Our God is Immutable (Part 1)

All right, so we’re going to be in Malachi 3. I’d like you to see verse number 5. The Bible says this, and I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against false swearers and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.

For I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. So the connection is, you remember we talked about the name of the Lord, I am that I am, right? That’s related to his self-existence, or his, what’s it called, the self-existence, what’s the word, 10-cent word?

Starts with an A, a-see-a-tee, a-see-a-tee, A-S-E-I-T-Y, the a-see-a-tee of God. But in verse number 6 of Malachi 3, this is one of the proof texts that demonstrates God’s immutability, which is what we’re gonna study. But notice the immutability of God, the fact that God does not change, the definition is actually, means not subject or susceptible to change, unchangeable, unalterable and changeless. And so that’s the idea of immutable.

Mutable means obviously you can change, immutable means you cannot change. And so, now just one little distinction. Immutable does not mean that you don’t change, it means you can’t change, immutable. The I-B-L-E at the end means you cannot change, and that’s what’s being described here. Now I know in verse number 6, notice it says I change not. So the God who cannot lie says that he does not, not that he cannot change, but he does not change, just to make a slight distinction.

But if he cannot lie and he says something about himself, that is the same as not being able to do so because he doesn’t ever, it’s impossible for him to do so because he said he won’t. And so, but notice this, I am for I am the Lord, I change not. So you have this idea of the Lord, which is a name related to God’s self-existence, his revelation to Israel as the self-existent God, is connected then to his immutability, right?

So the God that revealed himself to Israel by the name of the Lord is that God, who is the true and the living God, is immutable. And by this, we’re going to see this as well as other verses that the immutability of God is one of the defining characteristics of God, the defining characteristics of God. What do I mean by that? Can somebody help me, based upon what we’ve studied before, what does it mean for something to be a defining characteristic of God?

Sam? Okay. Okay, anybody, Jim? Unchanging? Okay, anybody else have another idea? A defining characteristic of God. Okay, yeah. Okay, all true, all true. To something that is defining, it means that it is something that is part of the definition of the true God. And if any part of any one of these defining characteristics is not present, you’re no longer talking about the true God. All right, that’s kind of the idea.

Includes all of those things. And immutability is one of those. How do we know that? I am the Lord, I change not. I am the true God that revealed myself to Israel. My characteristic is, my attribute is, I do not change. All right, so we’ll get into that in some detail. Now notice, I wanna just make one connection to something we previously have studied, which is the eternity of God.

Remember that concept that God has neither beginning nor end, that God inhabits eternity, he dwells outside of time and succession. And so God, there’s never been a time God has not existed, he has no beginning or origin or source. And so when we think about the eternity of God, we spend a lot of time on that. Let’s look at the eternity of God. We spent a lot of time on that the last four weeks.

But now we come to immutability. Now immutability and eternity are not the same. Eternity deals with what we think of as duration. From our perspective, it deals with duration. But immutability deals with change. So something, I mean, again, we’re philosophizing here, but it is possible in theory to think of something lasting forever but changing. Right? That is theoretically possible to think of. You know, you think about the material universe.

You know, it’s lasted all this time, not as long as they claim it’s lasted, but anyway, it’s lasted, it’s the longest existing thing, right, that God created. And yet, so this idea that we can understand long duration, but we also know that it changes within that period. That’s why eternity and immutability are different, okay? But immutability, the fact that God does not change, is related to his eternity.

And there is a scriptural connection, which we’ll see in the Psalms in just a minute, between the two. And so when we talk about immutability, we’re talking, we’re using, we’re essentially, a lot of times when the Lord talks to us in the scripture, he’s using human terms to describe something that is really beyond comprehension. But that’s the way we understand it. So, immutability is an essential and defining attribute of the true God, like the eternity of God, like the aseity or the self-existence of God, both of which, if God does not have that, or anything that claims to be God does not have that, it is no longer considered to be God.

Now think about this, is there anything, is there any, anything at all that you can think of that exists, that you can say is, that does not change? Is there anything, if there is, name one thing, there is literally, except in God himself, there is literally not one thing that we can say that exists, that does not change. That’s why, and that’s why we go to eternity, is there anything that is eternal outside of God?

No. Is there anything that is self-existent, except God? No. You see, those are defining characteristics, because they apply only, only to God, and cannot apply to anyone else. And so, and so, and so that’s why it’s an essential and defining attribute. So the only thing, God alone is the only thing in existence that is immutable. Every other thing. Well, let’s go to John one, before I say that, let’s go to John chapter one.

John chapter one. John chapter one. Look at verse number, well, we just quoted, Sandy quoted John chapter one, verse one, let’s continue with verse two. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, now notice that the word, the word was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and I’ve got a little bit of a problem here, but I’m gonna go ahead and read it.

