The Unchanging Saviour

These last days have known perhaps seven of the most remarkable ones in the lives of all of us here. All the friends will appreciate this, younger people will get to appreciate it as the as the years roll by. One of the things that stands out I think this week as we reflect on our Christian faith is the fact that God never changes and that we can trust him.

However many difficulties there may be in our world, we have a Savior who's mighty to save. We have a Lord whoever smiles upon his own. So with that thought in mind and wanting later on to bring you to the theme of Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever, let's stand and say the Lord's prayer.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen. Main standing let's turn in our hymns of faith to number 52. A great hymn written by Isaac Watts, I'll praise my maker while I breath and when my voice is lost in death praise shall employ my nobler powers.

We're going to sing this quite rapidly but I want you to think about each stanza as you mouth this praise to the Lord. Number 52. And as we come to read and in many ways the reading of the word of God and listening to it is the most important part of our service.

Let's just ask that God will speak to us through it. Open our eyes Lord we pray that we may see something wonderful in your word this morning. We ask it for Jesus sake.

Amen. Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have because God has said never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.

So we say with confidence the Lord is my helper I will not be afraid what can man do to me. Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace not by ceremonial foods which are of no value to those who eat them.

We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. The high priest carries the blood of animals into the most holy place as a sin offering but the bodies are burned outside the camp and so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp bearing the disgrace he bore for here we do not have an enduring city but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Through Jesus therefore let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise the fruit of lips that confess his name and do not forget to do good and to share with others for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Obey your leaders and submit to their authority they keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy not a burden for that would be of no advantage to you.

Pray for us we are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon. May the God of peace who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus that great shepherd of the sheep equip you with everything good for doing his will and may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ to whom be glory for ever and ever amen.

Brothers I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation for I have written you only a short letter. I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released if he arrives soon I will come with him to see you. Greet all your leaders and all God's people those from Italy send you their greetings.

Grace be with you all. Hebrews in chapter 13. Some years ago a man got on a train out of Germany.

It was a special train. I mean by that it wasn't open to everyone. Its destination was Moscow.

The man Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov more popularly known as Lenin. He got in on the tail end of the Russian revolution. So much in the society was wrong.

The Tsars to some degree were corrupt and certainly there were elements of the Russian Orthodox Church which was which were corrupt. What was the pipe dream of Marxist philosophers was to spring into realization as Lenin through some wheeling and dealing was able to secure the reins of government of the USSR. The country was to be brought into one of the most horrific periods in the whole of its history.

And from Lenin's entourage a few days a few decades later was to emerge Joseph Stalin who is responsible for the death of millions of people. One of the most infamous men who ever lived. Holy Russia or Mother Russia as she's often referred to by those who were born and have lived out their lives there has always been a very proud country.

Its religious ancestry is very much a Christian one. And though criticisms can be leveled at the Russian Orthodox Church as they every church in denomination there is that which is eternally good about the Orthodox Church. Its commitment to scripture.

The reading of scripture taking a very large part of the liturgy of the service. Its rich singing and so forth. And whatever attempts were made to take from Russia its Christian heritage it seemed as though all the effect really was was just to deepen it and to produce as in the Republic of China a church that was perhaps in some ways stronger than its counterpart in the in the in the West.

It seems ironic that the the newspaper that yesterday failed to come out for the first time in 75 years Pravda which means truth was actually the organ and the vehicle to replace so to speak the Bible in as much as it was issuing the eternal decrees of the rulers of the Soviet Union. And as that paper became more and more despised so there came a greater and greater hunger for the word of God amongst the Soviet republics. And perhaps one of the great events as far as Christian history was concerned which occurred first in Poland and will probably be repeated in Moscow was the felling of the bronze statue of Lenin in Gdansk, the melting of the bronze and it being turned into church bells which now ring throughout the whole of Poland.

And probably the same will obtain in Moscow as they've taken down the bronze statue of the founder of the KGB. There is no security in our world. I give you a brief synopsis as factual as far as I am aware of the of the changes in the Soviet Union over the last century.

You cannot put your trust in men whether they be western or eastern philosophers or politicians. There is only one solid anchor point throughout the whole of history and it is God himself who reveals that he's a personal God and does so in the sending into the world of our Lord Jesus. And one of the attributes of God as found in the Old Testament and displayed in the character of our Lord Jesus in the new is his unchanging nature.

