Revival and the Enduring Word of God
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
Well, we’ve been talking about revival over the last several weeks. And Isaiah 40 has been our guide and our path. We’ve been talking about revival. Hopefully by now we’re doing more than just talking about it, but we are actually experiencing some of it. And we’re getting ready for revival and God is doing a work in our hearts. We started down this path, of course, during this time when a global pandemic has paused our world. And we said, you know, this is a good time for us while we’re all staying at home, and life is paused. And we’re trying to figure out the way of this virus. This is a good time for us to examine ourselves and to reflect deeply and to ask God to, in fact, revive our hearts. Hopefully, you’re experiencing some of that and you’re following along with us. And here we are in week three.
0:01:13.9
Again, I’ve titled today’s message “Revival and the Enduring Word of God” because in the flow of Isaiah’s thought here in chapter 40, when he comes to verses 6, 7 and 8 he turns his attention in a very intentional way to the Word of God. And he contrasts the Word of God, which will stand forever, he says, with the withering grass and the fading flower, those things in life that are transitory, not transcendent. Those things that will not last forever. We’ll get there in a moment. But the fact that he turns in this direction reminds us of this. The Word of God plays a central role in all revivals and spiritual awakenings. Let me say that again. The Word of God is key. This book we call the Bible always plays a central role in revivals and spiritual awakenings. I can’t think of a revival in church history that we could look at recently or in the past, or some spiritual awakening in history where the Word of God was not central to that. And I can’t even think of one or read about one in the Bible itself that does not have the Word of God central to that revival and that awakening that took place.
0:02:29.7
In fact, let me give you two examples- one 2000 years ago on what was known as the Day of Pentecost, the day that the church was born. This church that Jesus said He would build, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, the ecclesia, the called-out ones. The church that was never mentioned or envisioned in the Old Testament but was mentioned first when Jesus said, “I will build my church.” On the Day of Pentecost, the church was born. Happy birthday, church. That’s what we say in Acts 2. And there were three things that really contributed to that phenomenal day when the church was born. One was the prayers of the early followers of Jesus as they huddled up in Jerusalem after His ascension and waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Second, of course, was the coming of the Holy Spirit “in tongues of fire” as the scripture tells us.
0:03:23.7
But there was something else that was happening that day that contributed to what God was doing to revive His people and to bring about this great spiritual awakening on the Day of Pentecost 2000 years ago. And that was the preaching of God's Word. You go to Acts 2, and you learn that the apostle Peter preached his first sermon. And ti was the first sermon of this new entity called the church. And the Bible says 3,000 people came to faith in Jesus Christ that day. That is the definition of a revival and a spiritual awakening and certainly is evidence of something very remarkable that God was doing. Central to that time, of course, was the Word of God.
0:04:07.2
Now, let’s go back even further into the Old Testament anther 500, maybe 600 years to the time of young King Josiah. Josiah was the son of Amon and the grandson of Manasseh, two previous monarchs in Israel. And both of those previous monarchs, Josiah’s father and his grandfather, were wicked, wicked kings. Manasseh was so wicked that it would make a Canaanite blush, some of the things that he did. And Amon, his son and Josiah’s father, was not much better. Amon was assassinated two years into this reign. And upon his assassination, Josiah became king. When I call him young King Josiah, I mean he was young. He was only eight years old when he assumed the throne. But the Bible tells us that he grew up. And during his teenage years, eight years after his reign began—so he’s 15, 16 years old—Josiah started seeking after the Lord. And soon he began making the kind of reforms in Israel that made some heads turn. For example, in 2 Chronicles 34:3 it says, “In the twelfth year,”—now Josiah is in his late teens, almost 20 years of age—"he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and the metal images. And they chopped down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and he cut down the incense altars that stood above them. And he broke in pieces the Asherim and the carved and the metal images, and he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.”
