The Ark of the Covenant and the Christmas Story

The seamless, unifying theme of the entire Scriptures is the story of God’s redemptive plan to restore his personal presence with His people. We first see God among his people in the original holy of holies, the Garden sanctuary on Eden Mountain. But due to their failure of faith in God, man and woman are expelled from his holy presence and from access to the tree of life, forced to descend to the valley and experience death. 

But despite this failure, God doesn’t give up on dwelling with His people.  He implements a plan, a journey of faith for us, to restore His fallen people to His holy and lofty presence.

Throughout the Old Testament, if we look carefully, we see signs God has placed on the redemptive road - to encourage us and help us keep track of his plan. Road signs are so helpful when traveling through unfamiliar territory. Let’s look at some of those road signs.

After man and woman have been expelled from Eden Mountain where they dwelled with God, we next see a sign, God’s presence at stage one, in a burning bush at the sacred Mount Sinai. There, God announces to Moses his plan to redeem Israel from Egypt. This fiery bush indicates one stage of God’s presence on the road to restoration.

In stage two, another sign, the fire again appears for months for all Israel to see as God descends on Mount Sinai to conclude his covenant with his people.  Then, finally, in stage three, that same divine fire rests permanently on top of the Tabernacle, the tent-sanctuary, as God’s presence settles there, and in a glory-cloud on top of the Ark of the Covenant inside the tabernacle.

So, while God’s immediate presence was forfeited from humanity on Eden Mountain, by seeing the road signs, we understand that it is partially restored in stages on Mount Sinai and then on a portable mountain called the Tabernacle.

 Then finally, under King Solomon’s rule, we see another sign on the road, a permanent temple is erected on Mount Zion (Jerusalem) and the Ark of the Covenant is placed inside. God’s holy presence is now located in a permanent, human-made structure on top of a mountain.

When we open the pages of the Gospels, the next stage in God’s restoration plan, the road signs seem to disappear. What has happened to the specific place of God’s presence, the Ark of the Covenant? What is the next stage on the road to restoration? Where are the signs on the road that show us his plan of restoration? We know that the Ark itself was probably taken by the Babylonians in 586 BC when they sacked Jerusalem. But what happened to God’s personal presence? Did it disappear? Did it stay in the Ark with the Babylonians? Did God stop placing signs on the road to guide us? If we read the Christmas story in the traditional manner, we’ll miss seeing the signs altogether and get lost on the journey.

But when we put on our canonical glasses, more road signs, visible indications of God’s presence, come into clear focus in the Christmas stories.

The story of the Gospels is the coming of Jesus, God-incarnate, into time-space. We should expect to see road signs connecting Jesus to the Temple or to the Ark of the Covenant, demonstrating a unified and seamless, redemptive story. Good news! The Christmas story in Luke is loaded with those clues. In fact, Luke shows us the reappearance of the Ark of the Covenant. The stories of the birth of Jesus make so much biblical sense when we view them through canonical glasses. The view is astonishing.

 Join us next Sunday at Redeemer Bible Church, 10:30 AM, when we examine this topic in Luke’s version of the Christmas Story.  

 Thank you for reading.

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