And so we have here in what Brian referred to as a miscellany, at least that's my word, he used an equivalent of injunctions in Hebrews 13, is if you please a creedal statement for the Christian church speaking of the security and the stability that there is in our founder. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. I'd like you to repeat that.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Someone has said God cannot change for the better for he is perfect and being perfect he cannot change for the worse. You may ask yourself the question if you had chance to glance through notes and news why it is that after 20 years plus of consistent ministry in this church I've never preached on Hebrews 13 and verse 8. And the answer I think is probably this, it's too difficult a verse for a novice to handle.

It's not quite as simplistic as it seems. It's the verse which running next to John 3, 16 is the most popular in the whole of Christendom. It needs to be examined and I'm glad to be able to have the opportunity to do that today.

It needs to be examined carefully and biblically and historically and contemporaneously. And so in the light of my preceding remarks let's talk about the unchangeable Savior, the person described, Jesus Christ. The period defined the same yesterday, today and forever and the principle applied contained within the verse in its immediate context.

The person described, Jesus Christ. You know you can read scripture too quickly and even that coupling together of two of the names of the Savior need to be considered individually. Jesus.

It's a special name to us. The cottons would not have thought of calling the name of their new son or giving him the name Jesus. But you know when our Savior was born there were many people, hundreds, thousands who had the name of Jesus.

Jesus was a popular name in Galilee, in Judea. It's the Greek version of Yeshua, Joshua. It takes you back to that illustrious successor of Moses and all that he did and obviously people would like their sons to in some way succeed to the spirit of Joshua and so there would be many, many Jesuses.

And forever in scripture in the New Testament Jesus speaks of the humanity and the sanctity of the Son of God. If you turn to the beginning of this epistle you find some words which are fairly reflective of John 1 and the 11th and 12th verse. In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe.

God speaks to us through his Son. John calls the Son of God the Word and then he goes on to say, and the Word was made flesh. You remember the verse? And also when you're reading through Timothy the letter that Paul writes to his younger contemporary in the ministry he tells us that God was manifest in the flesh.

Whenever you read of the name of Jesus it speaks I say of the of the humanity of our Savior, how he showed himself. Do you get tired? He got tired. Do you get hungry? He got hungry.

Do you know what it is to be tempted? He was tempted. You see all these things had to be part and parcel of the nature of the one who would come into the world to be our mediator because he has to understand us, what we are like. Look at the 17th verse of the second chapter of Hebrews, for this reason he our Lord Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every way in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God.

Verse 18, because he himself suffered when he was tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted. Time and time again the last verses of chapter 4, for example, you will find reference made to the humanity of our Lord Jesus. Who is the one who doesn't change? Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.

And yet, and yet he did change. This is why I say the text needs to be handled carefully. It's not the text for a novice.

After all, he's no longer the Babe of Bethlehem, is he? He's no longer the man of sorrows. He's now the ascended glorified Lord. There is a sense in which he does change at the physical level, at the psychological level, but at the spiritual level he remains the same.

At the didactic level, that is the level of his teaching, he remains the same. He's always the one who gives truth. He's always the one who's utterly holy, Jesus Christ.

Well, the writer of the Hebrews doesn't throw that second title in carelessly. He's balancing the humanity. Christ, well, that means anointed in the Hebrew.

The Hebrews knew something of the anointing of kings. They knew something of the anointing of priests. Well, here is our Lord Jesus Christ and he's anointed.

He's anointed by the Spirit of God. He's recognized to be someone utterly outstanding. For example, when he's in Nazareth, his home time, making his preaching debut as Martin will be making his this evening in his home church, our Lord Jesus says in the 18th verse of chapter 4 of Luke's Gospel, the Spirit of the Lord is on me.

Why? Well, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind. Our Lord Jesus is not just human, he's also divine.

There is that quality of our Lord Jesus that marked him out absolutely as being unique. He is the Son of Man. He's also the Son of God.

And when you see him as a child in Bethlehem's manger, he is still God's Son. However difficult that is for you and for me to grasp, he sets aside certainly his attributes. He does not pick them up, so to speak.

There are certain things which he tosses aside for a while as he becomes man, but he is still intrinsically, essentially the Son of God. Jesus, the Christ, the one who does not change, the person described. The period defined, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Campbell Morgan says we need a center of permanence. This world passes away. Jesus puts it in terms of the moth and the rust, you remember in the Sermon on the Mount.

And you know how our world gives its own testimony to change. Monasteries become roofless and become ruins. One car is superseded by another car.

