Skilled Hands

01 · Do you think God will be there?

Picture tomorrow. Maybe you'll be working on cars, or doing spreadsheets, or helping a patient, or watching kids. Maybe it's yard work on a day off. Or maybe it's been a hard stretch, and tomorrow is a doctor's appointment, pills to organize, and a call to the insurance company. Whatever it is, your hands are going to be busy.

So here's my question: do you think God will be there?

Of course, right? But I mean something different. Does what your hands are doing tomorrow have anything to do with the Spirit of God? If we're honest, most of us would say: not really. When's the last time somebody prayed over your actual, everyday Tuesday work? We pray over missionaries and pastors. Nobody lays hands on the plumber when he comes to fix a pipe.

Name someone in the Bible who was filled with the Spirit, and you'll probably name a prophet, a preacher or a miracle worker. That's where we expect the Spirit: in the big moments, in the people up front. So we split our lives in two. A week has 168 hours. Take out sleep and, on a generous week, an hour a day with God, church included, and there are still 105 hours left. We kind of assume God is waiting for us to get through those, so he can show up in the other seven.

As I put it on Sunday: "We put the Spirit in the church building, but Exodus puts it somewhere else." The very first time the Bible says somebody is filled with the Spirit of God, it isn't a prophet. It isn't a priest. It isn't a king. It's a guy who's really good with his hands.

02 · Already good at it

Israel is out of Egypt, camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses goes up the mountain, and God gives him detailed plans for a tent where God will live right in the middle of his people. Chapters and chapters of it: measurements, gold, curtains, colors. If you're reading through the Bible in a year, this is where you start to wonder whether you really want to. And you know Leviticus is next.

At the end of all those plans, God names who's going to build it. Bezalel. Not the priest. Not Moses. Not even Aaron. A craftsman, a master of metal, stone and wood. (These are not those hands. I got a blister rowing an old rowboat the other day. I'm the IT guy in my family; my calluses are on my fingertips.) You know Bezalel's kind of person. The moment something breaks, that's who you call. Maybe that's you.

Now notice: this isn't zero to hero. Bezalel was already great at this before God ever mentioned him.² The Spirit doesn't take over his hands. God fills the hands he already has.

So the thing you're good at, the thing that comes so easily you shrug it off with "I've just always been good at that," God pays attention to that. He isn't waiting for you to get some more spiritual skill. He might want to fill the one you already have. We often pray, God, take my heart and change it into something better. That's a good prayer. We don't often pray, God, come and use what I'm already good at.

And God calls Bezalel by name. Think about the times your name gets called: picking teams in elementary school, dreading being last; a waiting room, waiting for results. In those moments somebody is looking at you in particular. When God set up the place where he would live with his people, he looked for a guy covered in sawdust, someone who had put in years doing the same thing over and over. God knew Bezalel. He knew what his hands did.

03 · The same three things

Here's where the nerd in me comes out. Our Bible says God filled Bezalel "with skill, ability, and knowledge." Another translation, the NASB, keeps the three words the Hebrew uses:

And I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship,
(Exodus 31:3, NASB)

Wisdom. Understanding. Knowledge. Now listen to Proverbs, talking about how God made the world:

The Lord laid the foundations of the earth with wisdom,
establishing the heavens with understanding.
With his knowledge, the watery depths burst open,
and the skies drop dew.
(Proverbs 3:19–20)

The same three. As I said on Sunday, "The three things that God used to build the very fabric of our universe are the same things that God puts into the hands of a craftsman." When Bezalel picks up a chisel, he isn't doing something less holy than what God did in the beginning. He's doing a miniature version of it: taking raw material and making something beautiful and good.

And wisdom here doesn't mean being the wisest person in the world. It's skill: the things you've learned so well they're second nature.³ The nurse who hits the vein on the very first try, and you think, praise Jesus. The mechanic who hears the noise your car is making and knows right away what it is. The parent who hears a certain cry while the kids are playing and knows not only which kid it is, but exactly what that cry means. The people on Alone, one of my favorite TV shows, who look at a plant in the wilderness and know what to use it for. (I walk outside and think, that's maybe poison ivy.) You may not call that a skill. The Bible calls it wisdom, understanding and knowledge: the very things God built the world with.

And when it says God filled Bezalel with the Spirit, don't picture a gas tank getting topped off. As I said on Sunday, "the Spirit of God is not just some substance that fills you up. No, it's the very person of God." God himself came down and worked alongside this man at his craft.

04 · "I'm no Bezalel"

Maybe you're thinking: that's great, Pastor, but I'm no Bezalel. I can barely hang a picture straight. Or something harder: my hands can't do what they used to. Maybe you're older, or retired, or life has happened, and you wonder what good your hands are now. I know that feeling. It's a fair question, and Exodus answers it.

When the building actually starts, look who shows up:

Everyone who was excited and eager to participate brought the Lord's gift offerings to be used for building the meeting tent and all its furnishings and for the holy clothes.
(Exodus 35:21)

Not everyone who was skilled. Everyone who was eager. Everyone who was willing. And a few verses later:

All the skilled women spun cloth with their hands, and brought what they had spun in blue and purple and deep red yarns and fine linen. All the women who were eager to use their skill spun the goats' hair.
(Exodus 35:25–26)

Goats' hair. I've seen goats. That hair does not look like something that wants to be worked with. Nobody writes songs about the women who spun it. But it's right here in the Bible: with their hands, they used whatever they had.

And if you're past the season of doing it yourself, Exodus says God gave Bezalel "the ability to teach others" (35:34). Somebody younger needs what you've learned along the way.

As I said on Sunday: "You just have to be eager. That's what counts. Not being skilled." Praying over a list of things. Making a meal. The ride you gave somebody, the phone call to check in, the grandkids you're helping raise, even the job you think goes nowhere. Eager hands and a willingness. That's all God asks for.

And look what happens when a whole community does that. In chapter 36 the builders come to Moses with a problem: "The people are contributing way too much material for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do" (36:5). Moses has to tell the whole camp to stop. That's what it looks like when people stop splitting their lives in two.

Then the work is done: the tent, the curtains, the gold, the goats' hair. They bring it all to Moses.

When Moses saw that they in fact had done all the work exactly as the Lord had commanded, Moses blessed them.
(Exodus 39:43)

He looked at what their hands had done, and he blessed them. And in the very next chapter, "the Lord's glorious presence filled the dwelling" (40:34). The same God who filled Bezalel filled the thing Bezalel's hands had made.

So wherever your hands are tomorrow, here is the blessing I prayed over the room on Sunday: May the Spirit of God rest on the work of your hands.