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by Raymond T. Exum
Crystal Lake Church of Christ, Crystal Lake, Illinois
Oct. 22, 1995
For a copy of this lesson on audio cassette, click here.
Please turn to the book of Mark, Chapter 6. I would like to read a passage here that concerns the skill that the ancient people had that we may not be aware of.
There is a tendency for most of us today to look upon the people in Bible times as being rather primitive, being rather uneducated, not being skilled in areas such as we are skilled in today. This past summer when I had root canal surgery done on one of my teeth, I asked the dentist, "Who invented root canal surgery?", because I thought I might run into him some day and I'd like to punch him in the nose! But, nevertheless, the dentist told me that archaeologists have uncovered mummies from Egypt that had root canal surgery! And so it was known, at least, back in the days of the ancient Egyptians, 1500-2000-2500 BC.
That was a great shock! We do not think of people back in those days being able to preserve teeth by means of root canal surgery, and yet they knew that skill and they were able to preserve teeth that way.
In the same way, there's another skill that we may not identify with people back in Bible times, and this is the skill of carpentry. Today, we have so many tools, such as radial arm saws, which people did not have even in the last century. We have routers and electric drills and motorized miter boxes and joiners and planers and we have electric sanders today and electric wood lathes and all of these things. And we might say, "Well, how could there have been beautiful furniture before the 20th century?"
Well, actually we only need to go back and look at the Shaker furniture in the early 1800's - - that is incredibly gorgeous furniture. I wish that I could afford a Shaker chair, for example. But I cannot, because they are auctioned off at such high prices. But back before all of the radial arm saws and things such as this, the Shakers were making incredibly beautiful furniture: very light weight, very clean and simple lines to it, even in the early 1800's.
This past summer, at a garage sale I just happened to run across this tool. This is an antique woodworking tool, one that I read about in a lot of old books about woodworking. This was the forerunner of the modern day router. When you finish off a piece of furniture, you put a smooth edge, or some kind of edge around the wood that is exposed; and that is done today with a router turning about 30,000 rpm.
For example, the back of each of these pews here has been rounded off. The top edge on the back of the pews has been rounded off by, probably, a 3/8" rounding bit from a very powerful router. And you might say, "Well, how did they do that before the days of routers?" They did it with this tool right here: a spokeshave. You would secure the wood to the work bench and then you would begin running the spokeshave over that edge until it finally would be down to the kind of shape that you would like to have. She wanted $2 for it; I got her down to a dollar. And I thought this was a real bargain! I couldn't believe it -- paying $1 for a tool such as this for my antique collection of woodworking tools. A beautiful tool that the ancient people used to use that has now been replaced by the electric router.
Back in the days of the Bible, though, there were people who were extremely skilled in carpentry. In fact, they were very skilled in the nation of Israel because of the fact that there were so few trees in Israel. This forced the carpenters back in Bible times to learn techniques that were highly skilled, so that they would not waste wood. Wood was so rare, it was so expensive, that they became very skilled at techniques of using wood so that nothing would be wasted.
In fact, as we think about the carpenters that lived in Israel in Bible times, let us think about our Lord, Jesus Christ. The Bible says that when it came time for Him to be born of the virgin, Mary, He was born into a family that was very familiar with carpentry. In fact, the stepfather of our Lord Jesus Christ, Joseph, was a carpenter in the city of Nazareth, in the province of Galilee. The Lord, Jesus Christ, therefore, was raised in a carpenter's family. It was a custom among the Jews of the 1st century to teach their sons the skills that the father in the family had. So probably, somewhere around the age of 15, the Lord Jesus Christ began to learn from His stepfather, Joseph, the skills involved in being a carpenter. There was a saying among the Jewish men in the nation of Israel: "If you do not teach your son how to work, you teach him how to be a thief." So in all probability, about the age of 15, Jesus Christ began learning carpentry skills from His stepfather, Joseph.
As we read through the sermons of Jesus, there are many references to things that a carpenter would think about. For example, Jesus spoke about the "narrow gate" that we have to go through. You can imagine Him thinking about various gates that He had made along with His stepfather, Joseph. He talked about building a house "upon the rock" and not "upon the sand", another concept that a good 1st century carpenter would have known about. In a beautiful passage, in Matthew 11:29, Jesus said that His "yoke" was easy. Based on His carpentry skills, He could make a yoke that was comfortable for the animals. In Matthew 21:33, He talked about building a tower in a vineyard. In another place, He told the parable of a king who was going to build a tower but did not count the cost. And you can just see the mind of a carpenter working there. You have to know the expenses before you begin a project such as that. Jesus spoke about the chief "cornerstone." And in Matthew 13:55, He is referred to as "the son of a carpenter."
