103 - Indiana Jones and the Rest of the Story!

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, Raiders of the Lost Ark, remember that? Oh, lots of times we saw it. Yeah, and they had that big golden box in front of them. Oh, the Ark. Yeah, the Ark of the Covenant. And they opened it and stuff happened. And crazy things happened.

But you know, I wonder if we know as much about the Ark as we think we do. Well, let's read about it today. We'll do that today on More Than Ink. Well, a wonderful summer morning to you. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're delighted you're with us. We say that every time, but we really are delighted you're with us. We're delighted to just be able to do this. Yeah, we're a little bit amazed that here we sit every week.

That's right. And I do have my cup of coffee. And didn't you have some coffee?

I had some earlier. This is water. So we're all ready to go. Well, we're at an interesting turning point in Exodus as we're reading through Exodus. And before we get into it too deeply, I want to set the context well because from this point on in Exodus, it's going to be dominated by talking about the tabernacle, which is God's tent. It's His temporary dwelling. So as they are marching away from Egypt, away from Mount Sinai, into the Promised Land, they're all going to be in tents.

They're in tents right now. And God's intention is that He can live in their midst. And so He's instructing Moses right here about how to make a tent to represent the presence of God in their midst.

And so that'll dominate a lot. And what I really want to point to is the fact that God's going to give Moses very specific instructions. Oh, so detailed.

About this tent and what's inside this tent. And we can get distracted by looking at all those details, but what I want us to remember is sort of two things. Number one, this is God's way of living amongst His people and allowing people access to Him while not being near to Him.

And that topic will come up a lot. He wants to be in their midst, but they have a problem with sin. And the second thing is that God is so specific about the design of the tabernacle and the stuff inside that it's meant to be a gigantic teaching illustration about something very profound. Like, for instance, if you walk into someone else's house, you're going to know a lot about that family when you walk in their house.

Or like when you watch Lord of the Rings and you remember the first time we went into those little hovels in the ground with the hobbits and stuff like that. I remember seeing that scene thinking, I know a lot about the person who lives in his house. Well, God wants us to know a lot about who He is. By the way, He's designing His house and asking Moses to build it. So there's nothing arbitrary here.

Everything has teaching value. So I would challenge you as you're listening, as we're going through this, is to say, what is this telling me about God? It's telling me not only about God, but His desire to live amongst us and our access to Him. These things all have deep meaning. And we can all sit here and push back from our Bibles after we read it and say, I wonder what that means.

I wonder why He was like that. And this is really, for me, the most fun part of Bible interpretation is to sit back and say, what is God telling me in this very specific instruction about the tabernacle? And that's really important, too, because the level of detail here is a little bit overwhelming. And the repetition. And it's important to just slow down and take each element by itself and just camp on it for a little bit and think. Like you talked about last time. Go slow.

Go slow. If something attracts your attention, stop there. And ask the Lord, you know, what do I need to understand here?

What are you trying to show me? Yeah. And we'll probably bring this up a couple times, but as referenced in the New Testament, all of these very specific aspects of the tabernacle reflect a larger, real dwelling place of God. Right. As a matter of fact, Hebrews says that. It says that, yeah. Right, that this is a shadow.

This is a shadow. And a pattern of the reality, the greater spiritual reality. So ask what this is telling you about God and our relationship with Him because it's meant to be a teaching tool.

So let's just dive in. It's interesting that if the issue here now is to instruct Moses on how to build a tabernacle, a tent, this just means a portable dwelling. What does he first start off with? And this is a fascinating thing. His first couple things we'll look at today are the, they're not my choices.

Well, yes, and the order in which they appear is important. But before we get into that, let's just remember that this comes immediately after the people have pledged their faithfulness to God, right? They have participated in that covenant ceremony in chapter 24.

We will do it. Then there was the invitation to come up the mountain and the elders of Israel with Moses saw God, is what chapter 24 tells us. Right, right. What did they see? They saw the pavement under his feet.

Right. And then they had a meal, as I recall. They ate together in the presence of God. And then God invites Moses, now come up farther up the mountain. And the last thing we read in chapter 24 is about how to the people on the ground, it looked like a consuming fire at the top of the mountain. And Moses goes up into it and is up there 40 days and 40 nights.

