Mercy is God’s covenant “loving kindness,” it is Divine compassion. Psalm 85:10, “where mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Today, let’s look deeper at the Mercy Seat by way of a LIVING illustration…
Have you ever wondered what the Mercy Seat would look like in a “life encounter”?
Let’s look at John 4: In the Holy of Holies, a “God Encounter,” His Presence produces:
- WORSHIP
- FELLOWSHIP
- REVELATION
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John 4:23, “A time is coming and has now come when true worshippers will worship The Father in Spirit and in Truth.”
I have struggled much to understand “those who worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and truth…” Especially in context to how this command is presented…
John 4:4-24 (NIV), “Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
When Mercy Reaches Your Mess
Jesus had an agenda, a schedule that “…He HAD TO go through Samaria…” (verse 4), to a city called Sychar, which means: falsehood and drunkenness.
He had to go to Samaria to hold a cathartic conversation with a “messed up, confused” woman in order to proclaim the Kingdom of God and evoke the purpose & destiny that was locked in her heart.
Your spirit has a memory of your future that your mind struggles to comprehend!
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (Amp), “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.“
There was an assignment for him in Samaria – An entire city was waiting on him there. But He would access it through a seemingly casual encounter with one woman who He would be genuinely interested in and talk with.
Jesus recognizes to get the city, He had to go through this woman, “…the door.” And this woman (this door) was not a Phoebe (a rich, refined aristocrat), but she was a trampish woman. And Jesus went after her…
Mercy comes after your mess!
This woman was a woman who had lived in a state of compromise; who most likely was very unpopular among other women (but liked by men). This woman in the biggest mess had the greatest potential.
Don’t think God can’t use YOU or those in a mess that are around you! Remember, Luke 7:47 states, “Wherefore I say to thee, Her sins which are many are forgiven for she loved much but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
She was a woman with an appointment and didn’t even know it. GRACE came to you by the MERCY of God when you didn’t know you needed it!
John 15:16, “Ye have not chosen Me…”
Most of the blessings in your life you had very little to do with it. God just orchestrated your affairs for His own divine purposes!
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I love you,
