Other Refuge Have I None

Gracious Heavenly Father help us now as we come to Your Word that you might give us ears to hear, that you might save sinners, that you might bring back prodigals. Give me strength and health and humility to preach Your Word and send your spirit to provide an unction on both the preacher and the hearer for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 20. Joshua 20 and 21, we will be reading all of the verses. This will be our text for this morning, Joshua 20 and 21. You’ve been here over the course of the last months, you know that since chapter 13 in this book we have been looking at the division of the land. God lead Joshua and the Israelites into the promise land miraculously and then they had to fight to drive them out, and now we have had the divinely apportioned allotment of the land. Two and a half tribes on the east of the Jordan and then nine and a half tribes on the west of the Jordan, and book ended in this allotment on the west side of the Jordan, started with Caleb and then two weeks ago when we were at the end of chapter 19, ended with Joshua, and that’s fitting because Caleb and Joshua were the only two spies, come 45 years ago who gave a favorable report and said, “We can take this land”, and all of the unfaithful spies in that unfaithful generation died, but Caleb and Joshua now old men, the allotment of the land begins and ends with them, go to Judah, then Joseph which is Manasseh and Ephraim, and then the remaining seven tribes.

So you may have thought, at the end of chapter 19, yes, we made it, we are done with land allotments but not quite. There are two other very important matters to attend to. You may not think they’re important to you, they were important to them, and hopefully by the end of this sermon you will see how they are also important to you. They involve specific and special cities designated throughout the land, two types. Chapter 19, Cities of Refuge, or that’s chapter 20, and chapter 21 then, Cities for the Levites. So, we have those two final provisions to be made in the allotment of the land. So following along as I read beginning at chapter 20, verse 1.

“Then the Lord said to Joshua, say to the people of Israel, appoint the cities of refuge of which I spoke to you through Moses.” So in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible and Deuteronomy and in numbers there have already been instructions, specific instructions in more detail and now Joshua is coming around and the Lord saying, “Remember what I told through Moses, now you need to appoint these cites, 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. He shall flee to one of those 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 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, and he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgement until the death of him who is high priest at the time, then the manslayer may return to his own town, his own home, to the town from which he fled.” So they set apart Kadesh 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 and beyond the Jordan, east of Jericho, they appointed Bezer in the wilderness on the tableland from the tribe of Reuben and Ramoth and Gilead from the tribe of Gadolinium, and Golon and Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh.

These were the cities designated for all the people of Israel and for the strangers 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 til he stood before the congregation. Those are the instructions for these cities of refuge and really a subset of these cities are pulled out of the larger group of Levitical cities.

So we come to chapter 21. Then the heads of the Father’s houses of the Levites came to Eleazar the priest and to Joshua the son of Nun, and to the heads of the Father’s houses of the tribes of the people of Israel and they said to them as Shiloh in the land of Canaan, “The Lord commanded through Moses that we be given cities to dwell in along with their pasturelands for our livestock.” So by command of the Lord the people of Israel gave to the Levites the following cities and pasturelands out of their inheritance. So all of the tribes are going to contribute something, cities for the Levites to dwell in because they don’t have their own technical land allotment, they have these cites, and what we find are there are three priestly clans and so we’re going to get the cities divided into these three priestly clans. The lot came out for the clans of the Kohathites, so those Levites who were descendants of Aaron the priest received by lot from the tribes of Judah, Simeon and Benjamin 13 cities, and the rest of the Kohathites received by lot from the clans of the tribe of Ephriam, from the tribe of Dan and the half tribe of Manasseh 10 cities. So that’s clan number one.

Clan number two, the Gershonites received by lot from the clans of the tribe of Issachar, from the tribe of Asher, from the tribe of Naphtali, and from the half tribe of Manasseh and Bashon 13 cities. Now to the third clan of Levites. The Merarites according to their clans received from the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and the tribe of Zebulun 12 cities.

