Isaiah 40:6-8, What Lasts?

It's Isaiah chapter 40 verses 6 to 8 hear the word of the Lord. A Voice says cry and I said what shall I cry? All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it.

Surely the people are grass the grass withers the flower fades. But the Word of our God will stand forever. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Well, what do you think last?

We all know or should know we say we know there's some things won't last. Our money won't last. Even though we spend a lot of time spent a lot of our life trying to earn it our house won't last. So we know our cars won't last.

We hate the idea but even our health our strength our youth. Does it last. I was a strong? skinny all muscle and bone track and cross-country runner jumping over obstacles. That didn't last as you can tell.

One day even our bodies won't last as we just read in Psalm 39. Oh Lord, make me to know my end and what is the measure of my days? Let me to know how fleeting I am. But even if we don't last on earth.

We all want to be part of something that lasts maybe a cause. To be on the what some people now call the right side of history. Which is why I have some people in our day have such a zeal for their causes.

They just don't pour their whole life into that because they think even if they personally won't last this cause whatever it is. Hopefully it will last. Maybe the family will last. Right a lot of people believe the even if they personally don't the family will ask.

Well the Chinese believe that and with our ancestral tablet the imperative to Remember your ancestors even venerate them so that at least they last for now in your memory. And of course, they believe they will last.

Into the beyond as in the Godfather to the mother of the family tells Michael the main character you can never lose your family. But by the end of the movie Michael has divorced his wife and has had his brother killed.

Hmm.

So what lasts we want our memories to last we build monuments to others or to ourselves. Perhaps the most prominent monument in Singapore is an obelisk kind of like Washington Monument not quite as big and It's inscribed on it to the civilian dead of the Japanese occupation.

So they built monuments to the dead. That's what gravestones are. Desperate attempt to leave something in stone that will last when our bodies don't and it's good occasionally visit cemeteries and to remember the dead.

But for most people even these attempts to remember those in the past only last a few generations. Maybe you go to your parents graves sites, but how many of you ever go to your Grandparents great-grandparents.

Have you ever done that? We may remember our grandparents or even heard about our great-grandparents. But beyond that we're fortunate to have a little more than a name and soon we even lose track of the names and there are millions billions of people like that passed away and completely forgotten by the living a.

While back I visited a cemetery in rural, Kentucky. It was mostly an old cemetery with graves that went back to the 19th century and summers many of them were so eroded That you couldn't read these inscriptions on them anymore.

You couldn't read the names the people are Lost they're gone. Some of them had even completed the gravestones had just completely fallen apart just dissolve. He wrote it to the you know. It's not like a stub but it's just fallen apart into pieces pieces of whatever stone it is.

It's made out of just sent lying around it. But right away there. I noticed a newer headstone. They're very pretty recent. It was small to medium size. And as I walked up behind it I noticed several bouquets of artificial flowers decorating it and little statuettes got these praying angels.

It was a little American flag. They've been set up. It had fallen down. I reached down and set it back up again. And as I got around the front, I noticed a little first a little stone bench that's just curved facing in toward the Gravestone and then there's another flat stone by that bench at the foot of the grave.

That simply read our daughter and then I looked at the name. She was Sarah. Spelled without an H Sarah and the dates born August 10th 1993 died August 10th 1993. Probably the girl's mother spent many hours grieving there and one day even though the mother of Sarah's tried hard to remember her daughter.

She too will be buried and Sarah's gravestone will erode into dust. Perhaps one of the most impressive memorials to the dead is to make Something of their memory last in the minds of the living is Washington DC simple Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Have you ever been there you you walk by it? You begin kind of like this right by the walkway the sidewalk and it starts out about knee-high. Actually a new the path goes down and the names as the wall gets higher and higher and their names begin to appear carved in all capital letters and as you go down the while beside you goes up and you gradually come overshadowed now with this wall beyond way beyond your height and.

Each name is the name of an American lost in Vietnam over 55 ,000 of them and you're engulfed then in the names of the dead. And each one of them is whispering all flesh is.

Grass.

And that's what Isaiah says here the book of Isaiah is easily divided into three major parts the first part and The 35 chapters first 35 chapters are prophecies of destruction of coming judgment. Both on Israel and many of the nations surrounding it and then the second part for versus from chapters 36 to 39 tell the story of how God saved Jerusalem from the vicious Invasion by a Syria just as in 2nd Kings chapters 18 and 19 We talked about that last week the Assyrian invasion and then third from chapters 40 on God addresses the survivors of the Assyrian invasion beginning with in chapter 40 verse 1 comfort.

