It is obvious from the first pages of the Bible that God wants to be with these humans He created. In the earliest times, when humans lived in the Garden of Eden, God would join them regularly for walks. They would speak face to face. There was no sin or guilt or shame to mar the connection. Things were ideal.
But then came temptation and sin, and the whole thing started to unravel.
Still, God’s intentions never changed. He wanted a relationship with these rebellious and stiff-necked people. He wanted to actually spend time being with them.
So God began arranging ways of meeting with people. He would show up in what are known as “theophanies”, special, divine appearances. They were rare, but Abraham, Isaac and Joseph all experienced a handful of these God-sightings.
Then God appeared in a burning bush to call Moses to get the people out of Egyptian slavery. As they marched out, God was visibly with His people in the form of a cloud by day and a fire by night. Then He led them to a mountain where the people got to see just how terrifyingly powerful and awesome YHWH could be.
But the people rebelled again, so God suggested they just go into the Promised Land without Him (see Exodus 33). The people, realizing that they didn’t stand a chance against their enemies without God’s presence, refused to go forward unless He went with them.
The next part of God’s plan to spend time with people involved Moses building a box, the Ark of the Covenant, and placing it in the middle of a portable tent known as the Tabernacle. The high priest entered the presence of this box once a year, and God promised to meet the people’s representative there.
For the next few centuries, the Ark of the Covenant symbolized this abiding presence of God, the special relationship the Israelites enjoyed with their Maker and Redeemer.
Just prior to the reign of King Saul, however, the unthinkable happened: Enemies captured the Ark, causing the entire nation to panic. It was eventually returned, but then Saul did a foolish and unthinkable thing: For an entire generation, he kept the Ark sitting in storage.
King David understood that God’s desire was to be in the midst of the people. His first act, after setting up the new capital city of Jerusalem, was to bring the Ark of the Covenant there, with the intent of building a permanent structure for it, a place where the people could always go and meet with God.
David’s son Solomon built that place, and it was grand. It was glorious. It was beyond compare.
But it didn’t last very long at all. In a short while, the people would rebel again, and in a few generations, Jerusalem was reduced to rubble and ashes, the Temple just a pile of stones. The Ark of the Covenant was lost forever. The place where people could meet with God was gone.
And so, from this point forward, we’ll begin to hear more and more about the need for a permanent solution. Prophets will begin to take on a more prominent role in the Bible’s Story, calling the people back to their covenant promises and speaking of a time in the future when God would provide a new way of meeting with them.
The meeting point will no longer be a place; it will be a Person. And it is through that Person that God still meets His people. Anyone and everyone who comes to Jesus will find a personal encounter with the God who creates, redeems and restores.
Dear Father, I rejoice in the revelation that You want to be with me and me with You. The depths of Your grace are unfathomable, I cannot see how You could wish to have such intimacy with me. Yet daily I seem to forget this glorious truth and turn my heart instead to lesser gods that compete with the one thing most needful. Why do I clamour after other affections above Yours? How did I get betrothed to your enemy? I ask that you would untie me and break that knot, and take me to Yourself. Only when I am enthralled by You will I ever be free. Knowing this, I ask for the grace of holy aspiration, so that I will treasure what You declare to be important and stop giving myself to lesser things that cannot satisfy, but only entrap. By Your grace, I would break free from the bondage of the flesh, the world and the devil.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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