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As their Messiah, He had not only been accredited from the opened heavens by the voice and the dove, in these new relations with a repentant people, accepting a baptism of John in the waters of Jordan, but Jesus had also been “led of the Spirit to be tempted of the devil.” The wilderness and the solitary place are made glad by reason of Him who, by His obedience to God, made the desert to rejoice, and blossom as the rose. As the Son of Abraham, and Son of David, according to the flesh, though Son of man, and Son of God (like the pure gold of the ark), He overcame the tempter morally first, and by means of the temptations to which He submitted. Unswerving in His obedience anti devoted allegiance to the Majesty of God, He overcame the devil, and said, Get thee behind me, Satan. He has entered into the strong man's house in righteous title, and proved Himself, as the tempted Man, stronger than he. He then goes forth upon His mission as the Deliverer, with His disciples, to proclaim “the glad tidings of the kingdom of heaven,” to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and to cast out devils from the men into whom they had entered. Such was “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” when originally given out in pattern to Moses, and when borne along upon the shoulders of the priests under Joshua and Eleazar, in “the form of shittim wood, and the pure gold,” in the fore-front of the great congregation of Israel. Such, too, was “the ark of the covenant,” when “come in flesh and blood” into the midst of this same people, disgraced by their disobedience, and driven out of the land into which Joshua had led them aforetime. What a moment was this!
Will they welcome this Joshua-Jesus, come to begin a new history with them morally, by repentance and confession of sins to the Jehovah they had offended when in Canaan by their idolatry? He began this wonderful ministry in their synagogues, when He opened the book where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” But such beauty and glory as this, which dwelt in Him morally, and come so close to them bodily in grace, as to be in real flesh and blood in their midst, required other eyes and hearts to appreciate and worship; “And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?” They have lost the sense of what “the shittim wood and the fine gold” of the typical ark represented to their fathers, nor can they see “the form and comeliness” in the mystery of the Word made flesh; and fail more deeply by refusing Him thus in the glory of His humiliation. They will not follow this “ark of the covenant of the Lord” in their midst, but rise up, and thrust Him out of the city, and lead Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, “that they might cast him down headlong.” They refuse “the acceptable year of the Lord,” and have rejected their Messiah, the true Ark of the covenant between God and Israel, till another day, when His people shall be willing in the day of His power.
We may now turn from the synoptical Gospels to the Holy Ghost's subsequent testimony to Jesus in resurrection, as by Paul to the Hebrews, and see how “the ark of the covenant” is again brought out, and presented to another generation of Israel. The ark in this epistle, however, is no longer known after the flesh, nor as in the world, but as gone on before, and passed through the heavens for faith. Jesus sits there on the right hand of the throne of God, as the veritable “Ark of the covenant of the Lord,” once given out in pattern to Moses, and constructed by Bazaleel, and carried by the Levitical priesthood over Jordan to Shiloh, and by David to Mount Zion. Surely the Holy Ghost, as the Glorifier of Jesus, is bringing back to the Hebrews by Paul the essential glory of the Person of the Son, who, by His accomplished work on the cross (as foreshadowed in their tabernacle and its services), has substantiated all the promises of God to their fathers, and made them yea and amen to “the children of faithful Abraham.” What is the ministry of Paul, in chapter 1, but the embodiment “of the ark of the covenant” in the Book of Joshua; and beyond all that, the indestructible and incorruptible shittim wood, or the finest and purest gold, could prefigure of Him that was to come? What is Paul's testimony to the Hebrews of his day, if it be not another presentation of Christ to their faith and hope, according to “the glory, above the brightness of the sun,” which had arrested the man who did so many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth? A pattern to them, and an example!
