In the most literal sense our text is true. Because He lives we live
also. He is the same for ever, therefore we are not consumed. The
foundation of our being lies beyond and beneath all the mutable things
from which we are tempted to believe that we draw our lives, and is in
God. The true lesson to be drawn from the mutable phenomena of earth
is--heaven. The many links in the chain must have a staple. Reason
requires that behind all the fleeting shall be the permanent. There must
be a basis which does not partake of change. The lesson from all the
mutable creation is the immutable God.
Since God changes not, the life of our spirits is not at the mercy of
changing events. We look back on a lifetime of changing scenes through
which we have passed, and forward to a similar succession, and this
mutability is sad to many of us, and in some aspects sad to all, so
powerless we are to fix and arrest any of our blessings. Which we shall
keep we know not; we only know that, as certainly as buds and blossoms
of spring drop, and the fervid summer darkens to November fogs and
December frosts, so certainly we shall have to part with much in our
passage through life. But if we let God speak to us, the necessary
changes that come to us will not be harmful but blessed, for the lesson
that the mutability of the mutual is meant to impress upon us is, the
permanency of the divine, and our dependence, not on them, but on Him.
We may look upon all the world of time and chance and think that He who
Himself is unchanging changeth all. The eye of the tempest is a point of
rest. The point in the heavens towards which, according to some
astronomers, the whole of the solar system is drifting, is a fixed
point. If we depend on Him, then change is not all sad; it cannot take
God away, but it may bring us nearer to Him. We cannot be desolate as
long as we have Him. We know not what shall be on the morrow. Be it so;
it will be God's to-morrow. When the leaves drop we can see the rock on
which the trees grow; and when changes strip the world for us of some of
its waving beauty and leafy shade, we may discern more clearly the firm
foundation on which our hopes rest. All else changes. Be it so; that
will not kill us, nor leave us utterly forlorn as long as we hear the
voice which says, 'I am the Lord; I change not; therefore ye are not
consumed.'
God's purposes and promises change not, therefore our faith may rest on
Him, notwithstanding our own sins and fluctuations. It is this aspect of
the divine immutability which is the thought of our text. God does not
turn from His love, nor cancel His promises, nor alter His purposes of
mercy because of our sins. If God could have changed, the godless
forgetfulness of, and departure from, Him of 'the Sons of Jacob' would
have driven Him to abandon His purposes; but they still live--living
evidences of His long-suffering. And in that preservation of them God
would have them see the basis of hope for the future. So this is the
confidence with which we should cheer ourselves when we look upon the
past, and when we anticipate the future. The sins that have been in our
past have deserved that we should have been swept away, but we are here
still. Why are we? Why do we yet live? Because we have to do with an
unchanging love, with a faithfulness that never departs from its word,
with a purpose of blessing that will not be turned aside. So let us look
back with this thought and be thankful; let us look forward with it and
be of good cheer. Trust yourself, weak and sinful as you are, to that
unchanging love. The future will have in it faults and failures, sins
and shortcomings, but rise from yourself to God. Look beyond the light
and shade of your own characters, or of earthly events to the central
light, where there is no glimmering twilight, no night, 'no variableness
nor shadow of turning.' Let us live in God, and be strong in hope.
Forward, not backward, let us look and strive; so our souls, fixed and
steadied by faith in Him, will become in a manner partakers of His
unchangeableness; and we too in our degree will be able to say, 'The
Lord is at my side; I shall not be moved.'