First Love

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello everyone, and welcome to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I'm sitting with the amazing Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, Happy New Year.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Happy New Year to you too.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's been a very fulfilled 2025, and we are excited for all that God is going to do in 2026. So to all our listeners, Happy New Year. We are excited to continue taking you on the journey of your first love in 2026.

Speaking of that journey, we are going on from what we spoke on last week to do with the Holy of Holies, coming into the Ark of the Covenant. We've been on this extremely informative and descriptive journey through the Tabernacle. Dr. Robyn, you wanted to mention a couple of things before we move into the next part tonight, which is very ironic that it's the first of the year, first week, and we're coming into the Ark of the Covenant. I think there's no better way to start the year off.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I’d like to run over some things that we mentioned last week and what the Ark of the Covenant really represents. Once you come to that place and you've been lifted up with the balance of your emotions, you'll be in the presence of God—the immediate presence of God. Of course, that's where you find yourself moving in your spirit.

This chest has several items in it, but we want to talk about the Mercy Seat tonight. We want to talk about once you have a look at this and what is on the lid of this chest. It's called the Mercy Seat, and it's called that for a reason. On top of that Mercy Seat were the two cherubim. Remember we mentioned that? The wings of the two angels were touching. We know that's the voice of the Lord.

That was to Moses, and that brought him to speak right below the tip of their wings. That was important because mouth-to-mouth and face-to-face really is important. Inside the chest, there were three articles, which is what we meet when we meet God. We find the first article is the Ten Commandments. Before we go into that, I know you want to speak a bit more on the Mercy Seat. I'll hand it over to you and you can add your piece to the Mercy Seat.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Definitely. Before we go into the break, you were talking last week on the cherubim, and I thought that was an important thing to expound on. There are a couple more things that we need to bring out about the importance of the cherubim, their position, the way that they're facing, and what they represent.

The Mercy Seat has so many different nuances that we need to unpack, especially to do with how Jesus fulfilled being that Mercy Seat at the cross. The cherubim also represent the guardianship of divine order. They are heaven's agreement with God's mercy. We have an angel on the left and an angel on the right. We have the two in agreement. If two or more are there—and the "of more" there in the scripture has been added—it talks about heaven and earth. This is agreement between heaven and earth for God's continual mercy to flow.

Another thing that's important about the cherubim is the Lord said, "There I will meet with you between the cherubim." It's important to point out this is not above activity or above law, but it's above mercy that God meets with His people.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Of course, as we know, if there wasn't mercy, then there'd have to be judgment.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Very true, and we'll bring that out more with the expounding of the Mercy Seat. Another important thing about the cherubim is that their faces were gazed inward, pointing down at the same thing. Their eyes are fixed at the same level, looking at the same thing.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's like face-to-face.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Literally. Their gaze is actually beholding the mercy of God. They're bringing our attention and our focus to the fact that mercy is what emanates from God's holiness, not judgment.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Thank God for the mercies of God because otherwise, we'd be struck like lightning every time we came into His presence.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This facing downward brings out that mercy is the focus and that God dwells where surrender creates room. That's the space. There's a tension between the two wings and the cherubim's wings touching in that culmination. Here we see heaven is itself centered around mercy. This is an important thing for the believer: heaven is centered around mercy, not accusation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It also represents the righteousness of God—not our righteousness, because our righteousness is as filthy rags. We have to come to that place and always be remembering that we have to go in with someone else's righteousness. We cannot enter into His presence with our righteousness. We know what that means; that means the righteousness of God. That's the only way you could go in.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So true. I love that you brought that out last week when we talked about how the righteousness of God is attained not through action.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Through attitude.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You said something coming off last week, Dr. Robyn, that we talked about off-mic, but I actually wrote it down and recorded it because it was so powerful, as many of your gems are. You said that it's that way because if it was the other way around where action produced attitude, it would be a work. We would be working for righteousness; it would not be the righteousness of Christ.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That would be working for it all the time.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That means the righteousness of Christ comes when my attitude aligns with His attitude, which produces a right action.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If you have the right attitude, then your actions will take care of themselves.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think we need to pause just for a second. If I had a gem button or a crispy flash button, I would press it right now. I think that's an important thing in 2026. There are going to be so many things that present themselves as the right actions, but we need to learn to—and I'm going to use this verbiage a lot in 2026 because it's the Vav year—we need to learn to hook into the right attitudes first before we try to hook into the right actions.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We concentrate too much on action. Even in the world today with everything that's going on, it's all about action. If attitude isn't first, then the action is wrong.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The Lord Almighty. This is an important thing. God is setting new parameters as we go into this year on how intimacy is developed. Intimacy comes from right attitude, not right action.

