1st January, 2011       I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:  (John 17:20-22)       God’s Promise that Appears in Genesis     First Kings chapter 8 starts with an account of Solomon moving the ark of the covenant. Before this, we have a series of accounts telling us what kind of wood Solomon used to build the temple, how certain items were overlaid with gold, how the man by the name of Hiram was employed to make certain items of bronze, and so on, and while this was all going on, the ark of the covenant was safely tucked away somewhere in Israel.     The book of Exodus tells how God spoke to Moses and instructed him as to how the ark of the covenant was to be built. God called Moses up on to Mount Sinai and there He spoke with him for forty days and gave him the first set of tablets of stone. On these tablets of stone, God had written the Ten Commandments with His very own hand. God also explained in careful detail how the tabernacle was to be built. He began with the objects that were to be in the deepest part of the tabernacle, and explained in order precisely how everything was to be made, starting with the ark of the covenant that was to house the tablets of stone and progressing outwards. Usually, when we construct a building, we begin with the exterior and then decorate the interior, but the method that God explained was different from that of man. This is also representative of the events of history that God ordained and revealed through the nation of Israel.     Through the Bible, we can see the single line of this history, starting from Abraham. We know that this one family that began with Abraham became the nation of Israel and exists in this world in order to do God’s will and that this history has continued to the present day. This is how the history of Israel appears on the surface. Yet, even before God spoke about the genealogy of this one man, Abraham, before He even announced the name of the nation of Israel, the Bible had already foretold of the path this nation would have to walk and of the Man who would be born in its midst.This is the promise that appears in the book of Genesis.     Adam disobeyed God’s word and ate some of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but then realized he was naked and made himself a covering of fig leaves. At that time, God appeared to Adam in the garden and asked him, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” To this Adam replied, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” Then Eve said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Whereupon God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (see Genesis 3:1-15).     Putting enmity between the serpent and the woman holds a very deep significance. Who is the “woman” referred to here? Does this mean that Eve and the serpent are enemies? Many people do not think deeply about this matter, but if you read the entire Old Testament, you will see that the image of Israel is that of fertile ground which was being prepared for the birth of the Messiah. It appears in the image of a woman. In the New Testament it says in reference to Israel, “I called My Son” (Matthew 2:15), but in many places in the Old Testament, Israel appears in the image of a woman.     One man was placed on this earth that God had created, and it was when that man disobeyed God’s word and sinned that the history of Israel was sealed. God already knew that all of the descendants of this one man, Adam, would come to live as sinners in this world. Since God needed to reverse this fate, He determined that some day the Seed of the woman would be born through the body of one woman and walk this sinful world. In regard to this, He said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” When it refers to the Seed of the woman here, it is talking about the Messiah, who would be born of a woman who had had no physical relations with a man. Yet, when we look at this in light of the entire history of mankind, the “woman” refers to Israel.     This history was determined when Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Church, however, was already predestined before Adam was created and before God created the heavens and the earth. There is a difference between the predestination of Israel and the predestination of the Church. Israel is a matter completely confined to the earth.     God’s promise stood, and in the process of that promise being accomplished, God set apart a man by the name of Noah from among the descendants of Adam. Noah built an ark in accordance with the word of God, and he and his family of eight, along with all of the animals, were preserved during the flood, and the history of mankind continued through this family. Everyone else had died in the flood. Noah had three sons?Shem, Ham and Japheth?and of these three sons, God set apart Shem. When the heart contracts, the blood first travels by way of the large arteries, then the smaller arterioles and then finally the capillaries, where it approaches each cell. This is the principle that takes place in our bodies. God created our bodies in this way, and in this way He determined the law of life. Similarly, within the history of Israel, God set apart Noah and then set apart Shem. Then from among the sons of Shem, He called Eber, and then He called Peleg. And within that family Terah appeared and then Abraham.     