DIVINE TOUCHES

^[p. 387] DIVINE TOUCHES

Luke 5: 12, 13; 1 Kings 19: 3 - 8; Revelation 1: 17 - 20

These scriptures speak of divine touches. They are mentioned many other times elsewhere but I have selected these as bearing upon those who serve in the things of God. Of course, we are all to serve. We find very young people serving in Scripture, the most exceptional is the maid employed in the house of Naaman the Syrian. She served his wife in material things but she served him, a great man, in spiritual things. She served with feeling and effectively. The service culminated in his cure from his leprosy. Let every young one here think of that: how much she or he might do as laying himself out to serve. I have in mind persons who, like the apostle Paul, could say, “Ourselves your bondmen for Jesus’ sake”, 2 Corinthians 4: 5. Such a one had been divinely touched; a touch of Christ passing on himself, as it were, in a characteristic sense in the service; so that the service or services are to take on character from Christ. Luke would have this in mind.

So I have Peter in view in reading these two verses. It is Peter’s chapter, this chapter 5. The crisis had passed; he was converted. Luke treats of Peter peculiarly. He is not called Peter in this gospel until this chapter; he is called Simon. He is not called Peter until he makes his confession. Everyone has to make his confession; and that is not the confession of faith that is written for everybody. Each has his own to make. David wrote his; he wrote it poetically, too; it was his confession. He had first-aid in his confession. The one who convicted him stood by him; he was not left to himself to make his first confession. Nathan stood by him; he needed support. And so Nathan says, “Thou art the man!”.

^[p. 388] He had recourse to a parable to reach that man’s conscience, the king’s conscience, and he selected a good method. It succeeded admirably, so that he finishes up, “Thou art the man!”, 2 Samuel 12: 7. David says, “I have sinned against Jehovah”; he is smitten in his conscience. He had sinned against others too, but he kept to that thought. Later he says, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in thy sight”, Psalm 51: 4. He had sinned against Urijah the Hittite and others, but he is quick in his acknowledgment: “I have sinned against Jehovah”. He did not write the psalm then; he weighed it over as the sin became enlarged in his mind. It is not to be hidden, not to be forgotten, not to be concealed under a pious exterior; it is written down for the coming generations; we might say, for a thousand generations. It was his confession. Nathan stood by him at the first confession. He rendered what we may call first-aid to a man that needed it, for conviction of sin is terrible unless there is remission of sin. Thank God there is remission! And the one who convicted him announced remission. “Jehovah has also put away thy sin: thou shalt not die” (verse 13). He deserved to die, and he knew it. What a volume of grace entered into Nathan’s heart! God put it there, so that he could speak aright to the convicted sinner. “Jehovah has also put away thy sin: thou shalt not die”.

It was so with Peter. This is not his great sin; that comes in later in this gospel. This is one that he confesses, or the state he confesses. I am connecting my remarks with him for the moment, because the chapter is really, as you might say, Peter’s. He, like David, is outstanding as a servant, “First, Simon, who was called Peter”; but Luke reserves his name “Peter” until he confesses. I shall not get my spiritual designation until I confess my sin; I mean, until I make my confession. You may say that I am ^[p. 389] preaching the gospel. No, I am not; I am preaching to saints. But, of course, it is the gospel; but it is instruction, I hope, for saints. This is a question of my confession. This is Peter’s chapter in that sense. The Lord had been to his house and healed his mother-in-law, but He does not call him Peter. It is as he falls down at Jesus’ knees. It was not merely the effect of gravity, the weight of his body; it was an act of his own to fall, to prostrate himself, as it were, at the knees of the Saviour. No safer place for a sinner! Oh, you say, you are using the word ‘sinner’! It is well, dear brethren, to retain that word as one of the names attaching to each of us. Retain it! There is moral glory attached to it as retained by a forgiven sinner; and a forgiven sinner is a lover of Jesus. There is a moral glory attached to the word ‘sinner’ as he retains it as applied to him. How can I use the word ‘Saviour’ unless I retain the word ‘sinner’ or ‘lost one’? So the greatest saint, I suppose (I venture to say the greatest saint) says he was the chief of sinners, many years after he became the greatest saint. That was Paul. Another man called Simon retained his name, too. It is an added name, a hyphenated one, if you wish to call it that, Simon the leper; there is moral glory attached to that, and he would not give it up; I am sure he did not. The more the sense of forgiveness, the more the sense of the righteousness of God, the more power I have in retaining what I have been. It is to exalt Christ that He has saved me in spite of that. “Simon the leper” was not a leper when the Lord Jesus was anointed in his house. There was no contamination with him then; still, he was “Simon the leper”. The Lord, the Saviour, who was about to die for him, sat by his side. How Simon would look at Jesus on that memorable night or day, when some woman came in and anointed the head of the Lord Jesus, anointed His head. I suppose no one in that house,

^[p. 390] other than Christ and the woman, valued that action in the house of Simon the leper.

