We're looking at Psalm 22. And
I suppose that if a person was to ever doubt that the Psalms
are primarily the prayers of Christ, they certainly could
not deny that when they come to Psalm 22. Because this is,
of course, as we've read many times, marveled at these words
that are here that are so descriptive of those things that occurred
to the Lord Jesus Christ and those things that He said when
He was on the cross. But more so than just when He
was on the cross, and I've said this before and probably, you
know, it's amazing really, Most of us don't really have a whole
lot to say. We just say it the same thing
over and over in different ways. But really, the truth of the
Gospel, you don't really want somebody to come to you preaching
something that is new, because if it's new, it couldn't be the
truth, could it? I mean, the truth is old and
it's ancient. So the Lord just sends men If
they're preaching the gospel, they've got to be preaching something
that's already been preached. I mean, if you hear somebody
preaching something that ain't ever been preached, you'd better
run from him, because it's not going to be the truth, because
the truth of God has been preached from the beginning. It continues
to be preached, and it will be preached until the end, because
the Lord would have His Son to be exalted in all things. And
I believe probably in all the psalms there is not a more clear
message of Christ than we see in this particular psalm. We
will read it and then we will make a few comments as the Lord
enables us to. My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me? Why art Thou so far from helping
me? and from the words of my roaring.
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not, and in
the night season, and am not silent. But Thou art holy. O Thou then inhabitest the praises
of Israel. Our fathers trusted in Thee.
They trusted, and Thou didst deliver them. They cried unto
Thee and were delivered. They trusted in Thee and were
not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man,
a reproach of men, and despise of the people. And they that
see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip. They
shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver
him. Let him deliver him, saying,
He delighted in him. But thou art He that took me
out of the womb. Thou didst make me hope when
I was upon my mother's breast. I was cast upon thee from the
womb. Thou art my God from my mother's
belly. Be not far from me, for trouble
is near, for there is none to help. Many bulls have come past
me. Strong bulls of Bashan have beset
me round. They gaped upon me with their
mouths as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax, it is melted
in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like
a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws, and thou hast brought
me into the dust of death. For dogs have come past me, the
assembly of the wicked have enclosed me, they pierced my hands and
my feet. I may tell all my bones, they
look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them,
and cast lots upon my vesture. But be thou not far from me,
O Lord, O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul
from the sword, my darling, from the power of the dog. Save me
from the lion's mouth, for thou hast heard me from the horns
of the unicorns. I will declare thy name unto
my brethren in the midst of the congregation while I praise thee.
Ye that fear the Lord, praise him. All ye that see of Jacob,
glorify him, and fear him, all ye that see of Israel. For he
hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he cried unto
him, he heard. My praise shall be of thee in
the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them
that fear him. The meat shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the Lord that
seek him. Your hearts shall live forever.
All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord. And all the kindreds of the nations
shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord's,
and he is the governor among the nations. And they that be
fat upon the earth shall eat and worship. All they that go
down to the dust shall bow before him, and none shall keep alive
his own soul. A seed shall serve him. It shall
be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come
and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born
that he hath done this." Now, anybody who has ever read account
of the crucifixion of the Lord in the Scriptures has certainly
read these very words, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Now, I believe that this particular
passage reflects on several things, this particular phrase. One,
as I think about it, you know, what man upon the earth who has
been awakened to see himself as a sinner could ever say those
words in real wonderment? I mean, could we say, if we feel
forsaken, would we feel the need to ask God why He has forsaken
us? No, we wonder why He has not
forsaken us. I mean, the man that knows himself
to be a sinner, he is not complaining that the Lord has forsaken him.