0:05:53.7
The rumblings of a national revival began as Josiah brought low the high places, and he ground the idolatrous shrines into dust. Remember, last week we talked about our responsibilities in revival, about lifting up the low places, bringing low the high places, straightening out the crooked places, and smoothing over the rough places. Well, here is an example of when young King Josiah…he’s barely 20 years old, and he’s making significant spiritual and national reforms in the nation here. And He brings low the high places. He destroys them.
0:06:35.0
A little bit later he realizes the temple of God that was built under Solomon was now in ruins. And he put together a commission of people to go to the temple and clean it up and repair the temple and get it back to where it could be, a wonderful place of worship again. Among them was Hilkiah, the high priest who went back to the temple. And he is rummaging around in the temple. And you know what Hilkiah finds? He finds a copy of the holy scriptures, the law of God that was given to Moses. He blows off the dust. He might have found it in some closet somewhere. And he grabs that copy of the holy scriptures, and he hands it to a servant of his. He says, “Take it back to the king.” And this servant comes into the presence of the king, and he says, “Look what we found.” And the king says, “Read from it.” And so this servant began reading from the law of God. And you read on in 2 Chronicles 34, and it says, “When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.” This was a sign of spiritual mourning and grief and even repentance. There was a conviction that came over young King Josiah, his heart, when he heard the law of God and when he began to understand just how far not only he, but also the entire nation of Israel had drifted away from God.
0:08:06.3
Do you remember our definition of revival over the last few weeks? We said revival was the sovereign work of God that invariably happens when confession and repentance follow the conviction of sin brought about by the Holy Spirit. Here we see in the life of King Josiah the conviction of sin that comes in the presence of the reading of the Word of God. Have you ever experienced something like that? Where this holy Word of God, just the reading of it, let alone the preaching of it and the study of it, but just the reading of the Word of God brings great conviction to your heart. This is what happened to Josiah. Just another example of the central role that the Word of God plays in revivals and spiritual awakenings.
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What I’m trying to say is simply this. When revival happens, people return to the God of the Word and to the Word of God. Can I say that again? When revival happens, two things happen. People return to the God of the Word, and also to the Word of God.
0:09:12.0
And this brings us back to Isaiah 40, where, again, the scripture says, beginning in verse 6, “A voice says, ‘Cry!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” You know, God's Word is a sure foundation. And God's Word is powerful. His spoken word is powerful, and His written word is powerful.
0:09:54.5
Let’s think a little bit about His spoken word. You go all the way back to the creation story, and you find that the Word of God, the spoken word of God, is central to the creation story. Because early on in the creation story it says that God said, “Let there be light,” and, boom, there was light. God, just with His spoken word, was able to create the worlds out of nothing. The powerful, powerful Word of God.
0:10:26.3
And so it is in the flow of Isaiah’s chapter here. In fact, Isaiah 40 is really a conversation between three people. Three voices are in view here. There is certainly Isaiah’s voice. There is the voice and the presence of an unidentified group of people who join in on the conversation. But clearly the voice of God is preeminent here. This is the voice that takes centerstage. In fact, at the end of verse 5, it says, “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” It sets up verses 6, 7, and 8, and the central role of the Word of God, His spoken word, and even His written word.
0:11:09.1
And what Isaiah does here in verses 6-8 is he compares and contrasts some things. He goes into the natural world and compared the natural world with something that is both in the natural world and in the spiritual world. He says, “The grass withers, the flower fades,” two things from the natural world that don’t last forever. In fact, they’re transitory. They’re fleeting. “The grass withers, the flower fades.” Now we move into something that exists in the natural world, but also the supernatural world. He says, “but the word of our God will stand forever.”
