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The first people in the Bible who are said to be “filled with the Spirit of God” are not prophets, preachers, nor teachers . . . but craftsmen: Bezalel and Oholiab (1). The Spirit fills them with skill to construct the tabernacle - Israel’s mobile place of worship between the Red Sea and the Promised Land.

Every bit of the tabernacle had a purpose, because it pointed to greater, spiritual realities. Thus their work as craftsmen was deeply spiritual.

Yet this is true in all of life. Our world crackles with the spiritual, embodied in the physical. The people of God are like an olive tree (Romans 11); marriage is a picture of the gospel (Eph. 5:22-33); and the ark with its mercy seat (Exodus 31:7), anticipates a gory, humble Roman cross.

It is, in my estimation, no coincidence that the first time the Spirit descends on someone in physical form, accompanied by the very words of the Father, he descends on a Galilean carpenter (Matthew 3:16). God grants us faith in Him (Ephesians 2:8), that we would do works that glorify His grace (Eph. 3:10). Thus all that God requires of us, for those good works, God provides, by His Spirit (Exodus 31:6).

Some of those works lie before you today. God aims to push good into the world, through you, wearing you as His mask. And all that He requires of you He provides, by His Spirit.