Exodus 31:1-11 Called by Name

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Pastor Don Filsak is preaching through a sermon series called The Rest of the Week, Loving God from Monday to Saturday. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning.

The Call of God in Everyday Work

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. I just want to say thanks for coming out on this summer. Summer's finally here. I don't know if you guys noticed that or not. Maybe by the way that you guys are so spread out, I can tell that summer has arrived.

But just to welcome you, glad that you're here. If this is your first time with us, we want you to do us a favor and take a free coffee mug out there on the table. Remember to fill out that connection card.

If you are finding yourself missing out on information or you find yourself kind of like not knowing what your next steps are here or how to connect, I'd encourage you to fill out that connection card and check any boxes there that might apply to you.

And then we will follow up on those with you. But again, thank you for coming out to worship our great God together this morning. Any offerings that anybody would choose to give, go in that same black box out there.

Somebody just came up to me a minute ago and suggested that maybe I'd make a plea that this would be a good morning to mention that there will be air conditioning in the new building when we get the funds in for that.

Just kidding. In God's time, right? In God's time. But this morning we're going to be continuing a short topical series on the subject of our everyday work. Last week we set out to demonstrate from the pages of scripture that God has made humanity for the purpose of work.

He made us to work. He made us to be creative and to create and to care for the world around us and take care for others around us and ultimately to serve him by serving others in a real way. Work is a good thing even though it really has been broken as a result of our rebellion against God and so we all recognize that to some degree or other work within us and in our daily lives tends to be toil and hard and difficult, not always with the results that we're setting out to accomplish and all of those kinds of things are somewhat messed up as a result of sin.

But now this morning we're going to look more at a personal level. Last week kind of establishing a little bit through the flow of scripture that work is indeed a good thing, but now looking down to the individual by considering the word vocation that occurs in the text that we're going to be looking at this morning.

The word vocation, vocation is a word that we don't use very often, but it is simply a direct translation, a direct carryover into English of the Latin word to call. It's calling. Straightforward, that's exactly what it means.

It's ripped right out of Latin, brought over here and you're going to see the word calling or called in our text this morning. And we're going to be unpacking the definition of that word vocation as kind of a central theme of this morning and thinking about vocation.

Think about our calling. Think about the shape of the way that God has created us to serve him by serving others in the world around us. And this morning we're going to be looking over one specific text that serves as a model example of the call of God on a person's life.

Throughout the pages of scripture, God is often calling out people for specific tasks. Have you noticed that as you've read, particularly as you read through the Old Testament, but even some in the New?

He calls Noah and tells him to do a specific task. What is that specific task? To build a boat, right? Build an ark. He calls Abraham and calls him to follow him by faith and ultimately there is a physical result of that.

He calls him to move his family from an area of pagan idol worship into the land of Canaan that God says, I'm going to give to you. He calls Moses and there's a physical aspect to the call of Moses. Lead the people out of Israel.

And how many of you think that there might have been some physical labor and some hardship involved in that leading the people out of Israel? There was work involved in that. He calls David to be a great king.

He calls Solomon to build a temple. God calls many prophets to speak truth to a nation that is in moral decline throughout the Old Testament prophets. Jesus comes on the scene and calls his 12 disciples to come and follow him.

And none of those are going to be my example this morning, but we see this theme of calling going throughout scripture, but instead God laid on my heart to choose an individual that maybe I would guess that most of us in the room have never heard of, a guy named Basilel.

Raise your hand if you're familiar with the story of Basilel. Maybe a couple of us in the room. It's not a real common story. It's likely because of its location at the end of Exodus that if you've read through the Bible in a year, you've read this story, but it's just kind of stuck there and probably because it's all around and surrounded by the law and the rules about making the tabernacle and how much cloth is supposed to be used and how many ounces the rings that hold up the curtains on the tabernacle and how many of you have ever got bogged down in the details?

That sometimes you kind of cheat a little and skip and skim, just a skosh. And so it's possible to overlook this story that I think is quite important, especially when it comes to the subject and the topic of the call of God on our lives.

My hope is that through this short text, these 11 verses, many of you will find that God gives dignity to your everyday work and your specific calling, your specific vocation by looking at the story of Basilel here in this text.

