James 1:17   "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning."

God never changes.

He is exempt from any modification whatsoever.

Actually, there is no change possible within Him.

It is impossible for there to be a deviation by one hair’s breadth;

This is called the immutability of God.

God is immutable.

God never changes His mind.

He can’t change for better because God is absolute perfection. He fills the universe and there can be no variation in that because He simply cannot be more than He already is. And then He could not be worse nor could He be less. If He were, He would not be God because it is inconsistent with perfection to have change.

Therefore, in the Person of God there is no extension nor is there any declension whatsoever.

However, the minute we move out of the realm of creation and begin talking about God, there is no reason for God to change.

He does not have some new information today that He did not already have yesterday. Nothing unexpected can happen today that could cause Him to change His perfect plan and purpose in this world.

There is nothing that can appear on the horizon that God did not foresee.

He does not read the morning paper to find out what happened last night  -  in fact, it would not have happened if He had not permitted it.

Dear reader God knows everything from the very beginning to the very end.

The Scripture has a great deal to say on this subject.

God knows you and He knows me. He created us and before we were ever born, He knew exactly how many hairs would grow on our heads. He knew the exact moment we were to be born and He knows the exact moment when we will breath out our last breath. He knows whether or not we will trust Him for salvation and He knows exactly whether we truly love Him or not.

No person can ever fool God.

God does whatever He wants to do and nothing can ever stop Him.

No one can ever twist the arm of God.

Job makes this observation about God:

Another translation:

Isaiah also had something to say  about God.

God, speaking through him, said,

And the psalmist said in

Psalm 102:27    "But Thou art the same and Thy years shall have no end."

In other words,

God does not learn by experience.

He does not need experience and He has not come to the place where He is today because of the experience of the past.

There’s no danger of Him losing His position, and nothing has ever happened to surprised Him.

God never uses the trial-and-error method.

God is able to teach us a great deal about everything.

He knew all things from the very beginning and, therefore, there has been no reason for Him to change anything in His plan or in His program.

Changing economic orders present new problems that demand new methods and new solutions.

Well, for mankind that certainly is obvious. We are living in a world that has changed so much that we must have new solutions to our problems that continually come up. But God does not need solutions.

He is the solution to every single need or problem we have on this earth and He always does what is best for us.

We can rest entirely in that fact.

God takes care of His own in this world 24/7.

when God was ready to redeem man, it wasn’t handiwork. 

Isaiah 53:1   "To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"

The prophet Isaiah was not speaking of a physical arm; he was making a contrast. Saying that God has an arm and that He does handiwork this is is the only way we can understand that it cost God more to redeem man than it did to create a universe. You are more important to Him than the universe. That is a huge thought is it not. He used His fingers to create a universe; but when He redeemed you and me from sin  -  if you have indeed been redeemed  -  it was with His bared arm. 

No, God  does not really have fingers, and He does not have an arm. But that is the only way we will ever understand it.

God is nonmaterial. 

Material is His creation, and therefore it’s beneath Him; 

it is not part of Him at all:

Acts 17:29   "Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising."

This is the reason that from the very beginning God forbade man to make any image or likeness of Him. 

From the word go God said:

"Whom do you think I look like?" 

No one could ever make a true likeness of Him, because God is Spirit.

In spite of God's repeated warnings to the Israelites to stay away from idolatry, they would not listen  -  stiffnecked people -  and eventually their disobedience sent them into captivity. The story of the human family is not one of evolution up to God, but it is a story of devolution from a 

knowledge of God:

Romans 1:21   "Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

People began to make likenesses of four-footed creatures, of the sun and the moon and the stars, of just about everything, and began to worship them. 

Apostle Paul went into the city of Athens and said in effect, you have worshiped everything, and now you’ve even put up an image to an "unknown god." 

Deuteronomy 4:15-19   "Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure: the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth. And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage."

But are we ever told what Jesus looked like?

No.

We cannot find in any one of the Gospels that there was born to Mary a nine-pound baby boy with blue eyes and light hair or brown eyes and dark hair. A description of Him is not given in Scripture, and that is why our human attempts to paint a picture of Christ are not accurate. Oh, I know, all of those beautiful paintings are lovely to look at  -  the only thing is that 

our Lord Christ Jesus did not look like a single one of them.

Oh, dear reader, do you have the Savior?

"How can a spirit have personality?" 

Now just because God is Spirit does not mean that He’s not a person. 

You don’t have to possess a physical body to be a person.

For instance, Scripture makes it very clear that what you and I live in today, this physical body, is passing away.

It is only temporary. 

Apostle Paul said,

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1). 

God has personality, while at the same time being Spirit. 

What is our definition of a person?

It is one who is capable of self-consciousness and self-determination. 

God knows exactly who He is. 

He said to Moses at the very beginning,

"I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14)

God recognizes Himself, and He acts rationally because He knows who He is. He doesn’t have anyone to compare Himself to as we do, but He says, "I am who I am  -  I am God!"