Comfort now before the invasion when Judah was feeling comfortable. They're smugly looking at the northern kingdom of Israel. Which remember had been have been wiped out and been taken away by the Assyrians about 20 years before comfortable that Judah was comfortable that that hadn't happened to us and So sure that they were safe because you know, they had the temple.

That was their insurance policy. They thought they were safe. And so they were buying off God they thought. With their religion like someone today who's been told that you know He's always saved because he prayed a prayer way back when he was a kid in Sunday school.

And now he thinks it that he can live immorally. He can have no interest in God's Word and he is safe still. He thinks he's told at least he believes he's safe from judgment because that prairie prayed and maybe got wet in baptism.

And he thinks that's that keeps him safe. So he's comfortable. Now when Isaiah's time after the Assyrian invasion after the angel the Lord delivered Jerusalem remember probably with biological weapons, but not.

Most of the rest of the country remember the destruction of like each and the others still the survivors. From Jerusalem, they're shell-shocked. They're stunned. Many are in mourning. They've seen men Impaled before them is that's what the Assyrians would do when they laid siege to a city.

They would take some of them whatever men they could capture outside the city and impale them on stakes outside. There's a warning to notice to the people in the city. We're gonna do this to you to let you surrender now.

Some of them were flayed alive and we have testimony to this in archaeology. They've uncovered the Assyrians is Picturing this there's no they're proud of it what they did to the people. They conquered but to the people of Judah now, they've lost everything and so they're stunned even if they've survived.

They're like the bereaved at a funeral. They're like the mother of some college kid getting a call from the police to inform her that we're sorry to inform you. There's been an accident on the highway and your kid didn't make it before.

Isaiah afflicted the comfortable now. He comforts the afflicted and so that's the setting. That's the context the wake of the Assyrian invasion of this passage. And then Isaiah, here's a voice. Apparently from heaven telling him to cry out.

Voice says cry. It's a command. Isaiah cry. Don't just talk don't just say. But exclaim a message cry be stirring be earnest be urgent. What is he supposed to passionately proclaim to cry all? Flesh is.

Grass.

That's the literal translation of the Hebrew and by flesh. He doesn't mean what the Apostle Paul means. Sometimes uses that word for in the New Testament a fallen human nature. No, Isaiah simply means all people.

All human beings are just like grass. They're temporary. They're short-lived. They're soon forgotten. Now notice how he emphasizes that in every verse of this passage. The three verses every verse in its own way.

All flesh is grass in verse 6. It's beauty. The beautiful things that people produce the best of what they have. It's like a wildflower out there in the yard in verse 7 the grass withers Church brown like our grass does this time of year.

Like all flesh it ages and goes away. The flower. Again, he mentions the flower at verse 7 the beauty it fades. And he says surely the people. Means particularly that word. But usually means the the Gentile nations these empires these borders these people all kinds of people like the Assyrians who appeared so mighty.

They some seem so impressive with their army their their military power. Surely the people like the Romans like the Americans.

Their grass.

At the end of verse 7 and Again the third time in case you missed the point in verse 8 the grass withers. The flower fades and sharp contrast to that to all the flesh human beings that withers. Notice how the prophet Isaiah refers to the word the Word of God the Scripture God's Word.

It is the Word of our God. It's from him. It's not from human beings not from their fads. They didn't make it up. It's not just what? Poets in the past fabricated out of their imagination. It stands in contrast to withering.

It never wilts. It is forever. It may not always be popular. But it always is. This is what he's cried out. The word stands forever, but all flesh is grass. But surely it means that all carnal all fleshly people, you know, they're like grass.

But not us, you know, that's good people. We last forever, right? I mean our goodness makes us laughs, right? Is that what he means. Now look at the passage carefully. Verse 6 all flesh is grass. All kinds of people human beings are grass and all its beauty.

It's like the flower of the field. Mentioned it last week this word for beauty here translated the NIV translates it as glory. The King James Version translated as goodness. It's one of the most interesting words in the Bible here the the ESV beauty.

