"The Mercy Seat"

I am currently pondering the Mercy Seat, which was the covering lid on the Ark of the Covenant, and has so much to tell us in regards to the person and work of Christ.
This "Seat" or place of "propitiation" was the place where the gaze of the Cherubim was fixed and where the blood was spinkled on the Day of Atonement.
It is the place where God had told Moses: "And there I will meet with thee, and I will comune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel." (Ex.25:22)

What a vivid foreshadowing of Christ as the one by whom and through whom God reveals Himself to us, and by which we are able to come into His holy presence!

A study of the these shadows and types under the old covenant make it plain that God has a prescribed way and means of entering in before Him and communing with Him, and that no other way is acceptable.......That way is the Christ, His own Son, "the propitiation for our sins" (1John 4:9-10) .

Paul says....."Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forebearance of God;
To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." (Rom.3:24-26)

Any other approach is denied and condemned. To circumvent God's way to life and the way of acceptance with Him is to place oneself under the wrath of the law. I believe this is illustrated well in 1Samuel 6 where it is written...."And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.
And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? and to whom shall he go up from us?"

When the "mercy seat" is bypassed, all that is left to behold is the Holy Law of God which pronounces death on the sinner!

The blood of the Lamb must be interposed between the eyes of God and the demands of the law. We must be propitiated for and covered with that blood which alone can make the foulest clean.

He communes with us in Christ and because of His righteousness, and in no other way can I come to Him.

As Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6)

And, as the writer to the Hebrews declares, "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;
And having an high priest over the house of God;
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."
(Heb.10:19-22)

Christ is our Mercy Seat which ensures for us entrance into the holiest of all! Not only now, but for eternity!