The Inexpressible Inevitability of the Son of God
1.
He does not change – therefore you are not consumed
2.
His Word is faithful – therefore you can believe it
3.
He makes you clean – therefore you are accepted
Well,
this past week we reached that point we cross each year around this time. It’s
not anything to do with Christmas – nothing having to do with presents, or
lights, or trees. No what we did this past week involved another holiday – the
throwing out of old Halloween candy. Yep, much to the dismay of Micah and
Allie, it was just time.
How
quickly things change in life. One day, you’re carving pumpkins, tweaking
costumes, and gathering free candy. A month or so later and it’s all gone. The
pumpkins are rotted, the costumes donated or stored away, and the candy
discarded. It’s the inevitability of time. As soon as a season arrives,
it’s gone just as quickly.
No
matter how hard we try, or the many ways we numb ourselves to the reality
through celebration, excess enjoyment, and misplaced priorities, no one can
avoid that which is inevitable. Instead, we should be preparing for the change
that we know to be coming. Right now, we’re in the thick of Christmas
preparations. We’re busy hustling about town and on the internet to get our gifts
and to make our plans. We extend a great deal of energy and effort. We feel
pressing guilt and stress if things aren’t the way we want them to be. For
what? Christmas will come and go.
As
elusive and uncompromising as the change of time is, the Bible tells us exactly
what we need to hear. Since sin came into the world, it has always been linked
with the passage of time. The inevitability of change also means the inevitability
of decay and corruption. Things wear out. New Christmas toys break or fall
apart. Christmas feasts expire and are consumed. Happy times with friends and
relatives subside back to the daily grind. Scripture tells us that the change
we witness is a result of the overall decay of this world we are in. The clock
is ticking upon this material universe. The harshest reality of all is that it
includes our bodies. We are subject to the most devastating change ever –
death. For both of these reasons our hope as Christians is not in this material
world, and what a welcome reminder that is especially around this time of year.
God
does not avoid this topic in His Word. Hebrews 1:10-12 says, "In the
beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the
work of your hands. 11 They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out
like a garment. 12 You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will
be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end."
Even
our cherished hymns express this reality in song.
123:6. Time, like an
ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons
away;
They fly forgotten as a
dream
Dies at the opening
day.
552:2. Swift to its
close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim,
its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all
around I see.
O Thou, who changest
not, abide with me!
This
morning, we read another section of Scripture on the topic of change,
especially as it relates to that Savior, Jesus, who came in our place. We read
from Malachi 3:1-6:
Malachi
3:1-6 "Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me.
And the Lord, whom you seek, Will suddenly come to His temple, Even the
Messenger of the covenant, In whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,"
Says the LORD of hosts. 2 "But who can endure the day of His coming? And
who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire And like
launderer's soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will
purify the sons of Levi, And purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer
to the LORD An offering in righteousness. 4 "Then the offering of Judah
and Jerusalem Will be pleasant to the LORD, As in the days of old, As in former
years. 5 And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness
Against sorcerers, Against adulterers, Against perjurers, Against those who
exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, And against those who turn away an
alien-- Because they do not fear Me," Says the LORD of hosts. 6 "For
I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of
Jacob.”
The
lead up to the birth of the Savior was very much like life today – constant
change. In fact, one of the reasons why so many people were caught off guard
when Jesus came is because, in their minds, it took too long. God had given the
first gospel promise of a Messiah to Adam and Eve. The impatient human mind
thinks that if someone so important and necessary as a Savior must come, it had
better be right away. But God had a different plan. God sent His Son in the
“fullness of time” as Paul wrote to the Galatians. And many things changed
along the way.
The
words of God’s messenger, Malachi, about the coming of another messenger, John
the Baptist, are filled with thoughts of change. Before we get to all of these
inevitabilities of the Messiah’s birth and work on earth, we jump ahead to the
last verse of our text, where we see the exact opposite of change. The LORD God
almighty says, “For I am the LORD, I do not change, therefore you are not
consumed, O sons of Jacob.”
Amidst
all the inevitable change in the world around us – there is one constant – God.
He does not change. Hebrews 13:5 says likewise, “Jesus Christ is the same,
yesterday, today, and forever.” This is the first inexpressible
inevitability about the Son of God, and it’s about consistency, not change.
This is the most important point to get clear from the onset. God does not
change. He is someone you can rely on. He promises you that despite the chaos
and uncertainty of life around you, He will always be the same. He is an
unending source of stability for your life.
