Waist Deep 2018 - July 3


Isaiah 40: 8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. (NIV)


Nothing is eternal but that which springs out of the eternal.*


Flowers don’t last long. I live in Florida where the grass is green longer than in most places – but with the hot sun and no rain, it can turn to hay pretty quickly. God’s word, on the other hand, is indestructible.

What is the “word of God” that Isaiah refers to? Not even a fraction of the Old Testament (as we know it today) was available to Isaiah so it isn’t precisely accurate to say the Word is scripture.  In Isaiah’s case, the Word is the message that God charged him with delivering. But Peter, in I Peter 1: 25, quotes this passage and widens the scope of the message from its immediate context, giving it a “universal application.”* But even Peter couldn’t be referring to the written Word of God found in our Bible today - at that point, there was no New Testament, either. He was in the process of writing part of it!

In John 1: 1, we find the Word of God defined in its broadest sense, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  The word of God is as abiding as God himself* because the word is God!


God’s Word accomplishes God’s purposes.*


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