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Housesitter · 04-19-2008, 08:14 PM

Here is another article by my good friend Dr John Dempster published this week in the Highland Group of Newspapers under the heading Christian Viewpoint and reproduced with the permission of the author.

CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT

The Ark Which Wants to be Found

‘It’s the most holy object on earth,’ claimed Prof. Tudor Parfitt of the University of London’s School of African Studies in a Channel 4 documentary last week. Parfitt’s film, and the accompanying book The Lost Ark of the Covenant describes his quest to track down the Ark, which hasn’t been seen since it disappeared from the Temple in Jerusalem at the time of its destruction by the Babylonians in around 586BC.

A friend gave my wife Lorna a book for her birthday entitled A radical encounter with God. In it, author Greg Haslam the minister of London’s Westminster Chapel shares his vision of God’s bigness. He takes issue with our casual use of the word ‘awesome’, which he feels debases the word. ‘ “Awesome” is a word that needs to be recovered and used sparingly,’ he says. ‘It rightly belongs to God.’

The Bible tells us the Ark of the Covenant was a modestly-sized container made at God’s command by Moses, the leader of the Jewish people as they travelled through the desert, refugees from slavery in Egypt, heading for the Promised Land. It was made of gold-lined wood, and on it two gold ‘cherubim’ were mounted – winged celestial creatures, facing one another, their outstretched wings touching.

The Ark’s contents included the stone tablets listing the ten commandments which God had given Moses, when he made a ‘Covenant’ with the Jewish people, promising to bless them if they obeyed his commandments.

When the Jewish travellers had pitched camp, the Ark was kept in the Tabernacle – a tent of worship, which symbolised the fact that God had chosen to dwell with his people. This Tabernacle, and especially the ‘holiest room’ inside which housed the Ark, was regarded with deep awe, as a place for meeting God.

On the annual Day of Atonement, the High Priest sprinkled the blood of a sacrificed animal on the lid of the ark beneath the cherubim, a reminder that while breaking the commandments deserved punishment, God was prepared to accept a substitute and so forgive his people.

When the Jewish people were travelling, the Ark was carried in front, symbolising God’s leadership of his people. In battle it was a reminder that if they obeyed him they could rely on his support. It was not that the Ark itself possessed magical powers – rather, the power which brought victory was the power of the God whose presence the Ark symbolised.

Dedicated Ark seekers are familiar with many theories about its present whereabouts. Some say it is hidden on Mount Nebo in Jordan; others that it’s concealed in a church in Ethiopia or buried somewhere in Jerusalem. Tudor Parfitt’s rather fanciful theory is that the Ark was actually a musical instrument, a drum, and that it found its way to Africa where he has discovered what he claims to be a centuries-old replica of it. But a rabbi speaking in Parfitt’s film said with an enigmatic smile ‘I don’t think the Ark wants to be found.’

Of course, the quest for the Ark is fascinating. But to Christians, the Ark’s religious significance is no more than historical. To us it is a symbol of the one who was coming, and who now has come, the one who invites us to welcome him into the tabernacle of our lives.

For Jesus Christ is our Ark – he is with us, indeed within us; he leads us, and strengthens us in our inner battle with spiritual forces; he is the living expression of perfect obedience to God’s commandments; he is himself the sacrifice, dying as our substitute thus making it possible for a holy God to forgive us. And his presence makes our hearts a holy place where we can encounter God.

And yet, we’re so prone to content ourselves with symbols like the Ark which point us to God – words, songs, parables which resonate with us, similes and metaphors, ideas about him, all of which give us some emotional fulfilment. But we don’t press beyond the symbols to encounter the unimaginable God who draws near us through them, this God of whose awesomeness Greg Haslam rightly reminds us.

Why do we not see more of God’s glory? Partly, I suspect because we satisfy ourselves with the symbols and don’t press beyond them. Partly because we explain away the evidence of God’s grandeur in his creation and in our lives. Partly because we sometimes foolishly seek to use God’s power for our own ends. And partly, I think, because God in his mercy spares us from the terror of seeing him as he is.

And yet, we can find and know this untamed Majesty as our Father through our precious Ark, the Ark who is Jesus, an Ark which most definitely wants to be found.

John A. H. Dempster