Equipping Eve: Thou Changest Not

Is the Church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the Garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

The Purpose of Equipping Eve and the Need for Biblical Discernment

Well, hello ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve. I'm your host, Erin Benzinger, and this is the show where we seek to open God's Word and learn the truth about what He has to say so that we can stand strong in an age of deception.

You can check us out on Twitter, that's at Equipping Eve. You can email me, equippingeve, at gmail .com, visit equippingeve .com, visit us on Facebook. Hey, we are all over the social media world because, you know, we're that relevant.

So that's what we seek to do. We seek to really just dive into the world and be like the world. So that's why we're on Facebook. Not really. But it is a wonderful way to reach out to you listeners. So that is why I have a Facebook account.

It's really because of you people, you ladies, that I suffer through Facebook. So you know, you're welcome. I'm not a fan of Facebook. Can you tell? Topic for another day. Hey, would you like to have a Jesus Calling moment?

Let's have a Jesus Calling moment, shall we? Jesus Calling. I picked up my copy of this horrible book by Sarah Young, wherein she basically claims that Jesus spoke to her and told her what to write down.

And now we have a devotional that has taken the visible church by storm, and women are reading this book in droves, and it's just, it's not biblical, and Jesus didn't talk to Sarah Young. I said it. I meant it.

If she thinks he did, she is delusional, in my opinion. So the January 8th passage of Jesus Calling says, now remember, this is written supposedly in the first person. So this is Jesus talking. Okay? Apparently, this is as inspired as scripture.

It would have to be. All right. Sarah Young writes, as Jesus, You know, because that's really what salvation is all about. Putting your faith in Christ, repenting of your sin, and trusting in him alone for your salvation.

We really all do that just so we can be freed from depression and self-pity, don't we? Yeah. No. There's some bad theology there. We do that to be saved from the wrath of God. The wrath of God that we all deserve for our sin.

That is why Christ saves us. That is the result of salvation. And then he saves us unto good works. And then he saves us unto good works, we read that in the letters of Paul. I'm thinking specifically of Titus 2, verse 14, who gave himself, speaking of Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

But Sarah Young, her version of Jesus, would have us believe that we are saved and we hope in Christ to be protected from depression and self-pity. And so there's more, but that's painful enough. So there you go.

There's your Jesus Calling moment. You're welcome. Hope you enjoyed it. So there's a little wackiness there. I have another wacky thing here that's going to actually lead us into our topic for the day.

Pat Robertson, Free Will, and the Difference Between Old and New Testament Theology

So I do have a purpose. So Pat Robertson, here's the thing, ladies. I try to be really careful with whatever current events I talk about, just because this show is pre-recorded. So by the time it airs, it could be completely irrelevant.

However, you know, every now and then something comes along that you have to mention. And why I mention it is to lead into a broader teaching that has application and implication beyond the current event.

And so Pat Robertson, we all know, I think, that we can trust him to do one thing consistently, and that is say insanely crazy, blasphemous, unbiblical, nonsensical, horrendous things. Okay, that is the one thing Pat Robertson can do consistently.

He cannot be biblical consistently. He cannot be right consistently. But he can be consistently wrong. So yeah, at least he's consistent. So Pat Robertson, the headline says, detestable. Pat Robertson's response to a woman who asked, why did God allow my baby to die, sparks outrage.

And there's a lot, there's a lot in here that we could talk about. But here, let's just see what the article says. Why did God allow my baby to die? The grieving mother asked her co-worker with the woman writing in to ask Robertson for guidance on how to adequately answer the question.

Robertson said first that there's a difference between Old Testament theology in which, quote, God's responsible for everything, and New Testament theology in which, quote, human beings have an agency, they have responsibility, end quote.

He then went on to explain free will. A lot of things happen because of what humans do, Robertson said, citing medical malpractice and mistakes made by doctors and nurses as examples of how individual choice can sometimes lead to situations in which people negatively impact others.