He is wondering, why hasn't the Lord forsaken him? But the Lord
Jesus Christ being a perfect man, always going about to do
the will of the Father, is the only man that has ever lived
that could rightly say these words in wonderment. that they are given Him. My God,
my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Because why did the Lord
forsake Him? I mean, He did everything the
Father sent Him to do, did He not? He walked among men as the
most perfect of men. The law that you read in every
jot and tittle, He performed it. He did it. And so if salvation
was to come to men through their flesh, would not the Lord Jesus
Christ of all men be that one who would not be forsaken of
the Lord? Well, sure He would be. I mean,
He should never have been forsaken in the sense of the law. But you see, He was forsaken
in that He became sin for us. Now, he knew why. You know, this
is that thing which we can't really comprehend. I mean, the
Lord knew all these things. He knew why the Lord had forsaken
him, but yet as a man, he experienced that. See, it wasn't that he
didn't know about it, but he learned obedience by the things
which he suffered. He actually experienced it. He
became sin for us. And in that moment of time, The
Father turned His face away from him. He turned His face away
from him to demonstrate his hatred of sin. He cannot look upon sin. He is of purer eyes than to look
upon sin. And so it is not a wonder that
the Lord would forsake a sinner. I mean, you know, a lot of people
think, well, you know, the Lord just kind of, He ought to help
people. And they grow angry when things happen. You know, somebody
wrote a book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? Well,
it started off with the wrong premise. Now, I understand comparatively
there are good people, okay? You know, there are good people
and there are bad people. But when we are talking about
people as they stand before God, there is, the Scripture says,
none good, no, not one. So think of the best person you
know. And they are not good in God's sight. They are worthy
of destruction. Everyone. And so, you know, it
isn't necessary that a man understand that. You can get off into all
kinds of false doctrines and ideas about the things of God
if you don't understand that very principle right there. And
the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrates that principle. Because he became
sin, and because he became sin, which is what we are by nature,
he was forsaken of God. And all men should be forsaken
of God. And all men will be forsaken
of God apart from being found in Jesus Christ. The only hope
that we have, the only expectation upon which we stand, is that
we be found covered in the blood and the righteousness of Jesus
Christ, that He is our substitute, that He is that One whose righteousness
is imputed to us while our sin is imputed to Him. Upon that
is our whole basis of faith and hope. I mean, that is the place
where we stand. And there is no other ground
upon which we would have any expectation. Why art thou so
far from helping me and from the words of my roaring? He was
roaring in his heart, his mind, because of the separation that
came between the Father and the Son at that point in time, as
he was forsaken. And the words of his roaring,
that is, he was crying out in anguish of heart. Oh my God,
I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not, and in the night
season, and am not silent." You can't keep a child of God from
praying. The Lord has sent the Spirit
of His Son into our hearts crying, I am the Father. You can do anything
you want to Him, but you can't keep Him from praying. Now, you
know, that's a foolish thing, I know, and I don't want to get
into all the political ramifications and discussions of it, but this
business about, you know, they say that they've banned prayer
and all of that, and people get all up in arms and you can gather
a crowd up in a hurry, you know, to go down to the courthouse
and raise a hand about them banning prayer and all this kind of stuff.
Men cannot ban prayer. It can't happen. It doesn't matter
what the Supreme Court does, it won't happen. Now you can
keep people from going through a canned presentation. You can keep people from doing
all these external things, but dear brethren, that's not prayer.
Okay? That's not prayer. Prayer is
the cry of the soul and heart before Almighty God. And you
can't keep that from happening because it is the work of the
Spirit of God in a man that calls him to call upon the name of
the Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ. And so we cry in the
daytime even as Christ, and we often feel that He does not hear
us. But now listen, if He heard not the prayer of
the Lord Jesus Christ, why should we think He would hear us? And
the answer is in the very prayer because of the fact that he did
not hear in the day when Christ was crying out to him and He
showed him no mercy. For that very reason, we can't
expect to receive mercy because of the fact that He said that
we come, how do we pray? In Jesus' name. See, He gave
us the authority to come into His presence. We don't have any
power Men don't have the right to pray. You don't have the right
to ask God for anything. Oh, now people do, don't they?
