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THE WARP AND THE WOOF

N. T. Meek

I thought we might see in these scriptures some suggestion of sovereignty and responsibility as connected with the warp and the woof. Leviticus 1 speaks regularly of the warp and the woof. I think nowadays the woof is generally called the weft. It relates to a piece of cloth, such as your coat, and if you look at it you will see that it has got some threads going one way and other threads going the other way. I say this simply—the elder brethren will pardon me, I trust—but a web of cloth is made up of these two kinds of threads, the warp and the woof, and we have been taught that a believer’s life is like a web of cloth. We are not to think just abstractly when we say this, but my life and your life is something like a web of cloth. It is well for us to think about it. I think it is James who says, “What is your life?”, James 4: 14.

Well, it is like a web of cloth; that is one way of describing it. Perhaps the greatest possession you have is your life. There is something very special about it, something very unique about it, your life. I do not know if you understand that. You and your life are distinct in the whole of creation.

I will speak to you as a believer, and there is the warp and the woof in your life. You might say to me, ‘What do they mean?’. Well, a good deal has been said about this scripture that is very helpful. I did not exactly want to repeat that, neither do I want to say anything novel, but I can see that in everybody’s life there is God’s ordering, there is what God Himself lays down. That is

very much like the warp, the long threads, the strong threads which are laid down first. Then in the weaving process they are moved up and down alternately and the shuttle flies through them, through these long threads, it goes from side to side; that produces the weft, and that is something different. The warp is like certain things which enter into our lives sovereignly and which are not of our ordering. We just have to bow in relation to them. For example, the family you were born into was not of your ordering—you were born into a particular family and you had nothing to do with that.

I expect you think about these things sometimes; I remember I did when I was a youngster.

You wonder why you were born into that particular family and why you had the brothers and sisters that you had, and why, of all the people in the town, the family you were born into was one of the few that went along to the meeting. Did you ever wonder that? It is well to think about your life, dear friend. It is well for us to get into God’s presence and just quietly review why we are where we are and what it is all about. What is it all about? What is life all about?

These are questions that people ask in the world; it was a common expression of one of my colleagues; he used to say regularly, ‘That’s what life is all about’, and he thought it was just to enjoy himself, but it is not. You can think of other things, too, that God has determined, such as the time in which you were born. The time we were born in, dear brethren, was also none of our doing. We might have been born in Mr. Darby’s day. How wonderful! I sometimes think how thrilling it must have been to have been born in his day, or Paul’s day.

But that is not of our doing.

Our time is now; that has been determined for

us, and in a certain sense that is very wide in its application. It is so even with men generally.

God reserves, and man cannot alter it; God reserves His right on the lives of all men. He even

“determined ... the boundaries of their dwelling”. Paul says (Acts 17: 26), “that they may seek God”. God has determined certain things; when we were born and where we were born and the families we were born into—God has had His hand in it, and you and I cannot alter it.

Then there are illnesses that we may have; that is another way, generally speaking, that God reserves of putting His hand on us. Sometimes persons have had an illness in youth that has subsequently determined their whole course of life. God comes into that. You must reckon with that, dear young ones. I speak not exactly to the older ones because they know it, they know more than I do. It is very difficult, I find, to speak to older brethren; one is conscious that they have lived longer and they have learned more than one has oneself, but with younger ones one feels more free. You must reckon that God has got His hand upon your life and He can determine things for you, and you cannot say Him nay. Even if you were a notability or famous, you could not say Him nay. You think about it; you weigh it; ask yourself whether that is not so.

