12.1 The Throne
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Throne. I have made four giant claims about this Mercy Seat, the “lid” covering over the Ark of the Covenant. First, I have claimed that this Mercy Seat is the throne of heaven, the same “throne” seen by John in his vision. Second, I have claimed that this same Mercy Seat/throne is our own hearts filled with Christ.
Third, I have claimed that we are seated, now, upon this same Mercy Seat/throne, having turned completely around inside of God, no longer “approaching” God, but now revealing Him. And fourth, I have claimed that the Mercy Seat represents for us the practice of a particular exercise of faith wherein we, working together with God, set all things free into love.
The Throne of Grace. I made a quick perusal of the English word “throne” in the Bible and have found a dozen Scriptures, Old Testament and New, upon which these claims are made.
That the Mercy Seat in the pattern represents God’s throne is indisputable. Ezekiel places God’s throne in the temple, in the Holy of Holies. Here is the same thing in the New Testament. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16). – And again: having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19).
That we are seated upon this same throne is also clear. – God – raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6).
Sitting with Jesus. These references in Hebrews along with Zechariah 6 and others equate the function of the throne/Mercy Seat with the actions of the High Priest, with Whom we participate in His ministry of reconciling all things back to God. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne (Revelation 3:21).
We have already established from 1 John 5 that faith is our overcoming, that is, we enter boldly to lay hold of all that Life is and means by the confession of our mouth. I am entirely Biblical in three of my claims, but what about our hearts. How can we say that our own hearts are the throne John saw in his vision, the throne of heaven?
Knowing God by Heart. Christ lives in your hearts through faith – that you might be filled with ALL the fulness of God (Ephesians 3:17 & 19). I rest my case; nothing more needs to be added. We have carried such a picture in our minds of the “high, heavenly, and holy,” that we once failed to grasp that it is the simple expressions of the gospel, Christ in us, that are the highest and the holiest.
To “know” a God far separate from my own heart is to live in idolatry, always falling short of an image I have created. It is not to know God. I know God only inside my own spirit, which knows me, joined as one with the Spirit of God, the One who knows God.
Jesus Sat Down in My Heart. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool (Hebrews 10:12-13). Jesus “sat down” in a particular place; that place IS my heart, at the right hand of the God who fills me with all that He is. As I BELIEVE that He is, I overcome and sit down with Him upon that same throne, the Father’s resting place.
And God gives us a specific picture of what His throne is – the Mercy Seat. – And there I will meet with you. We need to have a STRONG picture of where we are seated, our position and our view.
Picturing the Mercy Seat. Turn in the Rose Guide to the Tabernacle to page 77-79 and look carefully at the Mercy Seat upon the Ark. Remove from your mind’s eye the “teeth” all around the rim of the Mercy Seat in that picture as well as the horns. There were horns on the altars, yes, but no mention is made of rim-teeth or horns in Moses’ account of the pattern. Otherwise the picture is clear.
Right where the glow appears in the picture, that is where God says that He, FIRE, meets with us, not as vessels of wood, which is the Ark, but here as His same Fire. That is where we are seated, in heaven, in God, right now. We are seated upon the Blood.
Our Surroundings. In our position, we are better able to see the faces of the cherubim looking straight into us. Our backs are resting against their outspread wings behind us and our arms are resting upon their outspread wings just in front of us. In relation to the measurements, the tip point of the two wings touching each other would be right beneath our hearts.
The wall of the Holiest directly behind us is solid gold-covered boards. There is no covering coming down on the outside except for three feet at the very top, Christ as us forever. The walls of the Holiest to each side of us are the same, except they are also covered by the four aspects of Christ. In front of us there is no Veil; we see only our brethren, the Church, longing, but refusing to enter into Christ.
Becoming What They Are. I want to talk about three parts of this picture, the Blood, the cherubim, and the Fire.
But we cannot know what these are unless we know the purpose for God seating us here inside Himself. Nothing can be what it is in its creation. God can speak all He wants, but nothing becomes what He intends by mechanical effort. And nothing created, though it comes only out of the good speaking of Jesus, can be good in itself in its creation. All things become good ONLY as they are seen as good by those possessing the authority to do so, and all things become what they are only as they are called into it by the same.
Symmorphy. God ceased from His alone works and we ceased from ours. From here on out, the purpose driving this Covenant, is that God and us, first, are Oone Pperson together, and second, are working all things together. Symmorphy.
And God and us together work entirely by faith and only through love. We never impose ourselves on anyone. Rather, we hold each one in the highest honor and regard.
