Things That Never Change Malachi 3:6
Today I want to talk just for a little while about some things that never change.
There are many things that are changing rapidly all around us. We are living in a constantly changing world. It seems that every phase of life changes.
Travel has changed – from the horse and buggy days of our grandparents or great-grandparents time to automobile and airplanes of our day.
The medical field has certainly changed – things that were once impossible are now routine.
But there are some things that never change.
Listen as I read today’s text found in Malachi 3:6.
6For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
The LORD, that is Jehovah is the eternal, self-existent, self-sufficient God who created and sustains it all. He never had a beginning and will never have an ending. God has always been, always is and will always be.
Our Great God is more awesome than we’ll ever understand. He transcends all time, all space, all knowledge, and every other dimension you can come up with.
Psalm 102:25-27 says,
25Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. 26They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: 27But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end
God existed before the heavens and earth were ever made, and He will exist long after they have been destroyed. God causes the universe to change, but in contrast to this change He is the same.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Hebs. 13:8 8Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and forever.
He is unchanging in His being, in His perfections, and in His purposes. God is the GREAT “I AM.” He is eternally perfect in every way, and His purposes will stand forever.
Three things about which God does not change:
Ø God is not going to change the way He feels about man.
God loves man and created man to have fellowship with Him. He loved the first man Adam in the garden before He sinned, and He loved Adam after sin entered the picture.
1 John 3:7-10 7Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation* for our sins.
God loved man enough to send His one and only Son into this world to live and die for man. Romans 5:8 “…God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
we certainly ought to be thankful today that God doesn’t change the way He feels about us – He loves us just as much today as He has ever loved us and no matter what we do His love for us will never change .
There’s nothing that we can do that will cause God to love us any more than He already does, and we can’t cause God to love us any less.
Some of Gods children have wrecked their lives with sin and shame, they have wasted opportunities, many saved people it seems have turned their back on Him, and yet He stands there with His unchanging love for His wayward child, waiting for His prodigal child to come back.
I’m thankful that God saw through my ignorance back in my younger days and kept me safe.
How can God continue to love man when man treats God at times the way we do?
He can love us this way because He does not change – His mercy endures forever!
So Gods love for man doesn’t change, and another thing about God that doesn’t change is, God is not going to change the way He feels about sin.
So people and every thing else change, but God doesn’t change how He feels about sin.
When Adam sinned in the garden, God was offended. Some folks may not think that Adams eating of the forbidden fruit was such a bad thing, but we need to understand that it wasn’t Adam eating the fruit but the fact that God told Adam not to.
The difference between God being the Lord of our life and us being the lord of our life is obedience.
What God told Adam was Gods law for Adam at that time, and Adam broke Gods law, and that is how Adam and Eve sinned, and that sin has been handed down to all mankind ever since.
Rom.5: 12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression,
From Adam to Moses sin was in the world, but at that time sin was not a transgression of the law because the law had not yet been given; it was looked upon by God as rebellion against Him.
Here is another light on this fact:
Gen. 6:5 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
But not a single one of them broke the Ten Commandments—because there were no Ten Commandments then. But they were judged because they were sinners.
~And that by the way helps to explain that the heathen yonder in the darkest jungle will die in his sin even though he has never heard the name of Jesus. God see him in rebellion against Him.~
God gave Moses the Mosaic Law and the people could not keep it either, so God made away that all mankind could keep His law.
Gal.4: 4 But when the fulness of the time* was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
The law was given so man could recognize when he transgressed Gods then given law, he had sinned.
1st JN. 4:4 Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.-- for sin is the transgression of the law.
But no one could keep Gods law other that the Lord Jesus Christ, He was sinless because His Farther was the Holy Ghost, His father was not Adam therefore He had not a sin nature..
Jesus said in Matt. 5: 17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
So when we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour, we keep Gods law through Him. Sin is offensive to God, it repulses Him, and it is loathsome to Him.
Nowadays our society might call sin by some other name but sin is sin. What was sin 10 years ago is still sin today. If it was sin 50 years ago it is still sin today. If it was sin in Jesus’ day it is still sin today. People might change the label on bottle full of poison but the poison remains the same. Poison is poison and sin is sin, no matter what people call it.
Ø Men with men & women with women, our society might call it an alternative lifestyle, but the Bible calls it homosexuality and it is an abomination to God.
Ø Sex out side of marriage, might be called a cohabietale experimentation, or love, but the Bible calls it fornication and it is sin.
We make some of the sorriest excuses for our sins as though we’ve got to convince people that what we’re doing is all right, and most of the time we’re only trying to convince ourselves, but listen, God has never changed the way He feels about sin and He’s not going to.
As I’ve already said, every one of us has an inherited sin nature. I didn’t become a sinner; I was born a sinner. We were born sinners. We were born with a sin nature that we inherited from Adam, and the only one who can do anything about that sin nature is Jesus.
We don’t like to admit something is wrong with us. We don’t like to admit when we are wrong. But the Bible still says, “all have sinned.”
Just as the cause of sin has never changed, the results of sin have never changed. “The wages of sin is death.”
Listen, the Bible tells us that because of our inherited sin nature, we were born spiritually dead, spiritually separated from God, and only a personal relationship with Jesus Christ changes that. We can’t do anything to prevent the physical death.
Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
God’s not going to change the way He feels about sin or the results of our sin.
If God were going to change the way He felt – if somehow He were going to overlook our sin, He would have done it on that terrible day over 2000 years ago when His only begotten Son was crucified!
And the reason why God’s son was crucified is because God is not going to change His plan of salvation
There’s only one plan of salvation. It’s the plan He used in the garden with Adam. It’s the plan by which Moses was saved. It’s the plan by which Noah was saved. It’s the plan by which every man or woman has ever been saved or ever will be saved.
Salvation is “by grace through faith.” Salvation is by “confessing with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believing in your heart that God has raised him from the dead.” Salvation is by “believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The men and women who lived before Jesus looked ahead by faith toward the Cross and those of us who live on this side of the cross look back believing that Jesus did come and die for our sins. I don’t think the people on the other side of the cross-understood what Jesus would one day do for them but they put their faith in God, they believed God would be faithful.
Either way, looking forward or looking back, the look is a look of faith. God’s plan of salvation has never been complicated. In fact, He’s made it so easy that most people stumble right over it.
~~Before Adam sinned he and God enjoyed a wonderful relationship with each other but when Adam sinned, he in essence turned his back on God.
God found Adam’s act so repulsive that He turned His back on man.
They were at enmity with one another. The Bible tells us that “no man seeks after God,” and had God never acted, man never would have turned to seek out a relationship with God again. But God, who is rich in mercy, made a way whereby man’s relationship to God could be restored.~~
The book of Ephesians tells us that when we were far from God He made peace possible through Jesus Christ. He broke down, destroyed the enmity and hatred that existed between God and man, so that what we have now is God turning back to man with outstretched arms offering a restored relationship. But Man stands with his back turned to a seeking and saving God.
