The presence of God is dreaded by those who do not feel themselves to be fit to be there, like Jacob when he realised that God was near him, for “he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is his place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:16-17). Jacob had sinned against his brother, and the presence of a holy and righteous God was dreadful to him. Even Aaron, Israel’s high priest had no boldness on entering God’s presence, for he had just witnessed the judgment of God upon his sons for their impious disobedience, and twice over in the divine instructions concerning his access to God’s presence the words “that he die not” were used by Jehovah (Lev. 16:2, 13).
The Mercy Seat
When Aaron entered God’s presence it was to sprinkle the blood of the sin offerings on the day of atonement, and the mercy seat on which, and before which, the blood was sprinkled, was covered with a cloud of incense. The blood of the sin offering pointed forward to the shedding and sprinkling of the precious blood of Jesus, which has glorified God in relation to sin, and which has enabled God to bring us into His holy presence. The cloud of incense speaks to us of the fragrance of Christ’s own Person, the One in whose acceptance we can be found in nearness to God.
In Romans 3 we learn that it is by the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ that sinners who believe on Him are justified, cleared from the guilt of their sins. God freely justifies the One who believes “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (verse 24). In the Gospel God has set forth our Lord Jesus “a mercy seat through faith in His blood” (verse 25), which enables God to righteously remit the sins of those who had faith in Him in the period before the cross, as also to declare and maintain His righteousness in being “the justifier of him that believes in Jesus” (verse 26).
Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, “by whom also we have access into this grace wherein we stand” (Rom. 5:1-2). How blessed it is for the believer to stand in grace before Him who has justified him, knowing that his place before God is not on account of what he is in himself, but on account of what Christ is and has done. The favour of God rests upon the believer for he is in God’s presence in all the value of the precious blood of Christ, and of the acceptance of Him who glorified God in the cross. As having this place before God our hearts are filled with joy, for “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” All sense of fear had been banished from the hearts of those who have peace with God, who are conscious of standing before Him in grace, and who rejoice in the hope of being in the presence of God’s glory with Christ in the coming day.
The Throne of Grace
In Hebrews 4:16 we are exhorted to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” The mercy seat in the tabernacle was the place from which God communed with Moses, but no man could sit down there. The Lord Jesus, having completed the great work of redemption, has sat down on the throne of God (Heb. 1:3; 10:12). God’s throne which, on account of man’s sin, became for man a throne of judgment, has now become a throne of grace, because of the precious blood of Christ, and because Christ sits upon the throne.
Of old, the high priest passed through the court of the tabernacle and the holy place to reach the presence of God, but Jesus, the Son of God, our great High Priest, has passed through the heavens to sit down upon God’s throne. He was great enough to make by Himself propitiation for sins, and He is great enough to pass through the heavens; and the One who has passed through the heavens once passed through this earth, and knows all that His people have to sustain in their trials in this world.
Although so great in His Person, He has a heart that can enter into all His people are called upon to pass through. He knows every trial and every difficulty that belongs to the path of faith, for He was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus was a real Man, but there was no sin within Him, but He knew what it was to hunger and thirst, and to be wearied with His journey, but in all these things, and with all the opposition of man and Satan, He remained faithful to God through every trial, walking in constant obedience and perfect submission to God’s will.
Jesus is therefore able to enter sympathetically into whatever testing we may be called upon to pass through, and to sustain us with His grace in the trial. To preserve us from failure the High Priest sustains us with heavenly grace; should we fail we need the ministry of Jesus as our Advocate (1 John 2:1). We are not to rely on our own strength in time of trial, we are to come boldly to Jesus on the throne of grace. If we know that Jesus feels with us, and that He is desirous of helping us, this will surely give us boldness to come to Him. Jesus can provide help that no other can give, for His supplies of grace are infinite and unfailing.
The Holiest
When we read of the mercy seat in Romans 3 it is to see how God in His grace and mercy has dealt with us as sinners through the work of His Son, and when we read of the throne of grace it is to learn that we have boldness to enter God’s presence to be sustained by Christ’s grace in our trials and sorrows. When, however, we read of the holiest in Hebrews 10, it is to learn that God would have us to come boldly into the nearness of His presence to commune with Him and to worship Him.
