(If you have found this sermon helpful, please visit us at www.HeritageRestorationProject.org or www.ChristianWisdom.info)
In Hebrews 13:8, we read, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” This is one of the most powerful verses in all the Scriptures, and one that most Christians know by memory, or at least recognize as being from the New Testament.
In a world where things are changing rapidly, where the fast past of living has become hectic, and, where it’s so easy to feel left behind, left out, and bewildered, a world is which values have been compromised and society seems teetering on the brink of moral collapse, it's tremendously comforting to know that we have a compass that points true, a God who speaks clearly, and a Savior who never changes. The Word of God is clear and consistent. When we follow it, our moral compass remains constant.
There are three things about Jesus that never change:
1. The first thing about Jesus Christ that never changes is the power of His name:
“Jesus Christ”. What an amazing name! It carries so much power. And that power is still the same. In 40 years of ministry, I have seen broken lives renewed, strained relationships restored, sick bodies healed and hearts transformed through the name of Jesus Christ! I have prayed in that name in hospitals, emergency rooms, funeral parlors, church services, classrooms, and at the bedside of those persons who were passing away. The power of Jesus’ name has always brought comfort and strength to those in need.
The name Jesus Christ has been used through the centuries and still remains the most powerful name ever known! Whatever struggle you may be going through, whatever problem you may be facing, if you will call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that name has the power to bring renewal and healing into your life.
In Acts 3:6, when a crippled man at the temple asked Peter and John for alms, Peter responded by saying, “Silver or gold I do not have, but in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk”, and through the power of that name an amazing miracle happened! That man who had been crippled from the time of his birth was healed and walked!
There is no greater power in heaven and earth than the name of Jesus Christ, and that power is available to us today, just as it was for Christians at the time of Peter and Paul.
2. The second thing about Jesus Christ that never changes is who He is and what He has accomplished:
His claims, His teachings, His revelations, His prophecies, and His promises will never change. He is the Savior who is always present to guide, comfort and strengthen us. Psalm 68:19 says, “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens”. Jesus is with you each day, and shares your burdens. His love and faithfulness never change!
Here are just three of His unchanging claims:
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die”, John 11:25-26a.
“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly”, John 10:10b.
“My grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness”, 2 Corinthians 12:9a.
These claims never change. Jesus Christ never changes.
3. The third thing about Jesus that never changes is His moral and ethical teaching:
If Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow as Hebrews 13:8 tells us, then surely His moral and ethical teachings do not change. And if that is true, then our values and ethical principles, the values and ethical principles taught to us by Jesus, should not change!
Here is an opportunity to say something that needs to be said: God’s plan for sexuality involves procreation and mutual affection within the marriage relationship. Anything else has consequences for both the individuals involved and society in general. Upon what justification can I say this? I say this because the Bible teaches that unrestrained lust and sexual immorality, results in disregard for the purity of character of both oneself and one’s sexual partner, a disregard which not only saddens our Heavenly Father and grieves the Holy Spirit, but which also damages our soul by making it less and less sensitive to the Holy Spirit. “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 NIV). “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more” (Ephesians 4:17-19 NIV).
Of course I believe that God forgives. But forgiveness and consequences are two totally different things. We may think that the closer we get to forgiveness the further we move from consequences. Not so!
The Old Testament book of 2 Samuel tells of King David’s lust for another man’s wife, Bathsheba. When she became pregnant by him, he then committed a second sin, the murder of her husband, to cover up the first sin of adultery. David requested and received God’s forgiveness, but natural consequences followed even though God had forgiven David. Now, I’m neither a psychiatrist nor a sociologist able to draw a direct connection between what David hand done and the tragedies which followed in his family (rape, murder and intrigue), but the implication of the account as found in 2 Samuel 13:1-18:33 is that it David’s sin introduced conflict, mistrust and dysfunction within his family. God promises to forgive sin, but that does not shield us from the natural consequences of our sin.
It has been estimated that the Lord’s church is losing eighty percent of her youth by the time they reach twenty-one years of age! Four out of every five! Does this shock you? It should. I am inclined to think that the estimate is fairly accurate. In many Christian congregations today, there are relatively few young people in attendance. Why is that? I suspect that a large part of the reason for this is that in many cases virtues and values are no longer a part of family life, having been obfuscated in these latter days by a general and pervasive secularism. There are at least three contributing factors, and all of them are natural consequences of the corrupted and debased cultural environment in which we live.
1. The Destruction of Personal Faith:
From the time our youngsters first start watching television, and then progressively as they matriculate through the secular school system, they are propagandized with a variety of teachings, overt and hidden, that are designed to destroy their faith in God, and their confidence in Christianity. In a hundred subtle ways children are taught that New Testament faith, universal standards of right and wrong based on God’s natural law, and, Christian virtues are untenable. Those children who have been taught New Testament faith, universal standards of right and wrong based on God’s natural law, and, Christian virtues in the home and express these ideas in public are subjected to subtle social punishment, sometimes including ridicule. Add to this fact the sobering reality that many young people today are given almost no moral and ethical instruction either at home, or in school, nor even in the church, to counter the secularism to which they are exposed daily, and the destruction of personal faith among our youth becomes understandable. It is a natural consequence.
