An Unchanging God

An Unchanging God

By

Bishop Melvin L. Maughmer, Jr.

OPENING: - I like to play golf although I haven’t been able to play lately one thing about golf that is totally true is consistency is the name of the game. The problem is I wasn’t always consistent. If we are honest most people aren’t always consistent in the things the do in life. We are always changing we are always adapting.

It is amazing how God will speak to you, and we must be cognizant to His voice and listen to what He is saying. Understand when He speaks it is seldom in a loud audible voice, but it is in the still small voice and the subtle ways that we must listen and hear what thus saith the Lord.

Heraclitus an ancient philosopher is famous for his statement, “Man cannot step into the same river twice.” Heraclitus was simply pointing out that change is a constant for us.

The road I normally take to go to work has been closed now for two weeks or more and there is a detour which WATCH THIS caused me to take a different way to work. Although the detour is a minor change it changed many different things. It changes my direction as far as how I travel to work it changed the scenery I was used to seeing and showed me something new that I hadn’t seen before, it changed the amount of time it took me to travel only by a couple of minutes, and it changed the route I was used to traveling. This detour caused me to pass two churches and two graveyards that I never knew existed before until the detour was in place. I thank God for the detour because it was through this detour that I heard God speak and give me this message. One of the churches I passed had on its marque Hebrews 13:8 and when I saw it something deep down on the inside was stirred and said that’s what I wanted you to understand. The sign said and I am using it as the title of the sermon “An Unchanging God”.

The depravity of mankind is displayed in every place throughout all of history; however, this time we find ourselves living is truly perilous times. The things that grip the headlines are outrageous and show just how far from the image and likeness of God we have fallen. Murder, killings, road rage, the utter disregard for life, and the utmost heinous crimes being done and not even a second thought is given causes us to say Lord have Mercy. We have surpassed wrong being called right and right being called wrong and are living as Genesis 6:5 says, “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. Romans 3:10 says, “None is righteous, no, not one”.

When we look at Genesis and the creation of man and compare it to the condition of mankind today, we see just how much man has changed. Although mankind has changed, we serve an unchanging God. “An Unchanging God”!

PRAYER: -

Scriptures: Hebrew 13:8 “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever”. Malachi 3:6 says,“For I am the LORD, I change not”. Psalm 119:89 says, “Forever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven”. Ecclesiastes 3:14 says, “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him”. Hebrew 6:17 says, “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath”.

QUESTION: - What does it mean that God is immutable? Immutability means God does not change in any way, form or fashion as Hebrew 13:8 “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever”.

UNDERSTAND: - God Cannot Change. God has no need to change for He is complete and perfect in Himself and has no need of anything. He cannot change for the better because that would mean he wasn’t God before He can’t become less than what He is because then He would cease from being God He is immutable – an unchanging God. The name that He gave to Moses to tell the people of Israel just Who God was is found in Exodus 3:13-15 “ehyeh ’ašer ’ehyeh: I AM that I AM or I AM” meaning the self - existent One. We are finite creatures, dependent upon food, air, water, sun and so on. We have a beginning and regardless of what we try to do will have a physical ending, but God has always existed and there was never a time that He did not exist nor will there will ever be a time when He will not cease from existing. God needs nothing outside of Himself to exist and outside of him is nothing for He is omnipresent. He is fully self-sufficient and self-contained.