We begin an interesting series of references today - a passage from Isaiah and its echoes in the New Testament:
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.
8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
The context is the second coming and the events leading up to it, which Isaiah tells us will make the glory of the Lord stand out in stark contrast against the glory of man. Wrapped up as we are in human society where status and accomplishment and skill and power and wealth and fame seem so real, it is an important reminder. All of us are grass, here today, gone tomorrow. The seemingly huge gaps between us in this world disappear completely seen from the perspective of eternity. Seen in its light all of us together are but withering grass and fading flowers.
Isaiah's words parallel those of Moses after his theophany: "I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed" (Moses 1:10). To a man raised amidst the wealth and power, the pomp and ceremony of Pharaoh's court, the insight must have been quite a useful corrective.
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