The Hebrew word is pronounced has said. Has said is usually translated mercies or steadfast love as in the steadfast love of The Lord. Never ceases some lamentations. That song we sang the word. There's a visually kiss it it emphasizes dependability.

Reliability or covenant love. It's it's a it's a good thing a very good thing. It's from the Lord. It never ceases at last.

Here though.

The Hesed of the flesh. Well, that's different. That's like a flower. This is surprising, isn't it? You know, we don't mind hearing that bad things will fade away that evil will wither like a like a dead flower.

We want you know, Hitler's and I'm who say whoever it is some evil thing to we want them to fade away. But we think if I do good I can last. But here God is telling us that even if even the best of human things even the best of human fleshly steadfast love Will not last.

God's not saying that here that wickedness will disappear and our good works if you're good. You do the right thing then you will then you will ask you will remain. No, he say that even our glory even our goodness even the best virtue you can have Will vanish to soon be forgotten like a dead wildflower.

This is a shock to us. What kind of thing you might expect here in church expect to be told him, you know, do good and if you do good You'll last now. He's saying What you produce it's like a it's like a flower out there.

It's not gonna last very long. We like to imagine that we deserve a share of eternity just because we think our hearts are in the right place. That at least something from us will last. Maybe our body won't but we can produce something surely.

Well our morality. Won't that make us like our religion? Ain't that what we're here for so we can last. It's like paying your insurance. So you can get something that keeps you safe or our family that will last but look what Isaiah cries out instead.

We think our good works deserve to be remembered make us remembered forever. But instead God tells us that even our the best thing you could have our chesed our good steadfast love. It's merely a it's a wildflower soon wilts in the hot desert wind.

Mary and I both went to seminary in Southern California. Now the weather in Southern, California is a lot like that of Israel. There's a sea on one side. California's the Pacific Ocean to the west and the desert on the other to the east and when the wind comes from the sea as It does most of the time it's pleasant.

But when the wind blows in off the desert. It's very hot and very dry Southern California. They call it the Santa Ana winds and it's just so hot you wouldn't believe it. It causes plants to wilt and us humans to retreat to air conditioning.

It gave me nosebleeds whenever the Santa Ana winds blew if I just rub my nose and start bleeding. It's horrible to scorching wind like a blast out of an oven. And Isaiah was referring to just such a wind coming in off the desert in Israel scorches everything.

And he compares it to the spirit or the breath of God and Hebrew. The word the word for breath here in verse 7 the the breath of the Lord blows on it. It's the same word for spirit the wind of God the Spirit of God blows on the best of our things and they are Like a flower before the Santa Ana winds.

So Isaiah is saying they're just like the hot dry desert winds a wither the grass and the flowers in the same way the Spirit Of God blows and it wilts all human beings and even the best of their works the best thing that you could have.

Your flowers. Withers it it's nothing.

What last?

Flowers don't. Now we like flowers. Some people make their living producing flowers. Because that's how much we esteem them. You go meet. Often go greet somebody the hospital. You bring flowers at a funeral.

You often bring flowers. Flowers are popular but Flowers fade. The flower fades. Both verses 7 and 8 says it twice. These are best things they fade. Flowers by nature are attractive. They're alluring.

We like them. But during Isaiah's time. Earlier when he was afflicting the comfortable before the Assyrian invasion King Ahaz of Judah and second Kings 16 He went to visit the king of Assyria a previous king of Assyria the emperor of the Assyrian Empire in Damascus.

So the people's he's going to meet there who are grass. But he may he has was a evil king. He was a bad king and he didn't know that he didn't understand that they're grass. So he's going to meet the people's the Gentiles the nation's at the end.

In second Kings 7 and there among the people's he saw there in a Syrian altar for for one of their gods. The Syrians they had they must had style. It was attractive altar really looked good and So he thought this is so alluring this is so attractive.

We've got to have this in our temple. We've got to have the same kind of altar. And so he commanded the priests of the Lord in Jerusalem to copy it. To build exactly the same kind of altar that the Assyrians had for their pagan gods put it up in the temple of the Lord.

He said that was allured him that attracted him like a flower. What he saw from the people's he saw success. He saw power saw what it looked to them and their culture like beauty. So he mimicked the world.