But it's what Robertson said about God that raised some eyebrows. As far as God's concerned, he knows the end from the beginning, and he sees a little baby, and that little baby could grow up to be Adolf Hitler, he could grow up to be Joseph Stalin, he could grow up to be some serial killer, or he could grow up to die of a hideous disease, Robertson said.

God sees all that. For that life to be terminated as a baby, he's going to be with God forever in heaven, so that isn't a bad thing. He continued, a good God is going to take that baby to heaven right now.

And then it goes on, and people are upset because he said it's a good thing that the baby died. That, you know, is from my perspective of what I'm seeing here of Robertson's quote, and this is not the full quote from the video clip.

But what really disturbed me was Robertson's quote that there's a difference between Old Testament and New Testament theology. And he says that in the Old Testament, God was responsible for everything, but now in the New Testament, human beings have free will.

What is he talking about? Do you realize the implications of Pat Robertson's words here? Now, I know, he's Pat Robertson, nobody takes him seriously, that's not my point. My point is, what he says here has far-reaching implications, and I dare say that there are professing Christians who would believe similarly, but would word it differently, and that's our problem.

You know, we've talked about free will a little bit here, we've talked about God's sovereign election, we did an entire show on that in the past, and there is no biblical basis for believing that man has free will to act contrary to his nature, which means that man who has a fallen nature can never and will never choose God on his own, because God has a holy nature, and to desire to obey and follow Christ and to be saved, that desire cannot be mustered up out of our own fallen sinful selves.

It has to be granted to us by God. We must be regenerated so that God brings us to repentance and faith in Christ. Okay, furthermore, what is Pat Robertson talking about when he says that there is a difference between Old Testament and New Testament theology?

What Bible is he reading? I mean, one could argue that Pat Robertson doesn't read the Bible, or doesn't understand it if he does read it, because of the things that he says over and over and over again.

He consistently twists and distorts scripture, and so if he is reading the Bible, he is not understanding it, and so we get that. The issue here is not Pat Robertson. The issue here is this idea that there is a difference between Old Testament and New Testament theology, that God has somehow changed over the course of time, and I dare say, as I said before, that there are professing Christians who would actually, in practice, believe this.

They may not even say that they believe this. They would say, oh, God is unchanging, but yet they don't like the Old Testament God who killed so many people. They love the New Testament God of love. Ladies, God has not changed.

From Genesis to Revelation, from the beginning of time to the end of time, which has not happened yet, the end of time as we understand it, and as we perceive it from our finite mortal minds, God has not changed.

God will not change. God is eternal. He is from eternity past. He will go into eternity future. I guess that's redundant. He does not change. It is intrinsic in his nature and character that God is immutable, that he does not change, and so that's what I thought we would talk about today, the immutability of God, and the immutability of his word, then, by default, because if God himself is immutable, and if his word reveals him to his people, then clearly his word is immutable, and he tells us that his word does not change, and he tells us that he does not change, and so I thought we would take a little biblical walk through this idea of God's immutability.

There were a couple of resources that I found really helpful when I was reading a little bit more about the immutability of God, and actually I have a lot of other articles saved in my Evernote that I probably won't even mention specifically on this show, but we will link to them at the Equipping Eve blog, because I think you'll find them really helpful.

It's difficult for us to comprehend something or someone that does not change. We live in this finite world. Things change. The weather changes. The snow falls and the snow melts. The grass is green. The grass is brown.

My grass is really brown right now. We haven't gotten the rain that the weather people have been saying we're going to get. Our bodies change. We do not have the same body that we had when we were 12 years old.

Do we, ladies? No, we don't. Our bodies deteriorate, but God does not change. I mean, stop and try to fathom that for a while. It might blow your mind. So the resources that I'm going to draw upon largely here today, aside from Scripture, of course, is a sermon by Charles Spurgeon called The Immutability of God, which is an excellent sermon I highly recommend, and as well as A .W. Pink's book, The Attributes of God, which we have utilized here in the past and I have heartily recommended in the past and I continue to heartily recommend it to you, ladies.

