The Great Contrast: Fading Flesh and the Forever Word
Introduction: Two Kinds of Reality
We live in a world that is obsessed with itself. Modern man is infatuated with his own accomplishments, his own beauty, his own strength, and his own opinions. He builds his towers, writes his manifestos, and preens before the mirror of his own technology, convinced of his own permanence. He is like a child who has built a magnificent sandcastle and cannot imagine that the tide is coming in. But the tide is always coming in. The central message of our secular age is that man is the measure of all things. The central message of Scripture is that man is measured, and found wanting.
This passage in Isaiah is a bucket of cold, salt water thrown into the face of our self-congratulatory age. It is a divine reality check. It establishes a fundamental contrast that governs all of life, a contrast between two kinds of reality. There is the reality of the flesh, which is everything that man is and everything that man can produce on his own steam. And then there is the reality of the Word of God, which is everything that God is and everything that God has spoken. One is like grass, and the other is like granite. One is a puff of smoke, and the other is an eternal mountain. One is temporary, transient, and fading, and the other is permanent, steadfast, and forever.
Our culture wants to pretend this contrast does not exist. It wants to build its house on the grass, plant its flag on the flower, and declare that this is all there is. It wants to insist that the temporary is ultimate. But this is a fool's errand. It is to deny the very nature of the world God has made. To build your life, your family, your society, or your salvation on the foundation of "all flesh" is to build on a vapor. It is to trust in a mirage. The prophet Isaiah is given a message to cry out, a message that cuts through all the chatter and all the boasting, and it is this: you are not as solid as you think you are. But there is something that is.
This is not a message of despair, but rather one of glorious hope. It is only when we see the utter frailty of the flesh that we will ever be driven to cling to the unshakable reality of God's Word. This is the foundation of the gospel. You cannot be saved until you realize you are perishing. You cannot grasp the rock until you realize you are sinking in the mire. Isaiah here lays the groundwork for the New Testament's declaration that we are born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.
The Text
A voice says, “Call out.”
Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”
All flesh is grass, and all its lovingkindness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
When the breath of Yahweh blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
(Isaiah 40:6-8 LSB)
The Prophetic Commission (v. 6a)
The passage begins with a heavenly command and a human question.
"A voice says, “Call out.” Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”" (Isaiah 40:6a)
A voice from the heavenly council, from the throne room of God, issues a command. The prophet, likely Isaiah himself, is drafted into service. He is to be a herald, a town crier for the King of kings. This is the nature of all true ministry. It does not originate with man. The preacher does not get to decide his message any more than a mailman gets to edit the mail. The message is given. The task is to proclaim it, to "call out," to shout it from the rooftops.
The prophet's response is immediate and right. "What shall I call out?" This is not a question of reluctance, but of submission. It is the question of a man who knows his place. He understands that the content is not his to invent. He is a conduit, a mouthpiece. He is asking for his script. This is the fundamental posture of every faithful Christian. We do not get to make up the truth. We do not get to tailor the message to the felt needs of the culture. Our first question must always be, "Lord, what would you have me say?" We are under orders. And the message he is given is a stark one.
The Frailty of the Flesh (v. 6b-7)
The content of the proclamation is a blunt assessment of the human condition.
"All flesh is grass, and all its lovingkindness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, When the breath of Yahweh blows upon it; Surely the people are grass." (Isaiah 40:6b-7)
"All flesh is grass." "Flesh" here means humanity in its natural, unregenerate state. It refers to man in his creatureliness, his mortality, and his fallenness. It is everything from the peasant in the field to the king on his throne. All of it, without exception, is like grass. In the climate of Palestine, the grass can be green and lush after the winter rains, but a hot wind from the desert can turn it brown and brittle in a single day. This is God's assessment of our strength, our stability, our permanence. We are here today, and gone tomorrow.
And not just our existence, but our very best qualities are just as fragile. "All its lovingkindness is like the flower of the field." The word for "lovingkindness" is the great covenant word, hesed. It refers to loyalty, faithfulness, and covenant love. The prophet is saying that even the highest human virtue, our best attempts at faithfulness and goodness, are as fleeting as a wildflower. They are beautiful for a moment, but they have no staying power. They cannot be the basis of our salvation. Our righteousnesses, as Isaiah says later, are as filthy rags. Our covenant faithfulness is a wilting flower.
