Back in January 2007, I was called into the office of the senior pastor of my church so that he could tell me that it was "not appropriate" to show Ps Joseph Prince's Humorous Biblical Illustrations DVD to my then-cell members. I was surprised to find that the other 2 pastors were also present at that meeting.
Anyway, one of them (who has thankfully since been posted to another church) told me categorically that it was wrong to challenge a pastor because I was "touching the Lord's anointed". But what really took the cake was when told me that "according to the Bible" we cannot do so, even when the pastor was in the wrong! To validate this, he quoted to me the passage recorded in 1 Samuel 24:5-7 whereby David had told his men not to kill King Saul because he was still king at that time and even though Saul was clearly at fault in hunting David down, he was God's anointed and hence untouchable.
So can we then say that "according to the Bible", there was a passage in Gen 38:15-16 whereby Tamar dressed as a harlot to seduce her father-in-law Judah into getting herself pregnant. She ended up being mentioned in Jesus' genealogy in Matt 1:3 and so, it is okay to seduce one's own father-in-law? Ludicrous if we use such kind of logic, isn't it?
The irony is that he was very critical of the grace message and what Ps Prince is teaching, so by his very own definition, isn't he also "touching the Lord's anointed"?
Unless he does not consider Ps Prince to be God's anointed, but then again, I could use a similar reasoning on him :-)
So who then is the Lord's anointed?
I did a Biblegateway search on the phrase "touch anointed" and the following verses were returned:
1 Chron 16:22
"Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."
Ps 105:15
"Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."
In both cases, it was part of a psalm by King David and he was referring to the prophets.
The Hebrew word for "anointed" in those verses is H4899 mashiyach (משיח) from which we get the word Messiah.
In the Old Testament, the privilege of being considered the Lord's was given only to a selected few, namely the priests, the kings and the prophets. We read in Ex 40:15 God telling Moses to anoint Aaron and his sons to serve as priests. We read in 1 Sam 10:1 the anointing of Saul and then again in 1 Sam 16:13 the anointing of David. And in the passage quoted above, David referred to the prophets as God's anointed.
They would be anointed by oil as an indication of this.
How about in the New Covenant?
Let's go back to the Hebrew word mashiyach, from which comes the word Messiah. There is a Greek equivalent of that word in the New Testament, and that word is G5547 Christos (Χριστός) from which comes the word "Christ" and "Christians"!
Yep. In the New Covenant, every one of us who has accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour and as a result of that been born again in the spirit is considered to be the Lord's anointed.
When we call ourselves Christians, we are calling ourselves "anointed ones".
Rev 1:6 tells us that through the blood of Christ, we have been made kings and priests unto God.
And while in the Old Testament, the anointing was with olive oil, we of the New Covenant are anointed with the Holy Spirit Himself. Hallelujah!
Amen, my fellow anointed ones?
So the next time someone tells you "touch not the Lord's anointed", you can tell him back that the same applies to him :-)
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