All things were made by him, now notice the words carefully, and without him was not anything made that was made. Without him was not anything made that was made. So if something, if anything, anything at all was created, it was created, in this case, by the word, right? Does everybody get that? So that means, that means that that deals with God’s self existence, and it deals with his uniqueness.

Okay, so of everything in the universe, this verse tells us every single thing excepting God himself was created, and was brought into being by God. Okay, now upon that basis, because every other thing besides the God himself that exists was created by God, therefore every other thing outside of God had a beginning.

Now I’m going somewhere, this is a logical pattern, okay? Because whatever, remember, we just read John 1-3. Everything outside of God himself was created by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. So if it was made, he made it, right, easy enough? And if it was made, that means there was a time, if we could say time, there was a time in which that thing did not yet exist.

You still with me? And if that thing did not yet exist, and then God made it exist, it changed. You see it? It’s a simple train of thought. And so therefore, everything outside of God himself that came into being is subject to change, for its beginning is a change from nonbeing to being. And so this is why the self-existence and eternity of God are based, or rather are the foundation for his unchangeableness, because literally everything outside of himself had a beginning, and therefore was subject to change.

So we can say, our final point is this, immutability then only belongs to God because he has no beginning, and therefore can have no place of change. A.W. Tozer in the book that I’ve been looking at and just kind of reading through during our lessons, he says this, one who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God.

All right, look at James chapter one. I definitely wanna cover the proof verses, and this is another proof text of the immutability of God. James chapter one. Cooper, you doing okay back there?

James chapter one, look at verse number. 17, James one, 17. Every good and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Now be careful here.

Variableness, you have to ask yourself, which we’re gonna get into in just a minute, but you have to ask yourself, variableness or change, with whom is no variableness? So this immutability of God, so I’m gonna give you this to ponder on and ruminate on before we get there. That immutability applies to what things of God?

Does nothing ever about God change? Does no thing related to God change? Or are there some things that do change and others that don’t? Because this verse says, with whom is no variableness. But it’s ambiguous enough to make you ask, what are we talking about when he says, God does not vary, what doesn’t vary? Is there anything at all that does vary with God? Yeah. Yeah. There’s a good amount of different characters that can be varied as names.

But all the people that are different are the same. It’s given men throughout the Bible choices. Sometimes even what sign do you want? I would basically all make a miracle what sign do you want. It means that there are multiple options. But that’s still what they just love. In terms of what angels discuss, it’s still the same. One is the purpose, another is the purpose. Mm-hmm.

Ms. Lynn? Andrew’s right. He can change his decisions. We see throughout scripture that he can change his mind when people are in need of more from him, right? All right. In practice, that’s what people for us think about when somebody says, oh, he changed, that’s what happens. You know, because of nature. Like the one in the beginning, you know, you didn’t know, but then you just changed your mindset about something.

Oh, you changed your, you need a different mind. Yeah. But because you changed your something about nature or something about your mindset, things like that, but God’s mindset and nature. So. So what I’m hearing is everyone seems to acknowledge that there are things about God that can change. Certain, like Ms. Lynn said, decisions, actions, perhaps, but Andrew, Sam are saying that his very nature doesn’t and can’t, character doesn’t and can’t.

All right. Let’s go to Psalm 102. Psalm 102. Psalm 102. Psalm 102. All right, verse number 25. Verse 25. Psalm 102 verse 25 says this. Speaking to God, of old, thou has laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of thy hands. Now there’s a reason that, notice it says of old, because again, if you’re talking about immutability, which is related to eternity, you can, there’s only so many object lessons that you can use.

Like you could take a really old man. Like have you been hearing that, the last person in the Baton death march passed away recently. The last person that survived D-Day passed away recently. And the last, you know, of World War II, there’s several lasts that have passed away. But you could look at somebody like that of great age, 102 years old, and you can use that to describe a long length of time, right?

And to kind of wrap your brain around and understand it. Well, if you wanted to go even further than that, you might refer to, you know, a period of history, like, you know, the Roman Empire or something like that. But if you wanna go the farthest back that you can go to describe the longest length of time, you’re kind of limited because the only thing you have is from the beginning of creation, which is why we’ve already seen that’s the mark of the longest duration in scripture.

All right, so when the Lord says in verse number 25, of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, what he’s describing is this object of the longest duration that exists, right? So he’s saying, Lord, this is the longest thing.

Verse 26, they, that is the heavens and the earth, shall perish. So even though that thing has lasted for so long and has persisted, it has an end, okay? That’s what you have to see. Now, if it has an end, they shall perish. That means the heaven and the earth has an endpoint. That means it is subject to change. All right, follow me. Verse number 26, but thou shalt endure.

