This morning I invite you to turn with me to Psalm 102, Psalm 102 as well as Malachi 3, Psalm 102, reading verses 25 to 28 together. This is a psalm that is the prayer of an afflicted man, the heading in my Bible says here. When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord. Praying that God would change his situation, relieve him of his affliction. And then there's a most beautiful testimony in verses 25 through 28. And then we will turn over to Malachi 3, verses 6 through 12. Verse 25, hear now the word of the Lord. in the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands they will perish but you remain they will all wear out like a garment like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded but you remain the same and your years will never end the children of your servants will live in your presence their descendants will be established before you and then turning over to Malachi 3 beginning at verse 6 I the Lord do not change so you O descendants of Jacob are not destroyed ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them return to me and I will return to you says the Lord Almighty but you ask how are we to return will a man rob God yet you rob me but you ask how do we rob you in tithes and offerings you are under a curse the whole nation of you because you are robbing me bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house test me in this says the Lord Almighty and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines of your fields will not cast their fruit, says the Lord Almighty. Then all the nations will call you blessed for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty. The immutability of God. Now beloved, this is another of the glorious attributes of the God we worship and serve. Now, boys and girls, that sounds like a strange word, doesn't it? And the very word immutable, the very sound of the word immutable, by that it almost sounds as if it's something terrible. But it's not, at least when we talk about it in connection with God. It simply means changeless, without change. God is without change. He doesn't change. And of course we know that's true because, first of all, that's what God says about Himself in His Word, the Bible. We just read that together, didn't we? The psalmist says, but you remain the same. And in Malachi 3, verse 6, the Lord says of Himself, I, the Lord, do not change. Now, of course, that's terribly frightening for those who reject God, or at least there will be one day. But on the other hand, it is to the believer's greatest comfort. And we'll talk a little more about that later on. But you see, congregation, God is perfect. God is perfect in His being. He is perfect in His nature, in His essence. He is perfect in His Word. In everything about Him, God is perfect. He does not change. He will not change. He doesn't need to change. You see, we, and I'm talking about we as creatures, as human beings, we, I believe, have a hard time really comprehending all of God's attributes, to be sure. But especially this one again, that God is changeless. And I think that's probably, at least in part, because we understand change. In a sense, change is all we're used to. It's all we know. Change is all around us. It affects us. It's a part of us. Boys and girls, your parents probably have a number of photographs of you, of your life, of you growing up, and maybe even starting with an ultrasound photo of you before you were born. Maybe that's tucked away in an album somewhere. Or maybe they have a number of videos on the shelf of footage they have recorded with their camcorder. Take a look at those pictures. Take a look at those videos and see how you have changed. You've grown physically, as we all have. You went from needing to be held and fed and burped and changed and bathed to being able to crawl and walk and learning how to feed yourself, to dress yourself, and to talk understandably. Our lives are constantly changing. As we grow and mature, we get stronger. But then, of course, we age and our strength begins to fail and our hearing fades and our eyesight gets dim. Our hair falls out. The cells in our bodies continue to change. I've only spoken about our change in the physical sense. Our situations in life change. We change occupations at times. We change locations where we live. Our address changes. We change our minds, don't we? We may think about a certain something in one way for a long time, and then at some point in our life, we change the way we think about whatever it was. We change the way we think about it. The physical world is constantly changing around us, and we see this as the seasons come and go, and even the sun in the sky, which doesn't seem to change, continues to burn out. Clothing and hairstyles change. Technology changes. Consider the television. Once there was black and white with two or three channels, some of the boys and girls are going, what? You've got to be kidding. But now there's the plasma, the thin screen that you can hang on your wall. It doesn't take up much room. And there's unlimited channels. Look at transportation changes from the horse and buggy to planes, trains, and automobiles. For years, the cancer, Hodgkin's disease, was considered to be a death sentence. Forty years ago it was, but I'm still here today, eight years after my diagnosis, by God's grace and the technology that He has given. And I'm