His
Workmanship
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God, not
of works, lest anyone should boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
~ Ephesians 2:8-10
Of the great building projects
in the Bible, three which outshone them all are the Tabernacle of Meeting
in Exodus 35:30-38:31, which includes the Ark of the Covenant; Solomon’s
temple in 1 Kings 5-7; and rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem in
Nehemiah 3. While all of these
projects employed skilled craftsmen from many trades (some older
commentaries call them ‘artificers’), expert planning & coordination was
also required to be successful.
Since I studied architecture &
drafting as a teenager, then worked as a planner/expediter in my thirties, I
can appreciate the up-front work that went into these projects, what today
is called ‘project management’. But
in the above examples it was not man, but God, who was the creative artist,
the ‘design engineer’. And although
the
Lord
could relay His designs through the prophets, His people here on earth were
needed to implement them.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses,
saying: “See, I have called by name
Bezaleel … And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in
understanding, in knowledge, and in all
manner of workmanship, to
design artistic works, to work in gold, in silver, in bronze, in cutting
jewels for setting, in carving wood, and to work in all
manner of workmanship.”
~ Exodus 31:1-5
Then Hiram king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to Solomon … “And
now I have sent a skillful man, endowed with understanding, Huram my master
craftsman … skilled to work
in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, purple and blue, fine
linen and crimson, and to make any engraving and to accomplish any plan
which may be given to him, with your skillful men and with the skillful men
of my lord David your father.”
~ 2 Chronicles 2:11,13-14
Bezaleel & Huram were obviously
multi-talented master craftsmen, able to build many types of useful objects,
both practical & artistic. In fact,
in ancient cultures, smiths & craftsmen in general were so valuable to
society at large that they were among the first to be captured & exiled
whenever a country was conquered by foreign invaders (2 Kings 24:14,16).
Most of us however, are limited to but a
few talents. Of course, there’s
nothing wrong with that, as long we identify & utilize those talents for the
glory of God (1 Corinthians 12:4-11).
Now, nothing is too hard for God.
If you are not sure of what God-given talents you have, and really
want to identify them, don’t wait for His intervening hand:
pray for Him to reveal these to you (Mark 11:24).
You might be quite surprised at the
latent talents that have been lying dormant your entire life (e.g.
me becoming an inspirational writer at age 48).
Use your knowledge of Scripture — at
whatever level — to connect Biblical truths with right-now situations.
Pastor Phil Dunn is a master of this in his sermons, the way he
brilliantly weaves real-life examples into Scriptural truths.
This letter metaphorically presents three
specific crafts, providing examples of how God utilizes His powers to help
us become more like Him. Although
much of what follows from the Old Testament was directed at the Israelite
people as a whole, it can easily be applied to the individual.
Pottery:
The Potter
For babes in Christ, who have no shape,
form or direction; a ‘blank slate’ desiring to be worked by God from the
foundation up.
Woodworking:
The Craftsman
For those who have been believers in
Christ for awhile, but are stubborn & rebellious by nature; who desire above
all else to be reworked in God’s image (this writer included).
Metalsmithing:
The Refiner
The toughest of all, for those who are
not saved, whose hearts have been hardened and/or blackened by abuse,
neglect, and/or demonic influences; who need a thorough purging of sins by
the fire of the Holy Spirit.
The Potter
The Word which came to Jeremiah from the
Lord,
saying:
“Arise and go down to the potter’s
house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.”
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making
something at the wheel. And the
vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made
it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.
Then the Word of the Lord
came to me, saying: “O house
of
Israel, can I not do with you as this
potter?” says the Lord.
“Look, as the clay is
in the potter’s hand, so are
you in My hand, O house of
Israel!”
~ Jeremiah 18:1-6
“Take me,
mold me, use me, fill me … call me, guide me, lead me, walk beside me.
I give my life to the Potter’s hand.”
~ Darlene Zschech
The ability of the potter
to mold the clay in his hands to any pattern or purpose as he pleases
symbolizes God’s mind in dealing with His own.
The
LORD
is a jealous God, for “the potter is envious and at enmity with the potter”;
every potter praises his own pot. It
is God’s right to deal with saints & sinners alike according to His own
perfect counsel.
~ Paraphrased from “All Trades and
Occupations of the Bible” by Herbert Lockyer
Finished clay pottery, by its very nature, is brittle & frail, for when a
vessel is broken it cannot be easily reassembled by human hands.
Not so with God’s handiwork.
Unlike a clay vessel, no matter how beautiful & righteous it may be, if one
backslides or falls out of obedience, God is able to work the vessel and
remold it yet again. However, God’s
molding is never complete until the day we are taken up in Jesus’ salvation
(1 Thessalonians 3:16-17).
Your hands shaped me, kneaded me
together, round about —
and now would You devour me?
Remember, You kneaded me like clay
will You turn me back to dirt?
~ Job 10:8-9
Woe to him who strives with his Maker!
Let the potsherd
strive with the potsherds
of the earth!
Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
Or shall your handiwork
say, ‘He has no hands’?
~ Isaiah 45:9
Does not the potter have power
over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another
for dishonor?
What if God, wanting to
show His wrath and to make
His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath
prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His
glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory …
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the
power may be of God and not of us.
