We live in the midst of change and we ourselves
are changing. I recently passed another age mile
marker. On the same day I saw a friend of mine
with whom I went to college and as I looked at
him, I thought, my, he is looking older. Not
only are we changing, but the times that we live
in are producing change at an ever -accelerating
pace. Consider, for example, that in 1960 there
were 439 ,000 unmarried households, couple households,
in the United States. That was 30 years ago.
Last year, there were 2 ,588 ,000 of them. Six
times as many, nearly. In 1910, of the households
across the United States, 81 % were headed by
a husband and a wife. 81%. In the next 40 years,
until 1950, that dropped only 3%. 78 % were still
headed by a husband and a wife. But in the next
40 years, until 1990, that dropped to 55%. Times
are producing change. And as we look into the
future, we are told that in the next decade,
between now and the year 2000, Time is going
to occur three times faster than it did in the
last 30 years. We're told that by the year 2000,
native -born Anglo -Saxons in the United States
will experience a zero birth rate. The fastest
growing minority today come from the Asian Rim.
Life expectancy in the year 2000 will be 90 on
the average. Today the fastest growing age group
in the United States is what age do you think?
Those who are 85 years of age and older. That
is the fastest growing age group in America.
It used to be if you watched the Today Show,
Willard Scott honored those who are 100 years
of age. They hardly take note of those anymore.
Now it's those who are 102 or 105 or 107 years
of age. Currently, one -fourth of all the homes
in America have computers. By the year 2000,
that will double. By the year 2000, white Americans
will be a minority in California. And get this,
those of you who are baby boomers, in your lifetime,
on the average, you will change jobs ten times.
Some of you are well above average at this point
already. But for the average baby boomer, there
will be ten job changes, and not only that, there
will be three vocational changes. Entire different
directions in vocation on the average. And we're
told that half of all the knowledge we possess,
half of it, we gained in the last 10 years. Think
of that. The amount of what we know doubled from
1980 until 1990. But they estimate that what
we know today is only 3 % of what we will know
by the year 2010. An explosion of knowledge which
will produce an ever accelerating rate of change.
Now change is very threatening to some people.
Change may be good, change may be bad, but the
fact is it's a reality that we must learn to
live with if we haven't already. It is wonderful
to know that the God that we worship is both
eternal and changeless. He has neither beginning
nor ending, and His perfections cannot change.
That's incomprehensible to us. It's in the first
place impossible for us to imagine eternity.
But it's just as impossible to conceive of a
living being who does not experience some sort
of change. And why is that so inconceivable to
us? It is because we are created in a universe
whose basic design includes both time and change.
Eternity and immutability, which is another word
for changelessness, distinguish God from his
creation. The truth of that is captured in the
words of Praise My Soul the King of Heaven written
by Henry Francis Light in the last century. Mr.
Light was well ahead of his times. We think that
paraphrasing the Bible was something begun in
the 1960s. Actually, he started it well over
a hundred years ago when he paraphrased Psalms
for his congregation in Devonshire, England.
And that hymn, which is in our hymnal entitled,
Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven, is his paraphrase,
a poetic paraphrase of Psalm 103. There is a
verse that is not in our hymnal, but which well
captures this truth of our changeability and
God's changelessness. It says, frail as summer's
flower we flourish. Blows the wind and it is
gone. But while mortals rise and perish, God
endures. unchanging on. Hallelujah, hallelujah,
praise the high, eternal one. The fact of God's
eternity and his changelessness are linked together,
they're inseparable truths. Think with me first
this morning that God is unchangeable in his
nature, in the very being of his person. There
is no mutation with God. There is no evolution
in the person of the biblical deity, this one
and true God. There is none. Now I need to point
out that there is a radical theology that is
being promoted by certain secular theologians,
if you can believe that term, secular theologians,
who accommodate their idea of God to the theory
of evolution. They have produced what is called
process theology. Maybe you've seen that term
or heard about it. You certainly see the results
of it, especially in mainline churches. Process
theology is rooted in Hegelian philosophy. Its
idea is that the universe is incomplete and always
changing. Nothing can ever be perfect or final.
because they say reality is always moving, dynamic,
and in process. The father of this idea of process
theology is Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher
and mathematician. As he defines God, God is
an impersonal force. Sometimes we're impressed
with the fact that 90 -some percent of Americans
believe in God. The question is, which God? The
God of the Bible or some God that's been created
by people like this man, Whitehead. He says God
is an impersonal force which controls evolution.
and changes with nature. God is not supreme,
God is not sovereign, but He is a co -creator
with man. Interesting thought. And He is working
with man to shape the future. This kind of theology
gives birth to a lot of things including the
rewriting of moral codes. You see, if God is
changing, then the standards that we have traditionally
associated with God also change. And this is
being illustrated, for example, in the stir in
the Presbyterian Church USA at the present time.