Because the series is ultimately about the rest of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and a lot of us think of our relationship with God as primarily focused on Sunday. It's a gathering of God's people.

That's appropriate in one sense. It's a gathering together. It's important. It's vital that we have this day of rest, a day set aside for the worship of God. And some of you, maybe you would even identify, well, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you know, I get up and I try to read a devotional or I pray before meals or I pray with my kids before I put them to bed at night or whatever.

So you're like, well, there's some spiritual things sprinkled in there. But what about the rest of the day? What about all the other things that can be redeemed and brought into an understanding of what God is doing in you and through you to reach out to the rest of the world and ultimately to bring honor to him through serving others in real tangible ways?

A lot of us think that our value Monday through Saturday is just strictly in as much as we can have a gospel conversation with the person in the cubicle next to us or maybe it's just talking spiritual talk and then we're doing the Lord's work.

But what about delivering packages? What about prescribing medicine if you're a doctor? What about all the different things that people are doing? What about design work as an engineer? What about those things that you spend a whole host of your time doing all week long?

Is that wasted time? Is that just me time? Is that just, I got to make a paycheck? Are you getting what I'm saying in this? So what is the value in that? And that's coming down to this idea of vocation.

So let's open our Bibles to Exodus chapter 31, 1 through 11, Exodus 31, 1 through 11. If you don't have a Bible on your lap or a device to navigate to the Bible, then just please raise your hand and one of these guys will bring you a Bible.

We want everybody to have a copy of God's word on their lap that they can see. And if you're looking for a specific app, I recommend the ESV Bible app. If you go to any of the app stores and type that in, ESV Bible, that's the app that I recommend the most.

It's really easy to search. I really like the interface of it. And it also happens to be the translation that I use. So nothing magical about it. Just my favorite. Deuteronomy 31, 1 through Exodus. Yeah.

Thank you. We were about to read something different there. We're going to be on the wrong page. I started to look at it and I was like, 1 through 11 is the end of a paragraph. What's going on? All right.

Here we go. The Lord said to Moses, see, I have called by name, Basilel, the son of Uri, son of her, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood to work in every craft.

And behold, I have appointed with him, Ohelayim, the son of Ahissamech, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability that they may make all that I have commanded you. The tent of meeting and the ark of the testimony and the mercy seat that is on it, and all the furnishings of the tent, the table and its utensils, and the pure lampstand and all its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offerings with all of its utensils, and the basin and its stand, and the finely worked garments, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons for their services, priests, and the anointing oil and the fragrant incense for the holy place, according to all that I have commanded you, they shall do.

Let's pray. Fathers, we come to this subject of work. I know that there's all different kinds of broken notions in our hearts and in our minds about this, and it really cuts to the core of what we believe we were created for.

And so, Father, as it can be so central and easily so overlooked in our lives, Father, I pray that you would open our eyes through the pages of your word to even contemplate and consider our vocation, the place that you have us, and the different skill set that you've given us to accomplish your work in this world for the service of you and the good of others.

Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to worship you in song even now, Father, that we would recognize this. Worship is also equally a part of our calling, Father, that our hearts long for and desire and are made for your worship and for your honor and for your glory.

And so, Father, I pray that we would recognize that as part of not just our responsibility, but our delight and our joy to sing songs before you in praise to you at this time. I ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, big thanks to Pete for leading us in worship, well, the team here, but Pete didn't find out until Friday he was leading worship. Josh got called out of town at the last minute, and so I just really appreciate him filling in in Josh's absence this weekend, so grateful for them.

I encourage you to get comfortable. I know that it's kind of warm in here. It actually is quite a bit warmer up there, according to my wife who was sitting up there at the beginning, so if you want to come down, feel free to, otherwise you can stay up there, but it is a little bit cooler down here on the floor, so not a whole lot of difference though, but yeah.

And then remember if you need more juice or coffee or donuts, those are available at either one of the places up here. Restrooms are out the door, down the hall, women's downstairs, men's upstairs. We want you to use the restrooms on this end, the ones down here we reserve for the children's ministry, so whatever it takes to keep your focus on God's Word over the next half an hour or so as we dig in, and make sure your Bibles are open to Exodus 31, 1 through 11 as we dig in.