The matter of leprosy comes into this chapter, and Peter had already indicated that he was a leper. The Lord had been in his house; he was another Simon, but he was not called ‘Simon the leper’. He had seen his mother-in-law healed of her fever, and he had seen her serving, too. She served him, too, as well as the Lord: “She served them”, it says. But he is not yet called anything but Simon; but when he makes his confession according to this chapter, he is Simon Peter. He has got his spiritual name. Each of us has that, you know. It is well to get it, because it belongs to you; it is your honour. Some great personages have a lot of names; you wonder how they remember them. Well, there is room for names that carry moral glories, the leper, the sinner, but a spiritual name is that which abides in eternity. Simon will not be called the leper in heaven; I am certain of that. Peter will be the name by which the apostle will be known there. The Lord says in John, “Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas (which interpreted is stone)”, John 1: 42.

That will be his name. So he is called Simon Peter here. He has a name that is to abide, and I have no doubt that Peter coming into the chapter runs through, and this remarkable identification by Christ with this leper would imply what Peter was to Him. He stretched out His hand and touched the leper. The word ‘touch’ is not simply that; it is a handling of the person. Who could do it but Jesus! He is going to take on all that, you know, and to relieve His servant of it as in Peter’s case, so that his conscience should not smite him in his service. How serious it is if one’s conscience smites one as he seeks to serve the Lord! It cripples him. One must remember the touch of the hand of Christ; that is, His complete identification with the leper; it is complete. It is ^[p. 391] not a mere touch; it is a full handling. The Lord is securing him; identifying Himself with him; but He is securing him. This will never be forgotten. If I had sin trouble and were near Peter, I would go to Peter. I do not know of any man I would go to quicker than Peter; or any of those men, Paul or David, who were handled in this way by the Saviour’s going and taking on all their leprosy. He is going to bear the full weight of it in death; but He never loses sight of the leper. As the apostle Paul says, “In that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Galatians 2: 20. He knew the Lord had him in His heart when He died. “Who has loved me”; he does not say, ‘who loves me’; of course He loved Paul right along, but “who has loved me”, that is, when He died, He loved him, “and given himself for me”. Think of what Paul was in the Lord’s heart, dear brethren. The whole vision was in the Lord’s mind of these great men that He would use. He laid hold of the leper; He handled him. “I will; be thou cleansed: and immediately the leprosy departed from him”. He would have them in His mind. “Who has loved me”, says the apostle in the past tense, and in loving me He gave Himself for me. What a power that was in the soul of the greatest of sinners, that the Saviour loved him when He died for him, gave Himself for him.

Well now, I have spoken of David and Paul and Peter, and of course I am not speaking for them. It is for those of us who are here. The Lord is using a good many of us, thank God; He needs more, but we are to be used as going through these experiences, coming under His touch. Think of the sense of the touch of the Saviour in dealing with our state-it is state here. Peter says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord”, Luke 5: 8. That is leprosy; the Lord dealt with it.