But I would like to skip ahead from the time in which He worked as a carpenter to the time that He began His public ministry. There were two occasions where Jesus went back to His hometown of Nazareth and preached there to the people. One occasion was in Luke, chapter 4. And as he began to preach to the people there, from Isaiah, Chapter 61, at first the people were just overwhelmed with the message that Jesus was giving them. But then, they became upset at Him and they reached the point where they were angry at Him, and they tried to kill Him before He was able to leave town on that occasion.
But there was another time where our Lord Jesus went back to His hometown, again to preach to the people, and their reaction this time was similar to what happened the first time; that is, at first they were overwhelmed by what He was saying, but then they got upset! And on this second occasion, what upset them was the fact that they knew that He was a carpenter.
Would you look with me, please, at Mark 6. I want to read verses 1-6, as the Lord returned to His hometown of Nazareth. Notice the reaction of the people as He began preaching.
"And He went out from there and He came into His hometown and His disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue and many listeners were astonished, saying, 'Where did this man get these things? And what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles, as these performed by His hands? Is not this the carpenter? The son of Mary and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?' And they took offense at Him. And Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in His hometown, and among His own relatives, and in His own household.' And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And He wondered at their unbelief."
Notice again, back in verse 3, that after initially being enthralled with His message, they said to themselves, "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" And based on that, they came to where they rejected Jesus Christ. Well, apparently, Jesus was not ashamed of being a carpenter from the age of 15 up until the age of 30, when His public ministry began.
I would like to ask you to think with me, for a few moments, about the significance of the fact that Jesus Christ served as a carpenter actually much longer than He ever served as a preacher. There are several things that are very significant about His profession as being a carpenter. Number one, the fact that he was a carpenter, for those 15 years, emphasizes that God respects all honorable work that we might do, even manual labor, as a carpenter would have been engaged in. That, in itself, was a hard lesson for the Jews to learn, in the city of Nazareth. Jesus did not meet their concept of being the Messiah because He had been a carpenter from the age of 15 on up.
They expected the Messiah to be born in a palace. He wasn't; He was born in a stable. They expected Jesus to be born into a royal family; He wasn't, He was born by the virgin, Mary, with His stepfather, Joseph. They expected Jesus to be raised and to be taught military skills. What they really thought was the Messiah would be trained as a soldier; that ultimately, He would raise an army. He would be the general of that army, and based on that military power, He would force the Romans out of Judea. He would then become a king and establish the Jewish nation in Palestine. That was the Jewish view of the Messiah early in the first century.
But it didn't happen that way. He wasn't born in a palace to a royal family. He was not trained as a soldier or a military leader. He was trained to be a carpenter! Why? Because He wanted to identify Himself with the common people. He wanted to identify Himself with the dignity of manual labor. He wanted us to understand that as long as it is honest work that we are engaged in, then any job is respectable in the eyes of God. That is not the way the people of Nazareth saw being a carpenter. They were prejudiced here against those who worked with their hands. "Is this not the carpenter?"
Notice, in verse 3, they continued by saying, "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?" Some people say, "Well, Joseph must have died by this point", and that is very possible; nevertheless, they could have said, "Is this not the son of Mary and the late Joseph?" What we see here is that they were continuing to insult Christ by assuming that He was illegitimate. That's why Joseph is not mentioned in verse 3. Not only did they look down on Him for being a carpenter, but they assumed that He was born illegitimately and not of the virgin, Mary. Jesus, therefore, chose being a carpenter because He wanted to demonstrate the dignity of manual labor.
When I was growing up, my dad used to say to my sister and me that he didn't care what we did in life. We could even become garbage men (or women, in her case, as the case may be); we could even pick up garbage for a living, as long as it was honest work and as long as we remained faithful to God. That is exactly what I have taught my children as they grew up in our household. It doesn't matter what you do in life, as long as it is honest work and as long as you remain faithful to God. I think that is what Jesus is telling us here, by choosing carpentry as His profession for these early years of His adult life. Any profession can be carried out for the glory of God.
