The Ark and the Mercy Seat.—It Was Made of Wood Overlaid With Gold. the Mercy Seat Was a Separate Thing and Made Entirely of Gold. the Cherubim We Know Not the Shape of, but Evidently They Were of Some Angelic Form. We Are Not Left to Guess What the Mercy Seat Means. in Rom. 3:25, We Are Told "Christ Is Set Forth a Propitiation (or Mercy Seat) Through Faith in His Blood." Every One Who Has Faith in the Blood of Christ Finds Mercy. Thus in the Fact of the Cherubim (Which Were Symbolic of God's Presence in Government) Being of the Same Substance As the Mercy Seat, We May Learn That God's Throne Is Now a. Throne of Grace. He Has Not a Throne of Judgment Now. Christ Came Down Here to Reign, but They ' Would Not Have Him. He Came As a King, and They Refused Him; He Went to the Cross, and God's Own Throne in Heaven Is Now Sprinkled With Blood, and It Invites the Sinner Near. We Know There Is No Throne of Judgment Now, a Blessed Thought for Every One of Us. If We Are Sons It Should Make Us Happy, If Sinners Ave Should Draw Near to God. at Present It Is Grace—" God Was in Christ' Reconciling the World Unto' Himself, Not Imputing Their Trespasses Unto Them " for the Present Time God Is Not Imputing the Sinner's Trespasses to Him, but by and by Every Idle Word Shall Be Imputed to the Sinner

Let me remark as to what was inside of that ark. We are told in the ninth of Hebrews there were three things there-the golden pot that had manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant. God gave the law the first time on the mount, but, already broken by Israel, Moses threw it down and broke it. But when God gave it the second time He took care it should not be broken (Deut. 10.). Moses was to make this ark first; and in that it was to be put. The ark of course is Christ. We had the law over our heads, but Christ had it in His heart (Psa. 40). The moment I have Christ, there is an end of the law for righteousness. He paid the penalty that I owed to the broken law. The penalty was death; He died in my stead; thus Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. Inside of that ark, underneath the golden mercy seat, were the two tables of stone now, the mercy seat covered it, and the blood was sprinkled there. The faces of those angelic forms were towards the mercy seat to where the blood was. God gazing down, as, it were, does not see the law that curses us, but He sees the blood. There was also the golden pot that had manna there. Christ was the true manna who came down from heaven to give life to the world. But here we have the manna, not as once, lying on the sand of the desert, but in the golden pot, for the bread which came down from heaven was rejected of men, but gone back to heaven He is still the food for our souls; we have a Christ in glory for our food. There was another thing there too: there was Aaron's rod that budded, and how that came to be there we are told in the 17th chapter of Numbers. It was put there to " make to cease" their murmuring. The Israelites had been murmuring.
How did God stop it? God would have had to kin every man, woman and child in order to stop them murmuring. He did not do that, however, but He told them to take, twelve rods, and the man's rod that He chose was to blossom. Aaron's rod bore fruit.
Aaron's rod was the type of the risen Christ, who alone ever bore fruit to God. The fruit-bearing rod was then laid up in the ark to "quite take away their murmurings from me that they die not." In the 23rd chapter of Numbers we have a peculiar expression, "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." God did not see the murmuring of Israel, not because it was not there, but because He gazed down and saw the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat and the food and the rod that budded. Aaron's almond-yielding rod was a type of the risen Christ, who ever lives to intercede for us. The righteous One is there. If God looks down upon me here, He sees me every day failing and failing and failing, but He looks at Christ the perfect Man before Him. The very One who shed His blood to put away my sin is now my advocate. If I am a believer I am " accepted in the Beloved." It is thus God " makes to cease our murmuring from before Him. We are told in the 2nd of Colossians, In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him." There is nothing short of this. In Adam we all sinned and died and shared Adam's doom, but in Christ we share Christ s blessing. First I have a common portion as a member of Adam's race, and then also in Christ I have Christ's portion. And just as Christ does not grow any more perfect, we in him do not grow any more perfect. While I am here of course I grow more in knowledge-but as to our standing in Christ our position is ever the same. The veil is rent. Through the sacrifice of Christ we have a right to go to the very place that Christ has gone; our anchor is fixed into that within the veil-the Ark of the Covenant?
We have now solved the problem with which we started, " How can God bring a poor leper from outside the camp into His own very presence, and in a righteous way so as to glorify God, and also give the poor sinner perfect peace before Him?' We have found out how it is done. He is brought in through Christ the gate, h s sins put away at the brazen altar by the blood; he has had boldness to enter the very holiest; yes, he can enter everyplace where the blood has been sprinkled.