Exodus 31.
TWO men were called by God to have charge of making the parts for the tabernacle’ and all its furnishings, and the clothes for the priests, but everyone could help in the work. God called Bezaleel, and filled him with the Spirit of God; gave him wisdom and understanding; fitted him for the work, and then told Moses about pit. With Aholiab too, whom He gave to work with Bezaleel, there were the “wise hearted” ones, or, as we read in chapter 36, verse 2, “Every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it.”
Of them the sixth verse of our chapter says,
God had put wisdom, into their hearts that they might make all that He had directed. All this was, and is God’s Way for service. He calls His servants and fits them for His service; it was not Moses, nor the people who chose them. But if we are not distinctly set apart by God for His service in preaching the gospel, or in expounding the Bible and in other ways, every one of us who love the Lord Jesus has a place to fill, and the question is, are we doing anything for God, or does this world attract us so that our hearts are cold towards Him?
From the twelfth verse to the seventeenth, we are told again about the Sabbath. The Sabbath, as we have seen before, was a type or advance picture of that rest that God means to bring His people into forever. The Israelite, who broke the Sabbath, that is, who did any work whatever on that day, was to be put to death.
Christians are not under the law given by Moses, and have never been directed to observe the Sabbath, which is Saturday, the seventh and last day of the week; on the contrary, Christians, who are under God’s free ‘favor, love to keep the Lord’s -Day, first day of the week, because the Lord Jesus ruse then, after lying dead in the grave on the Sabbath, and on that day visited His disciples, gathering them together to meet Him.
At the end of the chapter, God’s talking with Moses, telling him what He Wished from the people if they were to be His, having come to an end, He gave Moses two tables or tablets of stone, on which the ten commandments were written.
ML 09/10/1922