The First Man He Filled

Dale was up on a roof by ten past seven on the Monday and the message from Sunday was still in his head.

It had been a good one. That is the thing. Nobody said anything wrong. It was about God having a purpose for your life, and it was warm and it was well meant and the man preaching it plainly believed every word.

There were three examples in it. A surgeon who prays before an operation. A teacher who stayed late for one particular child. A woman who went to another country and started a school.

Dale is a roofer. He is forty-nine. He has one knee that is going and a van that is going faster, and on that particular Monday it was three degrees with a wind coming straight off the estuary and rain in it that was not quite sleet and was not quite rain.

He was not bitter about the sermon. He would not have been able to tell you he had a feeling about it at all. He simply noticed, at about half past nine, hanging off a ladder with his hands going numb, that there had not been anybody like him in it.

And that noticing has a particular quiet flavour, and men who work outdoors do not talk about it.

Ross has been on that crew nineteen years and is sixty-six and should have stopped four years ago.

They were in the van at eleven with the heater going and the windows steamed and Dale said something, not much, about the sermon and the three examples. Made a joke of it.

Ross did not laugh.

He said, "Do you know the first person in the whole Bible that God says He filled with His Spirit?"

Dale said something about Moses probably.

"No," said Ross. "Not a prophet. Not a priest. It is a man called Bezalel, and God says it Himself, out loud, and He gives the reason. And the reason is that He wants him to work in gold and silver and bronze, and cut stones, and carve wood."

He wiped the windscreen with his sleeve.

"First man in the book. And He filled him for craftsmanship."

Dale did not say anything for a bit. Then he said, "That is not in any sermon I have ever heard."

And Ross said, "No, mate. It is not."

Now let me ask you about your version of that Monday.

There has been a talk, somewhere, about purpose. And there were examples in it, and they were all fine, and not one of them was you.

You did not complain. You would not know how to complain about that without sounding like you were asking for something. You just went to work in weather nobody would choose, and something in you filed itself a little further back.

The first man God says He filled

Here is the verse Ross was quoting, and read it slowly, because the order of it is the whole point.

And I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship, to make artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood.Exodus 31:3 to 5

I have filled him with the Spirit of God. That is God speaking about a specific named man, and it is the first time in Scripture that sentence is said about anybody.

And look what it is for. Not to prophesy. Not to lead. To work in metal, cut stone, and carve wood.

Gold, silver, bronze, stone, wood. Four materials and a set of hands.

So hear this over you, in the van with the heater going. You are the kind of person God fills, and craftsmanship is the first thing on this earth He ever said He filled anybody for. That is written down, in God's own words, about a man whose whole job was making things, and the Holy Spirit named in that verse is the same Spirit who is in you on a ladder at half past nine in three degrees.

Now let me name the wound properly, because I said I would and because it is worse than the sermon.

It is not one talk. It is thirty years of them.

It is every list of examples you were not in, every prayer for the doctors and nurses that never once mentioned the men who kept the roof on the hospital, every conversation where somebody asked what you do and then moved on quickly. None of it was malicious and all of it added up, and by forty-nine a man has a settled and unspoken belief that whatever God is mainly interested in, it is happening somewhere else and to somebody with cleaner hands.

That is the belief this verse is aimed at, and God aimed it there Himself, in Exodus, before anybody had a chance to build the ranking.

I am not going to tell you the roof is beautiful in February either.

It is not. It is three degrees and your hands do not work and your knee is going and there is a fair chance you will be doing this until you cannot, and no article should tidy that up for you.

Both things stand. It is hard, and God fills men for exactly this, and the Word says so plainly, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a sentence out of Exodus and settles it into a man in a van until he sits differently in the seat.

There was a man five hundred years ago who took the word vocation, which in his day belonged only to monks and priests, and gave it back to everybody: to the farmer, the maid, the smith, the carpenter. He said God does His work in the world through their hands, and that when we pray for our daily bread, God answers it through a baker who got up at four.