I want you to just see that the things that we're talking about are coming from this text, and before we dig into this specific text, let me give you the shape of this five-week series that this is the second of.

Last week was an introduction to the goodness of work. This week we're taking some time to consider the call of God on each of our lives to our vocation, specifically on that idea of calling. Next week we're going to talk about the quality of our work in regard to our vocation, that calling, that specific shape of giftedness that God has given to us, so therefore we ought to consider what our quality of work ought to look like, and then we're going to look at the benefit of good work on society, and the last week we are going to wrap it all up considering stewardship as a result of our vocation.

The main point of this series is an attempt to recapture the rest of our week for God. My hope is that we leave this series with a deeper understanding that our work, and when I say work, I don't mean just our employment, but the things that we do Monday through Saturday.

Some of you might just, you could have a tendency to check out because you're like, I'm not in full-time employment, I don't get a paycheck, I'm a stay-at-home mom, I do different things, or I'm retired and I volunteer with my time, or I do, but what is it that God has structured in your life that you do Monday through Saturday?

Raise your hand if you do something Monday through Saturday. You've got some things on your plate. You have a vocation, you have a specific set of circumstances that God has called you to do right now to be faithful in, and that's the stuff that we're talking about.

And that ought to, those things that we do Monday through Saturday ought to be an expression of loving God and loving others. What we do Monday through Saturday is a major part of the way we relate to God.

And this week we get a chance to look in on a conversation between God and Moses in Exodus 31. And whenever we start off in the middle of a, that's one of the reasons I don't generally preach topically is I don't like just plunk you're in the middle of a historical, cultural context and we're just gonna take chapter 31 out and analyze a few verses in there.

I prefer to go through, but I think sometimes it's beneficial for us to do an exercise like this. But when we do that, when you have a devotional that reads like three verses, you ought to read a little bit more than that.

You ought to check out what's going on in the bigger picture. Where are we at in the history and in the writing and all of that? So let me catch us up to speed real quick. Moses has already led the people out of Egypt by the time that we come to Exodus chapter 31.

Remember, they walked through the Red Sea, all the miracles and the judgments on Egypt for not letting them go and eventually they're like, go walk through the Red Sea. They've been already by Exodus 31, they've been to Mount Sinai.

They've received the 10 commandments. Moses has gone up to the mountain and has conversed with God and not just in, not just received the 10 commandments, but Moses also received a detailed description of the relationship of Israel as a nation to their God in worship.

So there's all kinds of details that sometimes we get mired in. Sometimes I mentioned earlier, we skip over in our reading or whatever, but all of those are detail oriented things about how to approach a holy God as the nation was seeking to worship him.

And within some of those details, there was the inclusion of building of a specific tent for the worship of God called the tabernacle. It was a tent that was used, the tabernacle was used for sacrifices, it was used for offerings.

It also served as a place for the glory of God to appear among his people. Moses would go, it was often referred to as the tent of meeting, where God would actually come down and meet with Moses on a routine and regular basis, revealing to him and he would write and that's where we get the first five books of the Old Testament, of the entire Bible.

Well, after some detailed instructions for the construction of the tabernacle, which is quite detailed, and then further detail of the implements of worship, including what the priest was to wear and all of those details and all that really fun stuff.

Probably a couple of you actually really enjoy that. And the rest are kind of like, you know, I don't really, that kind of detail is a little bit overwhelming to me or whatever, but some of us like that detail work.

But within this conversation, we're going to find here, here in our text, a conversation between God and Moses about all of that building that's going to go on, all of that, and he is going to give us eight important truths that should shape our understanding of vocation through this encounter with Moses, God Moses, talking about a couple of other guys in the text.

But before we dive into those eight truths, if you're taking notes, you'll want to write those down. But before we dive in, I should mention that we're looking at a historical account. And at first glance, we might dismiss this as one man's specific experience and question what it has to do with us.

So we're going to read about God calling a guy named Basil. We already did. We read about God calling this one individual. And you know, you might be tempted to say, that's good for, that's good for this guy, right?