Yep. So that's important. So the next few chapters are going to concern Moses on the mountain in this conversation where God gives him all this great detailed instruction. And then we're not going to actually pick up the narrative of what's happening at the foot of the mountain until we get to chapter 32. And that's a story we all know about the golden calf. That's right.

It's going to get crazy. But for the next few weeks, we'll just be dealing with this detail between Moses and God on the mountain. Right. And in specific, this portable dwelling for God in their midst.

God needs a tent before they move away from Sinai and start marching across further in the desert. So this is well, the interesting thing is, but we can talk about the furniture a little bit is the tremendous emphasis on the portability. Yes. Right. Yes. We're moving that it all breaks down into pieces that a human being or a pair of human beings can carry across a desert or a wilderness journey.

It is fascinating when you kind of factor that into our reading. We better just start. We better go into it. So we're going to start with that specification. We're starting in chapter twenty five, verse one. So take it.

OK, here we go. The Lord said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel that they take for me a contribution from every man whose heart moves him. You shall receive the contribution for me. This is the contribution that you shall receive from them. Gold, silver and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen goats hair, tanned ramskins, goatskins, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant insets, onyx stones and gold for setting for the ephod and for the breast piece. And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all its furniture.

So you shall make it. So this is why we're collecting all this valuable stuff. Well, where did this stuff come from?

Good question. Because we thought they ran away for their lives, right? But remember when they came out of Egypt, God had instructed them, now ask the Egyptians for precious stuff. Yeah, and this stuff had to all be on the list. And so that's because they were not wealthy as slaves, but they received from the Egyptians who gladly gave them essentially a ransom.

Take this and go. That's right. And you know, when we originally read that, we thought that was virtually to make them rich in some way or to give them riches to start the nation. But here God's saying, you need to contribute it so we can make a place for my presence among you. Well, it is interesting that he says, from everyone whose heart moves him.

Yeah, that's a great line. So this was not a tax that all the people had to pay. It's not a tithe. This was, you know, take an offering because you have seen now what God has done for you. Give an offering as your heart moves you from these precious things so you can build a tent for me.

Yeah. And by the way, they're not giving this for Moses or Aaron's use, basically. They're giving it to God.

It says, take for me a contribution. This is going to God. This is not, you know, I think lots of times in the Christian church we get detoured away saying, well, here's this need, so will you give toward this need? And he doesn't even tell them what the need is here.

You notice that? He says you need to give these things. All they're doing is they're giving to the Lord.

But then at the end of that, he says, is for this purpose. Well, let them make for me a sanctuary, right? A sacred, set-apart place that is devoted to the worship of me.

Yeah, yeah. And I may dwell in their midst. I'm going to settle down. I'm going to be in the middle. They all have tents.

I have a tent. So that's the purpose we were talking about, why that's why we're going to put so much effort into the tabernacle. It's so that he can dwell in their midst. And they can visibly see him dwelling in their midst.

So that's what this is all about. I might mention, too, back to that point about giving, whose heart moves him. That shows up again when Paul's talking to the Corinthian church.

Remember that? Yeah. And he says, basically, let you give as each has decided in his heart. Right.

So there is no coerciveness in any of this stuff. It's just give, and we're going to accumulate enough stuff, we can make this a very important place. The sanctuary, this holy place where man can meet with God. That's the point. It's interesting that God says, so that I can dwell in their midst. Because up to this point in the book, the separation has been emphasized.

Yeah, that's right. Back in chapter 19, he says, now the mountain is holy. Don't come near the mountain. You're going to die if you come near the mountain.

Come near. Right. But he's no longer going to be just the God who's out there. He's going to be the God who's in their midst. And you can point to his tent and say, God's with us.

Yeah, what a great assurance to them that this is a God who wants to actually be in their midst and travel with them, wants to be with them when there's adversaries out there, when there's bad times and there's good times. He wants to be the God that shares life with them on the road as they're moving. And he wants to be with them. That's his point.

