SPROUL: We're like the grass that when the arid weather comes, withers.
We're like the flower that blooms with its glory and beauty, but wilts away.
You know one thing I don't like about magazines, I've never enjoyed writing magazine articles
because you write them, they're read, and then you fold up the fish in the magazine
and throw in the garbage. Nothing is more worthless than yesterday's newspaper.
Did you ever wonder why the candy bar
machine deposits only one candy bar with every insertion of a coin,
but when you go and buy a newspaper from one of those things where you put in a quarter or 50
cents and you pull it open, how many newspapers are there in front of you for the taking,
10 or 15 newspapers? Why aren't they more concerned about theft? Because they
understand the economic role of marginal utility, who needs yesterday's newspaper?
I don't. Yesterday's candy bar may still be succulent, but not yesterday's newspaper.
Books have a longer shelf life than magazines, but even those books come and they go. One of
the hardest things for me to get people to do is to read the classics of the giants that God
has given to the church. I've said many times if people would read Luther and Calvin instead of me,
they could take my books and burn them because all I want to do is direct them back to the giants.
And all Luther wanted to do and all Calvin wanted to do was direct people back to the word of God,
because that's the word that is not only living but it is a abiding.
How long does it abide? It abides forever because all flesh is his grass, all the glory of man
as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers, it's flower falls away. I love football and I keep reading about it
and for all its uselessness but one of the things that strikes me is you'll read the testimonies of
men who have labored so hard for the ultimate reward in football to win a Super Bowl
and almost universally, they say that once they celebrate that victory,
in a very short time, the thrill of the victory wears out and they feel let down.
And they want to say, ""Is this all that there is?"" Is that not true for every ambition,
every achievement known to the flesh? We're like the grass that when the arid weather comes,
withers. We're like the flower that blooms with its glory and beauty, but wilts and withers away.
How unlike the word of the Lord, that endures forever.