Mr. Bezaleel - in the shadow of God | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Mr. Bezaleel - in the shadow of God | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jeremy Higle
11/29/07
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A wise pastor once said, “The Old Testament is spiritual kindergarten.” His point was that God authored the lives under the old covenant to be object lessons for those who would live under the new covenant. Our heavenly Father has gone to great lengths to illustrate the unseen things with similes from the seen.

Saving faith is like Abraham going to the mountain with Isaac. God’s fierce justice is like the flood and His tender mercy is like Noah’s family in the boat. As Job was crushed and refreshed, so we will suffer and experience joy. None of the lives in the Old Testament were lived in vain. They were lived and recorded so that on this side of the cross we could understand better the mysteries that the great prophets longed to understand but could not.

One such life lived not in vain was that of a carpenter named Bezaleel. In Exodus 31 God tells Moses that Bezaleel had been filled by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit filled him with wisdom and skill for crafting all of the intricate parts of the Tabernacle. This man would become God’s holy craftsman working tirelessly in the construction of the Tabernacle of Meeting. This would be the very dwelling place of God among the Israelites.

Six chapters later we read that he Bezaleel had “made all that the Lord had commanded.” This included: the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat, the golden lamp stand, the garments of the priests, the different altars, along with all the other furniture for the tabernacle. These would be the centerpieces of the Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon over four hundred years later.

One could easily argue that Bezaleel’s handiwork for God was more important than that of the famous builder King Solomon. But he remains forgotten and his name true to its meaning - “in the shadow of God.” It was there in the shadow of God’s plan he worked faithfully with all his might.

This is the spiritual kindergarten lesson for what Paul was teaching in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. The spiritual gifts that God gives to his people show up in different ways through different individuals. But just as the temple built by Solomon would have been empty without the work of Bezaleel, so the work of today’s prominent Christians will be hollow without others faithfully working “in the shadow of God”.

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