Tablets of Flesh
The Ark was always to be carried by human legs, never on a beast or a man-made cart. The Jewish rulers and religious leaders were content to keep God in a box, symbolically hidden behind a veil. But in Christ, the Ark was free and walking around on human legs with the eyes and mouth of a Man. When the Ark was mobile, the people of God followed, seeking rest and scattering His enemies on the way (Numbers 10:33-34).
The Ark was a covering that protected Israel from the consequences of face-to-face exposure to God’s Law. With the Ark taken by God, the Restoration Covenant would be different. The synagogues would come into their own, and the Law would be studied by all Jews throughout the empire:
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31)
The next fulfilment was the bodily incarnation of the Words, Jesus Christ. He was both the Law of God written on tablets of flesh, and the blood covered container that protected Israel from extermination. They all knew Him, from the least to the greatest. Like the Ark, His words were a flaming sword that would bring either life or death to His hearers.
And of course, we are familiar with Paul’s explanation of this being applied to believers who are His body. Our words also bring division:
“…clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart… for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Cor. 3)
