The world in a box
The ark had three levels. The Lord divided three times to make His world, so it had three levels that required filling: sky, land and sea. In Exodus 20:4, three levels represent the entire universe. God forbids us to make an image of anything in the heavens above, the land below, or the waters under the earth.
God’s instructions for the ark included a window and a door, which match the “the windows of heaven” and “fountains of the deep.”
So the ark was a temporary model of the world, a sanitation-sealed miniature that was a door from the old world to the new one. In this way it prefigured the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the body of Christ. In Matthew 7, Christ’s parable of the wise man and the foolish man depicts one house saved (the ark) and another house destroyed by a flood (the old physical Temple). The entire Old Creation was judged or rescued in the ark/temple of Christ.
