A classic gospel message from a renowned servant of God.
And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that virtue had gone out of Him, turned Him about in the crowd and said, Who touched My clothes? And His disciples said unto Him, Thou seest the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched Me?” (Mk. 5:30-31)
From the three cases given in Mark 5, this chapter of incurables, Jesus proved Himself Lord over devils, disease, and death. Then we turn the jewel round and catch another flash of its beauty. We see that Jesus is the man’s Christ, the woman’s Christ, and the child’s Christ.
Now I want to speak about the middle case, this woman who had suffered many things of many physicians and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. So Mark says. When Luke tells the story he leaves that bit about the doctors out, but then he was a doctor himself.
Mark has no scruple; and he says that all her attempts merely aggravated the problem and excited hopes that only ended in despair. She was worse when they finished their attempts than before they started.
That woman represents multitudes. Perhaps you are longing for spiritual healing, for soul satisfaction, you are groping for light. You are trying to climb up out of the slough of your despond; you desire to get your chains broken and your fetters snapped. You say you want the assurance of sins forgiven, to be in possession of peace with God. You believe there is something for you that Christians talk about, and that the Bible describes in the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Somehow you believe it is for you, but you never get it, hunting after but never finding, always thirsty and never getting a drink of the living stream. Oh, how many fakes some of you have consulted! Some of you spend all your time in hunting up religious quacks. There has not been a preacher in town for twenty years that you have not heard. You boast that there has not been a mission held within reach but you have been there. You are front-seaters, bench-warmers, religious tramps.
Don’t smile—I want you to see yourselves. You have been prepared to listen to any fad, any big person, any sensational story, any man-made message, any new thing. But you have not got healing that way; and if I could see you as God sees you, I should see you worse today than you were ten years ago, with all your attempts at redemption.
Now you have come to hear this preacher. But at the beginning let me be plain with you. I cannot save you. That is beyond me. But I know One who can, and there is none like Him. He is the most wonderful Physician. He is never baffled; He can diagnose every case. He goes to the root of the mischief. He never makes a blunder. But He must have His way. All the poor, broken-down attempts at social, religious, and spiritual reform, and all the backsliding, and the falls, and the blunders that you have seen around you, have all come about because Christ has not had His way. Give Christ His way, and He will heal completely.
My friends, your cure is the same as the woman’s. Her cure came on the heels of everybody else’s failure. Christ’s cure always comes there. When people get to the end of things, then Jesus Christ bares His arm and shows His omnipotence, declaring Himself the mighty Saviour. He is a wonderful Jesus.
It is not a quack you want, it is a specialist. It is not the preacher you want, it is not the beautiful hymns we sing, it is not hearing some great orator, it is not being familiar with books or schools; it is Jesus. It is not even the Bible, for “the letter killeth.” You may be familiar with it, you may have gone through it I do not know how many times, but till it goes through you, you will not be any better. It is not in tramping to and from church. It is not in performance or ritual. Healing is in Jesus.
Soon after my father’s conversion, our tents were just outside Cambridge. My father could not read the Bible in those days. He was only a rough gipsy man, but he was saved, and he did the next best with his motherless children before he went to bed. He used to sing and pray every night. And when he and five children started to sing, you could hear us a few fields away on those dark, winter nights. I can see my father now; he would say, “Before we go to bed, my dears, we will have a hymn or two,” and he would strike off.
We had no idea that the people in the cottages across the fields heard the songs and came a little nearer to catch the words, or that they stopped while he prayed. It was a strange thing to hear a gipsy man pray in his tent. These people never expected it.
One woman was smitten in her conscience about her sin. She said, “Here is a rough gipsy man praying, and he is not praying for me to hear him, for he does not know I am here. How is it? I was brought up in a Sunday school, my mother was a good woman, I came from a Christian home. I am a mother but I never pray for my children.” The arrow of conviction pierced her soul, and it did not come out easily. For some time she said nothing about it, but she suffered something of the agony that David must have felt when he said, “While I kept silence my bones waxed old…for day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” And I tell you, when the light of God’s holiness shines into a guilty soul, it blisters it.
One night her husband came home from work, and he saw there was something the matter. He had noticed it for some days, and he said, “Mary, what is the trouble?” She did not answer. “Mary, are you ill?” Still she kept quiet. “Very well,” he said. “I will fetch the doctor,” and away he went.
As soon as he had got outside the door, she sent her boy to our old tent, and when he got to the tent he said to my father, “Sir, my mother heard you pray some weeks ago and she has never been happy since. She wants to know if you will come and pray with her.”
Father replied, “Of course I will,” and away he went.
When he got there, he found the poor woman crying for mercy. It was not long before the plan of salvation had been pointed out to her and she was rejoicing in Christ. She had met the condition, and her burden had rolled away. Her tears had become telescopes through which she could see Jesus.
Presently the doctor came with the husband. She looked up at the doctor and she said, “Doctor, I have found Him, I have found Him!”
He said, “My good woman, whom have you found?”
“Oh, sir,” she said, “My poor soul has been hungry for Jesus, and I have found Him.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “You don’t need me, for you have the best Physician the world ever saw.”
That is what I want to say to you: it is not a minister you want, it is Jesus. We are only fingers pointing, we are only voices crying; but, blessed be God, we do point and we do cry and we tell you in one concentrated voice: Only Jesus can do helpless sinners good. Five minutes’ honest, definite, intelligent dealing with Jesus Christ will cure your grief, and nothing else will. That is the first thing I want to say.
