The Mercy Seat / Ark of The Covenant

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat

A lot of people have wondered whatever happened to the Ark, because in the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant just disappears. Indiana Jones says it's in a government warehouse somewhere, but I don't think that's true.

But to focus on the most significant item in the tabernacle, it's what?

The Ark.

The Ark.

The Ark of the Covenant usually is what we call it.

What is it?

It's basically, you think of Ark, people think of Noah's Ark, right? Obviously, this is not the same thing. It's not a boat, it's basically a big box. It's like a chest. And in it, God is going to instruct Moses to put in the box, in the Ark, the Ten Commandments, the tablets of stone, or the testimony.

So it's the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Testimony. So this is God's word to Israel, but unfortunately, and this is important, because this is how we see the significance of the Ark and the mercy seat.

Unfortunately, this word to Israel ends up bringing condemnation to Israel, because they don't obey it. So God gives his law, the testimony, they agree. Remember, it was the last week or the week before.

Everything you said, we will do and obey. Okay, it's not the way it worked out. But, so inside is the testimony, which they broke, and that leads to what goes on top of it, what is to cover it, which is the lid.

The Mercy Seat and the Cherubim

The lid, which is referred to as the mercy seat. So just imagine this large box. I think everybody here, I'm sure, has seen pictures. We've all, I think we know what it probably looked like, maybe not exactly.

But you have this box overlaid with gold, gold rings on it, the poles went through so that it would be carried by hand. One time they put it on a cart, that didn't go well. You gotta obey God, guys. Like, just do what God says, and they really struggled with that.

People still struggle with that. But look at verse 17, the Lord says, you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two and a half cubits shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its width. And you shall make two cherubim of gold.

So a cherub is an angel, cherubim is plural. So there's two angels of hammered work. You shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at one end, the other cherub at the other end.

And you shall make the cherubim at the two ends of it, one piece with the mercy seat. And the cherubim shall stretch out their wings above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and they shall face one another.

The faces of the cherubim shall be toward the mercy seat. And you shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark, you shall put the testimony that I will give you. None of this is just arbitrary and God's just kind of, there's no rhyme or reason to it.

There's a reason for everything. Every, all of the furniture, even the dimensions, I'm sure there's probably a reason, just because we can't figure it out sometimes, there's always a reason. So one of the things that we've been saying throughout Genesis, throughout Exodus, is that the Old Testament, all of these things are symbolic throughout the Old Testament, and they point ahead to Jesus.

Christ Pictured in the Ark and the Mercy Seat

Jesus is on every page of the Old Testament scriptures. And he's pictured right here as well, not just with the showbread, not just with the lampstand. He's also pictured here with the ark and the mercy seat.

So just envision this in your mind. You have the ark, inside of the box was the testimony. Above the ark, the Lord would appear between the cherubim in the form of the glory cloud. So the commandments are here.

The Lord is up here, right? So God is holy. The commandments do what? They show man his sin, right? So God is here. The testimony is here, showing that man is unholy. 2 Corinthians 3, 7, the apostle Paul spoke of the tablets of stone or the law of God.

He called it the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones. So you see the problem. There's the law, which represents man's unholiness. God above it. God is holy. There's a problem. How is man reconciled?

How do you reconcile the two? Well, what's in between? Right, the mercy seat is in between. So only through God's mercy, through the shed blood of Christ, which is pictured by the mercy seat or the blood that would be sprinkled on the mercy seat, it does what?

It makes atonement. So the blood covers man's sin and guilt. So God is above when he looks down, instead of seeing man, this is the picture. When he looks down, instead of seeing man's guilt,.

He sees the blood.

The blood of Christ has covered, taken away our sin. So Christ is pictured in the mercy seat. It's a picture of the gospel.