(Genesis 6:6-8; 9:8-17)
In October 1980, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher found her government’s economic policy was under severe scrutiny. Unemployment was rising, the economy was shrinking, and Thatcher was facing calls to change direction. Her speech at the capitol conservative party conference addressed this unexpected “U turn” with a phrase that would define her career: “you turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning!”
To her supporters, this was evidence of her resolution, her exceptional ability to lead and ultimately of her strength. We want our leaders to lead, and she was certainly doing that. To our opponents, however, it was a sign of destructive inflexibility. Missus Thatcher’s refusal to change course proved her to be wedded to an ideology that did not work, unable to change her mind in the face of the evidence. As one saying goes, “when the facts change, I change my mind.” Never changing one’s mind, in a world of flux, is less a virtue than a pathology.
Whichever side of the fence one might stand about a particular politician, it’s pretty easy to see how the ability to change one’s mind can be a double-edged sword, and not just in politics. Wherever someone is called to lead, if you never change, you are stubborn, and probably stupid; If you do it too easily, then you are irresolute and given to flip flop.
Surely what we want from our leaders is iron resolve, coupled with an appropriate humility in the face of reality. Our ideal leader would be willing to change their mind if the facts demanded it but would only ever do so if the facts demanded it.
Even better than that would be a leader who began with perfect information, and perfect intuitions about what to do in the face of that information, and thus never needed to make a “you turn.” But we know that no mortal person could ever offer such leadership. As human beings we are constantly vulnerable to what the statistician and author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “Black Swan events.” If you haven’t come across the concept before, it’s pretty simple. During the Middle Ages and into the early modern era, western Europeans believed that all Swans must be white. So much so that “like a Black Swan” was an expression used to describe something that was impossible. No one could have predicted what the Dutch navigator Willem de Vlamingh Would find upon his arrival in Western Australia in 1697. On the river which runs through what is now Perth, he became the first European to witness that most unimaginable of creatures: the Black Swan.
So, no human leader could possibly make decisions with sufficient information to never need to change their mind. The available information is always changing, and it is predictably unpredictable.
But God is not like us. He does not change His mind. In fact, He does not change His mind because He is not like us. Statements in the Bible about God not changing His mind frequently put those two things together. For instance: “he who is the glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; For he is not a human being, that he should change his mind” (1 Samuel 15: 29).
It’s not just that God doesn’t change His mind-it’s that He can’t. Think about it like this. Why does anyone change their mind? The impulse must either be internal or external. Either something changes inside me – perhaps as a result of something as simple as a good (or bad) night sleep; or, circumstances change – for example, I changed my mind this morning about what to wear, because when I stepped outside I realized it was going to be a much colder day than yesterday’s weather forecast suggested.
In God’s case, there are neither internal nor external reasons for change period if He really is the great, I AM The one who “is who he is” eternally-then change from the inside is impossible. For a perfect being, all changes change for the worse. Change driven from the outside is likewise impossible, since it presupposes that new information is received. But as we know God can’t learn or be surprised. He never receives “new” information, so He never has an external reason to change His mind.
At this point, you might point out to me in scripture where God does actually seem to change His mind. One such incident is found in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. God looks down upon His creation, and the Bible tells us “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So, the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals the birds the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them.’” But God said everything was “very good” when He finished creation. Yes, I know that was before sin entered the world, but it has been centuries since that event and God did not regret anything at the time. So, either God not only changes His mind but is slower than molasses in January about doing it, or the phrase “I regret that I have made them” is supposed to tell us more about God’s attitude to humankind’s failures than to His own previous decisions.
So, that’s the big take- home message from this morning’s sermon: God can’t change His mind. But why does that matter?
Please don’t imagine that this is all a bit too abstract to be of “use” to any ordinary believer. First of all, we can sometimes be far too quick to associate value with “usefulness”. If we can’t see how something is going to fix a problem for us, or give us a skill we don’t possess, or enhance a quality that we’d love to see in ourselves, then many of us conclude that it’s not really worth our time. But wait just a minute.
Traffic lights are useful-they help prevent accidents and keep the traffic flowing in all the directions it needs to. It’s much harder to say that Michelangelo’s sculpture David is useful- it has no flat surface that you can put things on, and it doesn’t produce anything, yet we instinctively know that the sculptural masterpiece is more valuable to humanity than a set of traffic lights. There is an intrinsic value to beauty and goodness that goes far beyond obvious categories of utility. After all, in the garden of Eden we’re told that the trees provided pleasure for the eyes as well as food. The Kingdom of God is not utilitarian.
