RAISING THE LEVEL

N.T.Meek

John 2: 7-10; 2 Kings 4: 38-44; Daniel 1: 8-9

I was thinking, dear brethren, of these scriptures as containing the idea of lifting the level, or raising the tone, of a situation. Most of us will acknowledge that there is often scope for some service of this kind. I read in John in relation to this well known incident of the marriage to which certain customs were evidently wont to apply, and which may not of necessity have been ideal. That can, of course, obtain at the present time. We may have certain customs locally, or in certain areas of the country, which have not really originated from God or which may have become somewhat diverted from their original intention, and in that connection careful thought and appraisal in simplicity may be of value. One custom that was evidently extant in Cana was that things dropped as the occasion proceeded, with good wine to begin with and then something inferior. You cannot think of the Lord coming into an occasion and it being His mind that things should drop downward. Rather I think it would be that they would move upward, like the path of life, which is said to be upwards (see Prov 15: 24 ). Whilst what is natural is bound to wane, even at a wedding, it is not intended that any occasion of gathering of the saints should finish with our feeling flat. The Lord so operated here that the best came at the end. He lifted the level of the close of this occasion with the best wine. He is a model for us, dear brethren, in everything. John does not exactly stress Him thus but this scripture shows a manifestation of His glory, and we should look for this on every occasion of gathering. There is, of course, a right kind of natural human joy; it is sadly perverted around us but is still available and still enjoyable by those who know Christ, because the knowledge of Christ ennobles every relation ship, lifts it up, gives it a flavour and character which those who do not know Him do not experience. We see here how the Lord operated to lift the whole level so that the feast-master was evidently impressed by the Lord coming in and finishing with the best. We should remember when we are together, for example, in each other's homes, that it is well to finish on a good level, to come away from the brother's house on a good note. I think the Lord would encourage us that way. So there is that which is natural that can be enjoyed and, thank God, we have brethren with whom we can enjoy it. We can understand how Paul, when he saw the brethren, thanked God. We do that too, we love to see them, there is something very sweet about fellowship, something very real and cheering about seeing the faces of the brethren. A person's face will remain with you, you carry it in your mind and at some time it will come into your mind again, and a cheering experience it is. One day you will rub shoulder with that saint in heaven, he will be among that throng - 'Where the saints in glory thronging' (hymn 206). Do you ever think about that, beloved? What a level of enjoyment that will be! A level that will never drop, that will never weaken, never go flat, and there will never be an end to it. Down here the brightest day comes to an end, but there you will be with those with whom you are in perfect consonance, and there will be no drop. How wonderful! Think of all being sustained at the level that is proper to God 's presence. Well, that is future but the Lord would encourage us in our relations together to maintain the level proper to our calling.