told, even when I was diagnosed, that now, in this day, it's one of the most treatable and one of the most curable forms of cancer. If you're going to get cancer, they say, that's the one to get. But you don't want to get it, believe me. Consider computers from room size to fitting in the palm of your hand. Other medical technology, communications. The list goes on and on and on, doesn't it? But God does not change. He is changeless. How? He is changeless in His being. He is changeless in His purposes. He is changeless in His Word. He is completely other than the creature. God is what He was. always has been and ever will be in our way of thinking. He is perfect. The Bible describes God as light, which we know stands for His perfection. James says every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. We know, of course, a change is either for the better or the worse, isn't it? Students, if your grades change, either it's because they got better or because they got worse. Otherwise, they stayed the same. Beloved, if your weight changes depending on your perspective, either it's for the better or it's for the worse. The psalmist in Psalm 102 was pleading with God to change the psalmist's situation for the better because he was suffering affliction maybe before things were going well and things changed for the worse. And now he wants it changed back for the better. In the prophecy of Malachi, the Lord is reminding His people of how they have changed the relationship with Him for the worse. But God can neither be better or worse. Improvement or deterioration are both equally impossible in God. He doesn't become more or less than He is, nor does He grow or decay. You see, God cannot get better than He is because that would mean that before He was less than perfect. Which means then that He would not be God. And God cannot get worse because then He would become imperfect. and no longer be God. First of all, God is immutable or changeless in His being, in His nature, His very essence, His characteristics. He is infinite in His nature, first of all. There never was a time, you see, when He was not. There never was a time when He didn't exist. And there never was a time when He was different than He is today. We're even different today than we were yesterday. God has always been able to say, as He did to Moses, I am. You see, we are constantly becoming. But God is. He is true being. He is Jehovah, Yahweh, the Eternal One. And He always will be. He is described in Scripture as the One who lives forever and ever. That's from Daniel 4. And then from everlasting to everlasting, you are God, the psalmist says in Psalm 90, verse 2. There will never be a time when He shall not be. He will never cease or stop being God. God has not evolved. He has not grown. He has not improved in any way. Some heresies say that He is still in the process of becoming. Again, He cannot change for the better or the worse. And God is not at all influenced by time, is He? He is outside the boundaries of time. Unlike us, all we need to do is look around at each other. Look around at this room at the different ages and the descriptions of each other, and it's clear that we are all influenced by time, but not God. Time, by its very nature, changes, doesn't it? God is outside the boundaries of time. All created things are influenced by time. And I think James points to God's changeless nature or being when he says that He does not change like shifting shadows. Think of the sand dunes and the wind blowing over them. The sand dunes are constantly shifting and changing. They're never the same. And I believe that we can also speak of God's changeless nature in the sense that He will always be the one and only true God. There will never be another in place of them. There will never be another alongside of Him. He says in Isaiah 42, I am the Lord, that is my name, and I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to idols. When we speak of God's immutable being, That includes His character, you see, and the attributes which give description to His character. We've considered a few of His attributes now, and it's interesting that certain of God's attributes can be used to describe all of His other attributes. For example, we know that God is perfect, but we can also speak of His perfect love, His perfect holiness, His perfect omniscience. Or we can speak of His holy love, His holy wrath, His holy justice. And the same is true with His immutability or changelessness. His holiness is changeless. He is not more holy today than He was yesterday. He can't become more holy. He is truly holy in the fullest sense. His truth is unchangeable. Psalm 119 verse 89 says, Your word, O Lord, is eternal. It stands firm in the heavens. Now, boys and girls, we sometimes have trouble with the truth, don't we? And as well, we change our mind depending upon the situation, especially if what we have decided isn't going the way that we want it to go, then we tend to change our mind to make it then go the way we want. We don't always tell the truth either, do we? But the truth of God's Word is changeless. He always tells the truth, and it's always true. God's love is unchangeable. Jeremiah 31 verse 3 says, The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with loving kindness. But again, our love does change, doesn't it? Sometimes, as the saying goes, the blood in our