The Tables Of The Covenant

by G. Prasher | Category: The Tabernacle | Dec 1959

"The ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was

a golden pot holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the

tables of the covenant" (Hebrews 9.4).

In the above verse it will be noted that the ark in early days contained three things, a golden pot, Aaron's rod, and the tables of the covenant. We desire to dwell on these a little, as they contain much that is precious in their teaching, and we will commence with the last named-the tables of the covenant.

The covenant associated with these tables had to do with the constitution of the children of Israel as a nation, and as the people of God. In those solemn days when God covenanted with Israel, mount Sinai was sanctified by the presence of the LORD, and the people were warned against even touching it on pain of death. Both man and beast were prohibited from contact with it. The sounding of the LORD'S trumpet, the ascending smoke as from a furnace, and the quaking mountain afforded a scene so fearful, " that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake" (Hebrews 12.21).

Thus Jehovah spoke the ten commandments in the hearing of the people.

And they sat down at Thy feet;

Every one received of Thy words

(Deuteronomy 33.3, H.V.M.).

It seems evident that in this condition the LORD'S words reached their hearts, and He expressed Himself to Moses in the words : "Oh that they had such an heart as this alway, to fear Me, and keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever! " (Deuteronomy 5.29, R.V.M.).

THE CONTENT OF THE LAW

It is interesting to note that the law had two sides - one Godward and one manward. Four of the commandments appear to be Godward, and six of them manward. Eight of the words are negative and two positive. That God had to utter so many "Thou shalt nots" may remind us of the active nature of the flesh which requires so many prohibitions. How prone the natural man is to do evil! "Their feet run to evil " (Isaiah 59.7) is the Holy Spirit's testimony. The law, then, gave instruction to God's people how to deport themselves towards God and man. The Lord Jesus summed up this matter beautifully when He replied to the lawyer's question, "Which is the great commandment in the law? " saying, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22.85-40). Then He added, "On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets." "Love therefore is the fulfilment of the law" (Romans 13.10).

A MOLTEN CALF

Alas! that within so short a time God's people should forget. The absence of Moses from their midst for a period of a few weeks was sufficient to make manifest the waywardness of their hearts, "Up, make us gods," was their demand to Aaron. The voice of their God had already vanished from their hearts.

"The early dew of morning has passed away at noon."

"Thou shalt have none other gods before Me "was the first commandment, spoken audibly in their ears by the God of heaven, and also written by His finger upon the tables of stone; yet Aaron at the people's request made a molten calf, and fashioned it with a graving tool, "and they said, These be thy gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." A feast is proclaimed for the morrow, and they "offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play" (Exodus 32.1-6).

THE BROKEN TABLES

It was with a heavy heart that Moses descended the mount, carrying with him the two tables of the testimony which "were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables." The LORD had revealed to him the declension of the people, and the judgement He proposed to mete out to them for their guilt. The intercession of this great servant of God resulted in the LORD repenting of the evil which He said He would do unto Israel. While this success must have given him joy, yet the sight of the calf and the dancing so aroused his anger that he broke the tables by casting them out of his hands.

There is solemn significance in this breaking of the tables of the covenant. The whole story of mankind is here in shadow. "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."

" We spurned His grace, we broke His laws,

Arid yet He undertook our cause

To save us, though we did rebel, Christ Jesus hath done all things well."

The law was broken by God's rebellious people long before Christ, the perfect Man, came to earth and kept it fully and perfectly.

GREAT MEN ARE PRONE TO FAIL.

We pause to note in passing that "the LORD was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him,". but Moses prayed for him at the same time (Deuteronomy 9.20). Whilst we shrink from expressing anything disparaging regarding so great a person as Aaron, yet we must recognize that the LORD has recorded his failure in order that we may profit thereby. Amid the darkness of that apostasy what a glorious opportunity presented itself to Aaron! Might he not have stemmed the tide of idolatry, strong indeed though that current was? Instead, however, he yielded to the request, invited their gold to be brought, and made the idolatrous calf. We arc reminded of a servant of God who used to say, "We must learn to say, No, at times, and say it with a capital N." His meaning will be apparent, we feel sure, and if only Aaron had so acted how different might have been the result ! Let us, then, learn to stand with our loins girded with truth.

THEIR RINGS OF GOLD

Another solemn consideration is before us in the gold that Israel brought to Aaron. It would appear that about this very time, high on Horeb's mount, God was saying to Moses, "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they take for Me an offering ... gold, and silver, and brass" (Exodus 25.2, 8). Surely the adversary's design is evident in that the gold that should have been brought for the LORD'S offering, to be used in making His dwelling and its furniture, was diverted to his evil work-a veritable sacrilege, because the first of their gold should have been the LORD'S. Is there not a voice herein for us that we use with care and knowledge what of this world's goods our God may entrust to us? It is still possible for gold rings to become a god. "My little children, guard yourselves from idols" (1 John 5.21).

That is an important matter expressed by the psalmist:

"Thou wast a God that forgavest them,

Though Thou tookest vengeance of their doings" (Psalm 99.8).

Let us remember this, and increasingly fear before God. Though judgement is His " strange act," yet He says, " I will recompense. And again, the Lord shall judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." We may with profit ponder over the three thousand slain by the sword of Levi, and the twenty-four thousand that died in consequence of the wiles of Balaam.