I mean, you know, even people that don't believe in God in
the right situation, or say they don't, will ask God for something. Even the hardest of hearts. They'll
cry out to God in the right situation, but you see, they don't have
any right to do so. And let not a man think that because he is
a creature, he has the right to come into the presence of
God, because he does not. But those who are found in Christ
and those who approach the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ, they are not only given the right, but they are welcomed
there. And He says, come and make your
request known unto the Father, because He will hear. Now, He
does not always do exactly what we ask Him to do. And I for one
am very thankful for that. I mean, I get to thinking a lot
of times of the things that I would like to see happen, and if they
happened, I'd be in a mess for sure. But the Lord gives us such
things as we stand in need of. And the matter of praying, and
I mentioned it before, but I mentioned it a week ago, we don't pray
to get God to do something. Now, He does reveal to us sometimes
in a measure that He does things in answer to prayer. There is
such a thing as the answer to prayer. But we don't go to the
Lord simply to get him to do something for us. Now, that's
how most people approach praying. They say, oh, well, we'd better
pray about that. Well, you know, if you'd better pray about it
and you hadn't already been praying about it, you're probably too
late. You know, you need to be praying. I mean, God's people
are people of prayer. God's house shall be called what?
House of Prayer. Because what is prayer? Prayer
essentially is worship. Remember when the Scripture says
about Lydia and the women that were won together by the riverside
for prayer. Well, what did that mean? To
gather together to worship. That's what it meant. That's
what it means. That's what prayer is. And so
the essence of praying is not simply trying to get God to do
something, but it's crying out to Him because we are compelled
to do so. We must pray. And so it is that
the Lord Jesus Christ, as a perfect Son of God, He couldn't do anything
else but pray. You know, as sons of fleshly
fathers, when growing up and our fathers
didn't do exactly what we wanted them to do, or we thought we
ought to get something that we didn't get, and we'd get mad
at them. and then we wouldn't speak to
them, or we'd be sullen, or we'd be, you know, this or the other,
we'd try to get revenge, or we'd be thinking all these things,
and my boy, when I get grown up, I'm going to do this, that
and the other. And that's just the way of the
flesh. It's the way we think. But you
see, the Lord Jesus Christ, even under the great lash of the law,
even under the knowledge that His Father had forsaken Him,
had turned back from Him, what did He do? He called upon Him. He said, He didn't hear me, but
I called upon Him. See, that's the essence of what
true prayer is. It's not we stop when we don't
get what we want, but we pray and continue to pray simply because
we're compelled to do so. We can't do anything else. We
must pray. We must seek Him. I'm not silent,
but thou art holy, O Lord. Thou art holy. O thou that inhabitest the praises
of Israel, he is holy." What does that mean to you? Does it
mean that he doesn't sin? That's what we
usually think of as holy. If we think somebody, oh, he's
holy, that means he doesn't do things. There are denominations
that are built around the concept of not sinning. They call themselves
holiness people. Go around and if you ask one
of them, usually they'll tell you they haven't sinned. Some
of them, they'll give you a period of time, but I haven't sinned
for three weeks. Well, there's two things there. I mean, either they don't know
what sin is or they don't know what they are by nature. Because
there's no period of time or measure of time that you can
go and say, I have not sinned. Because sin is not what you do,
it's what you are. It's the very nature that you
have. That's just what you are. And that's the thing that ought
to bring us to a place of repentance before Almighty God is as we
recognize that very thing. But the Lord is holy. What does
that mean? It means He set apart when He told Moses, to take off his shoes because
the ground where on he stood was holy ground. Did the Lord
mark out a spot on the earth and He said, this is going to
be a holy spot and Moses, when you step inside that circle,
take your shoes off? No. He said, you are in the presence
of God. It is a holy place. What did
Isaiah say? In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And he saw those angels
around that throne, and they ceased not day and night to cry
out, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Because as David said,
he inhabited this eternity. He alone hath immortality, dwelling
in the light to which no man can approach. You see, God is
essentially inapproachable. Now, if you listen to most preaching
today, you'd never come up with that concept, would you? Because
God's presented primarily as just this poor old God. He's
trying to do something for men and they won't let Him. And His
heart is breaking every day because men just keep stymieing every
plan and purpose and way that He would do. And won't you all
help God out? I mean, send us some money and
we'll be able to go out here and help people and we'll get
this load off of God's back. Oh, what a foolish thing. Dear
brethren, God is unapproachable. Men have no way to approach Him. God has no way to know Him. He
cannot come into His presence except one way, and that is through
Jesus Christ because He is the way. the truth and the life. He is that one. He is that one
who gives us knowledge of who God is. How would you have ever
known who God is? Now, every culture and every
religion on the face of the earth, they would define God in some
measure. I mean, you know, you couldn't
go anywhere if you said, well, what is God? I mean, it would
be this, that, or the other. In our society, I mean, God is
like this big benevolent puppy dog and he is just wanting to
do stuff for people. Isn't that basically the picture?