If you read the paper this last week, you read
something about that. It's being talked about
in various places. There is a committee which
has drawn up a new statement on morality which
denies the authority of the Bible at its very
first point and says that we should search for
a morality that is based upon love and justice.
And the new morality they're seeking to promote,
which undoubtedly the Presbyterian session will
reject if it gets that far this summer, but it
will come back again. But the new morality they
promote denies all of the boundaries of traditional
morality. And I'm not going to go into detail
because of time. But that kind of an idea about
God, you see, that he changes, that he's sort
of in control of evolution and he himself is
evolving, whatever he is, that kind of an idea
about God produces shifts in morality. In contrast
to such muddled ideas that are rooted in rationalism,
is the biblical revelation of the God that we
worship. Listen to the words of A .W. Pink. He
says, There never was a time when God was not.
There never will come a time when He shall cease
to be. God has neither evolved nor grown. or
improved, all that he is today he has ever been
and ever will be. I am the Lord I change not,
Malachi 3 .6, is his own unqualified affirmation.
He cannot change for the better, for he's already
perfect. And being perfect, he cannot change
for the worse. Altogether, unaffected by anything
outside of himself, improvement or deterioration
is impossible. He is perpetually the same. He
alone can say, I am that I am. God is totally
uninfluenced by time. God is also changeless
in his attributes. As we've just read in Pink's
statement, what he has been, he is now, and he
always will be. God's attributes are all essential
qualities of his very nature. Pink goes on to
say, whatever the attributes of God were before
the universe was called into existence, they
are precisely the same now and will remain so
forever. His power is unabated, his wisdom undiminished,
his holiness unsullied. The attributes of God
can no more change than deity can cease to be.
His veracity is immutable, for his word is forever
settled in heaven, his love is eternal, his mercy
ceases not, for it is everlasting." So God is
changeless in his very being, he is changeless
in his attributes, and he is changeless in his
purposes. Numbers 23, 19 says, God is not a man
that he should lie. nor the son of man that he
should repent. Has he said and will he not do
it? Or has he spoken and will he not make it
good? 1 Samuel 15 -29 says, the God of Israel
will not lie or change his mind for he is not
a man that he should change his mind. Once again
I refer to Pink who says, God's purpose never
alters. One of two things causes a man to change
his mind and reverse his plans, want of foresight
to anticipate everything, or lack of power to
execute them. But as God is both omniscient and
omnipotent, there is never any need for him to
revise his decrees. God never changes in his
purposes. Ah, someone says. But what about the
statements in the Old Testament in particular?
For example, in Genesis chapter 6, where God
says he repents of making man. Or in 1 Samuel
15, where he says he repents of naming Saul as
king of Israel. Or in Jonah, where God repents
and does not bring judgment upon Nineveh in that
generation. Doesn't that mean that God has changed
his purposes? When the Bible says that God has
repented, it does not mean precisely the same
thing as when you and I repent. When the Bible
says that God repents, it is an accommodation
of language to try to help us understand what
has taken place. More accurately, what has changed
is God's dealings with humanity based upon the
change in humanity. but it is not a change in
God's purpose. Louis Barry Schaeffer helps us
by saying, God though immutable or unchangeable
is not immobile. If he consistently pursues a
righteous course, his attitude must be adapted
to every moral change in man. Then he quotes
Strong, who says, I think that's a good analogy.
It is not that the sun changes, but It is the
difference of quality in what it shines upon.
So when the Bible says God repents, it has not
been a change in God's purposes, but it is a
change in the way that He deals with man based
upon the consistency of His purposes. What does
this truth about God mean to us? How does it
touch our everyday lives? If the God that we
worship endures as Hebrews 1 told us, if he is
unchanging as James 1 tells us, if it is true
as he himself says, I change not, then how does
that touch your life and mine? Well I believe
in the first place that it encourages our praying.