I WILL NOT GO UP IN THE MIDST OF TREE

Beside the sword of judgement by the hand of the tribe of Levi, the plague whereby "the LORD smote the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made," and their being caused to drink the gold dust of their idolatry (Exodus 32.20, 85), there is also disclosed the most calamitous result of their iniquity, namely, that the LORD refused to take His place in their midst. It was His purpose to do so as expressed in chapter 25.8, where we read, "And let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them." This request of the LORD was consequent on the ratification of the covenant, when He avouched them to be His people, and they avouched the LORD to be their God. See Deuteronomy 26.16-18. Now the LORD speaks of " the people which thou (Moses) hast brought up out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 33.1-6).

We should note that while the LORD at this juncture appears as One who disowns His people, yet He makes an important promise in the words, "I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite." Had Moses been content with this offer unquestionably there would have been great evidences of divine power among and through them, but this is a matter altogether different from the LORD'S being in the midst of them. This latter implied His dwelling in the midst of the camp of Israel in the dwelling which He had previously requested His people to make for Him. We thus see clearly the conditional character and the great importance of the divine dwelling, or the house of God. It is so in every dispensation: "whose house are we, if we hold fast" (Hebrews 3.6). The evidence of God working in power through any company or companies of people, much as this is to be desired and longed for, is not in itself, therefore, an assurance that God has His dwelling among that company, or those companies. Scripture shows that God works in His sovereignty, and performs His counsels. Those were wonderful days of victory when Saul the son of Kish sat upon the throne of Israel, when the Ammonites were so defeated by his valour that not two of them were left together to prolong the contest; and the people, thrilled with the conquest, exclaimed, "Who is he that said, Shall Saul reign over us? bring the men, that we may put them to death" (1 Samuel 11.11-13). Yet withal in the days of Saul God had no house in which to dwell. See 1 Chronicles 13.8.

THE TENT PITCHED WITHOUT THE CAMP

In agreement with what we have noted above we find a sad story in Exodus 33.7-11. "Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it without the camp, afar off from the camp; and he called it, The tent of meeting." Though the Authorized Version says, the Tabernacle of the congregation, let us be assured that this was not the Tabernacle that was reared by Moses for the LORD to dwell in. Jehovah's dwelling at that time was not made, and it is not until we reach chapter 40 of Exodus that we read of the Tabernacle being erected. But a tent of meeting was pitched by Moses during those days when sin had caused such grief of heart to God, and the place of erection was outside the camp. In this tent God had no resting place. When He came down to speak with His servant Moses His place was standing at the door. From this story we may learn the difference between the dwelling and the tent.

HEW THEE TWO TABLES OF STONE

How true to the character of the LORD is His proclamation, "The LORD, the LORD, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth ..." (Exodus 34.6)! The burden of the intercession of Moses was that God would consider this nation His people, and "that Thou goest with us, so that we be separated ... from all the people that are upon the face of the earth" (Exodus 33.13-16). In those blissful moments of communion, which Moses enjoyed when the LORD spake face to face with him, as a man speaketh unto his friend, although it was outside the camp whither the LORD had been driven, and where all who sought Him resorted, Moses heard the gracious words : " I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in My sight, and I know thee by name" (Exodus 33.17). Then God says to His servant: "Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon the tables the words that were upon the first tables, which thou brakest. And be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to Me on the top of the mount" (Exodus 34.1, 2). As Moses hasted, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped on the mountain top the burden of his heart still is, "0 Lord, let the Lord, I pray Thee, go in the midst of us." There the LORD made a covenant (Exodus 34.10), and the decalogue was graven on two tables of stone which Moses had hewn. Forty days and forty nights the servant of the LORD was in the mount, and his face shone by reason of his speaking with God. Thus "Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand." As he recounts this at the end of the forty years' desert journey he says-"And I turned and came down from the mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be, as the LORD commanded me" (Deuteronomy 10.5).

SHADOWS OF CHRIST

Within the gold-covered ark, With its mercy-seat above, these tables of the covenant were preserved, and they foreshadow Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose heart contained the law of the LORD, as the psalmist foretold

"' The law of His God is in His heart;

None of His steps shall slide " (Psalm 37. 31).

And again in Psalm 40. verse 8 we read,

I delight to do Thy will, 0 My God; Yea, Thy law is within My heart."

In Him God found a heart of flesh on which to write His words. "These words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thine heart " (Deuteronomy 6.6), and good is it for the disciples today to attend to this command. "The day is long past," it has been said, "when God wrote on stone, and if He is to write His law on our hearts we must present to Him hearts that are softened by His grace." Let us learn from the perfect Man to keep soft, tender hearts on Which the Spirit of God can engrave His message. There is so much within and around that tends to harden the heart, but that hardness is usually the result of cold indifference. The warm glow of the love of God will act on the heart like the sun on the frozen ground, or like heat on the solid wax, and restore susceptibility to the touch of God. The Lord Jesus had nothing within that could harden His heart, for "in Him is no sin," and, like the clean fish which has fins and scales, He made His way down here, resisting all evil from without. Thus God, for the first time in the history of man, gazed on a perfect Man, who had the law (torah) within His heart. This is the word used by the Spirit in the above quotations from the Psalms, the root thought of which is to teach. It is by means of God's law that we are taught His ways. Would that we could say with the psalmist,

"Oh how love I Thy law!

It is my meditation all the day.

Thy commandments make me wiser than mine enemies;

For they are ever with me " (Psalm 119.97, 98).

G. Prasher | Dec 1959
The Tabernacle