Things That Fade and Things That Last Forever

Text: Isaiah 40, selected verses

-- (1) Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. - (6) The voice said, "Cry." And he said, "What shall I cry?" "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: - The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. - The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the Word of our God shall stand for ever." - (21) Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? - It is He that sitteth on the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: - That bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. - Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown; yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and He shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.

 

Introduction:

In 1963, a young man named Robert Zimmerman was an up-and-coming music star in this country. Touring the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, Haight Asbury, San Francisco and even Charlotte North Carolina, this man, under the pseudonym of Bob Dylan, sang the folk songs of the day. He would end his program by singing a song that he had written...one that sticks in our minds today even if we don't remember its words..."The times, they are a-changin'" was the anthem of the youth of this nation in that turbulent generation we call "the 60's." As much as the "establishment" generation of that day condemned the lifestyle, they could not deny the truth of the words. Today, we are 97 days away from the end of the 20th Century, and looking back on the 40 or so years that I have been an observer of it, I can say that the only consistent, constant thing in this century is change.

I. Some of the changes occur in cycles. This is the first situation our scripture from Isaiah refers to.

1. Israel, lying closer to the Equator than we do, has two major seasons instead of the four we know...the rainy season, and the dry season.

2. Year after year the winds changed in a pattern that brought unending cycles of planting and harvest, comfort and discomfort, and life and death.

3. Even so, the pattern was not absolutely dependable. Though they did not have the concept in hand, there were "el Nino's" in those times, which put a measure of uncertainty about whether, once the grass withered and the flower faded, they would actually be present again the next year.

II. People have a habit of observing the seasons, and marveling over their constancy. The trouble is, things are not as constant as they seem. The National Bureau of Standards and the National Observatory give us some interesting facts about the changes that are occurring in our world.

1. Over the course of the 20th Century, the solar year has increased by 4 minutes. This means our planet is now orbiting 5 miles further out from the sun than it was 100 years ago.

2. Every year, the people who keep the time standard for the world routinely add 2-3 seconds to the clock to keep the world's time in line with the position of the stars and sun.

3. The latest measurements indicate the hole in the Ozone Layer over the South Pole is increasing. No one really knows what that means, but they are advising people worldwide to avoid exposure to the sun as best they can over the next few years.

4. Do we feel those things...No, but the fact they are occurring is enough to tell us that even those things we perceive as constant, safe and reliable are not quite what we think that they are.

III. We all hope for the consistency of our seasons...Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter...but Isaiah tells us that it is a far better thing to trust in the Word of God, which is consistent and does not change.

1. God has his way of taking that which is bad for some things and making it good for other things. For example, we've been through some severe drought and hot weather this summer. What we perceived as a lousy summer turned out to be perfect weather for something...apples (I showed one from the parsonage apple tree).

2. We may not see any spiritual value in the "500-year flood" that indunates the eastern part of our state today, but once the waters have receded, people will start finding good that comes from it, and some folks will even show some gratitude because of it.

3. The words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes 3 seem to ring through the years when we consider the changes taking place in our world..."To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven."

4. Through such things as drought, earthquake, fire and flood, we can learn from God's word that even though such things are inevitable in our world, trusting in the creator of this world, who does not change, is the only thing we can place our hopes in that will not fail our expectations.

Conclusion:

Occasionally, you will see a tee shirt out here with a message on it that, in a sense, is the summation of what I want you to learn for today. The phrase on this shirt is, "Life is Hard, but God is Good!" No matter what our struggle, no matter where the struggles of this life might take us, no matter how badly the world might tease and taunt us in our misery, we can get through by remembering that God is sitting with His eyes fixed on each of us. His loving arms are ready to embrace us as he lovingly says, "My child, I know your struggles. I watched my own Son die struggling in your world, and because you are His, your struggle is my concern." Let us rely on the strength of the Almighty to bear up under the struggle of the uncertainty of this life, so that when the "...flower fades and the grass withers..." we do not lose sight of the fact that God is Lord over all of them, is constant through all of them, and has even promised to be the way out of all of them. Take the challenge God gives us today...invest in His eternal promises, rather than in a world that will one day fade away in death. It can be the most important choice you will ever make.