^[p. 392] Well now, I have spoken of these great servants, and the next one I want to speak about is Elijah, one of the greatest of the Old Testament saints. It was he, you know, who came out with Moses on the mount and spoke with Jesus. What did they speak with Jesus about on the mount? Some of us may not have noticed much, some of us have. They were speaking with Jesus. You say perhaps, It ought to be Jesus speaking to them. No. The speaking on the mount was to bring out the greatness of the heavenly saints; the greatness of Jesus, of course, transcending all; for He alone was transfigured, but these two men appeared in glory. It was a robe of glory in which they appeared; they appeared in glory speaking with Him. And Luke tells us they were speaking about His death. How beautiful that is! How the Lord loved to hear them, and how He loves to listen to us at His Supper as we sit there and speak to Him about His death; it was that which should be accomplished at Jerusalem. I think the word is ‘exodus’, that is, His outgoing. But think of the way He did it: that He should go out at Jerusalem, “the great city, which is called spiritually Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11: 8), and Moses and Elijah were speaking about that; they had come out of heaven. I suppose they had seen wonderful things up there; I know we shall see wonderful things and persons. But they are not speaking to the Lord on the mount about what was in heaven, but what He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Elijah was one of them, so he is greatly honoured, and worthy of the honour conferred upon him, too. One would have liked to hear what Moses said to the Lord at that time! We are not told in detail what they said; we are told of the subject they were engaged with; but you would have loved to hear Moses say to the Lord something about His death. You know how much he was engaged in the types with the death of Jesus. What ^[p. 393] a conversation it must have been! How the Lord would listen! He is a Listener; a Speaker, of course; His name is “The Word”, “The Word of God”; referring to His speaking, it says, “Never man spoke thus, as this man speaks”, John 7: 46. But He could listen too. I would urge upon all never to fail to speak to Him; He is always ready to listen sympathetically. They were speaking, not about themselves, but about His decease, or His exit, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.

Now Elijah was there and so he is in the great company of servants, the leading servants of God. But he is fleeing now from a woman. I do not need to go into the details; he is fleeing from Jezebel. She sent a message to him that gave him just one day to live. Think of the hard, imperious character of that woman! I suppose she is the worst woman mentioned in Scripture; she is carried down to New Testament times in the book of Revelation, Jezebel. She teaches; she is a teacher; but she sends a message to the great servant of God and says, “So do the gods to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time!”, 1 Kings 19: 2. I will give you twenty-four hours and you will be like one of the prophets of Baal. How sure she is! Sometimes you hear persons in the world speak with such assurance. Very often their assurances are lies and they know it; but she meant it. She had assurance that she could take that man’s life in twenty-four hours. You know how she got Naboth’s life. It is similar. She knew how to do it; she was trained in wickedness, educated in wickedness.

Well, Elijah fled for his life. You could understand how he came under the power of the thing for the moment, and yet he had stood up against eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and of the groves, and Ahab with them; but here is one woman and he flees, flees from her. Well, the facts are all known to you, I ^[p. 394] suppose; but I want to call attention to a statement here that he went down to Beer-sheba; and in saying this, the Spirit of God says that city belonged to Judah. What was the point in staying there? Well, think of what a man like Elijah would contemplate when he came to Beer-sheba. Beer-sheba? Why, he ought to have said, if he did not, My father Abraham was in this place; he planted a grove in this place. He entered into covenant with Abimelech in this place. He gave Abimelech seven ewe lambs to indicate the spirit he was in. And he worshipped Jehovah; he called on Jehovah, the eternal God, in this place. Undoubtedly Elijah knew that. Why, beloved, it ought to have turned him back, the very thought of Beer-sheba! Think of Judah! Who was Judah? He refers to the counsels of God in the tribes; the sovereign action of God; he who prevailed above his brethren; he from whom came the ruler who had come and gone, David. But it is the Messiah; he should be reminded of the Messiah who would do everything and tell everything. The very name Beer-sheba, the well of the oath, ought to have diverted him from his journey and directed him back whence he came, to Ahab and Jezebel. Could the eternal God not stand by him? Certainly! What a word it is! He left his servant there and went off into the wilderness. It seems to me he must have felt uncomfortable, a man out of the way. For that is the truth; there he was on the wrong way. He must have felt uncomfortable in the surroundings of the city of Beer-sheba. Everything spoke of God. God appeared to Jacob in this very city. Why should he not think of these things? I suppose he did. He must have been uncomfortable. He went out into the wilderness and lay down under a juniper bush and went to sleep. What a picture of a great servant! What a sorrowful picture! What must heaven have thought of it!

^[p. 395] Well, heaven was thinking of him and watching him on every step of his journey, and one of the emissaries of God, an angel, came there. What a God we have to serve! As someone has said, If I turn away from God, what will He do? He will shine on my back!

He was shining on Elijah’s back, you might say. His back was on the land of promise; his face was toward Horeb. What for? To resign his commission! Think of the sorrowfulness of it! Giving up such an honourable service; the service of such a God; service in which he had been so signally honoured. Going to resign!

