Our Unchanging Savior

Our Unchanging Savior

Let's take our Bibles this morning together and turn to Hebrews chapter 1, please. Hebrews chapter 1, and I'd like to begin the reading in verse number 1 this morning. God who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake, and time passed unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. Who being the express or being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. Being made so much better than the angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they, for unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And again, I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he sayeth, and let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels he sayeth, who maketh his angel spirits, and his angel spirits and his ministers a flame of fire, but unto the son he sayeth, thy throne, O God is forever and ever, a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, even thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And thou, Lord, in the beginning, has laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shall thou fold them up, they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. But to which of the angels said he at any time, sit on my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool. Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

We'll mark our Bibles this morning to the first chapter of Hebrews as our text today, and let's acknowledge the word of prayer. Father, as we do every, basically every Sunday morning, we have had a time of scripture reading now, this scripture will be our text that we will draw from for the message today. And Lord, we are asking at this time, we understand, Lord, that to truly gain what it is that you have for us to show us in your words, without your blessing, without the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate our understanding, as our brother, I believe it was Dwight L. Moody said, would be like reading a sundial by moonlight. And we pray, Lord, that you would help us today to come to your word with that understanding that we need you to open our eyes. We need you to help us to see what it is that you want us to see, not what we want to see, but what you want us to see from your word. And that we may make when you show us in your word what you'd have us to see, that it would humble us and that we would, that word would not only be in our minds, but it would be the engrafted word in our hearts. And so help us today in that. May we experience that illumination as well as that application in our lives of your word to our hearts. Bless us now, as we continue in this worship service may we in everything we think, say and do in this service, be looking away to Jesus. In Jesus' name we ask, amen.

I reminded this morning of the very first words in the Bible, Genesis 1:1, in the beginning, God. Those few words there say a lot, don't they? In the beginning, God, well, God created, right? But in the beginning, before He did anything, God was. We read the word made flesh that He was before anything was made, that was made by Him. But the author of Hebrews here, we are persuaded that it is Paul, but it really doesn't matter for this point today. He specifically applies the title, God, to Jesus. It's very plain from the text. He's saying that the Son of God here, the Son that the Father is speaking to, is higher than the angels, and the writer refers back to Psalm 45. He alludes to Psalm 45 verse 6 when he says and quotes from there, thy throne, O God. Psalm 45:6 says, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter. Well, he's quoting from that here in verse 8 when he is referring to that Old Testament scripture and he's referring to the Son to whom it was said, thy throne, O God, uncreated. One in substance, in nature with the Father, Jesus Christ, who in the beginning was, though not yet born of a virgin in flesh, was in the beginning with God. And was God, John tells us.

Now, He was before anything was made and He, this passage shows us in verse 11 and 12, will be, shall be. He will remain. That's the word there. He will remain even when that which now is will perish. That's why it makes 100% sense that He would be called Alpha and Omega, right? He was before anything He created and He will remain after everything is folded up, burned up, removed that currently is. I was thinking this week, how good it is for me to turn my eyes to the Lord Jesus Christ and look full in His wonderful face. It is good for us. I think even more now than ever it is important for us to be still and know who God is, to be still and consider His character, to consider who He is and what He has told us about Himself because there is so much in this world that we may try to say, I want to, you know, I need to do something about all of this. But first of all, we need to be still and know who God is and what He wants of us, right? Because if we follow our own hearts, we will go astray. We'll turn to the right hand or the left, but we need to know who God is and what He wants.

Now, when we think about who God is, I know that when I have even this week have considered in preparation for this message, thinking about God being the unchanging, immutable God, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, when I think about that, it is humbling because you cannot, you cannot exhaust God. I know the first thought that came to me about eternity when I began to fear for my soul, my eternal soul, and I began to think about that as a young person. I thought eternity is forever and ever and ever. We think about the eternal God. He has no beginning. He has no end, but also He's unchanging. What He said a thousand years ago, or what He wanted us to know 2,000 years ago, is the same thing He wants us to know today. He is not changed. He may deal somewhat differently with different timeframes in different situations, but who He is and what He desires has never changed. Who He is? He's changeless. His love has not changed. His power has not changed. He's certainly still eternal and perfect in His ways. He's almighty. We could go through the lists. God is love. God is just. He's all of those things perfectly, fully, changelessly. He is not changeable in any of His attributes. He's 100% the same in each of those ways.

