Well, the title that has been assigned to
me for this session is "God's Unchanging Word." And there's one text that immediately comes
to my mind and I want to direct you to it now is Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 8. Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 8, and in many
ways this is the signature text in Scripture for the immutability of the Word of God. And I want to begin by just reading this one
verse and this will be our primary focus during this first session, Isaiah chapter 40 and
verse 8. God's inspired, inerrant and infallible Word
reads in verse 8, "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands
forever." We live in a world that is constantly changing. Everything is in flux around us. Nothing is stationary. Everything is changing. The political landscape is changing virtually
moment by moment with cable television. The stock market is constantly changing up
and down. The international powers and trade agreements
are changing. But more than anything else, morality is changing. Culture is changing. Society is changing. Gender roles are changing. Genders are changing. R.C. Sproul said, "Modern man's feet are firmly
planted in mid-air," and that's the world in which we live and there is only one constant. There is only one anchor point. There is only one immovable cornerstone in
this world and it is God Himself, and it is the Word of God that stands forever. This was exactly the message that the people
in Isaiah's day needed to hear because the times were rapidly changing. King Uzziah had been on the throne for 52
years in Israel and as long as King Uzziah was on the throne, some seven centuries before
the coming of Christ, everything seemed to be secure. The economy was strong, the military was built
up, the borders were secured. And then Uzziah died. And in that vacuum there suddenly came Mach-speed
change. And everything began to suddenly change, and
apostasy and idolatry spread like a cancer in Israel and was taking the nation down. And in the midst of this, God pronounced judgment
upon the nation and said that they would be taken into Babylonian captivity. And in the midst of pronouncing judgment in
the first 39 chapters, as well as God's judgment on the surrounding nations, beginning here
in chapter 40 and extending to the end of the book of Isaiah God looks into the future. And not only will the people of God be taken
out of their land as hostages, taken exile into Babylon and there be for some 70 years,
God had already prepared the way for their return after the captivity. And beginning here in chapter 40, God brings
a word of hope and encouragement, and it is in such stark contrast that liberal theologians
have said there has to be a second Isaiah to have written the latter half of the book
because it's in such stark contrast, but the reality is it is the same author Isaiah, but
more than that it is the same voice. It is God's voice that is speaking. And we need to hear this same message that
God gave to Isaiah to give to the nation and to the people of God that "the grass withers,
the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." It's very easy to break out this one verse. There's the first line and there's the second
line. And the first line, I want to put the heading,
"The Perishing of Man's Life," and then the second line is, "The Permanence of God's Word,"
very easy to break out this simple verse that is also quoted in the New Testament. So, let's begin looking at the first line,
"The grass withers, the flower fades." This is the perishing of man's life. Everything about man's life is perishing. When he says the grass withers and the flower
fades, it is actually a reference to mankind, using flowers and grass as an analogy, as
something of a metaphor, a comparison to make. And the point that he is making here is that
man is ever and always passing off the scene and off of the stage of human history. Uzziah has passed off the scene. The kings of Israel have passed off the scene. Even the different prophets have passed off
the scene. Man's life is ever changing and ever perishing. He is fading like grass, withering like grass
and fading like the flower. This analogy depicting man as the withering
grass and the fading flower is pointed out in verse 6 and 7. I want you to look at the previous verses
because it becomes very apparent. In verse 6, we read, "A voice says, 'Call
out!'" And the voice is none other than God Himself. It is God speaking to the prophet Isaiah. God is a speaking God. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book many years
ago, "God Is There and He Is Not Silent." God goes public with what His infinite mind
and His genius is thinking and He speaks to the prophet Isaiah and He says, "Call out. Prophesy. Preach. Lift up your voice. Don't whisper. Call out and bring a strong message." And Isaiah answered. Then he answered, it could be translated,
"I said, 'What shall I call out?'" "What shall I say to the people?" "What is the message?" And Isaiah looked to God for what to say because
Isaiah understood the message does not originate within himself. Isaiah is not to pass on his own thoughts
or perspective or opinions. Isaiah understood that he is only a mouthpiece
for the living God. He is but the messenger. And so, he also knew that the message would
not come from around him. He would not look to the culture. He was not to look to society. He was not even to look to the religious traditions
of Israel. He was to hear the message that God is giving
to him. And so, we read in the second half of verse
6, so here is the message, and the message now begins in the middle of verse 6 and it
continues into our text in verse 8, "All flesh is grass." And flesh here representing human life and