But what about me? Okay, we're just seeing, we're just seeing an example of God calling somebody, but does he do that for, for me? And let me suggest to you that this text is recorded at least to show us how God works in real lives.

But when we consider that this text is recorded for us, is actually written down, revealed by the Spirit, recorded by Moses for us, and comes all the way down past centuries and cultures to us here in Matawan, Michigan, God wanted us to read this.

God wanted us to, to take this on and to understand it. And then further, you get into the New Testament where Paul says, all Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching and for reproof and for correction and training and righteousness.

And when we think about what Scripture exists for, then this, this, this passage of Scripture has something to do with you and me, right? Has something to communicate to us about the way that we live and the way that God interacts with us and works with us as well.

God has a vocation. God has a calling for you. I believe that. And I believe that regardless of who you are. He has something out there for you or something that he's actually, when I say out there, I mean Monday through Saturday, for you.

I believe that this text serves as a template for the call of God. And we learn, even if it's just in generalities, that God calls and gifts and equips people for the everyday task. He is calling and equipping you and has already equipped you for what you're going to face tomorrow morning, Tuesday, all throughout the day, Wednesday, all throughout the day.

He's equipped you for that. And we're going to see that through this text. So right from the beginning of our text, the Lord speaks to Moses. And how many of you think when God opens his mouth, we ought to listen?

We ought to pay attention? How many of you know, if God appeared to you and said some things to you and said, hey, I want to, I want to tell you something, would you, would he have your attention? Would your ears perk up a little bit?

Well, in this case, God is speaking to Moses and says, the Lord said to Moses, what's he going to say? He's going to draw Moses's attention to something else. He says, Moses, check this out. See this.

I have called a dude named Basil. I've called him. And in verse two, we encounter our first truth about vocation, fundamental, quite commonsensical, and at the same time, vital and important to start here, and the text starts there.

God does the calling. God does the calling. He is the one. God explicitly clarifies to Moses that he has chosen and called out a specific man for his purposes. Now, if we stop to consider the word vocation, I mentioned in Latin, that means to call or calling, right?

Specifically. And if we consider that, we realize that if it means calling, then it's a word that implies that there is someone who is doing the calling, right? That you would have some notion, that you would have some sense that you are called to do something requires someone to be pulling you towards it, right?

Someone is wanting you to do a certain task. In one sense, for any human to speak of them having a vocation or a calling is at least verbally to give some kind of assent to the reality that there is one who is higher than them that is orchestrating events in their lives, is actually doing something to bring them to the place of fruitfulness or towards a certain product or whatever.

For a true atheist to use the word vocation is technically inconsistent. Not that I would encourage any of you to go out and try to correct that. Anytime you see an atheist use the word vocation, now you're going to let them have it or whatever, you know, that would be really great for chat sites and stuff like that.

Do a search for vocation and find out if atheists are using it. But to say that you're called to a certain position, to say that you're called to a certain job, to say that you're called to a certain gifting or whatever requires someone who calls.

And we must recognize at the outset of our text that it is God who not only does the calling but has the right to call. As our creator, as the one who has set everything in motion, as the one who is worthy of all glory and honor and praise, he has the right to call us, to assign for us, in other words, our vocation.

Secondly, we see in verse two that not only does God call this dude Basilel, but God calls him by name. He calls him by name. This does not necessarily mean that God showed up and said to Basilel, Basilel, Basilel.

He's like, what? Yeah, you, I'm calling you by name. Your name is Basilel. It wasn't, it's not about the name per se, but I really believe that this is a figure of speech regarding intimate knowledge of Basilel.

Called him by name. He called him personally. Personally. And my second point is that the call of God is personal. First it's God who does the calling, second, the call of God extends down to the personal, to who you are and how he has made you.

A specific man from a specific father and a specific grandfather was singled out by God for the task of leading the construction of the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and the other many material things that were used in the worship of God in that ancient culture.

And God has a specific purpose for this guy. Within this personalized call is the explicit reality that God knows our history. God knows your history. He even knows our prehistory. He knows our Yuri and our Her, our father and our grandfather.

