Millpond Musing – What Withers? What Fades?

“The grass withers, the flower fades.” This passage of Scripture is found in Isaiah, Chapter 40, and reiterated in 1 Peter Chapter 1. I’ve long thought that this passage told of the physical death of a man. One day our end would come, and that truth served as warning of a great and awful coming judgment. Of course, true enough, death and judgment will come. We shall die. We shall die and those who die apart from the blood of Christ will surely be judged. Still, that particular application of the verse is not how C.H. Spurgeon interpreted and applied the verse in his discourses: ‘Spring in the Garden,’ ‘Spring Follows Winter,’ and The Grass Withereth, the Flower Fadeth.’ Those were published in his book, ‘The Teachings of Nature in the Kingdom of God.’ In them, he suggests that what ‘withers and fades’ is the sinner’s-soon-to-be-saint’s resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit to  reveal his true eternal state of condemnation. Thus, what withers and fades is the vitality and life of sin when the sinner confesses and repents of it. 

Really? I thought that what withers and fades begins before winter! I asked myself, ‘What then is the winter of a man’s soul?’

It is that time when the sinner learns that the things of earth… his sin… its supposed loveliness and attractiveness to others – must wither and fade… yes, die… if there is to be springtime in Christ. Pastor Spurgeon went on to say, “The withering before the sowing was very marvelously fulfilled in the preaching of John the Baptist,” who heralded the coming Messiah. Pastor Spurgeon then said of John, “It was not his work to plant, but to hew down.” Thus, spring followed a short winter in those who heard and responded to Jesus’ preaching… when he sowed the seeds of His Father’s garden, and those seeds fell on fertile ground. That is true today. We too usher in a short winter, when those seeds find fertile ground because the worldly grass and flowers have withered… faded. How does this happen? When we preach what the sinner does not want to hear… as John the Baptist preached… but also, preaching in the fulness of Christ and His Spirit… to lovingly point out the One, Jesus, whose seed is the good and altogether lovely seed of a Savior. Indeed, the effectual working of God’s Spirit – quickening the eyes of men to see… they soon see… astonishingly… incredibly… that the flower of one’s own beauty and worldly attractiveness – now withered and faded – has never been anything more than a bramble of thorns and nettles.