He wants to be with them. So that's just a great thing. By the way, I might point out this word tabernacle here in verse 9. This is the first place that word is used here in the Old Testament. But you're going to see it an awful lot after this.

Over and over and over again. And it's going to show up in the New Testament. And then John says in John 1, and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. It just means a temporary dwelling place. A temporary dwelling place. It means a temporary dwelling place. A movable place. In fact, I was curious this time. I looked up that word tabernacle.

It comes from a very simple Hebrew word that just means to dwell. It's the dwelling place. So that's what we're about. Okay. So we've got our materials being collected for all of this.

So instead of telling us directly now about the tabernacle, he's going to tell us about something very important that's going to be inside of the tabernacle. Indeed, it's probably the most important thing. The most. So that's why it's top of the list. So here we go. Want me to read? Yeah.

Okay. So the most important thing inside the tabernacle is the Ark of the Covenant. So verse 10. So you shall make an ark of acacia wood. Two cubits and a half shall be its length. A cubit and a half its breadth. And a cubit and a half its height. And you shall overlay it with pure gold. Inside and outside shall you overlay it. And you shall make it on a molding of gold around it. And you shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet. Two rings on the one side of it and two rings on the other side of it. There's the portability.

Portability. Yeah. So how to use the rings. Verse 13. You shall make poles.

Okay. Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry the ark by them. The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark.

They shall not be taken from it. And you shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you. So we're talking about a big box basically. Yeah.

That's what ark means. Just means a container. A chest. Right. A place in which you put something.

Something that contains something and it's a box. So that raises the question what's in it. Right?

Yeah. And he hasn't told him that yet either. But this is very special. Well he does right here in verse 16.

Put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you. What does that mean? Right.

There's nothing specific about that at all. The testimony. But by the way it's an interesting word he uses because it's the same word that we almost always use in courtroom situations. Right. Where we say this is what a witness testifies. And so we do have a sneak view.

We know what's going in there. Right. And what's going in there is in a sense a witness to the words of God himself. Okay.

It's God's testimony. Right. Right. God's statement of the truth. Right. To his people. Yeah.

And what this living in relationship with him looks like. Yeah. And in a weaker connection to our modern life we talk about doing contracts with other people. You know I can give someone my word to do something and you give me your word to do something and we shake on it. Right. But if we write it on a piece of paper and sign it you say well there it is in print.

There's substance to it right there. I know we said words but here's the content. That's what's going to be in this ark is basically the hard copy of God's promises and covenants.

The stone copy. Yes. That Moses is going to bring back down the mountain. Yes. That's an interesting question.

Since we know that's what's going to be inside the ark, how comes the ark is such an important thing? And we'll talk about that a lot as we go on because I've thought about this a lot over the years. I'm not sure there's any really right or wrong answers but well there may be. Oh yes there is.

There may be. But I mean in terms of any of us having the total take on it I continue to just kind of noodle over it. But it's a fascinating thing that here's the embodiment of God's words to Israel. His promises, his covenants and it's the living witness in the sense of those things and God says they're so precious I'm going to put them in a box that's lined with gold. That is. That tells you something. That is in the holiest of holy places.

Right and we'll see that. In the deepest central most part of the tabernacle I'm giving you. Yeah.

And only to be accessed by the high priest and he better be carrying blood. Yeah. Now we get some of those details later on but isn't it interesting that God doesn't start with the entryway.

No. He starts with the whole point, that deepest most precious thing. This is the core, this is the focus of the tabernacle. This is the innermost place you can get to and it's dominated by a box that holds God's promises. Well and then we need to read on because it's not just the box that holds God's testimony, God's truth to himself but what goes on top of it. Yeah because this box as it's described it doesn't have a top yet. We need a top and here comes the top. You want to read it? 17?

Yeah. Make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length and a cubit and a half its breadth and you shall make two cherubim of gold. Of hammered work shall you make them and on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings. Their faces to one another toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be and you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you.

There I will meet with you and from above the mercy seat from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel. Well there it is. Well there it is.

