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“search the scriptures” John 5:39
The ark of the covenant is a most interesting and instructive study in scripture. To fully analyse it we would need to consider it’s:
It is the last of these subjects that we purpose to consider. We will trace three significant journeys taken by the ark, namely through the Jordan river, around the city of Jericho, and up to the city of Jerusalem. These three areas of scripture will yield several searching lessons connected with the ark of God and will cover quite a scope of teaching as we endeavour to apply the principles from each journey. The Jordan will present truth relative to the believer personally, Jericho will relate to the believer and the world, and when we follow the ark to Jerusalem there are vital lessons that readily apply to the believer and the assembly.
Jordan was a natural barrier to the Promised Land. To be in the good of the land that God had promised His people, it was essential to cross the Jordan.
God had purposed a people for the land. We see in the book of Genesis that God had brought them out of the loins of Abraham. In Exodus, by blood and power, He would bring them out of Egyptian bondage and from thence into His presence as priests in the book of Leviticus. Numbers will reveal that in His faithfulness, and despite their unfaithfulness, He would bring them through the wilderness, then, ultimately, they would be brought into the land as we read in both Deuteronomy and Joshua.
They were truly a people of destiny. Failure to enter the land would rest foursquare at their own feet.
Joshua begins his book with a sixfold emphasis upon the fact that God had given them the land; 1. 2, 3, 6, 11, 13, 15. Everything they possessed was a divinely bestowed gift from the heart and hand of the God of sovereign grace.
Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 7 to 10, gives a detailed description of the wealth and fullness of the land of Canaan. He speaks about the vitality of a land with brooks, fountains, and springs; of a land with variety, containing wheat, barley, figs, and honey; a land with volume that would never run out, having no scarcity or lack, and with valuable metal in its hills.
All of this is most suggestive to the believer in the present age of grace. We too are a people destined to enjoy an inheritance, but this inheritance is something that God would have us enter into this side of heaven. Canaan does not answer typically to heaven, because, amongst other reasons, it must be conquered to be enjoyed, but it is a picture of our present enjoyment of all the blessed things we have been brought into by our union with Christ. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul reminds us of all the richness of the blessings that God has lavished upon us, we are ‘blessed … with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ’, Eph. 1. 3.
The ark is referred to seventeen times in Joshua chapters 3 and 4 and thus plays the key role in relation to crossing the Jordan. It is instructive to note the titles that are given to the ark. It is without question a beautiful type of the person of our Lord Jesus Christ - a study of the construction of it as outlined in Exodus chapter 25 will establish this. But here we note that it is called:
This title reminds our hearts of the absolute and essential deity of our Lord Jesus and takes our thoughts back to the glory of the gold that overlaid the ark within and without, Exod. 25. 11. At the beginning of his Gospel, John announces unequivocally the absolute deity of our blessed Lord by telling us that ‘the Word was God’, John 1. 1. This statement alone is sufficient, but scripture is full of this glorious truth. May our hearts ever be aligned to the words of Thomas when he expressed, ‘My Lord and my God’, John 20. 28.
This title is one of supremacy. We recall the words of Paul in Colossians, ‘that in all things he might have the preeminence’, Col. 1. 18. Christ must always be given the place of supremacy; just as the ark would be uplifted on the shoulders of the priests so Christ must ever be supreme amongst His people.
This, of course, reminds us that into the ark was put the testimony, i.e., the law, cp. Heb. 9. 4. Prophetically, our Saviour could say, ‘I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart’, Ps. 40. 8. His was a heart wholly and solely devoted to the will of God, the only man who upheld every principle of the law and acted according to it in every detail of His perfect life.
In the crossing of the Jordan, we need to delineate exactly what is typically portrayed:
With this clearly before our minds, we can see that the crossing of the Jordan speaks vividly of the association of the believer with Christ in death in order to come into the good of the inheritance.
We need to distinguish between the crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan.
Crossing the Red Sea is typical of my salvation; it is the death of Christ for me which brings me out of Egyptian bondage and introduces me to the pilgrim pathway through the wilderness.
But in the crossing of the Jordan, the type is of my identification with Christ; it is my death with Christ which brings me into the good of the inheritance.
Israel was told, ‘When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it’, Josh. 3. 3.
They followed that ark down and through the opened waters of the Jordan. When the feet of the priests touched the river, the Holy Spirit of God states that the waters of the Jordan went back to the city of Adam, Josh. 3. 16.
This brings us to the Epistle to the Romans, and chapter 6 in particular.
In chapters 1 to 5 of Romans, Paul shows us how that Christ has died for our sins. In doing this He has laid down a righteous basis upon which God can justify the believing sinner, thus clearing him of every charge of guilt and enabling him to say, like David, ‘Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven’, Rom. 4. 7.
But, when we come to chapter 6, the truth being taught is that I have died to sin. This is one of the most vital truths for the believer to grasp, and why Paul lays stress upon our understanding, ‘Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin’, Rom. 6. 6.
The ‘old man’ comprises everything that I was in Adam, all that I am from my birth to my conversion. At the cross, Christ not only died for what I did - my sins - but He died for what I am - myself! Paul uses similar language, albeit in a different context, in the Galatian Epistle, ‘I am crucified with Christ’, Gal. 2. 20.
So, we can see the beauty of the type in the crossing of the Jordan. The waters of the river of death go back to the city of Adam, the people of God follow the ark through the river and into the promised inheritance, likewise the death of Christ goes back to Adam and deals with everything that I was in my identification with Adam.
‘My Adam’s standing He destroyed, And set my soul above
The ruins of this wretched world - So boundless is His love!
The new creation now is mine, By grace in it I stand,
In resurrection power, upheld By God’s almighty hand’Midlane
Paul will develop in Romans chapter 6 that the new link with Christ will lead to a new type of life, a life no longer under servitude to sin but under the lordship of Christ. In baptism, we told everyone that we are now identified with Christ and the weighty responsibility upon us is that we must give evidence to this in a practical way.
There is one other point worthy of consideration.
Before the Israelites passed through the Jordan, they were instructed that ‘there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore’, Josh. 3. 4.
Evidently there was a practical reason for this distance (approximately 3000 feet). There had to be the distance for such a large company of people to see the ark.
But there is also a moral lesson to be learned from the distance between the people and the ark. We must never ever become over-familiar with things that are holy. When we consider the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, we take the place of the privileged three disciples in the garden of Gethsemane who went so far but must remain a stone’s cast away from their Saviour, Luke 22. 41.
This principle holds true whether we are considering the virgin birth of Christ, or His true and yet sinless humanity, or the sensitive subject of His trials by Satan in the wilderness, or the depths of His sorrow of heart in Gethsemane where He anticipated what it would be to be made sin for us. And what shall we say of Calvary with its unspeakable agonies and deep unfathomable mystery where, forsaken by God, He endured the totality of divine wrath against sin.
Oh, let us pause and think before we speak, and let our thoughts be high and holy, our hearts humbled, and our words governed only by the language of the sacred scriptures when we deal with the most holy of subjects, our blessed Lord. Let all undue familiarity be banished and let us maintain the distance between us and the ark.
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