Knowing this purpose, then, we can now speak meaningfully regarding the Blood, the cherubim, and the Fire. Nothing here is “for sin.” No sin exists in this picture.
Sitting on Blood. The Mercy Seat is solid gold, that is, God in Person. But upon that gold lid is sprinkled the Blood. …with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. …how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your consciousness from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 10:12 & 14).
“Dead works” are anything Christians do “for” God. Having turned around upon the Mercy Seat, we do all things as Oone together with God, His life in our bodies.
We are sitting on that Blood.
Our Cushion. The Blood is so many things. I’ve never expanded much on the Blood because I’ve not really understood it. That’s beginning to change. The Blood is the life of Christ flowing through His Body and as such, I suspect it will come again into our picture in Symmorphy V: Life. Here the Blood is speaking of something different.
Gold is a metal; a hard seat to sit upon for very long. Typically we put a cushion upon a chair. The Blood is our cushion. The Blood began in Gethsemane, and all the flow of Blood after simply represented that Action of Jesus becoming us.
No Consciousness of Sins. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole cosmos (1 John 2:2). The word “propitiation” is the Mercy Seat. Yet there is no “falling short” here upon the Mercy Seat. We are already complete in Christ; sin is already gone. Once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26b).
The Blood upon which we sit means that Christ is the High Priest now through us. We are His expression of priestly office. We are the Body of Christ. All of our ministry, our authority, our expectation of faith, and our view of everything sits entirely and only upon Blood, upon NO consciousness of sin.
Keep and Sanctify. Then, looking at the picture of the Mercy Seat in the Rose Guide, you can see how the two cherubim, Keep and Sanctify, surround us with all support and strength.
Be strong in the Lord does not mean to be strong in yourself, yet that is how it was always interpreted to me. Capable people will not be strong in the Lord because they do not even know that they are pretending.
Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. – Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth (John 17:11 & 17). Why do we need this help? As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world (John 17:18).
The Revelation of Christ. Our job is to BE the ministry of Christ in the cosmos, that is, the revelation of Jesus Christ. Christians do not reveal Christ because they believe they are always falling short of God. This belief is false, yet it keeps them facing the wrong direction.
To be the Mercy Seat of God we must KNOW that we are fully KEPT and fully SANCTIFIED. As humans, we are very sensual persons; God is as well. We need visible, audible, tangible support in order to move with all certainty in our role as God through us reconciling the world to Himself. God gives us the mightiest beings He created to keep our fronts, our sides, and our backs, seated upon Blood.
Confidence. We are KEPT. You see, the slightest shadow of doubt would have us scurrying back out into the Altar of Incense, weeping and crying over sin, refusing to enter into Christ.
God is doing and will do BIG things upon this earth utterly together as Oone Pperson with us. And when I say “big” things, I do not mean outward demonstration of “zapping” power. I mean the power of seeing all things as God sees them, with no consciousness of sins, of calling all things by Christ alone.
This is a terrible and a mighty power, a power that WILL change the universe. – Confidence is our only recourse.
The Fire. The Fire is God Himself filling us full with ALL that He is. We are Oone with this Ffire and this Fire is Oone with us before ever it touches the Blood, before ever it becomes the authority of Christ in the cosmos, before ever it becomes the beating Word of our hearts.
The Fire enters all things now through us. We are the “refractor” of that Fire, the lens through which it passes. We direct that Fire towards all things offered to God that the Fire might consume the offering and transform that which is offered out of the old creation and into the New. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire (Revelation 1:14).
The Passion of the Almighty. Those who will not believe one sacrifice for sins forever look at the Fire through sin and imagined guilt and see only wrath. That unbelief is the source of the very Christian Hell.
Those who know the Fire through Christ do not “look at” the Fire; rather, they see all things through the Fire, through eyes of Fire. That is, they see all things through Love. The Fire suffers long and is kind. The Fire bears all for all. The Fire believes all for all; the Fire hopes all for all; the Fire endures all for all. The Fire never fails.
The Fire is the burning Passion of the Almighty, burning now as us, the Pro-Determination of God to make all things good, to seize all things into Life.
Our Authority. Now, our picture of the Tabernacle as God’s highway through us out into all His Desire shows us the Fire that is God passing through each element on five pieces of furniture to become something needed in His New Creation, something of the quality of Life. It is the Blood upon which we are seated that allows the Fire inside of which we live to flow out from us as the authority of Christ.
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore… (Matthew 28:18). You and I possess the authority, as we are seated here above the Blood, to draw every individual person into Life and to turn all things meant for evil into unending goodness.