Some of you can cast your minds back almost 70 years and you think of the unsophisticated society into which you were born and now you think of these mysterious things like computers and jet planes which can take you in a matter of 12 hours from one side of the world to the other side. And the whole of your life has been fraught with change. One sociologist has said that in the reviewable history of mankind there have been 90 epochs, 9-0, and 98% of the change has come in the last epoch.

He goes on to argue, referred to a man called Alvin Toffler, that society cannot cope with that rate of change. Something must give. Whether or not he's right, certainly he must be correct in saying that the whole of our lives have been a sea of change.

And so when Campbell Morgan was preaching in London and arguing in the 1940s, we need a center of permanence, he was correct. Listen to the Word of God. As the psalmist tells us something of the character of the Lord, I read it to you earlier.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born you brought forth the earth and the world. From everlasting to everlasting you are God.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. You see, in the Old Testament you get the concept of the eternity of God. From everlasting to everlasting, let me translate that in a more popular sense, from vanishing point to vanishing point, you are God.

Now let's transmute that and put it through into the language of the New Testament and hear the theology once again of the Watchtower Collapses. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's a Hebrew expression, it's proverbial.

It's speaking from that which is from eternity to that which is eternal. And if you say, well that's a nonsense statement, that is correct. But how do you define eternity? Before any beginning was, Jesus was before that beginning.

Before any ending will be, Jesus will be at that ending and beyond it. There is no limit that you can put upon him because there is no limit on the omnipotence of God. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.

How many of you read through the Old Testament? Now be honest, what do you do when you get to the genealogies? You skip them. Beget, begat, begotten. It doesn't really seem to convey any great spiritual truth to you.

I mean you don't go out craving to be baptized as a result of reading through the first few chapters of Chronicles. Why were the Hebrews so concerned to write in their genealogies? Well in one sense it was the equivalent of the town or the country records. But there was a spiritual sense in which they recognized the impermanence of people.

Abraham is succeeded by Isaac, Isaac is succeeded by Jacob, Jacob is succeeded by Joseph. Then you go into Exodus, Moses looks for a successor and he finds Joshua. Then you move on into the time of the kings, don't you? Saul is succeeded by David, David by Solomon, Solomon by Rehoboam, and then the kingdom splits and you get Jeroboam in the in the north and so forth.

Where do you read in scripture, hear me, of a successor to Jesus Christ? And the answer is you don't. Why not? Well the writer of the Hebrews will tell you. The reason is that there is no successor.

He's greater than Abraham, he's greater than Moses, he's greater than Joshua. Read the unfurling thesis of Hebrews as you go from one chapter to another chapter to another chapter. Summarize Hebrews in one word or in two words including the definite article.

The greatest. Who is the greatest? None other than this Lord Jesus Christ. Who is this Jesus Christ? He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Never was such a message required in the Soviet Union than at this time. And the same applies to us here in the troubled west. We should remind ourselves of the eternity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am alive forevermore. He'll never be destroyed. I am Alpha and Omega, never a beginning before his, never an ending after his.

I am the same, never changing. I am with you always, never absent. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Never unapproachable, never unattractive, the altogether lovely one. Never too weary, I neither slumber nor sleep. He's the same shepherd who guides the sheep.

He's the same mediator who stands between man and God. He's the same intercessor who prays on behalf of sinful people like you and me. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Do you remember how the disciples were troubled when our Lord left them and who wouldn't have been so troubled? And in the Acts of the Apostles you get a little cameo of their opening response to the ascension of our Lord Jesus, Acts chapter 1. They stand on some promontory on some high part of Palestine as our Lord is lifted from them. And the ninth verse sets the context in a more detailed fashion, Acts 1. After he said this, promising the gift of the Spirit, he was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.

Men of Galilee, they said, why do you stand here looking into the sky? Listen, this same. You got the word? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. Jesus Christ, the same, the unchangeable Savior.

The person described Jesus Christ, the period defined the same yesterday and today and forever. The principle applied. So what? No, I don't mean to be rude, but unless, as the Puritans teach you, unless you give application to the exposition of Scripture, then all you've really engaged in is just a theological lecture.

But I've been trying to make application all the way through these last 20 minutes, but here I come with both guns blazing to this text. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So what? If this is true, what consequence should it make? What difference in our lifestyle? How should our attitudes be tempered as a result of this? Jesus Christ, the same.

Do you really believe this? The Soviet Union some years ago, somebody was vaunting, boasting of the success of communism. It was actually, and I can now believe this story, having been in Leningrad, although it took part in Moscow, if my memory serves me right, the international airport. They were boasting of the success of communism to make the people atheists.