veins runs cold toward another. Our love fades. We might consider someone a friend one day, boys and girls, but the very next day, if we've had a problem with that person, We might tell mom, well, you know, he or she is not my friend anymore. But God's love is perfect. It's without change. Praise God that it is, that God's love is everlasting for you and me. God's mercy is changeless. Psalm 100 verse 5 says, For the Lord is good, His mercy. And in this case, the word love can be interchanged and they mean the same thing. His mercy is everlasting. Again, how comforting for us that God does not change His mind about His people and decide to be unmerciful to us. We know that mercy presupposes misery. Where mercy is needed, misery already exists. And praise God that He doesn't leave us in our misery. But again, that describes us at times, doesn't it? Because of our sin. Sometimes we become hardened in our heart and we figure, well, he or she got themselves into that mess. Well, then he or she better get themselves out of it. God's wisdom is changed. You see, we hope to get smarter as we get older and grow. Boys and girls, that's why we go to school for so many years. But the learning obviously doesn't stop there. And wisdom is using the knowledge that we have acquired properly and in a God-glorifying way. But God doesn't learn as He goes along. He doesn't learn, nor does He forget. God has always known everything perfectly and His wisdom is undiminished. Beloved, because God is without change, because He is unchangeable, that means that even though we live in a much different age, a much different time than Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, even though it may seem that we today have nothing in common with the heroes of faith recorded in Scripture or even with the church of the time of the Reformation or even with saints of a hundred years ago, even though it seems that we're radically different, the truth is we have the greatest thing in common and that is the same unchangeable God. The same one who made a covenant with Abraham. The same one who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. The same one who made Adam and Eve and all things in the beginning. This very same God is the one we worship and serve today. And because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He is also immutable in His purposes. His nature is changeless. And then so are His purposes. God's counsel, His decrees, His will, which He has determined from before the foundation of the world, remain the same, perfectly the same. Psalm 33, verse 11 says, But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations. Now, the heretical teachings of the Pelagian and Arminian doctrine of God is that there is change in God's knowledge and in His will in that His decisions and the unfolding of His eternal plan are dependent upon the actions of man. Well, think about that. One of the implications of that would be that God doesn't really know what's going to happen until man acts. And that in essence, God just has to go along with it. What else can He do? And it means that history doesn't unfold in the way that God wants it to, the way that He planned it to, but it unfolds in the way that man directs it to. We've considered together the sovereignty of God, and we know that nothing happens by chance. We know that God perfectly and flawlessly rules and governs over all things, and that all things take place according to how He has perfectly planned it. That means, beloved, there are no sudden emergencies, there are no unexpected developments that take God by surprise. Nothing happens that He says, Oh, I better change my plan for tomorrow because it's just not going to work out. In contrast, man changes his mind. he reverses or revises his plans for two reasons, as one commentator rightly says. Number one, he lacks the foresight to anticipate anything that can, may, or will happen. We don't know what tomorrow holds. Secondly, he lacks the power to execute or carry out his plans, the plans that he has made. But God is both omniscient and omnipotent. So that by His sovereign power, He carries out perfectly all that He has perfectly, sovereignly willed to happen. And it's true, of course, that we don't know what God's plan is for our daily lives until it unfolds perfectly. Even the difficult situations of life, beloved, unfold perfectly according to how God has determined it. But we do have His revealed will, His Word, And the psalmist in Psalm 102, as well as Malachi in chapter 3, verse 6, could speak with confidence that God would carry out His revealed purpose for His people. Psalm 102, verse 28 says, The children of your servants will live in your presence. Their descendants will be established before you. And verse 6 again in Malachi 3, I, the Lord, do not change, so you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Now that alone is an amazing phrase. It's an amazing word of grace. Because if we were to read from the beginning of Malachi's prophecy, we see that the whole prophecy is about how Israel has failed. How they have turned away from the Lord. And indeed, God's threats of judgment are sure. But so is His promise of grace. And He's promised to save a people for Himself. He promised to preserve a remnant. And therefore, He can say, So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. I do not change. My grace