But look here in the text in what we read in verses 10 through 12 this morning is a quotation from Psalm 102. Psalm 102 verses 25 through 27. We just read it a moment ago in verse 10, which is corresponding to verse 25 in Psalm 102. It's showing that He is the one who laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens, David talked about that, and then he went, I consider the heavens, the stars, the work of thy fingers. And I think, what is man that thou art mindful of him? What was the natural response? What was the response of his heart when he began to think about the creation that God had made? He thought, I'm small. I'm insignificant. I'm just a little speck down here. I'm just a little insignificant man. It is good for us to think on God. It's good for us to think on even His creation because it helps us to see in proper perspective how really insignificant we are. What is our life? A vapor. It's here today, it's gone tomorrow. And when we look at our lives, even you look at the cellular level in our bodies, we're made of the elements of the earth, aren't we? Our bodies' cells have to be replenished every how many days. I forgot what it is, something like 90 days or something like that. There's a replenishing, a renewing of cells in the body. I think about if we didn't have sleep, we sleep at night and there's neuron repair that happens, all of these things that happen in the night so that we can get up and we can actually think clearly the next day and keep going. But we change. Our health changes. Our desires change because we're growing older, our bodies are in a constant state of change and they're temporary and they're fragile in a sense, just made of the dust of the ground, and they will return to dust in a period of time, not the Lord. He's the same. He's eternal, but even being eternal, He is the same in His eternality. He's changeless in His ways. And when we think about that, we ought to think, what is man that thou art mindful of him? And we ought to be still and know that He is God.

But we also ought to know, like it says in Isaiah chapter 2, turn there with me, Isaiah chapter 2 verse 22. It's there that we read this verse, it says, cease ye from man. What does it mean to cease from man? I believe the indication here is trusting in and depending on man. Cease from man. Oh, we ought to love, maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace among ourselves as brethren. We ought to strive to edify one another. We ought to point one another to the Lord. That's the only way we can really interact as we ought among ourselves. But cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils. Don't, well, don't trust in man. Don't trust in government. Don't trust in anyone to the point that you would trust in God because his breath is in his nostrils, even a good man, even a man or a person of character, a woman of character. They may make a promise, but they must always make that promise with the caveat, if the Lord will, we will do this with that because they do not know about tomorrow. They do not know, as strong or as wise or as good or whatever we might say about that's a good man. Maybe he is. But even everything he has, right on down to his breath, comes from God. Everything comes from God. So cease from man in the sense that we don't put our confidence in flesh. We might thank God for a man or woman that He's put in our life, but God is the source of that blessing. Now, He says cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils for wherein is he to be accounted of? Where is he to be accounted of?

Well, this is, think about it, Ecclesiastes 12 with me for a moment. Ecclesiastes 12 as a whole chapter, the end of that book, is dedicated to talking about how man's body is going to fail. And as we get older, the body begins to break down and begins to falter and begins to grow weaker, right? That is a universal truth. It's not a respecter of persons, is it? Over time, we just get a little weaker, a little less elastic. And we start to get a little more frail. And then we see that that's a change, it also does a change that we see around us is that God takes away loved ones from us, doesn't He? He takes away loved ones. Those that we loved that made in many different ways our world and our understanding of it, the way that it was, God takes those away from us. But remember what Job said in Job chapter 1, verse 21, he said, naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither. But listen to this, the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The Lord gave, gave me these children. He lost his children. He lost his flocks. And it wasn't there. It was gone. But the Lord, even in the midst of it, he blessed the name of the Lord because as painful as it was to face this change, the Lord wasn't taken away from him, was He? The Lord is the one that gave him and the Lord is the one that took them away. But he saw the Lord was constant in it. He didn't understand why the Lord had taken them away. But he knew the source of these blessings was the Lord.

Our finances may change and they will change and they do change. Sometimes you're doing fine, you know, at times you're not doing fine, right? Financially, Proverbs 23:5 says, wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not, for certainly riches make themselves wings. They fly away as an eagle toward heaven. You might say, well, I had a pretty good nest egg, but I had a lot of physical problems that came up. I had a lot of doctors' bills and the money started making wings and flying away. I had unexpected traumatic situations that came up unforeseen. Well, maybe I'm not doing as well financially now as I was at that one time. It's okay. The Lord gave, the Lord may have taken away. The Lord can give again. Keep your eyes on the Lord, not on the changes. If we keep our eyes on changes, there will always be changes for us to keep our eyes on. If that thing's done changing, the next thing's going to change. There's always going to be something fluctuating. And if we gaze upon that, if we look inward, we're going to be discouraged and despondent, or at times we might be puffed up with pride if we look at ourselves. Look at me. And then at other times we're going to be down in the pits. Look at me. Poor me. When we look at others, we might get a false sense of too much security and trusting in that person or we might have disappointment in people. You know, I'll disappoint you. We'll all disappoint one another at some time because I'm not God. I change. Now, hopefully, we pray that our heart will be fixed and we'll be growing in the Lord, right? And then we won't make certain mistakes and we won't sin in any way. But sometimes we do and we say things that we ought not to say and do, and we have to ask forgiveness for it. And we have to make them right quickly, right? If there's something between us and our brother, make it right. Don't let it grow and fester into bitterness. But also at the same time, we don't put our full confidence in one another in the sense that we're looking at that person to be perfect like God is. We need to be, even in those times, charity covers a multitude of sins. If your brother's overtaken in a fault, restore such a one, you know, you've got your spiritual garments well.