I believe that he has such a magnificent and glorious story arc of our history in front of him that what he knows about each one of us should humble us, but equally should give us comfort and energy. The one who calls you vocationally, the one who has said about the things that he has for you to accomplish tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, the one who has ultimately called you even to the place of employment where you work today or the place of unemployment where you will work, the one who has called you knows you in and out.

He knows your family and he has been working in your family line long before you ever existed and he's called you. He's called you to a place to be fruitful, to be useful, to be productive for his honor and for his glory and for the service of others, for the service of civilization, for the service of community, for the service of the people around you in your culture, in your neighborhoods.

God is the one who calls and his call is personal even to the individual person. Third, God's calling involves competence. It involves competence. The construction of the Hebrew language in verse three makes it a bit tricky to translate clearly into English, so I mentioned that I like the ESV, but once in a while it's just really hard to convey in the English language what the Hebrew is trying to say.

And so in the ESV, if you read verse three, it says this, and I have filled him with the spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship. And how many things does it sound like Bezalel has been filled with by God?

Five. It sounds in English like there are five different things. He's given him his spirit. He has given him ability. He has given him the intelligence. He's given him the knowledge. He's given him the craftsmanship.

And the point is, he has indeed given all of those things, but it's the timing that matters in the verbs. So the notion is, I filled him with my spirit now, and I've been filling him with these other things along the way.

That's what the verb construction looks like. And since this was so important to get these verbs right, I went back and double-checked myself because it really matters a lot in this text. If you think that God is just going to plop competency on your lap, and you're just sitting back with a remote control, hoping that he'll improve you, he'll make you capable of matching your job, or is there some notion to which God has been producing within you over time and over experience and over work, and there's some kind of sense in which, as you've been honing skill, he's been putting that in you, and that's kind of the notion of this text.

And so, again, because it was so important, I went over the top in making sure that I'm interpreting this correctly, and everyone in my research agrees that Basilel was already a craftsman when called by God.

He was already a craftsman. He already had significant skill, already worked into his life, when God said, hey, I want you to build this, I want you to design this, I want you to do this. You getting what I'm saying there?

It's pretty vital and important for us to grasp in this concept that God's calling involves competence, and so that in verse 3, God is explaining what he has already been doing in Basilel for quite some time.

This would be like God introducing me to a gifted architect at this stage in us thinking and dreaming about having a building with air conditioning and things like that, but at the stage where we're at of just kind of wishing that we had our own facility and kind of thinking maybe a year down the road, if God continues to be gracious to us this next year as he has been this last year, maybe possibly breaking ground this time next year for a new building.

How many of you think that would be a pretty glorious thing? That would be pretty cool to see God doing that here? And so, excited about that possibility, but simultaneously, just kind of thinking through how does God lead and how does he work in all of this?

And he is the one who brings about the competence. If we take verse 3 in the sense that God gave these five things just straight up to Basilel, we might be tempted to think that Basilel was sitting on his sofa one day watching the Tigers lose again.

He had never touched a chisel or a hammer, and suddenly, like a mighty rushing wind, the spirit swept in and he sat up and he had a strong urge to craft super cool stuff out of silver, wood, brass, and fabric.

He was just like, man, I just suddenly got the urge to build stuff. And it was like super awesome. But instead, like I mentioned, it's like God bringing us an architect and saying, I placed my spirit on this individual.

I've been weaving into them ability and craftsmanship and knowledge, and they've grown a lot over the course of their career in architecture, and they've honed their skills, and they've used those for my glory, and I've been infusing skill in them along this natural process, and I want them to be the architect for Recast New Building.

You see what that's like? That's like the picture of Basilel here. Maybe you've heard before that those that God calls, he equips. Have you ever heard that? A couple of us have heard that phrase, those that God calls, he equips.

But I would rather state it this way. I kind of disagree with that, according to this text. Those who are equipped are called. Those who are equipped are called. And that might settle better with you when you come to realize that every single person is equipped.

Everybody is being equipped by God for your shape, your form, your vocation. I'm going to use that term kind of interchangeably when you think about vocation. Think about the stamp of God's giftedness, skill, knowledge, wisdom, experience, all of those things imprinted on you and continuing to grow and continuing to change and shift.

