A voice saying, “Cry out!” Another said, “What should I cry out?” “All humanity is grass, and all its goodness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flowers fade when the breath of the LORD blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God remains forever.” Isaiah 40:6-8
I don’t know if you have noticed, but over the last several days all of the verse of the day selections have been about the importance of the Word of God, the Bible. And to give you the reason for that I am going to quote for you what the Baptist Faith and Message says about the Word God:
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
With that being said we are now going to look at what the prophet Isaiah is telling us about God’s Word. In this passage another herald compared humanity to grass and the flower of the field, both of which have short-lived and fragile beauty. The contrast is with the Word of God that endures. Perhaps the contrast implies that the Babylonians, though seemingly powerful, would fade, but God’s Word that had promised his people restoration would not fail. Peter himself quoted this passage in 1 Peter 1:24-25 when he concluded his instructions on “holy living”.
And now for the most important question of all. How does a passage in the book of Isaiah, written to a group of people under siege from another group of people thousands of years ago apply to you and to me? And the answer is very simple. Everything that we as finite beings have made will not last forever. All the laws, all the rules and everything else that we have made and put in place to give our lives structure will not last forever. The only thing that will last forever is God’s Word. That is why we are to put our faith and trust in God’s Word. The Israelites of Isaiah’s time had stopped putting their faith and trust in the Word of God and had begun to rely things other than God’s Word. And we do the same thing today. We build our lives on a foundation that is made of sand, and not made of hard rock. And then we wonder why everything in our lives comes crashing down. When we have ignored the very words of Jesus in Matthew 7:24-27:
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who build his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.
You must remember the Word of God is your foundation, because it is the only thing that will last forever. And when you build your life on the principles found in God’s Word, then your life will have a firm foundation and you can weather any storm that life throws your way.