Browsing Tag:

Immutability

In 1 Samuel, Bible Study, Blog on
November 7, 2023

Divine Regret

Have you ever been reading the Bible and come across something that appears to contradict what it says elsewhere? Have you ever discovered a verse that seems completely antithetical to what you’ve been taught by pastors and other teachers at your church?

This is not all that uncommon. There are many areas of Scripture that can be confusing and may seem at first glance to be in direct opposition of other Scripture passages. One particular place is 1 Samuel 15, where God declares that he regrets making Saul king.

But is it truly possible for God to regret something? After all, isn’t He all-knowing? Isn’t He sovereign over everything that happens in the universe? Doesn’t the Bible tell us that God can never change?

To answer these questions and gain clarity on the real meaning of 1 Samuel 15, we must examine the biblical context.

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In Blog, Common Questions, Theology on
January 2, 2023

Can God Learn, Change, or Adapt?

There seems to be a growing number of people who believe that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God of the New Testament. This belief is not exactly new or revolutionary. It really has been around for centuries, ever since Marcion spouted ideas like this and got excommunicated from the church for being a heretic in the year 144 A.D. But as the years pass by, we are seeing more and more professing believers agree with this sentiment—that the loving and lovable Jesus who arrived on earth in the first century A.D. is not the same God as the fiery and vengeful One of old.

In Ligonier Ministries’ biennial State of Theology survey, they asked both believers and unbelievers whether they believed that “God learns and adapts to different situations.” Forty-eight percent of professing Evangelicals who participated in the survey agreed with this statement.[1] This means that about half of supposedly Bible-believing Christians in this country believe that God is able to and does change over time.

However, this belief is not a biblical one, and as we’ll see in a moment, how we think about this issue has a great impact on our Christian faith.

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In Blog, Heresies, Theology on
April 3, 2022

Test the Spirits

Everyone is trying to sell us something, whether it be on YouTube ads, interstate billboards, or commercials during the nightly news. Forbes reported in 2017 that the average American is exposed to four thousand to ten thousand ads every single day.[1] Everybody wants to convince us that their product or message will make our lives easier, better, or more enjoyable.

And this isn’t limited to secular media outlets. Even our pastors and churches feed us different messages every week. Many of these messages are rooted in the Word of God and are edifying and uplifting. However, there are also messages being delivered by “pastors” every week that are not rooted in Scripture, that are not truly edifying, and that actually lead people away from the truth of the gospel. Because of this, we must be like the Bereans, examining the Bible to see if what we are hearing lines up with God’s Word (Acts 17:11), and test the spirits (1 John 4:1).

To help you test the messages you’re hearing and discern whether what you’re being taught is biblical truth, I’ve compiled a brief list of nine heresies that originated in the early church and are still popular today and how the Bible disproves them.

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In Bible Study, Blog, Isaiah on
December 20, 2021

A Child is Born

Christmas is a busy time of year. It’s a time of baking cookies, hosting holiday parties, and singing all of your favorite Christmas carols. It’s a time of wrapping presents, drinking hot chocolate, and last-minute shopping for that one family member you didn’t know was coming into town. It’s a time of hanging lights, decorating trees, and watching classic films, like Home Alone, Christmas with the Kranks, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. For some, Christmastime is filled with joy and cheer. For others, Christmastime is filled with stress and exhaustion.

No matter what life stage or season we’re in, we all have busy schedules at the end of each year, and we all get to a point where it feels like there is so much to do and so little time to do it all in. But as we attempt to fit in all the festivities and events, we miss something. We forget that Christmas is about more than the gifts and the music and the décor. It’s a day when we are to celebrate the birth of a child. And not just any child, but the Son of God.

What is so special about this child? Why does this boy named Jesus deserve our focus, our reverence, our worship? We can discover the answers to these questions by consulting a roughly 2,700-year-old Jewish prophecy written by a man named Isaiah.

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In Attributes of God, Blog, Theology on
September 21, 2020

He is Immutable

Have you ever heard the phrase, “The only guaranteed thing in life is change”? The Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote a very similar saying around 2,500 years ago.[1] This profound insight proves to be true even to this day! How we look changes. How we talk changes. How we think changes. How we make decisions changes. Our styles change. Our preferences change. Our relationships change. Where we live changes. Where we work changes. What we do for fun changes. Seasons change. Our situations change. The economy changes. Seemingly everything in our lives changes!

But, there actually is something in our life that NEVER changes. Or, rather, Someone-

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