God is self-conscious, and He also has the ultimate power to choose and decide. So it is obvious to us that God possesses the qualities to make Him a Person. And because He is a Person we can know Him and talk to Him personally. 

In the Old Testament it says,

Exodus 33:11   "So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend."

Why face to face? 

Because God is a Person.

God spoke as an intelligent Creator to this intelligent creature whom He had made.

God is also life. 

That does not mean that God merely has life, but He is life.

God breathes out life, and everything that has life must draw it from Him. 

His personality is never diminished or decreased because He gives out life. 

The Old Testament makes it clear that He is the living God, 

and everything else that is worshiped is a dead god. 

Jeremiah said to his people who had turned to idolatry,

Jeremiah 10:10   "But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King."

And old Elijah chided the prophets of Baal,   -  

"Where is your god? 

He must be asleep. 

He does not hear you." 

Baal could not hear them because he was an idol made by the hand of man. 

Only the living God hears! 

In the New Testament Paul said to the Thessalonians,

1 Thessalonians 1:9   ". . . You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God."

And the Lord Jesus said when He was here,

John 14:6   "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Christ is the living God and the life-giver, and He lives eternally and He knows all things.

I serve a risen Saviour; He's in the world today.
I know that He is living, whatever men may say.
I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,
And just the time I need Him He's always near.

Refrain:
He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way.
He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.

In all the world around me I see His loving care,
And though my heart grows weary I never will despair.
I know that He is leading, thro' all the stormy blast;
The day of His appearing will come at last.

Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian! Lift up your voice and sing
Eternal hallelujahs to Jesus Christ, the King!
The Hope of all who seek Him, the Help of all who find,
None other is so loving, so good and kind.

Thanks: HeavenlyMidis. homewithgod.com

Amen!

All that seems new and overwhelming or amazing to us is old hat to God.

The introduction of a nuclear age did not present Him with some intricate or complex problem. He is moving undeviatingly along with His own very complex and intricate program, and He knows every detail of it.

Nevertheless when it comes to the character of God, we are not dealing with fatalism at all.

Let us look at three classic illustrations given in the Scriptures of when God did change His mind, or so it seems to us.

What does it mean when on three occasions we read that God repented?

The first reference is in the Book of Genesis:

Genesis 6:6   "And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart."

As we have noted before, the Bible often uses anthropomorphic terms to speak of God so that we can understand Him. For instance, it speaks of His eyes, in

2 Chronicles 16:9   "For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars."

It also speaks of the ears of God, the arm of God, and the hand of God. But these are anthropomorphic terms, for He says this in

Psalm 94:9   "He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"

We can never understand how God can hear unless He has got an ear. So when we say that He has an ear we get the point  -  it gets through to us that God hears. But, God does not really have an ear in the physical form we are familiar with.

I do not know how God can hear without an ear, but He does. And I have a notion you feel the same as I do  -  the use of an anthropomorphic term is the only way we can understand certain concepts.

There is another device used in Scripture known as anthropopathism.

That is a big word that simply means to give human feelings to something that is not human  -  in this case, God.

The Bible says, for instance,

"He who sits in the heavens shall laugh" (Psalm 2:4).

It is an emotional term to say that God laughs.

I don’t know how anyone can laugh without a mouth, but it says here that God laughs.

Then, too, the Bible says that God weeps, also that God is grieved, and it plainly states that God repents.

These terms refer to us humans psychologically, and they are used in relation to God so that we can understand something about Him.

The King James Version uses the word repented, and actually the word here for repented is different from our word for repentance (I looked this up and in the Greek Septuagint translation  it is not metanoia  meaning "to change your mind."

Actually the word used here expresses a note of grief. I think we need to understand this  -  it is important to try to discover the exact meaning of words.

God tells us here,

"And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth"

"It repented the Lord."

What is meant by it?

What was it that caused our Lord to repent?

Let’s keep reading:

Genesis 6:5  "And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

This is what grieved God  -

the wickedness and the sin of man.

God created Adam and Eve and put them in the Garden of Eden. I believe He created them for several reasons and that one of them was for fellowship. And since they were created as free moral agents there must be a choice somewhere in that garden to test their obedience to their Creator. That choice was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At that time God said if they ate of that tree they were going to die.

Adam and Eve ate of the tree and did die.

Nowhere does God ever change His mind.

What God said at the beginning was,

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2:17).

And when Adam and Eve ate that fruit, God did exactly what He said He would do. He did not change His mind;

He kept His Word.

God always keeps His Word.

If we go into sin,

our Lord tells us the same thing He told Cain,

"If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." (see Genesis 4:7).

And God patiently  -  over a period of at least nine hundred years  -  watched the human family multiply upon the earth, and He was grieved because so few were coming to Him for mercy.

Eventually there was only 1 righteous man And God said,

"I’ve got to stop this while I have 1 man.

I cannot allow this to continue on to the next generation, otherwise Ham, Shem, and Japheth will not serve Me.

"Therefore for the sake of the race, I must intervene" (see Genesis 6:9–13).

God did save Noah and his household, and for 120 years Noah was faithful in preaching.

