The Immutability of God ( « previous here « )
III. Thirdly, I can say only a word about the other point THE BENEFIT WHICH THESE "SONS OF JACOB" RECEIVE FROM AN UNCHANGING GOD.
"Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." "Consumed?" How? how can man be consumed? Why, there are two ways. We might have been consumed in hell. If God had been a changing God, the "sons of Jacob" here this morning, might have been consumed in hell, but for God's unchanging love I should have been a faggot in the fire.
But there is a way of being consumed in this world, there is such a thing as being condemned before you die "condemned already," there is such a thing as being alive and yet being absolutely dead. We might have been left to our own devices, and then where should we have been now? Reveling with the drunkard, blaspheming Almighty God?
Oh, had He left you, dearly beloved, had He been a changing God, you had been among the filthiest of the filthy, and the vilest ofthe vile. Cannot you remember in your life, seasons similar to those I have felt?
I have gone right to the edge of sin, some strong temptation has taken hold of both my arms, so that I could not wrestle with it. I have been pushed along, dragged as by an awful satanic power to the very edge of some horrid precipice. I have looked down, down, down, and seen my portion. I quivered on the brink of ruin. I have been horrified, as, with my hair upright, I have thought of the sin I was about to commit, the horrible pit into which I was about to fall.
A strong arm has saved me. I have started back and cried, O God! could I have gone so near sin and yet come back again? Could I have walked right up to the furnace and not fallen down, like Nebuchadnezzar's strong men, devoured by the very heat?
Oh! is it possible I should be here this morning, when I think of the sins I have committed, and the crimes which have crossed my wicked imagination?
Yes, I am here, unconsumed, because the Lord changes not. Oh! if He had changed, we should have been consumed in a dozen ways. If the Lord had changed, you and I should have been consumed by ourselves.
For after all, Mr. Self is the worst enemy a Christian has. We should have proved suicides to our own souls, we should have mixed the cup of poison for our own spirits, if the Lord had not been an unchanging God, and dashed the cup out of our hands when we were about to drink it. Then we should have been consumed by God Himself if He had not been a changeless God. We call God a Father, but there is not a father in this world who would not have killed all his children long ago, so provoked would he have been with them, if he had been half as much troubled as God has been with His family. He has the most troublesome family in the whole world unbelieving, ungrateful, disobedient, forgetful, rebellious, wandering, murmuring, and stiff-necked. Well it is that He is longsuffering, or else He would have taken not only the rod, but the sword to some of us long ago. But there was nothing in us to love at first, so there cannot be less now. John Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and laugh at it too, of a good woman who said, in order to prove the doctrine of election, "Ah! sir, the Lord must have loved me before I was born, or else He would not have seen anything in me to love afterwards. "I am sure it is true in my case,and true in respect to most of God's people, for there is little to love in them after they are born, that if He had not loved them before then, He would have seen no reason to choose them after.
But since He loved them without works, He still loves them without works still. Since their good works did not win His affection, bad works cannot sever that affection.
Since their righteousness did not bind His love to them, so their wickedness cannot snap the golden links. He loved them out of pure sovereign grace and He will love them still. But we should have been consumed by the devil and by our enemies, consumed by the world, consumed by our sins, by our trials, and in a hundred other ways, if God had ever changed. Well, now, time fails us and I can say but little. I have only just cursorily touched on the text. I now hand it to you. May the Lord help you "sons of Jacob" to take home this portion of meat, digest it well, and feed upon it. May the Holy Ghost sweetly apply the glorious things that are written! And may you have "a feast of fat things, of wines on the lees well refined!"
Remember God is the same whatever is removed. Your friends may be disaffected, your gospel ministers may be taken away, every thing may change, but God does not. Your brethren may change and cast out your name as vile, but God will love you still. Let your station in life change, and your property be gone. Let your whole life be shaken, and you become weak and sickly.
Let everything flee away, there is one place where change cannot put his finger. There is one name on which mutability can never be written. There is one heart which never can alter, that heart is God's that name Love.
"Trust Him, He will ne'er
deceive you.
Though you hardly of Him deem;
He will never,
never leave you,
Nor will let you quite leave Him."
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