But then, there are the woof or weft threads, these are added to make up the web, and they may very well relate to what we weave in ourselves. So that along with the idea of God’s sovereignty the matter of my responsibility enters into the whole fabric of my life. I would like to ask as to this woof, as to what we weave in, what you and I weave into our lives. Just review this week, and ask whether anything worthwhile has gone in that is making up the fabric of your life. It is what you and I might do. You say, ‘Before I go out in the morning I pray’. Well, that is a fine thing; that

is like weaving in a bit of the woof. You get down on your knees, and it is not only, beloved, what you pray for, but it is the very fact that you have prayed in your simple way. In a simple way you have got into God’s presence, and something gets woven into you by that very means. Do you read the Scriptures? That is another thing that enters into the woof. Alas, how much we may do that does not usefully enter into the cloth! How much time is wasted, how many activities are wasted! They never go into the piece of cloth. They are like broken threads. What sort of cloth is it that is made up of a lot of broken threads? I suppose that is the characteristic way of an unbeliever. It is a life with no purpose. The shuttle never reached the other side, it fell short, it was to no point, it was aimless.

O, beloved, the times are too serious and life is too short to waste it. Life is too precious. You think of the life of Jesus. Was there ever a wasted day? There was never a wasted moment, beloved. There was never an act, never a thing that He did, never a day passed, but what there was something woven in. What a life it was! What a piece of cloth, speaking reverently, what a pattern! How beautiful that pattern was. In the cloth is the weaving of the pattern. We often speak about the dark threads, but there are bright threads too. Have you ever woven a blue thread into your life? We read of some persons who were here and they showed that they sought a better country, that is, a heavenly (see Hebrews 11: 16), they wove blue threads into their life. You say, ‘What does it mean?’ Oh, it means, I think, that as you feed on Jesus as He is, you become a little like the heavenly Man. At Philippi there were plenty of blue threads, speaking of the heavenly Man who had been down here on earth! How beautiful the piece of cloth was at Philippi, was it not?

What is it like in Kirkcaldy and Malvern? Or, putting it more bluntly, more personally, what is it like with you and me? What is it, beloved? One thing about these meetings is that you become revived again, become re-enthused, if you like. You talk over the truth, you talk over the Scriptures, you talk over God’s will. His purposes and His counsels and His ways and His love and His affection and His thoughts and His consideration; you talk about these things and you are revived. That is one point about our gatherings, it is not only that you are taught, but you are revived, you are aware that you are in living touch again with a system that is real. What about Paul’s life? Oh, you say, he was special. Yes, he was in a way. God determined certain things in his life. He surely did. But I do not think it is wrong to say that God is looking to you, and there are certain things that He has done in relation to you which are all designed for your blessing. He is now looking on you and me to weave in the woof, to have days with an aim in them.

We were speaking last night about the days of Enoch; what a lot was woven in during those days! You could not think of him walking with God and nothing being produced, could you?

What a life it must have been! It is a pattern of the church, is it not? It is going to be taken to heaven before the judgment comes; it is too precious to leave here. That is how God values it, the church is too precious to Him to leave it here, and He is going to take it before the judgment comes. Noah is a type of the remnant. He goes through the judgment, but the church is going to be taken before it comes. God, as it were, is going to say, ‘I must take it, it is too precious’. How wonderful it is, is it not? And it is being worked out now in men and women; it is worked out in persons like you and me.

I read about Aquila and Priscilla. In chapter 18 of Acts they are at Corinth. Paul finds them there, and it tells us why they were there. It was because God, using the Roman emperor as His agent, had ordered that the Jews should leave Rome. Now, this entered into the fabric of the life of this dear couple. They were not there at their own charges; they did not just decide that Corinth was a better place to live in than Rome; they were there by divine ordering. It is like the warp, God had laid down the warp for their lives; it was part of His ordering. When they are there what will they do? You see, beloved, what God does is part of the weaving but there is also what you and I do; how we spend our time; how we devote ourselves to His interests; what time we give, as we were saying, to reading and to prayer and to meditation; what time we give to testimony, too. I suppose we all feel very measured about this. If a brother or a sister is constantly thinking about another Man in another world, you can see how he will take on that kind of colour himself; he will become a heavenly kind of person.

Well, Aquila and Priscilla are here at Corinth and it is in divine ordering; they are not quarrelling with it, but they encounter Paul, or rather Paul finds them, and it looks to me as if they may have been weavers; it does not say so specifically, but then it does not say they were not. I always think, beloved, that we have a certain amount of latitude in the Scriptures.