The situation in Kings, in the scripture read, is often commented on, and maybe things will be said today that are not new; but still they can be said freshly. I recall as a boy hearing a brother pray that what was said in ministry that day might be fresh. I think he, as others, was able to give some fresh touch. The idea of the living word of God must involve that; it is not the dead letter, it is living, it has that character, it is for the moment, for today. So there was this situation in Kings, and the man of God was there; the man of God generally comes to light in a dark day, a day of departure, as with Elisha here and with Timothy. Things are not too easy, a famine in the land, but the man of God is there. Then there are the sons of the prophets, in which we might include ourselves, that is we have had prophetic ministry from Mr Darby's time in the recovery and we might take our place as being the sons of prophets such as he was. Sometimes I wonder if I could be so counted when I look at the volumes of his works that I have not read. They may appear rather forbidding thick black volumes, but there is something about them that one appreciates, and I hope it is so with you that you find some things that you can digest and that they are very sweet. Great intellect he may have had but there is what is very sweet. So you come down the prophetic line in the recovery - Mr Stoney, Mr Raven, Mr Taylor, Mr Coates and others. At times the sons of the prophets were off beam; that is not outside our own experience. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are almost infidel, even questioning once whether Elijah had gone up. It shows how untrustworthy we can be if left to our own devices. Still there is some element with us, I trust, of the sons of the prophets, that we have some gain from prophetic speaking. There are many believers who are not so favoured, who have not got the gain of that line of prophetic speaking from Mr Darby down. So we can count ourselves happy in that sense to be in an area where it is known of and where maybe you or your father have some of those books on the bookshelf. You have not read them much as yet perhaps, they do not appeal to you, the covers even do not appeal to you like the covers of other books, but if you get into them at sometime (maybe some little bit of pressure will send you to them) you will get something that will do you good. I am not speaking theoretically, dear brethren, I can thankfully say that I am speaking from experience, that these books were forbidding and almost off-putting to me at one time, but thank God He has worked with one and has given one a taste for them. So these sons of the prophets are here and the man of God tells his servant to set on the great pot, he wants to feed the brethren; it may be like a reading, he tells his servant to do it, to set on the pot and boil pottage. Then it looks as if someone else, not the servant, did something on his own. It says "Then one went out into the field to gather herbs"; he missed the immediate direction. Sometimes we are conscious of doing that in a meeting. Maybe you feel sometimes a bit sad after a reading because you feel you may have missed the direction. Someone went out into the field and gathered a lap full of wild colocynths and brought them back and shred them into the reading; as the reading was proceeding these things were shredded in, remarks were made that were not under direction. Notice the loose way of going on, the lap full. He gathered them, and you can picture him walking with a lap full. The wind would almost blow them out or they would tend to fall off the sag at the sides; the method is loose. One can put forward suggestions in a reading and really they are loose, they are not under divine constraint. Now this is what happened here, even in the presence of the man of God. It shows how dependent we are on one another, in a mutual way in a reading or any meeting, and how we owe it to one another (and owe it to the Lord of course) to forward what is going on that is directly of Him. I am not saying that we will never make mistakes, but let the bearing of my thinking be that way, not to speak for the sake of speaking and not to bring in a pet idea of mine, but to move under direction. Well, it is a peculiar situation, there was something here that detected it and there is a cry about it. Now that is preservative and the danger is met, the man of God says "bring meal", it is the humanity of Christ (how under direction He was!) that is brought in and there was no death in the pot. The situation is saved, and so the brethren get food, they are sustained. You must be nourished, otherwise you will die; you can die spiritually, how sad that would be! Let there be food, food that is preserved from contamination. It is the responsibility of all of us to seek to be minded this way. So the situation is met.

Now in this next paragraph there came a man from Baal-shalishah, and I would like to suggest that he lifts the level up still further. It is not only that error is met (maybe error was met in 1970 and in 1972) but what is also needed is this man from Baal-shalishah to lift up the level. It is one thing to meet error, in one sense that is negative, but what can one bring in that is positive and which lifts up the level? This man comes from a heavenly land. The term 'Baal' in 'Baal-shalishah' involves lordship, and this man comes from a realm where Christ is Lord; hence he is not loose, he has food in a sack. How much better it would be to carry in a sack than in a lap, how much more you would be able to get into a sack than in a lap! Imagine carrying twenty loaves in a lap, you would need a big apron to do that! This man came in with enough for a hundred men; but what I would like just to draw on lightly is the way he brought in, so to speak, an elevating touch to the meeting. It is possible to do that. There was once a small meeting in the country which reached a point where numbers were few and moreover the relations of the brethren remaining together were not, alas, too good. We visited the last old sister there and she recounted how things went; she told us something that has often affected me, that they would come together for the prayer meeting and a particular brother would get up to pray and in doing so would lift the whole level of the meeting. I wonder if I could do that - lift the brethren out of any petty personal strains and lift the whole level of the meeting in speaking to God. I would covet to be able to do that; because you get these kind of strains developing, these differences of opinion, maybe. O yes, you had the prayer meeting and you prayed for right things, things that in character were according to the Lord's mind, but the level was not lifted, the saints did not leave the meeting save as feeling that they had been together to pray, they were not really lifted by the occasion, the impress of heaven was not left on their spirits. This man from Baal-shalishah would, I think, have lifted up the brethren in this place; he had these twenty loaves and fresh ears of corn in his sack - his own fresh impressions brought, we might say, from a heavenly land. Well, that is a good thing and brings us to the point as to whether we can do this, whether there is fresh food, attractive food, fresh ears of corn in our sack. I suppose the secret of that brother who affected those tried and tested saints was that he really came from the presence of God Himself; that is how he came to the prayer meeting and, as he prayed, the Lord helped him at times especially to lift the saints out of all the local trouble.