The people of God in Hebrews 10:2 are viewed as worshippers, and as having been once purged by the blood of Jesus, the Christian has no more conscience of sins. God remembered all our sins when Jesus bore them on the cross, and they are remembered no more, and the same precious blood that has taken our sins away gives us boldness to enter the holiest, to come as worshippers into the immediate presence of God. By faith we see the blood sprinkled on the mercy seat, and sprinkled seven times before it, giving us a perfect standing in redemption in God’s own presence.
This is an entirely new way of blessing, a way unknown to Israel under law, and those who are so blessed and privileged live in the life of Him who died for them. It is not a way where death is threatened, as in the case of Aaron, but where life is given that we might worship God according to His own thoughts and desires.
The veil of the tabernacle, with all its variegated colours, brings before us the true Manhood of Christ, the incarnation of the Son of God, and all that He is as Son of God, Son of Man and Son of David, the perfect Man who answered in all things to the will of God, securing God’s will and glory in life and in death. We pass through the veil into the enjoyment of present communion with God, for this is the place that Christ has secured for the saints of this day. Israel’s place before God is seen in the twelve loaves upon the table of shewbread, and Israel will yet be blessed in this world on the basis of redemption, seen in the new covenant in Jesus’ blood.
Jesus, risen from the dead, is our Great Priest, and He is over the house of God, and it is through Him, and with Him that we have our place in the holiest, for He is there now, having sat down in perpetuity after offering “one sacrifice for sins” (verse 12). Of old the priests were associated with the high priest, and on the day of consecration were washed all over, and the blood of the consecration offering was put upon their right ear, thumb and great toe. We too, as a priestly company are associated with our great High Priest, having been washed all over as born of water and of the Spirit, and having been set apart for the service of God by the precious blood of Jesus.
To enter God’s presence as worshippers, or to commune with Him, there must be a “true heart,” a heart that does not condemn, for we could not be free in our spirit before God with anything on the conscience. The state of the soul must answer to the conditions of God’s holy presence. Moreover, there must be the “full assurance” that faith gives, for ignorance of God, of what He has done for us, and of God’s desire to have us so near to Him to enjoy His presence.
Access to the Father
In the Epistle to the Ephesians God has opened out to His saints the eternal counsels of His love, counsels that tell of the place that Christ occupies in resurrection, and at His right hand, as Head over all things to the church. Before we had any being, God chose us in Christ yea, before the world’s foundation He chose us to be “holy and without blame before Him in love” (Eph. 1:4). Besides, He marked us out before hand to the relationship of sons to Himself in association with His own Son, and made us His heirs to share the vast inheritance of the coming day with Jesus.
Already God has quickened us in Christ, and raised us up, and made us to sit down together in the heavenly places in Christ, and this in view of the display of the exceeding riches of His grace in the coming ages. Is it then any wonder that through the Son, those who are blessed in Him, “have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). Surely this access is that we might enjoy in the very presence of the Father Himself all that He has been pleased to reveal of His purpose and grace that was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages of time.
We never could have had such access to the Father had not the Son died for us, and had not the Father given us such blessings and such relationships and associations. Nor could we have had the enjoyment of this access without the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells us, giving us to be able to say “Abba, Father,” and giving us the realisation of all that God has bestowed upon us in the riches of His grace. So that the Spirit, the one Spirit that binds together in one all true believers in one body, is the power whereby we are able to enter the presence of the Father so that we might enter into His thoughts, and respond to them in the way that He desires.
After making known God’s “eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:11), the Apostle Paul writes, “in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him” It is as having our part with Christ, being in Him before the face of the Father, that we have this boldness, for we know by the very revelation of the Father Himself all that He has given to us to share with His Son.
Boldness and confidence come through the faith that lays hold of all that God has made known to us of His purpose in Christ Jesus, and as we enter into this wondrous purpose, so do we enjoy the place that the Father has given to us in nearness to Himself along with the Man of His purpose.
May we therefore know in a real way the joy of access into the grace in which we stand before God, the access to the throne of grace, the access into the holiest, and the access to the Father, that Scripture brings before us.
R. 2.8.68