And why does it all fade? "When the breath of Yahweh blows upon it." This is not just a statement about the natural process of aging and death. This is a statement about the sovereignty of God. The "breath" or "Spirit" of the Lord is His active power in the world. God, in His holiness and sovereignty, blows upon the proud achievements of man, and they wither. He touches our little empires of grass, and they turn to dust. This is a picture of judgment. It is God's active opposition to the pride of the flesh. The text drives the point home with a blunt repetition: "Surely the people are grass." In case you missed the metaphor, here it is, plain as day. This is you. This is us. This is all of us, apart from grace.
The Forever Word (v. 8)
After this devastating assessment of human frailty, the prophet delivers the glorious contrast, the anchor in the storm.
"The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever." (Isaiah 40:8)
The structure here is a classic Hebrew parallelism. The first two clauses repeat the bad news for emphasis: grass withers, flower fades. We are frail. We are fleeting. Got it. But then comes the great adversative, the "but." This "but" is the hinge upon which all of history and all of salvation turns. "But the word of our God stands forever."
While everything human is in flux, everything divine is fixed. While all flesh is grass, God's Word is granite. What is this "word"? It is not just the written Scriptures, though it certainly includes them. It is God's powerful, creative, and saving self-expression. It is His promises, His decrees, His commands, and His gospel. It is the truth that He spoke in creation, the law He gave at Sinai, the promises He made to Abraham and David, and ultimately, it is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, Jesus Christ Himself (John 1:1, 14).
This Word "stands forever." It is not subject to decay, to cultural shifts, or to human opinion. It does not wither under the hot winds of persecution or skepticism. It is eternally stable, eternally true, and eternally potent. This is the only solid thing in a world of vapors. Everything else will fail you. Your health will fail. Your wealth will fail. Your political heroes will fail. Your own best intentions will fail. But the Word of God will never fail. It is the one thing you can build your life on that will not wash away when the rains come.
The New Birth by the Imperishable Seed
Now, this great contrast is not just an abstract theological point. It is the very mechanism of our salvation. The apostle Peter takes this exact passage from Isaiah and applies it directly to the new birth.
"Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. For, 'ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS, AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS. THE GRASS WITHERS, AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF, BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER.' And this is the word which was preached to you." (1 Peter 1:22-25 LSB)
Peter connects all the dots for us. How does a person move from the "grass" category to the "granite" category? How do we, who are perishing, gain eternal life? It is by being "born again." And what is the instrument of this new birth? It is not a perishable seed, not something human or earthly. It is an imperishable seed, which Peter explicitly identifies as "the living and enduring word of God."
Then, to make sure we don't miss it, he quotes Isaiah 40. He is telling us that the gospel that was preached to us, the good news about Jesus Christ, is that very "word of our God" that stands forever. When that Word is preached, and the Holy Spirit applies it to a dead heart, something miraculous happens. The eternal, imperishable life of the Word is planted in the soil of a perishing soul. A new nature is created. We are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). We are no longer just grass destined to wither. We are born from above, by an eternal principle.
This is why we preach the Word. This is why we trust the Word. We are not trusting in clever rhetoric or emotional manipulation. We are trusting in the power of the imperishable seed. Our job is to be the voice that cries out, to scatter that seed. God's job is to make it grow.
So the great challenge of this text is a simple one. Where are you standing? On what are you building your life? Are you trusting in the flesh? Your own goodness, your own strength, your own plans? That is the way of the grass. It may look green for a season, but the hot breath of God's judgment is coming, and it will wither.
Or are you trusting in the Word of our God that stands forever? Have you abandoned all confidence in the flesh and cast yourself wholly upon the promises of God in Jesus Christ? Have you been born again by the imperishable seed of the gospel? To do so is to be planted in the house of the Lord, to become like a tree that will bear fruit in old age, whose leaf also does not wither. It is to pass from death to life, from the fleeting to the forever.