does not change. You see, in both of these instances, God's people have confidence in the promises of God that what He says, He will unchangeably do. Of course, there's so much that we could say that God says it best in His Word and that nothing about Him changes, including His purposes. Yet this does not mean that God is stagnant or without emotion of sorts or that He is unmoved. You see, God is busy directing the changing situations of our lives according to His unchanging plan. And as well, God acts consistent with His nature. You see, He is holy, righteous, and good, and therefore He is pleased with the holiness and righteousness of His people, but at the same time, His wrath burns against and He is terribly displeased with sin. And, of course, the Bible talks about instances where it seems that God changes his mind from what he had planned and even said that he would do, and he instead did something else. In Jonah, when the Ninevites repented, we read in Jonah 3.10, when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. You see, congregation, that repentance of the Ninevites was not a surprise to God. He knew that they would repent. He planned that they would, and that's why God sent Jonah, as another minister preached once, to Nineveh, precisely because he was calling them to repent. And that minister also said God didn't send a preacher to Sodom and Gomorrah, did he? He did not. But also God acts consistent with his nature in that he has promised forgiveness for all who truly repent. And the Ninevites were the recipients of that sure promise. Another biblical situation that we might think of is Numbers 14, where the Lord says He's going to wipe out the Israelites in the wilderness and in turn make a great nation of Moses. Moses pleads with the Lord on behalf of the Israelites, telling God that the Egyptians are going to hear about it and they're going to, in effect, laugh at God. They're going to say, well, He could deliver them out of bondage in Egypt, but He was not strong enough to preserve them in the wilderness. The result, we know, is that the Lord forgave the people. But did God really change His mind as we think of it? For example, when someone presents us with an argument that we hadn't thought of before, but it makes sense, so we change our minds? That happens in the council room at times. If an issue is being debated and reasons are going back and forth and one might change the way he thinks because someone else had an argument that they hadn't thought of before, and yes, it makes sense. It's the right thing. Was Moses really an obstacle in the Lord's way? No. God's purpose, it seems, was to warn Moses so that Moses would plead for the people. God's plan was that Moses stand between God and the people to show the Israelites and us the kind of Christ that we need to plead for us. To stand between God and us. Moses was an instrument in the hand of God to carry out God's plan, to unfold the history, God's history of revelation and redemption. God is unchangeable in His nature. He is perfect God, and therefore He is also unchangeable in His purposes. He knows the end from the beginning. He carries out His plan without fail, without flaw. What He says, He will do. And that means also then that He is unchangeable in His Word. God says what He means. He means what He says. But His Word, His Word of Scripture is constantly being changed and altered by man. And this is especially true in the visible church. In our day, we sometimes think that we know better than the wise preachers and theologians of the past who, be sure, studied a whole lot more than we do. And we try to change the Word of God to fit our culture, to fit the day that we live in. Indeed, beloved, how the Word of God may be applied to our lives may be different in our day for us than it was for Moses and as it was for Paul. And I say that very carefully. Because of cultural changes, the application might vary in a sense, but the Word of God stays the same. The commandments stay the same. And therefore, the application of the Word of God never contradicts the truth of the Word of God. And that's where the consistency comes in between the application to Moses, the application to Paul, the application to you and me. For example, like Israel and like Paul, we are commanded to keep the Sabbath day holy. The Christian Sabbath, we know, is now the first day of the week, Sunday. But it is still given to us not to do our own pleasure, but to do God's pleasure. And in this day, it seems that maybe we have more opportunity to do God's pleasure. I think of Valley Vista. I think of other Christian retirement homes as well. We think of the sick in the hospital or in their homes. We think of prisoners in the prisons. What an opportunity God has given to us. Malachi's prophecy was needed because God's people had changed His unchangeable Word. Again, if we start at the beginning, we read of that throughout. God commanded, we know, unblemished animals for sacrifices. The best of the flock. And in other parts of Scripture, we know He commanded the firstfruits of the crop. But they were offering, as Malachi says, crippled animals. Or as the Lord says through Malachi, crippled animals. They were keeping the best for themselves. And the worst part is they were not seeing anything wrong with that. But God says nothing doing. That does not fit with what I have said. And then in chapter 3, the Lord talks specifically about the tithe He required. Using the example of the situation there, God's people, you see, were not listening to Him anymore. They were no longer bringing the tithes and offerings that God commanded. Instead, they were bringing less. It's interesting, I think, that tithe means tenth. And nowhere in the New Testament do we read about that kind of a tie that seems to have ended somewhat with the sacrifices and so forth. However, the New Testament clearly talks about the weekly offering. And if you want to get technical about percentages, how much did the old lady, the old woman, the widow bring? The two mites. Everything, 100%, huh? What about Zacchaeus? How much did he bring? 