsel shall stand.

So God has purpose to redeem a people for his name from amongst his lost

creation.

And those whom he redeems have a grand and glorious purpose in life, to do all things to the glory of

God, whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all to the glory of God.

And while you and I sometimes struggle to discover what God's plan

for our lives is, but if, by the way, if we abide in him, we'll be, I think, we'll begin thinking

like him.

The more we abide in him, the more in tune we are with his direction and

his will for our life.

So whatever that is, whatever God decides for us, whether, you know, God wants us to

be a pastor or a missionary, or God wants us to be a driver for a cement company,

what is our purpose in life?

To do all things to the glory of God, whatever we do.

Our goal is to glorify God in what we do.

So the world continues to search for purpose and significance, but the believer finds his purpose

in God.

We have, I believe, a twofold purpose.

Number one is to glorify him, and secondly is to enjoy him.

And I think part of worship, by the way, is an expression of enjoying God, who he is.

And I find studying the attributes of God is one of the ways that I enjoy him, because

I understand who he is and what he is like, and my faith grows as I understand

what God is like.

So God is unchanging in his purpose.

But God is also then unchanging in his plan.

Unchanging in his plan.

I want to look at a couple of verses in the book of Hebrews here.

One of them is Hebrews chapter one, and then the other one is Hebrews chapter 11.

So let's go to Hebrews one first of all here.

Hebrews one, and verse two.

Let me start with verse one.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these

last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all

things, through whom also he made the worlds.

Or, you notice, the word is for the ages.

He made the ages.

We go over to chapter 11 of Hebrews, and we take a look at verse three.

And there it says, by faith we understand that the world, or the ages,

were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are

visible.

But I think part of the plan here is that God has laid out a plan for the ages in his word, and as we

study the word, we understand more and more of what that plan is of the ages.

And his plan outlines a program for his people, Israel, and God

will bring it to pass.

You know, as I read scripture, it seems to me that someday in the future here, Israel is gonna be the

primary prime nation of the world, the center of the world.

His plan also outlines a program for his people, the church, and he will bring that to pass, too.

We are to the praise of his glory, we are told in the book of Ephesians chapter one.

Jesus promised to make a place for us, and he said, if I go away, I go

away, and I prepare a place for you, and I'll come again, that where I am, you may be with me.

And so he made a promise.

And we're waiting now for that day in which he comes in the air and calls the church up to be

with him.

He promised that, and he will fulfill it.

We're waiting for him, and we should be looking for him all the time.

We don't know when he's going to come.

He hasn't told us about that.

So by the way, if someone tells you that, hey, Jesus is coming October one,

what do you know?

No, he isn't, because he tells us nobody knows it.

Nobody knows that, but he has a plan, and he has made promises, and all those promises, he keeps those, because

he is unchangeable.

Have you ever changed your mind about anything?

I'm sure a lot of things you've changed your mind about.

You ever made a promise after which you regretted making the promise?

Well, did you go ahead and fulfill the promise or not fulfill the promise?

You know, all of God's promises are made according to his infinite wisdom.

And in his infinite power and authority, he can bring those

promises to pass, and he will, because he is faithful.

He is the faithful God.

It's another one of the attributes that we studied of him recently.

So let me look at another thing.

Well, that takes me to the promises of God.

I got a bit ahead of myself here.

God is unchanging in his promises.

In 2 Timothy 1 and verse 12, there's probably a verse that

you're all very familiar with.

And there it says, for this reason I also suffer these things.

Nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know him whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able

to keep what I have committed to him until that day.

He will keep his promise.

Not only able, but he's faithful to keep that promise.

So the Lord has promised our forgiveness of sin.

Forgiven.

He'll never bring it up again.

He has given us the gift of eternal life to all who call upon Christ.

So if God has given a change, maybe he has changed his mind regarding his promise,

but he's not given to change.

For Paul, Paul said that God keeps that which he has committed to him in 2 Timothy

1, 12.

So all the promises in Christ are yes and no.

They have not, and they will not change.

Psalm 119.

Psalm 119.

We're just about done here.

Psalm 119.

And verses 89 and 91.

Forever, oh Lord, your word is settled in heaven.

Your faithfulness endures to all generations.

You established the earth and it abides.

They continue this day according to your ordinances, for all

are your servants.

So our God is unchangeable.

Meaning that he's being unchangeable, he is also, also faithful.

That brings me to just some summary thoughts.

That God is immutable does not mean that he's immobile, or that he does not and

cannot act because he does.

God is continually at work in your life as a believer.

He brought you to faith in Christ, and he began a good work in you.

And Paul tells us that that good work he started in you, God is faithful to

perform, complete it until the day of Christ.

When we say that God is immutable, we mean that he never changes his mind.

Someone says, well, didn't he change his mind about Nineveh?

Well, yes, God had Jonah go there and preach to them.

But the promise I believe was that if you repent, then I won't bring this judgment

upon you.

So some of the promises of God are conditional promises.

And the third thing is, when the Bible says that God, that he repented, it is not as

men repent.

Men repent with regret.

God has done all things well.

Thomas Watson said, God is the same in all his perfections, constant

in his intentions, steady to his purpose, unchangeably fixed and

persevering in all his decrees and resolutions.

God does not change.

He's not like men who repent.

He does not change.

His purpose is constant and he will perform his will.

He'll keep his promises always.

Father, thank you that you are unchangeable.

Because you're unchangeable, Father, we stand on the promises that you've made to us.

You will keep those promises.

Our Father, we thank you that your purpose is always the same.

Our Father, we thank you that it does not change.

We thank you that your purpose for our lives is to bring glory to you.

So help us, Father, to remember that, to bring glory to you always, and also, Father, to remember

to enjoy you.

Because you are immutable is one of the reasons we enjoy you so much.

Because you're faithful, we enjoy you.

Because you are true, we enjoy you.

Because you are righteous and holy and just, we enjoy you.

We enjoy you because you are all -powerful, all -knowing, present everywhere.

We thank you, Father, for these things, in Jesus' name, amen.