Saturday, March 5, 2011

God is Not Fickle

Mal 3:6a "For I am the Lord, I do not change..."


 

This is such a cool verse with an amazing truth. (Not hard to memorize either.) Why is it cool? Because it is kind of redundant. "For I am the Lord." Lord is Jehovah and Jehovah means "existing one"…eternal one. So this verse says "I am the eternally existing One, I do not change." Get it? If God is eternal, if He has always been in existence, then I would think that the One who is eternal is also unchanging. The truth is this: God is the same today as He was before the world was even created. And God is the same today as He will be a million years from now. Constant. Consistent. Reliable. True.


 

Kind of sounds like a familiar verse in Hebrews that says: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." Heb. 13:8 Let's see. If God never changes and Jesus never changes what does that make Jesus? No one else can make this claim. I certainly change, probably every day or more often than that. But Jesus never changes and God never changes The truth here is that this is another verification that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. They have exactly the same nature: Eternality.


 

The beauty in all of this is the fact that I don't have a fickle God. I don't have to worry that He is going to change in His love for me. I don't have to worry that He is going to fly off the handle one day because He is mad. I can trust that His love for me is the same no matter what I do. In fact, this verse backs that up. "For I am the Lord, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed…" Thank God for that! His patience is eternal as well. Does God get frustrated with us? Is He grieved because of dumb things I do? I believe that He is, but He can't deny His character and His character is loving. His character is merciful. His character is gracious. His character is long suffering. And because of this, the world has not been consumed.


 

Just think if God did not have these character qualities, this place would have been toast a long time ago. But God is consistent and He is watching and waiting. He is the eternal God who is going to someday judge the world with fire, but Peter reminds us that He is not slacking around about this promise, but rather is exhibiting His great patience waiting for many to come to repentance. (I Pet 3:7-10)


 

I thank God that He is constant. I praise Him that He is not fickle. When I think about the dumb things I do and say any mortal would say: "Forget you." But not God. Because He is immortal. He is eternal. He never changes. Thank You.

1 comment:

newdave said...

God may not change in terms of His love, commands and character, but is He fickle? He is often depicted in the OT and sometimes in the book of Acts as being very unpredictable. My brother in law says "you can't trust God, but you can trust in God". I like that. It captures and combines the mix.
Most people quote the stable unchanging berses as you did, but what about Psalm 78:65 where God is depicted as someone sleeping on the job and an intoxicated soldier...woken up by His own allowing of His people to get beaten up by God's enemies.
I do not actually believe God sleeps on the job, nor is He in some intoxicates stupor that He gets jarred out of, but I believe He is allowing Himself to be depicted as such. Why? The answer and truth of this should accompany with ...God never changes.