that's very obvious. At the end of verse 7 he says, "Surely the
people are grass," and flesh here representing human life. And he's making a comparison that the people
of his day and the people of every generation and every century, just like in this present
day, we're like grass that sprouts up in the springtime that looks so vibrant and looks
so healthy and looks so beautiful, it's so lush and so promising. All people at first appearance look so vibrant,
then he adds, in all its loveliness it's like the flower of the field blossoming and blooming
and beautiful and attractive. Man looks so good. Man sounds so good. Man makes many promises and makes many boasts. Man is articulate and smart and intelligent
and inventing and industrious. But when we come to verse 7, it's almost as
if a "however" or a "but" should be added at the beginning of verse 7 because now there
is a stark contrast. This grass and the flower that appears in
its moment in time and within history, verse 7, "The grass withers, the flower fades." What began so well in springtime as it shot
forth from the dirt and looked so healthy, during the summer when the hot sun of summer
comes the grass just turns brown. The grass dries up and shrivels away. And the flower that was blooming and blossoming
and smelling so well, it now fades and falls to the ground, so vulnerable to the hot sun
and so quickly passing off the scene. And it happens verse 7 says, "when the breath
of the Lord blows on it." It's depicting the wind that God would send
in the hot summer that blows and intensifies the heat on the grass and the flower causing
it to wilt. The invisible hand and the invisible breath
of God, and the analogy that is being made here is that the breath of the Lord brings
to an end human life. "It's appointed unto man once to die, and
after this the judgment." And so at the end of verse 7, God says this
to the prophet, "Surely the people are grass." You may know this with certainty, that all
mankind is like the grass that just withers and falters and fails. And this leads now into our text in verse
8. He repeats and reiterates what he said in
verse 6 and in verse 7, "The grass withers, the flower fades," and it is so obvious now
from the text in the preceding verses that what man promises he can never deliver. What man pledges he cannot keep, that everything
about man is, it's just passing away, even his own physical existence. He is but here for a blip on the screen of
human history. Psalm 90 in verse 10 says, "As for the days
of our]life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their
pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away," no longer to remain
here on the earth, either going to heaven or to hell. Psalm 103 verse 15, "As for man, his days
are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no
more, and its place acknowledges it no longer." This is true of individuals. It's true of nations. It's true of empires. It's true of everything about man. He is but a withering blade of grass. He is but a petal, a flower that falls to
the ground. The stark contrast is made with the second
half of the verse. We see God's Word is permanent. It begins with the word "but." Do you see that at the beginning of the second
line in verse 8, but. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, "Praise God for the
'buts' in the Bible." It indicates the total opposite of man, the
stark contrast with man, totally antithetical with man, in juxtaposition with man. "But the word of God," what God says, "thus
says the Lord," he says, "stands forever." Man comes and goes and passes off the scene. There is the parade of history that has entered
in its moment of time and then soon passes off the stage of human history, but the Word
of the Lord stands forever from generation to generation, from century to century. It never changes, it never withers, it never
fades. The Word of God never loses its authority
or loses its power. It never expires. It never passes away. And the reason for this is because God Himself
never changes. Malachi 3 verse 6 says, "I and the Lord God,
I never change." God is unchanging in His attributes. He is unchanging in His character. He is unchanging in His will. He is unchanging in His purposes. He is unchanging in His salvation. He is unchanging in His judgments. There is no change in God. And James 1 verse 17 says that He is "the
Father of light, with whom there is no shifting shadow." And because God never changes, God's Word
never changes. In Numbers 23 and verse 19, the Scripture
records, "God is not a man, that He should lie." In other words, everything that comes out
of the mouth of God is unvarnished, unadulterated truth. It is reality. It is accurate. And then he goes on, "Nor…God is not the
son of man, that He should repent." In other words, God never says one thing and
then has to change it. God never says one thing and then has to alter
it or amend it. We read, "Has He said, and will He not do
it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it
good?" Those are rhetorical questions, the answer
of which is so obvious. He does not even need to bother to answer
those questions. The answer is a resounding "yes." God will make good on every prophecy. He will make good on every promise. God's Word, He Himself will back up everything
that He has ever said to us. In Psalm 119, that extraordinary chapter,
a psalm of 176 verses, 22 stanzas of 8 verses each, there are multiple synonyms that are
used for the Word of God. It's referred to as the law of the Lord, the
testimonies of God, the precepts, the commandments, the judgments. But one of the titles for the Word of God
is His "statutes." And the word "statutes," which is used 21
times in Psalm 119 means things that are etched in stone, which are irrevocable, that are
