Hungry for the Human Touch.
God hungers for the human touch. There's an inner hesitancy in saying
this, and in hearing it. We feel it can hardly be so, even though our
inner hearts would wish it were so.
We know that we men hunger for the human touch, the strongest of us. And
in our hour of sore need we know that our inner hearts look up, and wish
we could have a really close touch with God. Well, this is a bit of the
image of God in us. We were made so, like Himself. In seeing ourselves
here, we are getting a closer look at the heart of God. He longs for the
human touch. When He made us He breathed into our nostrils the breath of
His own life. And this is not simply a bit of the first Genesis chapter.
It is a bit of every human life. There's the breath of God in every new
life born into the world. He gives a bit of Himself. We are not complete
creatively until part of Himself has come to be part of us.
And Jesus' coming was but the same thing put in yet more intense, close,
appealing shape to us. He came to get us in touch again after the break
of sin. He gave His blood that we might have life again after the
sin-break had broken off our life, and commenced to dry it up. This was an
even closer touch. The breath of God came in Eden to breathe in our lungs.
The blood of His Son came on Calvary to give life-action to our hearts.
Could there be anything to make clearer His hunger for the human touch?
The Holy Spirit's presence spells out the same thing once more. There has
been every sort of thing to induce Him to go away. He has been ignored,
left out of all reckoning, and talked against. Yet with a patience beyond
what that word means to us, He has remained creatively in every man as the
very breath of his life. And He comes and remains the very breath of the
spirit life in those who yield to His pleading call.
Jesus was God coming after us. We had gone away. He came to woo us back
into close touch again. He came to the nation of Israel, that through it
He might reach out to all men. When He comes again it will be again to use
Israel as His messenger, while He Himself will be present on the earth in
a new way to woo men to Himself. When that nation's leaders rejected
John's announcement, and so rejected our Lord Jesus, He began to appeal to
individual men, while waiting for the nation. And the work with
individuals was also His call to the nation.
So the chief thing He did was to call men. His presence was a call, and
the crowds flocked to Him wherever He went. His life of purity and
sympathy was felt as an earnest call and responded to eagerly. His doings
were a very intense call. Every healed man and woman, every one set free
of demon influence, every one of the fed multitudes, felt called to this
man who had helped him so. His teaching was a continual call, and His
preaching. But above all else stood out the personal call He gave men. For
our Lord Jesus was not content to deal with the crowds simply; He dealt
with men one by one in intimate heart touch.
Called to Go.
There are a number of invitations He used in calling men. It was as though
in His eagerness He used every sort that might go home. And yet there was
more than this; these invitations are like successive steps up into the
life He wanted them to have. He said, "Come unto Me."[28] This was always
the first, and still remains first. It led, and it leads, into rest of
heart and life, peace with God. He quickly followed it with "Come ye after
Me."[29] They must come to Him before they could come after Him. This was
found to mean discipleship, learning the road. He would "make" them like
Himself in going after others. He said, "take My yoke upon you."[30]This
meant a bending down to get into the yoke, a surrender of will and heart
to Himself, and then partnership, fellowship side-by-side with Himself.
Then He spoke another word to the innermost circle, on the night in which
He was betrayed. He had a long talk that evening with the eleven around
the supper table, and walking down to the grove of olives at the Brook of
the Cedars.[31] Several times that evening He used this new word, "abide,"
"abide in Me." That means staying with Him, not leaving, living
continuously with Him. It means a continued separation from anything that
would separate from Him. And then it means a fulness of life coming from
Himself into us as we draw all our life from Himself, a rich ripeness, a
rounded maturity, a depth of life, and these always becoming
more,--richer, rounder, deeper.
Then after the awful days of the cross were past, on the evening of the
resurrection day, in the upper room with ten of the inner disciples, He
practically said, "You be Myself"; "as the Father sent Me, even so send I
you"[32]; "You be I." I wonder if any one of us has ever been taken or
mistaken for the Lord Jesus. We would never know it, of course. But He
meant it to be so.
