I Change Not

Start with the honest complaint. Picture someone six weeks into a resolution that has failed. The old habit is back in the house, acting as though it never left. To that person, a verse where God announces "I change not" can sound like a boast from someone who has never had to try.

So look at the other key word in the verse: "therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." The Hebrew word for consumed is kalah. It means to finish something, to bring it to an end, to use it up completely. It is what fire does to what it burns, and what famine does to a people. And Malachi is not speaking to people with a good record. He has just spent two chapters on priests who offered "the blind for sacrifice" and "the lame and sick." He has spoken of men who had "dealt treacherously" with "the wife of thy youth." He has faced a nation bold enough to ask, "Where is the God of judgment?" Against all that, the verse is startling. They have not been used up, and the reason has nothing to do with them being better material than the generation before.

Notice the name God uses here, too. He calls them "sons of Jacob." Jacob was the name their forefather carried before God renamed him Israel, back when he was a schemer whose hand "took hold on Esau’s heel" at birth. God speaks to them by that old family name, and He tells them they are not finished.

Now turn the logic around. If their survival had rested on how steady they were, their story would have ended centuries before Malachi ever wrote. They are still here for one reason: God does not change.

So pray it simply, and without making a new vow. God, my record is what it is, and You have read all of it. I am not going to promise You a better version of myself this morning. You said You do not change. That is the only reason there is anything left of me here to pray with. Hold what I cannot hold. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 150 is Round About Elisha (2 Kings 6:17).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna