All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the Spirit of Jehovah blows upon it.

Man is nothing, and his works are nothing. The Spirit blows on man, and he withers. Man withers especially when the gospel comes, and he and all his works become a seared field before the blast of the Lord. In the world all man’s works amount to nothing but damnable opposition to Almighty God. In the covenant all man’s goodliness—his covenant faithfulness—amounts to so many filthy rags. Man does not bring God’s covenant, and God’s kingdom does not depend on man’s works. When the Spirit blows on man, he and all his works wither before that blast.

This work of the Spirit to make man and his works nothing stands in the service of making God and his word everything. Only in the desolation of the windswept field among the stubble of man and his works is the triumphant proclamation heard that the Word of our God shall stand forever.

Any voice that makes man something is a denial of the Word of our God. Any voice that makes man something is not the voice of a messenger sent by Jehovah. With a word that makes man something, the Spirit does not come and make man nothing. In that place the Spirit does not make known that the Word of our God shall stand forever.

Emphatically, the Word of our God did stand to that point. It stood at that moment; it would stand in every age; it stands now; it will stand forever to the final wonder of grace and the regeneration of all things; and it shall stand age to age, world without end, in the new heavens and the new earth.

The Word of our God is Christ. The Word of our God is his covenant promise to perfect all things in Christ the head with his elect church as the new humanity in a new heavens and a new earth. The Word of the Lord is God’s eternal counsel of salvation for the glorification of all things in Christ. The Word of the Lord is God’s promise sealed with a divine oath to save his elect people from their sins in Christ and to bring them to heavenly glory. It is the Word that we are partakers of Christ and his righteousness and that we live and can never die.

It is the Word of our God. He was our God in election. He is our God now. He will be our God world without end. As he cannot fail or change and as he stands immovable and eternal, so his Word for the salvation of his people and the glorification of all things must stand forever. While all else fails, while we fail, while all our works fail—exactly in the way of our failing and the failing of our works—the Word of our God shall stand forever and to all generations. So little is our covenant fellowship with God in the way of our obedience that God’s Word stands only in the way of our failure and the failure of all our obedience.

It is exactly because we are grass and all our goodliness is as the flower of the field that God gave us his Word and bound himself to us by an oath to be our God and to save us and our children. It is his Word. It is of him. It depends on him alone. And it will be perfected by him, even the Word of our salvation.