The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.
Comparisons, contrasts, metaphors, and similes are all used by God to get a point across to His listeners or to teach those, who are justified by faith, an important biblical fact. However, when the Lord God reiterates a truth, it is because He wants to emphasize a matter and we would do well to listen to the Word of the Lord and to read, mark, learn, inwardly digest, and take to heart all that He has to teach us and to apply it in our life. It was the Spirit of God that moved over the face of the earth, in the beginning, to bring light and life to a darkened world. God’s Holy Spirit breathed life into the empty shell of Adam, causing man to become a living soul, who was made in the image and likeness of God. For 39 chapters Isaiah had been warning the people of Israel of forthcoming judgement and the need to repent of their sins, to turn back to God, and to hearken to His Word of truth. Judah would soon have to face years of captivity in Babylon as well as a long-term global dispersion because of their disobedience. But Israel would not harken to the Word of the Lord, and the prophet Isaiah used withering grasses and the fading flowers of the field to illustrate the transient nature of mans’ life, in an attempt to encourage Israel to repent of their sin, leave their apostate ways and turn back to the Lord. Isaiah used the familiar grasses and flowers that grew everywhere to show the contrast between with the permanence and stability of God’s eternal Word, with the fleeting nature of wayside grasses and fading flowers, “for the grass withers and the flowers fades; but the word of our God endures forever.” The stark comparison of the fleeting life of a frail little flower with the transient passage of human existence is intensified by the striking contrast of the permanently established Word of God. All human life is like grass, which appears as nothing more than evaporating vapor, which lasts for a little while but quickly vanishes away. Man’s glory is likened to both the grass of the field, which dries up in the noon-day sun and the short-lived flowers, which droop and drop and wither away when the breath of the Lord blows over them. The transitory nature of fallen man whose days are but as grass, is starkly contrasted with the permanence of the everlasting Word of our God, which stands forever and ever. The Word of the Lord not only refers to the scriptures but also to Jesus Christ…the incarnate Word of the Father, the eternal Son of God. For He is the only eternally abiding reality in this world, and life everlasting. Let us read, mark, learn, inwardly digest and take to heart all that He is and all that He has to say. And let us apply all that he teaches us, into our lives.
Spiritual Steve 