Deuteronomy 22:8

Battlements

When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof. Deuteronomy 22:8.

I suppose not more than two or three of you have actually seen an Eastern house. But all of you have seen pictures of houses in India, Egypt, and Palestine. And not one of you but has admired their flat roofs. “What a grand idea!” you have said to yourselves. “I wish our houses had flat roofs too. Wouldn't it be great to go up there and look down on the street?”

Now, when you were gazing at the pictures did your sharp eyes notice also that some, but not all, of these flat roofs had a wall round the edge? That wall round the edge is the battlement of today's text. And today's text is just one of the lesser laws which the Hebrews made long years ago.

And a very good common-sense law it was! For the roof of an Eastern house is perhaps more used than any other part of it. ‘ It is the playground and the promenade, the garden, the drying loft, and in the hot weather the sleeping-place of the people who live in the house. It is also the spot from which a view may be had, for Oriental houses have generally no windows giving on to the street, and if they have windows, these are so closely latticed that they are of little use.

If an Eastern roof is used for so many purposes you can understand how necessary this law was. You yourself would not care to sleep where there was a chance of rolling off your mattress in the middle of the night and next minute finding yourself in the street. It is bad enough when you fall from your bed on to the floor. Or imagine playing games on a roof without a battlement! You would have no freedom at all. You would constantly have to be watching that you did not step back into the air. The battlement is, at one and the same time, what restrains you and what gives you freedom.

The Hebrews made this law for the owners of houses. The owner of a house was held responsible if anyone chanced to fall off the roof and get injured or killed. The pity was that every one did not obey it; Some people preferred their own way. And it is the same still.

There is a famous book about Palestine which I hope you may all read some day. It is called The Land and the Book. If it had not been for a battlement that book might never have been written. The writer, Dr. Thomson, on the third day of his tour through the Holy Land was so absorbed in gazing at the wonderful view to be had from the roof of a house in Beirut that he nearly walked off it, and if it had not been for the parapet which caught him he would have plunged to the street below. He tells us in that book that the Moslems today build high parapets round their houses. But the Christians are, alas! not so particular. And he adds that many an accident would be prevented if everybody observed the law of battlements.

And there would be far less sorrow and trouble in life if people obeyed the law of battlements there. The law of house battlements was a kind law. It had love behind it. The law of life's battlements is as kind a law and it has just as much love behind it. As the owner of the house was responsible for the life of whoever went on the roof, so your father and mother feel responsible for you. And so they build battlements. They build them even for the youngest of you.

The first battlements they build are battlements you can actually see. When you are a toddling baby, they pop you into a play-pen. Inside it you can be safely left to amuse yourself. If you had not that fence round you, you would be exploring everything and everywhere, and getting hurt every other minute. Or they put a fire-guard in front of the grate. You think it is a nuisance, especially when you are dying to light papers at the blaze; but that fire-guard is your battlement of safety. It keeps you from setting fire to yourself and being badly burnt.

As you grow older you will find that life's battlements are not like baby's battlements things you can see. They are rather rules that you must keep, laws which you must obey. For instance, you are forbidden to be out later than a certain hour at night, you are not allowed to smoke cigarettes, or to read certain books, and you are debarred from making friends with certain companions. You think all these rules irksome and needless. But every “don't” is a battlement of safety, and some day you will understand that your father and mother knew better than you, and that the rules they made for you were wise and good.

Later, when you reach what older people are fond of calling “years of discretion,” you will find that you have to build many of your own battlements. You will find that Parliament has made laws which, as a good citizen, you must keep or suffer the penalty, But within these laws you will find there are many things you may do that it were better you should not do. If you are wise you will say to yourself, I may but I shan ' t, and you will build your battlements cheerfully and manfully.

And having built your battlements, keep behind them! Don't jump over them from a false idea that you will have more freedom on the other side. You will only land yourself in terrible danger. And don't knock them down weakly at the suggestion of a friend who has perhaps knocked down his and wants company in his dangerous doings. Have the courage to defend your walls when you once have built them.

Otherwise you will be like the valuable little dog whom a man saw fastened to a railing. He went up to it and undid the chain and marched it off. And that doggie never so much as tried to bark, or struggle, or bite the thief. It meekly allowed itself to be led away.

Are you going to be like that stupid dog, “led away” by evil companions? Or are you going to stick to the rules you have made? Are you going to keep behind your battlements?

But with all this battlement-building don't forget the best parapet of all, the parapet which makes all other parapets secure, and without which every other parapet is liable to fall or crumble away. That parapet is the love of Christ. Take Him as your Friend. Then all life's battlements will be blessings not hindrances.