Study the Word

Guest (Male): What really happened to the Ark of the Covenant? Some fascinating biblical insights related to this ancient and beloved artifact and the traditions associated with it, next on Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller.

It's been said truth that's merely academic will never get to the heart until it's practiced by the will. Satan doesn't care how much Bible truth we learn as long as we don't live it. Unless we're vigilant, our worship and service can degenerate to mere form and tradition.

Today's Study the Word will help us to counter that. We continue in the Old Testament book of Ezra with Pastor Thom Keller. It's rich with form and tradition. Of course, that's not bad as long as we remember what it all points to. In our search for the Ark of the Covenant or any understanding of its important traditions, let's remember we're not just on an academic journey, but to worship and serve from the heart. In Ezra chapter 3, beginning with an illustration, here's Pastor Thom.

Pastor Thom Keller: A man went to the dentist because he felt that something was wrong in his mouth. The dentist examined him and said, "That new upper plate that I put in six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?"

The man replied, "All I can think about is that for about a month now, about four months ago, my wife made some asparagus and she put some sauce on it that was delicious. It was Hollandaise sauce. I loved it so much I started putting it on everything: meat, toast, fish, vegetables, everything."

The dentist replied, "That's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive and it's actually eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time I'm going to use chrome." The patient said, "Why chrome?" To which the dentist replied, "It's simple. Everyone knows there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise."

Would the person who emailed that to me like to stand up and take credit? I didn't think so. You put me up here and then you don't take credit. This morning we are in the book of Ezra, chapter 3. 1500 BC, 3500 years ago, was the Exodus and coming into the Promised Land. Then the exile and then the restoration.

There's a period of three to four hundred silent years and then Jesus comes. We're in this restoration period. Cyrus, in chapter 1, in 538 BC, Cyrus is the king of Persia and he conquers Babylon. Cyrus sends a decree out to all the Jews that they can go back to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple if they want to.

Chapter 2 lists all those that are going back. We discovered that 42,360 Israelites returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. That's where we pick up in Ezra 3:1. It says, "Now in the autumn, when the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people assembled together as one person in Jerusalem."

It says in the seventh month, which is early autumn. It would be sometime during our September or October. As you're picturing them coming back in, this is the setting. Imagine them settling into their towns. They've been in a far land for a long time. It's been 70 years since they've been back.

Their houses, if they even existed, have been occupied by someone else. Their land has been settled by someone else. It's not like they're coming back and the key still works and they walk in the door. What was that like? What did that occupation look like? Did they just walk onto the land and say, "This is our land, we want it back," and the people said, "Okay, sure"?

Do you think that happened? Did they fight for the land? If you look at Ezra 2:27, it says the people of Michmash 122, the people of Bethel, Ai 223, the citizens of Nebo 52. These are the numbers of people, the citizens of those towns. For instance, the citizens of Nebo, 52 citizens from Nebo went back to Nebo and said, "We want our town back."

There are already people in Nebo. Did they fight for it? Did they say we want it back? Did they purchase the land? Did they mooch in and stay in game lands that were available and they just slept there? Did they show them King Cyrus's decree? I thought at first that's probably what happened, but the decree doesn't say anything about where they live.

King Cyrus's decree just says you can go back and rebuild the temple. He's very generous in that, in the provisions he provides, but there's nothing there about land or where to live. It was probably not an easy task. In fact, we know that they did not receive a friendly welcome because in Ezra 3:3, it says, "Even though the people were afraid of the local residents, they built the altar at its old site."

The Israelites were afraid as they moved into this Promised Land. There is hostility toward them by the locals and we're going to see much more of that as we get deeper into Ezra. They resettled and at the end of verse 1, it says that they assembled together as one person in Jerusalem. What that indicates is that they had unity. They were really focused and together on this vision to rebuild the temple.

We pick up in verse 2. It says, "Then Jeshua, son of Jehozadak, with his fellow priests and Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, began to rebuild the altar of the God of Israel so they could sacrifice burnt offerings on it as instructed in the law of Moses, the man of God. Even though the people were afraid of the local residents, they rebuilt the altar at its old site. Then they immediately began to sacrifice burnt offerings on the altar to the Lord. They did this each morning and evening."

