When Jacob the Worm Met God the Helper

Sometimes, life knocks you down so hard that you feel like a lowly worm and that the whole world is out to get you. “Everything is against me,” said Jacob after he lost his wife and his son. But the good news is that God helps the lowly:

“Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel; I will help you,” declares the Lord… (Is. 41:14)

It may shock you to hear God calling Jacob a worm, but it should reassure us to hear God refer to himself as “the mighty One of Jacob” (e.g., Is. 49:26). Here is what a certain Victorian preacher said about that:

What a combination! Thou worm Jacob, the Mighty One of Jacob! A worm united to Omnipotence! What is so weak and worthless as a worm! What is so mighty as the Mighty One of Jacob! I want to tell the story—not of Jacob, but Jacob’s God; not of a man, but the all-sufficient God displacing man and substituting his own infinite fullness.

That preacher was A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the trainer of countless missionaries. In 1899, A.B. Simpson preached a series of sermons entitled “But God.” In it, he examined how the grace of God changes the lives of people like Jacob.

If ever there was a man that deserved to be called a worm, it was the supplanting son of Isaac. And yet this was the man whom God selected from among all the patriarchs to be head of Israel’s tribes and the real founder of the covenant people to whom was committed the oracles of God. Therefore, Jacob is more especially fitted to set forth the grace of God than any other of the Bible characters.

While preparing my series on the Patriarchs, I stumbled across Simpson’s brilliant sermon “The God of Jacob.” It’s a zinger.

God chose this man to prove that there is no class of humanity so hard, so hopeless, as not to be within reach of sovereign grace, indeed, that God loves a hard case and that “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” If there is someone reading these lines who is discouraged about himself, remember Jacob, and then remember Jacob’s God, the One that could choose a worm and make him a prince with God and with men.

In his classic sermon, A.B. Simpson tells the story of how God’s grace turned Jacob the Sinner into Israel the Patriarch. (I highly recommend reading the whole sermon. I have edited it for modern readers and will post it on my Patreon page.)

Simpson says that everyone comes to a crisis point – “one night of loneliness, one hour of deep trouble” – where God reveals himself to them as he did to Jacob at Bethel. From that moment, we know God is real and that he is our Friend. In our crisis, we choose whether to trust him and rely on him.

“The greatest need of every human heart,” says Simpson, “is to know the resources and sufficiency of God.” Our greatest need is to quit relying on ourselves, and trust fully in his grace.

God is good – we all say it. But knowing that God is good to me and that he longs to reveal his goodness every day is something we may have trouble believing.

“Surely his goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,” said the Psalmist, and we say those words too. But saying and knowing are different things. We need to preach this good news to ourselves until we are fully assured and totally convinced, otherwise we’ll take the long, hard route of Jacob.

I’m no better than Jacob. I have low moments of worry and fear, just like anyone. And I know that life would be better if I daily took God at his word.

The ruin of the human race came by discrediting and doubting God’s word to our first parents. ‘Has God said?’ was the fountain of all sin. ‘God has said’ is the foundation, therefore, of our restoration.

Happily, God never leaves us in our lowly, doubting state. When we worry and tremble, he does not wash his hands of us and walk away. Our heavenly Father stays with us. He remains faithful even when we are not.

Such is the mighty One of Jacob.