A Scottish lady missionary in India tells of a Bible class of girls which
she had. She was teaching them about the life and character of the
Lord Jesus. One day a new girl came in, fresh from the heathenism in
which she grew up, knowing nothing of the Gospel. She listened, and then
became quite intense and excited in her childish way, as she heard them
talking about some One, how good He was, how gentle, how He was always
teaching and helping the people around Him. At last she could restrain her
eagerness no longer, but blurted out, "I know that man; he lives near us."
It was found that she did not know about Christ, but supposed they were
speaking of a very earnest native Christian man living in her
neighbourhood. She had mistaken her neighbour for Jesus. How glad that man
must have been if he ever knew. This was a part of our Lord's plan.
And at the very end, these successive invitations took the shape of a
command, which was both a permission and an order,--"Go ye."[33] Men who
had taken to heart, one after another, these invitations were ready for
the command. They would be eager for it. The invitations were the Master's
preparation for the command. He could trust such men to go, and to keep
steady and true as they went, in the power He gave them. There is one word
that you find in all these invitations--"Me." They all centre about the
Lord Jesus. He is the centre of gravity drawing every one, in ever growing
nearness and meaning, to Himself. It is only when we have been drawn into
closest touch with Him that we are qualified to "go" to others. It's only
Himself in us, only as much of Himself as is in us, that will be helpful
to any one else, or will make any one else willing to break with his old
way. He is the only magnet to draw men away from the old life up to
Himself.
"Follow Me."
But there's one other invitation which belongs in this list. It proves to
be the greatest of them all, because you come to find it includes all
these others. It's His "Follow Me." It seems at first glance to be the
same as that "Come after Me." But it is the word He repeated again and
again, under different circumstances, with added explanations, to the same
men, until you feel that He meant it to stand out as the great invitation
to His disciples. It seems to mean different things at different times.
That is to say, it grew in its significance. It came to mean more than it
had seemed to.
Peter is a good illustration here. The word really came to him five times,
with a different, an added, meaning each time. His first following meant
acquaintance.[34] John the Herald had sent his disciples, John and Andrew,
along after Jesus as He was walking one day on the Jordan river road. They
followed Jesus to their first acquaintance in a two hours' talk, which
quite satisfied their hearts as to who He was. John never forgot that
first following. Every detail of it stands out in his memory when long
years after he began to write his story of the Master. Andrew went at once
to hunt up Peter, and brought him face-to-face with his newly found Friend
and Master. That interview settled things for Peter. Andrew's following
now included his. Following meant the beginning of the personal friendship
which was to mean so much for both of them.
It was about a year after, that "Follow Me" had a new meaning to Peter and
some others.[35] The invitation was an illustrated one this time,
illustrated by a living picture of just what it meant. It was one morning
by the Lake of Galilee. Peter and his partners had had a poor night's
fishing, and were out on shore washing their nets. The Master had come
along, with a great crowd pressing in to get closer and hear better. There
was danger of the crowd pushing the Master into the water. The Master
borrowed Peter's boat for a pulpit. Peter sat facing the crowd while the
Master talked to them.
Was that the first time the spell of a crowd began to get its subtle
heart-hold on Peter as he looked into their hungry eyes? Who can withstand
the great appeal of the crowd's eyes? Not our Lord, nor any that have
caught His spirit. Then the great draught of fishes, after the fishless
night, made Peter feel the Master's power. Fishes would make him feel it,
being a fisherman, as nothing else would. The sense of Jesus' power, and
with it a sense of purity--interesting how the power made him feel the
purity--this brought him to his knees at our Lord's feet with the
confession of his own sinfulness.
