Exodus 25: The Ark of the Covenant

Then you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold; two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its width. You shall make two cherubim of gold; you shall make them of hammered work, at the two ends of the mercy seat...You shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the covenant that I shall give you.
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Many scholars consider these chapters the most pivotal section of the Old Testament. Called before a trembling and smoking mountain by loud trumpet blasts, the Israelites received something unique in history: a stone document to be deposited in the most valuable piece of furniture in the nation, the ark of the covenant. What made this so valuable was that this very stone tablet was signed by none other than the finger of God himself.

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The entire book of Exodus tells of a time when God made himself perfectly obvious. The plagues on Egypt revealed his mighty power; an enormous miracle at the Red Sea provided sensational deliverance; and a recurring miracle supplied food for the Israelites every morning in the form of manna. And, if questions about God's existence still arose, doubters needed only to look to the ever-present glory cloud and pillar of fire coming from Mount Sinai.

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Life Question: Why do you think God doesn't intervene and show himself to us more?

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Why doesn't God directly feed the hungry, heal all the sick and stop all the wars? Is it not a legitimate question that if God really exists, at the very least why doesn't he make himself more obvious. Well, I'm guessing that a portion of the answer lay in the stories found here in Exodus. Just about every instance of God's faithfulness & physical divine intervention (for the lack of a better word) seemed to summon up human unfaithfulness. The same Israelites who had watched God crush a pharaoh quaked at he first sign of Egyptian chariots. Three days after a miraculous escape across the Red Sea they were grumbling to Moses and God about water.

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And then, a month later when hunger pangs began to gnaw at them, they bitterly complained, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death". God responded with a provision of manna and quail, yet the Israelites were soon seen complaining about something else. Get the picture? Impressive displays of God's power does not guarantee faith.