50% of all that He had. Maybe those of us who stick to a tenth are really cheating God. They were bringing less. It was a serious act of disobedience. And it was a demonstration of what we might say was the real issue. Verse 7 says, Ever since the time of your forefathers, you have turned away from My decrees. You have not kept them. The real issue was that by failing to bring the required tithes and offerings, the people had changed God's Word, and the result was that they were robbing God. But any time you and I change God's Word, we are robbing God. But God's commands don't change. God's Word doesn't change with the times. It doesn't change with the culture. It doesn't change with the trends. It doesn't change according to majority vote. God's Word is settled and binding. And we cannot twist God's Word and still expect fellowship with Him. God's Word over the centuries and even over the decades of our lives has been whittled down. We tend to peel away from it layer by layer like the skin of an onion. We reduce it. We change its meaning for our lives. It's been changed over and over again, even in the church, to fit man's tastes and man's desires. How many times haven't you heard someone say, well, this is a different age, you know, and the church has to change with it. Or maybe you've heard someone say something like, well, the Bible meant something differently. You know, it was written so long ago, and it meant something differently to people 500 years ago than it does for us today. Consequently, worship is watered down. God is no longer always said that He's the focus, but He's not. Man is the focus in what you and I like, what will draw us in. Sin isn't preached faithfully, if at all, anymore. People are not held accountable for their actions. And when one brother tries to hold another accountable, or when the pastor and the elders try to hold the congregation accountable, right away that word flies out, you're legalistic. You're legalistic. When one is a little more strict in their observance of God's Word than another, the one who's not quickly comes back with that retort. That's legalism. And that really bothers me, beloved. It troubles me greatly. Legalistic, being legalistic or legalism can mean something proper and good. But it also can mean something very improper and bad. And the bad way is those who are trying to be legalistic like the Pharisees in order to earn their way into heaven. It'll never happen. It's bad. But legalism in the good sense is striving to be obedient everywhere possible to the Word of God. That's good legalism. If you want to call me legalistic for striving to be obedient into what I believe the Word teaches, then go right ahead. I'm proud of that. We need to be honest, beloved. How have our lives changed? How many of us do things we never would have done 30 years ago because, well, number one, our parents taught us, but number two, we believe without reservation that whatever it was was offensive to God and that it violated His Word. How many of us have changed our standards and why have we changed them? For example, I'm not afraid to use the hot-button issue of eating out on Sunday or shopping on the Lord's Day. When I was a child, you see, at least in the town that I grew up in, that just wasn't done in Reformed circles or even by many professing Christians. Maybe it's because the restaurants weren't open. I don't know. And maybe now that's why some do. But now many do. Why is that? You see, we always believed that doing that violated keeping the Sabbath day holy. Not because we were trying to earn our way into heaven, but because we believed it was not honoring to God. Has God's Word changed? No. But we have. And that then begs the question, were we wrong back then? Were we ignorant? Did we just not understand? or are we wrong now? Have our traditions changed because the changes are biblical or because they are cultural? Those who have opened their restaurants on Sunday, surely they must know better than we did back then. It must be okay. Have our practices and beliefs changed or become watered down because we have a clearer insight into God's Word than any of the saints before us? or because they fit with our desires better? Do our changes cause us to look more like the heroes of faith of Hebrews chapter 11, or do they cause us to blend in a little bit better with the world? We must beware, beloved, because there are false prophets who preach from the Bible, but they change it, they dilute it, they even eliminate portions of it because society has changed. And that's why each and every one of us must be a student of the Word of God. that's why