And it is all up to you. If you don't get the blessing
of God, what is it from? You didn't. It is your fault. It is your fault. You cannot
overemphasize the fault of man in all situations. But, dear
brethren, God is God and there is none
else. He dwells in light to which no
man can approach. You cannot approach Him. You
cannot know Him except He is pleased to show Himself to you. And He has shown Himself to the
human race in general. In a general way, He has shown
Himself. He walked among men. But men
saw Him and they received Him not. And now what the Scripture
says? He walked among men, but yet they didn't want Him. They
said, don't let this man rule over us. But you see, He does
come to men and He does reveal them to Himself by His Spirit.
And then they say, O Lord, rule over us. Be our King. Be that
one before whom we fall in worship because You are the great and
the mighty God, the One who is holy. Now, look what he says
here. Now, he inhabited this, the Scripture
says, eternity. Now, I believe this is a true
thing, and that is that the separation between God and men is essentially
this, that is that God is eternal. Now, we can talk about eternal
and eternality, eternity. We can philosophize about it,
but can you really comprehend that? No, you can't. You're not meant to. I mean,
you're a creature of time. You'll always be a creature of
time. I mean, through the ages to come. Eternity doesn't have
any ages. Time does, though, doesn't it?
And through the ages to come, because see, as a creature, that's
the only place you can be. to be in that place which is
separate from God. Now, He's eternal. But the glorious
thing is that He who is eternal has seen fit to come and meet
with men. See, that's the wonder of the
ages. That's the wonder of the Gospel, is that He who is eternal
in the heavens, needing nothing, being without any lack, I was
hearing a guy today talking on the TV, and he wasn't necessarily
promoting this, or not on TV, on the radio. He wasn't necessarily
promoting this idea, but he brought it up that some people think
that, that God was lonely and that's why He created men, so
He'd have somebody to commune with. Listen, God doesn't need
anything. He doesn't need anybody. He's not lacking for anything.
He's holy. He inhabits the eternity. But
listen to what it says here. But thou art holy, O thou that
inhabitest the praises of Israel. Now He inhabits the eternity,
but He is pleased to dwell with His people. He is pleased to
let sinful men praise Him. Isn't that an amazing thing?
I mean, he never let one sinful angel do anything, did he? He
cast all those who kept not their first estate out of heaven without
so much as a, shouldn't have done that. He cast them out according
to his purpose. And so the angels have never
known anything of what this is speaking about here. That is,
that he would see fit to receive the worship of men, corruptible
mortals, those who aren't worthy of the least of His mercies,
and yet the Scripture says He inhabiteth the praises of His
people. He lives in the praises of His
people. The joy of the Lord is our strength,
is it not? And so we are given strength
to praise Him. How do we praise Him? Do we praise
Him because, well, we came up with a new song and here it is,
or we got an old song and here it is, or we got whatever? No. No, it is the work of the Spirit
in men that cause them to desire to praise Him. In whatever fashion
He may see fit to bring that forth. You know, there is no
prescribed method or means whereby men can praise the Lord or can't
praise the Lord according to His purpose. And He enables men
to praise Him according to His purpose. But it is not their
effort that defines the praise, it is the work of the Spirit
in them. And when the Spirit of God moves men to praise Him,
what can you say about it? What can I say about it? Did
I look at it? Did I say, well, you know, that
doesn't seem like that's quite right. You know, they ought to
be doing it this way. No. Dear brethren, God is able
to move people to praise Him in the fashion in which He wills. Now, because men come up with
some outlandish thing and they claim that it's their praise
in God, does that mean it is? No. I saw a video the other day
about these guys handling snakes somewhere up in Kentucky. Now, you couldn't convince one
of them that they're not worshipping God, and I wouldn't try to. I
don't know what they're doing. They may be worshipping God.
