Isaiah 41:14 Fear not, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel; I will help you, said the LORD, and your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. I. JACOB WAS A WORM IN OTHER PEOPLE'S EYES. Is there not many a "worm" still under the same experience? I may be speaking to a clerk who gets laughed at by his fellow-clerks, with their master's permission, because he is a Christian. I may be speaking to some one who is despised and scoffed at, and called a Sabbatarian, because he keeps the Sabbath day. Take comfort! He who is now thy Redeemer was treated as a worm. "I am a worm, and no man," sang the Messianic psalmist. II. JACOB WAS ALSO A WORM IN HIS OWN EYES, which is far more to the purpose. Look at the Jews drawing together into some little sanctuary on a Sabbath morning or evening, amid the scoffs of the Babylonians. Look at the aged patriarch when the doors are shut, opening the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and reading, "Fear not, thou worm Jacob." "Ay, worms indeed:" the hearers would reply from the bottom of their hearts; "worms indeed!" We may writhe under men's contempt; but there is no writhing like the writhing under a sense of personal sin. There is no nerve like the nerve that passes through the conscience. Job was perhaps the noblest man of his day; and yet we find him saying, "I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister." None of you are so low as that! Our Lord called Himself a worm because He was treated as a worm; but Job uses the word in a very different sense; for Job knew he was a sinner, and it is almost an insult to a worm for a sinner to call himself by the name. The Septuagint has left out this word in the text. How that came about passes my comprehension. Were these proud translators of Alexandria too good for the Bible? Were they too high and holy to put in what Isaiah wrote? Coleridge says, "God's Word is God's Word to me, because it finds me." Has it found us? Have we seen the sin and the misery of our own heart? Can we look back on that action we did yesterday, and say, "It was the action of a worm, and not of a man"? III. JACOB WAS A WORM IN GOD'S EYES. "God," says Calvin, "here seems to speak disrespectfully of His people"; but if you are to speak t? worms, you must speak in their language. Fine names would never suit Jacob in this case, and the Jacob-minded soul finds comfort in such words, knowing that they were used in love. "Fear not, thou worm Jacob, I will help thee." "Thee" is an individualising, singularising word. The Lord places His finger upon the humble man's heart, and says, "I will help thee. I, the Highest, will seek out the lowest, and let others, who think themselves better, help themselves." "The Holy One of Israel" — blessed name! name He will never lay aside! — is the Portion, the Helper, the Friend of "worm Jacob." Oh "worm Jacob," it doth not yet appear what thou shalt be; but when He shall appear whose thou art, "thou shalt be like Him, for thou shalt see Him as He is. (A. Whyte, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. |
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