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And the question that Isaiah begs in verses 6, 7 and 8, and especially in verse 8, is simply this. What are you standing on? Upon what foundation are you building your life? Are you building your life on the foundation of withering grass and fading flowers? Or are you building your life on the foundation of the Word of God? You know, I can think of some fleeting pursuits in this life. In fact, I wrote down a few, some that are in the category of withering grass and fading flowers. I’m talking about politics, fame, fashion, money, power, pleasure, even drugs and the culture that comes with it. Even life itself is short, and it’s transitory. Isaiah is comparing the transitory things of this life and all that mankind can produce and live for with the transcendent, eternal, indestructible, unshakeable foundation that is the Word of God itself.
0:12:59.3
And again, the question is, what are you building your life on? What is your foundation? Is your foundation made up of withering grass and fading flowers? Or is the foundation of your life the never-changing, never-destructed, always-enduing and eternal Word of God? You know, during this pandemic if you’re somebody who was building your foundation, for instance, on money and the things that money can buy and on the economy and commerce and all of that…whoo! You talk about a withering grass and a fading flower. It also reminds me of Proverbs 23:5, “Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone. They will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.” And that very vividly describes our economy and what happened and is happening right now in the stock market and so forth.
0:13:55.7
No, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Central to revival, to a spiritual awakening, is our relationship not only to the God of the Word, but to the Word of God. What role does it play in your life? Is it central to your life? Is the foundation of your life the foundation of that which lasts forever? We’re talking about the Word of God. Or is the foundation of your life something that is so fleeting and so transitory that even a tiny little virus that is naked to the human eye could cause to go away.
0:14:41.7
Let’s talk about a little bit about the Word of God. Again, in the context of revivals, the enduring Word of God and our relationship to it and to the God of the Word is vitally, vitally, important. I want to say just quickly seven things about the Word of God. And these are going to build on each other, starting very simply that the Bible is the Word of God.
0:15:07.3
When we talk about the Word of God, we can talk about the spoken word like in Genesis 1 and in other places where God spoke His word directly, maybe in visions and dreams to people in the Old Testament and elsewhere. But we’re also talking about the written Word of God. The primary way that God communicates to us today is through His written word and through His Living Word, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible, these 66 books, this collection of books we call the Bible that was written by 40 different human authors over 1600 years from three different continents from such a variety of backgrounds and experiences, this Bible that speaks with one voice has an amazing continuity, some say a miraculous way in which it comes together. By the way, every other holy book like the Koran or the Book of Mormon, one person wrote it. One person put it together. Are you going to build your life and your foundation on a book that one person wrote, like Mohammed or Joseph Smith, or a book that is so amazing and so miraculous that 40 authors came together over time that they didn’t even know each other? But it’s God who speaks through the collection of these writings and make it into His Word. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. All scripture is breathed out by God is the idea and is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.” 2 Peter 1:21 says, “For no prophecy was every produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” This is talking about the way that the Word of God came to us. It is the Word of God through human instrumentation.
0:17:11.9
1 Thessalonians 2:13, the apostle Paul applauds the Thessalonians by how they received the teaching of God's Word for what it really was, the Word of God. Listen to this. “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.” Friend, do you accept this book we call the Bible for what it really is, the Word of God? I wish I could take more time to develop the reasons why we believe the Bible is the Word of God, take some time to do that and come to the settled understanding that the Bible is God's Word. Not that it contains God's Word and it’s our job to find what parts of it are the Word of God? No, from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, all of it is the Word of God.
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Secondly, the Word of God is truth. John 17:7, Jesus is praying His high-priestly prayer during His time in the upper room with the disciples. In verse 17 He says, “Father, sanctify them in the truth; your word,” He says, “is truth.” Interesting that we interact with that word “truth” in our culture today. Because one of the withering pieces of grass and the fading flowers is our culture that from one culture to the next is always deciding what is true and what’s not true.