There's a tombstone over in Great Britain. And on the tombstone there is an epitaph written for a man who died, who was buried there. The man's name was Thomas Cobb. I want to read what that tombstone says: "Here lies Thomas Cobb, who mended shoes to the glory of God, for 40 years." What a great statement that is! We can mend shoes for a living. We can write musical compositions for a living as Johann Sebastian Bach did; and on every piece that he wrote, he put the letters "SDG", which stood for "Sola Deo Gloria"-- to God alone be the glory. Whether it is manual labor, whether it is mental labor, whether we are involved in some kind of other profession, we can still glorify God with the kind of work that we do.
Earlier this year, there was a great Christian man who passed away in Nashville, Tennessee. His name was Miles Ezell, Sr. In fact, on the south side of Nashville, there is a school named after him, the Ezell-Harding Christian School there, from kindergarten up through high school; a very fine school, a number of my nieces and nephews attend Ezell-Harding. The word "Ezell" there refers back to Brother Ezell, Sr. He began his life as an adult by having a dairy. He worked hard. Through his manual labor and through the grace of God, that dairy grew. If you ever go through Nashville today, I'm sure you will hear of Purity Dairies. Purity Dairies was established by Miles Ezell, Sr. He was such a good man. He was made an elder for the Una Church of Christ, just the next congregation down the road from where I grew up; a very faithful man, and there is no telling the good that was done by the light of that man in terms of mission work, in terms of support, particularly, that he gave to the country of Africa and the churches there. Here was a great, Godly, Christian man who was a manual laborer, starting out with his own dairy. Jesus, therefore, I think, would have a warm compliment for a dairy man or anybody else who has an honest job and who uses that job for the glory of God. Jesus Christ began as a carpenter.
Let's think of something else that is significant about Christ as a carpenter, and that is the nature of His work as a carpenter. What kind of work does a carpenter do? There are really two things that a carpenter does. He repairs things and he builds things from scratch. Think about those two parts of a carpenter's job. In the first place, many times we call a carpenter to repair something that has become broken. Maybe a chair has a broken leg to it or the kitchen table has broken and we need that wood repaired. Sometimes, there may be a big storm that comes through and there's a giant tree that falls across the roof of the house and caves it in. Who do we call? We call the best team of carpenters that we can find. We want them to repair the damage. In the same way, Jesus Christ was a spiritual carpenter. People brought to Him their broken lives and He was able to repair them just as He does today.
A few moments ago, we sang Number 62: "Bring Christ your broken life, so marred by sin. He will create anew, make whole again. Your empty wasted years, He will restore, and your iniquities, remember no more." Beloved, the Great Carpenter can look down upon us and see what messes we have made of our lives. He can take that mess we've made, that awful mistake that we committed and He can begin to repair the damage and allow the healing to start. There's a beautiful verse that maybe we overlook sometimes, along these lines. It's Matthew 12, verse 20, talking about Jesus Christ. The Bible says this: "A battered reed, He will not break off; and a smoldering wick, He will not put out." That's very interesting! Here is a reed out here that maybe the wind has bent over, and it's about to break off and to die. The Bible says that Jesus does not go out there and stomp on that thing, and break it off so it goes ahead and dies. He doesn't do that. "A broken reed, He will not break off; and a smoldering wick, He will not put out."
Here's a lamp that has a wick in it, and it's burned down and the wick is just about to go out. Jesus Christ does not go over there and blow it out! He doesn't do that! In a spiritual sense, which is what the verse is referring to (Matthew 12:20), we look at our lives, and we see, many times, we are like that broken reed! I mean, we're just about ready to leave this life through despair, through depression, through all of the mistakes that we have made, and Christ does not go over and stomp on us!
And many times we are like the smoldering wick. We're just at the bottom of life. Everything that can happen to us has happened. We have been defeated by life! But He does not go over and blow that little flame out! The Great Carpenter begins to work with that reed and that little flame and begins to rebuild our lives... if we will let Him. Christ, therefore, as a carpenter, repairs our lives and doesn't just go ahead and allow us to suffer in misery.
There's a second thing that a carpenter does: he builds new items. Jesus is the Great Carpenter because John 1:3 says, "All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being." Can you imagine a carpenter who has built the universe? And yet, that's what the Bible says. Everything that has been created was made by this carpenter! In the first century, Jesus was still building. He said, "Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it."
On the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2, here's the Great Carpenter who built His church and brought it into existence and put it into service. Did you know the Bible tells us that Jesus is still a carpenter today? There's something that He is still working on today! In John 14:2, He said, "In My Father's house are many dwelling places, if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you." As the Great Carpenter, He is constructing places for us that we will dwell in once we reach Heaven.
So we see that He was a carpenter in the sense that He repairs things -- our lives. And He also builds things from scratch. There's a third idea that is significant when we consider Christ as a carpenter. And that is, how does a carpenter think? When a carpenter sees a piece of wood, how does he look at that piece of wood? Well, the answer is, he sees it differently from the way most other people see the wood. Most people would look at a piece of wood out here and say, "Well, it's got all these knots in it; it's got cracks in it; it's got some ink on it where they stamped it at the lumber yard", and maybe it's bowed a little and so forth. A carpenter doesn't look at wood that way. The carpenter sees the potential that the wood has. A carpenter says, "Well, I can glue those knots back in. In some cases, that crack can be fixed and that warp can be taken out with a plane or joiner", and various other imperfections can be worked out. The carpenter sees the potential of the wood, not the problems of the wood!
You know what kind of wood is most in demand today? Old barn sidings. We look at wood like that and we say, "That's worthless." That's not the way carpenters see it. It's used for many decorative purposes and various other things today, and it's in very short supply, apparently. We say, "Well, there's no potential in that wood." A carpenter says, "I think I can use that." We go out behind a factory and there's some old wooden crates there that are going to be thrown away. A carpenter is standing there looking at that thinking, "I wonder all the things that I could make out of the wood that is in that old crate."
In the same way, Jesus Christ looks at us today; what does He see? Does He see all of the flaws that will doom us eternally? That's how we look at people. We see their imperfections; Christ, though, sees their potential. Christ looked at a man, who was a fisherman, by the name of Simon. And Christ said, "You are Simon, the son of John; you shall be called ?Cephas'", which translated means "Peter" or "rock." Can you imagine what Peter's friends must have said on that occasion? They must have laughed and laughed and laughed. "You mean, Simon -- this guy -- is going to be a rock in Your kingdom some day? Jesus Christ, You've got to be kidding! This guy's nothing but a braggart. He's nothing but a show off. He's not going to amount to anything!" But Christ saw his potential. Jesus Christ said, "I'm going to rename him 'the rock' because he will be a rock in My kingdom."
A carpenter, therefore, sees the potential in that wood, and not the flaws and imperfections that might doom it in the eyes of others. Beloved, The Great Carpenter is still working with us today. He know which tools to use on us to bring out our potential. He knows when maybe we need to be sanded down, and He carries that out. He knows when maybe we need to be polished...and He carries that out. He knows when various other things need to be done in our lives to bring out the talents that we have...and He carries those things out, if we will allow Him to do so. He sees our potential and works on that.
There's a final way in which Jesus, as a carpenter, is significant to us today, and this is in the manner of His death. The Lord Jesus Christ could have chosen to die in a number of ways. He could have chosen to be beheaded, as was John the Baptist. He could have chosen to be stoned to death, as they were in the old law of Moses, but He didn't choose to be stoned or to be beheaded. He could have chosen to be shot to death with an arrow, as was King Ahab, back in the book of 1 Kings, Chapter 22. But instead, He chose to die a carpenter's death, because the Roman soldiers took a hammer and nails, the tools of a carpenter. And they nailed the Son of God to a wooden cross. It was an ugly way to die. And yet it was altogether fitting, for the Great Carpenter. Why, therefore, did He go through this kind of death? He went through this kind of death so that He might buy us from Satan. His blood would result in our forgiveness of sins, if we accepted it. When we were forgiven of our sins, then we could be transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light, which is the Lord's church. So, when the Great Carpenter died on a wooden cross, it was to bring about our redemption of sins. And it was a fitting way for such a carpenter to depart.
The Great Carpenter, therefore, demonstrates the value of honest work. He demonstrates the fact that He can repair lives and build things from scratch. He demonstrates that He can see the potential that we have, as we ought to see potential in one another, that He can work with us. And it also shows that He died a carpenter's death on a wooden cross.
I hope that some of things have encouraged you. If you are not a member of the body of Christ, then please think about the fact that the Carpenter died for you and for your sins. And as He bled to death upon the wooden cross, He was bleeding to death for your sins, as well as those who have already obeyed the gospel. We would urge you, therefore, to believe in Christ, to repent of your sins, to make the good confession, then to be baptized by immersion in water for the forgiveness of your sins, and enter in to the family of the Great Carpenter.