"A Changeless God for a Changing World"

James 1:17

¹⁷Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Dear Friends in Christ, James 1:17

Our God truly is an awesome God, isn’t he, just as we sang in that hymn. How awesome is he? Well, consider this comment that I came across from a famous chemist named Dr. Edwin E. Slosson. He says: “The greatest miracle of the Bible is its chemical accuracy! The Book of Genesis says that man was made out of the dust of the earth, and this is literally and scientifically true. The ground in the vicinity of the place where life began in the Garden of Eden consists of 16 different chemical elements, all of which are found in the body of man. Now how could Moses, Job, and later the psalmist have known this? Yet long ages before the science of chemistry was born, this truth was declared to be fact. Only God could have inspired the writers to make such accurate statements.” Yes, indeed, our God is an awesome God!

And for the past couple of weeks we’ve been seeking to answer the question “What is God like?” as part of my “Back to the Basics” sermon series I am currently preaching. In our study of God we have discovered that he has many characteristics and attributes that reveal how awesome and amazing he really is because they go far beyond our ability to understand. For example, we’ve learned that he is triune, which means 3 persons in 1 God; he is eternal, which means he had no beginning and will have no end; he is holy, which means is so absolutely perfect, pure, and sinless that he is in a class all by himself; he is omnipotent, or all-powerful; omniscient, or all-knowing; and omnipresent, which means present everywhere at the same time. Today we want to consider a few more of God’s attributes that should be a little bit easier for us to understand, but attributes that will also prove to be very comforting and encouraging to us, starting with this one: changeless.

In Mal. 3:6 God says, “I the LORD do not change.” Elsewhere in our text for today, we are told: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” How nice it is to know that in the midst of a culture and a world that is changing at a breathless pace that most of us cannot keep up with, the God we worship and serve is the one changeless reality that we can anchor ourselves to, that we can always count on to bring strength, stability, and peace into our lives. We never have to worry about him being one thing today and another thing tomorrow. He’s not like Buddha, whom nearly half a billion people in our world bow their knee to. Just recently I learned that in Kyoto, Japan there is an unusual place of worship called “The Temple of the Thousand Buddhas.” On display inside of that shrine are more than a thousand likenesses of Buddha, each just a little different from all the others. Why so many? Well, from what I read, they are there so any follower of Buddha can come in, find the likeness that looks most like himself or herself, and then worship it.

I’m thankful that the God I serve is a changeless God. Like Heb. 13:8 puts it: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And my friends, this unchanging characteristic of God is something that we need to take very seriously because we’re living in a time right now where people outside the church and even some inside the church are trying to change him, to update him, to modernize him to make him more palatable to our politically correct culture. For example, many pastors today no longer use the word sin in their sermons, even though God uses that word quite frequently throughout the Bible to describe those times of rebellion and disobedience in our lives when we choose our way over his way. These pastors might speak of mistakes that we make or flaws that we have, but they are reluctant to call those mistakes or flaws sin because they don’t want to offend anyone. In that sense, then, they are trying to change God.

And what’s scary about all this is that the more society tries to change God and water him down, the more de-sensitized we become to the things that hurt him or offend him, the things that he declares in his Word to be wrong. Need some examples? Remember the days when profanity and 4-letters words were forbidden on television? When they were first allowed, people were shocked that such language could be heard over the airwaves, but now no one bats an eyelash at it because it’s become so commonplace. Remember the days when living together outside of marriage was called living in sin? But now with more than 70% of couples doing it before they get married, cohabitation is readily accepted and often times promoted as the wise thing to do in order to see if you and your partner are compatible with one another. Never mind the fact that couples who live together before they get married stand up to a 100% greater likelihood of getting divorced than couples who don’t live together. Remember the days when the gay lifestyle was seen as a socially deviant way to live because the Bible declared it to be an abomination to the Lord? But now it is seen and even promoted as a healthy, normal, and acceptable lifestyle that all of society is supposed to embrace or else risk being labeled as homophobic or intolerant.

Times have changed, haven’t they? But make no mistake about it, my friends, God has not changed. Sin is still sin from his perspective, regardless of how we try to color it, whitewash it, or sanitize it, which leads us to another characteristic of God that is worthy of our attention today, and that is that he is just.

What that means is that he must deal with sin. He can’t turn his head the other way and pretend that sin doesn’t happen. If he were to do that, then he would cease to be just. And if he ceased to be just, then he would cease to be God. For Deut. 32:4 says: “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.”

Now I would imagine that most of us would prefer that God did not have this particular quality because his justice demands that our sins be punished. But just try to imagine for a moment a world where justice did not prevail. Remember the whole Sean Hornbeck ordeal that took place some years ago. He was kidnapped by Michael Devlin who held him captive for several years, physically and sexually abused him, threatened to do harm to his family if he ever tried to make contact with them. When Michael Devlin was finally caught and brought to trial, what do you think would have happened if the jury had found him guilty, as it did, but when the time came for the judge to sentence him, that judge said, “I know Mr. Devlin did all these horrible things. I know that he has been found guilty by a jury of his peers. But I’ll tell you what. I’m having a pretty good day today and I’m feeling kind of footloose and fancy free. So Mr. Devlin, this is your lucky day. I’m going to go easy on you. I’m going to ask you to pay a $10 fine and then you’re free to go.” What do you think the reaction would have been to a decision like that? Why, there would have been such a public cry of outrage as had never been heard before. People would have shouted, “But that’s not fair! That’s not just!” And they would have been right.

Well, in a very similar way, the sins that we commit are no minor matter to a holy and perfect God. They demand his justice; they deserve his punishment and judgment. It’s only right, it’s only fair from heaven’s perspective. Which leaves us in a pretty sad state, doesn’t it? For the Bible clearly declares that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It also states that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And if God were only a just God, we wouldn’t stand a chance on that day. But thankfully, his justice is tempered by a couple of other great characteristics that we need to talk about today. And that is that he is gracious and he is merciful. Grace is a beautiful word. It’s defined as God’s undeserved kindness, love, and favor. It can’t be earned by us, it can’t be bought by us, it can’t be merited by us in any way, shape, or form. Mercy is the pity, the tenderness, the compassion that he shows to us in spite of our sins simply because that is his nature.

Sometimes grace and mercy are used interchangeably with one another, but they really shouldn’t be because they are very different from each other. Many years ago I heard that difference expressed in a way that I’ve never forgotten: Grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve; mercy is God withholding from us what we do deserve.

So on the one hand, we’ve got a God who is just, who must deal with sin, who must punish sin. On the other hand, we’ve got a God who is gracious and merciful, a God who longs to rescue his children from their sins. The question is, how could God be both just and merciful at the same time? How could the justice of God meld together with the grace of God?

The answer to those questions can be found in one of my all-time favorite stories that is entitled “Eternal Harmony.” Some of you have heard this before, but it’s definitely worth hearing again…

At the cross, Jesus, like the son in that story, wrapped himself around us and allowed himself to receive in his body the punishment that we deserved for our sins. And as God took out that punishment on his own Son, both his justice and his mercy were satisfied, and we who receive Christ’s sacrifice as our own become the blessed beneficiaries of God’s amazing grace and all that that grace brings with it: forgiveness, life, peace, strength, hope, and salvation.

And speaking of hope, I had really hoped to finish up our look at the attributes of God today, but I didn’t quite make it. I have 3 more that I want to share with you to complete our picture of what God is like, so we’ll take a look at those in my next sermon. Until then, may the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding keep your hearts and minds firmly anchored to our changeless, just, gracious, and merciful God at all times.

Amen.