Peter was greatly moved that morning, greatly shaken. A new experience of
tremendous power had come to him. And out of it came a new life, a radical
change as he left the old occupation, fishing, boats, father, means of
livelihood, and entered upon the new life. "Follow Me" meant a radical
change of life, constant companionship with Jesus, sharing His life, going
to school, getting ready for leadership and service; yes, and for
suffering too. He entered the Master's itinerant training school that
morning. A man needs a sight of the Lord Jesus' power, a _feel_ of it,
before he is fit to serve, or even to go to school to get ready for
service.
It was some months after this that another meaning grew into the words
"Follow Me," and grew out of them. The words are not spoken this time, but
acted. Out of the group of disciples that He had gathered about Him our
Lord prayerfully chose out Peter with the others to be sent out as His
messenger to others.[36]Part of the schooling was over; now a new part, a
new term of school, was to begin. He gave them a special talk that
morning, and sent them out to teach and heal and do for the crowds what
He had been doing.
He called them Apostles, Sent-ones, Missionaries. "Follow Me" now meant
going to others. It meant more--_power_, power to do for men all the
Master Himself had done. First, power felt that early morning by the lake,
now power given. That was a great advance in training. Power had to be
felt before it could be given, and has to be felt before it can be used.
Only as the power takes hold of our inner hearts to the feeling point,
will it ever take hold of others. And no life is changed through our
service till power takes hold of us to _the feeling point_.
The Deeper Meaning.
But there was a special session of the "Follow Me" school one day, a very
serious session.[37]They had to be shown the red threads in the weave of
the word. The words had to be held under the knife, so they could look
into the cut, and see the deeper meaning. "Follow Me" had to take deeper
hold of them yet, if His power was to get the deeper hold of them, and, by
and by, get hold of the needy crowds. The very setting of the words gives
the new meaning to them. John had felt the keen edge of Herod's axe blade,
and was now in the upper presence. They were up in the far northern part
because of the growing danger threatening Him by the leaders.
It is the turning point where our Lord Jesus begins to tell them that He
was to suffer. Their ears _could_ not take in the words. Their dazed eyes
show that they think they could not have heard aright,--He to _suffer!_
What could this mean? They hadn't figured on this when they left the nets
and boats to follow. There had been a rosy glamour filling impulsive
Peter's self-confident sky. Now this black storm cloud! Then to Peter's
foolhardy daring came words spoken with a new intense quietness that made
the words quiver: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross daily and 'Follow Me.'"[38]
This was startling to a terrific degree. Here was a new, strange,
perplexing combination--"deny himself," and "cross," coupled with His
"Follow Me." What could He mean? This was surely some of His intensely
figurative language again, they think. Yes, it surely was; and it stood
for a yet intenser experience. "Follow Me" means sacrifice. It means a
going down as well as a going up. And it proves to mean that one can go up
in power and service, only as far as he has gone down in the obedience
that includes sacrifice. Did Peter take in the meaning that day? I think
not. Actions speak louder than words.
That betrayal night a few short months after, when the actual cross was
almost in actual sight, he "followed Him afar off."[39] Without knowing
it, that was as far as he had ever really followed thus far. He wanted to
keep as "far off" from that cross as possible. He always had. He baulked
at its first mention, baulked tremendously. Yet he "followed." Poor Peter!
he was in a terrible strait betwixt two, this wondrous Master whom he
really loved, and this threatening cross of nails and thongs and thorns.
It was a stiff struggle between heart and flesh; between the longing of
his love and the shrinking from pain and hardship and shame. And Peter's
kinsfolk are still having the same struggle. A great many stop here. This
is going _too_ far! They prefer staying by the easier "Follow Me's," and
forgetting this one. Yes, and go on living powerless lives, and engaging
in powerless service, when the crowds were never so needy.
Peter didn't follow this time. The road was too rough. He stumbled and
fell badly. Badly? Still no worse than many others. When he got up he was
still facing the same way. You can always tell a man's mettle by the way
he faces as he gets up after a bad fall.
Six months or so after there came another "Follow Me," to Peter. No, it
wasn't another; it was the same one, the one he hadn't accepted. Peter was
to have another opportunity at the same place where he fell so badly. How
patient our Lord Jesus was--and is.