Even before I say about the government, people's feelings towards us change. Remember how Paul said to the Galatians, you would have plucked your eyes out and have given them to me in the past because you were just so grateful for what message God brought to me through me to you. He said, but am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth now? Are you turned against me now? What an extreme. As human beings, we have a tendency to be fickle, not only. We have a tendency to be fickle. But also we think about how governments change. Look in Daniel chapter 2, please. Daniel chapter 2 in verse number 21. It's here that we read in verse 21 and He, God, changeth the times and seasons. He removeth kings and setteth up kings. He giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. So governments rise and fall. Kings are set up and taken down. But also as we read in our text this morning, the earth is changing. The earth is changing. In fact, we read in here, what do we read in verse number 11, that they, that is the heavens, also the earth, the heavens shall perish, but thou remainest. They all shall wax old as doth a garment and as a vesture thou shalt fold them up and they shall be changed. It's going to change. You know, the elements are going to melt even ultimately with fervent heat. But even now they're changing. You know, we've heard about that a lot with our Outer Banks, haven't we? The constantly shifting, constantly moving around hurricanes, change things, fires rework the landscape. There may not be any of the vegetation before that was there before, at least for quite a period of time, floods. We certainly saw how that changed the landscape in the western part of our state this past year, last year. I mean, just places that were wiped off, really basically, wiped off the map. Basically a new gorge that was cut out by rushing river water. But in the midst of all of that, I think it makes the unchanging, I know that it makes the unchanging character of our God stand out more brilliantly.

We learned when we were going through the book of James that there is no shadow of turning in Him. There's no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Every good gift, remember we saw, every perfect gift coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is none of that. He's the source, the unchanging source of all our blessing. He is the constant. When we look at the Old Testament, His chesed, the steadfast, loyal love, the undeserved loyal love of God. We see that. He showed His love not only to His covenant people Israel, but He extended that love. Oh, yes, we'll hear the atheist talk about how could a God who is love destroy entire nations of people, how could He destroy them? He destroyed people who were sacrificing their children in the fire. They were going to die anyway, a lot of them. And they would not, they rejected the knowledge of God in creation. They, in many cases sometimes, sometimes as the case was with Nineveh, we see that with the Assyrians, God would send prophets, God would raise up prophets to speak to these nations. And sometimes there was a humbling as there was with the Ninevites in sackcloth and ashes. They'd even put sackcloth on the beasts. And God spared them. Jonah wasn't happy about it, but God, we see in His long-suffering and His love, spared at least for a hundred more years a nation that turned to Him. We see people like Hagar, Rahab. These were people out of cities and nations that were to be judged for their sin, but they, we see that Ruth, the Ninevites, Naaman, and Nebuchadnezzar. We see the law and the mercy of God, even in the Old Testament to these individuals. And that doesn't mean they were the only ones, they were just ones that are selected out for us to see as examples of God setting His affection on people that were not even part of the covenant Israel.

God cannot turn a blind eye to sin. He never has and He never will. He's long-suffering, but He must judge sin. We pointed out even in the Sunday school lesson this morning, He will judge sin and He made it clear even in His son going to the cross of Calvary that sin must be dealt with. It must be judged. He showed that that is what His heart is towards sin when He smote Nadab and Abihu by offering strange fire, disobedience to what He had told them to do in the temple or in the tabernacle. He showed it when He smote Achan for directly disobeying the orders not to hoard spoils from the conquest of Jericho. He showed it with what He did with Ananias and Sapphira for directly lying to the Holy Ghost in the early church. He gave examples like this to show us His heart has not changed towards sin. But He showed it when He smote the nation of Egypt back in the Old Testament with the plagues. He showed it when He smote Assyria, destroying what they thought was an impregnable fortress of a city in Nineveh. He showed it when He smote Babylon even as Belshazzar was drinking himself drunk that night and the handwriting appeared on the wall. He showed that He will require it. We said earlier, the wicked thinks in his heart God is not going to require it, right? He is unchanged. He is unchanged in His requirement that sin must be judged. It must be judged. One can either cast himself upon God's salvation freely offered or face certain judgment. And yet as we said, God is long-suffering. Remember what we read in Isaiah chapter 1, Isaiah chapter 1 and verse number 18.

