In Exodus chapter 25, very specific instructions are given to build a unique piece of furniture. Here we read a description of a box — and yet this box is the center of not only the living of the Israelites but also our walk today.
And let them make a sanctuary for Me that I may dwell in their midst; / … / And they shall make an ark of acacia wood: two and a half cubits shall be its length; and one and a half cubits, its width; and one and a half cubits, its height. (25:8; 10)
This box, the ark, is the first and foremost furniture that God tells His people to build for His dwelling with man. It is the center of the tabernacle and also the testimony of who God is on the earth. The ark, built of solid acacia wood was overlaid and inlaid with pure gold. But the ark is not an empty box; one of the most key items to be contained within it is God’s words — it is an ark of testimony, God’s testimony. Without the ark and its content, it is only a box, a structure with no essential value.
This picture is the same with us as human beings. When God made man from the dust of the earth, we were made according to His image and likeness. Yet it wasn’t until man received the breath of God that he became a living soul. Without God’s breath of life in man, this vessel has no value.
Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. (Gen. 2:17)
Today, we too, are just the form, a vessel without content to give us value if we do not have the life of God in us. But since Adam’s fall, we need a way to have access to that life in order to match our design and have that testimony. In the New Testament, we see that way was made in Christ:
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality. (John 1:14)
The Word became flesh — Christ’s coming as a man gave God’s life a tangible expression. He is the true man according to God’s original design. Now, through Christ, we too, can be the embodiment of God’s word bodily, the human expression of the life of God in man. We are a vessel with this unique content to express God’s testimony on the earth, just like the ark.
So where is the ark today? The ark today is God’s word as life in us. If we do not carry and daily experience His word with His value, nature and attributes as life in us we are just like the ark without its contents — there’s no living soul expressing God’s testimony on the earth today. No amount of outward performance or religious duty will ever express this ark. Are we truly experiencing God’s words as our life? Or are we still empty? God wants a testimony and it is only through man that God can express this testimony. As a vessel, we need to let God put His words, which is Himself, into us. It is only through this inward filling that can we have a real humanity and testimony of God.
— Behold! This ark indeed is a real living soul.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 12/15/2023, not reviewed by the speaker.)