Here's another important thing about this Mercy Seat as we go into opening it up. The Mercy Seat actually is where God meets humanity, but God meets humanity governed by truth. Mercy is not governed by grace.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, it's by the truth.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's by truth. A lot of the times we can try to govern God's mercy in our life via the grace of God.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When we do that, we cause grace to become a license.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: In Romans 3:25, Paul actually says Christ is our—and he uses the Greek word here—hilasterion, which is Mercy Seat. He's literally saying that Christ has become the Mercy Seat of this second—I wouldn't say old or new, I don't like using those terms—but the second covenant. It is the new covenant in the sense that it is the updated version of the covenant.

In the first covenant, the Mercy Seat blood was only applied on the top from the outside. But in the second covenant, Jesus has actually applied His blood from the inside out.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And He becomes the Mercy Seat.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He becomes the hilasterion, the Mercy Seat. I think that's an important thing for us to see because when I say heaven is governed by mercy versus accusation, the accuser of the brethren cannot speak in heaven because heaven is governed by mercy. He has to accuse from the earth.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When you say about it's within, it's Christ within us. That's the only way we can receive the mercy. If it's an action, it's on the outside of us. It is not an inward thing; it's an outward thing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Very good. This must point out something to the believer: mercy is governed by truth. Then mercy governs identity. We're coming to that place now where those three articles that were placed in the actual Ark all represent identity. We have the tablets, the Ten Commandments, the law. We have Aaron's rod, which is the authority. Then we also have the jar of manna, which is the provision.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'd like to speak quickly on the jar of manna, and then maybe you could speak on the Ten Commandments. I just want to bring out a simple understanding of why they would have a jar of manna. We know what the manna was all about in the wilderness. It's important to know that manna was placed in there, and it's still placed there. It's placed in there all the time. What does that mean? That means supernatural provision of God every day in our lives. That means we can have our emotions, our spiritual, and our physical needs supernaturally provided every day of our lives.

When you speak to the Lord, if it's journaling, then He will speak to you all the time, speaking about needs emotionally, spiritually, and physically. When you know that, it'll be like waters of living waters of springs of water within us flowing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Adding in some neuroscience here, when we experience the mercy of God, it actually calms that fear center in us and it allows us to recover easier than when we first experienced life without mercy. Mercy preps us for recovery. Mercy is when you don't get what you do deserve, and grace is when you do get what you don't deserve. Let's go into a break, and we'll come back with more on this topic.

