God preaches divine wrath through the worm that sweetly consumes the defenseless dead: humiliation for sinners and a visible token of justice. The first death trains mortal eyes for the second, for Hell is the place “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
THE WORM. It is one of the smallest of God’s creatures. It is harmless to the living and defenseless when attacked. Nevertheless, it is a fierce consumer of the dead! The dead are violated by the worm. A corpse is defenseless before the worm. And the rotten meal is sweet to the worm! These are tokens of divine wrath: “…the worm shall feed sweetly on him”
The presence of the worm is nearly indistinguishable from death. It is a minister of corruption It is as the presence of death itself Unless you have beheld the worm at work you couldn’t possibly understand. When the worm meets with mortal men in the end, this can only mean one thing: HUMILIATION. “Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.” Death is the deglorification of Sinners. The worm defeats them. God is demonstrating divine wrath in real time through creation. He that hath an ear, let him hear.
The Creator designed creation to preach sermons to mankind. The worm sweetly feeding on the dead carcasses of wicked sinners is a process that satisfies the wrath of God. Divine justice kills sinners and removes them from the face of the earth The world is made better by one less sinner. The holy heart of God is cheered at a little less sadness
“Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the LORD, Omy soul. Praise ye the LORD.”— Psalms 104:35
Nevertheless, what about the afterlife? The same dreadful marvels accompany the 2nd Death. The tokens of divine wrath that accompany the 1st Death are harnessed by God and adapted to meet with tormented souls in Hell, or what we could call the 2nd Death (Rev. 2:11, ). In retrospect, we can see that the 1st Death was teaching sinners about the horrors of the 2nd Death all along! It pleases a benevolent God to force sinners to encounter the rotting corpses of dead things as they go about their business in their earthly lives. As a medicine to the soul it would do them good to take a long hard look at the unsightly mess of rotting death: see how it looks, imagine how it feels, and be nauseated with horror at the smell!
The worm, as an instrument of divine wrath in the 1st Death, is employed by God even after physical death – the worm will sweetly feed on the spirits and bodies of sinners in the Lake of Fire for their outrageous and unthinkable wickedness before a Holy God! Herein, God’s wrath will be forever satisfied in the destruction of transgressors God has appointed the worm for this cause Speaking of this, Jesus of Nazareth spoke about the torments of Hellfire, quoting Isaiah, saying that it is a place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" This should make mortal men and devils horribly afraid ( James 2:19).
Somewhere up on high, at the peak of the slopes of glory, as one is going up on the sides of the north, there sits a King who is exalted above the Stars of God (Isa. 14:13-14,Heb. 12:22).
O! Mr. P____, I am not prepared to die; there is a God; the Bible is true! O, pray for me! pray God to spare me a few days till I shall know I am saved!
It has often been remarked, that people who have passed into the other world cannot come back to tell us what they have seen; but I am so near the eternal world,
Job speaks less of his physical suffering and more about his personal confusion about the situation. Job’s physical suffering is truly unfathomable without comprehending his confusion. The fact that Job feels condemned before God is the crux of the matter!
Dying men sometimes pray for death. Mortally ill people who teeter on the brink of death for a prolonged period of time sometimes give into these desires. However, even believers can be driven to this dark place through spiritual illness.
Job claims that if his grievous calamity were to be “thoroughly weighed” in a balance, so as to determine its weight, then “it would be heavier than the sand of the sea” (Job 6:3)!
