The Jewish faith laid a strong emphasis on not having any graven images, and so it's interesting to me that the Ark played such a prominent role in their worship. You'd imagine that they'd be wary of the danger of people worshipping the Ark instead of worshipping the Lord.
But now that they've built a Temple as a place to focus their worship of God, they don't simply discard the Ark that was made some 480 years previously. Instead, they move it from its old location (the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting) to a new location in the Most Holy Place of the Temple.
This is significant because of what the Ark had always represented to them:
1) God's presence among them
2) God's word spoken to them
The cloud of God's presence has historically hovered over the Tabernacle and the Ark (see Numbers 9:22, for example) and when it moved, it was a sign that God's presence was also moving on; that the people needed to break camp and move with Him.
The only contents of the Ark (see 1 Kings 8: 9) were the two stone tablets from Mount Sinai that bore the Ten Commandments and the other laws that God had given to them through Moses.
So, although most people could barely see the Ark, deep within the inner sanctuary, it continued to represent these two very important things to the people.
We don't have the Ark today as Christians, but we do still have the two precious things that it represented:
1) We have God's presence constantly with us, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
2) We have both His written and His spoken Word: - we have the Bible available in our own languages, and we have the ability, through the Spirit, to hear God's voice for ourselves.
So it got me thinking this morning:
- Do we value these things as much as the people of Israel valued the Ark?
- Are we conscious of carrying God's presence into every situation with us?
- And do we make enough time to read His Word and listen to His voice?
Food for thought ...