Daniel is a young man who lived in a difficult day, a day that answers very much to our own when many of the vessels which should be available to the Lord are in the treasure house of a heathen god; that is the character that marked the day. But there were some, of whom this young man was one, who found themselves in these extraordinary circumstances. Now we tend to settle at the level of our contemporaries, to seek out persons of our own level. I would encourage us all to seek the company of those who are better acquainted with the Lord than we are. Daniel, I would suggest, set, so to speak, the tone of this group, a group of four young men. They were given the opportunity of extraordinary education, "skilful in all wisdom, and acquainted with knowledge, and understanding science" (v 4). (It is remarkable what things are in scripture - "understanding science".) There are these four young men, may be you can put yourself among them. I think of myself and my contemporaries when I was a boy, friendly with three others, four others, five others. Young brothers, young sisters, tend to develop friendships of that character. There are certain persons who by proximity or by apparent chance have entered into your life. You are hardly aware of it but you are in a little group that has special relations together. You may not intend any danger, you may not see anything wrong in it and so far there may not be. You are in such a situation; he is your friend, you meet him on Saturday afternoon or you like to be in his company and in his house; it is that kind of thing and it may be older persons are like that too. Here it is four young ones, and what I think is true is that you tend to settle down to the level of the lowest; that is what is natural. Therefore our company always needs to be watched. I beg you characteristically to seek out those who know a little bit more about the Lord than you do. You love Him and your friend loves Him, He means much to you both; you do not speak much about it very often but you have that link. That is how you first met, you would not have me otherwise, you would have been friendly with someone else at school or at world, but you know that your father and mother would rather you were friendly with him than with others. So you are with him, and with somebody else three or four or five or six of you. Who is going to set the level? Who is going to lift the tone? Daniel did it here among these four, he purposed in his heart a certain standard. He lifted the level, so to speak, at a time when it could have continually dropped, in Babylon with all its attractions and wonders. It could have steadily dropped but this Daniel lifted the level. You see what I mean, dear brethren, you set the standard, you make the pace, that is the idea of it; you do not want to be ahead of everybody but why should you be behind?

I am not suggesting that you should become a prodigy or endeavour to become hyper-spiritual, but to develop in committal as Daniel did. In Babylon with all its glory, what do you think he read? You say I expect he would read about Solomon in all his glory; he may have done, but what book do we know that Daniel read in Babylon? Maybe it was a book you would hesitate to read - the prophet Jeremiah. You say, a young man reading the prophet Jeremiah? Yes, and that book provided him with the vital key as to what was happening before his very eyes. The secret of the seventy years he got from Jeremiah. So he read the Scriptures, as we would say. Maybe amongst those who you are especially friendly with, there is not much discussion of the Scriptures. Why not, why not ensure that the level is up? There is what is rightly natural; I mean you are boy to boy, girl to girl, young man to young man, there is that side of course; but try to make the running in a spiritual sense, not for its own sake but for the sake of your friends. I think you will all be lifted up. I feel I have put this very imperfectly but there may be at times need of adjustment, because too much special friendship can be dangerous. Nevertheless, we would be practical, realistic, that at certain ages you tend to mix with certain ages. Take young married couples, they have certain problems, the bringing up of children brings its own problems and you can understand young married couples developing a certain friendship because of the common interest they have of raising a family, acquiring a house and of making ends meet, that kind of thing, it is a common problem. In these situations, dear brethren, let us always endeavour to be upward in our relations. This Daniel persevered and he really continued till the coming of Christ, till Cyrus came, that great deliverer that set the people free. I wonder if we will continue till the coming of Christ and the Lord takes us all. Do you think we will? Do you even think about that? You are thinking about your school, you are thinking about work; do you ever wonder if you will continue and actually witness the Lord coming and actually be raptured? Because He is going to come, to come for His church.

Well, the se things are real, dear brethren. May the Lord help us and exercise us and keep us concerned always in our relations together, meeting wise or what I might speak of as householdly or socially in that sense, to keep up the level for His Name's sake.

 

CROYDON

13 September 1975