Then the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, 3 that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. 4 He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that city. Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place, and he shall remain with them. 5 And if the avenger of blood pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand, because he struck his neighbor unknowingly, and did not hate him in the past. 6 And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment, until the death of him who is high priest at the time. Then the manslayer may return to his own town and his own home, to the town from which he fled.’” 7 So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. 8 And beyond the Jordan east of Jericho, they appointed Bezer in the wilderness on the tableland, from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead, from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan, from the tribe of Manasseh.9 These were the cities designated for all the people of Israel and for the stranger sojourning among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so that he might not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, till he stood before the congregation.
The justice of God, unleashed on YOUR sin, is seen at the cross. Justice is seen in Christ’s bearing the full weight of your sin, my sin, the sin of all his people. It is just for God to cleanse us so perfectly because justice has been fulfilled, sin has received what it deserves. Sin does NOT go unpunished.
The foreshadowing, the principle of freedom for the sinner at the death of the High Priest as our text mentions, cannot be missed. The death of the high priest is that which frees the land from pollution and the guilty from his or her prison. Christ’s death is what sets us free from the prison of the grave. His death, as the great High Priest has made atonement for our guilt and is the cause for the mercy of God to be poured out upon us, it is why we can flee to our Refuge!
Deuteronomy mentions in this context, laws with regard to witnesses; namely that matters are to be established by 2-3 witnesses. We don’t know all the details of what the elders in these cities did but we know they were to judge rightly and therefore we can infer that they sought to establish the matter according to the law of God.
We see these same principles in the NT in Matthew 18 with regard to church discipline. Matters are to be established by two or three witnesses. And in I Timothy five, with regard to a minister, without two or three witnesses you are not to even LISTEN to an accusation against a minister.
And if the witnesses bear falsely, if there is lying that damages another person it is likened to murder. Words that we speak often violate the laws of mercy and justice as God’s principles go down deep.
Therefore, if we are to truly champion the sanctity of life, we will not slander or gossip against our brothers; Falsehood, as you know, is likened to murder and by Jesus no less! Lying is likened to murder, there is not as much difference in the eyes of God as we might like to think between blood on the tongue and blood on the sword.
This is the point that Jesus is making in Matthew. Hatred in your heart, leads to murder, even if it is with your tongue only, it is revealing of what lies within you. In Proverbs we read that there are six things that God hates…7 that are an abomination to Him. The first is the haughty look, that is pride, then the lying tongue and after that murder. You see what kind of company lying keeps. Its companions are pride, that which causes God to despise a man for God despises the proud, the murderers, and we are told that murderers will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Here is the point in all of this: What we learn from our Bible’s in a comprehensive study of them, is that if you love life, if you love truth, you will see that falsehood is not simply an attack upon truth, it is also an attack upon life.
Christians today will speak a lot about mercy. God’s mercy and the need for us to show mercy as His children. But will then turn around and kill their brothers and sisters by destroying their name before others and feel no guilt, no remorse, or act as though they have done nothing wrong. Is this what is illustrated by God when He shows us His mercy? Is this in keeping with the principles of mercy and justice?
My point is not to say that all sin is the same, but rather that we ask ourselves if we really know God’s mercy as we should. Are we in danger, like the people in Hosea of saying one thing but living completely differently? We have the big banner and we stand under it, but do we have a deep and ever deepening understanding and love for what it really means? Do we marvel in God’s mercy and then find ourselves longing to both live in it and demonstrate it in our own lives?
Could it be that we have become so detached from an understanding of redemption, an understanding of God’s mercy to us, that we no longer make the connections from the cross to the way we are called to live our lives in radical conformity to the Savior?
This is not a small thing. and in case you are thinking: “Pastor Skogen, you have made too big a jump to go from the cities of refuge to my lying tongue and hate filled speech, to my slander and gossip and bitterness against others.” I humbly beg you to reconsider.
The greater context of the cities of refuge, as we see in DT and in Numbers, is telling us a much bigger story, namely, that we, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the redeemed of God, are to be the living conduits from which the principles of the kingdom flow. We are to be a people who delight in mercy as our Father delights in mercy. We are to be a people who understand that murder is not done only with the sword and merciless actions have no place within those who have been shown mercy by the Lord.
My conclusion this morning is a bit anticlimactic. I want to briefly address the content of the next chapter. I could write pages on the importance of ministers and the ministry of the word which is what chapter 21 is about. The priests did not get land rights but they did get cities in the land. The Lord was emphasizing that He is the reward of His people, illustrated in and through the priests.
It was, and is the responsibility of the priests to keep word and sacrament before the people…to keep justice and mercy before God’s people. Priests or as we say, ministers, have as their calling, to speak God’s word for Him…to make sure that God’s people have as the foundation, reading God’s Word, singing God’s word, praying God’s word, preaching God’s word and eating and drinking God’s word.
The examples of how the office of word and sacrament has been all but destroyed abound in our day as ministers see themselves and churches demand their ministers be a jack-of-all-trades. That coupled with the anti-clericalism that is rampant, the individualistic view of life and especially religious life that seems to course through the blood of our American culture and the biblical calling for ministers has all but disappeared.
Let me put it this way: What is it that you most need, more than anything else, what is your biggest need and that of your family and your children? Is it not to comprehend more and more of Jesus? Isn’t it true that, that which you need most is the knowledge of God and his Christ, His love, grace and mercy and what it means to follow Him, and love Him, and serve Him and seek Him always as your Refuge?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God appointed someone in your life who was NOT to be a multi-tasker, but who had one job, one task: To keep grace and mercy, discipleship and the Christian life before your eyes? He wasn’t to be a hospital chaplain, or a CEO…he wasn’t to be distracted with budgets or with building funds…He was to do one thing…teach you and your children what it means to love Jesus and walk with Him.
He was to have one task for his entire life, to teach you the ways of the kingdom so as to help you get from this life to the next? And if he got distracted from this task, you would want to say to him, “Sir, please, stay the course…please show me Jesus, please set for me the Refuge for my soul.”
Before I went to seminary I worked for 3.5 years with a parachurch organization. Part of my job was to raise money from the churches in the greater Tacoma area to support what we were doing. Over that time, I met a lot of pastors, saw a lot of churches and I grew very, very cynical, sinfully so. Pastors seemed more like business men to me, corporate managers sitting in plush offices with two or three secretaries, a couple dozen books behind them, many which were about marketing and long-range planning strategy. And I just thought something was wrong.
And then I met a man, a pastor, who was a bit nerdy, his study filled with books, mostly of dead people…he was easily accessible but not easily distracted…he seemed to think what he did mattered. And I listened to him preach and I knew he believed that what he was doing was indispensable to the souls of his people.
Here are his words: “It is the work of a lifetime and the whole work of a lifetime to preach the Word of God with the humanity, earnestness, accuracy, insight and power which the great subjects of the Word and the great issues of a congregation’s everlasting salvation require. Only the man who loves to preach and lives to preach will be adequate to such a work, demanding as it does the continual cultivation and full exercise of all his powers. And that holy consecration, I have come firmly to believe, depends upon a man seeing himself to be not an elder but always and only a minister of the Word of God.”
That is my calling. I pray with all seriousness and ask you to do the same, that I will discharge these duties to the glory of God and His Messiah. That we together, might flee to our Refuge and find Him able, faithful, just, merciful and loving!
Prayer: Father, I confess that I am not at the feet of Jesus as I should be, as I so desire to be. When I am there I know peace and rest as in no other place. May it be a familiar home to me and hope for me. Give me the courage and the love for my Savior that I give myself and my life to serving Him and my brothers and sisters, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Song: Sing to the Glory of His Name
