The Word Endures Forever Series

### **Introduction – The Fading Seasons**

Video Ill.: Sermon Bumper

You can feel it this time of year. The grass that once stood green and tall now turns brown. Flowers that filled the summer air with color and fragrance begin to wilt. The days grow shorter; the air turns crisp.

The calendar and nature both tell us — it’s fall. The time for apples, falling leaves and pumpkins!

https://nypost.com/2025/10/14/lifestyle/engineer-wins-contest-with-2346-pound-pumpkin/

California gardening enthusiast wins biggest pumpkin contest: Here’s his massive, prized gourd

Associated Press

October 14, 2025

A few days ago, a manufacturing engineer in California made headlines by growing a 2,346-pound pumpkin and winning the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off.

What’s fascinating is that he wasn’t just lucky — he applied his engineering skills (precision watering, light exposure, nutrient balance) to coax that gourd into greatness.

But here’s the kicker: last year he lost by just six pounds. He came back, refined what he did, and turned what was once almost enough into record-winning.

Imagine that — a pumpkin bigger than many cars, grown from soil, sweat, and science.

The sad thing is that big massive pumpkin will eventually go bad. It’s moment of glory will fade.

You know, as soon as the calendar turns to September, and some places even before that, the aromas of pumpkin spice and apple cinnamon begins filling our homes, shopping centers, and our workplaces. Coffees and hot chocolates take on new “fall” flavors, each claiming to capture the taste of autumn. There’s literally pumpkin spice everything — coffee, cereals, dog treats! It’s like the world goes nuts for a few months!

Then, there are colorful gourds, bundled corn stalks, and colorful fall leaves decorating our homes.

The heat of summer baseball is now replaced by the cool temperatures and the Friday night lights of football.

Someone has once said: “Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.” Carol Bishop Hipps

The clocks change. The evenings are no longer filled with stunning sunsets, but are now enveloped in darkness as the days march onward, the days getting shorter and shorter with each step.

Fall is a constant reminder that life changes, seasons change, and nothing escapes the ever ticking clock. Fall is the time when we observe and feel change more than any other season, I believe.

But while it lasts, how beautiful it truly is. And part of that beauty is the fact that it does not last. When fall comes, it offers a change of scenery that never gets old, because it is here for only a little while, and then its gone.

It is as if creation itself is preaching a sermon: Everything changes. Everything fades.

We see that not just in nature, but in life.

Culture changes faster than we can keep up.

Technology becomes outdated almost as soon as we learn how to use it.

People change — their priorities, opinions, even relationships.

And sometimes, we change too — our feelings, our circumstances, our health, our strength. We look in the mirror and realize we’re not that young kid anymore.

Everything around us changes.

Is there anything that stays the same? Besides change itself?

Isaiah asked that same question in his day. The people of God were surrounded by instability, uncertainty, and decay. But in the middle of it all, Isaiah heard a word from the Lord:

8 The grass withers, the flower fades,?But the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40, NKJV)

Centuries later, Peter quoted this same passage in 1 Peter 1, adding:

25 [T]he word of the Lord endures forever.

Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you. (1 Peter 1, NKJV)

Isaiah saw it first — and Peter confirmed it: there is one thing that never changes — the Word of God.

In a world where everything fades — from flowers to fame, from seasons to civilizations — God’s Word stands unshaken.

And that’s where we begin this morning in our new study, Unchanging. If we are going to live in a world that changes by the minute, we need something eternal on which to hold. That something is the Word of God. The Word of our God endures forever!

So what does that mean for us today? Let’s look together at what makes God’s Word so enduring — so alive — and so trustworthy.

### **1. God’s Word Is Enduring**

Isaiah 40 is an incredible passage of hope and promise. It begins by prophesying about the coming of one crying out in the wilderness. We now know this voice belonged to John the Baptist — the forerunner of Jesus.

Isaiah asks what the messenger will proclaim, and God answers:

6 … “All flesh is grass,?And all its loveliness is like the flower of the