“They are to make an ark of acacia wood, forty-five inches long, twenty-seven inches wide, and twenty-seven inches high. . .Set the mercy seat on top of the ark and put the tablets of the testimony that I will give you into the ark. I will meet with you there above the mercy seat, between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony; I will speak with you from there about all that I command you regarding the Israelites.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Over the never several posts we are going to be taking a look at the various parts and pieces of the tabernacle. I’ve long since prepared you for the fact that this section doesn’t make for the most compelling reading. And, I’m not going to include every single verse here for you to read, but rather will hit some highlights with the regular link for you to go and read the rest for yourself. Even if you don’t do that, though, don’t skip out on these posts. The apostle Paul said that every word of the Scriptures are useful for shaping us more into the kinds of people God made us to be. “Every word” includes the parts we’d rather skip because they aren’t very exciting. Stay with me in this next part of the story as we explore the wonders of the Gospel in the instructions for how Israel was to build their original place of worship.

The ark was the vey center of religious life for Israel. It represented the power and presence of God in their midst. When they understood and treated it the way God designed and intended for it to be used, they sought the wisdom and direction of God there. When they didn’t, they still revered it, but treated it more like a talisman. The best example of this is when they brought the ark with them to a battle against the Philistines when Eli was serving as priest and judge over the people in the first part of 1 Samuel. They thought that by having the ark with them, God was going to give them victory. They were guilty of pagan thinking there and it backfired on them rather gloriously.

Because the ark was the center of religious life, it was located at the very heart of their place of worship. It is also the first part of the tabernacle God gave them instructions to build. There’s a reason for that. This was the focal point of the whole endeavor. Normally, where the ark was placed was where an idol of some kind would be located. But the ark was not an idol. God was rather explicit about that. It was a symbolic piece of furniture that was to remind the people of the presence of God.

The ark was where they ultimately kept all of the most important symbols of God’s power and presence. It started with the two tablets God would eventually carve and inscribe with the Ten Commandments and give to Moses. Later, it would include Aaron’s staff that budded in a display intended to demonstrate God’s enduring choice for the leadership of Israel when Moses’ authority was challenged during the wilderness wanderings. It also included a golden jar filled with some manna. These things were all significant reminders of how God had directed them, provided for them, and led them in the past that were to serve as promises that He would continue to direct them and provide for them and lead them in the present.

At the end of the description of the ark here, God tells Moses that it would be from above the mercy seat – the lid of the ark – that His presence would appear, and He would give further instructions about what they were to do and where they were to go. I have to admit, it would have been pretty wild to enter that space and see a little cloud-like presence hovering just above the ark, between the wings of the decorative cherubim on the mercy seat. It would have been even wilder to hear God’s voice coming from it.

Ultimately, though, the ark was to serve as a reminder of God’s presence among the people. Remember from yesterday that was the purpose of the tabernacle in the first place. It was to be a place where God’s presence could dwell among them. And again, this wasn’t because God needed such a thing, but because the people did. They needed this visual reminder because they didn’t yet understand fully what He was really like. Jesus hadn’t yet come and done His work to make access to God’s presence something that was easily available for everyone. God’s presence was among them, but it was guarded for their own safety, so that they didn’t take Him flippantly and have to deal with the consequences of that.

For us, all of this points once again to the superlative superiority of the new covenant we have with God in Christ. Whereas the people used to have to go to a single place to experience God’s presence, and that was mediated from a distance through someone else, now we can be in His presence constantly and all by ourselves through Jesus. Jesus opened the doors. His death tore the veil (literally so). In Jesus, everyone can experience the cleansing from their sins that the sacrificial system used to exist to provide. But the cleansing we find in Him far surpasses what any goat or sheep could extend to us. In Him we find not merely a covering for our sin, but justification. We are made totally clean in Him.

There is one thing, though, about Israel’s experience with the ark that we have lost some of today. For Israel, encountering the presence of God was a communal affair. It was public. You had to go to a central place where everyone else had equal access, and you nearly always would have gone together. Families went together. Neighbors and friends went together. Whole communities gathered in the tabernacle to hear from the Lord together. The challenge we have in being able to access God on our own through Jesus is that we have lost some of this communal experience. Because it isn’t strictly necessary, we don’t treat it as essential very often any longer. Yet God never intended for a relationship with Him to be a private affair. It was personal, to be sure, but never private.

We need to make sure we are still striving to experience God’s presence in community. Following Him was never intended to be a solo affair. This means being a part of a church. It means being a part of a group of people who are similarly committed to following Jesus who can help encourage us and hold us accountable for sticking to the path that leads to life, and for whom we can do the same. We need people to remind us why it is we follow Jesus so that in the face of all sorts of clever and seemingly convincing arguments to the contrary, we can stand firm together on what is most fundamentally true. If you don’t have a church community in which you are actively investing yourself, you need to fix that. God made you for community. Don’t look to experience His presence without it.

One last thing. Because all the descriptions of the tabernacle are for something that was ultimately physical in nature, being able to see them helps us get our minds a bit more fully around what God was saying to Moses here. There’s a great series of YouTube videos called Bible Scenes where a digital artist reads the text (in the KJV) and visualizes each part as he reads the descriptions. I have found them to be pretty helpful as I’ve been studying through this. Here’s his visualization of the ark of the covenant.