God asked Moses to build
the Ark of the Covenant for a special purpose. For this reason, He gave Moses
specific guidelines and instructions as to how to build the ark.
Exodus 25:1 says "And the
LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, that they bring
me an offering: of
every man that gives it willingly
with his heart ye shall take
my offering.
3 And this is the offering which ye
shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass,
4 And blue, and
purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
5 And rams' skins
dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
6 Oil for the light,
spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense,
7 Onyx stones, and
stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate.
8 And let them make
me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.
9 According to all
that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the
instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.
10 And they shall
make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth
thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
11 And thou shalt
overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt
make upon it a crown of gold round about.
12 And thou shalt
cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of
it".
The first guideline is to
take offerings; probably materials to be used in building the ark, but there is
a limitation as to type of offerings to be received. It must be an offering
given freely from the heart.
2Corinthians_9:7 Every man
according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
God indeed blesses
a cheerful giver and not a cheerful gift. It is only when you truly understand
the things of God that you give out freely without resisting. We need to
compare some of those days to our present days to see whether we are truly
corresponding to the will, desires and guidelines of God. Certain preachers go
in for gain at the first and foremost nowadays that they lure people through
deceit to gain wealth. These unsuspecting children of God buy into some of
these deceits giving out and even buying these so called special anointing
oils, anointing waters, handkerchiefs others. It is good to sometimes look into
the past in order to see how God issued His guidelines so that we may not fall
prey to these deceits. It is only by the right knowledge of God that we can
rightly discern and flee from these lies.
God points out the items supposed
to be used for the ark, and all these bear certain significances that we cannot
be able to deliberate on now, but might do in the course of time. It is however
worthy of note that God ordered the ark to be built with wood. After it is
built with wood, it is supposed to be overlaid with pure gold within and
without. Why was the ark not built with pure gold once and for all. Why should
it be built with wood, but overlaid with gold?
In Hebrews 10:1, God says `` For the law having
a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those
sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers
thereunto perfect``.
These means that the laws
of the Old Testament are only symbols serving as shadows to reveal the real
things. God does this in order to teach us from simple to complex, know to the
unknown. What then does the wood symbolise? In my opinion even as I believe to
have the spirit of God in me, the wood represents we human beings especially
the children of God. The bible mostly refers to us as trees.
We are trees planted by
God beside the waters that even when people lack water (which symbolically is
the word of God), we will not taste. God`s special dealings with the Israelites
in the land of Egypt especially during the ten plagues proves this. Woods are
made from trees and there is no difference between a tree and its wood.
Why should the wood then be covered with gold all around both within and
without?
Lest you forget, let us
bear in mind that God did not just ask them to use gold, but pure gold. There
is nothing pure like gold, just as there is no one pure like God Himself. The
glory of God is the purest gold that ever existed and will ever
exist.
Now, I hope you get the
picture. God is trying to say that a day is coming that He would build a
sanctuary for Himself. A sanctuary in which He will fully dwell. God has this
design for a long time in that He only needs to reveal it to Moses in order for
him to form the ark in the manner in which he sees it. He will be inside that
sanctuary and without it. That is why He is in us and upon us.
Here is one other thing
to look at. God said the ark will be His dwelling place, and today we are the
dwelling place of God, the temple of the Holy Ghost.
Collosians_6:19 "What? know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"
This sounds like;
Exodus 25:8 "And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.
God dwells in His
sanctuary, and He is now dwelling in us, His sanctuary".
This sounds like without
us Christians, God may not dwell among us. That is what we are created for, the
dwelling place of God.
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