Well, God says, Elijah, I feel for you; you are going a long way, and you know the wilderness of Sinai, a perfect wilderness. It is a terrible wilderness; it is called a great and terrible wilderness. You wonder how he survived at all traversing that wilderness. It is a wilderness of death but God took account of His servant in his unfaithfulness. Let us be encouraged in entering on the service of God, that it is such a God. Not that He gives licence for failure like this; not that He would encourage it at all. He would rebuke it as He did in this case; but nevertheless, the servant is His servant to Him; Elijah is still Elijah; the Elijah that would come out presently on the mount of transfiguration; He wanted him to do it. And so an angel touches him as he sleeps. It is a divine touch, I may say, because the angel is representative of God. “An angel touched him, and said to him, Arise, eat!” (verse 5). As we had lately, “Wake up, thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee”,

Ephesians 5: 14. The Christ was shining upon him; grace was there. In failure we need food. It is doubtful whether anybody ever will repent in failure unless you feed him. A cake was at his head, baked on hot coals. Think of heaven’s cakes! How wonderful it is that heaven comes down just to where we are,

^[p. 396] like the manna, bread from heaven. Man did eat angels’ food, the food of the mighty. But this is not manna. This is a cake baked on coals, and a cruse of water. This is nothing new to Elijah; bread and water were familiar enough to him. He waited in the house of the widow of Sarepta when things were scarce, but the cruse of oil did not run out, nor the barrel of meal. How he would be reminded that the very God that kept that widow and her son and him for a year was now baking cakes for him. How God would come into our vision to stir us up and comfort us, so that we might be true servants and not run away when we are attacked by a woman or anybody else, but stand our ground. “Be strong and very courageous”. And now God is reminding him of his prior history. The very God that kept him-he himself said to the woman of Sarepta, “Make me thereof a little cake first”, the very word ‘cake’. Now the angel was making a cake for him; God was doing it, you might say, and there was a cruse of water; all would remind him of what a God he had to do with. Let us know God! “Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me”, Jeremiah 9: 24. You are pulled up at once as something comes to your mind that reminds you of God; and that is the point here. It is a question of cakes entering in so distinctly into Elijah’s history. And he takes the cake and the water and goes to sleep again. It is a remarkable history. You say, The sleep was good for him. Of course it was, but God is waiting on him until he gets another sleep. How comforting it is! You go to bed and God waits on you, and the next night the same thing. Maybe the next day you need a sleep.

God looks after you in sleep as in wakefulness. And the second time He came and touched him. What is all this about? Will he ever forget those touches? Never! Two divine touches, and two divine meals. The angel says, “Arise, eat; for the journey is too great for thee”. There is another meal, and he eats again (verse 7). What sympathy in heaven for us! Are we seeking to serve the Lord? Let no one shrink from it. If God opens up a line of service, do not shrink from it. Such a God is your God. There is divine food, so that the way is traversed. God would have him to go the whole length of that road, and as he ended the journey, God says, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”. His answer is a complaint against the people of God. God does not like that. As soon as a servant begins to speak against the people of God in a characteristic way he has lost his commission. You cannot serve people unless you respect them; you cannot love them unless you respect them. And Elijah was speaking against the people of God. He thought there was not a single man but himself that was faithful to God, whereas Paul says, “But what says the divine answer to him?”. Listen to that answer. “I have left to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed knee to Baal”, Romans 11: 4. That is what God said; God had reserved them to Himself; but Elijah is speaking against them. How sorrowful all this is! How ready we are to speak against the people of God, and maybe the most honoured of them. “But what says the divine answer to him?”. That is how Paul puts it; he himself knew what it was to be spoken against. Think of that man at Corinth where he had worked so faithfully. They said of him, “His presence in the body weak, and his speech naught”, 2 Corinthians 10: 10. “But what says the divine answer to him? I have left to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed knee to Baal”. At the end of the journey that question comes up and Elijah tells the old story; and there was an earthquake and a fire; God was not in either. But all these are symbolic of divine power, what God could do with Jezebel. How quickly He could have withered her up with any of these powers, and yet ^[p. 398] Elijah fled from her. But God was not in any of them. God could use one of those at a distance; God does not need to be in them, but He operates through them. And now Elijah comes out and hears a still small voice. God takes up Elijah and uses him again, sending him to anoint Elisha and others, meaning that God will get His purpose. If I do not do the work He has given me to do, someone else will; but if I love God I will do what I can. That is the idea, and Elijah was used again. God in grace restored him. Now just a word about John in Revelation; he, too, is a great servant. I just wanted to show how the touch is to affect us in our actual service. The Lord says to John in verse 18, “I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”. And in verse 17 it says, “He laid his right hand upon me”,

