Bringing The Ark Into Jerusalem
Before the ark of God was brought into Jerusalem, the spiritual condition in
Israel was deteriorating badly.
The war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long
time. David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul grew weaker
and weaker (2 Samuel 3:1).
After Ishbosheth the son of Saul was murdered by the sons of Rimmon the
Beerothite (2 Samuel 4), David became king over Israel (2 Samuel 5).
All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, “We are your own
flesh and blood. In the past, while Saul was king over us, you were the one
who led Israel on their military campaigns. And the Lord said to you, ‘You will
shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.’”
When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the king
made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed
David king over Israel.
David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years.
In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months.
After the capture of the ark of God by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4) and Saul's
murder of the priests of Nob (1 Samuel 22:19), there was widespread
indifference and compromise of true worship to the Lord. This brought the
whole nation of Israel into a state of disastrous ignorance of God's Word!
The unification of Israel required a central place of worship, the coming
together of the two rival priesthoods and the moving of the ark of God into the
nation's capital.
The whole chapter of 2 Samuel 6 recorded one of David’s most important
actions in bringing the whole nation of Israel together. Returning the ark of
God to His people and restoring true worship of God!
The ark of the covenant was the same ark that God had commanded Moses
to make more than 400 years earlier. Inside the ark were the tablets inscribed
with the 10 commandments, a jar of heavenly manna, and Aaron's rod that
was alive and budding miraculously. And the Lord of Hosts dwelt between the
cherubim.
The ark of God represented the manifest presence and glory of God. It was
placed in the house of Abinadab for 20 years after the Philistines had returned
it to Israel (1 Samuel 7).
David had a desire to bring the ark into the city of God! To make a dwelling
place for God!
David brings the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God's presence among them, to
Jerusalem. This has the effect of making Jerusalem the Holy City, Israel's religious
center, as well as David's political capitol.
Because for the first time in God's dealings with His people He has succeeded
in bringing into union with Himself and into His Temple, a man who is both
king and priest in Israel. Not in any sense of fullness, that is true, but in seed-
form we have in David a man who is both king and priest; and in David's Tent
a structure that is both Throne and Temple. This is what God is after, and
therefore Zion takes on eternal significance. He must have a people in whom
He can dwell in the fullness of priestly fellowship and communion, and through
whom He can reveal Himself to the nations in kingly authority and power. And
so the original kingdom of David becomes the seed-plot for the unfolding of
the Messianic Royal Priesthood. And in the days to come we will discover that
Zion will take on still further enlargement as God moves on and on with His
people.
But before we get into that we must consider the original meaning of Zion in
greater detail, for it is only then that we shall understand the ultimate meaning
that God had in mind. We do not do away with the real meaning of scripture
when we seek to understand its spiritual and heavenly counterpart. The exact
opposite is the truth: for God's plan from the beginning was to bring us out of
the earthly and into the heavenly... out of the carnal and into the spiritual... out
of old creation life and into New Creation life. God's order is first "that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual" (1 Cor. 15:46). And His plan is to
lead us from the one into the other. In so doing the earthly is neither
neglected, or ignored, or destroyed. It is rather swallowed up by the heavenly,
made immortal by the new life, and made eternal because of its deliverance
from decay, death, and corruption.
after David had moved the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and set it in the tent he
had built, he was permitted to minister to God before the Ark as a priest. Since neither
David nor Joshua were of the tribe of Levi, they were not "legally" to minister in the
Tabernacle. If the Ark had been in its place in the Tabernacle of the Congregation at
Gibeon, rather than in the Tabernacle of David in Jerusalem, David could never have
entered the Holy of Holies. Only the High Priest would ever dare to set foot in the
Holy of Holies and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement. Had David
approached the Ark at any other time, in any other setting than that of the Tabernacle
of David in Jerusalem, he would have instantly been struck dead by the Almighty
himself, as the King had already sadly learned in the death of Uzziah.
David knew it was important to bring the ark of the LORD into the center of Israel’s life. He wanted
all Israel to be excited about the presence and glory of God. Because of what happened to Uzzah,
David felt he couldn’t do what God wanted him to do.
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