Keep in mind, we've said this before, but Jews aren't allowed to sacrifice animals anywhere except in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount on that altar. For 70 years, there have been no sacrifices. That's the first time that happened since Moses put the law in place. They had a tabernacle, which we'll talk about later. This was tremendous rejoicing because their position would have been that their sins had not been paid for, had been atoned during that whole 70-year period. This was huge that they could once again be back.

It says that they rebuilt the altar on its original site. As a little bit of a review, when Moses and the children of Israel left Egypt, God gave instructions to Moses to build what was called the tabernacle. This was in essence a portable temple, if you think of it that way. This isn't the first temple. The first temple is Solomon's temple, but this was the beginning because the tabernacle was constructed, it was movable.

The dimensions are clearly given in the Bible. The walls can be broken down and the Levites, the family of the tribe of Levi, were responsible for breaking this down, carrying it through the wilderness as they trudged around and then setting it back up. In the middle, the bronze laver where they would wash, but in front of that is the altar. That's the altar, the only altar where animals were allowed to be sacrificed.

They were 40 years in this setting. All 40 years that they traveled through the wilderness, they used this tabernacle. In Numbers 33, every move that they made is listed. I counted them, there are 40 times that they moved in the 40 years. 40 times this was broken down, once a year on an average, it was broken down, carried, and then set back up.

This was the place where Moses went to meet with God. The 40 years when Moses would meet with God, he would go into this place. Numbers 7:89 makes this point. Whenever Moses went into the tabernacle to speak with the Lord, he heard the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim, those are angels. He heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him from between the two angels above the Ark's cover, the place of atonement, that rests on the Ark of the Covenant. The Lord spoke to him from there.

On the inside of the tabernacle, when you go in those original gates, there's the candelabra there, there's a table of incense. That first room is called the Holy Place. Behind it, you see about a third as large in the rear, that's called the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies is where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

It's pretty easy to make a drawing of this because it was clad in gold. It was four and a half feet by two and a half feet by two and a half feet. It had long poles that were put through it to carry it. It had two angels on top where the wings of the one angel would touch the tips of the wings of the other angel. That's where in the wilderness Moses would go into the Holy of Holies, and it was from between those two angels that God would speak to Moses.

In Hebrew, the word altar, back into the story now, in chapter 3 today, the only thing they're building, they've done some foundation stones and the altar, that's it. As we go through chapter 3, the only thing in this whole scene are some foundation stones put back in place and this altar. In Hebrew, the root word for altar means to slay. The Latin "alta" means high, as you would imagine.

Moses was given specific instructions by God on the size and construction of this altar. Exodus 22: "Using acacia wood, construct a square altar seven feet wide, seven feet long, four feet high. Make horns for each of its four corners so that the horns and the altar are all one piece. Overlay the altar with bronze. Insert the poles through the rings on the two sides of the altar. The altar must be hollow, made from planks of wood. Build it just as you were shown in the mountain, but covered then with bronze."

Before David, before King David, before King Saul, the Ark is captured by the Philistines. Israel becomes apostate and during the time of the judges, they become apostate. In the range of 1300 to 1100, this is when the Ark was carried off by the Philistines. It made a lot of trouble for the Philistines because God didn't want them to have it. They got these tumors and they were able to attribute it, rightfully so, that they had the Ark in their possession and should not have.

As a result, they gave the Ark back to the Israelites. In 2 Samuel 6, David brings the Ark to Jerusalem. It says then David again gathered all the elite troops in Israel, 30,000 in all. He led them to Baalah of Judah to bring back the Ark of God, which bears the name of the Lord of Heaven's Armies, who is enthroned between the cherubim, between the angels. They brought this back from Kiriath-jearim where the Philistines had it.

David then takes that Ark, he brings it back to Jerusalem and he puts it inside of a special tent that he designed for this. One day as David is praying, thinking about this, he determines that he should build a temple, a house for this Ark to be placed inside. 2 Samuel 7 says, "The King David summoned Nathan the prophet. 'Look,' David said, 'I'm living in a beautiful cedar palace, but the Ark of God is out there in a tent.'"

