From Sinai to the Sanctuary: The Ark of the Covenant

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome

to the Bible Guys another episode. My name is Chris, this is Jeff,

and we are here today bringing you the story of Moses, bringing it

in a series that we're calling what Highlights of the Old Testament. That sounds

good to be milestones, milestones, posts, big events. Yes. So

anyway, before we get to that, Desiree has asked us to pause from

our normal fun games and to highlight where are our listeners from. Well,

there you go, and this is fun. People listen from all around the

world. Yes, this is amazing to me. It is amazing, And

so she writes, it's so fun to see where our listeners are from.

Today, we're going to highlight some of our listeners by stating fun facts about

their location. These are the funnest. Yes, we recently talked about how

we are listening to around the world, so today we're to highlight a whole

It says a whole country, but that's not true. That's not true.

Today. This is a whole city. This is a whole city, all

right here we go. The city has the largest and most diverse collection of

ice age fossils in the world. I had no idea. I had no

idea either. Wow. Wow, Okay, this is the city is the

birthplace of the Internet. Ooh, I bet you those who live there know.

Oh my god, that's a big deal. That's a big one.

Yeah, just a little thing called the internet, right right. Number three.

Their residents spend over one hundred hours in traffic on average each year.

Yuck, yuck. Yeah, everybody, I think everybody knows how this one's

gross. Yes, yes, the city is home to the only solar powered

ferris wheel. Okay, all right, okay, little known fact there must

be so proud. Okay, all right. So it works when the sun's

out right, and the sun's always out of this because it's it is Los

Angeles, California. Hey La, Yeah, so thank you whoever's listening for

LA from LA, thank you. Yeah. And I didn't know there were

any Christians in La. Oh stop stop, I'm joking. No, I'm

joking. Oh no, I'm joking the jeez. I was out to LA

several times. Oh good for Yeah, have you ever been lots of times?

Yes, yes, yes, it's it's great. It's a great place

to be, is it. But it feels like a different world. Yeah,

you don't like La? I hate La, do you really? Yeah?

I have several friends who live there. I love them. I hate

everything about the city, you really? Yeah, I like it. I

had never want to live there. I had a free ticket yeah to I

could, you know, take a companion on Delta, And so I came

towards the end of the year. It was almost over, and I'd go

to my daughter's sixteen and I said, hey, listen, I'll take you

anywhere in the country. We'll spend four days just you and me. It'd

be like a daddy daughter trip. Wherever you want to go. And I

was just getting ready to say except La, and she goes, I'm gonna

go to La really? So we went out. Yeah. Yeah, we

had a nice time. It was fun. It was fine. It's just

everything is inconvenient, everything is stacked on top of each other, and everything's

too expensive. That's right, right. I would not want to live there

because mainly because the traffic, the weather way too hot, and it's the

housing market is crazy. And but there's lots of good people there, right,

So I love the people, I just don't like the place. So

yeah, and so well, and it's also so transient, he says the

guy from just outside Detroit by the way, So right right, so that's

fixed volumes about about you know whatever. That's so funny. They were there,

they'd be like, I'd rather live in La than Detroit. I'm like,

yep, probably, Hey, thank you for listening. By the way,

around the world, he's bored to death with you are we have we

have we do have people in a lot of countries. We do. How

how many countries would you say? I don't know. Last time I counted

those, like eighty eight countries have tuned in? Hey did you know this?

We we are we are charting right top top podcasts in Hungry, Botswana

and Indonesia. Wow. Yeah, I mean we are killing it in those

markets. That's that's true. It is true. Wow. Yeah. So

I thought that was a really amazing thing for the you know, accomplishment for

us. Well, I want to do it now. I want to shout.

I want to do a shout out to people and Hungry, yeah,

Hungry and Botswana and Botswana in Indonesia. Yeah, I mean, thank goodness

that people are listens up with all you people in Malawi though, right,

come on, come on, get with it. Thank you for listening for

real. That's pretty, that's pretty. That's fantastic. Yeah. So I'm

sorry if I said bad things about LA and offended somebody. Now all of

a sudden, there's like nobody listening from LA anymore, if they're tuning out.