So that your vocation might change, your vocation might shift, but at the same time, you're being faithful to do the things that God has called you to now in the vocation that you have right now. Another way of stating all this is that your ability, your intelligence, your knowledge and your craftsmanship all factor into your vocation.

The calling that God has placed on your life has been infused in you over years of experiences. Sometimes so slowly, by the way, that it takes others identifying in you the skills that you don't even see in you.

Have you ever had that happen? Where you didn't even realize that you had been prepared for a specific role and then all of a sudden, that role is given to you and you're like, man, this just feels, I would have never aspired to this, I would have never thought I had these skills, but man, this feels natural.

This is normal. Or somebody else is confirming in you, I think you can do this. I see it in you. Sometimes it happens over time where you actually realize that your knowledge and your confidence have grown.

But for many of us, the way this works out in our everyday lives leads us to a specific type of problem. We have a tendency to look back at the way that we have arrived at whatever competency you have and ascribe it to yourself.

To say, ultimately, well, it's because I'm, because I've worked at it, right? So you look at these, look at these four things, ability, ability, I've honed my ability. I've been working hard at my ability.

How dare God take the credit for that one, man? I know, I've worked at it. Or knowledge, knowledge, I've applied and practiced this and learned from my mistakes and I've studied, I've studied hard, right?

Craftsmanship, I'm the one who's put in the time. I'm the one who's practiced this and honed this. But God is the one who has been working in your history. He has been prepping you toward your vocation throughout your life to be able to arrive at the calling that he has on your life right here, right now.

And the preparation that has led to the calling on Basil's life leads us to the fourth point in verse four. Applied calling results in skillful work. Number four, applied calling results in skillful work.

Notice in verse four that Basil is equipped according to the text to devise artistic design in his work. Artistic design. Not merely functional construction, but skilled, artistic, aesthetically pleasing design.

I think maybe God is kicking back a little bit on my comment a couple years ago about wanting to design a building that others would look at and kind of just say, meh. You remember me saying that? And yet I think there's a truth to this that in a very true sense, if we find a designer and a builder who is equipped by God and is passionate about their vocation, passionate about their calling, then they will seek to apply their creativity in artistic design.

They will want it to look nice. They will want it to be good. Now, you might not look at your current position as a place of artistry. You know, how many of you know that there's only so many ways you can put together a Big Mac, right?

And if that's where you're working, you know, it's not like they're looking for creativity in that position. They're like, well, I wanted to put some barbecue sauce on it. No, no, no, it's the Thousand Island.

It's the special sauce. No, no, no. So, I mean, they're not looking for you to create in that position. But I think we've all had someone wait on us at McDonald's that was less than passionate about their position.

And then you've had somebody who made you feel like they wanted to be there. Have you had that experience? And is there a difference in the way that they're working? Is there a difference in the way that they're understanding their calling to serve God and serve others?

Now, they might not have the God component in there, but at least to some degree, through common grace, they're recognizing their need to serve others, right? That there's something that is at least beyond themselves in this position.

Don't get too hung up on the word creativity in this, but think in terms of doing your work as if the Lord is the one you are serving, as if the Lord is the one who has called you to the position you currently hold.

Now, all this talk about vocation probably naturally tends to lead you in your mind to, am I in the right calling? Am I in the right place? I can't answer that. I can't stand up here and answer it for each one of you, right?

But I'm talking about, in this message, primarily about where you are at now. It might be temporary. And a quick point of clarification as we're halfway through is this idea of vocation change. Vocations do change.

For some of you, your vocation is to raise children. For some of you, your vocation is to work part-time outside of the home. Some of you have a temporary vocation that is your current calling, and you know that right now this is helping you get through school, and it's not the position that you have currently that is probably going to be the long-term solution.

But man, it's a vocation. It's a calling. God has placed you in this position now for a purpose. Some of you are at a stage of life where your vocation is realized primarily by volunteer work. That's glorious.

That's great. For most of us, it's some kind of a mix of these things. To use myself as an illustration, my vocation is some semblance of these three roles and maybe a couple of other smaller ones mixed in, but husband, father, pastor.