Thankfully, the Lord never taught me or led me to pick up a snake
to praise Him. And it would be my understanding
that that would be foolishness, you know, to do that. But at
the same time, you know, I'm not going to go around and tell
somebody, well, you can't do that or you can't do that. You
do whatever you think you need to do, but don't think because
you do it and because it seems right to you that it is right
or that it is good. You know, just because you come
up with it and you like it, doesn't mean that it is that thing which
is a means whereby God would be magnified. Because you see,
well let me back up, God will be magnified. He'll be magnified
every time somebody picks up a snake and hollers and dances
around and carries on. He'll be magnified every time.
But it won't be because of that or because He ordained it and
He'll be glorified in all things, but those things that men do
are not the praise of God because they do them. There's only one
way that the praise of God exists, and that is because He moves
His Spirit in them to praise Him. And when they praise Him,
He's the object of praise. See, Christ is always the object
of praise for the people. Not the abilities that we have. I like to hear good singing,
you know, but good singing in itself is not praise. It may
be praise, but because it's good singing, the Lord will be praised
and a man that can't carry a tune in a bucket. You know, it just
doesn't matter because He is that one who will have these
things done according to the good pleasure of His will. He
inhabits praises of His people. And I remember, I know Curtis
probably does, right over here in this church I grew up in,
there was an old gentleman, every now and then he'd get up and
he'd have a song that he said the Lord gave him. I don't know
if the Lord gave him the song. I was blessed actually every
time that he got up and sang. He couldn't sing a lick. And
everybody rolled their eyes, you know, when he'd get up to
sing. Oh, no. Here we go. But he'd get up there and he'd
do that. The Lord inhabited the praises
of His people. Because, you see, the Lord moves
people. He doesn't need skillful people. He doesn't need people
that have talents. Oh, you've got this talent. You
ought to use that for the Lord. Well, the Lord doesn't need your
talent. Now, He may use your talent. He may have given you
that talent unto His praise and His glory, but He doesn't need
it. You see, He doesn't need eloquent
preachers. He doesn't need people that know
the Bible backwards and forwards and they know all the Greek and
the Hebrew and all those things. He may use that. He does use
that, I believe. Thank God for people that study
the Scriptures. But the Lord is able to speak
through an ass as He did to Babel. And He can still do the same
thing. You see, when the disciples First, again, their ministry,
the Pharisees, the Scriptures, they took knowledge. They said,
these are ignorant and unlearned men. These are fishermen. These
guys don't know nothing. But they took knowledge of them
that they had been with Jesus. Because I'm telling you, a man
who is taught by the Spirit of the living God knows more than
all of his teachers. David said that. He knows more. Because when the Lord teaches
a man the truth of God, no man can take that from him. It is
that which the Lord has brought to pass. O thou that inhabitest
the praises of His people, though He inhabitest eternity, He dwells
with those who are of a broken and a contrite heart. He will
not despise them, because He is the One that causes them to
have a broken and a contrite heart. Our fathers trusted in
thee. They trusted, and thou didst
deliver them." Now, some would say, they trusted
in Him, and yep, the Lord said, well, they are trusting in Me,
so I am going to deliver them. No. That is putting the cart
ahead of the horse there, brethren. They trusted in Him and He delivered
them. But He didn't deliver in them
because they trusted in Him. They trusted in Him because He
was their Deliverer. And they couldn't do anything
else but trust Him. They said, Lord, You are our
Deliverer. Oh, help us. And He delivered
them. He heard their cry because He
was the One that sent the power of the Spirit of God in them
to cause them to cry out to Him. Oh, that He might be praised.
Our Fathers trusted in Thee. They trusted and thou didst deliver
them." Now we look historically back at the children of God and
what do we see in them? They trusted the Lord. We look
at Daniel. What did he do? He trusted the
Lord. But did the Lord deliver Daniel out of the lions' den
because Daniel trusted the Lord? What if he didn't trust the Lord?
I imagine Daniel probably had some pretty strong trepidation,
wouldn't you? Whenever they threw him in that
lion's den, and here's all these lions down there, I don't imagine
he was just, you know, well, this is going to be great. No,
he probably figured, well, this is the end of the road here.