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Nearly two decades (0:19:00.0) ago, Michael Novak wrote an article where he was wrestling with some of these ideas. And he says, “Here is what we teach our little ones today. There is no such thing as truth. Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals, we teach. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with yourself. Do what feels comfortable.” Novak says, “Those who speak this way prepare the jails of the 21st century, and they do the work of tyrants.” Those are some pretty strong words, but he’s exactly right. That’s the culture of our day. Your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth. There are as many truths as there are individuals. No, that’s not what Jesus said. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father but by me.” He prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth,”—we’ll come to that in a moment—but He said to the Father, “Your word is (0:20:00.1) truth.” And when we talk about truth, we’re talking about that which is true at all times and in all places for all people in all generations. Not a relative truth relative to your circumstances and relative to what you think is right, but an absolute truth upon which you can build the foundation of your life. Not a truth that is like a withering piece of grass or a truth that is a fading flower that is popular in our time today but goes out of favor at another time. Who wants to build their life on something fleeting like that?
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No, the Word of God, this book we call the Bible, is truth. And when we don’t teach people, especially young people, that there is an absolute truth that is the foundation of all human existence, then, as Novak says, we prepare the jails for the 21st century. Because he goes on to argue that people who believe truth is relative to the individual eventually don’t obey the laws of the land. And you’ve just got to open up the jails and put them there. And then the mob comes, and then he says that’s when the government comes and the tyrants come and say, “To protect you from the mobs that are going crazy in the streets and all of that, we need to come in…” And he goes on from there. No, the Word of God is truth. And if we deviate from that idea, there is a whole ripple effect in our society.
0:21:36.5
So the Bible is the Word of God. The Word of God is truth. Let’s stay in John 17 for this next one. The Word of God is sanctifying truth. Jesus says, “Father, sanctify them in the truth.” And then He goes on to say, “Your word is truth.” The word “sanctify” means to set apart for a holy purpose. And Jesus is saying to the Father as He prays, “Your word is truth, and it has the power to sanctify and to make whole.” Listen, friend, as long as you and I, as we’re inviting the Lord to revive our hearts, position ourselves in a way where we are drinking in the Word of God and digesting the Word of God and doing it with every anticipation that whatever we hear from the Word of God we are quick and swift to put it into practice, being doers in the Word and not just hearers. As long as we do that and position ourselves before the Word of God that way, laying ourselves bare before the Word of God, then the Word of God will sanctify us. It will change us. It will shape us and mold us more and more into the image of Christ.
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Now, if you’re somebody who, you know, just reads the Bible and has no intention of doing what it says, will it change you? No, probably not. It’s possible to hear and to even digest and to be a student of the Bible and for it never to change you and shape you and mold you and make you more whole and to sanctify you. But let’s not do that, friends. This is a time, during this global pandemic and this pause, to examine ourselves and to say, “Lord, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” You know how the Lord does that mostly? It’s as we lay ourselves bare before the Word of God and read it and study it and digest it with the intention of putting it into practice.
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Number four, the Word of God is perfect truth. The Bible is the Word of God. The Word of God is truth. The Word of God is sanctifying truth. But now the Word of God is perfect truth. Hold your place here in Isaiah 40 and go with me to the book of Psalms. Psalm 19. I love how the writer of Psalms, this being a psalm of David, brings our themes together here. Psalm 19:7, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” We would stop right there and just rejoice in that. But then he goes on to say, “Reviving the soul.” Isn’t that great? The law of the Lord, this book we call the Bible, the Word of God…the law of the Lord is perfect. There is nothing wrong with it. It is completely, from cover to cover, the perfect and enduring Word of God. You can trust it all the way to the bank. Now, there are people who pick apart this book called the Bible. There are people who think it’s imperfect. “Nah, this is written by a bunch of men.” No, we already determined that it was God-breathed through human instrumentation. And in the original autographs, the original texts, it’s perfect. It’s without error.
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And because it is perfect, it has the ability…did you get this...to revive the soul. I love how the psalmist goes on. “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.” And then he says in verse 10, “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” David couldn’t get enough of the holy scriptures. he found them to be perfect and reviving and full of wisdom and filled his heart with joy, enlightened his eyes, and so on and so forth.