I always said the person who heard the boast, listen to this. Now, you've got to understand the Orthodox Russian church. It's got a beautiful, beautiful liturgy, as I said.

Very often, well, not very often, but I have on some occasions listened to it through. It's saturated in scripture. And the Russians respond as the Jews responded to the Old Testament scriptures.

And one of their creedal calls is, he is risen. And the whole congregation, because they don't sit down in the Russian Orthodox churches, they stand for a couple of hours. They can move around, but they do stand.

The whole congregation responds, he is risen indeed. In Moscow airport, the man who was a Christian who'd been informed that atheism had spread its wings around the Soviet Union and most people were committed to the position, he shouted out, he is risen. And back from many a traveler came the response, he is risen indeed.

You say, why do you believe that story now? And you didn't, at least you weren't so sure a little while ago. Do you know when preaching on the streets of Leningrad last year, we had more people standing by than I've ever known at an open air meeting here in the United Kingdom. And on one occasion, when it was my privilege to preach to this crowd of about 200 people, I asked at the end how many wanted to respond to Jesus Christ as Savior, and about 50 people signified their assent.

And then I asked, would they bow their heads in prayer? I've never done this in the open air here in the United Kingdom. And almost everyone in that crowd of 200 or so bowed their heads and listened to a prayer in English, translated obviously into the Russian language. You see, there is a sense in which the Russian people and you and I need to grasp on to this truth of permanence that there is within this text.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So what? So I have a friend to whom I can constantly turn. And whether I'm in the gulag as was Solzhenitsyn, whether I'm deprived of my freedom as was Wurmbrand, I can discover in that gulag in the Soviet Union, in that jail in Romania, I can discover his promise.

That's so what? I can cope. So I'm a mother in Sweden and my daughter has just been killed as a result of a hand grenade thrown on the Duas, and I get the news. Well, my kid from Australia suffers the same thing.

Now, many of you are parents. How would you have coped? For an hour, when Vrba came on the phone to me last Friday week with the news, I didn't know whether Gustav had been affected or not. And I wonder how as a congregation we would have coped, God forbid, that his life had been taken.

But such is the experience of two congregations, one in Sweden and the other in Australia. So what? Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And we don't go through this life holding on grimly as though that is all that there is.

Our destiny is sealed with the purposes of God. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. So what? So I can receive the remains of my daughter and have her buried in Sweden or Australia and still give thanks to God for the salvation proffered her and me through Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So what? So I can cope with the imponderables of life. When my heart breaks because of my son or my daughter or my marriage, I can cope because this same Jesus who does not mock, this same Jesus who is ever the friend of sinners like me, will give an audience when I break my heart before his throne.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So what? So hear me. No, some of you aren't hearing.

I don't say that dramatically. I say that because I believe the Spirit told me to say it. Listen.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So what? So I must not be fickle because he never was. Gorbachev's greatest grief was it was a man that he appointed that maneuvered him out of position.

Our Lord, the prophetic scripture said, was wounded in the house of his friends by his friend. And treachery and fickleness is still within the body of Christ. You see, our Lord's the same.

He never speaks of you behind his hand. He never will double-deal you. He's one of utter integrity.

And the integrity of this Jesus is the integrity that he wants from his body. Are you hearing? Then if you're here, respond to this great and glorious text. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So what? So I have access to the sinner's friend. So I can come to him and say, Lord, I look at the treachery of my own heart. I think sometimes of the language that I've expressed and that I shouldn't have done.

And I ask you, blessed Christ, because you died on Calvary's cross, to save me from my sins and to make me more like you are. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hear me, the toast in the Soviet Union at the moment is Jesus Christ.

And in a little while, we'll come around this table and we'll take the bread and we'll take the wine and understand the metaphorically. It will be the same toast because there's no other name. There's no other being who can do for us what he has done.

Together on three, the text. One, two, three. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Let's pause for a moment's Now, it is past and over, gone my sin and shame. Jesus, Jesus, did his glory to his name. Father, we're grateful for what you have done for us through your son.

We praise you that he is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever. And in the moment as we have the privilege afresh of taking bread and wine, help us to reaffirm our faith in that same Lord Jesus. Amen.

Sing one of my favorite modern hymns, 277. It's in Songs of Fellowship, but we'll come up on the overhead projector. Jesus is king and I will extol him, give him the glory and honor his name.

277. Let's stand. Yes, we mourn him, Jesus the same, Jesus the savior.