Our Unchanging God - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, April 3rd. Things in this world seem to change so fast. Today, you'll find stability and a firm foundation in the Scriptures as you get to know our unchanging God. Now some people have a problem with the fact that this book was written over a period of about 1,500 years and the fact that it was written several thousand years ago.

And I think it is a legitimate question to ask. Why should we be asked to abide by laws that are thousands of years old? Why should we be asked to sit in seminars and in schools and in worship services week after week and talk about old principles that were given thousands of years ago? It came from a whole different culture than ours.

It's out what we call in the Middle East. It came in languages different from ours, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. It came from peoples whose customs are far different from our customs, whose ideas about life and whose attitudes about God's were different from ours.

And so we ask, why should we be expected to abide by these principles and these laws? In fact, what is it that closes the gap between the thousands of years that have existed when God was dealing with these people and how he's dealing with us today? There is only one thing that links us to the past. Only one thing that makes it legitimate that all of this be applicable in our lives today. It is one single attribute of God.

There have been many attributes that could have shades of meaning. But when you and I come to the verse of Scripture and God says, I am the Lord thy God, I change not. It is the immutability of God that links us with centuries before Christ. It is the immutability of God that brings us to our knees to the same God to make application of the same principles and expect God to operate in the same way as he did thousands of years ago. And you see, there are many, many people who will maybe quote the verse in Hebrews that the Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. But somehow, they never understand the full scope of the meaning of the fact that God never changes that he is immutable. God cannot change his mind.

That is a self imposed attribute. He is absolutely eternally immutable and unchanging in every facet of his person or his plan. For example, let's go back to the Old Testament. The way God worked and his purpose in men's lives in the Old Testament, let's take Abraham, for example, or Joseph, or Daniel or David or many of the others, as God worked in their lives, he hasn't changed a bit.

And nobody ever told me that. But as a teenager, when I was trying to find out what God wanted me to do, and I knew that he was calling me to preach, but when I was trying to figure out how God was going to work in my life, but something within me deep down inside, it had to be God. Nobody ever said to me, read the great biographies. Nobody ever said to me, God has a plan for your life, find out what it is. Nobody ever said to me, God has a purpose in your life, pursue that at all costs.

Nobody ever said to me, if you just trust the Lord in everything, God will answer your prayer every time. Those things somehow, little by little, God began to show me so I can remember in my own heart, not a specific time, but I can remember because I didn't know anything and I didn't know who to ask, I began to read the Old Testament. And there's certain men in the Old Testament that God began to just impress upon my mind to read. Joseph was one of them.

Daniel was another. In both those men's lives, I saw one thing that stood out, that they obeyed God. They trusted God. I began to read the Old Testament over and over and over again and began to look for the lives of the men in the Old Testament that I thought that I could learn something from the way God operated.

And I began to think, and I can remember this, I thought, well, now, Lord, if you do that to them, why would you do that to me? And I'll tell you, I was so afraid that somebody would say to me and discourage me, now, look, God doesn't do that today, that I wouldn't ask anybody. But I'm sure in my heart that many of the basic things I believe, I'm sure in my heart that my simple childlike trust in God was founded upon the simple truth that if God would do it for Joseph, he'd do it for me. If he'd do it for Abraham, he'd do it for me. If he would do it for Elijah, he'd do it for me. If he'd do it for David, he'd do it for me.

If he would do it for Isaiah, he would do it for me. But with that came the same requirements of obedience and trust and holiness of heart. Listen, if you want to find out how God operates in men's lives, get back there in the Old Testament, and you'll find situations and circumstances that not are exactly like yours, but are similar. And when you find it, get into somebody's life and root out the principles and the truths. You see, what I want you to get a hold of is this.

Man, stop looking around you at somebody else. Get in the word and ask God, Lord, not what are other people doing, but what do you want me to do? Leaders are not men who look around to see what someone else is doing. Spiritual leaders are men who look to God and say, Lord, what do you want us to do? If he has not changed, listen, if his omnipotence has not changed, that means that all the power available to that New Testament church, the Bible says many times they met on their knees and prayed and what happened? Why the number of the hosts were multiplied, the priests got saved, a whole awakening broke out the city of Jerusalem, the power of God came down upon them. Well, has God changed?

Let me ask you this. Did he love that New Testament church any more than he loves you? You see, listen, the change disastrous change has been in man, not in God.