2. The Encroachment of the World:
The times they are changing, and, drastically so. Youngsters these days are brutalized with the carnality of the world at increasingly tender years. More and more children are exposed to the use of recreational drugs and alcohol at an earlier and earlier age. Television, with its inundation of lustful explicit sexual activity has broken down the barrier of sexual purity. Many of our young people today are accustomed to ogling nudity in the movies and on TV. And need I mention the internet? Every time I turn on my email, I must pass through the provider’s home page with its prurient teasers inviting the viewer to click on a “news” story that is salacious in content. The kids are exposed to this as well, and no longer just on home computers where there is some reasonable chance of regulating what they are exposed to. Now sexually explicit material is available to them on the cell phones that almost all children seem to carry with them. Once prematurely deprived of their youthful innocence and seduced by hedonism, it becomes nearly impossible to bring them back to godliness. This too is a natural consequence.
3. Parental Neglect:
Many parents within the church are far more concerned with their children’s academic achievements than their spiritual development. Moreover, we are a nation obsessed with sports and recreation. What are we teaching our children when we allow and even encourage them to subordinate spiritual activities to ball games, ski trips, and school projects? Certainly not that religious, moral and ethical instruction is important to their growth and development. Much heartache has come about as the natural consequence of parental neglect.
More than a billion dollars will be spent this year on sex-education, most of it centering on teaching what has become known as “safe sex”. Perhaps teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases may be reduced through this type of instruction, one can only hope. But what about the damage to the child’s soul! Is that not a problem? In I Peter 2:11we read, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul…” Spiritual damage is very real and a natural consequence of sexual activity during childhood. And yet, biblical morality is laughed at, belittled, called archaic, and old-fashioned.
In the 1960’s, Hugh Hefner said, “sex is a normal function of the body, it is a desire that man shares with the animals, just like sleeping or eating, therefore it is not wrong to satisfy these normal desires”. Society has swallowed that philosophy, hook, line, and sinker. Traditional Christian values have been overthrown. If you tell a teenager that they are an animal for long enough, he or she will eventually prove you right! Sex, from the human standpoint, should not and cannot simply be a desire that man shares with animals which is to be satisfied promiscuously as many “animals” do. Such an attitude is destructive to society, to culture, and to the individual who is degraded spiritually and harmed emotionally by such an attitude.
Yes, there are inevitable, predictable, natural consequences that result from sin. But rather than avoiding those consequences by curbing inappropriate behavior, society has decided that it is better to simply try to do away with the consequences of our inappropriate behavior. In the case of unwanted pregnancy, just do away with the consequences! In the case of sexually transmitted diseases, teach our kids to use prophylactics and spend billions to come up with new drugs to try to prevent or treat sexually transmitted diseases.
But regardless of the efforts society is making to “fix” or avoid the consequences of sin, there are still natural consequences to living a life without concern for natural law. That hasn’t changed. Uncontrolled alcohol abuse still leads to the danger of addition and cirrhosis of the liver. Use of tobacco still elevates the risk of cancer of the lungs, mouth and esophagus. Gluttony can lead to cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes. That hasn’t changed. Reckless driving is still a major cause of automobile accidents. Gambling and other addictions are still a major cause of financial woes. Unwanted pregnancy, wrecked marriages, and sexually transmitted diseases are still the result of sexual promiscuity. All of these sins and others, with repentance, can be forgiven, but we will not necessarily escape from the “natural consequences” of that sin.
Sin has the potential to leave man shattered, uncertain, and unproductive. In addition to physical consequences, sin also has spiritual and emotional consequences; e.g., guilt, anxiety, loss of self-respect, and so on. Guilt is the most destructive emotion we can have. It robs us of sleep, peace, joy, self-worth, and, potentially adversely affects our receptiveness to God’s grace (see Luther’s Commentary on Galatians for an excellent explanation as to why guilt is one of Satan’s favorite tools used by him in his efforts to separate us from our reconciliation with God).
Yes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”, and the same is true of biblical morality which is based upon the bedrock of natural law. Natural law cannot change. All that exists is sustained through natural law. Moral and ethical teachings are not true just because they are in the Bible; they are in the Bible because they are true.
It is said that Bill and Gloria Gaither were once wondering what the future held for their newborn child. They were, naturally, anxious parents in a world filled with war, riots, sexual perversion and the threat of nuclear devastation. In that moment anxiousness for their child, the Lord gave them the words of a song that has become a favorite of Christians:
"Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone,
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living, just because He lives."
May that be our hope and blessed assurance today as we seek to become more like Jesus, remembering that he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
(If you found this sermon helpful, please visit us at www.HeritageRestorationProject.org)