God did not change His mind.

God always punishes sin, and God will always save the sinner who comes to Him.

Anybody could have gotten into the ark if they had believed God.

The people of Noah’s day were like a lot of people in our day who just will not believe God.

God did not change His mind.

Then who changed?

Mankind changed.

The people whom God created to walk with Him turned away from Him in rebellion.

The natural man is an enemy of God.

The Word of God says that this old nature we have called the flesh, is at enmity with God. It is the enemy of God   -  and it is going its own way into sin.

God had to destroy man from off the face of earth, and the reason was because 

God never changes.

Mankind radically changed and became corrupt,

and God treated them as He must always treat

lost sinners going on in rebellion against Him.

He had to judge the earth..

And He did it in His mercy.

What repented God and grieved Him was man’s changed action, because God loved and wanted man for His own. He did not want to destroy him, for

"it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish" (Matthew 18:14).

God has not created any person to be lost  - 

He wants to save us.

God has never changed from that position.

Now alongside Genesis 6, we need to consider this statement:

Numbers 23:19   "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good."

Deuteronomy 32:4    "He is…a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He." 

Isaiah 65:16, He is called "the God of truth," and in 

2 Corinthians 1:18 the definition that is given of Him is,  

"But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay."  

And so we find that God is set before us in contrast to Satan. God is truth. 

The devil is a liar.

Notice also that our Lord Jesus, when He came to this earth, came as One who is the truth. 

Remember that John put it like this, 

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, [that is, Jesus Christ pitched His tent among us], (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth" (John 1:14)

Proverbs 6  that there are seven things He hates. 

The first one is a proud look, the second is a lying tongue. 

God says He hates that, 

He positively hates it!

All of us have to face the truth about ourselves and this is  grieves the cause of Christ. 

It causes the enemies of God to blaspheme God. But when we admit, that after we were saved, we did terrible things, things that not even the heathen do, Our Lord Jesus Christ is willing to forgive us and bare the shame because He has done just this for king David and others.

No one can ever tell lies to cover their sinful behaviour and enhance that cause of Christ Jesus in this world. Christ is perfect righteousness, He is just and true and His purpose cannot be thwarted by anything we do or say or do not do or say.

We must never forget that.

God is working His purpose out and not the gates of hell can ever prevail against Him.

God is fulfilling His purpose in this world and the cup of wrath is filling up as we speak. It is all moving undeviatingly according to His plan in this world.

Our sin can do nothing against His purpose.

He does not need any one of us to enhance His kingdom, Christ Jesus, Himself will bring in His own kingdom in His own time.

We are to wait upon Him and we need to renew our strength in Him daily. We need to repent daily and keep short accounts with Him so that we have no unconfessed sin in our lives. We are to walk in the Spirit continually and we ought to be praying without ceasing as we walk in Him, we ought to be seeking the lost and bringing  them to Lord Jesus. Our goal ought to be getting to know Christ Jesus more and more each new day so that we can grow to love Him more and more each new day and thereby learn to do more and more of the that which He is doing in this present world. God sent His only begotten Son to die on the cruel tree of Calvary for the sins of this world and we are to get that message out every single day of our lives. We are to seek for the lost sheep, and we are to carry them if necessary. Build them up in our most holy faith  and we are to take care of the widows and orphans in this present world. Oh today let us walk in His light like apostle Paul who said  

"And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another" (Romans 15:14).

We are to be ministers of the glorious gospel of Christ Jesus..

All the Gentiles are now  "acceptable"  -  apart from the Law or any religion  -  through  Christ Jesus being preached unto them.

"… Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). 

God grants Jew and Gentile today so that all can turn to Him.

The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit begins with Jew and Gentile the moment of regeneration when the Spirit of God takes up His abode within the believer. 

Apostle Paul gave the gospel,

 but God gave the Holy Spirit when they believed. 

And that is all we need to do.

Give the Gospel and trust God who through Christ Jesus alone gives the Holy Spirit when the heart of the recipient will turn to Him in truth.

Once we are born from above, we are a part of His body and we are identified with Him. 

Christ Jesus draws us to Himself so we can walk where He is walking   -  in the light of His Word  -  and we have His mark upon us, His seal, we are anointed with His power to proclaim His glorious gospel. The glorious gospel of Christ not only will save a sinner but it will keep us from sinning and it will uplift those who have fallen by the wayside and it will bring joy to the heart of those who mourn over their sin

"blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted"

Oh there is no greater comfort when we have sinned than to remember that our Lord Jesus paid the price of our terrible sin and when we think of the sorrow He bore as He suffered

Out there amongst the hills, 

My Saviour died - 

PIERCED BY THOSE CRUEL NAILS,

WAS CRUCIFIED.

Lord Jesus Thou hast done,

All this for me,

HENCEFORWARD  I  WILL LIVE

ONLY FOR THEE.

Amen!

Special Thanks: Losinda. 

Great is Thy Faithfulness, O  God my Father,

Strength for today  and bright hope for tomorrow,

Special Thanks: SermonAudio.com