Here’s my point: at the heart of the Christian life is worship – praise, adoration, and devotion given to God. We worship God for who He is. Therefore, if something is true about him, it is worth knowing it. Any true thing I know about God enriches me enormously, even if I’m not sure at first what difference it makes to my life. If it fuels my wonder at who God is – if it reminds me just how much greater He is than anything in creation – it has surpassing value.
As long as they think of God as “like me, just bigger” I am a stranger to real worship. As long as I think He is comparable with myself, my worship will be that of a fan, not a creature. God’s knowledge – the scope, the mode, and the extent of it- is such that I cannot even begin to grasp what it looks like for God to know things, let alone aspire to having knowledge like His. The God who made me is beyond my imagination, but He knows me, He cares for me, and is interested enough in a relationship with me that He has found a way to make himself known to a mind as puny as mine.
However, none of this is to say that we are dealing with abstract ideas about God that have no impact on our life. In scripture, the fact that God doesn’t change His mind is something that underpins the certainty of His promises. In the story of Balaam, who is employed by the Moabite king Balak to curse Israel, we see a lot of frustration as Balaam again and again blesses rather than curses the Israelites. Finally, God speaks directly to king Balak through the renegade prophet: “God is not human that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?”
Those rhetorical questions highlight the believers rock solid grounds for confidence. If God has spoken, the matter is done. All of us have tasks, like hanging towel racks, for example, that we have stated, with the best intentions, that we will get done. And yet, all of us have tasks, like hanging towel racks, that have not yet been completed. Unlike us – OK me, God always follows through. If He has promised to bless His people, there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. It doesn’t matter how hard our enemies might try to talk God out of His promises, as in the case of bellum. His words never fail. His words express His mind, and the Lord is not for turning.
Our God does not and will not and cannot change His mind. He never wakes up in a bad mood. He never forgets an agreement He’s made or conversation He’s had. He will never find something better or more convenient to do than to keep His promises to you. He will never find someone more interesting or more strategic to invest His efforts in. He is never blindsided by new information or swayed by popular opinion. He is not looking to back out on what He has started. He is committed in His affection; Resolute in His justice; Determined in His plans. Nothing and no one can throw him off course.
Therefore, it is God’s inability to change His mind that becomes A cause for God’s people to sleep securely. We know that He will never reconsider a single promise or go back on even one word He has spoken, so we can build our entire lives on His word and trust him completely.
The letter to the Hebrews was written to Christians who were suffering and tempted to give up on Jesus. The writers center argument is that only Jesus can offer lasting peace with God, because He has established a new and better covenant that cannot be broken; therefore, to give up on Jesus is to give up on God. As part of this argument, the rider repeatedly highlights the security of God’s promises in Jesus. “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’ Therefore, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant.” The word “guarantor” is very powerful. It refers to someone who would take all the legal implications of someone else’s debt or obligation. The guarantor could be subject to “ruin and imprisonment, and even reduction to slavery, because they were subject to the same penalties as those for whom they offered themselves as guarantees.” Jesus himself, the son of God, stands as our guarantor; he absolutely guarantees that God will accept us as His people. His work on our behalf cannot fail unless he fails, as it is based on God’s oath, and God’s “will not change his mind.”
There’s something immensely comforting about certainty. We all know what it is like to feel edgy until something that has been promised is delivered. I can’t count the number of times I’ve spoken to someone who states they are a believer but doubts whether or not God’s promise through Jesus Christ will come true in the end. Far too often I’ve spoken to committed Christian people, even members of my church, and told them of the certainty of my final destination, only to receive a reply along the lines of, “Well, I just hope that God will accept me too.” Paragraph it seems too good to be true that we might be sure of eternal life. Perhaps it feels arrogant or presumptuous to say that we are certain. Yet the implication of the promise of God is that we can be certain. If you put yourself in Jesus hands, your place in God’s Kingdom is as certain as His. It is settled; There is no “maybe” or “hopefully” or “probably” about it.
In Romans 8, Paul speaks of the glory that is promised to those who are among the brothers and sisters of the first born; that is, Jesus Christ. In verses 29 and 30, he speaks of Christians using an unbroken chain of saving acts that ends with him describing Christians as those “[God] also glorified.” Glory is something that lies in our future – it’s something that comes at the return of Christ, when everything He won for His people is finally theirs, and when we will see God “face to face.” Yet, amazingly, Paul speaks of it in the past tense – as something that has already happened. Why? Because God does not change His mind. He will finish what He started. He does not speak and then fail to act. We can rest peacefully, and indeed, rest in peace because God’s promises are utterly secure.