Nathan replied to the king, "Go ahead and do whatever you have in mind for the Lord is with you." Many of you know the story. God later reversed that and said to Nathan, "Go back and tell him, you're not to do it. It's noble that you want to do it, but you're not the one to do it because you're a man that has shed much blood. Instead, your son Solomon can build the temple."

Solomon did it. 1 Kings 6:1: "It was mid-spring in the month of Ziv during the fourth year of Solomon's reign that he began to construct the temple of the Lord. This was 480 years after the people of Israel were rescued from their slavery in the land of Egypt." Solomon builds the temple. Four years into his reign he begins, it takes seven years to complete it, which is a phenomenal accomplishment that it could have been done in seven years.

We go from the tabernacle, that's the first place the Ark was covered. Then it's taken by David and put in a tent, just a simple tent. Then he says, but it should be in its own home. Solomon, year four begins Solomon's temple. There are complete instructions given. This is the dedication of the temple. Solomon's supposedly standing watching and the fire from God came down and lit the sacrifice, an incredible event.

This is again the front of Solomon's temple, the altar covered in bronze and the entrance to the temple. This time the altar has steps going up, the bronze laver, and the Holy Place and then behind it, the Holy of Holies. This temple that Solomon built lasted 375 years until Judah was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 BC.

2 Kings 25: "On August 14th of that year, which was 586 BC, on August 14th, which was the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard and his official of the Babylonian king, arrived in Jerusalem. He burned down the temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He destroyed all the important buildings in the city."

This is when the temple is completely destroyed. It stood in place for 375 years. It starts with the Ark of the Covenant, Solomon's temple is built. Now, 70 years before where we are today, it's absolutely destroyed. But what about the Ark of the Covenant? Whatever happened to the Ark? Indiana Jones would like to know that as well.

In case you don't know, you may not know that that movie is based upon this exact Ark. That's what the story is about. Jewish tradition has it that before the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem, that the prophet Jeremiah took the Ark out of Jerusalem and hid it in a cave in Mount Nebo. 2 Maccabees gives quite a detail on that. I was going to read it, it just takes too much time. That's what they think.

That's why when Jesus said to the disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" some say Elijah, some say Moses, some say Jeremiah. The reason Jeremiah was mentioned there is because the Jews believed that Jeremiah was going to come back before the great day of the Lord and would bring the Ark out of the cave which was hidden and set the Ark back up.

Some believe that the Ark, I think a lot of Jews, would believe that the Ark is still in that cave waiting to be discovered. Some say that the Ark is in Ethiopia in the Church of Saint Mary under guard. Some say it's in Egypt, some say Babylon, Syria. I hope it's not in Syria. Some say it was carried to Rome by Titus or in a tunnel under the city of Jerusalem.

This is very interesting. Some say that it's actually in a temple tunnel underground. This is actually, when we went to Israel, you can walk through these tunnels. This is a tunnel that's right behind the Western Wall. If you've seen the Western Wall where they pray against that wall, the reason they pray against that wall is the Jews believe that when the temple was destroyed, they believe that the Holy Spirit of God who rested on the Ark of the Covenant, they believe that when the temple was destroyed, the Holy Spirit because the Ark was taken that the Holy Spirit went and entered into the Western Wall.

That's why they pray there. They think that the Holy Spirit that was at one time in the temple is now in the Western Wall. Directly behind that wall is this tunnel, and it goes on and on. There are caverns, up steps, down steps, lefts, rights, huge arches. The Temple Mount is 20 football fields large.

Under the temple, you may think it was built on a mountain on a hill. There's a lot of fill necessary to make a 20 football field area flat. What they did is they actually built arches and colonnades underneath. Some places there are three series of arches. Some of the corners are actually as tall as a 15-story building.

Imagine how high. There's a Roman arch, a tier of stone, a Roman arch on top of that, a tier of stone, a Roman arch on top of that. That's what's under the Temple Mount. If you think it's just dirt and gravel under there, it's not. There are all these tunnels. Solomon's stables, this is under the Temple Mount. This is where Solomon kept his horses. This is where the Knights Templar, when they were in power in Jerusalem, where they kept their horses as well.