Lots of mysterious stuff here. Lots of symbolism too and you know if you're thinking the ark looks like what you saw in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well it sort of does. It sounds pretty right. That was a pretty good approximation. It was a great approximation so if that's what you're thinking in your head that's a pretty good one. Well and that probably came out of Jewish tradition.

Yes. Right a deep understanding historically of what it looked like. Yeah so here God says let's make a lid. By the way the lid is not a cashew wood coated with gold it is solid gold and you know the engineer of me inside asked myself how heavy is that lid going to be. Well we don't know the thickness of it which would make a big deal but we're talking about something that would be impossible for one man to lift easily. So I mean it's a pretty well placed cover let's put it that way. Well and in the simplest way of looking at it it speaks to the heaviness of what's happening here. Yeah. This is an immovable or hard to move thing.

Yeah and it's a hard to move thing and it has integral to it because he says make it one piece. Those two sculptures of the cherubim are part of it that's one piece it's all together. And so they look like with their bent forward wings that they're actually shadowing over the art in a way they're protecting it they're saying you don't come past this you don't get inside here unless you come past us first. And cherubim have always been that kind of attendant sort of beings that do that kind of protection.

Right so the first place cherubim show up in the scripture is back in Genesis 3 24 when God places cherubim at the way into the garden after he has exiled Adam and Eve. Their guards. Place the cherubim there to guard the way to the tree of life.

So you know this is one of those places where your observation of the repetition of the connection of the cherubim and the mercy seat will pay off if you camp on that a little bit. What are they protecting? What are they protecting? They're guarding.

What's so important inside the ark? Right. The holiness of the presence of God and what is happening here. And isn't mercy seat a weird term? That's a weird term.

Right? It shows up seven times in this passage. And when you realize too that this mercy seat on top of this box holding God's promises is sort of fashioned after a throne.

And so you see that it's like you're coming to the king on his throne. And the fact that the contents of this box are so valuable, so important, God's saying with these two statuettes in a sense he's saying that all my power in heaven is protecting what's inside this box and this solid gold top is protecting what's inside this box. I mean it reminds me of Jesus saying that none of my words are going to go away. Well those words are written in stone inside this box. And everything about the box is saying what's inside is holy and precious and nobody can touch it. Nobody can mess with it. So in a way it's saying visually God said I made promises to you, I made covenants with you, if you'll be my people I'll be your God. And there's no way anyone's breaking into this box and changing that. That will always be.

Not one word will pass away. So the box is saying that in a very holy and sanctified and yet powerful way with the images of these two cherubim. By the way, in the temple when the permanent structure of the temple gets built, there's more cherubim inside the room that this sits.

We're going to get some of that instruction later on in the tab there woven into the temple curtain. They're on the walls, there is this very visible presence of the holiness of God guarded by these angelic beings who are mysterious. I was going to mention that the cherubim inside the temple that are on each side, in that holy of holiness, they're huge.

They're not just like little figurines on top of this. In Solomon's temple, yes, they're huge. In Solomon's temple, they're gigantic.

I think my memory says 15 feet, but they're just gigantic. So if you went in there and saw this, you'd say, well, you know what, this is a pretty serious place and what's in this box is pretty important, I'm not going to mess with it. Okay, so it's interesting that in ancient cultures in Babylon and Assyria, they also had cherubim, cherub is the word, as heavenly guardians to the holy places, even though their gods were idolatrous. This idea of there being angelic beings who guard the holiness is really interesting to me that that crossed cultural lines.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So here we've got God's covenant and the testimony to that covenant in this box that looks about as holy as you can get. And by the way, just as a small aside, if you were to look at this, you'd see this gold box with this gold slab on top and these gold cherubims on top. Later on, we'll find out that the high priest, when they go into the inner part of the temple and they see this box with the poles in it and with the cherubim on top, what they're instructed to do is sprinkle blood on the front of it and on the top of it every time they go in and never instructed to clean it off. So over the generations and generations that this box exists, it's going to be spattered with blood.

So this wonderful gold box is going to be visibly tainted by blood. There's huge symbolism in this. I agree with you. And we'll get to that.

