What's In A Touch? Series

MAKING SENSE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD – TOUCH

Exodus 19:12-13 & 2 Corinthians 6:14-18

What’s in a Touch?

INTRODUCTION:

A. This morning we are continuing on in our 5 part series entitled “Making Sense of Our Relationship to God.”

1. We have already looked at the senses of hearing, seeing, and tasting.

2. Today we will take a look at the sense of touch, the forth sense.

B. In preparation for this message I did a number of things

1. First I went to innerbody.com and factmonster.com and read about the sense of touch

2. It should be rather obvious to most of us that the sense of touch is a wonderful thing.

a. It is a part of our nervous system and there are nerve ending is every area of our body, located primarily in the dermis, or second layer of our skin.

b. Specialized sensory receptors give us the ability to sense heavy pressure, light touches, temperatures, as well as other factors that can damage skin tissues.

c. It is our sense of touch that allows us to have intimate relationships

1) Holding hands, hugging, even kissing are examples.

2) The sense of touch seems to be relationally oriented. (Personal space)

3. I then took my concordance and looked up the words touch, touches, touching, toucheth – you get the point.

a. What I found was interesting.

b. I began the search with the idea that the message would be about our Christian service

c. But what I found was that the great majority of references dealt with a completely different subject – relationship

d. And more specifically, our relationship to God

4. I then went to ChristianintyToday.com and did a search on the word “touch” and found 3453 articles

a. I only perused about 50 of them and the great majority, about 80%, dealt with personal relationship issues

b. The others dealt with how we might relate to a situation or theology

5. In all three cases the sense of touch was oriented toward relationship issues

C. With this in mind I think we can say with great certainty that when we think about the sense of touch, in connection with God, we are speaking about personal relationship issues.

1. We will first look at Touch from the O.T. perspective

2. From the N.T. Perspective and then

3. Make Practical Application for Us Now

Lets ask God to help us understand our relationship to Him this morning as we examine the spiritual sense of Touch

PRAY

I want to begin our exploration of the Sense of Touch by first looking at

I. TOUCH FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE

A. I chose the passage out of Exodus because it seems to embody the essence of OT line of thought as it concerns holiness

1. Exodus 19:12-13 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death: [13] There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

a. Three months prior to speaking these words to Moses at Mt. Sinai, God had brought Israel out of Egypt by s strong hand.

b. Many miracles had been performed, the most devastating being the death of all the first born in Egypt who were not protected by the blood.

c. This was followed by the parting of the Red Sea and mass destruction of the greatest army of their day.

d. Again followed by the Lord God providing water and bread in the wilderness.

2. Now having come to Mt. Sinai God is about to institute a new type of relationship with Israel – the law.

3. Be ye holy, for the Lord your God is holy! – this is the essence of the relationship

B. If you were to look through the book of Leviticus you would find the word touch (and its many forms) 28 times – of which 23 are tied directly to the word unclean

1. This touching might have been of a dead body, a monstrous women, a leper or other specified sickness, or specific animals that God had designated unclean.

2. The important thing about these laws is that they determined whether a person was in a proper relationship with God.

3. Deut. 29:9 states, Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do. (Blessing or Cursing in Deut 28)

4. The laws were give that Israel might be different from the surrounding nations - that they might be special to God – that they might be holy!