What do you think about LA people? No, I said, I

love the people like some of my dearest friends love. I said, you

don't think there's any Christians analogy? Well, I know my friends. Wow,

you know who? Five people among you? Know who? You have

a million? Yeah? No, I'm joking. So today we're jumping into

really we're establishing the fact that the God's putting into motion his system. Right

he says, he says, you are my people, and if you obey

me, then you'll be my special people, and I'm gonna set up a

tabernacle for you. And then he creates this thing today that we're talking about

called the Arc of the Covenant, which is a wild, tangible box that

God creates that is just unbelievable. It represents so many things that will become

so important for so many generations. The whole thing is important up up until

this point. Now, as we're coming to Genesis twenty five. From Genesis

twenty where he gives the Ten Commandments, to twenty five, he gives a

bunch of other guidelines for how they're supposed to be living. Right, So

he talks about how to treat servants. There was slavery back then. It

was always to pay off debts or to pay off crimes. But even here,

the sentences could only go seven years, right, stuff like that,

So they work that out. He goes through how to deal with personal injury.

He deals with protection of property. Right. I know it's not popular

right now people think it's okay to just trash property, But in the Bible

times there was big consequences for ruining property and other people's stuff. There's a

lot of social responsibilities, how to take care of people, how to manage

your justice, all the things. He sets up some festivals, and then

God promises, as you follow these things, I'll be with you. I'm

going to be with you from start to finish. And so then Israel goes,

Okay, we accept this. This is a contract between us and God.

We're going to accept this contract. And then God says, all right

from there. Now that you've accepted me as your God and you're accepting this

contract that we have on how to live your life, then God says,

I want you to build a place that kind of represents where I'm going to

be with you. And so in Exodus chapter twenty five, verse one,

it says the Lord said to Moses, tell the people of Israel to bring

me their sacred offerings. Accept the contributions from all whose hearts are moved to

offer them. Here's a list of sacred offerings you may except from them.

Gold, silver and bronze, blue, purple and scarlet thread, fine linen

and goat hair for cloth, tanned ramskins and fine goat skin, leather,

acacia wood, olive oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil,

and the fragrant incense, Onyx stones and other gemstones to be set in the

ephod and the priests chest piece. Have the people of Israel build me a

holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this tabernacle and

its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I'll show you. And then he goes

on. He starts telling them these are all the things that go inside the

tabernacle. And the first thing he says that we'll go inside the tabernacle is

the ark of the Covenant. He says, Have the people make an arc

of acacia wood, a sacred chest forty five inches long, twenty seven inches

wide and twenty seven inches high. Overlay it inside and outside with pure gold,

and run a molding of gold all around it. Cast four gold rings

and attach them to its four feet, two rings on each side. Make

poles from acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Insert the poles into the

rings that the sides of the ark to carry it. These carrying poles must

stay inside the rings, never remove them. When the arc is finished,

placed inside it the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, which

I will give to you. Then make the arcs cover the place of atonement

from pure gold. It must be forty five inches long and twenty seven inches

wide. Then make two cherubim from hammered gold and place them on the two

ends of the atonement cover. Mold the cherubim on each end of the atonement

cover, making it all one piece of gold. The cherubim will face each

other and look down on the atonement cover with their wings spread above it.

They will protect it. Place inside the ark the stone tablets inscribed with the

terms of the Covenant, which I will give to you. Then put the

atonement cover on top of the ark, and I will meet with you there

and talk to you from above the atonement cover between the gold cherubim that hover

over the ark of the Covenant, and from there I will give you my

commands for the people of Israel. And he goes on, and he has

the table of presence and the lamp stand, and the design and the layout

of the tabernacle, and the altar for the burnt offerings. God builds or

designs for them, and the courtyards, and then he lays out the clothing

for the priests, and the design of the ephod and all those things.