etched in stone for all time. That's what the Word of God is. It can never be amended or changed. Psalm 119 verse 5, "Oh that my ways may be
established to keep Your statutes!" In Psalm 119 verse 89, we read, "Forever,
O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven." Forever. Whatever man says, whatever man does here
upon the earth cannot even touch the Word of God that is settled in heaven. Psalm 119 verse 160, "The sum of Your word
is truth." In other words, "When you add it all up and
you put your arms around the entirety of Scripture, the sum of your Word is truth and every one
of your righteous ordinances is everlasting." It will never pass off the scene. It will never go unfulfilled. It is everlasting. In Matthew 5 and verse 18, we read, Jesus
said, "For truly I say to you." And whenever Jesus intended to underscore
the importance of what He was saying, many times He would say, "Truly, truly, I say unto
you," indicating that what follows rises to a higher level of importance than other things
that He said. Everything that He said was true. Everything recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, Revelation is inspired, inerrant and infallible, but some things that Jesus
said bring a greater weight. And this is one of those statements. And in Matthew 5 verse 18, "For truly I say
to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the slightest letter or stroke shall pass
from the Law until all is accomplished." Now, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet
is a yod. It's like an eyelash. It's like an apostrophe. It's just a little, tiny, little half-moon-looking
letter, that little smallest letter. It's so easy almost to overlook it. And then, the smallest stroke is like a serif. It's like a little horizontal line. For in our alphabet what would separate a
lower-case l from a lowercase t is just that one little stroke, that one little horizontal
line. And what Jesus is saying is that the accuracy
and the immutability of the Word of God is down to the smallest eyelash and the smallest
little stroke that would separate one letter from another letter. And none of it will go unfulfilled. And none of it will be changed. Down to the most minute detail in what God
has said, every inch, every ounce, every letter, every word, every clause, every phrase, every
sentence, every paragraph, every chapter, every book, every testament. It is all the Word of God and it cannot be
changed. It will all be fulfilled. In Matthew 24 and verse 35, Jesus reiterates
this, and He said, "Heaven and earth will pass away," and that day is coming when God
will create a new heavens and a new earth, and He will burn up this earth and create
a new earth in which we will live throughout all of the ages to come. And Jesus acknowledges that with this statement,
"Heaven and earth will pass away," this present earth and this present heaven, "but My words
will not pass away." Even the planet upon which we live is a disposable
planet and God will dispose of it at the end of the age and create a new heaven and new
earth but His word will remain on the books forever. In Luke 16 and verse 17, Jesus said, "It is
easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail." Nothing will fail that is recorded in God's
Word. The sun will fail to shine and the earth will
fail to spin before any part of the Word of God passes away. So, what does this have to do with defending
the faith? So, what does this have to do with our conference
theme, God's Unchanging Word? The answer is "everything." The faith that we defend is an unchanging
faith because it is rooted and grounded in the unchanging Word of God. And so I want to give you some action steps
to put this into practice. I remember when I studied under Dr. Sproul,
the class that I took immediately before sitting in my first class under Dr. Sproul's teaching,
I had a professor who said, "I'm going to come hear you men preach one time and I'm
gonna sit on the front row. And 15 minutes into your sermon I'm going
to hold up a big sign. And it's going to have just two words on it,
'So What.'" And he was urging us, "You've got to get to
the so what. I mean, you can't just give us truth, truth,
truth, truth. How is this supposed to impact my life? What do you want me to do with this? How am I supposed to live this out? How do I put this into practice?" So I can just see him right there holding
up the "So What" sign. So, I'm going to give you five words that
begin with the letter C on how we put this into practice. And the first word is 'Convictions.' If we are to defend the faith, you and I must
have deep convictions about what it is that we believe about the Bible and about the Word
of God. Now we cannot be like a reed blowing in the
wind, we cannot be like the wave of the sea that is tossed back and forth in the essential
matters of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: His virgin birth, His sinless
life, His substitutionary death, His bodily resurrection, His present enthronement at
the right hand of God the Father, His eternal deity. We must have deep convictions about the faith
that we earnestly contend for, the faith that we believe. And we can't be stroking our chin as we're
talking to people out in the world and say something like, "Well, it seems to me..." No, we need to be able to know the truth and
have deep convictions in the truth and to be immovable in the truth, that we stand strong
in the truth. That's where this begins and this implies
that you and I are studying sound doctrine, we're studying the Word of God, that we are
mastering the message of Scripture and Scripture is mastering us, that we can rightly handle
the word of truth, that we are growing in our understanding and our knowledge of Scripture