We're coming back fresh off the press, as we like to say, and we're going to continue this conversation about these articles in the Ark and their significance. Dr. Robyn, before we went to the break, we talked about grace being when we get what we don't deserve and mercy being when we don't get what we do deserve. How does that apply to where we are now in 2026 with what's going on outside in the world?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We're having a lot of grace, I can tell you that. A lot of grace and a lot of mercy. Righteous judgment is happening. Like I said before, we need to allow that which is within us to do with our attitude. That will have a great bearing on mercy and grace rather than just judgment from the outside in and through actions. These days we are taught to go by our action, but our action never finishes our attitude.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's so good. It's an important thing to understand too. When we understand the Mercy Seat, I want to expound on this a little bit. Mercy actually physiologically calms the amygdala, which is the fear center. It activates the prefrontal cortex of our brains, which brings us into discernment and it strengthens discernment. It brings a word: integration. This is where integration replaces fragmentation. Judgment is actually deregulating our nervous system, whereas mercy is integrating what God is saying into our nervous system.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So it's always into something, within something.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. It's important to understand the context. On the Day of Atonement as they would go through the processional of the Tabernacle, the High Priest would sprinkle the blood on this Mercy Seat for a reason. This essentially was a throne of judgment. Until the blood was applied, it was a throne of judgment. God would look down and everyone was to give an account on the Day of Atonement for their sins for the previous year. By all means, God had every right to judge everyone to death via His standard of holiness. But then He looked down and He saw the innocent blood sacrifice sprinkled on the altar of the Mercy Seat, and He instead turned it from a throne of judgment to a throne of mercy.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That came even to the Ten Commandments, which came under the mercy of God. We've got to see that. We think we have to keep these laws, but God provided mercy to cover even the mistakes and the weaknesses there.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You just brought out exactly what I wanted to say. The law was inside the Mercy Seat. This is a foreshadowing of the law being written on the heart through mercy rather than through obligation and judgment.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Rather than hands and feet and everything else.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: God's law is governed by His mercy. That's important even for the manna. This was provision that was governed by rest. When you come into an intimate place with the Provider, you stop looking for provision and you start resting in the Provider.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Also with that, you have the jar of manna, and it was a remembrance of what had taken place—that God had kept His word, that it was always there supernaturally being provided. They didn't have to go out and do things to cause action; they just had to believe and collect it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is interesting about this manna because inside this Ark, the manna didn't need to be replaced daily and it never rotted. This teaches us that provision that doesn't fade comes from a place of continual intimate rest in the mercy of God. That's not looking and going, "I deserve more." It's looking and going, "I shouldn't even really have what I have now, but I'm so thankful that God's mercy has given me that. Now, whatever He gives me, I'm thankful for." That creates a constant flow of provision that doesn't need to be replaced or replenished. It's eternal.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Then when you come to look at their lives and the complaining and everything that they did—moaning, winging, and whining over everything—yet God covered that in the representation of the jar of manna with the Mercy Seat covering the weakness of the Israelites.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Before we go to the end, I just want to quickly add this really important, interesting contrast. We said that blood was applied on top in the first covenant, not inside. But Jesus, when blood and water flowed because He is the Mercy Seat—remember, He's our hilasterion—blood and water flowed from the inside out. Before, blood was applied externally, covering sin temporarily, and access was still limited. But Jesus, His body was pierced and blood flowed from within. Redemption not only became external going in; it became internal going out. That means that the old covenant covers the Ark, but the new covenant transforms the carrier.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's because Jesus is the Mercy Seat.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You just said it. Colossians 1:27: "Christ in us, the hope of glory." He is the one that comes inside and transforms us. The transformation now is not just external; it's internal. Mercy is flowing through us out into the world, not just to us.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that's what we need to get a hold of. It's all inside, not outside coming in. It's inside flowing out.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So true. Another thing that we quickly want to mention here, and I just wanted to tie it in why the blood coming from the inside is so important. Figuratively, we take that blood—it's not the actual blood of Jesus, but it's representation—we take that blood every Sunday, or whenever you take communion. We take that blood and we ingest it and we take the elements: the body and the blood. We say, "By His stripes, I'm healed."

We don't realize it, but I like to tie in the science here. Our heart is now the Ark of God's presence. Just like the blood going into the inside of the Ark, that actually goes through our body and it actually produces what we call expectation. When we attach expectation to a belief, it actually turns something on in our nervous system. It causes us to have what we would call the reality of the blood through science.

Let me just read a couple of things here that I think are really important. We are not saying that the physical molecules of Jesus's blood circulate in our veins. However, His blood secured legal, spiritual, and relational peace. When we believe that this blood is going through our body as we do with communion figuratively, we allow the body to exit survival mode and we prime the body to go into recovery without resistance.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So that explains why we can say, "By His stripes, we are healed."

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is it. Again, the word: we take our bodies and we shift them from survival into what is called a regulation. This regulation actually shows us that as we reaffirm trust in the blood, as we release the fear of whatever might be coming against us, and we activate the hope that what we're doing through communion is literally the anchor that we're anchoring our health on, it shifts the body. It doesn't replace medicine, but it supports healing by removing internal resistance to recovery.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that brings great expectation.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Great expectation. The Mercy Seat is heaven's regulation center. When we come into that mercy of God and we allow Him to regulate us, He removes our resistance to recovery. Final word, Dr. Robyn, please take it away.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that understanding that, you can reach out and step out into more healing, more wholeness, and believe that the blood covering will bring you through to great expectation of "by His stripes, you're healed."

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So powerful. You're going to need that. Just say no in 2026.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, just say no.