His right hand. That is, I come now to the last word; it is a question of your very best. The Lord is saying this to you in touching you with His right hand; it does not say His right hand touched the leper or that the angel’s right hand touched Elijah; but John is in full service. He is in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, in prison for the testimony. There is no rebuke for John. The Lord puts His right hand upon him; He means to give him to realise that his very best is to be put into the service. The Lord is saying, I have put My very best into the service. The right hand is symbolic of one’s best in service; and the Lord is saying to us tonight, Whatever little bit you undertake to do, do it with your might. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might”. It is not an optional matter. “Cursed be he that doeth the work of Jehovah negligently”, Jeremiah 48: 10. That is a most solemn word. People think they can make the Lord’s work a mere side-line, but the Lord does not like that. He wants you to put your whole strength into the thing. As John says, “That we may not lose what we have wrought, but may receive full wages”,

(^[p. 399] 2 John 8); you want to get all the wages. Love will tell you what wages to expect. It is no selfish matter at all. The Lord puts His right hand upon him and tells him, “I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”. What a mighty Person is speaking! All powerful! And He is saying, I put all My strength into the service that God committed to Me, and I want you to take it on. John was working faithfully; Now, the Lord says, there are three things you have got to attend to. There are three things, one, two, three, that you are to write about. I just wanted to say that we must learn to be in order in our service. It is very important, I believe, in service, especially if you are speaking to the saints, if you have your number one, two, three; because we are built that way. Our minds are created that way to take in mathematics, so to speak; to take in the order of one, two, three. It is to keep things in their order; it is a question of order. So the Lord is saying to us tonight, If you are going to speak or write for the saints or to the saints, see to it that things are in order; that you are understood. There is the intelligence and the intelligible; that is, what I have got and what I can convey. God has done that perfectly. The word ‘Logos’ (’The Word’) means that; it means the divine mind has come out in intelligence and intelligibility. There is intelligence, and there is intelligibility. God has made us that way. He has given us fingers and eyes and toes and hands-all on the principle of number. He is the God of measure; He is called that. Take Luke, for instance; Luke says, “It has seemed good to me also ... to write to thee with method” (Luke 1: 3); and there is no book in the Scriptures so easily understood as Luke. He writes with method. And so the Lord has put His right hand upon John and told him about Himself, and He says, “Write therefore what thou hast seen” (verse 19). That is number one. He says, in effect, If you are going to write a book,

^[p. 400] the first thing is what you see. He saw the Lord and the candlesticks and all this. The next thing you are to write is number two: “The things that are” what you have seen is preliminary. These things that are have continued on from the time the Lord spoke until I am speaking now, and they will go on still further. The little word ‘are’ is present tense, but it is now some seventeen or eighteen centuries old. That is a wonderful thing. John, you are to write that; that is number two, covering such a period of time. It is in the divine touch you can do this. He put His right hand upon him; this is the way; put your all into it. This book is called a sealed book by many, but it is not a sealed book, it is an opened book; that is, to those who have the Spirit of God it is very intelligible, but the Lord knew the difficulties that would attach to it, and He told John in effect, to write it very carefully in order and in all the strength that I am imparting to you. That is number two. And number three is “The things that are about to be after these”. The connection is in the word ‘and’. “Write therefore what thou hast seen, and the things that are, and the things that are about to be after these” (verse 19). There are three sets. So He has put it on John to write this book. There is no such care, as far as I know, expended on any other book as this. A great servant is taken up and treated in this way. He is the servant that Jesus loved; the most interesting, perhaps, of all the servants of God. He is the only one that is called the disciple whom Jesus loved; several times over he is called that. And the Lord has never forgotten that; He loves him just now as much as ever He did, when He was telling him this thing.

To be very simple, “the things that are” refer to the history of the assembly, the seven churches. “The things that are about to be after these” are what we find in the book from chapter 4 until the end. “The things that are about to be after these” will ^[p. 401] take up a great deal more space than the first two. The book is mainly “the things that are about to be after these”. That is a great practical outline of the history of Europe and the world that is seen in this book from chapter 4 until the end. I am now speaking about order in our service, that we present the truth in intelligence and intelligibility, so that those who hear may run, as it is said, “Write the vision, and engrave it upon tablets, that he may run that readeth it” (Habakkuk 2: 2), and that he that hears may know what it means and may “accept with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls”, James 1: 21.