It was one morning just after breakfast--a rare breakfast--on the edge of
the lake, after as poor a night's fishing as that other time.[40] Again
the touch of power revealed the Master's presence. Again Peter had a
special word with the Master while the others are hauling in the fish. Now
breakfast's over and the seven are grouped about the One, listening. The
Lord's quiet skilled hand touches the heart meaning of "Follow Me." Its
real meaning is a love meaning. Do you love? Then "Follow Me." Then you
_must_ follow, your love draws you after, even though the path be rough
and broken. This is the same "Follow Me" that Peter baulked at so badly
months before. Its meaning had not changed. It would mean a death, Peter
is plainly told. But now Peter baulks no longer. The Master's great love
had taught Him how really to love. And now not even a cross for himself
would or could keep him from following close up to such a Master.
Here is the meaning of "Follow Me" as it worked out in Peter's
experience--acquaintance, a new life, schooling, service, a sight of
sacrifice, and a baulking, then--a sight of Jesus on the cross, and then a
willingness to go on even though it meant the sorest sacrifice. This is an
etching of the road Peter actually went, an etching in black and white,
with the black very black. Is it a picture of your road? But perhaps you
have never filled out the last part--still back at that baulking place. In
the thick of our present life, in the noise and din of the street of
modern life, comes as of old the quiet, clear, insistent call "Follow Me."
Getting in Behind.
But, some one says, how can we really follow this Lone Man, our Lord Jesus
Christ? He was so pure in His life, stainless in motive, and unstained in
character. And we--well, the nearer we get to Him the more instinctively
we find Peter's lakeshore cry starting up within, "I am a sinful man." His
very presence makes us feel the sin, the sin-instinct, the old selfish
something within. How can we really follow? And the answer that comes is a
real answer. It answers the inner heart-cry.
It is this: we begin where He ended. The cross was the end of His life. It
must be the beginning of ours. It was the climax of His obedience. All the
lines of His life come together at the cross. It is the beginning for us.
All the lines of our lives, the lines of purity, of character, of service,
of power, run back to the one starting point. And we come to find--some of
us pretty slowly--that it is only the lines that do start there that lead
to anything worth while. The starting point for the true life, and for
real service is very clear. And if any of us have made a false start, it
will be a tremendous saving to drop things and go back and get the true
start. "The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth from all sin"--this is the
only point from which to start the "Follow Me" life. "Follow Me" does not
mean imitation. It means reincarnation. It's some One coming to re-live
His life in us. He died that His life might be loosed out to be relived in
us.
I have already spoken of this as being a call to friendship. All the rest
that comes is meant to be what naturally grows out of this friendship.
Peter never forgot his last "Follow Me" call. "Lovest thou Me?" Then thou
mayest follow. This greatly sweetens all the rest. It's all for Him!--our
friend. Out of this personal relation comes service, power in service,
suffering because of opposition to Him whom we serve, and joy because we
may suffer on His account.[41]
Matthew became His friend that day down at the little customs-shed at the
Capernaum water edge. And out of that friendship grew our first gospel.
John lived very close, and out of his intimacy came the gospel that
reveals to us most the inner heart of our Lord, and His own intimacy of
relation with the Father. And out of that friendship came, too, not only
John's wonderful little "abiding" epistle,[42] but the Revelation book,
which gives us an inkling of the coming in of the Kingdom time that lies
so near to our Lord's heart. Out of such intimacy of touch grew Stephen's
ringing address before the Jewish council, and--his stormy, stony exit,
out and up into his Master's presence.
And time would fail me to tell of those in every corner of the earth, and
every generation since our Lord was here, who have served and suffered
because they loved Him and followed. Hidden away in the rocks and caves of
France from the fires of persecution, the Huguenots sang their favourite
hymn:
"I have a friend so precious,
So very dear to me,
He loves me with such tender love,
He loves so faithfully.
