The First Man He Filled

He is fifty-four and he has never in his life been able to say what he means.

Not in a room. He can say it perfectly well in a yard, to one person, with something in his hands, and half the men in that town would rather hear his opinion than anybody else's. But in a room, with the lights on and people looking, the words come out of order and he sits down.

He left school at sixteen and went to his uncle and learned to make things out of wood, and forty years later he can look at a job and see it finished. He does not measure the way other people measure. His father was the same.

And he has one absolutely settled belief about himself and God, which he has never examined, because it has never occurred to him that it might be examinable.

He believes he is the sort of man God uses to fix a roof.

He is thrilled to fix the roof. There is no resentment in this. He has fixed that roof twice and the manse door and the ramp for the woman in the wheelchair, and he was glad every time, and he does not want thanks.

But when they pray at the front, and something is happening, he is at the back with his arms folded, and he is thinking, without any bitterness at all: that is for the ones who can talk.

So let me ask you.

What can your hands do that you have never once counted as anything to do with God?

Look up who the first one was

I want to show you something in the book of Exodus that I have never got over since the day somebody showed it to me.

Go looking for the first person in the Bible who is described, in those words, as being filled with the Spirit of God.

It is not a prophet. It is not a priest. It is not a king and it is not Moses.

See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills, to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.Exodus 31:2 to 5

Read the list of trades out loud. It ends in wood. You are carrying hands that the Holy Spirit filled before He ever filled a prophet, and God did the listing Himself so that nobody could call it a lesser filling.

A craftsman. And read what he was filled with, because it is the part that undoes forty years of standing at the back with your arms folded.

Wisdom. Understanding. Knowledge. And all kinds of skills, and then a list of the actual trades, in order, ending with wood.

The Spirit of God, in the first instance in the whole of Scripture, came on a man so that his hands would know what to do.

Now hear where that puts you, and hear it in the yard where you can hear things properly.

You are not the man who fixes the roof for the people who do the real thing. Scripture puts the first filling of the Spirit on a craftsman and lists his trades, and the Spirit never once ranked a pair of hands below a mouth.

And I want to say something about the room, because that is really what has you.

You have been reading your difficulty in a room as a verdict on your standing with God. It is not. It is a fact about rooms. Some men are built for a yard and some for a hall, and the God who made both of them wrote a passage in Exodus that names a craftsman before it names anybody else.

That thing you do, where you look at a job and see it finished before you start it. Where did you think that came from?

You have called it having an eye for forty years. Scripture has a different word for it and the word is understanding, and it puts it in a sentence beginning I have filled him with the Spirit of God.

The fire that this house is named for fell in a stable in Los Angeles in 1906 that had been a livery and then a lumber store, and the seats in it were planks laid across nail kegs by men who worked with their hands, and the man at the front was not permitted in the classroom where they taught it.

Nobody in that room was there because they could talk.

But you are not the support act for somebody else's ministry. Exodus 31 says the first man ever filled with the Spirit of God was filled with wisdom and understanding and skill, and it lists the wood and the stone and the gold by name.