John Flavel
What remains then, seeing God is unchangeable in His love to His people, pursuing the great ends of all His gracious promises in a steady course of providence? In it He will never effect or permit anything that is really repugnant to His own glory, but He would have us enter also into this chamber of rest, shut the doors about us, and make comforting use of the unchangeableness of God, while we see nothing but changes and troubles here below.
1. Enter into God’s unchangeableness by faith; take up your lodging in this sweet attribute also. And to encourage your faith to do so, seriously consider a few particulars.
(1.)
Consider how constant, firm and unchangeable God has been to His people in all times and straits. Many thousands of His people have passed on before you and all of them have found Him so by frequent and certain experience. What a singular encouragement is this to our faith in the case before us! “They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee, for Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee” (Ps 9:10). So also: “Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as the storm against the wall” (Is 25:4). Neither is there anything in your experience which contradicts the encouraging reports others have made of God. You must acknowledge that, notwithstanding your own changeableness, who have hardly been able to maintain your hearts in any spiritual frame towards God for one day together, yet His mercies towards you have been new every morning, and great has been His faithfulness. You have often turned aside from the way of your duty; you have not followed God in a steady course of obedience; yet, for all that, His goodness and mercy have followed you all the days of your life (Ps 23:6).
(2.)
Consider how often you have doubted and mistrusted the unchangeableness of God and been forced, with shame and sorrow, to retract your folly therein. God has many times convinced you that His love to you is an unchangeable love, however many changes have passed over you in the course of His providence. Consult Isaiah 49:14 and Psalm 77:7,8 and see how the cases are parallel, both in respect of God’s constancy to them and you, and the inconstancy of His people’s faith then and yours now. Your fears and doubts are the same as theirs, though His goodness and love have been as unchangeable to you as ever they were to them.
Another edited extract from Flavel’s The Righteous Man’s Refuge, in vol 3 of his Works. Last month’s piece considered God’s unchangeableness in His promises and providences.
(3.)
Consider the advocateship and intercession of Jesus Christ in heaven for you, by virtue whereof the favour and love of God become unalterable towards His people. If anything can be supposed to cool or quench the love of God towards you, nothing in the world is more like to do it than your sin; and this indeed is what will, you fear, alienate the heart of your God from you. But if you are one who sincerely mourns for all the grief and dishonour done to God by your sin, who applies the blood of sprinkling to your soul by faith and makes mortification and watchfulness your daily business, comfort yourself against that fear from that singular encouragement given you in this case: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not; and if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 2:1,2). Consider that, as the death of Christ healed the great breach between God and the soul, by your reconciliation at first, so the powerful intercession of Christ in heaven effectually prevents all new breaches between God and your soul afterwards, so that He will never totally and finally cast you off again.
2. Shut the door behind you against all objections, scruples and questionings of God’s immutability. And by a resolved and steady faith, maintain the honour of God in this point, by your constant adherence to it and dependence upon it; and especially see that you give Him the glory of His unchangeableness.
(1.)
When you shall see the greatest changes made by His providence in the world, what though you should live to see all things turned upside down, the foundations out of course, all things drawing into a sea of confusion and trouble? Yet in the midst of those public distractions and distress of nations, encourage yourself in this: Your God and His love to His people are the same for ever. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble; therefore will not we fear, though the earth be moved, and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. . . . God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved” (Ps 46:1-5).
(2.)
Live by faith upon God’s unchangeableness under the greatest changes of your own condition in this world. Providence may make great alterations upon all your outward comforts: it may cast you down, however dear you may be to God, from riches into poverty, from health into sickness, from honour into reproach, from liberty into bondage; you may outlive all your close relations, and of a Naomi become a Marah. “Thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down,” said as good a man as you (Ps 102:10). Yet still it is your duty, and will be your great privilege in the midst of all these changes, to act faith upon the never-changing God, as that holy man did: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:17,18) – that is: Suppose a thousand disappointments of my earthly hopes, yet will I maintain my hope in God. O Christian, how many yets, notwithstandings and neverthelesss must your faith bear up with in times of trouble, or you wilt sink.
(3.)
See that you live upon God’s unchangeableness when age and sickness shall inform you that your great change is at hand; though your heart and your flesh fail, comfort yourself with this, your God will never fail you (Ps 73:26). “O God,” says David, “Thou hast taught me from my youth, and hitherto have I declared Thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not” (Ps 71:17,18).
(4.)
Live upon the unchangeableness of God under the greatest and saddest changes of your spiritual condition; God may cloud the light of His countenance over your soul, He may fill you with fears and troubles, and the Comforter that should relieve you may seem to be far off. Yet maintain your faith in the unchangeableness of His love; trust in the name of the Lord; stay yourself upon your God, when you walk in darkness and have no light (Is 50:10). Thus shut your door.
3. Use the unchangeableness of God to your best advantage in the worst times, by drawing thence such comforting conclusions as these:
(1.)
If God be an unchangeable God in His promises and in His love to His people, what should hinder the people of God from living happily and comfortably in the saddest times and the greatest troubles upon earth. “As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor 6:10). Certainly nothing ought to quench a Christian’s mirth, that is not able to separate him from the love of Christ” (Rom 8:35).
(2.)
If God is an unchangeable God in His love to His people, then it becomes all that have a special interest in this God to be unchangeable and immoveable in the ways of their obedience towards Him. God will not cast you off; see that you cast not off your duties – no, not when they are surrounded with difficulties. He loves you, though you often grieve Him by sin; see that you still love Him though He often burden you by affliction. He will own you for His people under the greatest reproaches of the world; see that you own and honour His ways and truths when you are under most reproach from a vile world.
Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little in comparison with eternal realities.
R M M’Cheyne