So we’re still really talking about, we’re not really talking about mutability as much as we’re talking about duration still. But remember, they’re related. So if something has an endpoint, it is therefore mutable. It can change. And this says, but thou shalt endure, speaking of God now. God, there is no endpoint to God, therefore he’s not gonna change. We already saw that because he had no beginning, there was no change.

So now it’s talking about the end. Again, the beginning, the end, those are eternal, eternity terminology. He says, it goes on to say, yay, all of them, what is the them? Heavens and the earth. Heavens and the earth, exactly. All of them shall wax old like a garment. Wax old like a garment. How many of you have clothes in your drawer right now that do not look the way they looked when you bought them?

Right? For men, some of the most comfortable pants you wear, right? It’s true, it’s true. Holes and all kinds of unsightly places, but they’re the most comfortable pants you’ve got. All the men have that. I’m not, did the ladies have things like that? Man, I don’t, it seems like ladies are the ones who replace things and, oh, okay, old ladies, well, I’m not touching that, so.

So this is what the Lord’s using. He’s saying, now the Lord is not talking about clothing, but he’s talking about the heavens and the earth. He’s comparing the heavens. So the Lord is using a two-step comparison. First thing, he’s talking about the heavens and the earth, which is his primary comparison. Now he’s gonna compare the heavens and the earth to clothing. And he says this in verse 26.

He says, all of them, the heavens and the earth, shall wax old like a garment. You know what that is? Change. It is, even the heavens and the earth, and I think this is also borne out scientifically, that even the powers in the heavens and the earth have changed over time. That’s demonstrable, like in science. They have not stayed the same. And they’re gonna continue to degrade, because of course that deals with the fall of man and all of that, but all of those things, but the point is they’re changing over time, even though they have a long duration, yet they’re changing.

He says, as a vesture shalt thou change them. A vesture, which is clothing, okay? So what do you usually do when your clothing starts to get threadbare? What do you do? You throw it out. You get rid of it. And that’s what it’s saying here. The heavens and the earth are, like clothing, are getting worn out, they’re decaying, and so God’s gonna change them. And we know what that’s referring to.

That’s talking about the new heavens and the new earth, when the Lord changes them. Now, all of that, the heavens and the earth, as the example, by means of clothing, the Lord gets to verse 27, but thou art the same. Thou art the same. Like the shoes of the children of Israel that wax not old miraculously, though they wore them 40 years, the idea here is God is not only eternal, like the heavens and the earth aren’t eternal, but the picture of long duration.

God is that way, but in addition to that, he is always the same from the beginning to the end. So he’s not like the clothing that gets threadbare over time or stained over time. No, as he was at the dawn of creation, when he spoke, let there be light, as he was at that moment, so he is exactly like that now.

And will be like that for all of eternity because he is eternal. And there’s so many applications to this we can look into, we wanna get into, but think about how that should affect the way we look at the Bible. Whatever we see about the God of the Bible in Genesis chapter one is the very same thing as the God of the Bible in Revelation 22. In no way has he changed, right?

And he says in verse 27, thou art the same and thy years shall have no end. So immutability describes more than just God’s permanence or his eternity, it also describes that within his eternity there is no alteration.

There is no alteration. So in conclusion of this little section and then we’ll get into something else, God himself is quite literally the single thing in the realm of our knowledge that never changes. And that makes him totally unique, which makes him God. Make sense?

Because the Lord never ages, never decays, and never changes, there is no chance that he will ever be any different than he is at this moment. If we just let that sink in at the proper time when we’re in time, we’re dealing with some matter, we’re dealing with some issue, that could be a real comfort to us. Now let’s talk about the one thing where we see, the one part of scripture that we see that God does change, all right?

Probably a couple dozen times in scripture the Bible says that God repents. Probably a couple dozen times, just roughing it. God repents. And there are clear, clear scriptures that say that God does repent. And then there are clear scriptures that say God does not repent. Let’s look at those. Look at Numbers 23. The word repent just means to change. I know we attach a bunch of fields to the word repent, we attach a bunch of theological, it means to change one’s mind regarding sin, but at its core it means to change, all right?

So look at Numbers 23, verse number, verse number 18. And he wrote, and he took up this parable and said, rise up, Balak, and hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor. God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said and shall he not do it, or hath he spoken and shall he not make it good?

See, God is not a man that he should repent. Look at 1 Samuel 15, 1 Samuel chapter 15. So, 1 Samuel 15, look at verse number 29. Samuel speaking here, talking about rending the kingdom away from Saul, Paul, giving it to David, chapter 15 verse 29, and also the strength of Israel will not lie nor repent. Notice lie and repent together, like in numbers. Will not lie nor repent, for he is not a man that he should repent.

