"Set the mercy seat on top of the ark
and put the testimony that I will give you into the ark.
I will meet with you there
above the mercy seat,
between the two cherubim
that are over the ark of the testimony;
I will speak with you from there
about all that I command you
regarding the Israelites.
Put the bread of the Presence
on the table before Me at all times.”
Exodus 25:21-22, 30
God meets with us on the mercy seat.
How sweet is that? His words are from the seat of mercy, though His heart and treasure of life is in the testimony inside the ark, yet He meets to deal with us not from rules but from mercy.
He is not wanting to give us rules for the sake of giving rules (even if the rules bring us life), but He wants to approach us from a place of mercy as He explains the commands that lead to our life in abundance, because He knows that we are so resistant to the Words of life.
He meets us in mercy because He is willing to put in the effort of working through our resistance.
If He does that for us, and we see that going on, how can we not do that for others? To work through their resistance with mercy, patience and kindness. Yet most of us usually give up on difficult people who don't listen to us or who go against us or rub us the wrong way, but if we know the mercy we have been given we would not withhold that same mercy towards others who are difficult just like us. We, too, would work through that mess in order to bring them life but work through the mess with mercy. Mercy means forgiveness, which means that when we work through the mess of others we take hits, painful hits to our pride and our sense of self-value, and we let them do wrong to us if and only if it means we are having mercy on them. We don't let them walk all over us, because that is called self-pity, but to have mercy means we take hits that we don't deserve and we humbly acknowledge that our very own Savior did this for us too. The seat of mercy is an attribute of God, which means that the way of mercy is the way to life, because if God does it we should too. He is perfect in all of His ways.
He has the right to punish us for not following His commands, yet His commands are also from mercy and not from rules. So even when we know we have the right to be upset or to get angry at someone for wrongfully treating us, God shows us that mercy is the right we should choose over getting justice. Because that is what He chose when dealing with us! That is what He continues to choose when dealing with us, and I thank God for that! I never want God to deal with me according to the standard of what is just because I would be in Hell then! I want Him to deal with me from mercy. If I want that from Him then that means I acknowledge that He wants that from me too when I deal with others.
This just struck me, because God is telling the Israelites to build this ark, and it characterizes His very own presence with them. This display is still how God works today!
God still speaks to us from the seat of mercy.
Yet how many of us show mercy to those who resist us? The world operates differently. Usually when someone rejects us we reject them. But God sits on a seat of mercy and when we reject Him He is merciful not to give us rejection in return! The way we treat those who reject us will show us whether or not we have truly come to believe in the God of mercy.
If God has forgiven you for a debt of 2 million wrongs, and your fellow person has a debt of 4 wrongs done against you--how absurd is it to ask for their repayment to you in full justice when you yourself have been forgiven 2 million wrongs? It would not make sense. It only means you have not truly come to see the reality of how much God has forgiven you for.
“Then Peter came to Him and said,
“Lord, how many times could my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? ”
“I tell you, not as many as seven,”
Jesus said to him,
“but 70 times seven.
For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves.
When he began to settle accounts, one who owed 10,000 talents was brought before him.
Since he had no way to pay it back, his master commanded that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt.
“At this, the slave fell facedown before him and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you everything! ’
Then the master of that slave had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan.
"But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denarii.
He grabbed him, started choking him, and said,
‘Pay what you owe! ’
“At this, his fellow slave fell down and began begging him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he wasn’t willing.
On the contrary, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed.
When the other slaves saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their master everything that had happened.
"Then, after he had summoned him, his master said to him,
'You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? ’
And his master got angry and handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed.
So My heavenly Father will also do to you
if each of you does not forgive his brother
from his heart.”
Matthew 18:21-35
That last part: "if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart" is so real. It's not just the words or the facial expressions of forgiving but it's forgiving from the heart! Is that even possible? No. It's impossible to forgive from the heart, because we have no power to do this. We need the power of God to forgive. And without God's help to forgive we will not be able to forgive from the heart and will end up being unforgiven by God!
It is a desperate and utter cry of helplessness! We need God. We cannot even do what we need to do without His help! Yet this parable is not about being able to forgive someone so that we too can be forgiven, but this parable is about showing us how our un-forgiveness toward another indicates a disconnect with our forgiveness from God. If we find in our lives a person that we cannot forgive then this parable is speaking into that as an indication that we have rejected the forgiveness of God for our sins! I shudder at the thought that I would reject God's mercy for the forgiveness of my wrongs done against Him and His authority.
This is not so much about forgiving someone as it is about our own sins having been forgiven! Have you been forgiven?
If so, you would not withhold forgiveness from another who owes you much less! It would be ludicrous!
May God soften our hearts and bring us to the reality of who we are and of how much we have been forgiven! He sits on the throne of mercy, and Christ on Him and our inheritance is to sit on the seat of Christ, which is the seat of mercy.
“The victor: I will give him the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also won the victory and sat down with My Father on His throne.”
Revelation 3:21
We are being shaped into the victor everyday and with every person we meet. The victor is the one who shows mercy because mercy has first been given to them by God.
Jmegrey
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