“I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). One of the important and very practical attributes of God is His immutability. When we say that God is immutable, we are acknowledging that God does not change. Such is the constancy of His attributes. Because God is true, He cannot lie. Because God is just, He cannot sin. Because God is immutable, He cannot change.

In contrast, mankind is very fickle and inconstant. A review of election cycles makes that very evident. The ideas and values of the majority shift with astonishing variety and rapidity. Styles of dress come and go in a few short years. Genres of music shift and change with the wind, and the popular songs of today will mostly be forgotten tomorrow as newer styles replace them.

Meanwhile, our God does not change. The assurance of God’s immutability gives us as His children a stable confidence in an unstable world. No matter who is in the White House, God is on the throne! No matter how formidable the sea to cross or the stronghold to conquer, God Who brings us forth in freedom is the same Who empowers us to stand firm for His glory.

There is a noteworthy title that God uses repeatedly to describe Himself in the pages of the Pentateuch. Indeed, the same title is used throughout the Bible. God calls Himself “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

When Jehovah revealed Himself to Moses in the midst of the burning bush, He said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6).

When most Christians read verses like that one, they tend to read these words as superfluous, lengthy, and tedious. But God never wastes words nor is He wordy. Every single word of Scripture is there for a specific reason. The title “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is not to be glossed over, abbreviated, or taken for granted.

The fact that God announced Himself to Moses with this title involving several patriarchs is extremely significant. Much had occurred in the annals of human history in the tumultuous four centuries that separated Moses from the days of the patriarchs. The children of Israel had multiplied exceedingly from seventy-five souls to approximately 2.5 million people! They were not dwelling in the Land of Promise, but instead they were in bondage in the land of Egypt. The Messianic hopes of future glory, the covenant of the land, the promise of a universal blessing, all seemed very remote and impossibly unattainable!

Yet God was unchanged by the passage of time. The God that called Moses out of Egypt is the same God that called Abraham out of the land of Ur, the God that led Isaac, and the God that brought Jacob back again to Bethel. The God of the Bible is always the same, regardless of the winds of circumstances. What He promised to Abraham, He would most certainly fulfill in the days of Moses and beyond.

God still remains the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Fourteen hundred years after Moses, the Lord Jesus quoted these words again to the Sadducees in the courts of the Temple in testimony to the Resurrection: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32).

What does this mean to us today? It means exactly the same as what it meant to Moses in his time and to the Jews of Jesus’ day. The God of the Bible has not changed at all throughout the 6,000 years of human history. God is today what He was 1,000 years ago, and what He will be 1,000 years from now. He changes not!

Nominal Christians sometimes have the false notion of a God whose ideas on certain matters, such as marriage, education, law, and government, changes with the passing centuries. They vainly imagine that God must accept sodomy and gender confusion just because modern academia does so. The God of the Old Testament was a God of Law, they say, and now we know a God of love! The God of the Old Testament was stern and intolerant. The God of the New Testament is loving and kind.

Many evangelical Christians have adopted aspects of this fallacious thinking that flies in the face of the immutability of God! The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. The God of Abraham is the God of Paul the apostle. The God of the Old Testament is a God of love, just as much as the God of the New Testament is a God of justice and truth. He is always consistent with Himself because He does not change.

May God help us proclaim, without apology and without shame, His incomparable immutability. Nothing or no one else can claim such a trait. May we not forget that we serve this constant, unchanging God—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. His name is Jehovah. He changes not!