Raiders of the Lost Ark

I remember the thrilling moment, in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the German soldiers opened the lid of the ark of the covenant, and Indiana Jones tells his leading lady not to look, as angels, turning into demons, emerge from the golden box to wipe out the soldiers.

Sadly, that is the image at the forefront of most believers’ minds when they think about the ark, because we hear very little about the ark from our pulpits! The ark of the covenant is brimming with meaning. It was part of the tabernacle whose exact specifications were laid out by God to Moses over about 15 chapters of Exodus (Ex.25-40). My guess is that we have spent more time unpacking the burning bush than we have the ark of the covenant. So let’s ‘raid’ the ark again.

The ark was the most important piece of furniture in the whole tabernacle. It is described first in Exodus 25, and it held pride of place in the holy of holies, covered inside and out in gold. The ark was God’s throne, reminding us that He is king over His people, over His world, and over the entire cosmos, including angelic powers (we don’t have time for all the ‘cosmic’ imagery in the tabernacle, but that’s another fascinating study!)

God sits invisibly between the cherubim. The Ten Commandments insist that we cannot carve any image to represent God, because none would do justice to His immensity, His eternity, and His white-hot holiness. Cherubim were no ordinary angels. Their job was to ‘stand guard’ at God’s throne, like the cherub who wielded the flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life in Eden.

Inside the ark were found, among other things, the tablets of the Ten Commandments. God rules His people through His word. The tabernacle was placed right in the middle of the camp of Israel (Num.2), and the word of God was right at the heart of the tabernacle. We must keep the word of God central in all we do as churches and individuals. It must permeate our preaching, our sung worship, our prayers, our family and personal devotionals, as we ‘meditate on it day and night’ (Ps.1) and are utterly shaped and driven by its teaching.

In between the throne of God on top of the ark, and the word of God at His feet, was the ‘mercy seat’. In Romans 3:25, the verse that Luther called ‘the centre of the centre of the Bible’, we are told ‘God put forward [Christ] as a propitiation by his blood’. The word for propitiation means literally ‘mercy seat’.

Once a year, on the Day of Atonement (Lev.16), the High Priest would bring the blood from a sacrificial victim and sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat. This was the act that brought sinful people, who could not live up to God’s word, into God’s holy presence. The blood on the mercy seat appeases God’s righteous wrath against human sin and allows us now to enjoy God’s presence in perfect freedom.

So the ark reminds us that God is king of His people, His world and the entire cosmos, ruling over them through His word, and by His grace He allows sinners like us to enjoy His glorious presence through the blood of Christ sprinkled on heaven’s mercy seat (the earthly tabernacle was just a shadow of heavenly realities).

Here is the beauty of the gospel, pictured through a golden box and a tent constructed 1,400 years before Jesus even arrived, as though the story had already been written. Worship your king with reverence and joy, immerse yourself in His word, teach it to others, and give thanks for the blood of our Great High Priest, who entered through the greater heavenly curtain, to present His perfect sacrifice before the throne of God. Let’s keep raiding the ark to uncover its jewels!