When you read through the Scriptures, you may find something that, at first, seems odd. But then, as you make your way through more books of Scripture, you start to see a pattern. At first, it’s a phrase here, and then a phrase there. What was, at first, an odd turn of phrase then becomes a powerful expression.
In our Old-Testament reading, we heard Isaiah use the word “worm.” And that is an odd turn of phrase to describe a people, especially the people of Israel. So, let’s see how the Scriptures elsewhere use that word, “worm.”
In Deuteronomy, we find that worms are agents of God’s judgment, eating and destroying the vineyard (Deuteronomy 28:39). In Jonah, a worm destroys the plant that shaded Jonah from the sun, revealing God’s judgment that Jonah was to preach repentance into the forgiveness of sins to the people of Nineveh (Jonah 4:7).
In Leviticus, God commanded that worms were a part of the group of animals that He had forbidden the Israelites to eat (Leviticus 11:41-42). In Psalm 22, King David confessed to being under God’s judgment when he said, “But I am a worm and not a man” (Psalm 22:6). And Jesus quoted that psalm on the cross because He, too, was under the Father’s judgment as He took all our sins into Himself (Psalm 22:1).
Elsewhere in the book of Isaiah, we find worms eating the remains of those who had died rebelling against God (Isaiah 66:24). So being a worm meant that you were under God’s judgment or curse.
Through poetry, when God called His people of Israel a “worm,” He was saying that they were as good as dead. But how do we know that? How do we know that’s not just pastor’s Lutheran glasses causing him to understand the Scriptures in that way?
Well, let’s see. Immediately after saying “people of Israel,” clearly linking who that “worm” was, God said, “I myself will help you.” Then He said, “I am making you into a new threshing tool with sharp teeth.” Who’s doing the doing? Who’s making the people of Israel into something else? God is.
So, let’s compare dead people with worms. Dead people are buried; so are worms. Dead people are stepped on; so are worms. Dirt surrounds the dead, for they are buried; dirt surrounds worms. The dead are ignored and soon forgotten; so are worms. The dead and worms are so intertwined that worms feast on the flesh of the dead to feed themselves.
I suppose, we can get flustered that God chose to use poetry, at times, to express His truths to us. But He chose to do that because His Word is not mere information; it is to touch us more deeply than just the rational, intellectual parts of our being. When God used that word “worm” to describe His people, He was letting them know that, just as a worm couldn’t change itself into the people of God, so the Israelites were also that powerless. Without God doing that, without Him changing them, the people of Israel would remain as a worm.
The people of Israel, by losing a war against the Babylonians, became exiled in a foreign land. It seemed that God had forgotten His promise that King David’s throne would last forever. The culture around them mocked and dismissed their worship of the one, true God and their Old-Covenant liturgies as irrelevant. (Hmm, that’s not too different for the Church in our culture, today, is it?) It looked as if the beast called Babylon had swallowed up who the Israelites were as God’s people.
So, if you were an Israelite, how would you think of yourself if held captive and far away from the Temple, the place where God came to give His people His forgiveness? You’d see yourself as a worm. That word, “worm,” was a metaphor to describe someone being far away, but not just physically, but also spiritually.
When I “don’t do what is right, love mercy, and live humbly,” I am a worm (Micah 6:8). When I’m not shining with the light of Christ’s righteousness, I am a worm. What am I to think of myself when I take no delight in the Word, recoil from prayer, harbor sinful thoughts, and lust after the praises of others? What am I when I am deceptive, mean-spirited, petty, or vindictive? God has a word for that: “worm.”
But pastor, when we’re spiritually in such a state, the word “worm” is so depressing. That doesn’t boost my self-esteem!
But then thinking too much of ourselves has nothing to do with what God tells us who we are as HIS people. He would rather have us to cry out with Isaiah and Job: “I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5) and “Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). God would have us echo the Apostle Paul: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).
That’s what Lent is: It’s recognizing who we are in God’s sight–apart from the righteousness He gives us through His Son, Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. On our own, we are sinful and unclean in thought, word, and deed. On our own, we are but worms. Failing to recognize that, it then becomes so easy to let our sinful nature rule the roost, and have him perch in the place of God in our lives.
And so, the Church in her wisdom, established the season of Lent. For Lent is when we recognize our inborn sinful nature, confess our sins, and turn away from those sins. When we recognize that we are worms, people who are dead, buried, and surrounded by dirt, it’s then that we cry out for life and resurrection!
Hear the Word of the Lord: “Do not be afraid, Jacob, you worm, you people of Israel! I myself will help you,’ declares the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.” The Lord isn’t a life-coach trying to rally His team. God isn’t some talk-show host, who exists to make us feel warm and fuzzy. Our God isn’t a sentimental granddad who helps those who help themselves. No. He is “your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”
If you read through the book of Isaiah, the word “redeemer” appears for the first time in chapter 41, our Old-Testament reading for this Ash Wednesday. In the Old-Covenant, a redeemer was a male relative who bought back your inheritance, freed you from slavery, and paid off your debt. Whatever has gone bad, your redeemer will make good (see Job 19:25 and 42:10).
In Today’s reading, we hear God attach this phrase to the word Redeemer: “The Holy One of Israel.” The Holy One of Israel is as the angels cry out, “Holy, holy, holy!” (Isaiah 6:1). It means the Lord is completely set apart and different from everyone and everything else.
When Isaiah links your Redeemer, the One who buys you back from slavery, with the Holy One of Israel, he announces that only the Lord can marshal every power in the universe for a single, focused, and relentless goal—to bring you love and life, forgiveness and salvation!
But how does God do that? At the proper time, God became your male relative, literally. He became related to you, in some way, by being born as a human from the Virgin Mary. But then, He took another step. He became dirty and despised, rejected and humiliated. And then He took another, almost incomprehensible step. It was one He took for the ages.
Psalm 22:1: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And then in verse 6, “I am a worm and not a man.” Here is Jesus, nailed to the tree, His body bent and twisted. Here is Jesus, a bloody horrific mess. Here is Jesus, mocked, ridiculed, and abandoned. God has a word for that: worm.
He did it all for you. It’s as our Old-Testament reading described it:
Look, I am making you into a new threshing tool with sharp teeth. You will thresh and crush the mountains, and reduce the hills to chaff. You will winnow them and the wind will carry them away, and a windstorm will scatter them. Then you will rejoice in the LORD and glory in the Holy One of Israel.
“A new threshing tool with sharp teeth” was more poetic metaphor. As a threshing tool grinds and crushes grain, so will Israel be such a thresher and reducer of mountains. We see such movers and shakers later in the Old Testament in Daniel, Esther, Mordecai, Haggai, and Zechariah. God had placed those people on the international stage and they moved mountains, well poetically and metaphorically speaking.
But most of all, God fulfilled Israel being “a new threshing tool with sharp teeth” in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus became Israel condensed into one man. He remained sinless where the people of Israel had earlier failed. He “will thresh and crush the mountains, and reduce the hills to chaff” when He returns on the Last Day to create a new heaven and new earth. That’s when we will “rejoice in the LORD and glory in the Holy One of Israel” literally, for then we will be shining with, and in, God’s glory.
In God, through His Messiah to come, through His Messiah who has come, through His Messiah who will come on the Last Day, God takes us, we who are but “worms,” and loves and lifts us up! He turns our Lenten sackcloth and ashes into the resurrection robes of Easter, washed white in the blood of Jesus. For we are “sons of light and sons of the day, for we do not belong to the night or the darkness” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). And it’s all because of God’s doing! Amen.