For we do not pray to a God who is fickle. We
pray to a God who is always consistent and forever
dependable. We know from the Bible exactly how
God views us, how he views the world, how he
views sin, how he views the righteousness of
Christ and the cross work of Christ, and he will
never change in any of those views. So when you
and I pray, we can be encouraged to know we come
to the same God that David prayed to, that Moses
prayed to, that the Lord Jesus addressed his
father, that Paul prayed to, that the saints
through the ages have prayed to, and he is the
same today as he always has been. He has not
changed. Well, someone asks the question, and
rightly so, that this is true. And if God's purposes
do not change, then why should we pray? It's
a good question. And there's a very simple answer
to it. We should pray because God requires it
of us. God tells us to pray. But you say, what
good does it do? Well, it brings obedience in
our lives, for one thing. But remember this,
that the same God who has purposed the end also
purposes the means to the end. And frankly, prayer
is part of his means to the ends that he's purposed.
And how all of that works out, I cannot tell
you. And I've never read anybody that could.
I think it's inscrutable. The fact is that God
encourages us to pray. He tells us to pray because
our praying is part of His process to the ends
that He has already designed and fixed. This
truth about God also establishes moral certainty.
The relativism that is revealed in such statements
as being put together by the committee I mentioned
earlier in the Presbyterian Church is popular
in our culture. It's popular because of the pluralism
that has become the hallmark of late 20th century
American idealism. Pluralism, which basically
says that there are many truths and all truths
are equally true. It's a lie, but that's what
pluralism is all about. And that kind of an ideation
produces change and relativism in moral standards.
But the commandments of the unchanging God do
not change. The Ten Commandments have not become
the Ten Suggestions. There are still God's commandments.
Now it's true that there is a gray zone where
God has not spoken with finality and clarity
on some disputable things. The New Testament
addresses those, laying down principles as to
how we are to respond within the context of our
culture in those areas. But remember that there
are principles of right and wrong embodied in
the Word of the unchanging God and they are forever
the same. They must be because they are a true
measure in terms of human morality of God's standard
for righteousness. The truth of God's unchangeableness
encourages us to pray. It establishes moral certainty.
It also ensures perfect justice. Perfect justice.
What I'm about to say is a warning to those who
are living in sin. God's wrath upon sin has not
subsided except at the cross of Jesus Christ.
The wrath of God upon sin, though he may withhold
it for a time, will still come. God has not grown
accustomed to human sin. It is as offensive to
him today as it was in the Garden of Eden when
Adam and Eve first sinned. And God's wrath is
still coming and will come, certainly, upon all
human sin. Thank God for the cross, however,
for that wrath has already fallen upon a substitute
for those who will go to the cross and bow the
knee and recognize that great work of God in
the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. For
those who will not do that, there is but one
destiny and that is eternal punishment because
they have ignored the only provision that the
eternal God has made for sinful people to be
right with himself. The unchangeableness of God
ensures perfect justice and it also underscores
the promises of God. God's promises are constant.
They are trustworthy. To Titus, Paul said he
is the God who cannot lie and he promised. To
Timothy, he said God cannot deny himself. God
makes a promise he must and will keep it because
he is unchangeable. That is why we are committed
to that system of theology that says God is still
going to fulfill his promises to Abraham. in
the Abrahamic Covenant. Because God made certain
promises to the Jewish people. And one day He
is going to fulfill those promises without fail.
I'm grateful to know that John 3, 16 is an unchangeable
promise. That it is dependable that whoever will
believe in the Son of God whom He has given in
His love will not perish but have everlasting
life. That is a promise and it's forever true.
Let me say finally that the unchangeableness
of God also, if you stop and think about it,
entices us toward heaven. Do you ever get weary
with change? Do you get tired of the pace of
it in the world, not to speak of your world?
The unchangeableness of God, that there is a
sure resting place, entices us toward heaven.
In the midst of change we rest in a God who provides
security and reliability. and we long for deliverance
from the kind of change that we experience in
this world. Decay, degeneration, separations,
death. Turn with me in your Bible to Revelation
chapter 21 and notice that none of these kinds
of changes will be a part of heaven. Revelation
21 God says in verse 3 behold the tabernacle
of God is among men And he shall dwell among
them and they shall be his people and God himself
shall be among them and He shall wipe away every
tear from their eyes and there shall no longer
be any death There shall no longer be any mourning
or crying or pain the first things Which includes
change and time have passed away. He who sits
upon the throne said, behold, I am making all
things new. Look in verse 23. The description
here of the heavenly city. The city has no need
of the sun or of the moon to shine upon it. Those
are basic elements of change, aren't they? Light
and darkness. In our world, we live with them
every 24 hours. No need for these any longer,
for the glory of God has illumined it, the city,
and its lamp is the Lamb. And the nations shall
walk by its light, and the kings of the earth
shall bring their glory into it, and in the daytime...