He was conformed to the culture To its ideas of beautiful worship. And the Lord here tells Isaiah to cry. The people's the nation's as populous as they may be as powerful as they may be. As Beautiful as cultured as they may be as intelligent as they think they are.

They're grass.

They're fading away. The world imposes on to us what it is. Sure. It is the wave of the future. On the right side of history is a popular slogan today. Just last week a major supposedly Christian columnist endorsed the proposed respect for marriage act.

Which is right now before Congress was codifies so-called same-sex marriage. We just got to go with it. Now you just some Christians are saying we just got to go along. We got to support it because that's the wave of the future.

That's what the culture says is beautiful. We got to be behind it. We're supposed to accept it now, but the Lord can blow on it and It will wilt away.

What last?

Human fads don't. They're also fleeting flowers. They allure us fads fashions. They're attractive. They attract us to To something that's new a new way of doing things to shame sometimes now, they're not always bad.

It's not always sinful to change certain outward customs because the times have changed like, you know, like not wearing ties to church. I've changed in my lifetime. We still always think you got to wear a tie to church.

Well types change news are new styles of music. That's not wrong. But sometimes a fad comes along like Transsexuality that says it's on the right side of history and it treats anyone as a bigot. You're a bigot if you don't go along who dares to question it and it is contrary to God's creation.

I'm worth just to nature and.

God's Word.

So don't let fleeting flower a fleeting flower distract you. From the eternal word our worship must be rooted in what God has said. Not just what is popular, but the culture thinks is attractive. Our ideas of right and wrong should come from God's Word.

Not just what every wind of Opinion says is reasonable.

What last.

Our goodness doesn't our morality. Doesn't not even our religion last. It's also a fleeting flower. And this is often what religious people forget when they choose morality or moralism cultivating human virtue.

Striving to perfect human character and good works when they choose all those good. Sure. They're good. They're hesitant. That's it's good. They're good that they're temporary things over. What is eternal many people think that's what religion is all about.

Cultivating those wildflowers and maybe that is what other religions are about. As we see right here in Isaiah 40 God's Word is not primarily about encouraging moral health. This is what we forget when we get too absorbed in making our faith making the church the Bible the gospel.

All about improving our morality make being more moral being making political changes. Maybe going on social crusades. Stopping drunkenness and pornography and abortion and we should be moral people. Yes, and we should be moral people.

Because God has made us Moral, he's made us good. We bear good fruit. You should be involved in influencing our nation to be a better place, but we do all that we bear good fruit because first God has Made us good.

He saved us. I was power and made us that way. Now we cannot as bad trees by nature. Develop ourselves into good trees. You can't cultivate a dead tree into a fruit-bearing tree. You can't you have to make it supernaturally come alive.

So we must be born again and bear good fruit and that is something but that we cannot do for ourselves. It must be done for us because even the best of the fruit we bear for ourselves our flowers. The best of it will wilt.

When God's eternal spirit blows on it. When we do Christianity with a system of more moralism to morality. Focusing on the family something like that. It's all about that. Political changes about politics getting the policies the laws we want passed something like Confucianism.

When we do that to it, we destroy what is eternal about it. We make it into a system of moral self-improvement. Self-help all about cultivating flowers. They will soon wither away. About 250 years ago in New England into America some of the dissenters of the Puritans thinking themselves.

They're sophisticated now. We've been to Harvard were sophisticated and we can accept the secularist assumptions of the of the what they call the light Enlightenment they began to assert that that we must accept what the world culture at that time says it's rational.

We've got to be rational like these new wave of philosophers in Europe. That human minds are more reliable than the Word of God that one must believe that people are naturally good. So we can reason our way to what is right and good and and true.

Everything revolved around human beings for them man is the measure of all things kind of their slogan. Christianity then for those who believed in it was still it was in their minds. It may be a good thing.

Like it and what they think it is was in their minds all about cultivating human virtue human pested fleeting flowers. It's about morality. It's about improving yourself about cultivating yourself. That's what they thought the ones who went with the Enlightenment.

But they were really just importing into the church the idea that had been diluting Western culture for about 300 years now the idea that man. Not God, but man is The measure of all things. In other words, he likes it.

He thinks it's reasonable. It feels good to him and it's true. It's good. It's right according to man. This started with what is known as the Enlightenment and they gave it that name because they believed it was enlightening to be free of the superstition of Christianity the superstition of the belief that the Bible is the Word of God the Word of God which stands over us and Judges us the Word of God that tells us what's true and right and good.