Now that’s all fine and good, but in this very chapter, in this very chapter, there are some problem verses. Look at verse 11. So in the same chapter where Samuel, almost in the same breath, where Samuel says God is not a man that he should lie or repent, in verse 11 he says, God speaking here, it repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king.

See that? Look at verse 35 as well. Verse 35, and Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel. Well, that just messes up our theology, does it not? Here in the middle, squished between sandwiched between two references that says God repents is a reference that says God does not repent.

Ain’t that fun? You know, when they’re both talking about the change of heart toward sin, God has changed his heart toward the man who is proven to be a sinner and not a repentant to be king. So these changes, by the end of the day, you’re not going to repent because you’re not repentant to be a sinner. If you want to get somebody to say it, you’ve got to tell them you haven’t changed your heart from being a sinner to being someone who recognizes that you’re accountable to God for all this sin.

But in a sense, they’re both related. God’s doing it for the other side of the coin. Man must repent from sin to change for someone called God. And God is saying, since you have not repented from sin, I am going to change and take this away from you. It’s highly related. It’s just when we talk about the idea of immutability, inevitably the question of repentance, God repenting comes up.

Because it’s not infrequent in the Bible. It’s a couple dozen times the scripture says it. And the word repent does absolutely mean it indicates a change at a minimum. It indicates a change. When the scripture said that God repents, it is applying to God a human act. Now there are many, many times in scripture where the Bible says that God sees or God hears, or God flies, or God walks.

You know what those things are? Those things are human activities. Everybody with me? Those are human activities. But we know that the Lord doesn’t, you know, the God is a spirit. So he doesn’t have legs, he doesn’t have ears and eyes, human ears and human eyes. But what the Lord does is, he takes those human characteristics and applies them to himself so that we understand what and how he is.

They’re called a, I’m going to get the word wrong so I’m not going to try it. That’s a Tencent word. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And the mistake is, and this is why it’s so important for us to understand the theology, because we read the text of scripture and we can, if the Lord did not give us the other side of theology, we can go away with the idea that God is like us.

No. He is most certainly not like us. He uses like us terminology so that we can understand what he’s saying. But he is not indeed like us. God doesn’t need eyes to see us. It’s using terminology to help us understand the way God is. And the idea that God repents is one of those cases. Because obviously repentance involves change, which is a human thing. And it is common for the Lord to describe himself in terms of repenting, but that is a way that we can understand his ways from our point of view.

Now just, yeah. So the best way that I can talk about this is how God repents. You’re having a hard time describing it. There’s a reason for that. Because the moment you say something, you feel like you’re overstepping some boundary, right? Let’s look at an example. Look at Genesis chapter 6. What’s that? Yeah. Yeah. We better be glad God changes or something. Because if the Lord never did change his mind, again we’re using a human...

Okay, here’s the conundrum. All right? So let’s get to what Sister Karen is saying. Here’s the conundrum. Okay? So say you can continue to Genesis 6. This is going to mess up our theology a little bit. But say you say, okay, well God does change his mind because we repent, right? Or because he wants to forgive us. And whereas before he was intent on judging us, right, or punishing us, he repents of that and he decides he’s not going to.

And that’s in time. Is it also not equally true that from all of eternity God knew exactly what would happen? How does that mesh? And this actually gets to something else. Which is... Which I’ll get to in a second. Go ahead. Can God create a rock? He can’t move. Can God blind his own mind to sin so he can’t see it? Well apparently so. Yeah? Both exist in the Bible.

Yes sir? Alright, let’s finish up with Genesis. We don’t have Genesis 6 verse 6. We’ll just basically read it. We won’t have time to comment on it too much until next week. Genesis 6 verse 6 says this. Verse 5 says, and God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart.

That grieve, that there’s your... That’s a little hint. That parallel construction tells you that this idea of repentance, God, especially when it uses in the reflexive, which is repent himself, repent the Lord, in that phraseology, the idea is that there’s an emotion, which is a human characteristic that God is applying to himself that says basically God regretted it. It’s an application of a human emotion to the Lord because the Lord has emotion.

And this is deep stuff. It’s hard for us to understand this. In the case of humanity during the time of Noah, God was grieved at mankind. Mankind was evil and God responded to that. And so he has emotion. He was grieved and because of man’s exceeding evil, God changed his course of action. I mean, that’s... He changed from something he intended to do to something he did not intend to do.

And how can we say that if he who inhabits eternity and all of his works are finished from the foundation of the world? It’s what the Bible says. How can both of those two things be true? What it is, it’s a paradox. It’s a legitimate biblical paradox, which we expect from a God who is incomprehensible. So it’s not a big surprise to us. All right? We’ll pick up there next time.

Let’s pray.