~ Romans 9:21-23; 2 Corinthians 4:7
But for the wicked who refuse to repent:
“[The
Lord
has said to Me] ‘You shall break them with a rod of iron;
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ ”
~ Psalm 2:9
~~~~~~~
Like an
earthen vessel overlaid with silver dross
Are burning
lips and a wicked heart.
~ Proverbs
26:23 (NASB)
The precious
sons of
Zion,
Weighed
against fine gold,
How they are
regarded as earthen jars,
The work of a
potter's hands!
~
Lamentations 4:2 (NASB)
The Craftsman
“Among
the varied productions with which Nature has adorned the surface of the
Earth, none awakens our sympathies, or interests our imagination so
powerfully as those venerable trees which seem to have stood the lapse of
ages, silent witnesses of the successive generations of man, to whose
destiny they bear so touching a resemblance, alike in their budding, their
prime and their decay.”
~ John Muir
“But
the tree must be brought down, humbled to the earth in the dust of the
ground, then the tree might be used to form an instrument … Working the wood
the good Craftsman should cut & bend & remold us.”
~ John Michael Talbot (paraphrase
of Daniel 4:10-17)
Then the Lord spoke to Moses,
saying … “And they shall make an ark of acacia [‘shittim’
KJV] wood … And you shall make
poles of acacia wood, and
overlay them with gold … You shall also make a table of acacia wood … And
you shall overlay it with pure gold, and make a molding of gold all around.”
~ Exodus 25:1,10,13,23-24
The above passage made me wonder what is
so special about acacia wood.
According to Isaiah 41:19 the acacia (Hebrew
shittah) tree symbolizes the
revival of life:
“I [the Lord] will plant in
the wilderness the cedar and the acacia tree … I will set in the desert …”
Acacias are well adapted to
their environment, being able to withstand extremes of desert climate, as
well as insects & decay.
A once-upon-a-time
carpenter & woodworker myself, I have to admit there is a certain earthy,
organic quality to working with wood.
Unlike clay & metal, which are inanimate substances, wood was once a
living tree (see The Tree — Planted
In the Church), and knowing this imparts a special respect &
significance to the work. Whatever
the finished product might be — whether sculpture, furniture, or a doll
house — the warm fuzzy feeling that the wood was once alive is always
present. Wood is amazingly compliant
to the craftsman’s desires: it can
be sawn, chopped, chiseled, gouged, carved, drilled, bored, routed, planed,
bent, sanded & finished into virtually any shape, and still retain its
integrity. Being quite stubborn &
rebellious myself, it’s easy for me to see how God can take someone who is
as stiff & obstinate as a live tree, and remold that person into a new
creation, one better conformed to the likeness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17).
There is actually very little in the
Bible about woodworking, except in the negative sense of idolatry.
The writer of Isaiah 40-48 had quite a satirical sense of humor when
he wrote:
The workman molds an image,
The goldsmith overspreads it with gold,
And the silversmith casts silver chains.
Whoever is too impoverished
for such a contribution
Chooses a tree that will
not rot;
He seeks for himself a skillful workman
To prepare a carved image that
will not totter.
So the craftsman encouraged the goldsmith;
He who smoothes with the
hammer
inspired
him who strikes the anvil,
Saying, “It is ready for
the soldering”;
Then he fastened it with pegs,
That
it might not totter.
~
Isaiah
40:19-20;
41:7
The craftsman stretches out his rule,
He marks one out with chalk;
He fashions it with a plane,
He marks it out with the compass,
And makes it like the figure of a man,
According to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house.
Indeed he makes a god and worships
it;
He makes it a carved image, and
falls down to it.
~
Isaiah 44:13,15
~~~~~~~
[The LORD
answered] “What profit is the image, that its maker should carve it,
The molded image, a teacher of
lies,
That the maker of its mold should trust in it,
To make mute idols?
Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’
To silent stone, ‘Arise! It
shall teach!’
Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,
Yet in it there is no breath at
all.”
~
Habakkuk 2:18-19
~~~~~~~
Remember your Creator
before the silver cord is loosed,
Or the golden bowl is broken,
Or the
pitcher shattered at the fountain,
Or the wheel broken at the well.
Then the dust
will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it.
~
Ecclesiastes 12:6-7
The Refiner
Many shall be
purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly; and
none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.
~ Daniel 12:10
The word of
the Lord
came to me, saying, “Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross
to Me; they are all bronze,
tin, iron, and lead, in the midst of a furnace; they have become dross from
silver. Therefore thus says the Lord
GOD:
‘Because you have all become dross, therefore behold, I will gather
you into the midst of Jerusalem.
As men gather
silver, bronze, iron, lead, and tin into the midst of a furnace, to blow
fire on it, to melt it; so
I will gather you in My
anger and in My fury, and I will leave
you there and melt you.
Yes, I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of My wrath, and
you shall be melted in its midst. As
silver is melted in the midst of a furnace, so shall you be melted in its
midst; then you shall know that I, the Lord,
have poured out My fury on you.”
~ Ezekiel 22:17-22
“The
Lord, with perfect wisdom and love, leaves His people in affliction till,
their dross being purified, He sees them reflecting His holy image; just as
the ‘refiner of silver’ sits watching his own image reflected when he knows
the silver has been long enough in the furnace and withdraws it.”
~ A. R. Fausset, Commentary on
Malachi 3:3
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