Look how many times Bezalel’s name is mentioned here in Exodus! And not only here, but he is referred to elsewhere in Scripture as well. We might expect someone mentioned so frequently in Scripture to have been a prophet, a priest or a king, but Bezalel was none of these things.

Bezalel was a skilled craftsman who the Lord anointed with the Holy Spirit to carry out a specific role in this Kingdom project. He could have been any one of us.

When we think about ‘offerings’ at church, we usually think about gifts of money. But what about other types of gifts? Bezalel was gifted at wood and metal work. You might be gifted at cooking great meals, managing finances, administration and organisation, listening, or any number of other things. You may feel as though you don’t have any gifts at all, but the Lord has given each one of us a special and unique part to play in his body – you matter, even if you don’t yet know how you matter.

It is a good thing to offer gifts of money – the Lord values the first fruits of our labours – but in some ways, this is a type of giving that requires little of us, especially if we compare the effort needed to set up a bank transfer with the effort that Bezalel put into his offering of skilled work. If Bezalel had decided that he was too busy for all this effort, then the Tabernacle would still have been built, but by somebody else, and Bezalel would have missed out on the anointing of the Holy Spirit and his place in history.

The Israelites were generous with their material gifts, but that was not all that was needed to get this job done. The Lord also needed them to be generous with their skill and with their time. Let’s not miss out on the purposes of God because we are too busy, or because we don’t think our skills are worth offering. The Lord wants to appoint you, and to anoint you!

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NEWBOLD COMMUNITY CHURCH