Now, notice that. Isn't that an interesting thought?
In the daytime, there shall be no night there,
its gates shall never be closed. They shall bring
the glory and the honor of the nations into it,
nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination
and lying shall ever come into it, but only those
whose names are written in the Lamb's book of
life. He showed me a river of the water of life,
clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God
and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street.
And on either side of the river was the tree
of life bearing 12 kinds of fruit yielding its
fruit every month Well, that's an interesting
term isn't it for heaven every month and The
leaves of the tree were for the healing of the
nations and there shall no longer be any curse
and the throne of God and of the lambs shall
be in it and His bond servant shall serve him
and they shall see his face in his name shall
be in there on their foreheads and there shall
no longer be and unite. And so we have terms
that are used here that we relate to in our change
in time universe, but which describe something
that happens beyond the veil of time and change.
Have you ever thought about heaven, about eternity
to come? Does that mean that there is no time
there? Or does that mean that there is endless
time there? Or does it mean that heaven is the
eternal present? Those are three different positions.
Good people take different positions there. But
the fact is, though we think of heaven as being
without time, there is some kind of process that
takes place. It mentions here months, for example,
and seasons of fruit from the trees. Whatever
the mystery of all of that, the truth that we
shall be in a perfect place Where there is not
the kind of change and sorrow and separation
and death that we experience in this world, it
entices us on doesn't it? It is normal to experience
anxiety around changes in life. Some of you are
experiencing that. Some of you are newly single
again. Others of you are couples who've recently
emptied the nest. Some are about to be engaged
or married. That brings big change. Some are
about to graduate from school. Some are beginning
a new job this week. Others are moving to a different
city. We live in a society that changes more
than some of us at least can accommodate. to
our personal convictions. It is not easy to live
in a world that changes. It produces anxiety.
How do you handle anxiety about change? Let me
just drop in two or three suggestions. One idea
is to share your feelings of anxiety with intimate
friends who can understand what you're facing.
and pray with you. And then secondly, think about
what you're anxious about. Someone has said,
don't tell me it doesn't do any good to worry
because the things I worry about never happen.
There's a short circuit there somewhere. But
think about those things that you worry about
and imagine the worst case scenario. And what
you would do, would it really be that bad? But
most importantly, commit your way to the Eternal
God, the Unchanging One, and trust in Him to
guide you and strengthen you through this world
of change. I mentioned earlier Henry Francis
Light, who wrote the poem, Praise My Soul, the
King of Heaven. He was a man who experienced
change in his world about a century and a half
ago. He grew up wanting to become a physician
but ended up being a clergyman. That was a change,
quite a change. For 25 years of his life he ministered
to humble fishermen and sailors in Lower Brixam
in Devonshire, England. In the latter years of
his life, he fought tuberculosis, which had no
cure in those days. He saw a change in his body
and his activity, his lifestyle, because of the
deterioration that took place. It grew worse
until finally a doctor told him that he had to
spend the winter of 1847 in a warmer climate
and suggested that he go to Italy. And so on
September 4th of that year, he preached his last
message to his little congregation there in Devonshire
and administered communion to them one more time
as they sorrowed together over his leaving. That
afternoon, he walked alone along the seashore
and watched the sunset. And as it did, it reflected
its golden rays in the blue waters. and he was
impressed to write another poem based upon that.
And so he returned to his home, and in the space
of 60 minutes or so, he hammered out the words
of a poem on the anvil of his own life experience.
It's meaningful as you realize that he left Devonshire
and headed toward Italy, but before he got there,
he died. and went to be with the Lord. That poem
is found in our hymnals. I'd like you to turn
there with me as we sing a couple of verses of
it. It's 478. In light of what you've learned
about Henry Light, I'd like you to notice the
words carefully. And notice also that his faith
was resting not in his changing circumstances,
but in a God who change is not. Would you stand
with me as we sing verses 1 and 2 of 478.