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Good Tuesday morning to you my friends, today we’re reading together Exodus 31.
Have you noticed most every child begins to develop a natural born interest in something, when they are quite young? Think about your children, grandchildren, nieces & nephews for just a moment. Who among them love art, who seem gifted in music, who love cooking or working with their fingers in the dirt, who love animals or even carrying for old people or babies? Isn’t it fascinating to watch those natural areas of interest develop as our children grow older? Dawn and I sure see it in our 4 grand-girls, each so different one from the other, yet born to the same parents!
Now here’s the question: where did those innate, natural passions, talents, interests come from? When in their pregnancy was that woven into them, even before they were born? What fuels their desire to learn, to develop these God given interests?
We’ve been up Mount Sinai with Moses for the past few days, eves-dropping in on his conversation with God. Exodus 31 answers the question HOW? Perhaps you’ve been wondering, as I’m sure Moses was…WHO is going to make all this remarkable stuff God has described and designed, and HOW will they do it?
Look at Exodus 31:1…Mr. Bezalel and his assistant Mr. Oholiab. “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘I have chosen Bezalel, son of Uri…and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze…” Aha! God had prepared a man, and his assistant, and many others, to fabricate these remarkable things that He had described to Moses in the cloud on Mount Sinai. And do you see God’s preparation of them not only included talent and skill, but also “…I have filled him with the Spirit of God…”? What does that tell you about the sacredness of this Tent of Meeting construction project which God was calling Moses to lead?
Now let’s look at ourselves… what are those unusual abilities God has entrusted to each of you? Be neither prideful nor self-demeaning my friends. God designed each of us with gifts, abilities, interests that HE placed within us. The question is…what have we done to develop them and to understand, to discern, how God wants to use your uniqueness in this world, for HIS glory?
How much potential in each of us has been squandered over the years…why? Fear of trying? Selfishness? Fear of failure? Never really considering it was GOD who gave you those abilities and passions, according to HIS plan for your life and so He could involve you, in what He wants to accomplish somewhere in our world, at this time in history?
It’s never too late my friends… may I urge you to stop right now and ponder what God may want to do through you, at this stage of your life with the God given abilities He has entrusted to you?
What wells up inside you when you hear the word “Sabbath”? Do you know what it means and why the Bible speaks so much about it? Exodus 31:12-17 helps us. As God begins winding down this first 40 day experience with Moses up on Mount Sinai, this final topic is really important. In fact by God’s design it should be a cornerstone of each of our lives. Sabbath means… rest, refresh, re-align, revive.
We all have a tendency to fill every available, awake moment with something, especially now with so much technology available to us. Two very important things happen in our ‘busyness’. First, we wear out and second, we are drawn away from God. “Sabbath” is God’s answer to both problems. God feels so strongly about it, you see He refers to it as “This will be a sign between Me and you for the generations to come, so that you may know that I am the LORD, who makes you holy.”
Now perhaps you grew up in an era when you did essentially NOTHING on Sunday except church both AM & PM. And the explanation you received from your parents was simply, “because that’s the way it is”. Did Sunday’s become for you a frustration, a wasted day? How far is that from ‘rest, refresh, re-align and revive’?
Because human life, in our sinful world, naturally draws us AWAY from God, we need something that will REGULARLY draw us back to Him, and that needs to be more than a 3 minute morning prayer. One entire day every week, with our focus on HIM, should help draw us back to Him, and help us re-align our priorities with God’s, our passions with God’s, even our pleasure with that which God loves. Listen to this: “Do not fret… Trust in the LORD and do good… Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Ps. 37:1-4) That’s what Sabbath is all about.
Moses and these 2 million run-away slaves had likely been accustomed to hard, non-stop, back-breaking work. In fact they had probably seen many people simply worked to death. But God was re-defining a balanced life for them and that included a day each week to rest their bodies from their labor and focus their hearts and minds on God. The result of that should be re-vival!
A rested & revived physical body, but also, and maybe more importantly, a revived heart and mind, re-aligned with God. May I invite you right now to take a moment and think through your personal Sabbath Philosophy? How might Sunday become for you, the most important day of your week, for your health of mind, heart, soul and body?
Finally the last verse of Exodus 31… ahhhh, the tablets of stone, cut out of the mountain, by God Himself, and the 10 Commandments, engraved on them by, ‘the finger of God’. Can you imagine that moment?
Do you remember another time in our Exodus story when that phrase, ‘the finger of God’ was used? Remember the Pharaoh and his sorcerers who were unable to duplicate the plague of gnats (Exodus 8:18,19)? So let’s sit down next to Moses on the hillside. Look out over the tents of 2 million people scattered across the desert down below. They have no idea what we’ve been experiencing these past many days with God and Moses in the cloud.
Run your fingers over the tablets, trace the cut marks in the stone which form letters and proclaim God’s Commandments, the secrets to living life by God’s design. As your fingers touch the letters… do you feel the finger of God? As your mind and heart contemplate the privilege of weeks with God in the cloud, of being ‘the people of God,’ do you feel the finger of God touching your life?
This is the purpose of Sabbath… the touch of God.
It’s also the purpose of a ‘mini-Sabbath’ each day as we meet together in this “Walking With Jesus”. So may invite us all to spend a little time, right now, talking with God…mostly LISTENING to God? What does He want to say to you about how you are like Mr. Bezalel by His design of you, and how He’d love a Sabbath with you…often?
Oh God… thank you…
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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