So all of this is about now, how how to begin communing with God

regularly? Right? And so this tabernacle will serve as where God dwells.

Until really the three tabernacles that we have, or we have the we have

that we were, were the three places that God has addresses. Right is

this, and then also Solomon's temple and then the temple that is rebuilt,

right right, that's right. And temple, the Herod's temple, and so

we have we have those, we have those three and this is the first

of the three. And this one wasn't made of stones or bricks. This

would have been you know, made out of cloth and and uh and so

but thick, very very thick cloth. And they were and they were they

had like just you know, there was silver woven in there. There was

all sorts of you know, thick braided decorative cloth. This would have been

extravagant to look at. And even though it was more of a you know,

temporary type material, it was it was very sturdy, and it was

magnificent and so uh it's you know sometimes I've seen you know, drawings of

it that that don't match, you know when you when you read it,

and you really, man, this thing was extravagant, right, very extravagant.

Yeah, stunningly beautiful. And God says at the very beginning he's receiving

offerings from people who are moved to offer, right, so he goes,

hey, gold and silver and bronze, we're gonna need all these things.

Your finest linens, your finest threads, right, purple, red and blue

and scarlet represented royalty, all the finest leathers, the finest woods, Acacia

wood is amazing, the finest oils, all those things, and the people

willingly came and gave of their offerings to God. And then God said,

okay, take those and build this magnificent place that has a certain amount of

I don't know it's set aside as holy, but it has this really spiritual

Have you ever been like in a cathedral? This designed to make you look

up, you know, the European cathedral builders designed things to cause you to

look up, to make you realize how small you are and how grand God

is, and then oftentimes just stunningly beautiful. I think that was the idea.

It's not that the building itself was God, but rather it represented where

God was with the people. Yeah. I remember one time I went to

Israel and we came on the I think it was the Pool of Bethesda,

I think, and there was you know, in a lot of times,

what happens. Does the Catholic Church, you know, declare a holy site

than they would build cathedral And the reason why is because they knew that once

you build a church on a property, that it could never be you know,

taken over by the government. Right, So there's all these churches on

these holy sites just to protect them, which is just amazing that that's a

great gift that the Church has given to everybody. But anyway, we were

in this massive, massive cathedral and they just like you said, they had

built this thing to where it's designed to look up. But beyond that,

they did it acoustically because you know how much they were just masters of acoustics,

weren't they back then. They just knew how to build something to where

somebody could stand in the center of the room and talk, and all of

a sudden it just reverberated throughout the entire cathedral because they didn't have any sound

systems or anything like that. So anyway, we're there, and you know

how it is, there's people from all over the world. I bet you

there was one hundred and fifty people at this one holy site, and we

probably represented thirty to forty languages, right, I mean, everybody who just

was in twosies and three zis of every country of the world. You know,

nobody speaks you know her in the English or whatever. And so we're

in this chapel and all of a sudden this girl who was with us on

our trip. She was one of one of the most beautiful singers that we

had. She sang on the big stage, right, and she was just

amazing. She would beld it out and everything else. Anyways, all of

a sudden, she stands in the center and all by herself. She's in

the chape all by herself. All of a sudden, she starts singing,

Ah, they MORI right, and this is a universal song, and she

knows the whole song because she sang the whole song all of a sudden.

I'm not even kidding. I bet you one hundred people floked into this church

and just had a seat. It was so emotional. Everybody just has a

seat and they're just listening, and everything quieted down, and she's standing there

with her eyes closed and she's listening to her own acoustics. Right. She

opens her eyes about halfwa through the song, realizing she now has one hundred

people gathered listening. So she continues to sing, but she only knows the

one song, right, so every starts clapping and everything else, and then

she doesn't know what else to do. She's like, I don't know what

else to sing, So that she sings it again and everybody just but it

was beautiful anyway. It was just a story that almost had nothing to do

with anything. Well, just beautiful, right, So that's the idea.

