People

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The Man Whose Time had Come

For at least forty years he got up every morning and went to work. He raised a family and accepted the responsibility to support them be working in a workshop hours on end. He started as a young man but the years crept up on him and before he knew it he was supervising younger men in the finer skills of carpentry. Often he worked with inferior materials and crude tools but despite this he gained a reputation of sorts as being one of the finest carpenters in Goshen. Being a slave was not an easy life but he had done well despite the circumstances. He worked, he played and he went to church every Sabbath, but in the back of his mind he always had this nagging thought, “There has to be a reason for all of this! There has to be more!” Day after day and year after year he led an ordinary life, as ordinary as one could have and still be a slave.

Then…… Moses came!

He had never seen such things! Cataclysmic events unfolded right before his eyes and before he could grasp an understanding of it all he and 600,000 other Jews were catapulted out of Egypt. He would leave the place of his birth never to return and embark with the rest of his kinsmen on one of the most important journeys in the history of mankind. Now his purpose would be revealed!

There in the desert Moses is given divine instructions to construct a tabernacle. It would be like no other. It would be a place where Yahweh would rest among His people. With ease, all the details fell into place. There was more than enough material, after all they had left Egypt with their wagons full of riches untold, and they had a plan which was very plain and clear. The only thing that lacked was the workers! Now Moses needed some body to build it. He wouldn’t take “bids” by local companies instead it would have to be done a different way. The time had come for Bezalel ! The curtain that had hidden this unknown carpenter from public attention was suddenly pulled aside putting him at center stage in the divine drama of God.

Perhaps deep into the night he is awakened from his sleep in his tent and begins thinking, “I can do this.” After all he had spent forty years day after day working and learning. “Could it be that I was in that shop for so long just for this moment?, he thought.” Now he was beginning to understand the very purpose for why he even existed. It all came down to this moment. He was born for this!

Determined to be a part of this great endeavor, the next morning he marches to Moses’ tent and with a willingly offers to help. Leaving his tent he has no idea that he’s on his way to make history! It doesn’t take long before Moses and Aaron recognize the unique abilities of this man. They start the work and Bezalel is put in charge to oversee the construction. Now work has a purpose! He’s excited about each new day and can hardly sleep. His mind reels with details and ideas as he draws new plans. Other men come to him for advice and wisdom. His tent becomes the center of operations with men streaming in and out at all hours of the day, to the chagrin of his wife.

Bezalel sews the curtains and veil, builds the walls, the ark, the table of show bread, the candlestick, altar of incense, the altar of sacrifice and so on. His men are busy with a purpose. This is definitely not Egypt! It’s fun and exciting to be a part of something far bigger than that little shop back in Goshen.

As he pauses for the noon day meal maybe he starts to realize the plan God had for him for all those years in Egypt. While God was teaching him in the crucible of life, while on the other side of the country God was preparing a deliverer. By divine intervention the course of both men’s lives would cross in the Sinai desert and out of that would come a tabernacle that would host the presence of God on the earth.

Now he understood! Now it all made sense.

He had been prepared for this moment!

I’m not sure how long it took for Bezalel’s team to complete the work but I do know one thing. THEY FINISHED! As suddenly as he appears on the scene, he disappears but not before Moses writes the following epitaph. In Exodus 38:22 Moses writes, “Bezalel the son Uri, the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah made all that the Lord had commanded Moses!”

Somewhere buried beneath the sands of the Sinai desert are the bones of a man whose time had come, who recognized it, captured it with all of his heart and then finished it!

I know a lot of men and women like this! They have spent their youth in obscurity, working year after year all the while wondering “Why am I here? What is my purpose in life?” Then suddenly something happens that frees them for their “slavery.” They retire. The whistles of the task masters are rendered silent and days are spent playing golf or baby sitting grand children. Rest and relaxation are the prescription from the family physician. Ahhhh, life is good! But, that “nagging thought” isn’t so easily erased.

They go to church hear the sermons and try to justify their earned rest by saying “let the kids do it.” But it doesn’t give them any relief. Friend, if this describes you, your time may have arrived! You were born for a purpose. For some that purpose is revealed later in life than for others. I mean, look at Moses. He gets his commission when he is eighty years old. Abraham and Sara are pretty old when Isaac is born. A nation would come from the loins of a pair of senior citizens!

Demographers tell us that the median age for American is climbing upward. I saw on 60 minutes the other night a company that employs senior citizens in their factory. One lady works 39 hours a week making surgical needles and she's ninety years old! The owner of the factory told her that as long as she could walk up the stairs she had her job. She’s still climbing six days a week! She said she retired once for seven years but she like to went nuts. There was still something more for her to do.

I don’t know if this lady was saved or not but assuming she wasn’t, if she still recognizes her need to do something, how much more should we who are sons of the Most High, recognize that “Our time has come?”

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