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ACCEPTING RESTRICTION

N. T. Meek

One wishes to address oneself especially to the young. Youth is a time of frustration, a time when things often get bottled up inside us, feelings, emotions, maybe even rebellion at times; we want to ‘do our own thing’ as people say, and yet we do not know what that thing is. We seek for something that is elusive and we are not at peace with ourselves nor at peace with anyone else. There is one thing in which older people have an advantage, and that is that they went through these experiences, they have weathered them already, whereas when we are young we are struggling in them.

These two scriptures have some restrictive suggestion in them. The first one is in relation to the parapet built on the house. No doubt the Israelites’ houses were flat roofed, and they were instructed to build a wall or a parapet round the roof. That is God’s consideration for His people and for the young, lest, it says, “any one should in any wise fall from it”—lest there should be an accident. It is not that the person was deliberate here, it does not envisage a person trying for example to jump from the roof, but he might fall from it and be damaged.

These scriptures are often taken up at baptisms as to how it is obligatory on the householder, and no doubt his wife too, to be protective in their house lest any one should fall from it and should in some way be damaged. Parents, responsible parents, take this up carefully, thoughtfully, and say to themselves, Is my house safe? Is the house safe for the children? You say, What do you mean, is it that the wall might

fall down? No, but something might happen which negates the effect of this parapet. This scripture envisages their being in the land. I suppose you could see over the parapet, see the land, see the other tribes. It must have been very wonderful in the old dispensation to look out on all the roofs; there were brethren under every one of them. There is Issachar here, and Zebulun there; wherever you look there are brethren. It must have been a very exhilarating thing to get up in the morning and wherever you looked there were the brethren, and every one with a parapet upon his house. What it means is this, that you and your family could go to any house and you would be morally and spiritually safe, because the parapet was not only built but maintained.

So it rests on persons, on the parents really, taking forethought to prevent any accidental damage, caring for what is under their charge; and if the children of Zebulun visited the children of Issachar, the houses would be safe for them to come to. How it worked out in detail I do not know; it does not say how high the parapet should be; these are the kind of things we have to work out as exercised before God. It does not say whether it is one cubit or two. God, I suppose, would give a parent an estimate as to how high the parapet should be.

Some things, dear brethren, are presented for us to decide for ourselves, though not without recourse to the Lord, but not everything is specified for us to the last hand-breadth, and that is divine wisdom no doubt. If it was rigorously defined we might become very exacting, and we might lose the spirit of the thing. We may say it must be so high and yet still someone could be damaged in some way. We have to work things out, beloved, do we not? and the exercise that we go through in working them out is very real. These are real matters; parents are faced with practical

matters in the household, but the working out of them calls for a certain sensibility, and preserves us from being arbitrary, and yet it never ceases to make us careful.

Well, it could still be that whilst the people had got through the wilderness and into the land there could be an accident, and I suppose we should pray that there may not be these accidents, these unfortunate occurrences. We pray that they should not be; they should not happen. It speaks about “that thou bring not blood upon thy house”. How solemn that is, is it not? Someone possibly losing their life spiritually because the parapet was not maintained; I suppose that is what it means. It would be a very sad thing, would it not? and yet it has happened, alas, and it could continue to happen that some life is lost. It is a very solemn and sobering thing.

In Ecclesiastes there is something which is similar and yet it is different—“He that diggeth a pit falleth into it”. Well, you do not dig a pit accidentally, you do it on purpose. This is, in a way, more serious, I think—“He that diggeth a pit falleth into it”. In other words it comes back upon oneself. How often things do, do they not, come back upon ourselves? It envisages that someone has done something deliberately, to the hurt of another. It would be a very solemn thing to try to trap or snare a brother or a sister, would it not, to dig a pit for them?

We can do this in our minds. Rather we need to act and think preservatively for one another.

This spirit of digging a pit that someone might fall, can come right into the Christian circle. It is a very solemn thing, dear brethren, that although we are converted we find that our thoughts, unless they are constantly judged, can go to most extreme lengths. Do not let your thoughts run out of

control; call upon the Lord to bring your thoughts to heel. Be careful what you allow Satan to put into your mind and occupy yourself with. These thoughts that come in unbidden and unwanted, you scare them away. Be very careful that you do not dig a pit for another because God will regard that seriously if it is deliberate. Note what God says in Obadiah verses 10–14

about the neglect of brotherly relations; God is severe, and understandably so, towards Edom.

Then it says, “and whoso breaketh down a hedge”. Somebody planted the hedge, maybe our parents—“whoso breaketh down a hedge, a serpent biteth him”. Some restriction, I suppose, is envisaged here; the hedge is to keep us in so that we are hedged about and preserved. And yet we may want to break it. How often we have wanted to break it! We have ‘kicked over the traces’ as we say. How many tears our parents shed over our behaviour because we wanted to break down the hedge. We wanted to get out, and what we wanted we did not know, but we wanted to break out. That is the kind of frustrated feeling that we have sometimes, and it may be partly creational and partly the working of sin. I do not know, dear young one, what better advice I could give you than this; get into the Lord’s presence and unburden yourself to Him, and tell Him all your frustrations, and tell Him all your anxieties, and tell Him all your worries, and all your hopes and all your aspirations, and you will find that as you are speaking to Him they will lose something of their power; they will lose something of their urgency and potency as you take them into the Lord’s presence.

The engineers who built the early steam engines soon found that they had to incorporate a safety valve, and it was extremely dangerous to try and run the engine without the safety valve. In a

certain sense we need a safety valve because otherwise we would blow up, what I mean is, you need to get it off, as they say, to get it off your chest, get it off your mind, these things that are going through your mind that maybe damage you, these feelings, and you cannot be blamed for all of them. If you are wilfully set for them, that is your responsibility, and it is no light thing. It says of some that the sin of the young men was very great; that is the Spirit’s comment. But there is such a thing as taking provision of your knees. I suppose getting on your knees is like the safety valve. You can tell the Lord all about it, and the pressure will drop.

I would encourage you to do it, and not fight your way through the hedge; have respect for it; have respect for any restriction that has been imposed upon you, whether it is by the fellowship or by your parents’ desires, or by the Scriptures or whatever it is; have respect for it, and if you find it irksome, I do not know what else I could say than that you get into the Lord’s presence and you will find He understands you. He will not go along with your sin.

Maybe He will convict you of it, but you will find this, that just in the same way that, however stern your father may be at times, he loves you in his heart; you will find it infinitely more so with the Lord.

Well, I think that is all I wanted to say for the encouragement especially of the young. May they be preserved, for His name’s sake.

Address at Buckhurst Hill
29 December 1990

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