“The Cherubim are to face each other looking toward the cover.” Exodus 25:20.
We who live in the New Testament can still learn much from the Old Testament. This is true even though the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old. The apostle Paul compares the church of the O.T. with a minor, a child not yet of age. Someone once said that the Old Testament church was the church at kindergarten age. God taught His people then like a kindergarten teacher teaches little children. We often find in the Old Testament simple language and little simple history. God often used what we today call “visual and audio” education methods. The temple was the place where people could come to God and worship Him . God was visibly present with the Israelites in the cloud. In this meditation we take a look at one of the many “articles” in the temple, the cover (also called “mercy-seat”) of the ark.
The temple had two main parts, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. They were divided by a thick curtain (which was torn from the top to the bottom when Jesus died on the cross). In the Holy of Holies, also called the most Holy Place, there was only one piece of “furniture,” the ark. This ark was a box made of acacia wood and overlaid with gold. It was approximately forty inches long and a foot and one half wide and deep. In the ark Moses had to put a pot of manna which was given to the Israelites during the forty years in the wilderness, the budding rod of Aaron, and the two tables of the law, the ten commandments. The cover of the ark, or “mercy-seat,” was also overlaid with pure gold. On that cover, at each end there was a statue of an angel, a Cherub. With wings stretched out the two stood facing each other. In that position they were both looking down at the cover.
To understand this symbolism of the gazing angels we must remember that in this most Holy Place God was present in the cloud. He spoke to Moses from between the Cherubim. In the ark was the law, the ten commandments. As holy and righteous, God demanded that His law be kept. Only when man keeps this law will He be blessed by this holy, righteous God.
Israel is sinful from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads, says Isaiah. Not only was carnal Israel sinful, but all of God’s people were disobedient. This disobedience to the law must result in bringing God’s wrath upon them. Once a year, on the great day of atonement , the High-priest must enter the most Holy Place with the blood of a sacrificed animal and sprinkle the blood on the ark’s cover, the mercy-seat. This would satisfy God’s justice. The sprinkled blood was a type of the blood of Christ which would be shed in the fulness of time. It is at this sprinkled blood that the two angels gazed. How can blood satisfy the righteous God regarding all the sins of His believing people? What kind of blood is this?
We begin to understand this symbolism when we remember that these angels are Cherubim. There were, and still are, we believe, various kinds of angels. Some are Seraphim, others are Cherubim. The Cherubim were given the task of guarding the holiness of God against sin. Cherubim were set as guards at the gate of Paradise when Adam and Eve were expelled from it. In the temple these “holiness-guarding” angels are amazed as they see the power and blessing of the blood on the cover of the ark. The angels stare in astonishment at what is taking place as they observe the forgiving grace of God because of this blood!
We may conclude that these two statues of angels represent all of the angel world. How many angels there are we don’t know. The Bible does speak of hosts of angels, of thousands of thousands (Rev. 5:11). This angel world is amazed at what takes place on that mercy-seat through the shed blood.
How that angel world burst into song on Christmas morning! Here they began to see the fulfillment of what they have gazed at and waited for throughout the centuries of the Old Testament (I Peter 1:12). Whether they understood it all at the time of Jesus’ birth we don’t know. But they surely did know that the birth of Jesus in some way was the unfolding of God’s plan of redemption.
For us Christmas is past as well as Jesus’ work on this earth, His dying on the cross, resurrection from the grave, followed by the Pentecost, giving of His Spirit. With this knowledge of God’s complete work of salvation, we as saved sinners should surely respond with songs of wonder and gratitude. Angels, after all, are servants. As far as salvation from sin is concerned, they do not partake of it. They don’t need that salvation. That is for sinful human beings, originally created in the image of God but fallen. If these angels as servants are so keenly interested in the work of the Lord, and marvel at the work of salvation through the gift of Jesus Christ, how much more we should do so. Can any saved sinner who really knows himself in all of his weaknesses remain silent regarding this great work of our gracious God?
As we often sing, “Though we oft have sinned against Him, still His love and grace abide.”
The scriptures speak of this marvelous grace again and again. Paul speaks of God’s incomparable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:7) . Paul also says concerning himself, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was poured out on me abundantly” (I Tim. 1:14). Also “And I pray that you being rooted and established in love , may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and how long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpassed knowledge” (Eph. 3:18).
In the book of Revelation the Apostle John tells us what he saw in a vision concerning heaven . All the angels with all the saved saints were surrounding the throne singing, “Worthy is the Lamb.” Here the saved sinners, the church, join the angels in glorifying God in Christ Jesus, our Savior. We already sing of this now. One familiar hymn speaks of what we will do in adoration then, as the angels did in the temple:
Father of Jesus, love Divine
What rapture will it be, Prostrate before
Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
Something of this the Lord showed to Israel in the Cherubim looking down in amazement at the mercy seat of the ark, and at the never ending value of Christ’s blood which is our eternal hope.