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Friend, do you have that kind of understanding of and relationship with the Word of God? The Bible is the Word of God. The Word of God is truth. The Word of God is sanctifying truth. The Word of God is perfect truth. Here is another one. The Word of God is living truth. Now let’s go to Hebrews 4:12. Here is what the Word of God says about itself. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Boy, a lot comes to mind here.
0:26:48.0
The Word of God is living, and it’s active. Do you know why this is a book unlike any other book you have on your library shelf? Well, first, because it’s the Word of God. And it’s the living and active Word of God. I found that one of the differences between this book and any other book that I’ve read is that every time I come back to this book, even to a familiar passage of scripture, it speaks to me and interjects things into my life that, even though I’m familiar with the passage, as it intersects my life at a different point, the living and active Word has an effect in my life. It is the living Word of God. It’s not a dead piece of religious scribing that dead people long ago put together. This is why it’s the bestselling book of all time and has been so in every generation.
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The writer of Hebrews goes on to say it’s sharper than any two-edged sword. Yeah, watch out. This book will cut you. If you lay yourself bare before God and say, “Yes, God, search me. Know me. I’m reading Your Word, and I want to know the truth. I want to be reproved and corrected and instructed and trained in righteousness,” well, this is the place to go. This book will cut down into those deep places, those core places, maybe those hidden places in your heart like a surgeon’s scalpel and will do spiritual surgery on our hearts. It is the living truth and the living Word of God.
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Number six, the Word of God is eternal truth. It brings us full circle, now, back to Isaiah 40, where verse 8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” It’s eternal. It will stand forever. But, you know, there have been people throughout history who have tried to destroy the Word of God. I think of a well-known philosopher and atheist named Voltaire who boastfully declared the demise of the Bible. Voltaire said, “Another century, and there will not be a Bible on earth,” he predicted. That was centuries ago, and here we are all these years later, still the Bible being the bestselling book of all time because it is the Word of God. The Bible is still that bestselling book, and Voltaire is a fading memory. If I remember correctly, his house was later used as the headquarters for the International Bible Society in sort of a funny turn of events there. But the Bible is the most attacked and maligned book ever. It’s sort of like a champion heavyweight fighter in that God's Word has taken punch after punch, round after vicious round, and yet it remains standing at the end of the fight. “But the Word of our God will stand forever.” It is eternal. It is enduring.
0:30:11.6
What are you building your life on? Let’s get back to that question. Are you building your life on withering grass and fading flowers, things that will never last forever? Or are you building your life on the foundation of the Word of God? You can say that you’re building it on the foundation of the Word of God, but are you doing it? Are you putting it into practice? Are you living it? Are you reading it? Or, like Hilkiah…if I were Hilkiah walking into your house, would I have to go [makes blowing sound] and blow the dust off your Bible?
0:30:40.9
Which brings us to the seventh thing I want to say about the holy scriptures that will stand forever. The Word of God is authoritative truth. The Bible is the Word of God. The Word of God is truth. And the Word of God is sanctifying truth, perfect truth, living truth, eternal truth. But it’s also authoritative truth. In other words, because it is the Word of God it has the authority to tell us what to do. You know, Jesus made it a matter of discipleship to obey all the commandments that He gave to us. He said in Matthew 28, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” In other words, “Make sure that my followers are willing to go public with their faith.” And then He says, “Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded them.” Think about that. Part of what it means to disciple someone and to be a disciple is to teach that follower of Jesus to observe or to obey all that Jesus has commanded us. And that encompasses all of the scriptures, that statement does.