It would be a good even study book for you with a group of ladies to study through the attributes of God as A .W. Pink describes them, and there actually is a lot of consistency between Spurgeon and Pink here in these particular resources, which is why I really decided to draw upon these two because I thought that the way they talked about the immutability of God was so rich and so helpful, so I hope you agree.

God’s Immutability in Essence and the Incarnation of Christ

So Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon, he gives six points describing ways in which or points in which God does not change, and the first of those is that God does not change in his essence. He says, we cannot tell you what Godhead is.

We don't know what substance that is which we call God. It is an existence. It is a being, but what that is we know not. However, whatever it is, we call it his essence, and that essence never changes.

And then he goes on and explains, as we just said, how this world changes, how our bodies change. So mortal things are ever-changing, but God is not composed of these mortal things, and so he does not change.

And God says this himself in Scripture, Malachi 3, verse 6, For I, the Lord, do not change, therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. Let's see, where else can we go? We can look at Numbers 23, 19, where Balaam, the Lord puts a word in the mouth of Balaam, and he says, you know, God is not a man that he should lie.

God is not a man that he should repent, and that's not an exact quote, but you get the idea. The Lord God does not change, and we are going to look at a lot more scriptures, but his essence does not change.

He is the eternal God, and this does not change with the incarnation. Spurgeon goes on and says, God is not composed of any substance or material, but he is spirit, pure, essential, and ethereal spirit.

Therefore he is immutable. He remains everlastingly the same. I love this. There are no furrows on his eternal brow. No age hath palsied him. No years have marked him with the mementos of their flight.

He is the great I am, the great unchangeable. He says, mark you, his essence did not undergo a change, did not undergo a change when it became united with manhood. When Christ in past years did gird himself with mortal clay, the essence of his divinity was not changed.

Flesh did not become God, nor did God become flesh by a real actual change of nature. The two were united in hypostatical union, but the Godhead was still the same. That's why we call Jesus Christ the God-man.

You know, 100 God, 100 man. How does that work? We don't know. We can't comprehend that. We are not God. But that is reality. His nature did not change. There was the hypostatic union of his human nature and his divine nature.

Spurgeon goes on and says, It was the same when he was a babe in the manger as it was when he stretched the curtains of heaven. Meaning it was the same when Christ was born as that baby as it was when Christ created the world.

It was the same God that hung upon the cross, says Spurgeon, and whose blood flowed down in a purple river, the self-same God that holds the world upon his everlasting shoulders and bears in his hands the keys of death and hell.

This is the same God. So Christ, the incarnation of Christ, that glorious miracle that God wrought so that we could be saved, that did not change the essence of God. That did not change his nature. Because Christ is eternal.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13, 8. Remember, what does Jesus say in John 8, 58? Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am. This refers back to Exodus when God called Moses.

Moses said to God, Exodus 3, 13, Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you. Now they may say to me, What is his name? What shall I say to them?

Verse 14. God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent me to you. I am. Just I am. Because he is the eternal God. And Jesus Christ, the Son, is the eternal Son.

So the incarnation did not change his essence. He is eternal, and he is immutable. Secondly, Spurgeon says, and A .W. Pink says the same in his book, God is immutable in his attributes. God is immutable in his power, in his wisdom, in his goodness, in his justice, in his holiness.

A .W. Pink writes, God is immutable in his attributes. Whatever the attributes of God were before the universe was called into existence, they are precisely the same now and will remain so forever. Necessarily so, for they are the very perfections, the essential qualities of his being.

Semper. Idem, always the same, is written across every one of them. His power is unabated, his wisdom undiminished, his holiness unsullied. The attributes of God can no more change than deity can cease to be.

And, of course, deity cannot cease to be. I am that I am. His veracity is immutable, for his word is forever settled in heaven. Psalm 119, 89. His love is eternal, says Pink. His mercy ceases not, for it is everlasting.

Psalm 100, verse 5. God is immutable. He is thrice holy, and he always has been, and he always will be. God is immutable in his truth. The truth incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, the truth of his word by which we are sanctified.

