THE BELIEVER'S HOUSEHOLD CONDITIONS
THE BELIEVER’S HOUSEHOLD CONDITIONS
Notes of a Reading at a Household Baptism
JT These verses stand together in the construction of the chapter. In the building of a new house, it is to be protected lest blood should come upon it through something happening because of the lack of protection: then sowing is to be of a kind, we have one end in view — one crop, the vineyard is not to be of two sorts; then we are not to plough with an ass and an ox to ether, in our operations we are not to have mixed associations. Following on that our garment is not to be of mixed material; and then we are to have the four corners of our clothing tasselled, that is, marked off at the turning of it, the corners being something to distinguish us, which, according to Numbers, is to be of blue, the lace of blue and the tassels. These are the thoughts that enter into these verses, and I think apply to a house into which a child is born, that, as brought up, its cultivation has one end in view — it is a seed that is wholly right, not mixed. In Genesis we learn that in agriculture each was to be of its own kind, the fruit tree bearing fruit after its kind. The babe in a believer’s house is of a kind; God graciously regards it as holy in an external way, and that helps as to what it is potentially, and whatever would militate against that thought is to be abandoned. That is what I was thinking the Lord may impress us with; it all bears on the working out of Christianity in us, developing in what is heavenly, as the tassels, compared with Numbers, have in mind.
EG Why does it start from the roof of the house?
JT [p. 400] Well, it serves to bring out a thought, a parapet is a protection on the roof, the house is to be guarded from what would be damaging — of course, it is not only the child in the house, but anyone. A young child could easily be damaged seriously, blood might be brought upon the house by the allowance of something which would damage it and which could be avoided. It is a convenient way of calling attention to what might happen in a house through want of care and vigilance. It is not an addition to the house, it is something that is to be an integral part of it.
EG Do you think it might be possible that there should be a fall from the house?
JT I think so, I think individuals and families have fallen through want of vigilance, of safe-guarding, for it is a matter of what is spiritual now, not a material parapet. Many young people have been damaged by want of vigilance on the part of the builders of the house, the parents.
PL Would Timothy illustrate this? “From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures”. Were his mother and grandmother concerned about the parapet, the divine protection? He was preserved in separation from defiling influences, his father being a Greek. Did it not all issue in the tassels of blue being seen as Timothy becomes available under Paul for the assembly?
JT That is the order, “From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures”. What would prevent or vitiate the knowledge of the Scriptures with a child would be the allowance of other reading matter. For instance, if the mother were to read light literature (although the Scriptures might be read), and went out to worldly affairs, a child would soon become vitiated in its appetite for the Scriptures, its knowledge would be vitiated, too. But in Timothy they were said to be “the holy scriptures”, showing [p. 401] they were not mere ordinary literature in the eyes of a child, they were “the holy scriptures;” there would be a sense developed in the child of holiness in reading them. Many other such things in the parents would answer to the idea of the want of a parapet, or safeguard. It is a fall-trap; if the mother does something, why should not the child do it, and do more?
Ques Why emphasise the mother?
JT Because the mother is so much with the child. It is Timothy’s mother that is alluded to; it does not look as if the father were of much account — he was a Greek — and I think the fact that so little is said of him only emphasises the importance of the mother’s and grandmother’s training — the maternal side in both cases. Of course, there is the other side. If the Christian father, for instance, smoked his pipe before the child, the child would, in due course, do the same, although the father might say, ‘You must not do it’ — and many other such things.
EG There is the thought of shedding blood in the land, but this is bringing blood on the house. What do you think as to that?
JT That works out now, and in the course of God’s government one’s house suffers. God respects those who are vigilant to prevent anything in their houses that would cause the children, or anyone else, to fall. One says, ‘If Mr. — — — does this, he is a leading brother and I am a young man, why should not I do it, and much more?’ That is how things work out, and something happens and the responsibility is yours. It is very like Romans 14, destroying the weak brother. On account of your place in the testimony, or your intelligence, you become the occasion of another falling, and God holds you responsible. The idea of blood on your house or on [p. 402] yourself now has to be noticed, for the type means something.
PL Would the history of Eli suggest that he brought blood on his house through lack of a parapet, his two sons being slain and himself dying, too?
JT He is a striking instance of it.
PL Hannah was the contrast to that, even in the thought of a garment — the little coat she made for Samuel, it was not mixed, it was a linen garment.
JT Yes, she followed up the child with the garment every year. With some valued brothers whom God uses, there is nothing in their houses for God. God will know how to discriminate as to that, but it is a question as to whether there has been a parapet in the house of such, whether one has not brought blood on his house; the facts would the rather indicate that the government of God is on it.
Ques Would you connect blood being on the house with the fact that there was not a blessing in the house?