every elders meeting I remind the elders of the sermon texts and themes and points that I preach on that they might critique them and that's why you as a people of God must also search the scriptures to make sure as well that what is coming from this pulpit is the truth you see many say that God is okay with homosexuality so long as it is a faithful, monogamous relationship. Show me. God's Word doesn't say that anywhere. God's Word and His commandments haven't, they don't, and they won't change. And neither should the expressions of love from our hearts, neither should our obedience change. Not in that way. You should become more sure. And obviously, though, that means that as society changes, the more different we will look from the world as time goes by. But that's okay, beloved, because that's a good thing. Yet God's immutability is to be for our comfort, even as it is to the terror of the unbeliever. God eternally hates sin. His punishment of sin is eternal. As one commentator rightly says, God's immutability ensures the execution of His threatenings as well as the performance of His promise. And he goes on, It destroys the hope which the guilty fondly cherish. Those who reject God are terribly ignorant, beloved. Many truly believe that God will not severely punish sin, that He will not stick to His Word, that He will not hold those who reject Jesus Christ accountable. But God's Word is clear that the Father of lies and all who believe in Him will suffer the eternal torture of hell. Not one of them will be able to sneak in or sweet-talk their way into heaven. And listen to the last verse of Malachi 3, verse 18. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who don't. God will not treat all mankind the same on the day of judgment. Not at all. But our comfort is that God's promises are sure because they are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. We may be like, and we certainly are like, the ever-tossing sea, changing all the time. The waves are always coming into the shore of the ocean, boys and girls, always churning and changing, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the solid rock upon which the feet of God's people rest secure, immovable, solid, and sure. And no matter how much man learns, no matter how much we explore space, and no matter how many cures man finds for the different diseases, God's Word and His only way of salvation is the same. There's only one Gospel. There always has been. And that's the one and same Gospel that we are to spread of Jesus Christ. God's promises cannot be revoked. They will not be broken. And that means the saints' eternal rest is sure. It means our inheritance is secure in heaven. It means that He will never leave us nor forsake us. It means Jesus Christ will come back again for us. And it means that while we are still in this world, our comfort is that even if we fall into terrible, disgusting sin, we pray that doesn't happen, but we know it does at times. Even if we do, God's promise of forgiveness for those who truly repent is sure. Because He is faithful and just. Man cannot be relied upon, but God can. See, there's absolutely no encouragement to pray to one who promises one thing today and turns around and denies it tomorrow. But God is changeless. We can take Him at His word. He's already proved it. The Israelites didn't stay in bondage any longer than what God said they would. God said that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the seed of the serpent. We read about that again in Isaiah 53, about the one who was crushed, who was pierced through for us and crushed for our iniquities. It's been fulfilled. Jesus Christ came. Jesus said that He would send the Comforter, His Holy Spirit, to lead us into all truth. He has come. He's with us even today, even now. I don't know what each of you might be facing today. If we took time to talk about it, there'd be a lot of different issues that people are struggling with. But, whatever you are facing today, you can take God's promises, any one of them recorded in His Word. You can take God's promises to Him in faith, and He will fulfill it. May each one of us find comfort in this changeless God, finding comfort in the unchangeable saving sacrifice of His Son accomplished 2,000 years ago. And it's still the same today. And praise God that His salvation doesn't change with the culture and with the society and with the whims and desires of man. May we rejoice in the truth of His Word as He says of His sheep, I give them eternal life. and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. Amen. Shall we pray? Father, with humble hearts, we come before You again in this morning hour rejoicing that You are immutable, that You never change. You have been, are, and will continue ever to be perfect and eternal. That your word is sure, your plans are being carried out just as you have perfectly planned them. And that your plan for our lives as well is perfectly unfolding in your care. Father, we pray that you would draw each one of us ever closer to yourself in that confidence and that assurance of the security of the salvation which Jesus Christ has earned for us, knowing that we will never be lost. That our eternal future is set in stone and can never be taken away from us. May we rejoice in that, O Lord. May we rejoice in Your goodness. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.