Certainty in an Uncertain World

Certainty in an Uncertain World

Is there anything that we can hold on to? Is there anything that gives us meaning in our lives? In the midst of these changes, certain things never change.

The nature of God does not change. In all these centuries God has not changed. He said, “I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6). “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should [change]” (Numbers 23:19).

The Bible says that God is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2). I can’t comprehend that. I cannot understand that God never had a beginning and will never have an end. I accept it by faith because the Bible declares it. There is “no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17) with God.

God is unchanging in His holiness. God is a holy God, a righteous God: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8).

God is unchanging in His judgment. A day is coming in which all of us will stand before the judgment of Almighty God to give an account of our lives; we will give an account of what we did with His Son, Jesus Christ, and of our response to Him when He said, “I love you, I want to forgive you, I want to change you, I want to be your Friend.” What will we answer? What will we do with Christ? The Bible says, “The Lord will judge the ends of the earth” (1 Samuel 2:10).

God is also unchanging in His love: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God loves us! God is interested in us. He has the hairs of our heads numbered. He knows all about us, and He loves us!

God loves us with a love that we do not understand. When we come to Christ and give our hearts and lives to Him, He will give agape love–His love–to us so that we can love people whom we usually don’t even like. Now we will love them. He will give us a supernatural power to love.

The Word of God has not changed: “The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever,” says the Bible (Isaiah 40:8). The Bible was given to us by God. The Bible is our guide, our compass through life.

The first question that the devil put to Eve in that encounter in the Garden of Eden was, “Has God indeed said?” (Genesis 3:1). He was questioning the word of God. The devil will do everything in his power to keep you from reading God’s Word, from studying it, because believing the message in this Book will change your life!

Human nature has not changed. The Prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Human nature is the same the world over. I have preached in all kinds of cultures and in all kinds of conditions, and I have learned that the human heart is the same everywhere. The Gospel meets the need of the human heart when a person turns by faith to Christ.

The Bible says,”all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are sinners. We have broken the moral laws of God. We are all sinners.

And the moral Law has not changed. God gave the moral Law to Moses who recorded it in the Ten Commandments.

  • “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). Anything can become a false god.
  • “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). Even when we no longer have to obey our fathers and mothers, we are to honor them.
  • “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). Adultery is thrown at us from every angle. I don’t know how people today can stay clean and pure in their moral lives without Christ. With Christ we can.
  • “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). Robberies, muggings–all kinds of things like these are going on; we read about them every day in the newspapers.
  • “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). That’s lying.

These are from the Ten Commandments, and Scripture says that if we have broken one of those Commandments, we are guilty of breaking all of them (James 2:10). So we are guilty in the sight of God. That makes us sinners, and sin comes between us and God. We are separated from God by our sin. We all need Christ!

The way of salvation has not changed. You ask, “How can I be saved? How can I have a changed life?” The Scripture says, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

Jesus said that we need to enter the narrow gate, to walk down the narrow road (Matthew 7:13-14). There is only one way, and that way is through Christ, who died on the cross for our sins, shed His blood for us and rose again. He is the living Christ. God is not calling us to a dead Christ on a cross. He is calling us to the living Christ. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is coming back and that the Kingdom of God will prevail.

The only way to God is through Christ. He is the only One in history of whom it is written, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Christ will never change, but you need to change. And today, out of love, He offers you salvation. He can come into your heart right now and change you. That is the beginning of a whole new life.

It doesn’t mean that you will become perfect overnight. As long as you live on this earth, you will be imperfect. And you won’t find a perfect church. Only One who has ever lived was perfect: Jesus Christ.

There are three things that you must do. The first is to repent of your sins. The word repent means to change–to change your mind, to change your way of living, to change your attitude. You can’t do that alone, but God can help you to change. “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19).

The Apostle Paul, when he preached his great sermon in Athens, said, “God … now commands all [people] everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). All men and women have been commanded by God to repent, to change. And if you are ever to get to heaven, if you are ever to have your sins forgiven, if you are ever to have assurance and peace and joy in Christ in this life, you need to repent.

Second, you need to believe. That word believe means much more than just head belief. It means that you put your confidence in Christ, you put the entire weight of your thought in Christ: “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12). You need to put your confidence in Him. You need to commit yourself to Christ without reservation.

Third, you need to confess Him openly. “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

Do you want to be saved? You say, “Well, I don’t even know what ‘saved’ means.” It means that you are saved from judgment. It means that you are saved from hell. It means that you have a new joy and a new peace in your heart, a new power to face the problems of your life. It means that when you die, you will go to heaven.

Without salvation, without knowing Christ, you can’t have that. But when you come to Christ, He changes you. “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus”–you do that today–”and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

If there is a doubt in your heart that you know Christ, say today, “I want to be sure. I want to be certain that Christ lives in me.” Christ can come into your life.

I am not calling you to a church. I am not calling you to an organization. I am calling you t
o the Person of Jesus Christ. Make sure that Christ lives in your heart.

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