John 17, 17. Sanctify them in the truth, thy word is truth. He is immutable. His attribute of love does not change. He is immutable in his love. John 13, 1. Before the feast of Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, that he would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

The attributes of God do not change. Thirdly, God does not change in his plans. And A .W. Pink kind of puts this, that he does not change in his counsel. Spurgeon preached, quote, God is a mastermind.

He arranged everything in his gigantic intellect long before he did it, and once having settled it, mark you, he never alters it. This shall be done, saith he, and the iron hand of destiny marks it down, and it is brought to pass.

This is my purpose, and it stands, nor can earth or hell alter it. This is my decree, saith he, promulgate it, angels, rend it down from the gate of heaven, ye devils, but ye cannot alter the decree. It shall be done.

God altereth not his plans. Why should he? He is almighty, and therefore can perform his pleasure. Why should he? He is the all-wise, and therefore cannot have planned wrongly. Thus saith the Lord. It shall be done.

You know, I often think of, when I was reading this, I thought of that old movie that all of us grew up on, I think, The Ten Commandments, and you see Pharaoh in that movie kind of stretching out his hand as he's condemning Moses, and this movie is completely out of line with scripture, just FYI that I do realize that, but I think we all remember this movie, and we remember Pharaoh saying, So shall it be written, so shall it be done.

But the ultimate example of that is God, because he determined, he decreed an eternity past and ordained all things, all things, ladies, and they all come to pass exactly as God predetermined them. And that is amazing.

That is amazing, and that is a comfort because God has already ordained all things. Psalm 3311 says, The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of his heart from generation to generation. Hebrews 617, and I know I have you flipping to a lot of different books.

Maybe you want to jot these down instead, ladies, but please go back to them. Hebrews 617, in the same way, God desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his purpose interposed with an oath so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

The unchangeableness of his purpose. God cannot lie. He is not a man that he should lie. He is not a man that he should change his mind. His purpose stands eternally. Eternally. Romans 11. Romans 11, I'm going for verse 29, but let's start at verse 28.

From the standpoint of the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

His plans do not change. Isaiah 4610, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done, saying, my purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

The plans and counsel of God do not change. Verse four, or not verse four, I'm sorry, number four in Spurgeon's list of ways in which God is immutable, God is unchanging in his promises. In his promises.

Philippians 1, 6, for I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Titus 1, verse 2. Actually, let's start at verse 1. Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth, which is according to godliness in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, but at the proper time manifested even his word and the proclamation with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God, our Savior.

The promises of God do not change. Aren't we thankful for that? We serve a covenant keeping God. This is how we know that the promises and the covenant that God made with Israel will be fulfilled in the future.

And this is how we know that the promises of God, that we shall inherit eternal life and the blessings that he has promised to us, we know, we know, ladies, we know that we will receive those promises.

And we are so undeserving. Why? Why would we receive those promises? We have done nothing to deserve them. Spurgeon takes a turn in his sermon, and the fifth thing he gives us is that God is unchanging in his threatenings.

Because, ladies, if God keeps his promises, the ones that we like and the ones that give us comfort, God will also keep his promises for judgment because he is a holy God and he must judge sin. And if our sin has not been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, we are without an advocate.

Spurgeon says, to some of you, God is unchanging in his threatenings. If every promise stands fast and every oath of the covenant is fulfilled, hark, thee sinner, mark the word, hear the death knell of thy carnal hopes.

See the funeral of thy fleshly trustings. Every threatening of God as well as every promise shall be fulfilled. Talk of decrees. I will tell you of a decree. He that believeth not shall be damned. That is a decree and a statute that can never change.

Be as good as you please. Be as moral as you can. Be as honest as you will. Walk as uprightly as you may. There stands the unchangeable threatening. He that believeth not shall be damned. What sayest thou to that moralist?

Oh, thou wishest thou couldst alter it and say, he that does not live a holy life shall be damned. That will be true, but it does not say so. It says, he that believeth not. Here is the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense, but you cannot alter it.