Here is a little bit of beauty for a sacred place, and then God

begins to set up all these tools, And man, I wish we had

the time to really dig into the Tabernacle. We should come back and do

a Tabernacle series. Yeah, because every element in the Tabernacle represents some points

to Gesus. Yeah, that'd be cool, that would be fun, and

it'd be like a mini series. Yeah, and unpack all the pieces because

it helps you understand the law better. We're not going to spend a ton

of time in the levitical law, but it would help understand the law better

if you understood all the different pieces in the Tabernacle that eventually were transferred into

the Temple. But particularly this arc of the Covenant. I mean, we've

all seen Indiana Jones, so I believe it or not, the design of

the Ark of the Covenant India Jones is pretty close. It is. It's

pretty close to what the arc would have been. The thing that seems to

be the biggest difference is the angels weren't prostrate, so like right here it

says that the bent over bent over it so very specifically says bent over.

But there's if you remember, they had like the straight their wings were straight

as an arrow straight. Yeah, and they weren't necessarily they were tilted down,

were they? Yeah? Okay, all right? But yeah, So

anyways, the Ark of the Covenant and the Indiana Jones thing is kind of

you have an image in your mind of this thing. So it wasn't very

big. It's twenty seven inches by twenty seven inches by forty five inches right,

right, So it's it's just over two feet by just over two feet

wide, so it's not very big, yeah, and then just at just

under four feet, right, So it's a narrow box. So the scale

of the Indiana Jones one might have been off just a little bit on that,

but it's it's it would have been four feet two feet two feet is

what it would have been, right, And so four feet is yeah,

I mean yeah, but it only would have been about this, why right,

two feet yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, so it

wouldn't have been very big. But anyways, the covered in Gold has got

these angels on there, and then it keeps talking about this atonement cover.

You and I would have learned it as the mercy seat, right, and

this represented where God, the presence of God would be, and this is

also the place where the atonement, sacrifice for atonement would be poured out,

would be on this mercy seat place. And it represented the fact that sins

could be covered by blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no

forgiveness of sins, and so the priests would come in and pour out this

one offering every year to atone for the sins of all the people for the

whole year. And so it really represents even more than just this. Really,

you know, people think of it as a magic box. It'st it

has inside, it has the we didn't even talk about this, but Aaron's

rod that flowered, and then it has the Ten Commandments, and then eventually

there's going to be this man man. This hasn't happened yet, but it's

going to be in there. And God laid all these things out to a

little bit of trivia. That's the only thing mentioned tangible that's in heaven from

Earth. Well, well, no, the Ark of the Covenant and its

contents are the only thing that is mentioned that's going to be in Heaven that

existed on Earth except people, well, tangible yeah, items, items.

I was referring to things. Oh I see yeah yeah yeah yeah. God

liked it so much he took it to heaven. Yeah. It reminds me

of that joke. Can I tell it? Certainly? Okay. So the

guy dies he's super wealthy, goes to heaven and and he begs Peter and

says, you know, well, sorry, Peter's a the parlegates, right,

and that's every joke. And he says to Peter, he says,

hey, id a request. He says, I was so rich in Heaven

that on earth. He goes, I want to go back down. I

want to take something with me, and Peter says no, no, no,

no no. He goes, everybody knows you can't take anything with you

in heaven, and he goes, oh please, oh please, so please.

He made such a fuss that Peter says, fine, I'll go talk

to the boss. Comes back and says, okay. He goes, this

is the first time in history that God's done this. But he says,

you can go back, and He's given you one suitcase and you can fit

anything you want as long as if fits in this one suitcase and bring it

back. And the guy's like so excited, So he sends it back to

Earth, and the guy doesn't know what to do, so he decides to

liquidate everything that he has and he turns into gold bars and he stacks it

into you know, it just brings gold back into heaven. But he realizes

as he's packing it in that there's spaces between the gold bars, and he's

so greedy that he eventually grinds all the gold down to gold bullion and just

so there's no spaces whatsoever, and he packs the suitcase with gold bullion,

so there's not even not even a space that isn't gold bullion, closes it

up and brings it into Heaven and drags it as it's really heavy, and

all of a sudden, at this time, it's not just Peter, it's

it's everybody, and they're there and they're so ex because this is historic,

right, and he says, man, we can't believe that you bring something

to heaven. You've created such a fuss. So he drags it all the

way up and he says, I can't wait to see what's inside. And

so the guy clicks it open. He says, oh, wait, do

you see this man? You've never seen anything like this. And the guy

pops it open, you know, and every he looks down and Peter glances

and says, you brought pavement. So the arc of the Covenant, and

then it goes on to lampstand the table of Presence, and all of these

elements represents specific things in the way that God is interacting with his people,