God hasn't changed anything. And here's the tragedy. Our young people grow up in a society of spiritual death, spiritual famine, spiritual hunger. And what happens? They listen to their mothers and their dads. They listen to Sunday schools, teachers and preachers who believe that this is a new day. Things aren't like they used to be.

And what happens? We grow up a whole generation of young people who, for all practical purposes, know not the God of the Bible, because the God they're hearing about is a weak God who's changed his attitude, changed his plans. He's no longer omnipotent. He's no longer omniscient.

He's no longer sovereign. Therefore, man is the center of the universe and man must make decisions. And man is the heart and core and deism rules.

Whereas in the scripture, Jesus Christ must rule in men's hearts. I want to say something to you, daddies. Let me tell you something. If we don't teach our children and instruct them by life and by our walk, we will raise a generation of young people who will know not the God of the Bible. No generation of young people that has ever lived apart from the New Testament era has ever had the privilege and the access to so much knowledge, so much truth and so available unto God as you have.

Let me tell you something. No group of young people will be so accountable unto God as the generation that now lives. And on the other hand, the vast majority of them know not the God of the Bible. And we need to get on a soapbox and on top of the building and shout the immutability of God. Because the fellow you work with in your office, he says, well, you know, I believe God used to do those things. How many times have you heard people say that? Oh, I used to believe God did that.

But I, you know, I don't see any evidence of that anymore. What this generation needs is a generation of men and women who are committed by faith to the God of the Bible and not the God of the culture in which they live. Our culture covers up the truthfulness of God, but the scriptures reveal God as he is with no counterfeit and no covering. Now, the last thing, and that is that God is changeless in his promises.

For example, if that were not true, here's what would happen. You'd get on your knees tonight and you pray for God's protection in your life or his provision of something specific and thank him for it. You get on your knees tomorrow night and you'd say, oh, my goodness, I don't know whether he's going to do it today or not, because I know he did it yesterday, but see, he may change his mind.

The Bible says, my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. Now, let me ask you a question. How long does that last for? Is that one of those 30 day things?

You know, big sale on last three days, get it while you can get it 30% off. God does not operate that way. Let me tell you something. The offer that God made from the creation of the world is the same offer that is going to last as long as this whole world lasts. And in fact, the real truth of it is that promise is an eternal promise. That promise was in application when God created it all and 10 million billion years after you and I get to heaven, it's going to be true. You think you're going to get to heaven and have to go to the Lord and say, Lord, I have a need.

Nobody's met it. He says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. As long as we're working in the will of God, that is true.

He says, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Well, was that true in Abraham's day? It was. Was it true in Daniel's day? It was. Was it true in Paul's day? It was. Is it true today?

It certainly is. He says, if thou canst believe all things are possible, then they believe. Listen, when you take any single principle of scripture and you segment it to a culture or to a given time or to a given space, what you are denying, you are denying the immutability of God, that he changes. He operates over here this way and over there that way. No, he doesn't operate that way. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. There is no change in him. Now, how does that apply to your life and my life every day? When you and I get up tomorrow morning, listen, we get up to the same God who looked down upon his only begotten Son and said, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.

He hasn't changed. You and I wake up to the same love of God every morning. We wake up to the same abundance of God every morning. We wake up to the same mercy of God every morning.

As believers, we wake up as children of God every morning. Listen, did you know that God can't love you any different than he loves you right now? You say, yeah, but you don't know how wicked I've been.

I want to tell you something. Listen, you can step out of the will of God into rank disobedience before God and get yourself under God's chastisement and he'll make you think that everything in heaven has come loose against you. But you can't change God because does he not say in Hebrews chapter 12 that he chastens his sons out of love?

You say sometime, well, God must be angry at me. God's not angry with us. You see, he loves us.

He's always forbearing, always patient, always loving. But listen, that does not mean that God won't cut with his knife and just prune us away, slice away to sand us down, chisel away. He hasn't changed anything.

That's part of the plan. His plan is when you get over here out of his will, the chastisement begins. He hasn't changed anything. That's his love doing what?

Just simply wooing us back. Now with some people, listen, and this is the way he manifests himself. He doesn't change. In some people's lives, they get out of God's will. What does he do? He just loves and loves and loves them in the humility and submission and they come back. In other people's lives, they get out of God's will and God knows that won't work with them. So what does he do? He just brings down the hammer. Now, if you've got three or two or three or four or five children, I don't know how many you have, you know, and you can't treat any two of them alike.

