God Unchanging
‘’’This is the rest ‘wherczvith yc may cause the weary to rest,. and this is the refreshing’’’’ —
“iSut ®f)ou art tfjc samr.” — Ps. cH. 27.
This is an antithetical clause; a statement which is placed in contrast with something preceding, in order to bring the truth it contains more strongly and powerfully before us. The sacred writer deepens the shadows of his background, to give a more vivid prominence to a great Pillar of natural and revealed belief, the Immutability of God. The background I it is the dark, fitful, flitting shadows of time and sense. He thus chronicles their history — “They shall perish His foreground! it is the changeless and unchanging Jehovah, “But Thou art the same.”
The highest and sublimest verities in theology are oft supported alike by reason and revelation. ‘What says reason with regard to the Divine Immutability? That if God be a changeable Being He cannot be perfect, for mutability is the necessary attribute of imperfection. Again (if we dare venture for a moment the supposition), that if God were to undergo a change, it must be an Infinite change; moreover, it must be one of these three (I quote the words of an old divine) — (i.) A change for the better.
This would suppose present imperfection. Or (2.) a change for the 7O0rse; bold and blasphemous impiety, which would reduce the Holy One to a level with the creature. A third supposition — most presumptuous of all — is that of annihilation. This would leave the world without God, which would be a contradiction in terms.
Turn we, now, to what is the testimony of revealed scripture. That testimony, though uttered in diverse forms, may be comprised in the one assertion, “I am the Lord, I change not “(Mai. iii. 6). Glorious truth! To think, as imagination wings its flight from everlasting to everlasting, that in the existence of the Being whose lifetime is eternity, there has been no “variableness;” — that He was the same before the world was; that He is the same now; and will be the very same, ages and ages after the angel has stood on the wreck of matter and proclaimed ‘• Time to be no longer: “— as perfect at the present moment as He can be when an “eternity of eternity” shall have rolled by.
But in what respects may this unchangeableness of God be regarded as a ‘Palm of Elim,’ imparting a sense of rest and refreshment to those encamping under its shadow? Comforting doctrine it undoubtedly is. It leads us, among other reflections, to feel assured of His certain foreknowledge of all events. That whatever can befall us must be His ordination; and that the fitful changes in a changing world, — our relations to one another, our domestic and social ties, our joys and our sorrows, are ordained, watched, controlled by Him, who sitteth enthroned alike amid the radiant sunshine and above and behind the cloudlands of life; bringing good out of seeming evil, order out of apparent confusion; overruling all (all), for His own glory and for the best interests of His Church. He is spoken of as “the Father of lights with whom is no... shadow of turning” (James i. 17). “This,” observes an eminent Christian of a former age, commenting on the words, “is His disposition. An act of love may be very kind, but there is no security for the future. But when the disposition is love — unchanging love — all must be loving because He is love — all must be wise because He is wisdom.” “God,’’ says the inspired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ‘• willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hoi)e set before us” (Heb. vi. 17, 18).
There is a view of this peerless truth connected with our motto-verse, pre-eminently comforting, to which we have not yet adverted. The passage of which that verse forms a part, has, by Scriptural warrant (Heb. i. 10-12) a special application to the adorable Person in the sacred Trinity, who is pre-eminently the Palm under whose shadow His Pilgrim Israel repose. Christ, the God-man Mediator, may be supposed (in vers. 23-27) to address His Divine Father — “He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My days. I said, O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days.” Then follows the Father’s answer: — “Thy years are throughout all generations. Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They 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: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end” (vers. 24-27). Yes, of Jesus, wearing our glorified human nature — the sympathies of a refined and exalted humanity, we can say, “Thou art the same.” The unchangeableness of God absolute we could take little hold of: it is high, we cannot attain to it. But “the Man Christ Jesus j” — the same as He lived and moved and suffered and died on earth; the same in His compassion, in His words of mercy, in His messages of love, in His tenderness to the penitent, the fearful, the doubting; in His sympathy with the bereaved and lonely; and who no longer with tears to shed, has still the heart to feel: — Oh, when the spirit is rent with sorrow, and wounded with thoughts into which the cold world cannot enter; when estrangement severs brother from brother and friend from friend; where can the eye peacefully repose but on this unchanging One? “But Thou art the same!” Truly this is “an anchor of the soul, [>ure and steadfast,” for it “entereth into that within the veil!”
Change is our portion here. The Psalmist in this passage points to the spangled heavens above, and the apparently immovable, immutable foundations of the earth beneath, and inscribes on them the record, “They shall perish. As a vesture Thou shalt fold them up” (as a worn-out garment which the Almighty Maker lays aside, as for no more use). When everything within and around us may be echoing the same sad verdict, blessed it is to be able to turn from the unstable to the stable; from the reed which the blast may bend and the hurricane shiver, to the Great living Rock which spurns the storm and defies all change! In a word, to lay firm grasp on the glorious antithesis of Israel’s Kingly Minstrel. It is God in contrast with man; Immutability in contrast with mutability, the Infinite with the finite, the mortal with the Immortal, Eternity with time. “But Thou art the same 1”
“Our years are like the shadows
On sunny hills that lie;
Or flowers that deck the meadows
That blossom but to die;
A sleep, a dream, a story,
By strangers quickly told,
An evanescent glory
Of things that soon are old.
“O God! the Rock of Ages,
Who evermore hast been,
What time the tempest rages
Our dwelling-place serene.
Before Thy first creations
Thou wert the same as now,
To endless generations
The Everlasting Thou!”
AND THEY THAT KNOW THY NAME SHALL PUT THEIR
TRUST IN THEE.”