Now fast forward to the end of the chapter, so I do encourage you to read through it when you get to the read through the Bible and we have a list of all of these cites, but we’re going to come to the summary beginning at verse 41. The cities of the Levites in the midst of the possession of the people of Israel were in all 48 cities with their pasturelands. These cities each had its pasturelands around it so it was with all these cities. And now here’s the final paragraph to summarize all that the Lord has been doing in the promised land. “Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that He swore to give to their fathers and they took possession of it and they settled there, and the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers.”

Not one of all their enemies had withstood them for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands, not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed, all came to pass. Here’s how you can understand this passage. It’s very simple, but it involves numbers, just three number. You can understand this passage with three numbers, 48, 6, and 1. Start with the number 48. Now just read here 48 cities given to the Levites. These 48 Levitical cities were the Lord’s blessing to the Levites.

As we’ve heard several times throughout the book of Joshua, the Levites do not have their own inheritance, but they need somewhere to live, they don’t live in outer space, they need to have somewhere, they have pastures, they need to feed their families and so they give cities and pasturelands sprinkled throughout the rest of the tribes. These were taken from the other tribes that the other tribes were instructed to give as a gift these tribes, or rather these cities from their tribes to the Levites, and there is a principle at work here, one that will be reinforced in the New Testament that those engaged in the service of the Lord, because of course the priests and the Levites that come the priestly clan to attend to the sacrifices and the ritual and to inspect your home for mildew and see who has leprosy and to attend at the tabernacle and later at the temple, these Levites, those who serve the Lord ought to be provided from the contributions of those who benefit from their service. The Old Testament provision and Deuteronomy 25 is repeated in first Timothy 5, do not muzzle the ox while he treads out the grain. Paul says that those who sew spiritual things have a right to reap some material benefits, here’s the application, pay your pastors, you do, we’re grateful. This ox wants to eat, you know I don’t eat well, but I do eat and thank you for providing for those who attend to full time ministry here at the church.

So, it was a blessing to the Levites that they were given the cities and the pasturelands and, think about it, it was a blessing to the Levites to have been given this privileged position in the first place. This is one of those instances, in the Bible there’s lots of them, where God turned their curse into blessing. You know this from the history in Genesis, and if you don’t now you will. There’s a reason that Levi was not getting an inheritance. Way back in Genesis when one of the daughters of Israel was raped, defiled by the Shechemites and then in order for the two peoples to intermingle, the Shechemites had to be circumcised and when all of these grown men are in their time of pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, thought it would be a good idea to slaughter them in order to avenge the shame that had come upon their sister. Now you can appreciate their zeal for her honor, but this was not honoring to the Lord and so in Genesis 49when Jacob is handing out the blessings to his 12 sons he says this, “Simeon and Levi are brothers, weapons of violence are their swords, cursed be their anger for it is fierce and their wrath for it is cruel”, and then he says this, “I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel”, and that’s exactly what happened.

Remember when I did this very helpful imaginary map a few weeks ago, that down here in the south is Judah and I said there was a circle within Judah’s land that was given to Simeon, and over the years Simeon will really disappear and become a part of Judah. Just like the Prophecy had said in Genesis 49 that Simeon will be scattered, but of course that curse that their land is really in the midst of Judah’s land, becomes a blessing because they get aligned with Judah which is the uppermost, the chief of the tribes, and will last longer than more rebellious Israel in the north and so their cursing ends up a blessing for Simeon that they get to be a part of Judah and so we see here, with the Levites, yes it’s true, they too are scattered among Israel, divided among God’s people, and yet that curse has now been turned into a blessing that they will be the priestly tribe. The Levites, we read in chapter 18 have no portion among you, so that’s the curse, but then it says, “For the priesthood of the Lord is there heritage, that’s the blessing.” Even in their rebellion now the Lord has turned to their favor. One of the reasons he did it is because when the Lord needed judgement upon his people at Mount Sinai, it was the Levites who took their sword, those who were fierce, and they administered justice for God’s sake. And so God has turned the curse that was against Levi into a blessing. No heritage of land, you can be my priests.

