Bowling Green Covenant Church

The Traveler’s Advisory

Friday 18 August 2006

“A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.’” —Isaiah 40.6-8 [NIV]

The first time I read these words was on the title page of the first Bible I ever owned—a paperback New American Standard Bible. I was a very young Christian at the time, having confessed faith in Christ a mere two weeks prior to the purchase. They are arresting words. They are sobering words. They are encouraging words. The arresting part of Isaiah’s words is not that you and I are like grass. The sobering news of his text is not that we are like flowers that fall. To the contrary, the arresting, sobering and encouraging news is that “the word of our God stands forever.” It requires no faith at all to believe in the mortality of humankind. The evidence is all around us. Witness Iraq, Lebanon, even Bowling Green. Have you read the obituary section in the newspaper? Driven by a cemetery? Our mortality is undeniable. Ah, but equally undeniable is the eternity, the “foreverness,” of God.

We may not enjoy being compared to grass that withers, or flowers that fall, however the fact is we are only on this earth a very short time. We grow, we blossom, we fade, we wither and we die. The bad news is we are temporary. The good news is God is forever.

It’s like the song that says, “We are a moment, You are eternal.” Our hope for eternal life rests securely in the eternity of God. Specifically, our hope for the present and the future rests securely in the eternity of God’s word. In his commentary on Isaiah, John N. Oswalt observes,

“The Spirit that breathes destruction for all human pride is the same Spirit who speaks the eternal Word of life over all withered and faded human hopes. Here is the paradox introduced at the beginning of the book: if I insist I am permanent, then I become nothing; if I admit that God alone is permanent, then He breathes His permanence on me.”

The cry of Isaiah 40 is an open call to confess faith in the permanence of God. It is a declaration that we only have some many breaths to take in this life before we wither and fall—a limited time before we pass into eternity. Unless the Spirit breathes His permanence into our being, we have no hope for life beyond this life.

The message of Isaiah 40 culminates in verse 31, “but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.”

Sometimes we must state the obvious before we see the obvious in a new light. We will wither, fade and die. But if our hope is in the permanence of God and His Word, the Spirit breathes eternity into our being. And so filled with His presence we have assurance that even though we die; yet we shall live.

You think about that.

MM