One of them you can sit down and talk to. The other one just doesn't operate on that basis. You see, God doesn't operate in all of our lives alike. He does the same thing for us as he told us to do to our children. Train up a child in the way he shall go and when he is old, he'll not depart from it. So he puts the hammer on this one, the torch on this one, and just smothers this one in the same way.

The end result is the same. You say, oh, I'll take the love smothering. That's what I want. All right.

I'll tell you how you can do that. When you disobey, act quickly. That's the best way to handle that. Now, listen, God isn't going to work in everybody's life the same. He's going to call you to do something he's not going to call a thousand other people to do.

And he's going to call them to do something he's not going to ask of you. And you see, he's going to give one man ten talents, one man one talent, but that that man exercises his one talent to the maximum of his capacity, he's going to be a whole lot better off. God hasn't changed anything. He works in our lives differently. What you and I have to be sure of is this.

Now, watch this. Not to figure out what God's going to change, but to be sure that as God is unfolding his different requirements in our life, that we remain in step as he unfolds a plan that looks like it is changing. It is not changing.

It is merely unfolding. Now, Ezekiel chapter eight, look at verse 18, the last verse in the chapter. Therefore will I also deal in fury. Mine eyes shall not spare.

Neither will I have pity. And though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them. God hasn't changed. There comes a time of judgment and wrath when God's wrath comes down upon man and nothing man does can change that. Look in Revelation chapter six.

There's a long span of time between Revelation chapter six, which is ahead of us, to Ezekiel chapter eight, which is behind us by about two and a half thousand years or thereabouts. Let's just read a couple of verses. Verse 15, the king, this is during the time of the tribulation, which is ahead of us. And the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains and the mighty men of every bond man, every free man hid themselves in the dens and the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb. For the great day of his wrath has come and who shall be able to stand?

Listen, the fact that God is immutable and unchanging is one of the most comforting and assuring and confident faith building concepts in the whole Bible. But it also ought to be one of the most fearsome concepts in the scripture, because here's what he says. As God destroyed the wicked in the past, he will destroy the wicked in the future and he does not change. Men who died without Christ in the New Testament day went straight to hell. Men who die without Christ, they still go to hell. Men who will die 1000 years from now without Christ are going to hell.

He hasn't changed. In the Old Testament, he was believing in God. In the New Testament day, what is it? It is believing in Jesus Christ, the ultimate unfinished sacrifice. What God did for you and me at the cross is this.

He paid, what? He paid the ransom for your sin and my sin by taking it upon himself. God bought us, paid the price for our release from the bondage of sin and set us free. Therefore, because those things are true in the eyes of God, he says one of these days, he'll present us before the Father, what?

Holy and reproveable, righteous, unblameable in his sight. Listen, because he took the rap for you and me. He bore the penalty for you and me. God placed upon him what? Nailed him to the tree, put all of our sin upon him.

He paid the penalty and that made it right for God to declare man not guilty, sin canceled, freedom given, man is released to become everything that God wants him to become. Let's say amen. That's what God has done for you and me. Now let me ask you one question. You say, well, is that free to everybody? Listen carefully. It is free to everybody, but everybody will not accept it. My friend, there's only one way to be saved and that is accepting Jesus Christ as Savior.

Here's what happens. When you ask the Lord God in heaven to forgive you of your sins, what you're saying is this. Father, on the basis of what Jesus did at the cross, he bought my way, he canceled my debt, he closed the gap and he said that he would present me before you, unreproveable, without blame, thoughtless and holy before you.

And I'm coming to you not on my merit, not on my goodness, not on my promises. I'm coming by the shed blood of Jesus Christ and I'm asking you to take me just like I am. Will you come and receive what you can only receive from God the Father through Jesus Christ his son? Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for providing for us so bountifully, so graciously, so lovingly, so eternally, what we could not have taken the first step or made the first mark toward accomplishing.

Cleansing us and keeping us continually cleansed. Writing our name in the Lamb's Book of Life not because we could buy our way in but because you purchased our way in by making your only begotten son a substitute for us. And Father, I want to pray today for somebody out there who's never been saved, that they'd be willing to recognize their only hope is in Jesus Christ. And I pray that even now they'll be willing to make that decision by the simple prayer of asking for forgiveness of sin. And this I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to part two of Our Unchanging God. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.