So brothers and sisters, God is not pleased when we sin. We are not better off for having sinned. Don’t think while this is great, I love to sin, God loves to forgive, that’s why we get along so well. No, may it never be, Paul says, that we sin in order for grace to abound. That’s not the thinking of a born again Christian. However, don’t think if you have in your past, and we all have sins, and if you think well I have horrible egregious sins, I’ve ruined my life, as Christopher said during the Sunday school when he was in prison and walked by a trash can and thought, “That’s my life, it’s garbage, I’ve made rubbish out of my life.” If you think that about your life, don’t think that God has run out of ways to use even your sin to accomplish his purposes. You may have chosen cursing for yourself and God can yet turn it into blessing. If you will listen to Him, be faithful unto Him.

So these cities the Levites surely I hope stood back and wondered and said, “Can you believe of all people we will be in the land the Lord’s priests, and we will receive these cites, 48 Levitical cities” and they were a blessing not only to the Levites, but they were meant to be a blessing to the rest of the nation. It was for good reason that these cites were scattered throughout Israel, 48 cities. Now we could go through and they don’t come in exact equal measure from each of the 12 tribes, but the number 48 is no accident because it is 4 times 12, 12 number for God’s people, and four often a number for a universal scope, the four wins or the four corners of the earth. In other words, the Levites are to be a holy nation within the nation, a royal priesthood within a kingdom of priests, and think of the very practical implications of this. Throughout the land 48 Levitical cities meant no one had to travel too far to reach the priests and the Levites and there were nearby priests and Levites who could reach the people. Not only for the various rituals and procedures, the Book of Leviticus spells this out, the many things they had to be like home inspectors, and they had to be health inspectors, they had to attend to sacrifices, the many things that you needed priests and Levites for, not only that, but sometimes we miss that the Levites were also teachers, they were the teachers in Israel.

Deuteronomy 17, the Levites were to provide instruction and clarification on legal and moral issues. Deuteronomy 33:10, Levi shall teach Jacob your rules and Israel your law. Nehemiah 8, the Levites were there to help the people understand the law. Now there’s a reason that I am called a pastor, which is another word for a shepherd, and not a priest, because a priest makes atoning sacrifices and there is no longer any need for another atoning sacrifice. There is only one high priest and the priestly work of that atonement is done, so there’s a reason that pastor is a better name than priest, and yet you can see the derivation that like those Old Testament priests, pastors are the one who attend to certain rituals in your life and handle holy things of word and sacrament and chiefly are to be teachers.

I am not sure if this passage, Joshua 21, has ever been used at a church planting conference, but I hope somebody does because it’s a great message about church planting. Do you see the implications of these 48 cities? No one should be too far away from someone who can faithfully teach them the Word of God. Now we have the privilege of having Bibles we can read and we can listen to things and the internet and Christian books, but still you need a local church and God gifts to his people teachers in that church. No one should be far away from someone who can faithfully teach them the Word of God. That’s what we see here with these Levites, 48 cities scattered among their people, 48.

Here’s the second number, six. Six cities of refuge. Now you may not have noticed because I didn’t read the whole passage, but these six cities were all Levitical cities. There were three of these cities of refuge on the west side of the Jordan, Kadesh in Naphtali, Shechem in Ephraim, Hebron in Judah. I do sort of wonder what did, remember Caleb said, “Give me Hebron.” Alright, you’ve got Hebron, enjoy it for a bit, the Levites are coming in. So this is going to be a Levite city in perpetuity so those three and then three on the east side of the Jordan, Bezer in Reuben, Ramoth-Gilead in Gad, and Golon in Manasseh. Each of these are mentioned specifically in chapter 21 verses 13, 21, 27, 32, 36, 38, but here’s the summary. Numbers 35 and 6. So these are the instructions given to Moses which now we see the fulfillment of through Joshua. The Lord says, “The cities that you give to the Levites shall be the six cities of refuge where you shall permit the manslayer to flee, and in addition, you shall give them 42 cities, 42 plus 6 equals 48. So these six cities are a subset of the 48 Levitical cities which have an added purpose that they are cities of refuge.