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The Bible has the authority. Are you living under the authority of scripture? Psalm 119:89 says, “Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven.” I want you to think about this. If you and I were to pay a visit to heaven today, there is nobody in heaven—not the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit, nor the angels of heaven, not the saints that have gone before us—there is nobody in heaven that is debating about whether this is the Word of God. It is forever settled in heaven that this is the Word of God. So, have you settled it in your own life that this book called the Bible is the Word of God? It doesn’t contain the Word of God to where we have to pick and choose which ones really are the Word of God and which aren’t. There are people who do that all the time. No, this is the Word of God. And have you settled that? Have you settled it and come to that settled place where you can say, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me”? That’s the idea here. “Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven.”
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Jesus said in Matthew 5:18, “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until it is all accomplished.” And Jesus placed His stamp of validity upon all of the scriptures. Matthew 24:35, Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” You and I could write a book in this generation. You know what? It wouldn’t even take a generation for those words to be forgotten for the most part. But the Word of God will never pass away. This earth and the heavens, they will pass away. One day there will be a new heaven and a new earth the scripture tells us. But the present heaven and the present earth will pass away. “But My words will not,” Jesus says. His word is eternal, and His word is therefore authoritative.
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What does this have to do with revival? Again, friends, when our hearts are revived, when we’re coming back to the Lord, we come back to the God of the Bible, the God of the Word. But we also come back to the Word of God. You know, this book we call the Bible, think of it as sort of like a love letter from God to you and to me. Could you imagine being in a love relationship and that person that is very special to you writes you a letter day after day after day after day, and you receive it in your mailbox, but you never open it? You take those letters, you put it on a shelf or in a box somewhere and the box up on a shelf in a closet, and you never open up those letters. Those letters might even contain some words from that person who is special to you about how you can love them better and how you can please them. But you never open up the letters. They just gather dust. That’s the way a lot of people who call themselves Christians relate to the Word of God. It’s just a dusty old book. Oh, once in a while they might pick it up and blow the dust off it, but it doesn’t have any meaning to them because it’s not central in their lives.
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Or think of this book we call the Bible as a success manual for life. God said to Joshua before he was about to lead the people of Israel across the Jordan and into the promised land to take possession of the land…He said to Joshua, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate upon it day and night. And you shall be quick to observe and do all that I have commanded in it. Then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Can you imagine having a success manual for life and never opening it up?
0:36:15.5
But, friends, this is a time of pause and global pandemic to examine ourselves, not just in terms of our relationship to the God of the Word, but also our relationship to the Word of God. And they are wedded together. I want to encourage you to come back to the disciplines of reading and studying and memorizing and meditating upon the holy Word of God for all the reasons that we talked about. Because the Bible is the Word of God, and the Word of God is truth. It’s sanctifying truth and perfect truth and living truth and eternal truth and, yes, authoritative truth. Read it with the utmost desire to say, “Lord, show me those areas of my life that need to be sanctified and changed and made whole and made new again.” And invite God as we have to revive our hearts again using the Word of God that will never fail us, but that will stand forever and ever.
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Again, I ask you the question, what are you standing on today? Upon what are you building the foundation of your life? Some withering piece of grass and fading flower? Something that will never last forever and that might even change in the next turn in the culture? Or are you building your life on the foundation of that which stands forever, that is eternal, the enduring Word of God? It endures punch after punch, round after vicious round of people who want to pick it apart and even destroy it. Here it is. And it’s here to play a central role in your life and in my life, especially during this pause and during this pandemic.
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So, take some time right now, friend. Take some time to determine, “I’m going to pick up this book. I’m going to blow off the dust. I’m going to read it every day like a love letter.” You know, if you really did open up those love letters, you would pour over every single word that was written and read it forwards and backwards and ask all kinds of questions. What did she mean by this? What did he mean by that? Read it like a love letter. Read it like the success manual it is. Read it for what it really is- the Word of God. And it is speaking to you, and it’s speaking to me today. Do we have ears to hear? Isaiah says, “Cry! What shall I cry? What should I shout from the mountaintops? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Invest your life in that which lasts forever, not on withering pieces of grass and fading flowers.
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