Just as God’s promise appeared in God’s words when He declared that there would be enmity between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, His promise also appears within His act of clothing Adam and Eve with garments of skin. Blood is not explicitly mentioned in this account, but God must have killed an animal to clothe Adam with this garment, and Abel also sacrificed the firstborn of his flock, offering it to God along with the fat. The method of approaching God through an animal sacrifice appears from the beginning of the book of Genesis. Also, if you carefully examine the history of this one family in which divisions and distinctions were constantly made, you can see that the sacrifice of animals before God was always a part of what that they did. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all did this. Just as history has been telling us something as it has been unfolding, we can see through the book of Genesis that, even though they were related as ancestors and descendants and may not have seen each other’s faces, they all offered animal sacrifices before God, as if they had promised one another through successive generations. Just as God first gave the tablets of the covenant to the nation of Israel, it is from the book of Genesis that God begins to teach all those who wish to know the Bible and look to the Bible. The Bible clearly implies that the promise of God exists in the history of Israel and also within the history of mankind.     Also, as Israel existed within history as God’s chosen people, at a certain point in time, the Christ, the Messiah, was born within that nation of Israel. In this way, the promise of God has been revealed distinctly before us through the history of Israel, and this is also related to the ark of the testimony that was ensconced within the temple.     The History of the Ark of the Covenant (the First Covenant) and the History of Jesus (the New Covenant)     God gave to Moses the covenant He had in His heart. He gave instructions as to how to build the tabernacle, and then sent Moses down the mountain with the covenant inscribed on tablets of stone. When Moses came down the mountain, however, he found that the Israelites had made a golden calf and were reveling in front of it. When Moses saw this, he broke the stone tablets upon which God had written with His own hand. When we look at this from a human perspective, it is completely unacceptable. It would be considered rude if you broke a gift you had received even from a person in a more senior position, but Moses broke the tablets upon which God Himself had written while He was with Moses and talking to him for forty days. God, however, did not make Moses responsible for his actions.     At the time of King David, on the other hand, when the ark that held the second set of stone tablets was being moved, the cart that carried the ark lurched and almost fell over, so a man named Uzzah put out his hand to hold it up, but God killed him for doing this (see 2 Samuel 6:6-7). God struck him down, even though Uzzah had done this in order to protect the ark. This is absolutely impossible to understand when we consider it by our moral standards.     From this we can see that God’s promise and what God is intent on accomplishing He will indeed accomplish, regardless of anything that any person may do. If Uzzah had protected the ark by stopping it from falling, He would have become a prominent figure in the history of Israel and that in itself would have been wrong. It is enough for the Creator alone to receive all the glory, so there is no need for man to protect His work. This is why we come across people in the Bible who appear extremely cold-hearted according to our human standards.     When Moses broke the stone tablets upon seeing the Israelites rejoicing before the golden calf, he not only broke the tablets of promise, but also separated one tribe from all the rest. When Moses told “Whoever is on the LORD’s side?come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered on Moses’ side. Then the tribe of Levi killed many of the members of the other eleven tribes by the order of God spoken through Moses’ mouth.(see Exodus 32)     The tribe of Levi was cursed through Jacob. Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, hearing that their sister had been raped, took revenge in their fury. They said that a man must be circumcised if he is to have anything to do with their family, and so all the men of the tribe of the man who had raped her were circumcised, but then, when they were in agony because of this, the brother attacked them in the night and killed them all (see Genesis 34). Later, when Jacob made prophecies regarding his sons, he said that Simeon and Levi would be cursed. In accordance with this prophecy, Simeon ended up living off of the tribe of Judah. Nevertheless, since the tribe of Levi took part in the judgment of those who had worshipped the golden calf, God distinguished them from the others. Also, the tribe of Levi became the tribe that was given the task of serving in the tabernacle.     This is explaining the blessing received by a person who has been cursed but is able to return to God when he stands on God’s side, a blessing that goes beyond all human morals and emotions. This is also a shadow of what happens when a person finds salvation. Being born again or experiencing a change in front of God does not come about through superficial human emotions or acts of will, by resolving to love God. This comes about entirely through God planting this experience into the heart of the individual. Also, the Bible calls the assembly of these individuals “the Church,” and says of them that “you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).     