JT We have to look at it in that way, for a blessing is promised on the believer’s house, “Thou shalt be saved and thy house;” why should it not be there?
PL Have you the idea of the parapet in what was said to Manoah and his wife? The angel says: “... the boy shall be a Nazarite of God”, and it says later: “the child [referring to Samson] grew, and Jehovah blessed him”, Judges 13: 5, 24. Would that be the answer to the parapet that the angel urges in regard of his mother particularly?
JT You may be sure she followed it out. It is very sorrowful to see a gifted man, it may be, a valued brother, having no blessing in his house. God blessed the house of Obed-edom because he kept the ark, that would not be merely his house, but all he had.
Ques It says, “If anyone should in any wise fall from it”. Does that go outside the actual members of the house?
JT I think so — “anyone”. I believe a Christian household is intended to be a place of safety, a clean place, so to say (that is a scriptural expression). Falling from the roof might be fatal, it might mean that the person is never recovered spiritually. Well, the blood is on that house. Suppose the young people came in and there is a game of cards started, or some other thing like that, which seems harmless in itself, perhaps, as we say, yet is worldly, and leads in that direction. If a young person sees it in a believer’s house, he goes further; ‘Why should I not go further?’ he says. So the blood is on the house, and I believe houses are devoid of blessing just because of that.
Ques In connection with the word to the Philippian jailor you mentioned in prayer. “Thou shalt be saved and thy house” — how far does salvation go there?
JT It is salvation in the fullest sense.
EG Do you think David recognised in his last words that perhaps there had been some of these features missing? He said, “Although my house be not so before God”, 2 Samuel 23: 5.
JT Well, the sword was there, and it was against his house — a terrible thing, a governmental penalty. A very solemn thing! For instance, you have two brothers; Absalom slew his brother, and then Absalom suffers, and the sword was never to depart from David’s house; it was not a sword against the enemy, but against his house. David always had a sword against his enemy, but a sword in his house is against his house, and it is by God. A very solemn thing!
EG Does it come out in regard to Adonijah? It says he never refused him anything. Would that be the lack of a [p. 404] parapet?
JT Exactly. Eli, too, did not restrain his sons. He did it in a perfunctory way afterwards; he says, “No, my sons, for it is no good report that I hear” (1 Samuel 2: 24); but why should he not have followed up his sons and dealt with them at the outset. Yet he was a man you could not but respect. He was a fat man, a man like that is lazy spiritually and does not mind what the children do.
The seed of one kind means that you have one thing in your mind for the child; you want him to come into fellowship and be of service in the testimony. When that is what you aim at, everything hinges on that. But if you want him to shine in the world, you have another crop in mind, another seed — many have that, they send their children to college to make something of them in a worldly way; it may appear to be legitimate, but you have another thing in view, it is not merely that he may be able to make an honest living, but to give him a status in the world; many do that and think it is right. You have a boy or girl in fellowship, but you want them to have a place in the world, and that is another crop.
Ques You are not despising education?
JT Oh, they need to learn to read and write but what crop have you in mind?
AEL Why is it the grape that is chosen, not wheat or barley, for instance, as an example of the seed?
JT The vineyard has a great place in Scripture. God had planted one for Himself, what did He have in mind? That it would make His heart glad and make the heart of man glad, too — wine does that. It is not a cereal, as you say, it is a vineyard. The way it reads literally is: “Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with seed of two sorts, lest the whole of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the produce of thy vineyard, be forfeited”. The second sort would [p. 405] damage the whole and it would be forfeited. The margin reads, that it might be hallowed or set apart to God; but I suppose the reading here is correct, that the thing is lost. It is a poor thing to see a child brought up in a dual sort of way, half for the testimony and half for the world; it is not fair to the child itself. We are obligated to our children, and if we are not true to our obligation, there is forfeiture, he is lost; whereas if he had been properly cared for and properly watched over in his infancy and boyhood, he would be a wholly right seed and shine in the testimony.
AEL Giving joy to his father’s heart and possibly also joy to God.
JT Quite so. Obed was a worshipper, or servant of God; Scripture gives a great place to that thought, one that is to become famous in Israel, that would be famous, of course, in God’s account.
PL Did his mother start early with the parapet? — “Where thou diest will I die”, “Thy people shall be my people”, and so on.
JT Yes, she would impart all that into the child, that would be her ideal. So that we have the line in connection with her and Rahab. Rahab began with the idea of a line, the line is through Rahab and Ruth; that is something going through, she is equal to Rahab. Rahab is an ancestress, she is on the line, but on the maternal side; she was a person of another character at one time, but she was now drying flax and she had thread and she had a cord; it all emanates from the flax, that is the thought, the raw flax is spun into a thread, then into a cord, something powerful by which she let down the spies that they might go another way, different from the world. So that the line ran through and David is the great result — Bethlehem-Judah. Christians generally lose this thought of the household and how it preserves and conserves what is of God.
