I. The unchangeable God.

In the great covenant-name Jehovah there is revealed an existence which reverses all that we know of finite and progressive being, or finite and mortal being, or finite and variable nature.  With us there are mutations arising from physical nature.  The material must needs be subject to laws of growth and decadence.  Our spiritual nature is subject to changes arising from the advancement in knowledge.  Our moral nature is subject to fluctuations; circumstances play upon us, and ’nothing continueth in one stay.’  Change is the condition of life.  It means growth and happiness; it belongs to the perfection of creatures.  But the unchangeableness of God is the negation of all imperfection, it is the negation of all dependence on circumstances, it is the negation of all possibility of decay or exhaustion, it is the negation of all caprice.  It is the assurance that His is an underived, self-dependent being, and that with Him is the fountain of light; it is the assurance that, raised above the limits of time and the succession of events, He is in the eternal present, where all things that were and are, and are to come, stand naked and open.  It is the assurance that the calm might of His eternal will acts, not in spasms of successive volitions preceded by a period of indecision and equilibrium between contending motives, but is one continuous uniform energy, never beginning, never bending, never ending; that the purpose of His will is ’the eternal purpose which He hath purposed in Himself.’  It is the assurance that the clear vision of His infinite knowledge, from the heat of which nothing is hid, has no stages of advancement, and no events lying nebulous in a dim horizon by reason of distance, or growing in clearness as they draw nearer, but which pierces the mists of futurity and the veils of the past and the infinities of the present, and ’from the beginning to the end knoweth all things.’  It is the assurance that the mighty stream of love from the heart of God is not contingent on the variations of our character and the fluctuations of our poor hearts, but rises from His deep well, and flows on for ever, ‘the river of God’ which ‘is full of water.’  It is the assurance that round all the majesty and the mercy which He has revealed for our adoration and our trust there is the consecration of permanence, that we might have a rock on which to build and never be confounded.  Is there anywhere in the past an act of His power, a word of His lip, a revelation of His heart which has been a strength or a joy or a light to any man?  It is valid for me, and is intended for my use.  ’He fainteth not, nor is weary.’  The bush burns and is not consumed.  ’I will not alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.’  ’By two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we have strong consolation.’

II.  The unchanging God as the foundation of our changeful lives.