They shall perish, but Thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment. Hebrews 1:11
When I was a little child, an old canvas bag hung on the back of the pantry door in our house. Called the rag bag, that old khaki sack with the drawstring was the destination for every piece of clothing that became too worn out or torn to be usable. If we needed a cloth for any purpose, such as wipers for when my father did a motor job on one of the old cars, we opened that bag and took out whatever old garment would suit the purpose. Sometimes we needed just a piece of a shirt, at other times, we would use an entire old sweater. That rag bag was an important part of our recycling program, and it was proof that nothing that we wore would last forever. Our text today reminded me of that old rag bag, because just like all of our old clothes, everything in this world will wear out and decay, and will eventually perish in the judgment. But there is one constant that will remain unchanged and unaffected by time and use, and that is the God Who made it all.
Creation has a limited life span. For example, true scientists have determined that the amount of effective energy left in the sun is in the thousands of years, not the billions of years that the evolutionists claim. So too the rest of creation is rapidly being used up and depleted. The laws of thermodynamics – which evolutionists ignore or shrug off – dictate this. We see this in our own bodies, and in the lives of all those around us. Like an old garment, everything is running downhill, and only the Millennial reign of Christ will bring a halt to this deterioration, and then only for a thousand years. Then, as our text declares, they shall perish. But before this world began, there was a God who spoke creation into being. And after creation is exhausted and discarded in judgment, there will be a God Who is, was, and ever will be. You and I struggle to understand the eternal state, the dwelling place of the God of eternity. But this we know, that when this world is gone, God will continue to be, and we will be with Him.
When the apostle wrote our text, as he thought on the inevitability that all of creation would be discarded, he must have been cheered to have the Holy Spirit direct him to include the words ‘but Thou remainest’. Throughout history, God has always been the constant. When our first parents fell in sin, God not only remained but also provided a means for man to return. The offerings of the Old Testament were to display to man God’s requirements for holiness and God’s provision to at least temporarily lift man to God’s acceptability. At Calvary, we see God making provision for a permanent restoration of man’s relationship with Himself.
And that is why we are not dismayed to see our old world and all that is in it waxing old like a garment. In Christ, we will be part of that which remaineth, because we can never perish. By trusting the finished work of our Saviour, we are forever rescued from the rag bag of God’s judgment. – Jim MacIntosh