Part three of lesson two/balance1 John 2:6: “He who says he abides in Him ought also to walk just as He walked.”(Also read 1 John3:1-10 and 4:17 and 1 Peter 2:24) Would Jesus have put this in His Word if it were not possible for us to live pg.9 as overcomers? One more point I want to make before going on to talk about the mercy seat is this and I am quoting from Dr. Ness, “Our Lord never ceased to be God when He became man, but the life He lived was lived in total dependence upon Him who sent Him. He did all things by the power of the Holy Spirit and never did anything of His own inherent Deity.” End of quote. Jesus lived and did what He did as a man in total dependency on His heavenly Father. And He expects the same from you and me tonight.
As I was studying, preparing this area of our study, I was so engrossed in this Ark that I almost …in fact I did overlook the four rings of gold with the two staves or carrying poles. We read it in our text from Exodus 25:12, 13, “You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it and two on the other side. You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold.” Verse 14 says “And you shall put the poles on the sides of the ark, by which to carry the ark.” As anyone can see, the poles provided a good balance for the ark, so that when it was being carried and moved to another place, its contents would be protected. We need to balance the scriptures; we need balance as we walk this Christian walk. If we do not have that Godly balance we pg. 9) can soon upset the ark and its contents and if we don’t have balance we will bring disaster upon our lives or someone else’s life. Remember the story of Uzzah I think it was, when they were moving the ark on an ox cart and it began to wobble. He reached out his hand to balance the ark and God struck him dead. We should not touch the ark. Draw your own
pg. 10 conclusions. The poles represent God being brought to man by means of the preaching of the Word and man being brought to God through the atoning blood that was sprinkled on the mercy seat.
The mercy seat…reading again from Exodus 25:17, “And you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold; two and a half cubits shall be it’s length and a cubit and a half shall be it’s width.”
Dr. Ness asks this question in his book “Pattern for living” He asks, “Dare we say that the Mercy Seat is the most important item in the whole tabernacle provision?” Mercy is a characteristic of God isn’t it? Mercy does not originate in man. It is not a human thing to be merciful; you don’t see a lot of mercy in this world. Certainly not in countries who do not honor God. The Mercy Seat was all solid gold…it was all God. It represented God. Because it was all gold it was very costly and it was upon the Mercy Seat that the blood was applied. The Blood that has been applied at Calvary is priceless and it has been applied to the Mercy Seat for your sins and my sins and we ought to stop right here and praise Him for the Blood.
In the Mercy Seat we have a clear picture of our Lord the Mercy Seat was where the blood of atonement was applied. As I began to read and study and look further in to the Word of God about these things I realized that we could be here ‘til JESUS COMES AND WE WOULD NEVER EXHAUST THIS SUBJECT. It caused me to ponder how in depth we should take this subject of the tabernacle. There is so much and we pg. 10) are only scratching the surface. But it is fundamental to all we believe.
pg.11 The Mercy Seat was not a seat to sit on; it was really a lid for the Ark. It was not a chair; in fact there was no provision in all the furnishings for sitting down. It was a covering for those things that were contained within the Ark. There was no place for the priest to set down because his work was never finished and the only time we read where the High Priest ever sat down is when Jesus sat down after He had purged our sins and these are references found in Hebrews 1:3, 8:1, Eph. 1:20 because Jesus has finished the work and His sacrifice is once and for all forever. There may be more scriptures referring to this but they all refer to this one thing; the finished work. Aren’t you glad that the Blood of the everlasting covenant has been applied to the Mercy Seat and when the God of heaven looks down at us tonight He only sees us through that precious Blood? What a thought! What a truth! I, who am so weak in my old sinful flesh, have been made worthy tonight because the Blood has been applied to the Mercy Seat.