We may ask again, what is Paul doing with the Hebrews (as a new generation), if it be not acquainting them with the personal glory of the Messiah, like “the light which had appeared to him” before he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and “there fell from his eyes as it had been scales?” Under this anointing it is that Paul writes to his kinsmen, “God having spoken in many parts, and in many ways, formerly to the fathers in the prophets; at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son, whom he has established heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” Indeed these glories far exceed all types, for this Son is not only the Creator of all worlds, but “the possessor of the heavens and the earth,” although He humbled Himself to pass along before His people, in “shittim wood and fine gold,” veiled under “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” and in the hidden character of “the Lord of all the earth.” But again, as to the brightness of its light, Paul says, “Who being the effulgence of his glory, and the exact expression of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, having made by himself the purification of our sins, set himself down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” Nor is this marvelous glory only that which the Son (as the true Ark) is essentially in His Person; but relatively He has in grace purged our sins, and officially as the Priest sprinkled the blood before the mercy-seat, where God in His holiness dwells, and where Christ has sat down.
What is all this but the antitype of “the ark of the covenant,” and of “the true tabernacle,” which goes before the people of God, and which, in this precious chapter, this remnant of Israel is exhorted to follow? Moreover, the kinsmen of Paul after the flesh had, like himself, refused Jesus in humiliation, as the Child born of the virgin, in Isa. 7; so that he can present Him now in the magnificence of His exaltation, as indeed He had appeared to Paul “above the brightness of the sun.” Taking a place, he says, by so much “better than the angels, as he inherits a name more excellent than they.” For to which of the angels said He ever, “Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee"? And again, “I will be to him for father, and he shall be to me for son?” And again, “When he bringeth in the first-born into the world, he saith, And let all God's angels worship him.” Besides this presentation of the personal glories of the Son, as the only “Ark of the covenant between the Lord and his people,” whether with John the Baptist, in Jordan, on earth; or much more by His death and resurrection to the right hand of the throne of the
Majesty in the heavens; He concentrates likewise in Himself all relative and official glories, as King and Priest. He passes along before us, too, as “the appointed heir” of the inheritance, yea, and of all things. Moreover, the blessed promises and prophecies in this chapter touching “the throne, and the scepter, and the kingdom,” are all to be fulfilled in the city of Jerusalem, in the coming day of their millennial rest and prosperity, by redemption through His blood.
It is to be observed that Heb. 1 is more in character with Isa. 9 and His exaltation, than with Isa. 7 and His humiliation. In this, “the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful,” &c., “and of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth and forever.” And are not these relative and official glories made sure to David and his son, by an everlasting covenant? What does it mean, “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this,” in Jerusalem and Mount Zion, if it does not find its place, and form part of the glory of “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God?” Doubtless, “these mercies of David” and of Israel are made sure to him and to them by the actual death and resurrection of Christ; but does this fulfillment in the heavenly places first, disconnect them from the typical ark and the priests, when they bore it along, in wood and in gold, into the land of Immanuel? It is significant that Paul propounds the same enigma (from Psa. 110.) as the Messiah did, “Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet,” only with this difference, that Paul quotes it to account for the absence of the Messiah from the earth, as rejected by His enemies; and Jesus, that He might oblige the Pharisees to confess that David's Son must be David's Lord at the right hand.
These were the ways of “the ark of the covenant” (in which they had not heretofore trodden, and for which, typically, they were to leave a epees of two thousand cubits), in order for them “to come to Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,” &c., when “the Lord of all the earth” will come forth, and reign before His ancients gloriously. Nor were the throne, and the scepter, and the government, and the kingdom in Mount Zion, the only mercies promised to “the appointed heir,” and spoken of by the Messiah when upon the earth, or by Paul, in his Epistle to these Hebrews, when he bade them go after the Ark, which had really taken the way of Jordan, to reach its place of rest in glory. Either they took part with the enemies of the ark, when “in wood and gold,” or when it passed along “in flesh and blood,” or when it took the way “of death and resurrection to the right hand,” and would “be made a footstool for his feet” another day; or else they formed part of the new generation of Gilgal and Shiloh who believed, and were entering into rest, in the city for which Abraham looked. They had come out originally (Paul tells them in his epistle) by “the way of Mount Sinai, and the voice of words,” and the former covenant of works; but the ark of “the covenant of the Lord your God” refused to travel by “the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire.” It takes its path through “the tabernacle” of Moses in the wilderness, and then upon the shoulders of the priesthood across Jordan, in the days of Joshua, onward to Shiloh, by Eleazar, and finally is carried up by David, under other patterns, and another ministry, to Mount Zion, and then put into the temple of rest and peace, in the reign of Solomon, where the staves are drawn out. May be, these stages of the mysterious journeyings of the ark, and its spaces, are the ground-work of Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, and, if so, would illuminate and illustrate the Book of Joshua, whether for Jews, or for Gentiles, or Christians with their heavenly calling.
