(Exodus) Exodus 25:20-22

Now, notice what God says here, "...and the cherubim shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another. Toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be." That is, they look down upon the mercy seat. "...And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark, and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.

And there I will meet with thee, and I'll commune with thee, from above the mercy seat, from between the cherubims, which are upon the ark of the testimony of all things, which I'll give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel." Now, the mercy seat actually was just sort of a chest, it was a box, and you'll notice it was gold inside and outside. It was made of chitim wood, a wood that was more or less indestructible, very much like our redwood here in California. And it's a perfect symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ in His deity and humanity.

You see Christ as the God-man, and we find here that we have both His deity and His humanity. And it was a true symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ setting forth, therefore, both His deity, represented by the gold, and His humanity, represented by the wood. It spoke of Him in the hypostatic union.

Now, that's a big word. The hypostatical union means that He's very God of very God, and He's very man of very man. That's what the oldest creed of the church says.

Now, the ark could not be spoken of as merely a wooden box, for it contained gold, and it could not be called a golden chest, for it contained wood. It required both to maintain the symbolism pointing to Christ as the God-man, and there's no mingling of the two. To overlook this duality is to entertain a monstrous notion of His person.

There is no doctrine, friends of the Scripture, so filled with infinite mystery, so far removed from the skin of man's thinking, so foreign to the realm of explanation than is the hypostatic union in Christ. Yet there is no symbol so simple as the ark, merely a box made of wood and gold, yet it speaks of things unfathomable. Truly, God chooses the simple things to confound the wise.

That simple box tells out the whole story as far as man can take it in, of the unsearchable mysteries of the Blessed Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the goal was both inside and out, for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. That's what Paul said in Colossians 2.9. He's not merely a thaumaturgist, that is, a wonder worker, neither was he a man with an overdeveloped God-consciousness.

He was God. He spoke as God. He put himself on the same plane as God.

He says, you believe in God, believe also in me. And again, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. But he was a perfect man.

He grew tired. He sat down in a well in Samaria in the cool of the day. He slept.

He ate. He drank. He laughed.

He wept. And beyond all that, he suffered and he died. And all of these are human characteristics.

The gold and the wood in the ark are both required, yet neither was mingled with the other, nor was the identity of one lost in the other. Christ was both God and man, but these two natures were never fused or merged. He never functioned at the same time as both God and man.

What he did was either perfectly human or perfectly divine. Christ was the theanthropic person, and the ark was therefore not merely an empty box, by the way. It contained three items which are numerated over in Hebrews, the 9th chapter, verse 4. It says, which had the golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant.

Now, let's take them up. Aaron's rod that budded speaks of his resurrection. The manna speaks of the fact that he is the bread of life.

And the Ten Commandments speaks of the life that he lived down here. He fulfilled the law and he kept it in all of its point, even fulfilling the prophecies or the things that it speaks of. Even this tabernacle speaks of him.

Now the tables of the covenant speak of the kingship of Christ. He was born a king. He lived a king.

He died a king. He rose from the dead as a king. And he's coming again to this earth as the king.

And God's program is moving today and has been from eternity to the time when Christ shall rule over this earth. For he will turn and turn until he comes whose right it is to rule. Now this earth needs a ruler.

Man needs a king. And someday he's coming as king of kings and lord of lords. The Ten Commandments there, the tables of stone.

And the pot of manna speaks of Christ as prophet. He spoke for God. When Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.

And then he not only spoke for God, but he was God's message to man. He was the Logos, the Word of God, the very alphabet of God, the Alpha and the Omega. He's God's final message to man.

He is the first and the last. And since Christ came, heaven has been silent. For God has no addenda to place after Christ.

He has no postscript to the letter where Christ is the embodiment of that letter. God has told out his heart in Christ. And Aaron's rod in the ark speaks of the work of Christ as priest.

The prophet spoke for God before God. The priest spoke for man before God. As a priest, Christ offered himself as a priest.

He passed into heaven and even now sits on God's right hand. And that is the thing that speaks of. And then we have here the work of Christ as priest.

We've already been talking about that. And Aaron's rod which budded was in the Holy of Holies. Thus today there is in the heaven at God's right hand the man Christ Jesus who was raised from the dead.

He's the unique example of resurrection up to the present hour. He's there for us. And Easter lilies and eggs don't speak of the resurrection, friends.

It just happens to be that Aaron's rod that budded does for it was an old dead stick that came alive. And here you have set before us, he is prophet, priest, and king. And the Word became flesh and tabernacled here among us.

That's what the ark speaks of.