but as we are we are growing deeper and deeper in our firm convictions, thus says the Lord. And so, for you to be a defender of the faith
you must have strong convictions. I mean, you cannot be wearing Saul's armor. You cannot be upholding someone else's convictions. You must believe what you believe in the depth
of your heart and in the depth of your soul. Number two, 'Confidence.' If you're to be a defender of the faith, you
must have great confidence in the message and confidence in the power of the Word of
God to explode in people's minds and in people's hearts and to be able to transform them when
accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. With great confidence, we must uphold the
message and interact with people and have confidence that the truth will win the day. Not everyone will believe, but those for whom
it is intended will. I love Paul in Romans 1 verse 16, "For I am
not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes." We must have this confidence that the Word
of God is the dynamite of God. The gospel is the dynamite that has power
to change. That's why Paul was so eager to go to Rome,
to put the gospel up in the marketplace of ideas surrounded there in Rome by all of the
false religions and the ideologies and the philosophies. Paul was confident that the gospel could blow
out of the water every other worldview. We must have this confidence that this in
which we have deep convictions, that God will work through the message and the truth that
we bring. God will honor the man and honor the woman
who honors His Word. Third, 'Contagious.' As we defend the faith, as we rub shoulders
with people in the world, we need to be contagious, enthusiastic about what it is that we believe. We need to be positive. We must be upbeat. We must be triumphant about what we believe. It's not only what we say; it's how we say
it. And we can't be on defense. We have to be on offense and be contagious. And for the truth to spread like a fire into
the lives of other people there needs to be a dynamic, a spiritual dynamic, about our
lives as we are talking to others. We're not just trying to win arguments. We're trying to bring people to the foot of
the cross and to bring people to faith in Christ, and that necessitates that we be contagious
in our faith and not be dour and sour and flat. Number four, 'Compelling.' We must be persuasive with people. It's not enough just to put the truth out
there. It's not enough to toss it out there to people
and say, "You can take it or leave it. Here, read this book," and walk away. No, we need to be persuasive. We are to be urging people to believe the
truth and to come to faith in Christ. Paul said he wants to win men to Christ. And for us who believe the Reformed message,
which is simply the biblical truth, we must also understand that we must be persuasive
and compelling as we present this to other people. Second Corinthians 5 verse 11, Paul uses a
Greek word peitho, which means "to be persuasive, to urge, to entreat, to win someone over." And he says, "Therefore, knowing the fear
of the Lord, we persuade men." It's hyper-Calvinism not to persuade men. It is biblical Christianity to try to win
people over to the faith, not to manipulate, not to cross the line. But we must be after people to win them to
Christ and to win them to the truth of the Word of God. Listen, when I asked my wife to marry me,
I had to do more than a word study on agapeo and compare it with phileo and eros. That was not going to do the job. I had to be persuasive because I had a bad
product to sell. I oversold and under delivered. It was buy high, sell low for her but anyway. But I had to be persuasive with her and I
had to entreat her and plead with her, "Will you marry me?" We have to be like that with lost people and
people as we're defending the faith. We have to call for the verdict in people's
lives and be compelling and be contagious as we present the truth to them. And then, finally the word 'Cost.' We have to realize on the front end that there
is a cost to pay for being an apologist. It may cost us popularity. It may cost us relationships. It may cost us a job. It may cost us whatever it is that would be
required of us, but we must be willing to pay whatever price is necessary to put our
chin out there and to be out on the limb and to make ourselves vulnerable with other people
and to be willing to sacrifice, even be willing to suffer. And isn't that the message that we heard yesterday
out of 1 Peter as they are to give an account for the hope that lies within them, that they
must be willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel? And so must we. I mean, we must be willing to speak up and
to receive whatever pushback may come because in reality they're not rejecting us. We're just the messenger. They're rejecting God. They're rejecting the truth and the gospel
and Jesus Christ. Anyone whom God has ever used in a significant
way in the history of the church has always had to pay a price. As you study church history and discuss century
by century by century, those names that rise to the surface that define eras and mark seasons
in the life of the church, those are all men and all women who paid an enormous price for
the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they were willing to earnestly contend for the faith,
to get into the arena, to get into the boxing match, if you will, and to fight the good
fight for the truth and to take whatever blows would come their way. In my preaching Bible, that from which I preach,
you can't see it from there, but I always have a picture of this man, John Rogers. He was born about 1500. He was burned at the stake in 1555. He was the first Marian martyr, burned at
