“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: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” — Isaiah 40:6-8
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)
Charles Spurgeon,
As you read these verses do they not strike you as having a very funereal tone? “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withers, the flower fades.” This is mournful work, but it must be done. I think those who experience much of it when they first come to Christ have great reason to be thankful. Their course in life will, in all probability, be much brighter and happier. I have noticed that persons who are converted very easily, and come to Christ with but comparatively little knowledge of their own depravity, have to learn it afterwards.
And they remain for a long time babes in Christ, and are perplexed with matters that would not have troubled them if they had experienced a deeper work at first. No, Sir, if Divine Grace has begun to build in your soul and left any of the old walls of self-trust standing, they will have to come down sooner or later. You may congratulate yourself upon their remaining, but it is a false congratulation—your glorying is not good. I am sure of this, that Christ will never put a new piece upon an old garment, or new wine in old bottles—He knows the garment would be worse in the long run, and the bottles would burst.
All that is of nature’s spinning must be unraveled. The natural building must come down, wood and plaster, roof and foundation—and we must have a house not made with hands. It was a great mercy for our city of London that the great fire cleared away all the old buildings which were the lair of the plague. A far healthier city was then built. And it is a great mercy for a man when God sweeps right away all his own righteousness and strength. When He makes him feel that he is nothing and can be nothing, and drives him to confess that Christ must be All in All—and that his only strength lies in the eternal might of the ever-blessed Spirit.
Sometimes in a house of business an old system has been going on for years and it has caused much confusion, and allowed much dishonesty. You come in as a new manager and you adopt an entirely new plan. Now, try if you can, and graft your method on to the old system. How it will worry you! Year after year you say to yourself, “I cannot work it—if I had swept the whole away and started afresh, clear from the beginning, it would not have given me one-tenth of the trouble.” God does not intend to graft the system of Grace upon corrupt nature, nor to make the new Adam grow out of the old Adam.
But He intends to teach us this—“You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Salvation is not of the flesh but of the Lord alone. That which is born of the flesh is only flesh at the best. And only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. It must be the Spirit’s work altogether, or it is not what God will accept. (excerpted from: THE WITHERING WORK OF THE SPIRIT, NO. 999, A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, JULY 9, 1871, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.) (RT: Free Grace Broadcaster, Issue #154)
Reformed Bibliophile 