The second is this, that there is a tremendous difference between thronging Jesus and touching Jesus. There were at least six hundred thousand people who left Egypt for the Promised Land who never reached it. Two men out of the crowd reached it. They were touchers, the others were throngers; the others bleached their bones in the wilderness.
Here is a multitude of people at this very moment crowding Jesus, speculating about Jesus, excited about Him, criticizing Him, elbowing Him, but one woman touched Him, and that made all the difference.
Which are you? Have you touched Him, or are you a thronger? In the name of God I tell you—and I tell you to startle you—church-goer, you are a thronger; you have never touched Him yet, multitudes of you. If you had, your life would be different, for whatever Jesus touches is glorified.
Which are you now? You know deep in your heart. Don’t make any excuse, don’t shuffle; don’t, I beg you, get away from the main issue. Have you come into living, vital, saving contact with the Son of God? Because you will know if you have.
You must not tell me that a man can be born again and made a new creature, have his chains broken, his night turned into day and his blindness to sight, his hell into heaven, and not know it. Listen. This woman knew, so will you when you have touched Him. This is one of the surest things in God’s world, for a man that can look up into the face of Jesus, and say by faith, “Thou art my Saviour,” has got in his soul the joy that will some day make heaven pulsate with hallelujahs. The man that could look up into the face of Jesus and say, “Thou art my light and my song; my sins are put away; my chains are broken, my Lord and my God,” is sitting in the twilight of the coming glory. If he is not in heaven, he is in the ante-room, and he is as safe as though he had been there a thousand years. For when God gets hold of a man He does not let go His grip. The Lord God Almighty take hold of you!
Have you touched Him? Do you know this? I am not asking what else you know—are you sure about this thing? Blessed assurance is the ground, the indestructible rock beneath a man’s feet upon which he can stand and say to the world, “Rage on, toss on, howl on, ye storms, and peal, ye thunders, and flash, ye lightnings, but it will be but the rocking of an infant’s cradle as it lulls me to rest in the arms of Him who saves me, and keeps me by His grace.” Have you got it? “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!” Do you know it? Are you sure of it? Because that is what He calls you to.
You say, “Are you not forcing something that is not in the story?” No, it is all here. The woman came in the crowd behind, and I can hear her as she comes limping, stooping, catching her breath, hardly voice enough to speak out loud, saying in a whisper, but saying it, “If I can only touch the hem of His garment I shall be healed”; as much as to say, There is power enough in the threads of His coat to save an old woman. That is the faith that conquered Deity. “Only let me get to Him, and I shall be a new woman.” Listen. She knew she was not healed, yet she says, “I shall be,” and she touched, and was made whole.
The next verse says, “And Jesus, knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned in the crowd.” What does that teach? His Spirit answers to my spirit, and tells me I am born of God. Jesus knew, and the woman knew; and Jesus will know and you will know, when you plow your way through the crowd—whatever the crowd may be for you—and insist on touching Him.
Have you touched Him? You are a professor, but are you a possessor?
“Amazing grace, ’tis heaven below
To feel the blood applied,
And Jesus, only Jesus, knows,
My Jesus crucified.”
Is that your experience? Have you touched Him? And if you have touched Him, that leads me to the next thing. If you have touched Him you must confess Him. There is no such thing as getting healed and then being ashamed of the doctor. But there is no such thing as being a smuggler here; there is no such thing as playing hide-and-seek. You must confess Him; He will see to that. If you are to get all He wants you to have, He will see you meet the conditions. She began in the crowd behind, she ended up on her knees in front of Him, where all grateful souls end. He said, “Where is she that touched Me?” and He looked round about to see her that had done this thing; and mark, He turned round, and when He turned round she was there.
Don’t you see, it was not as difficult as she thought. She thought she would get at His back; He gave her His face, and she knelt at His feet, and they made a ring there on the highway. That was the inquiry room, and she told Him all the truth. Nobody hindered her, nobody checked her. She poured out her heart and her tears, and she told Him everything. He listened patiently, and when she had told all, He said, “Daughter, thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”
If you want to have peace as a friend and companion, peace as the bloom and blossom of things, the music ineffable sounding in the life, let Jesus Christ come in and take the throne, and you will get peace.
Men and women, come out of hiding. Never mind the crowd; Christ is here, and you can touch Him if you will. You can get where there is always room for another in His presence, at His feet. He will make room if nobody else does. He will see that you get a place right in front of Him, if you only will come to Him.
“But,” you say, “what can I do?” What could she do? She seized her opportunity. Will you? Here was the Christ passing by. She had only to touch the hem of His garment, but there was more in that touch than you think. The Lord help you to touch Him the same way, and you too will be made whole. Your night will break into lovely dawn, your misery into music, your tears will be kissed into jewels, your heartache into soul rapture, your lifelong agony will end in the joy of the presence of the risen Christ.
Oh, touch Him! Do not throng Him longer. It ends all one way—it spells failure, it spells loss, it spells agony. But touching means life. Oh, how I thank God I have touched Him! I do not know as much as some of you, but I know this—I let nobody cheat me out of my opportunity—and I shall never forget how I knelt as a gypsy boy and said, “O God, I want to love Thee, I want to be saved, I want to be good, and I will be saved, and I will follow Thee.” I do not know how, but I touched Him at that moment, and He accepted me.
God help you to touch Him in the same way, and the grace that turned the gypsy-tent into a palace will change your life from the poor miserable thing it has been into a thing of beauty and praise forever.