Rediscovering the Ark of the Testimony (Covenant) and the Most Holy Place

I discovered something new the other day, but first let me take you back to something old.  When God instructed Moses to build the tabernacle in the wilderness, there were two parts to it—The Holy, and in the inner-most part, The Most Holy, wherein was placed the Ark of the Testimony (Ex 30:6).

To refresh your memory, Moses met with God upon Mt. Sinai in the wilderness to receive God’s law (the ten commandments) for the people who had just been delivered from slavery.  God fed the people in the wilderness with manna and instructed that a container of it be kept.  And when there was contention with Korah and his company regarding whom God had chosen to come near Him, it was Aaron’s rod that budded indicating God had chosen Aaron.  So, the Ark of the Testimony contained the stone tablets of the ten commandments, a container of manna and Aaron’s rod that budded (Deut. 10:4-5; Ex 16: 33-34; Num. 17:8-10).  On the lid of the ark was the mercy seat where God’s Presence would come down above it and He would meet and speak (Exodus 25:21-22) between the figures of two angels on either side.

Now all of this may seem foreign, remote and somewhat meaningless to us today.  After all, the contents of the ark were missing long before even the ark itself was lost, but it doesn’t matter because these things were types and shadows of the true and everlasting.  Let’s look at this from a different and modern perspective.

Scripture tells us that God’s people are a royal priesthood and being built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4-5, 9; Rev 1:5-6).  Jesus taught that when we pray we should go into our inner room, shut the door and pray to the Father in secret (Matt. 6:6).  Could this inner room Jesus speaks of be analogous to the most holy place? Isn’t it the place where we know and are certain that we have been chosen by God to approach Him; that we have access to the Bread of Life and that we have God’s new covenant written on our hearts and minds as He promised (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10-13).

The world looks for answers from mediums, psychics, tarot card readers and other such so-called spiritual guides (as I once did before I knew better).  Such things, however, are forbidden to the people of God (Lev. 19:31; Lev. 20:6-7; Deut. 18:10-15).  We, with whom God has made a new covenant; we whom God supplies not only with our daily bread, but with the True Bread of life that came down from heaven (John 6:31-35, 48, 51, 58); we whom God has chosen and caused to bud, grow and flourish in Christ, have the awesome and enviable privilege to meet with and inquire directly of God.  We can go into the inner room of our own tabernacle where God meets with us at the mercy seat of our personal ark, not as part of an earthly congregation or assembly, but one to One in the intimate, private, place behind the veil.  Praise be to God!