GOSPEL WORMS Psalm 22-6

Have you ever felt like a worm? Has anyone ever treated you like a worm? Have you ever been called a “worm?” Look up! Let not your heart be troubled, you are in pretty good company! The problem is one of sight and vision; you are not seeing who you really are. As a matter of fact, the message of the worm is part and parcel of the Easter message we celebrate. I will now amplify this thought.

Let me begin with a corny illustration from the classic TV series, ‘Gunsmoke’. I work out each morning with 5-10 miles on my stationary bike. To make it more interesting, I watch this favorite old western; one episode provides a good workout for me. Anyway, here is this sooty drunk whose only pursuit is that of a whisky bottle. Like the lowly worm, he is trodden by all the folks in Dodge; he is skid row and not worth the effort it takes to flip a nickel his way. The rich villain of the episode gives him a few bottles of the store-bought squeezings to squat on a piece of land up for a land grab; the crook hopes to later swindle it for himself. The hero of the show is a boy who is going fishing and can’t find any worms. The drunk staggers along the road till he sees the boy at the creek and says to the youngster, “you just don’t know where to look; all rocks are not the same!” He turns over a rock and fishing worms are everywhere. He begins to tell the boy how important the “worthless” worms are. “They toil the ground; they feed the grasses; the grasses feed the animals; we eat both. Even worms are important!” The youth’s countenance lit up like a new candle at this discovery. He looks at this penniless sot and determines to show him love. He visits him every day and teaches him to farm; a bond is made and a “worm” becomes a farmer, and the wealthy rogue with his treacherously evil plot is foiled. Worms are more than fish bait!

”It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures” CHARLES DARWIN ON EARTHWORMS, 1881

You may not be an advocate of all that Darwin taught, but this quote is absolutely true. It is true in nature but its significance to Christians is also how important you are to God! My message to you is, "Look how vital “worms” are to the building of the church of God! All of you are awesomely essential to God!"

Psalms 22:6 KJV Bible: But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

Much of Psalm 22 is messianic. As you read it, you cannot escape the similarity of its imagery to the passion and the cross of Christ. Imagine it; Jesus says that He was a worm! He is using this metaphor because that is the way people were treating Him. “Reproach” and “despised” are his adjectives. Such love He has for us. If you sometimes feel like a worm, you are in good company!

Let us consider three important analogies of the Christian life that we can learn from worms.  First, worms are handicapped! 

Worms are blind.  What a horrible thing it is not to be able to see!  Worms did not choose to be blind; it is just the circumstances of life.  Sometimes we feel like worms simply because of our situations of living.  It is not fair, but that is the way things are.  As a matter of fact, the Bible says that everyone who does not know Jesus Christ as Savior is blind like the worm!

2 Corinthians 4:4 KJV Bible: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

We are all blind worms because we cannot know Him by sight; we only meet and learn of Him in our darkened world by grace; He comes to us sort of like that drunk came and overturned the rock to find those fishing worms.  He comes to us by grace; we do nothing.  We can only then know him by faith, and the scales fall off our blinded eyes and His light beams into our hearts.   Praise God!

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Worms are also handicapped because they cannot seem to rise above their lowly position.  They are ground bound and vulnerable to be trodden by all!  This is the sad part of the Easter message; Jesus says, “I am a worm, reproached and despised!” 

Sometimes I feel that way!  Do you?  It is not a pleasant place to be, but the Easter message of the worm tells me I am loved, and I am important.  The whole of the Christian church is built on this message!  Jesus, who is brought low as the worm, rises to ascension glory!  We who sometimes feel like the worms of the earth are citizens of heaven, and in His house are many mansions.

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Second, the worm is not only handicapped, he is humbled!

• Down low
• In the soil
• Below ground
• Out of sight

When Jesus says through the Psalmist, “ I am a worm”, He is referring to the scarlet worm.  The Hebrew word for scarlet and worm are the same.  When the mother worm lays her eggs, she attaches herself to wood and then dies (picture of the humbled Christ on the cross).  Her dead body is protection for her young and that same body produces a scarlet dye which stains whatever it touches!  This scarlet worm brings new life!

 When you feel like a worm, praise God anyway!  A new and better life for you is in the making!

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Finally, God honors the lowly worm!

For example, look how God honors the earthworm in nature.  Many of you think that the earthworm is only good for fish bait. The plain truth is that the worm is one of nature's crowning "soil scientist.”   The earthworm is accountable for many things that help make our soil first-rate sufficient to grow healthy plants and supply us food.  Worms lend a hand in water flow through the soil.  Worms aid to amplify the amount of air and water that gets into the earth. They break down natural matter, like leaves and grass into stuff that plants can use. As they eat, they leave castings that are a very important type of fertilizer. They help to "rotate" the soil.   They submerge organic matter from the top and mix it with the dirt below.

Here is something interesting.   If you have an acre of ground saturated by earthworms, let us say 500,000,  they alone would make about 1,000 pounds of castings fertilizer and would create a drainage structure equal to 2,000 feet of six inch pipe!  Worms make healthy soil!  Isn’t that amazing? See Worm Facts.

Let us close with a brief look at the honor given to worms in the Bible:

Isaiah 41:14 KJV Bible: 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.

Jacob was full of impurities, and God refers to the people of Israel (Jacob) as worms. However, they have a redeemer who had already converted the first Jacob into Israel (prince).

• God makes a prince out of a worm!

Job 19:26 KJV Bible: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Several times in the testimony of Job he says he felt like a worm! Here he talks about his decaying body. Yet, in triumph he says he will yet see God. God raises Job up!

• God makes new life out of a worm.

Jonah 4:7-11 KJV Bible: But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. … (10) Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: (11) And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Do you like fish stories? You will love the Bible story of Jonah and the worm.

Here is this preacher, Jonah. God wants him to preach to this wormy-people-infested Nineveh. Jonah feels these worthless “worms” from Nineveh are to be hated, not loved and preached to! He runs from God. Jonah becomes a “worm”; that is, God makes him fish bait! A whale has him for dinner (the fishes’ answer to sushi!) . After weltering in the slime pit of whale humility, Jonah changes his mind, and repents. The whale gets sick of this “preacher worm” and spews the worm vomit out. So, Jonah preaches, and the Nineveh worms become children of God. The preacher worm, Jonah, doesn’t like this, and he begins to pout. Now, the pouting preacher Jonah worm seeks comfort and shade under a gourd vine God prepares for the occasion. Then God sends this other worm to kill the gourd. All this so that the preacher might learn that God loves all folks, even the wormiest! I have given a little poetic license to this story which you can read for yourself! However, the message is obvious!

• God makes preachers out of worms!

Psalms 22:6 KJV Bible: But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

This is my favorite worm Scripture. Jesus says he feels like a worm! When I think about this, I realize something exciting; The whole of the Church is built by worms! Fishermen, hated tax collectors, prostitutes, common carpenters, jailers, demon possessed, women and men with loose morals, uneducated, etc.. This is where Christ begins His church, and this is the majority of the Church today! Yet, it is still standing and growing; it is healthy because it is saturated with worms! We fail when we insist on having only the elite. This is why many churches today are only religious clubs that would rather discuss religion that reach the lowly. The good new is: if I feel like a worm, I am in good company. I am awesomely important to God!