Into The Box

“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,”

Exodus 31:1-3

Bezaleel, a man of many talents

Impressive is an understatement of the skills that Bezaleel was given. God specially selected him out of 600,000 men (Exodus 12:37) in Israel to fashion his Holy Place in the wilderness: the Tabernacle. This privilege required a number of specialized skills.

• 31:4 Engineering: “To devise cunning works”
• 31:4 Metallurgy: “To work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,”
• 31:5 Gemology and large-scale masonry: “And in cutting of stones, to set them,”
• 31:5 Trim carpentry and rough-in framing: “And in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.”
• 31:9 Glassmaking: “The laver and his foot” (Exodus 38:8)
• 31:10 Tailoring and embroidery: “The cloths of service, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons,”
• 31:11 Culinary and apothecarial arts: “And the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place:”
• In addition to various disciplines of visual art: sculpting and engraving, upholstery, and the manufacture and use of dyes and textures. (Ex. 36:8,19, 36-38)

The man was undoubtedly a genius. He was not a jack-of-all-trades, he was a master artificer. His crowning work was the extraordinary House of God and its exquisite furnishings and decorations. He built it to be so majestic, yet so portable. So intricate, yet durable. So untouchable, yet it would ride on the shoulders of the priests for 40 years around the wilderness of Sinai.

The patterns he created would never be improved upon. Some of the furnishings would be duplicated by Hiram (1 Kings 7:43, 49), alongside the originals (1Kings 8:4). Solomon’s Temple would be only a new frame for the old masterpieces created by Bezaleel.

To gain a working knowledge in any one of those trades would take years; to master one may take a lifetime of constant use. Yet Bezaleel had command of all these skills together, thanks to the gifting and anointing of God.

Unappreciated Genius

I have interviewed many people whose claim to fame they cinched inside this catch-phrase:

“I’d like to think of myself as an outside-of-the-box thinker.”

It used to impress me. Then it started to amuse me. Until, after the eighth-dozenth time, it began to irk me. This is the particular reason why.

I recall I was sitting in on a conversation where the ‘outside-of-the-box’ bomb was dropped. That statement was usually met with platitudinous “ooo’s” and “aaah’s”, and blessed was the man who claimed it first. But an old salt sat across the table, and gazed at the smug claimant over his thick bifocal glasses. I’ll never forget what happened next.

He tapped his pencil on the pad in front of him and in a cool but serious tone asked, “You said you think out of the box, yes? Can you please explain to me what the box is?”

The poor soul never saw it coming. The next ten minutes were filled with sweat, anxiety, uncertainty and more doublespeak than you’ll hear in a State of the Union Address(!). I wouldn’t have traded places with that person for the world. When they left the room, one thing was certain: they were NOT an out-of-the-box thinker!

What is the Box?

Christianity has been marked by the unorthodox. John the Baptist breaks on the scene open-air preaching in a camel-hair suit. Betsie Ten Boom refuses to lie to Nazis about which direction Jews fled from her house. Martin Luther nails his defiant resignation to the Wittenburg castle door. Nate Saint uses an airplane to lower gifts to open native tribes to the Gospel. George Muller refuses to beg anyone but God for his orphans’ daily bread. Peter Ruckman draws men to Christ with chalk art and masterful homiletics. What a legacy, what skill, what gifts!

We all want to be that. Nobody wants to remain a nobody. We want our talents to bring dividends; we want to let our light shine!

Back to Basics

In our Athenian search for new and novel, we have forgone the tried and true. Up and coming preachers have sought to be something they are not. They are journalists before they are reporters, commentators before researchers, and advisors before they are students. They want so badly to get ‘out’ of a box they have never been ‘in’.

Bezaleel’s skills were not an overnight epiphany, nor was the time he spent with each of them a total waste. He had to concentrate as hard at learning to drive a nail as he did to weave a golden thread. (Exodus 39:3) He trained his eye to lay a brick wall plumb just as much as to set an onyx in a golden socket. (Exodus 35:27) It is plain to see that he had to master the primaries before he could lay claim to the specialties.

How weary I am over the podcasters who discuss the ‘deeper life’ while their churches struggle to be Bible readers. They want to delve into prophecy– how about honesty? Tell me the truth about today, before I believe you about tomorrow! I love meditation; but it is a secondary skill- how can one meditate on truths he has never committed to memory? I enjoy hypothetical postulating; but the idea goes without saying- if you do not know a simple truth, you are wasting time with a complex one!

We have become specialists who have no special skill at all. We are like a book with a grand, colorful title page, but no bibliography. We are like the mechanic with thousand-dollar tools, but who can’t remember ‘righty-tighty, leftie-loosie’. The Bible word is ‘novice’.

“Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.”

1 Timothy 3:6

In our race to outpace other internet preachers spreading their ‘influence’ on online ‘platforms’, we have only proven to be desperate, shoddy, shams. We are supposed to be diligent followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. He called us to be disciples. Instead we are despicably UN-disciplined.

Paul would rebuke his Hebrew brethren for this same oversight in Hebrews 5:12. “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.” They felt they were ready for deeper waters, but had not yet learned to swim. They wanted to major in the New Testament, but they had not fully grasped the Old. To further illustrate his point, the Apostle Paul would reference the handiwork of none other than Bezaleel, son of Uri.

“In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” (Hebrews 8:13) It would seem Paul is urging them to throw their OT away, but wait a moment as he continues:

“Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.

For there was a tabernacle made; the first, wherein was the candlestick, [Bezaleel] and the table, [Bezaleel] and the shewbread; which is called the sanctuary. And after the second veil, [Bezaleel] the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all; Which had the golden censer, [Bezaleel] and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, [Bezaleel] wherein was the golden pot [Bezaleel] that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; And over it the cherubims of glory [Bezaleel] shadowing the mercyseat; [Bezaleel] of which we cannot now speak particularly.”

Hebrews 9:1-5 [Brackets added]

The mountain of time and talent poured into the ‘OLD’ is staggering! Paul doesn’t overlook it, rather he urges his reader to look INTO it. He takes more than a passing glance at that ancient dwellingplace of God in order to bring out a rich NEW truth.

“The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: Which was a figure for the time then present,“

Hebrews 9:8-9a

The entrance of Christ the Saviour as the fulfillment of the law was not the replacement of what was before with something else; rather it is an addition to what He Himself had so precisely ordered from Mt. Sinai. It was the “box” that Jesus Christ got you “out” of! It was more than not bad; it was a necessary box.

Squared Away

I’m all for thinking outside the box. I’m all for asking questions and the fresh discovery of truth. That doesn’t make the box wrong; rather, it makes it necessary as a point of reference to know where you are looking from, to find what you’re looking for.

Be like Bezaleel.

Master the basic arts: in music take the time to learn your scales so you can handle a key change. In math, learn addition before factoring binomials. In sports, learn to run so you can carry the ball one day. In language, learn to spell before you write a book. Basics before brilliance.

In your Christian walk, let daily Bible reading, confession of sin, verse memorizing and Sunday School attendance be basics. Though you may aspire to exposit difficult passages, to pray fire from Heaven, or to write a doctrinal thesis; remember the box God starts you in is a necessary building block for better things.

---