It says they were tent-makers. Whether they wove the cloth or whether they bought it ready-made I do not know; I would not be surprised if they did weave it, because if you weave your own cloth you are sure of the quality, are you not? I would think they made worth-while tents. A lot has been said about this and how extraordinary it was that in a city like Corinth, with all its magnificent architecture,

people could find a living making tents. Still they did, and it says, he “abode with them, and wrought”. Think of that; think of how they would sit with Paul. Doubtless God used Paul to stretch out the long threads at Corinth, certainly in his teaching of the disciples.

Paul laid down the principles; that has been said in the good ministry—the warp is the principles and the woof is the practice. Paul laid down the principles. It says he laid the foundation, that is another way of putting it, then he said, ‘You see how you build; you see what you build in’, or, if you like, ‘You supply the warp’, using this other figure. You can understand how they sat at that loom, and how they talked. What company, how congenial it would have been; the brethren’s company is very congenial, and is intended to be. There would be no small talk at that loom. What did Paul speak about at Corinth? He spoke about Christ and His principles. Soon he was teaching not just these two, but he secured a company, there were much people in the city, and Paul laid down the principles, he laid down the warp.

Then the responsibility comes to us, dear brethren, in the confines of Christian truth, to weave our own lives into them. I do not know if I make myself clear, but we have the great principles governing the truth of a Christian, how a Christian should be here for God, how he should be here for God’s service and honour and testimony.

Well, how are we weaving? How is the cloth going? Is there any colour? It is a wonderful thing that every believer, I think, has a distinctive colour, “for star differs from star in glory”, 1 Corinthians 15: 41. There is that idea, that every believer has his own distinction. But let us be busy. I suppose that is really the burden of one’s word; let us be busy. Then in due course

these two helped Apollos in his weaving. He only knew part of the pattern. He wove in the baptism of John, and very useful, very good it was too, but I suppose at Ephesus—because that is where they are next—they taught him some other colours and some more truth, and doubtless they wove very happily there together.

I am aware, dear brethren, that this is perhaps a new application of this scripture. The scripture in Leviticus is, strictly speaking, about leprosy, self-will and sin, how it may enter into the cloth. Alas, I suppose in Christendom it has largely entered into the warp, into the principles. How confused they have got, how sadly they have been turned aside, and it has also entered into the practice. I would just like to say, if you will bear with me, a practical word about the warp and the woof, the principles and the practice. We say that we are here to please the Lord; but do we? Do we always? We acknowledge that He is rejected, the world rejected Him—we acknowledge that; but in my practice I might deny it. The world rejected my Saviour but I may go along with it in many ways, in many things. We have to watch how the world seeks to infiltrate—worldly practices and worldly dress and worldly principles and worldly language; they tend to affect us. We are in the world, but we must see that God’s principles and our practice are to correspond—You understand me?

I just leave this with you. It may seem hard, but it is something that we had to learn in an earlier generation that it is part of the Christian’s lot to stand apart from the world that crucified his Saviour. You know in your heart that is right and yet you find it difficult. You may as well admit it, that naturally the world does attract you, it has got a gaudy show. Even worldly men will tell you, though, that it is empty. I think it was G. K. Chesterton who said he looked at the stage, how it was all set and was all a-glitter from the front, but when he went back-stage he saw the greasy ropes and the unreality and all the hollowness of the props and scenery. It looked so good from the front, but it was only made of cardboard. It takes you a little while to see that. In the world all is hollow; it is really. It is as hollow as can be. Well, do not let us try to weave in worldly habits into our lives either, or worldly practices.

I confess that my theme is very simple. I have often wished I could give a profound address, but I do not think I can. But I would commend this to us as to what we weave into our lives—it is the woof, and you can make a piece of cloth that is distinctive, that will reflect the glory of Christ—and what an infinite privilege that is. May the Lord help us, for His name’s sake.

Address at Kirkcaldy
22 June 1984

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