I could not live apart from Him,
I love to feel Him nigh,
And so we dwell together,
My Lord and I."
When I was in China a year ago, my heart caught some of the distant echoes
of that sort of singing, by Chinese Christians, in the midst of the fiery
persecutions of the Boxer time. And I heard the same sad, glad undertone
last year out in Corea, in the homes we visited, whose loved ones were
behind prison bars for their Friend's sake.
One of the latest chapters of this friendship's outcome is only just
closed in the story of that quiet, young friend of the Lord Jesus, William
Whiting Borden, who sat down a little while ago, and so placed the wealth
left him that the world might learn of his Friend, and then went out and
laid down his life in Egypt in this same passion of friendship. So the
earth's sod in every corner has known the fertilizing of such friendship
blood, and shall some day know a wondrous harvest under our great Friend's
own gleaning.
And this is why He asks us to follow. He needs our help. Our Lord Jesus
gave His precious life blood to redeem the world, to set it free from its
sin-slavery. But there are two parts to that redemption, His and ours.
These two parts are strikingly brought out by a single word in the
beginning of the book of Acts,[43] the word "began." Luke says that what
he has been writing in his Gospel of the life and death of Jesus was only
a _beginning_. This was what "He _began_ both to do and to teach." It is
usually explained that what our Lord Jesus began in the Gospels, the Holy
Spirit continued to _do_ in the Acts, and to _teach_ in the Epistles. And
this is no doubt true. But there is still more here. The Holy Spirit
continued and continues through men what He began through Jesus. There is
a second part to the work of redemption, our part, the Holy Spirit working
through us. There had to be a first part; that was the great part. There
could be no second without a first. That first part was done when our Lord
Jesus was hurt to death for us. That is the great first part. Yet in doing
that He had but begun something. He touched Palestine. We are to cover the
earth. He touched one nation; we are to go to all nations. We are to
continue what He began. The work of redemption was finished on the cross
so far as He was concerned; but not yet finished so far as its being taken
to "all the world" was concerned. He needs us. This is why He asks us to
follow. He needs our co-operation.
The second great factor in carrying out what He began is--how shall I put
it? Shall I say, men and the Holy Spirit? You say, "No, change that, say
the Holy Spirit and men. Put the Spirit first." Well, the order of these
two depends on where you are standing. If you are standing at the Father's
right hand, you say "the Holy Spirit and men." For the power is all in the
Holy Spirit. He is the power. There can be nothing done without Him.
Whatever is done in which He is not dominant amounts to nothing. How I
wish we men might have that tremendous fact grip us in these days when the
whole emphasis is on organization.
But, very reverently let me say this, and I say it thus plainly that we
may know how much our Lord Jesus is depending on us, how really He needs
us,--this, that since we are on the earth, in the place of human action,
where the fighting is to be done, it is accurate to say with utmost
reverence, "_men_ and the Holy Spirit." For mark keenly, the initiative is
in human hands. God's action has always waited on human action. The power
is only in the Holy Spirit. The most astute and strong leadership amounts
to nothing without Him flooding it with His presence. But the power needs
a channel. The Spirit needs men strongly pliant to His will. The great
world-plan waits, and always has waited, for willing men. And so our great
Friend asks us to follow because He really needs us in His plan.
Have you ever noticed the picture in the word "follow"? You remember that
the earliest language was picture language. And it is a great help
sometimes to dig down under a word and get the picture. Here, it is a man
standing on a roadway, earnestly beckoning, and pointing to the road he is
in. The Old Testament word means literally "same road." The very word the
Master Himself used means "in behind."
To-night this wondrous Lord Jesus stands just ahead. His face still shows
where the thorns cut and the thongs tore. But there is a marvellous
tenderness and pleading in those great patient eyes. His hand is reached
out beckoning, and you cannot miss the hole in the palm of it. The hand
points to the road He trod for us. And His voice calls pleadingly, "Take
this same road; get in behind. I need your help with My world."