After the tribe of Levi had been segregated in this way, Moses went up Mount Sinai once more and there he received a second set of stone tablets. This time, however, God told Moses to carve out the tablets himself and bring them to Him, and then He wrote the Ten Commandments on them. The second set of stone tablets became the combined work of man and God. This is a very strange matter. The covenant itself definitely remained the same, but the first set of stone tablets was broken. In the letter to the Hebrews it says, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second” (8:7). Through this letter to the Hebrews, we can examine carefully the detailed description of Jesus in regard to the first covenant and the new covenant. Through the history of the Israelites recorded in the Old Testament, we are notified in advance of the first covenant and the new covenant which appear in the New Testament and everything about these truths.     When Moses went before God the second stone tablets, God wrote His covenant on them once more, and when Moses took the tablets and brought them down the mountain, the Israelites built the tabernacle. The second set of stone tablets was to be put inside the ark of the covenant. The fact that the second tablets were the work of God and Moses together was to show us in advance the work that God would accomplish with man. An image of Jesus is revealed within this. Jesus was with God the Father from the beginning, and He was the Creator of this world, and yet He was born in human form and shed His blood. As a human being and as a righteous man He shed His blood, which was enough to bring all of us?who had become sinners because of Adam?before God the Father. This truth, along with the cross of Jesus, rises up in the Bible as the unbreakable, perfect covenant.     The covenant is the law that the Israelites of the Old Testament tried to observe. But the Israelites failed. It is impossible for any human being to accomplish what God requires. In other words, it is impossible even to come close to accomplishing God’s righteousness by observing His commandments. Nevertheless, as the central figure of the new covenant, Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the law. The events that testified in advance to all of this took place on Mount Sinai. God’s promise flowed quietly through such historical events. God’s promise is not accomplished with the loud ringing of a bell from within the ark of the covenant. At first, God’s covenant passed by hardly noticed. Within the work of making garments of skin and killing animals to do so, there lay the promise of salvation for mankind, a promise which God had determined and which did not depend whatsoever on the people of this world. This is revealed to us little by little through history, through Noah, through Abraham, and now through the history of Israel.     The Israelites carried the ark of the covenant and packed up the tabernacle and carried that with them as well as they wandered through the wilderness for forty years. Then, after their time in the wilderness, they crossed the River Jordan and put the ark of the covenant in Shiloh. Then, in First Samuel, we read about how the Philistines took the ark of the covenant from them. This Gentile nation that took away the stone tablets was severely punished; they met with misfortune everywhere they took the ark of the covenant. In the end, the Philistines returned the ark of the covenant to the Israelites. After that, the ark of the covenant was moved to various places including Beth Shemesh and Kirjath Jearim, until later David called for it to be moved to Jerusalem. This was the time of the incident in which Uzzah was killed for putting out his hand to stop the ark from falling. When David saw this, he was afraid and so he entrusted the ark to the house of Obed-Edom, and then, since the house of Obed-Edom received a great blessing because of the ark, David called once more for it to be brought to Jerusalem. The ark of the covenant was moved around through history in this way by the hands of men, but it was eventually brought to a place somewhere in Jerusalem. Then we read how Solomon built the temple. The ark of the covenant was moved from place to place and then when the time was right, Solomon built a house in which to place it.     If we consider carefully the relationship between the journey of the ark and how the temple was built, we can see the relationship between the Old Testament and Jesus who was born into this world. When we look at the Old Testament as a whole, it becomes clear that it is because God’s covenant is living that a certain nation was brought forth through this promise, and it remained with this nation providing them with protection. These people recorded the commandments and God’s prophecies, they established a country where they lived, making Jerusalem its capital. Their land was destroyed by Babylon, to which land they were taken away as captives and whence they later returned, but since God’s promise was with these people, they were protected through to the end, and continued to gather in Jerusalem. Then, when the time was right, Jesus came to Jerusalem and there He was crucified. This Man who was the Lord of the temple and revealed that His body was the temple, was born in the land of Israel, and through His death on the cross, He fulfilled all the promises of the Old Testament.     Through the ark of the covenant

정회원으로 가입하시면 전체기사와 사진(동영상)을 보실수 있습니다.