But we don't have time to really talk about that much. That's one of the things that renders me speechless in thinking about this. Yeah, in fact, I wrote down a reference, if you just want to go look at it and get a sneak preview, it's in Leviticus 16. So go to Leviticus 16, you'll see what they have to do.

Every time I envision this beautiful gold box and it being splattered with blood on the front side, on the approach side as you come in, that just staggers me that this thing of great value and importance costs something, it's life. And we're talking, that's Jesus. Yeah, we're going to revisit Leviticus 16 next week when we talk a little bit more about the other furniture that's coming in the tabernacle. But we probably need to spend our last couple of minutes talking about this verse 22.

Yeah, it's key. There, I will meet with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim. There on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you. The mercy seat, it's not called the judgment seat. It's not called anything else, it's called the mercy seat.

The mercy seat. That place where the blood is applied, where God meets with us in holiness is characterized by his mercy. By his mercy. Because God himself has provided the way for us to meet with him. So that just always stops me, this innermost, holiest of holy places, God says, I'll meet with you in holiness, I'll meet with you in truth, I'll meet with you on the basis of what I have said to you about who I am and who you are, according to my mercy.

Yes, yes. And if you see this as a picture of an ancient throne, you would humbly come before the king to ask for mercy. And this is the path you do it. And as the years would go on, you'd see that this path of appealing to God's mercy is paved with the blood of the lamb. So the imagery here is so incredibly powerful, points so immediately to the sacrifice of Jesus who is our sacrifice lamb.

And about the fact that God's there and he's ruling as a king, because he is the king of kings, and he allows approach to his presence, but only on a restricted basis. But that approach to God is all about his mercies and not about our ability to cleanse ourselves. This could have been, if it was just a regular old kingly throne, it could have been called not the mercy seat, but the power seat or the judgment seat.

It's not called that. As you approach into the nearness of God, the issue that's attendant to that approach is his mercy and nothing else. His mercy that is demonstrated in the blood of the sacrifice that he himself made.

Right. So if you, we run across this big word, propitiation in the New Testament, right? This mercy seat is the place where atonement is made. Well, propitiation means an appeasement or a satisfaction for a debt that's owed. And so if you take your concordance and look up that word, you're going to turn up some wonderful statements in the New Testament, where it says specifically that Jesus himself is the propitiation for our sin. Yeah. And here's a little tidbit.

I was just going to offer the references, but go ahead. Well, no, the tidbit is that propitiation, that word in Greek, when they translated the Old Testament in Greek, they use that word to describe this thing we're reading right here. The mercy seat is that Greek word for propitiation, where in Romans 3, Paul says, and Jesus is our propitiation. And in the Old Testament Greek version, that's mercy seat. So you could actually say from that connection, the mercy seat itself is Jesus, what he's done for us. Well, and we're going to talk about that in the coming weeks, how all of these details point very specifically to the person of Jesus Christ. And John, in 1 John 2, 2, he says that he himself is the propitiation for our sins. So he is that place, that mercy seat where God's mercy rests. And not the propitiation for us only, but also for those of the whole world.

Yeah, for the whole world. So here we have a fascinating, most internal focus of the tabernacle, the presence of God, is a place where he rules and he reigns and he affords mercy toward us, who come to him in a humble way. And we're faced with this trail of blood that has been paved for our behalf to come near to God. And this imagery, so I would just encourage you again, take this imagery, put it in your head and ask yourself, what is this telling me about the occupant of this tent? What is this telling me? Because it's meant to be such a deliberate and overt picture of the heart of God toward us and our relationship together.

This God who wants to dwell in our midst, the place where he wants to meet with us. That's what this is all about. Not just furniture in the tabernacle.

So we're really out of time. I'm speechless. The imagery is just something. The more I roll it over in my head over the years, the more profound it seems to get every time I look at this. Well next time we're going to look at some other things that go inside the tabernacle and they have similar imagery and similar symbology and tell us something even more important about the God who dwells in this tent. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. Join us next time on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. And they opened it and stuff came out. And they opened it. Well I wonder if we know as much about the Ark as we know. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. More Than Ink is a production of More Than Ink.