You must believe or be damned, sayeth the Bible, and mark that threat of God is as unchangeable as God himself. And when a thousand years of hell's torments shall have passed away, you shall look on high and see written in burning letters of fire, he that believeth not shall be damned.

But Lord, I am damned. Nevertheless, it says, shall be still. And when a million ages have rolled away and you are exhausted by your pains and agonies, you shall turn up your eyes and still read, shall be damned.

Unchanged, unaltered. And when you shall have thought that eternity must have spun out its last thread, that every particle of that which we call eternity must have run out, you shall still see it written up there, shall be damned.

What a picture of the eternality of hell. You know, there are those who teach that eventually sinners are annihilated in hell and that it is not eternal. Ladies, it's eternal. Because sin against a holy God must incur an eternal judgment.

It must. It simply must. And God's threatenings do not change. His judgment will come to pass. Romans 2, turn there with me, ladies. Romans 2, I'm going to start in verse 5. But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds.

To those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life. But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath, and indignation.

There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek. But glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For there is no partiality with God. There will be judgment for those who do not believe. John 3, and again, ladies, I wish that you would turn there with me. John 3, I'm going to start in verse 14. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes will in him have eternal life.

Whoever believes will have eternal life. 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. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Verse 18, he who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. It has been decreed. And Spurgeon's final note of ways and things that do not change, that characterize our God, that are immutable, is that God is unchanging in the objects of his love.

And I thought this was so interesting and so precious, that not only does God's love not change, but the objects of his love do not change. Those whom God hath called, he will justify. Those whom he has justified, he will sanctify.

And those whom he sanctifies, he will glorify. And that is found in Romans 8. We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, says Romans 8 .28.

And then, just as I read from Spurgeon's sermon, verse 29, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his sons, that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

These whom he predestined, he also called. These whom he called, he also justified. These whom he justified, he also glorified. John 15, verse 13, greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends, which is what Christ did for those who would believe.

1 John 4, verse 7, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through him.

Verse 10, in this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. The objects of God's love do not change. How glorious is that? Ephesians 1, Ephesians 1, starting in verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.

In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Amen and amen, right ladies? And so, I don't care what Pat Robertson says, very few people do, I don't care what that professing Christian says when they say, well the God of the Old Testament was just mean and wrathful, but the God of the New Testament is a God of love.

No, no, no, no, no. God does not change. The wrath of God that we see perhaps a little more visibly in the Old Testament, that wrath does not change. And God, in his patience and mercy, does not shower down his wrath on us the second we deserve it.

We all deserve to be destroyed upon our first breath because of Adam's sin, because of our fallen nature. And it is through the mercy and grace and patience of God that he has not poured out his wrath on this world yet.

But he will. And scripture tells us about that. And it will come and it will be fulfilled to the letter because God's word does not change. The word of the Lord is settled in heaven forever. Psalm 119, verse 89.

Isaiah 40, verse 8. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. So the promises that we see in his word, the promises of blessing and the promises of judgment, the character of God that is revealed to us through his word, those things do not change because his word does not change.

And his word does not change because it was given to us and written for us by a holy, immutable God. God does not change. The theology of the Old Testament is the theology of the New Testament. Period.

End of story. Sorry, Pat Robertson. Please stop talking. And anybody who says that God is different in the New Testament than he is, than he was in the Old Testament, is wrong and is blasphemous and does not know the God that they are talking about.

They do not know the true God of Scripture. So, ladies, test all things against that word, that unchanging word, that word that stands forever, that will long outlive us, that word that brings salvation because it brings the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That word does not change, and that God does not change, has not changed, never will change. We serve an unchanging God. How thankful are you for that? How thankful, how much comfort does that bring you?

That God does not and cannot change. I hope you'll think on that this week, ladies. We're out of time for today. So until we gather again, get in your Bibles, get on your knees, and get equipped. Thanks for listening.

Closing Encouragement and Program Sign-Off

You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no-compromise radio production. If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at EquippingEve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of her two websites, DoNotBeSurprised .com or EquippingEve .org.

Thanks for listening.