Sermon Shorts from Spurgeon – Sermon 1: The Immutability of God

Remember God is the same, whatever is removed. Your friends may be disaffected, your ministers may be taken away, every thing may change, but God does not. Your brethren may change and cast out your name as vile: but God will love you still. Let your station in life change, and your property be gone; let your whole life be shaken, and you become weak and sickly; let everything flee away—there is one place where change cannot put his finger; there is one name on which mutability can never be written; there is one heart which never can alter; that heart is God’s—that name Love.

“Trust him, he will ne’er deceive you. Though you hardly of him deem; He will never, never leave you, Nor will let you quite leave him.”

From the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 1, Sermon 1 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

https://ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons01/sermons01.i.html

The Beginning

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

I thought it would be good to start off the beginning New Year with a verse on the beginning.  This foundational verse reveals much to us about our world and God.

First, God exists.  The Bible does not try to prove God’s existence, but rather assumes His existence as evidenced by His creation (Psalm 19:1) and revelation of Himself (Colossians 2:8-9; 1 Timothy 3:16).

Second, God existed before the universe was created.  He was there before the beginning.  He is eternal in His very nature and is separate from His creation (transcendent).

Third, God created all that exists, including the celestial bodies and life on Earth.  As is shown in the remainder of Genesis 1, macro-evolution is untrue.  God created the different kinds of living creatures; they did not evolve from lower forms of life.  The biological processes which are observed today are those which were there in the beginning.  Living creatures reproduce after their own kind (Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25).

Fourth, there was a beginning.  God set everything in order.  Although mankind chose sin rather than obedience, God had a plan of salvation through Jesus Christ to deliver us from our sin and renew all things to their original perfection.

Romans 8:21-25 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

This is the ending that God has in store for us started with His beginning in Genesis 1:1.

Featured Resource – Week of 04/29/2012

Basic Theology – A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth by Charles Ryrie

Moody Publishers, 1999
656 pages
ISBN-10: 0802427340

If you want to know more about God, this is the book for you.  This is the most approachable theology book I have found.  It is clear enough for the average person (see the word “popular” in the sub-title), yet it is deep enough that the pastor, Bible teacher, or seminary professor often finds it to be an indispensable resource. Continue reading