They began to believe that the Bible is not the Word of God. But just the words of men and then we were not really sinners. We're not dead in our trespasses and sins. But we're good enough as we are to see what's true and right and to follow the truth by ourselves.

With we just we just exert ourselves. We can do it our our flowers will last they thought. One of the leaders of this point of view was a Frenchman named Voltaire. Voltaire was confident that his Enlightenment view would prevail and the Bible would eventually become because of the way they saw things now the Bible Would become a relic.

No one's gonna read it anymore. They thought he he claimed in 1776 quote 100 years from my day. So 100 years from 1776 of 1876. There will be not be a Bible on earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker.

In other words a museum piece. No Bibles anywhere except some, you know scholars will have it to look at past literature. Well, it didn't turn out that way. Did it? He assumed that the Word of the Lord was grass and now over 200 years after Voltaire's death.

Only university students basically study Voltaire and the Bible is still a bestseller and even in his native France not long after his death the Bible Society Used Voltaire's home as his is their headquarters and used Voltaire's own printing press.

To print their Bibles and so once again, the scripture was fulfilled. He who sits in the heavens.

Laughs.

Those who married the spirit of the age soon find themselves widows. And so they traded the rationalist the Enlightenment people. They traded the proclamation of God's Word cry all flesh was grass. They traded that for human sophistication and they ended up with what nothing.

But those Christians who did not fall for the lure of fleeting flowers help bring about revivals. But here in this country in England to called the Great Awakening they stood fast for the Word of God.

They chose proclamation. Cry all flesh is grass. They chose proclamation instead of sophistication and many of them many many of them went as evangelists all over America missionaries all over the world and they prayed and they preached for waves of revivals as they call them people to believe the Word of God and be born again.

Thousands of churches were planted as the Word of God flourished and the atheism or the deism of the Enlightenment wilted. And here we are today. We are the spiritual beneficiaries of those who chose the eternal word over fleeting flowers.

Proclamation.

Overt sophistication, but every generation faces the temptation to be shaped by the times rather than to shake the times today. Temptations of the fleeting flowers of sophistication Are with us more than ever.

You know, we too are faced with a temptation to choose the popular over the permanent. We're told we're bigots if we don't you got to be on the right side of history. This is the way everyone is going to believe in the future.

And so we're battered down with that and that's the way it is out of the world. So we all face this regular onslaught that to be sophisticated modern kind of tolerant people. We have to believe like the world tells us to believe very permissive ideas about sexuality.

Basically, if it feels good, you can do what is fine about tolerance for things the Bible calls sins about indulgence for child rearing about total equality and gender roles in the family and In the church and in our day.

Those ideas are just pressed in on us now all the time through the media through social media. About this is the way you live if you're going to be right with society and it helps when that pressure is on when we can step back and See that all these things.

That people today are so sure. Are there are the wave of the future? They're on the right side of history. They always like to say These things that they're so sure are the truths that any open-minded Intelligent modern person simply must accept they can't fathom.

They can imagine that anyone could believe differently than that all these things. They're all grass. Soon the Spirit of God will blow on them and they'll wilt away in a moment. And only his word will be left.

So the question to you is. Which will you follow? I'm sure you can follow the fleeting flowers of the world. Be popular for a while go along with it go with a wave. Be part of the mob the group go with their thinking.

Which will you follow the popular or the permanent now? It sounds simple in theory. Just follow. And it is simple with God's grace, but not only the pressures of the world, but also our human pride. It's not only the pressures from outside.

It's the problem we have on the inside our human pride our haughty hearts. It tempts us to stray from God's Word and to go our own. We're tempted to be smug. And to think what you know, look at this. I know better.

I thought of something better than this. I'm smarter. I've been better educated. I'm in a wiser age more tolerant age. We know better than this so we pompously think that we know better than to simply follow the way marked out for us by God.

What last?

God's way. Follow it.

When I'm in cross-country in college, we ran a five-mile race on the campus of West Georgia State University. But if I recall correctly in this one race, there were about 50 of us runners. They line us up.

If you ever seen a cross-country race line us up on this field. That the starting line and the director of the race gave us only one instructor. This is not like a track where you where you know where you go.