Certainly he bids “the children of Abraham” come forth, and follow the “true ark,” in the first chapters, as “anointed with the oil of gladness,” to conduct them into “the great salvation” of the second, where the ark (in flesh and blood, and by the passage of Jordan) goes down with the priests to the bottom, and stands firm till all the people are passed over. They were baptized unto Moses, in the cloud and in the Red Sea; but they came up out of Jordan under “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” to possess the land. In “flesh and blood,” too, Christ takes the place of Joshua as “the Captain of our salvation,” made perfect through sufferings.” He took part of the same “with these children, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage.” What is this action, if it be not in type, meeting the whole strength and power of Jordan, at the time when its waters overflowed the banks too? They left twelve stones in the bed of the river, and they carried twelve stones out, as the abiding proof to their children that the tribes of Israel had followed the ark and the priests by the path they had not heretofore traveled; of death and resurrection, to Gilgal and Shiloh. Besides this, He, “the ark,” in flesh and blood, and as “Son of man,” in this chapter 2, takes His place as “the appointed heir of all things,” according to the scope and power of David's Psa. 8, “in the world to come,” and all things put under His feet, according to “the everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.”
The ark of the covenant, or “the brightness of the glory,” which came forth in the beginning of this epistle as the express image, and in the effulgence of the eternal Son, whom all the angels of God worship, enters by another way in chapter 2. “The ark” reveals itself here under the coverings and curtains, in the glory of His humiliation, and seen in the likeness of man, “for verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Moreover, “in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” As the “Captain of our salvation, he was made perfect through sufferings,” and now, for loving sympathies as the High Priest, he has qualified Himself, being tempted, “to succor them that are tempted.” He has identified Himself as the ark with the congregation in the Book of Joshua, by “flesh and blood,” with the nucleus of a new generation in Jordan, by the baptism of John; and now, as on the other side of its waters, with “the children” and “the brethren” in the true tabernacle, and in the midst of the great congregation, by a real death and resurrection with Him. “He who sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one,” becomes the new principle and manner of “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” when revealing itself in its other relations to us, in the tabernacle of Shiloh, on the way, or in the sanctuary of its permanent rest in heaven, and “made without hands.” (As in chapter 7.)
How graciously Paul seeks, in other parts of this epistle, to win these believing Hebrews away from the shittim wood and the pure gold; yea, and from the mere “likeness of flesh and blood,” and their associations with an earthly Messiah, as well as from their typical history under Moses and Joshua, by giving out the summary of all these, from “the ark of the covenant” passed on before them. “Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum; we have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Indeed we must own, that the Hebrews is the only epistle which teaches us what Christian priesthood is, and which introduces to us “our great High Priest, Jesus, the Son of God, passed through the heavens.” Its connection, therefore, with the Book of Joshua, in which “the ark of the covenant” borne by the priesthood, and taking the way of Jordan into the promised rest, is of real importance, and is analogous in many respects to “the rest which yet remaineth for the people of God” (in chap. iv.), and into which “we who believe are entering,” though the space may be yet between the ark and ourselves.
(To be continued.)