[p. 406] We should see to it that it goes through and is not stopped at any given turn, but that it goes through to the full issue.
Rem I was thinking that all the households that were brought before us produced something to stand in the breach at the time of breakdown, Samuel and Samson and David, and then Timothy.
JT Quite so.
EG With regard to the question of seed — “thy seed”, it says, “which thou hast sown;” in Genesis, alluding to the seasons, it speaks of a seed-time; I was wondering if there is in the household a seed-time, a time specially suitable for sowing.
JT Yes, the allusion here would be to what you put into the child by way of instruction and what you set before him, the impressions that you make on him. “While the earth remains”, it says “seed-time”, but there is no use in seed-time if there is not to be a harvest, and the harvest is the end in view. Genesis 1 sets out the principle that the harvest is to be according to the sowing, there is to be no mixture. Then there is the cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, all that stands in relation to the seed. There would be the cold and heat in the house, the summer and the winter, and the day and the night; the day and the night, I think, allude to the building up of manhood by gaining experience. All that enters into this.
FS Have not most of us had to own that it has been the prayers and influence of our mothers that have in any measure brought us into blessing?
JT Quite so. I suppose the first great mother is Sarah; she is the model mother. With her it was a question of what kind of companionship her son should have: “The son of this handmaid shall not inherit with my son” (Genesis 21: 10).
Rem She saw that all would be forfeited on that line — two seeds. Paul refers to it in connection [p. 407] with the thought of seed in the epistle to the Galatians.
JT There is a wonderful line of mothers, beginning with Sarah. Then Rebecca, who took the curse on her for her son — “On me be thy curse, my son” (Genesis 27: 13) — a remarkable carrying on of the maternal thought. Then Moses’ mother: she saw the child was proper and fair to God and hid him; she put him into death, and in baptising our children we are doing what she did. She put him where, in the full recognition of death he was safeguarded, in the sedge. It was not the current of the river, you would not put a child there, no one could go into the current of the river but Jesus — I mean the full thought of death — but we put the child into the sedge; it is just the symbol of the thing, it is the river, but it is a question of the child having part in it in that sense, not the flowing river; it could not subsist in the current, but it is wonderful that it is the same river, it is the same death, he is accredited with it.
Then the principle of the ploughing with an ox and an ass might easily enter into the household, bringing in a foreign idea in our operations and undertakings. And our garments, that is, our circumstances, are not to be mixed; we do not go to tea parties in the neighbourhood with the worldly, that is, our neighbours; it is very easy to link on with people. Our neighbours are the Lord’s people, and only those; we are not thinking of anything beyond being courteous to others. “Wool and linen” — it is the warp and woof of the thing, you have that in your mind, that you will not recognise the social around you.
PL I was thinking of Elizabeth and Zacharias. The child John was brought up in the deserts. You see the kind of company Elizabeth his mother kept, when Mary visited [p. 408] her.
JT That is right, and the hill country is a suggestion of moral elevation, above the level of the world. So that our surroundings are, so to speak, all linen, the wool is left out.
The idea of a thing woven gives the thought that you must have something in view, it is not something taken on later, it is the whole fabric of your life. You have a right principle to start with and you do not admit of anything different all the way through.
AEL So the Lord’s tunic was of one piece throughout.
JT Just so. Here it is just the material in the garment. We cannot help having garments, we must have them, but it is a question of the material in them, what you make them of. Then in verse 12 we have the garments themselves. “The four corners of thy clothing, wherewith thou coverest thyself”. This is an additional thing, it is not only that you have the saints in your surroundings and all that sort of thing, but this is an additional thing, a turning point, the corner where you turn round. You might get out of sight of the others, that is the idea of a sharp corner — it is in the turning the tassel is to be, that is, it is what you do on Monday as well as on the Lord’s day.
PL This is the right kind of Monday; the saints have the blue, the heavenly colour, on the hem of their garments.
JT Yes, you are referring to Numbers 15, for the allusion is to that. In Deuteronomy we have the actual dwelling in Canaan. The blue lace was simply ornamental, it is not alluded to here. I suppose the tassel could be seen on either side of the garment, for it is a question of a corner, where a person turns round, so to speak, in his circumstances. There is equalisation: You are not different on Monday or Tuesday from what you are on the Lord’s day. You go to business on [p. 409] Monday, your brethren do not see you, perhaps — what are you now?
ECG Is your thought that, instead of the circumstances overwhelming you, you are helped of the Lord to ornament them?
JT That is what I understand by the corners; it is a peculiar expression as to the garments. The force of it is in the antitype, I think, it is a question of the believer’s surroundings.
GRG Would the four corners indicate all round?
JT That is what I thought; a tassel on each corner.