And I sure hope that teeth ain't all that sharp. But yet, because
we know that he trusted the Lord, why? because he got thrown in
there for trusting the Lord. So we know that he trusted the
Lord. And the Lord heard him. But the Lord heard him before
he ever was cast into the lives then because he belonged to Him. See, before Daniel ever was born,
before Daniel came out of Israel and was taken to Babylon, the
Lord loved him. And he moved in him and he trusted
the Lord. Our fathers trusted in thee. They trusted and thou didst deliver
them. Now are we encouraged by that? Of course we are. If we have a desire to trust
the Lord, now who in here trusts the Lord as much as they want
to? Anybody? No, nobody trusts the Lord. I
mean, the children of God don't trust the Lord as much as they
want to. I want to trust Him. I find my fearful and unbelieving
heart quite often not trusting Him. I get to thinking of my
own ways and ways that I can solve this problem and that problem,
and I can do this and I can do that. But our fathers trusted
Him. Now, were they just like us?
Yes, exactly. But see when you look, and we
talked about this when we were out at Brother Jerry's, this
came up in the meeting and in fact we talked about it on the
way out there, how that our lives are not snapshots. Now we look
at our lives as snapshots, do we not? And we see this picture
and we look at that one and this, that and the other, but our lives
are videos. I mean, it's like it's moving. It's constantly
moving. And you don't see everything that's taking place in this video. You can look at a picture and
after a while you can pretty much see everything that's in
there, right? But I mean, you take a video, you've got to watch
that thing over and over again because there's all kinds of
stuff happening in there. And the life of the children
of God is as that before the Lord. When the Scripture says
that Lot was a righteous man, does that mean that if you took
a snapshot of every day of Lot's life, was he a righteous man?
Of course not. Was David a righteous man every
day of his life? I mean, if you looked at what
David did, would you come to that conclusion? No. But you see, that's not the way
it is. The Lord brings His people from point A to point B as He
sees fit. And everything from point A to
point B is according to the good pleasure of His will. And everything
that transpires in our life is not a picture we want to cut
out and put in our wallet, is it? But oh, by the grace of God,
we say, thus far hath the Lord brought us. Oh, what a sweet
and precious promise it is, and an encouragement to the people
of God to know that the people of God stand in historical perspective
as those who trusted the Lord. Don't believe it. Read the 11th
chapter of Hebrews. There it is, black and white.
These all died in faith. Brethren, that's the place we
want to be, is it not? To die in faith? I want to live
in faith. I want to die in faith. I want
to be a man of faith. Oh, Lord, work that in me. You
know, bring me to that place. They cried unto Thee, and they
were delivered. They trusted in Thee and were
not confounded. That is, their base desire was
not turned over. Now, there are a lot of times,
you know, every little thing we ask for we don't always receive. And so when the Scripture says,
they cried unto thee and were delivered, does that mean that
everybody that was thrown into a fiery furnace was rescued out
of it like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? No. I mean, history
is full of multitudes of people who were slain by lions, went through all sorts of tortures
and things for the glory of Christ, but all of them, everyone who
was in Christ, regardless of what happened, would testify
before the throne of God this very thing. We cried unto thee
and we were delivered. Oh, the Lord delivers people
in different ways. It is not always a physical manifestation
of deliverance, but He does indeed deliver His people faithfully,
and indeed they were not confounded. How often is this taught in the
Scriptures that they shall not be ashamed. That is, when all
is said and done, those who have fled for refuge to Christ shall
not be confounded. They are not going to be ashamed.
They are not going to wake up one day and say, man, that was
a waste of time. No, they are going to be happy
because they have been given that which they long for. They
cried unto Thee and they were delivered. They trusted in Thee
and were not confounded. And we are going to stop right
there. But I would like you to think
a little on that next verse, but I am a worm. Now a lot of
people don't like that. In fact, some of the hymn books,
they've taken words like that out. Oh no, we're not worms. What did the Lord say to Jacob?
He said, Thou worm, Jacob. A worm. What the word really
means is a maggot. I mean, that's even worse. I
mean, you wouldn't mind being an earthworm, but you wouldn't want to be a
maggot, would you? But that's what it means. It means you're
just a maggot. And yet, the glorious thing is
God has mercy on maggots. He has mercy on such as we are. And may we ever be found praising
His name, worshiping Him who is holy, who inhabits the praises
of His people.