Representing how God gives light, representing the food that God provides, representing all

these things. And then there's these altars. There's the clothing for the priest

and the epod that he's wearing, and the chest piece that he's going to

wear, and all of these elements so that the people would have an understanding

that they're dealing with the Holy God and that God is set apart from them,

and that our sin separates us from God. That's a part of that.

But through sacrifice and then ultimately through the the the shed blood of the

innocent lamb on this mercy seat, on this this this uh what what what's

what's the title? Atonement cover that because of that, God will be with

his people and God offers to bless his people as they choose to obey him

and follow his commands. Right, But the possibility of having this connection with

him was not because of the the law. It was because of the sacrifice,

the innocent one sacrificing for the guilty. And so that's what they do,

is they would pour it out here on this this holy box, and

it would atone for the sins of the people. And uh yeah, And

even the placement within the tabernacle is important as well, because it was it

was located in the very center, right, and and and so God existed

in the epicenter of the tabernacle, and not all of that. But then

he sets forth forth laws that only certain people can enter into the presence of

of where the the ark of the Covenant was. Right, so the Holy

of Holies becomes, uh, you know the room in Solomon's temple that is

not only in the very center of the temple, but in that case it's

also on the third level. So there's actually like levels you know that that

that are down below on the outer rim. And then as you went into

the next level, it goes up slightly and then you get to the Holy

Holies and it's on the third third floor, So it's it's interesting how it's

so symbolic everything about it and the rules of who's allowed closest to God's presence.

Everything was was was because of sin, because of God's holiness. So

you had you had the courts right where there there would be places where people

could who were not Israelites Hebrews that they could come and and be around.

But then the Israelites or the Hebrews would be allowed in an open court.

Then from there there'd be the Holy Place, this is where only the priests

can work. And then there'd be the Holy of Holies, and this is

where the arc of the Covenant would be, the mercy seat would be,

and this is where they would only go and they had a huge thick curtain

and they could only go in one time a year, and they'd tie a

rope around their foot. They had bells on the bottoms of their thing just

in case they died because they hadn't gone through the purification process right or something,

and they could pull him out rather than have to go in and get

them. So it was a big deal because if he died without a rope,

then how do we get him out. How do we get him out

because somebody's alloed in. Yeah, So it's really really fascinating stuff. I

just encourage you go ahead and read through it. There's several really good books

on the idea of the tabernaclin what that's all about. But just ultimately know

God's desire, even in the midst of our sin, is to have a

relationship with us. And this was his way of initiating a relationship in his

presence with an entire nation of people. Now he desires an an intimate personal

relationship with you. And the Bible says, now, because of what Jesus

did on the Cross, that that veil between us and the Holy of Holies

is torn apart, and that we can go boldly before the Throne of Grace.

Right, the throne of grace, this covering of atonement, it's the

same thing. Right, we can go boldly before the Throne of Grace to

God with our requests and our needs. And He wants to have a relationship

with us. But this is the beginning of God instituting with an entire nation.

I want a relationship with you, and there's an appropriate way to do

it. And he's very specific I mean, it's dozens and dozens and dozens

of pages about the specifics of how to approach him, and it's just an

indicator of the fact that we don't create our own way to God. God

makes a way to Him that's right for us, right, got establish all

of that, that's right. Yeah, Well, hey, that is our

time, and so that's a good place to end. So we will continue

on next time. Hopefully you'll join us on the Bible. Guys,