the stake, February the 4th, 1555, Smithfield, London. He wouldn't budge from the truth. He helped complete Tyndale's first translation
of the Bible into the English language, serving as somewhat of a compiler and an editor and
probably was led to faith in Christ by Tyndale himself. And when Tyndale was arrested and then strangled
to death and burned and then blown up with gunpowder, it was this man, John Rogers, who
ran back to where Rogers was living with some English merchants and gathered up Tyndale's
work and saw that it was brought to completion. And he was a powerful preacher of the Word
of God in London, in that area surrounding St. Paul's Cathedral. And he was a marked man when Bloody Mary,
Mary I, took the throne of England. She succeeded her half-brother Edward, Edward
VI, as the throne, the monarchy, went from Protestant under Edward VI to becoming strict,
staunch Catholic under Mary. And she put an X on the forehead of John Rogers
and told her officials to go after him. And he was arrested and thrown in Newgate
Prison, having some 11 children, the last of which he had never seen or held in his
arms. He was told if he would repent, if he would
change and back off his preaching of the one true gospel of Jesus Christ, then he would
be released. And rather than compromise, rather than cave
in, he was willing to pay the price and he was willing to die for his convictions. And he was led out of Newgate Prison to Smithfield. At this time, no Protestant had been burned
at the stake by Mary and everyone wanted to see would this actually go through and how
would this man respond? And as he was being led to the stake…and
by the way, they would burn their martyrs in front of their church to send an intimidating
message to the congregation, "This is what we think of your pastor and this is what we
think of the message that's been preached to you," to strike fear into their hearts. And this bold preacher who helped complete
the first translation of the Bible into the English language from the original Hebrew
and Greek, the French ambassador came to watch this and said, "Rogers looked to be as a groom
headed to the church on his wedding day." He went, quoting Psalm 51, triumphant, willing
to pay the price. And in the back of my preaching Bible, I have
a wood carving of Rogers strapped to the stake with the fires burning around him, willing
not only to live for Christ but to die for Christ. That's the cost that's required. God probably will not require that cost. He may, because times are changing, society
is changing, culture is changing. Are we willing to pay the price for whatever
it takes to defend the faith even unto death? After I graduated from college, I had a degree
in finance that would help prepare me to be a Baptist preacher. I probably should've majored in real estate,
but anyway. After I graduated from college, I went to
law school. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I worked for a very famous trial attorney
in Texas, the last man to beat George W. Bush in a political race. And I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. And I remember that first year. I would study case law. I would arise early in the morning and I would
stay up till late at night and read constitutional law, civil law, criminal law. And your whole grade was your final exam. And so you went into that final exam with
some fear and trepidation. And after I had studied the law, these cases,
memorized the law until I was like a cup overflowing, by the time I went into the final exam, you
know what, they changed the law. I thought, "This is, this is stupid." Now, we need Christian lawyers, okay, and
when you're in trouble you want a good Christian lawyer, but God was using that to awaken me
that this is not what He had for me, that I was not to pour my life into a law that
was constantly changing and subject to reversal, that I wanted to pour my life into a law that
would never change. And it was a part of the attraction for me
that was drawing me into the ministry and to pour my life into this Word and be used
by God so that the message would come out through me to the world around me. And it struck me that what I was studying
in my 20s I would teach in my 30s and I would preach in my 40s, I would declare in my 50s,
I would cling to in my 70s and die believing in my 80s. That what I memorized as a young man in my
20s I would be preaching now in my 60s and nothing would change because the Word of God
never changes. It is the same from one generation to the
next. And I just flew back from the Czech Republic. I've crossed the Atlantic Ocean six times
in the last five weeks. I've preached in Scotland, I've preached in
England, I've preached in Northern Ireland, I've preached in the Czech Republic, and I've
preached to men who have come from Serbia and Poland and Slovakia and Romania and all
of these places just over the last couple of weeks. And you know what, there's only one Word and
only one message to give to everyone. No matter what their culture, no matter what
their society, and whether it's on the upswing or the downswing, we bring to them the unchanging
Word of God that is ever contemporary. And so, yes, the grass withers and the flower
fades, and one generation passes off the scene and another generation comes and kings come
and they go, but the one constant of history is God and God's eternal purpose and His sovereign
will. He has never gone to plan B, He has never
gone to plan C. It is forever plan A from eternity past. And when God speaks, He speaks His unchanging
Word that is immutable and irrevocable and irreversible, forever the same. May God give each and every one of us convictions
and confidence to be compelling and contagious and to pay whatever cost price is necessary
for the gospel of Jesus Christ. God bless you.
