THE “MAN” must become a “worm” and the “worm” a “man”! Does not this deep thought contain all the mystery of our holy and precious Gospel?
Again the passion-weeks go on apace, and again, at the responsibility of the church, the cross of Jesus is pictured as before our eyes. And what is this Lenten preaching other, than to show you step by step, how that “Man” became a worm and finally curved Himself in the dust of death.
The first mystery, that of Bethlehem’s manger, spells out to you, how, He Who was “God”, became a “man”; but the second, of which Golgotha’s cross forms the center, shows you how now that “Man” humbled Himself again and debased Himself to a “worm”.
“After me comes a man,” the Baptist said, “Who was before me, the lachet of Whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose!” pointing therewith to Him, of Whom it was already said at Peniel in Gen. 32:24: “A Man wrestled with Jacob”; of Whom in Joshua’s vision it was said: “A Man stood over against him” (Joshua 5:13); Who as “a man clothed with linen” was seen by Ezekiel and Daniel; Who to Zechariah was “the man that stood among the myrtle trees” (Zech. 1:10); of Whom it had been prophecied that this “Man shall be as a hiding place from the wind” (Isa. 32:2); “a Man Whose name is The BRANCH” (Zech. 6:12); of Whom it would be said in the hour of dreadful decision: “O sword, awake against the Man, that is my fellow” (13:7); and Whose most deeply touching name would therefore be “Man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3).
Power, strength, majesty lie expressed in that Man. We, the altogether weak, the helpless, miserable ones, who flee to Him for help and protection, and He, the strong man, Who covers us with the arm of His power and turns aside the adversary from us.
A MAN, yea, when He made the Devil to cower before Him in the wilderness; when He dominated the thousands by His word; when He rebuked diseases so that sicknesses gave way; when He cast out devils so that they slunk off; when He caused the Pharisees to tremble before His look; when He rebuked the storm; caused the sea to obey Him; stronger yet, when He overpowered death in Lazarus’ grave; yea, even yet in Gethsemane, when everything shrank back from before Him and He cast down His captors in the dust.
But can He remain that Man? Can He by breaking through as Man in our behalf, help you and me to go through? (Micah 2:13). Can He go through might to triumph, through strength to victory, does the arm of His potency lead us to conquest?
And to this, God’s holy Word says, no; and again, no; if that man becomes no worm, the “worm Jacob” can not be delivered.
If the corn of wheat will not fall from its high stalk and sink into the earth and die, it does not touch the lost; it remains alone and can bear no fruit unto eternal redemption.
Consider well, we are no more men! All our strength is dried up as a potsherd. A child of man, conceived and born in sin, lies actually in the dust, and is become like unto a worm.
Naked, sin has stripped us. There is nothing sound left of us; and even our best deeds are still, as has been said with perfect truth, dishonoring God.
One glory after another has fallen away from us. There is still a semblance; but no reality left.
Mouldered joists are we, which break at a touch.
Hollowed out willows, in which the night owl builds his nest, and with which winds play.
Job knew this well when he exclaimed: “The stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, that is a maggot, and the son of man, which is a worm!” (25:6).
And oh, if we but willed to be this; if we would but realize that that is what we are; and as “poor worms” would crawl before God in the dust!
But this that mouldered joist will not do! No, that “mouldered joist still presents itself as a “sound beam”, and yet wills to be a support, and deems that a house can rest upon its bearing-power.
Thus dreams the worm in the dream of its pride, that he is still a man!
Terrible self-delusion!
And then that “small dust on the balance” yet opens its mouth against its God and that worm murmurs godlessly against the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth.
And see, for this reason Jesus had to be laid so deep in the dust of death. What you, because of your proud heart, would not do for your God, that, from compassion, He would come and do for you.
There He stands the strong hero, the glorious Man in all the strength of His might. Lion of the tribe of Judah! And now, that Lion drops his mane; that hero casts away His quiver; that Man bows the head; kneels down in the dust, and lets all the burden of God’s wrath come down upon Himself, until He succumbs under its weight, and sinks down in the dust of death, and now as one despised and trodden under foot, by His crawling in the dust, He is become like unto the worm.
So was He despised and we esteemed Him not.
For whose heart still thrills with holy indignation, when he hears the Man complain: “I am a worm!” (Psalm 22:6).
Speak not of the admiration which the cross has quickened, tell me not of the love for Jesus that has inspired song.
All such superficial talk about that terrible descent into the eternal death, is but another crown of thorns, which you press upon the yet bleeding head of the Man of sorrows.
They who say this, do not understand it, do not fathom it, surmise it not from far.
He who has not learned from the Father, in some measure at least to fathom the nameless mystery of this most nameless anguish, still plants his foot on the breast of that Sufferer, still tramples that worm a little deeper into the dust of death, yea, tramples under foot His blood!
Not one here and one there, no, but all.
That, you have done, that I have done!
There is only one, who no more does it, and that one is called the worm Jacob.
And who is that?
That is every young man and woman, every young and old of days, every freeman and every bondman, who first undertook to vindicate himself, and say: “This is right, Jesus the worm and I the man”; and upon whom then the Holy Ghost is come, to bruise his wicked and proud heart, to chastise and to break it; till at length he learned to know himself as a poor worm, and now, himself lying in the dust, awards the Only Precious One the palm of Victory, and says: “I, by the grace of God the worm, and He alone THE MAN.
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