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The Mercy Seat

Exodus 25 records God’s instructions to Moses regarding the ark of the covenant:

  • 16 And you shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you. 17 “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 breadth. 18 And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. 19 Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. 20 The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. 21 And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. 22 There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

Francis Schaeffer comments:

This ‘mercy seat’ was the lid, the second part of the ark. A very important thing, this lid.

It was Luther, when translating the Old Testament into German, who first used the term ‘mercy seat.’ It is a beautiful, poetic phrase – but it also accurately communicates what the lid of the ark really was, a place of mercy. Yet if a person does not know the Hebrew word being translated, ‘mercy seat’ may confuse, because this word actually meant ‘the propitiation,’ ‘the propitiatory,’ ‘the covering’ – a covering not like a jar lid, but a covering in the sense of atonement…

The propitiatory covering was exactly the same size as the box. They matched. The atonement exactly covered the law. Here, I feel, is the balance we find in the New Testament – the balance of the character of God. God is holy…and God is love. Both must be affirmed…

Verse 22 contains the most important clause: ‘and there I will meet with thee.’ God did not meet the Jews at the level of the law. He met them at the level of the mercy seat. Undoubtedly, this is why Luther, loving the Lord as he did, called the covering the ‘mercy seat.’ He understood that this is where God meets everybody who is met by him.

No Little People, pp. 112-113.

  • He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).

Christ is the Mercy Seat of the world.

The Law was in the box. The Law was covered by the propitiation. The world seeks to find God in that box, that ark, the ark of the covenant, when it should seek him in another ark – Noah’s ark, the ark that is covered inside and out with the atoning pitch that keeps the waters of the flood out.

The box of the ark of the covenant suffocates and brings wrath. The Mercy Seat covers the demands and penalties of the Law. That is where God is to be found. You will not find his love in that box. You will not find his love at the level of Law. You must seek atonement, that is the place to find his love. And Jesus Christ is our true Mercy Seat, the place, make that the person, where God meets with sinners and communes with them in love. He covers sins (mercy), he communes with sinners (seat). He forgives and sits down at the table.

  • Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me (Rev. 3:20).

Thank God for the Mercy Seat:

  • Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins (Rom. 3:25).

Being Busy Is Not Enough

Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not a matter of being saved and then simply working hard. After Jesus ascended, the disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of his Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism – Christ has risen, now let us be busy. Though they looked at the world with Christ’s compassion, they obeyed his clear command to wait before they witnessed. If we who are Christians and therefore indwelt by the Spirit are to preach to our generation with tongues of fire, we also must have something more than activism which men can easily duplicate. We must know something of the power of the Holy Spirit.

-Francis Schaeffer, No Little People, p. 63

Dead Wood

And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs (Exodus 4:17).

I have been greatly challenged and encouraged as of late by the late Francis Schaeffer’s book No Little People. The very first sermon of the book takes up the theme of Moses’ rod. How did a dead piece of wood become an agent of salvation for Israel? How did a dead piece of wood turn the Nile to blood? How did a stick part the Red Sea? How did a staff whack water out of a rock? It was just wood, dead wood.

The answer is that Moses’ rod became God’s rod. God took ownership of it, and caused his power to flow from it. From this Schaeffer argues that there are no little people, or places, or things. Anything that God takes ownership of is significant – even a dead piece of wood.

If he did such things with a dead piece of wood, what might he do with you if you yield to him? If you could be still and quiet before him like a staff, then what? Now I digress from Schaeffer.

Dead wood performs all sorts of assignments in the history of redemption. In Genesis it is covered with pitch that it might seal out the waters of God’s wrath (Gen. 6:14). In Exodus it performs signs and wonders. In Leviticus it provides for the burnt offering (cf. Lev. 1:1-17). In Deuteronomy it is the material of the ark of the covenant (Deut. 10:1) and the instrument of cursing that will begin to unfold in the conquest of the Promised Land (Deut. 21:23). In Joshua it is the death-instrument of cursed kings (Josh. 8:29). In 1 Kings it is the floor of the house of God (1Ki 6:15). In Job it holds out hope in death (Job 14:7). In Psalms it is the Shepherd’s rod (Ps. 23). In Proverbs it is fuel for the fire (Prov. 26:20-21). In Song of Solomon it carries the king of Israel (Song 3:9). In Haggai it renews the destroyed temple (Hag. 1:8).

Dead wood has no power in itself, but only when the right person wields it (Isaiah 10:15).

In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John dead wood is the agent of our Savior’s death. There, on the cross, He is our Ark in the midst of the flood, our miracle Worker, our burnt Offering, our Mercy Seat, our cursed King, our Temple, our Hope in death, our good Shepherd, our Fuel, the Lifter of our spirits – the One who makes us into the temple of the living God.

Through dead wood, wielded by Jesus Christ, God brings salvation to the world. The cross became God’s rod, and our deliverance. All this with dead wood. Can he use you? On account of dead wood, and a risen Savior, indeed he can.