You don't have where you're gonna go on this Campus and the director of the race gave us over one instruction.

Follow.

The white line. There was a white line made out of chalk on the ground. It's supposed to guide us for the whole course of the five-mile race. Simple direct instructions, right? Possible to get lost just follow the white line.

And then he raised the starting pistol and fired it. So we were off running following the white line. About two-thirds of the way through the race. I was getting really tired. But the finish line was still too far away to give you any hope.

You know if I got like you could see the starting the finish line and press on to finish and Worn out from already about three miles of running. Couldn't see anyone in front of me couldn't hear anyone behind me.

Now just following this white line down a trail through a forest and I remember thinking well how this might be a nice Walking trail that wasn't so tired. I'm just so exhausted. It was impossible to get lost because there were through that trail.

There's trees and bushes on either side and of course the white line down the middle of it that we're told to follow. Then it turned this corner. And I saw the white line. Which was in the middle of fail?

Veered just made a sharp turn right into these bushes on the side of the trail. That is only a second to make a decision. I didn't want to stop and look at this in the middle of the race. Do I follow the white line like I was told?

Or do I follow the easier trail? And in that second, I remember the first thing I did not want to follow the line and jump over the bushes. That would literally be a leap of faith because I didn't know what was on the other side.

How far does it drop off down on the other side of those bushes? Well, I was already tired and I want to exert more energy minutes. It was exhausting to jump over something. If I surely didn't want to jump over those bushes if I didn't have to and then I started to rationalize.

Surely the man who marked his trail that chalk he made a mistake. And maybe his thing he just turned sharply and he didn't want to pay an attention because after all look at this. Every reasonable person can see it's far more rational.

Far more intelligent far more enlightened you could even say for the race to go down the trail. And I make a lot more sense to stay down that trail and so in that second I decided that I knew the race course better than the man who marked it down with the chalk.

So I continued down the comfortable trail and after a while of running down this trail it came into a clearing. And standing there in this clearing in the middle of the forest. There's a bunch of other runners who had apparently gone before me and made the very same decision I did.

There were several trails leading out of this clearing and there was no white line. Telling us which one to take. Now you think at this point we'd all figure out we've made a mistake. We'd turn around go back even though he's backtracking and losing a lot of time in the middle race.

But we go back to that white line and jump over that bush admit not. I was foolish to not trust the line. But no, that's not the way people think not the way I thought. They were these other runners were standing around.

I thought I don't want to waste a second. So instead of admitting my mistake without even slowing down I just picked out the trail. I thought in that second look best and I started to run down it. This must be the best one and the other runners assume that I must know what I'm doing.

Right. Yeah, I must maybe I've ran this course before I must know what I'm doing. So they start they take off running after me. I'm leading the pack for a little bit other road after a little bit though.

Some faster ones caught up and passed me down this trail like they assumed that I was guiding them down the right trail. So well, we even caught up with runners. Who were really leading the race? The one is who had gone the right way jumped over that bush way back there.

We caught them because we had found a shortcut my my trail I took but because of that they're all mixed together. Runners like me who had taken the shortcuts and runners like them who had jumped over the bush all mixed together.

They didn't know who was who and so the whole race had to be declared null and void as though it didn't happen. Some teams traveled hundreds of miles. They ran hard, but in the end it was for nothing.

There was no winner. Now a cross-country race being nullified is no great tragedy, but their whole lives. That in the end are just grass. That because people decided that they knew better about which way to go than the God who Marked out the way with his word and there's others that saw them going.

Confidently down the way they thought was best and it followed after them like they thought like they knew better and they didn't they're just Following this is going along with a group and no one knows where they're going and it all gets declared nothing.

What last?

The word of our God The gospel last if you want to be more than just mere grass that quickly withers. It's not enough to just do The things the Word of God says to do. That's not really the meaning of this passage.

The white line We are to follow does not just guide our behavior Rather is to guide our heart. Remember that even the best of our works even our tested our steadfast love our glory Is but fleeting flowers That wither in the hot wind.

The only way.

To stand forever to last to continue to live is To be born again By God by his word. In first Peter chapter 1 verse 24 the Apostle Peter says that Christians have been born again by the Imperishable that means always lasting the imperishable seed the gospel itself and then he quotes this very scripture from Isaiah to show that the gospel is Imperishable that it's the gospel.