Changes Changing

Malachi 3:6-7

For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, “How shall we return?”

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Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

"Changes" by David Bowie

Here's the problem we face as individuals and as the church. We're changing all the time. God never changes. Sometimes we improve and sometimes we don't. God never changes. What makes it difficult is when we change in directions that move toward God and away from society. That's very difficult. What's even worse is the thought that hundreds of years of conventional wisdom rooted in scripture can suddenly be wrong.

The church has dealt with this in the past. In fact, about every 500 years the church faces this in earnest. In the fifth century it came with the writing of the Nicene Creed. One stupid little Latin word, filioque (it means "from the Son"), caused a stink that broke the church into two parts, the Church of Rome (we call it Roman Catholic today) and the Orthodox Church. Half of the church says the Holy Spirit comes from the father, the other half says the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and from the Son. Splittsville!

Five hundred years later it was something else. Five hundred years after that it was a little thing we call the Reformation.

God never changes, we change. It has actually happened since the beginning. Acts 15 describes The Jerusalem Council where Peter wanted the gentiles to be more Jewish and Paul said in Christ we are all Jewish enough. God never changes. We change.

It's happening again all over the world. In the last 100 years, churches with their European roots have begun ordaining the children of African slaves, women, divorced people, and the latest hot button, homosexuals. Each of these changes have caused cracks in the face of the church-some smaller some larger. On both sides of the splits, people say that they are right and the opposition is wrong. In the worst of these, some call themselves faithful and the others unfaithful. Some Godly and the others ungodly.

God never changes and this is the only reason we don't perish.

God says we all have turned from the faith. God says we have turned from the faith since the beginning, so nothing is new under the sun. We have turned from the statutes of God since the first statute, "Don't eat that!" Our salvation is that when we change and when we don't, God doesn't change better than us.

We need to return. We need to return to the Word and we need to return to the Lord. But this is where we must beware, because as we turn we must decide whether we are turning toward or away from God. Regardless of the choice, someone will say the choice is good where others will say it is bad. No sweat, the Lord will judge.