The God of the Aged

"Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."—Isaiah 46:4.

The doctrine of the text I hold to be, the constancy of God's love, its perpetuity, and its unchangeable nature. God declares that he is not simply the God of the young saint; that he is not simply the God of the middle-aged saint: but that he is the God of the saints in all their ages from the cradle to the tomb. "Even to old age I am he;" or, as Lowth beautifully and more properly translates it: "Even to old age I am the same, and even to hoary hairs will I carry you." The doctrine, then is twofold: that God himself is the same, whatever may be our age; and that God's dealings towards us, both in providence and in grace, his carryings and his deliverings, are alike unchanged...

They testify that the God of their youth is the God of their later years. They own that Christ "hath the dew of his youth." When they saw him first, as the bright and glorious Immanuel, they thought him "altogether lovely;" and when they see him now, they see not one beauty faded, and not one glory departed: he is the self-same Jesus. When they first rested themselves on him, they thought his shoulders strong enough to carry them; and they find those shoulders still as mighty as ever. They thought at first his bowels did melt with love, and that his heart was beating high with mercy; and they find it is still the same. God is unchanged; and therefore they "are not consumed." They put their trust in him, because they have not yet marked a single alteration in him. His character, his essence, his being, and his deeds are all the same; and, moreover, to crown all, we cannot suppose a God, if we cannot suppose a God immutable. A God who changed would be no God. We could not grasp the idea of Deity if we once allowed our minds to take in the thought of mutability. From all these things, then, we conclude that "even from old age he is the same, and that even to hoary hairs he will carry us."

The God of the Aged, Sermon 81, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Photo credit: By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons