Talent For Sale
Have you ever met someone who is able to light up a room with their presence? Even though you just met them, you felt as if you had known them all your life. They carry the conversation when everyone else is too uptight to talk. Kids are often attracted to them, and everyone seems to know them, or wishes they did. Such people are typically the life of the party, but their outgoing personalities are sometimes scoffed at by those who fancy themselves to be intellectuals.
This is a talent from God! We sometimes call it “charisma”. Not to be confused with that referred to in the Bible in connection with supernatural gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, this type of human charisma is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “a gift of God’s grace; a divinely inspired gift, grace or talent to rejoice at; a special quality of leadership that captures the popular imaginations and inspires unswerving allegiance and devotion.”
When this type of personality is put together with some kind of musical talent or speaking ability, you have a celebrity. If such people are not famous yet, with only a little effort they usually can be. The Hebrew word halal in the Bible has a definition similar to what Webster’s says about “charisma”. Halal means “to be bright; to shine, to be splendid; to boast; to praise; to celebrate; to be praised; to be famous; to cause to shine; to make bright.” The root of the word conveys the idea of radiance.
There is a warning in Scripture about using this divinely inspired gift foolishly. “I [God] said unto the fools, ‘Deal not foolishly,’ and to the wicked, ‘Lift not up the horn.’” (Psalm 75:4). The words “fool” and “foolishly” are both translated from the Hebrew word halal. Yet, halal is also used many times in the Bible to express praise to God. It is the root of the word “hallelujah,” which means “praise the Lord. Some people in show business have an unusual kind of attracting power, similar to the basic meaning of halal to be bright or radiant. Sometimes this quality is seen as being cocky or boastful. In fact, some of the other translations of Psalm 75:4 use the word “boast “ to translate halal, but the KJV renders it as “fool”.
When I first discovered that, I was puzzled. It was the first time I had ever seen the word halal translated as “fool”. It caught my interest, so I started looking a little closer at what the Lord might be saying in this strange use of a word often connected with praise to God.
In times long past, the word “fool” was used to refer to an entertainer. The fool was kept in the house of a nobleman or king to entertain by joking or clowning. The king’s subjects would always search the land for the best of the fools and offer them to the king in hopes of bringing pleasure to him. The best of the entertainers would light up the room when they walked in, and if the king was pleased, all the people in the land were blessed. The pleasure of the king was all that was important.
Of course, if he didn’t please the king, the fool could lose his head. Such an arrangement has a way of really sharpening your act! It wasn’t long before the entertainer—or “fool”—started turning his attention to trying to please the other people at the court instead of just pleasing the king. In fact, some fools abandoned the objective of entertaining the king at all, deeming it too risky. By entertaining outside the court, they were paid a lot less, but at least they could keep their head if they weren’t very talented.
The problem with trying to please the crowd instead of the king is that there are as many opinions of what is good as there are people in the crowd. No one could possibly please everyone. Yet, many fools never realized that it would be easier to just try and please the king rather than continually reshaping themselves to fit the fickle demands of the public.
The outcome of this situation was probably predictable. In order to entertain the crowd and keep their head at the same time, a fool needed to learn how to sell himself. In effect, he had to make a deal with his listeners. This is the very place many entertainers, and even worship and church leaders, find themselves in today.
Psalm 75:4 could be paraphrased, “To the bright and shining people who are very good at what they do, beware of the temptation to sell yourself and your talent.” The end of the verse says, “and [God said] to the wicked, ‘Lift not up the horn.’” Horn means power. God is saying that we must not lift up or exalt the power of the wicked. Yet, often those who have great power and wealth are admired and held in high esteem, even when they are wicked or questionable. God warns us against this.
There are several other verses in Psalm 75 that have a bearing on this matter of selling your talent: “‘Lift not up your horn on high; speak not with a stiff neck.’ For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:5-7). Don’t promote yourself, even if you feel you have the greatest gift in the history of mankind. Only God’s favor matters, and He is quite capable of promoting you if He wants to. The scriptural route to promotion is actually very clear: “ Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (James 4:10).
dp
4/1/1999