Could it be that the Ark is under there? Jews aren't allowed to go under. The Muslims control the Temple Mount and they're very finicky on this point. There are people that have said they've seen the Ark of the Covenant under there. I don't know, we're going to get to heaven and find out. The significance of the Ark is that what was inside the Ark was the Ten Commandments written on a tablet of stone. Aaron's rod, he had like a cane that budded, and that's in there, and also a jar, can of manna, was in there as well.

The point is that it would appear that from the time of Babylon's conquest on, the Ark of the Covenant has never been seen again. It has certainly not been in any temple since that time. The temple since that time of that original Ark, there was no original Ark, it was missing. They're going to rebuild an Ark in this one, but it's not the original Ark. The tablet is missing, Aaron's rod is missing, the manna is missing because it was a duplicate.

Going into Ezra 3:3, "Even though the people were afraid of the local residents, they rebuilt the altar at its own site, then they began to sacrifice burnt offerings on the altar to the Lord each morning and evening." There was a lamb that was sacrificed in the morning and in the afternoon. They don't know what time the morning sacrifice was, but it was prohibited to be at sunrise. They worked very hard to make sure they did not offer it too early.

The afternoon sacrifice, historians and Josephus says it was 3:00 in the afternoon that this lamb was sacrificed. What time was Jesus did he cry out "It is finished"? 3:00. At the exact same time Jesus was crying out it is finished, that exact same time, the High Priest Caiaphas was in the temple sacrificing that lamb.

I think about the fact that for 1500 years before Jesus came, every 3:00, I picture God and Jesus watching that lamb being sacrificed, knowing that in 1500 years, 1400 years, 1300 years, 1200 years, it will be you. It will be you.

We go then to verses 4 to 6. It says they celebrated the Festival of Shelters as prescribed in the Law of Moses, sacrificing the burnt offerings specified for each day of the festival. They also offered their regular burnt offerings and the offerings required for the new moon celebrations and the other annual festivals to the Lord. Freewill offerings were also sacrificed to the Lord by the people. 15 days before the Festival of Shelters began, the priests had begun to sacrifice burnt offerings to the Lord. This was also before they had started to lay the foundation of the Lord's temple.

It mentions here this Festival of Shelters. What is that? In Leviticus 23 it says this, again Moses writing during the time of Moses, and the Lord said to Moses, "Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. This is a celebration Jews still celebrate today. Begin celebrating the Festival of Shelters on the 15th day of the appointed month, five days after the Day of Atonement. This festival will last for seven days, one week."

Verse 42: "For seven days you must live outside in little shelters. All native-born Israelites must live in shelters. This will remind each new generation of Israelites that I made their ancestors live in shelters when I rescued from the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God." Today, this is Sukkot. In Israel, if you go to Israel in the orthodox sections, you'll see things like this. They'll build a little pole building and they'll put, they're commanded in Moses' instructions, to put boughs of trees over the top of them. They will eat dinner in there, some will sleep in them during this seven-week period.

Guest (Male): Fascinating insights Pastor Thom Keller has given us on the worship traditions God gave to His people that are to remind them of Him, and this is Study the Word. We're studying the book of Ezra right now. To hear this message again, simply go to CCLEB.com and look under resources. We're at CCLEB.com. If you'd rather have a CD copy, call 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862.

For those that give to the ministry this month, we'll say thanks by sending you a book by Andrew Murray called "The Blessings of Obedience." Maybe your view of obedience is more along the lines of an inconvenience, something you have to do but don't want to do, and it takes all the fun out of life. But the truth is God has our best interest at heart. He loves us and it's truly a blessing to get in line with His will for our lives. Again, we'll send this your way for a gift of any amount to Study the Word.

Call 717-507-7862 or write Study the Word, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania, 17046. If you live close by or will be visiting the area soon, we hope you'll join us for worship. For our service times and more information about Calvary Chapel Lebanon, turn to CCLEB.com. Download our free Android app, search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play Store. We'll get back into Ezra next time on Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller. May God richly bless you as you study the Word and discover the blessings of obedience as you apply it to your life.