Bezalel And Oholiab

Does your weekday go something like this?

Rush through breakfast to get to school, or the office, or the store. And there’s so much to do there.

And then after our full-time responsibilities evening time rolls around and we got all that social-stuff-and-the-family-and-recreation-and-we-gotta-make-dinner-and-lunches-and-watch-our-favorite-TV-show-and mow-the-lawn-and-wash-the-dishes-and-feed-the-animals-and-pay-the-bills-and-finally we plop into bed looking at our watches and saying, “Gosh, I wish I weren’t so busy that I could get a full night’s sleep.” And then we wake up in the morning OVERtired for UNDERsleeping so we hit the snooze button too many times and so we rush through breakfast and start the whole…thing…over…again.

Sound familiar?

Why? Why are we so busy?

I know the easy answer. Because we have so much to do.

But what’s our motivation for being so busy?

Why are all of these things so important?

How does this task or that responsibility even make the cut to be included in the sprint of our lives?

What is…our motivation?

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Bezalel and Oholiab

The two most famous names in the whole Bible. Right?

Of course not.

Were they priests? Or prophets? Or Apostles?

No, they were two guys who worked with their hands.

Bezalel is the first person in Scripture to be described as “filled with the Spirit of God.”

That honor is reserved for a “blue collar” worker.

The Bible says he had all kinds of skills. To make artistic designs in gold, silver, and bronze; to cut and set stones, to work in wood and engage in all kinds of crafts.

I have to tell you…I am amazed by people like Bezalel. People like my dad and Bill and Josh and Bart and Terry and Bassel and Darryl. If it involves metal or wood and you can buy what you need for the job at Lowe’s or Home Depot, these guys can do it.

I, on the other hand, am mechanically learning disabled. Two winters ago I had pipes burst in the laundry room. I called Terry. Last summer I wanted to put a screen door at the house. I called Bassel. But my incompetence is much worse than that. On Friday, I needed to drill a hole in the wall. I called Bill. A couple of days before that I had a flat tire. I called Josh. So at least I spread it around even if it seems to these friends of mind that I’m an incessant nag.

So you can see the source of my awe for Bezalel and Oholiab. Not only do they have cool-sounding names that only Hebrew scholars can pronounce… but they got mad skills. They got skills I never dreamed of having.

More than that, they teach us something very important…about motivation…and the proper source for everything that you and I do.

When I read about Bezalel and Oholiab I notice that their gifts were from God:

“The Lord has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge, and with all kinds of skills.”

This wasn’t just the right tech school.

This was God’s specific blessing.

We should all be so wise as to recognize that all our gifts come from God.

Eric, who preached here two weeks ago went to Baylor with a guy named Jeremy Wariner. Jeremy Wariner ran track for Baylor. One of their professors was a huge sports fan and particularly track. He said something like, “Wow, Jeremy, that was amazing this weekend!”

“I had a good race.”

Yeah, I’d say, he holds the NCAA Record 4X400 Meter

He won the 2004

NCAA Indoor and Outdoor 400M,

2004 US National Champion,

Olympic Gold Medal.

He saw it as God’s gift.

You and I should look at our gifts the same way.

Seeing all our gifts, abilities and skills, as being from God is

The solution for pride because we won’t give ourselves the credit…

The solution for idolizing other people because we won’t give them the credit…

The solution for despair because we can know that God has not withheld from us anything that we need.

So we should sit down and solemnly and honestly list all of our gifts, skills and abilities, no matter how small… and they say “thank you,” “thank you,” , “thank you.”

The other thing I notice about Bezalel and Oholiab is that they respond to direction from God. It’s God who did the choosing and the directing. 36:1

In chapter 31:2 “I have chosen.” Them to do this.

God does the choosing and they did the obeying.

It seems to me that God is always calling us to do something or grow in some area, or respond in some way that we need to discover. It’s our growing edge.

Some of us know exactly what God is asking us to do and we’re just not being obedient. Others of us aren’t sure what God’s asking us to do.