The more you know the scripture, the more you realize that God hasn't changed. If you really know it, not that you just cherry-pick scriptures, but when you read through the whole thing, and when you see, yes, God may have dealt, thank God who didn't deal with you and I as He dealt. He didn't deal with everybody in church history like He did to set an example with specifically Ananias and Sapphira, right? Because there probably wouldn't be anybody left, but that is His heart toward sin. We notice in Isaiah chapter 1, verse 18, though, come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. The psalmist, David said in Psalm 103, verse 10, the Lord, He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. We are all better than we deserve, aren't we? We all, none of us today have received what we deserve because God is long-suffering. God is loving. God is just, God is unchangingly, immutably merciful and long-suffering in His dealings with human beings. Even those nations He destroyed, He gave them hundreds of years before He took them and replaced them and raised up other kingdoms in their place.

I think about God's power this morning in Isaiah 59, verse 1. Even though at times God is silent, it doesn't seem that He's working. It doesn't seem that He's working in a right-hand, strong-right-arm kind of way, maybe in our lives, or in our nation. I think of what Isaiah 59, verse 1 says, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither His ear heavy that it cannot hear. As I thought about all these attributes this week, I thought about the fact that, and actually, I did listen to a message by Charles Spurgeon. He made this observation. He says, God will not love you more when you stand face to face with Him than He loves you right now. And He does not love you, He did not love you more at Calvary than He loves you right now. His love is the same. He loves you just the same. And we said this morning, and just on the other side of the coin, just because we might say, well, I'm not as bad as someone else. Someone might say, well, my sins aren't as bad as that person's. That's a very subjective analysis. The only sin that sends a person to hell is the rejection of Jesus Christ ultimately. And when, because that in itself is a declaration of pride, I don't need a savior. I don't need someone. I don't need someone to save me from my sin. We might not have robbed the bank. We might not have committed lewd fornication, but nonetheless, we've rejected the offer of the changeless loving God that must deal with sin. He must deal with sin. And if we don't let Him deal with it in our lives and cast ourselves upon Him, then He will have to deal with it in judgment upon us. If we do not receive what Jesus Christ has done for us, God is our hope. He's our hope because He doesn't change.

How many things have we hoped in? How many people have we hoped in? You know, I hope this is going to work out and it didn't work out. I hope that this is going to go a certain way, it went the other way that we hoped it had not. In fact, Job said something like that which I greatly feared has come to pass or has come upon me. Well, he hoped that his children wouldn't be taken, but they were. He hoped that this bad day would not come, but it did. On our worst possible day or in our worst possible circumstance, just remember God isn't changed, God, Jesus Christ, He's the same yesterday, today, forever. Does that not bring us hope? I think about when we look at the world around us, we see change and decay, as the hymn says, in all around I see. O thou who changest not, abide with me. Oh, when we look at the hymns, we said before, there are many hymns that express this sentiment. I can't basically, I can't believe He loves me. I can't understand why He loves me so. But then there's a lot of hymns, as I was thinking this weekend, I didn't write them all down, but I was just thinking through different hymns. Talk about how God is changeless. Think through that. That would be a good exercise to think through some of the hymns and they talk about how God is the same, remains the same. And then apply that. We don't have time this morning, but apply that to all the attributes of our God. It is holiness and His justice and His love and His mercy, His long-suffering. And all of these things, think through that. What a blessing it is to meditate on. Be still and think on the changeless God and Savior that we serve.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, your Son, Jesus Christ, is far greater than the angels because He created them before anything was that is, that art, God. And when everything will be folded up, burned up of this present earth and will pass away, thou remainest. That thought, Lord, should just humble us this morning to think, what is man? What is man that thou art mindful of him? And yet to think thou lovest me, as the songwriter says, my heart cries out, how can it be? May we dwell on this wonder today of how great and immutable of a God we serve. We know that our hope is built on this reality. Our hope is firmly, squarely sitting upon this truth that we have seen this morning. So help us. Fill us with hope and with joy through the Holy Ghost as we dwell on this and as we step out in faith upon the unchanging nature of our sure rock, our sure God that we serve. We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.