exodus 25
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Exodus 25:2:
“Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring Me an offering. From everyone who gives it willingly with his heart you shall take My offering. |
We need to be reminded that we give to the Lord, not to the church or denomination, or to pay the preacher. Giving should be an act of worship to God, out of willing hearts, because we have been redeemed at such a glorious price. |
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Exodus 25:8:
And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. |
The Tabernacle had to be a portable structure, for Israel had not yet reached their home in the new land. They were pilgrims in a foreign land. Today, we also have a portable place of worship: "For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (II Corinthians 6:16).
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Exodus 25:22:
And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune 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. |
"It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17: 11).
"There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat" (Exod. 25: 22). READER! Have you ever felt your need of salvation! Have you ever sought it, as one who must obtain it—or perish? When a sinner is first brought to feel sin to be a burden—when he feels wrath abiding upon his soul, and that his whole past life has been a life without God—his question is, "What must I do to be saved?" "Is it possible that my sin can ever be forgiven by a God who is angry with the wicked every day?" The awakened publican’s cry is, "O God, be merciful to me!" And this cry finds God in the very attitude of grace, proclaiming his name. "The Lord, the Lord God merciful," and pointing to the Saviour on the throne of grace, where we may obtain mercy. In Old Testament times, the Lord set forth our condition on the one hand, and His respect toward us in the other, in one part of the furniture of the Tabernacle. He did this in the mercy-seat. This name is given to that part of the ark, in the holy of holies, whereon the blood used to be sprinkled on the day of atonement. The mercy-seat was the lid of the ark, as broad and long as the ark itself, and made of the same precious material; and the lid, or mercy-seat, being sprinkled with blood seven times, set forth to us the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanseth from all sin. Now, it is where the blood is, that mercy for sinners is to be found. For they deserve to die; and their deserved doom must be exhibited, and exacted at the hands of another, if they themselves are to escape. Therefore, the place where mercy can be found, is the place where the blood is. No other place, O sinner, in the wide world for you! But to that place you may come—nay, must come, if you would escape the wrath of God. You must come as a sinner. You must come with nothing but sin. On the day of atonement, the priest in Israel who came forward to the mercy-seat, laid down nothing but sin on that blood-sprinkled lid. He showed a sinner's way of coming to the Lord; and yet he brought nothing what-ever but sin, to be laid down there. So the sinner, in coming to the mercy-seat, brings nothing but sin. He confesses the sin he was born with: "Behold! I was shapen in iniquity"; and lays it down on the sprinkled blood. He confesses his inheritance of corruption from Adam, and lays it down on that mercy-seat. He confesses his own personal sins, in their various forms, aspects, aggravations; the sins of his life and lips, as far as memory can remember, and lays them down upon the sprinkled blood. He calls to mind his sins as a member of society; sins in the relations of life—sins against the Church of God, sins as one of a guilty nation, sins as a man belonging to a world lying in wickedness. And as he feels and deplores all, he lays down his innumerable sins on the mercy-seat. He tries to look in, and bring out the sins of his heart— sins of thought, feeling, affection, desire, hope. His hardness of heart, his blindness, above all, self, in its ten thousand times ten thousand forms, all are laid upon the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat. His unbelief—the grace of God, as well as His law, despised, slighted, undervalued, set aside, times without number—unbelief, even since he knew the Lord, caused by the deceitfulness of sin, by earthly care, by passing pleasure, by Satan's wiles, by a too pliable or too fearful soul—this, too, is brought out, confessed, and laid upon the blood. Yet more: the sin of his holy things is laid there too; for the very act of confession has its sin, there is some blemish in the very act of faith; there is a film in the eye that looks to the atoning Saviour. Who can understand his errors? Oh, who can declare his own heart's utter sinfulness! At length it is done. But what does it discover? He has laid down his whole soul there—his very self; but in all this there has been nothing but sin for him to leave there! No holiness is laid down on that blood, for it is from all sin that the blood cleanses. You come, therefore, wholly as a sinner. Nothing can be more deeply solemnising than this. To have such a burden to lay down there—to have nothing else than a burden of this kind, and to lay all this on the Lord Jesus Christ! How humbling, how fitted to lay the sinner in the dust, is the view this gives of his utter guilt and vileness! And yet nothing is more inviting, for it is with sin he comes, and as a sinner; and the Lord Jesus meets the sin and the sinner. Is there, then, any room for delay? any ground for excuse for hesitating to come at once? --Andrew Bonar; The Mercy Seat |