Selling All.
And yet--and yet----. Do you remember one time our Lord turned to the
crowds that were following and told them it would be better to count up
the cost before deciding to be His disciples?[44] He feared if they didn't
there would be "mocking" by outsiders because His followers' lives didn't
square with their profession. His fear seems to have been well founded.
There seems to be quite a bit of that sort of mocking. It's better to
count the cost, to know what following really means. A Salvation Army
officer in Calcutta tells about a young handsome Hindu of an aristocratic
family. One day he came in, drew out a New Testament, and asked the
meaning of the words, "sell whatsoever thou hast," in the story of the
rich young ruler.[45] The Salvationist told him it meant that if a man's
possessions stood in the way of his becoming a Christian he must be
willing, if need be, to dispose of them for the needy. To his surprise the
young man quietly said, "I fear you don't understand."
"Do you want to be a Christian?"
"Yes, but I'm not willing to sell all that I possess."
After a little more talk the young Indian left. Sometime after he appeared
at one of the Salvation Army meetings, and when the opportunity was given
for those who would accept Christ to kneel at the altar, at once he
started forward. But instantly a storm broke out in the crowded meeting. A
group of men rushed forward, shouting angrily, seized the young man and
bore him bodily out while the crowd watched in terror. A few weeks later
the young man turned up again, asking to be taken in and quietly saying,
"I have begun to sell all."
Then his story came out. A Bible had come into his hands; the character
and call of the Lord Jesus made a great appeal to him. He was haunted by
the words, "sell whatsoever thou hast." He felt he knew what it meant for
him. His family heard of his interest in Christianity. They belonged to
the highest class, were wealthy and officially connected with the heathen
temple-worship. They did their best to dissuade him, then finding that
useless, they kept watch, and had him forcibly taken from the meeting
where he was about to openly confess Christ. The entreaties of his father
and mother shook him greatly but failed to change his decision. He had
been imprisoned, chained hand and foot, and scantily fed, but all to no
purpose. Then he managed to escape and came to the one Christian place he
knew, the Salvation Army, and asked to be taken in.
After about two weeks he disappeared as abruptly as he came. Then one day
he came back, and told his Salvation friend that he had been carried to
Benares, their holy city, and forced to bathe in the Ganges. "But," he
said, "as I stood in the water of the Ganges, I said, 'Lord Jesus, wash me
in Thy precious blood,' and when I was forced to bow to idols, I bowed my
soul to the eternal Father and said, 'Thou art God alone.'" His mother had
implored him on her knees not to disgrace them; his tutor, whom he loved
dearly, and his brothers had joined the father in their plea not to bring
such shame on the family. "Well," the Salvationist said, "now, you know
the meaning of 'sell whatsoever thou hast'" "Not yet," he said, "but I
have sold nearly all."
Again he came back and said quietly, "_I have sold all_." He appeared
deeply grief-stricken, and yet there was a light shining in his eye. In
answer to questions he said, "I have not only ceased to be a Brahmin, I
have ceased to be a human being. I am not only an outcast, I am dead. I
have neither father, mother, brothers, nor sisters. I have been burned in
effigy, and the ashes buried. It was not the effigy they burned; it was I.
My father would not recognize me now if he met me on the street, nor would
my mother. I am dead. I have been buried. It is the end. I have sold
all."[46] He had counted the cost. Then though it meant so much, he
followed. The rich young Jew to whom the words were first spoken, saw
_things_ bigger than Jesus; the rich young Hindu saw Jesus bigger. Each
held to what he prized most, and let the other go. Would it not be better
if we were to count the cost, and then _deliberately_ decide? and if it be
to follow, then follow _all the way?_ I want to talk a little later about
what it means to follow. I hope this will help us a little in our
calculations, in counting the cost before starting in to follow fully.
And yet, and yet, may the vision of the Lone Man in the road, beckoning,
flood our eyes while we count the cost, even as with the young Hindu.