The
blessed result is that you are not consumed. How does change consume? Well,
consider that this word indicates the completion or expiration of something. It
is the result of something having lived out its value. We might say that it’s
the impact of change on our lives. We eventually reach a point when we are
done. We, too, at least in our physical properties, are just like the earth
around us – a garment that will wear out. James expressed this truth by saying,
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a
city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; 14 whereas you
do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a
vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. (James 4:13)
We
hate hearing that message. We don’t want to be consumed. We want our lives to
continue forever. Sometimes, we want these things for selfish reasons. We want
to continue on in order to have more pleasure and happiness of an earthly
quality. But we also want to live on because God has created us to value life.
Death is a foreign agent. The change and decay of a sinful world is a twisted
reality on what life should be, and we know it. But, inevitable time moves
on. The first great truth is that God does not change. He does not succumb
to the decay of the world. He is above it. And He doesn’t just sit there idle,
He helps you. He promises that because He does not change, you will not be
consumed. You, too, will triumph over even death itself.
We’ll
have more on that in a moment, but for now we move to our second point. Since
God does not change, His Word is faithful. The first truth is about who God
is – His nature we might call it. This is a good truth and something we need to
know, but in reality, God is far from us. He is unapproachable to sinful
humans. (John 1:11,5) The Word is how God steps into our world. The Word is God
in our lives. It is every bit His nature as He is in reality, but it’s the
version of God that we can endure right now. Therefore, the link between God in
His nature, and God in His word, is inseparable. He does not change, therefore
what He says is faithful.
This
is such a blessed truth, and every bit as important as God Himself being holy.
For if God’s Word cannot be trusted, He might as well be an immoral tyrant and
a sinner just like us. Without a faithful Word from God, we have nothing. The
faithfulness of that Word is highlighted in the trustworthiness of this
prophecy from Malachi. Malachi speaks of the special forerunner of the Messiah
– John the Baptist. Malachi also prophecies of the direct work of Jesus in
cleansing us from sin. The launder’s soap was used to wash wool, in order that
it might be white again. A passage like Isaiah 1:18 comes to mind, "Come
now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins
are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like
crimson, They shall be as wool. The fulfilled work of Jesus as our Savior
makes this a reality. Our filthy sin is washed away in His blood. Our disgusting
acts of corruption and perversion against God’s holy will are wiped away in the
tide of mercy. This is the heart of Jesus’ work for us as a Savior from sin.
And it’s faithful. The second inexpressible inevitability of the Son of God is
that His Word is true, and therefore it is foundation of every believer’s
faith.
The
last point is really where we get the “inexpressible” part of our theme. It’s
not hard to understand that God is unchangeable and that His Word is true.
Those are regular themes for the Christian. The truly mysterious truth before
us today involves HOW the Son of God made all this possible. HOW He cleansed us
from sin. Here’s what makes it tough. This unchangeable God. This holy God. He
chose to come down to earth and be born like us. He chose, as contradictory as
it sounds, to be changed. Malachi says that He would “come suddenly to His
temple.” That meant coming to earth – that was a prophecy of Christ’s
incarnation – the technical term for Him becoming human.
God
should not have had to do that. God does not change in that way – at least in
theory. But Jesus did, for you! He walked on the same legs. He held with the
same hands. He thought with the same brain. He felt with the same heart. The
same blood flowed through His veins. But God does not change. The truly
inexpressible part of all this is that Jesus did all this for us, yet did not
violate the immutable nature of God. The most amazing miracle happened – He
was both true man and true God at the same time in a most perfect union. Human
nature cannot conceive of that ideal or even understand it. It tries to in the
religions of the world. All over the place, mankind interacts with the divine
but never in this way. Never in the perfect union of the Messiah as fully Man
and fully God.
Yet,
Jesus is also inevitable – even more than time, and change, and decay, and even
death. God should not have changed as He did – we though we don’t know how it
was possible. But, what we can say is that Jesus wouldn’t let sin or death have
the final word. The simple act of mercifully offering His own life for yours
was far more powerful than any evil of this present age.
This
is truly inexpressible yet also inevitable. We teach is clearly from Scripture
yet it’s a thought, like so many others from the Bible, that far transcends our
reason. And yet, even the littlest among us knows who that baby in the manger
really is. The result is that we have the hope of a perfect union with God. The
ugliness of sin, the inescapable change and decay of the world, everything
wicked that we can’t do away with on our own – is covered in Christ. Therefore,
we are not consumed.
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