How did this system work? Now they didn’t have jails, not in the way that we do. And you say, wouldn’t that be great. Well, they weren’t stretched across a continent, there weren’t 330 million of them, so there are some principles here, but it is not a one to one correspondence. It was not possible for every infraction to be handled this way, but for death they had this special provision. Now notice these were not, so-called sanctuary cities for people to escape the rule of law, but rather these were cities of refuge so people could receive due process. It’s not to say go to those cities and even if you’re guilty it’s fine, those will say go to this city so you can be assured that you will receive the due process and a fair trial.

Normally if someone was killed in Israel, justice would be meted out by another party which is called here, the avenger of blood. Likely this was a close relative, a friend, someone from your clan or tribe. Genesis 9 after the flood says because we are all made in the image of God whoever sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed. That is, it inshrines there in Genesis 9 living in a fallen world, now I know the death penalty, you have questions of can it be administered fairly or not, but at least the principle is clearly outlined in scripture that those who take life have forfeited their own life. It’s the law, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Sometimes called the Lex Talionis, that’s Latin for the law of retribution. Like for like. You poke my eye, I poke your eye. Punch out your tooth, I get your tooth. Life for life. Now that sounds cruel, but there was actually a restraining principle to it. It means that if somebody knocks out your tooth, you don’t get to burn down their whole village. It’s like for like, but the principle is, if you kill someone, someone will come and kill you, but you can image well, accidents happen in the world and what if the killing was not meant to be a killing.

Now notice in this passage, so now we are in chapter 20, three factors are at play, look at verse 3. It says, if this killing happens without intent, it’s one factor, unknowingly, and then in verse 5, you did not hate the person in the past. So those three things, someone has died at your hand, but you did it without intent, unknowingly, and you did not hate him in the past. Numbers 35 give several examples. It says if you, for example, strike someone with a lethal object or you lie in wait for them or you push or hurl them off a cliff out of hatred, then you’re a murderer, you’re subject to death, but number 35 says, well what if you weren’t known to hate the person, but you got into a spat and you’re shoving each other and you pushed and you didn’t mean to and the person trips backwards, hits their head and dies, then what? You weren’t lying in wait, you didn’t have malice of forethought or say you were dropping stones and you didn’t know that someone was walking by and hits them in the head, numbers says and they die, but they hadn’t been your enemy, then what? Or Deuteronomy 19 gives a very specific example. You’re in the woods and you’re cutting down a tree, you’re chopping some logs and the axe head flies off of the handle and it hits your neighbor and it kills him. Clearly an accident, you didn’t mean to do this, then what? These were not always easy to determine, just like they’re not always easy to determine in our day, but you can see the same basic issues are at play.

Even today, a judge or a jury might ask, well was this clearly an accident, could he or she have known that this would be the case, was there a motive, could they reasonably have known that these actions would transpire, was the other person somewhere they shouldn’t be, was it just a freak accident in one of the many sadnesses in life, but no one’s intentional fault. So there was a process then of exonerating and freeing the person who had killed another unintentionally? Look at verse 4 in chapter 20. There’s a threefold process here. So the man runs, he’s in the woods, the axe head flies off, kills his neighbor, and his family finds about it and they have the avenger of blood who is going to go and hunt you down, and you hightail it out there to find the nearest city of refuge. Now the first part of this process is you have to come to the gates of the city and verse 4 says that you explain your case to the elders so it seems like at the very front end the elders of that city have to say, is there a reasonable chance that this was an accident? They may say absolutely this story does not hold up at all, you can’t come in here in which case the avenger will hunt you down. So the elders hear the case and they must reach a determination of you should at least should live to see another day and receive a trial, so you’re welcomed into the city, a place of safety.

The second step then, verse 6, “He shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation.” It doesn’t necessarily mean every last person in the city. That word for congregation is often used for heads of families or some representative body, so likely the elders are a smaller group and then there’s a larger group of men who would have heard the case and now they determine, probably have witnesses, we’re not told exactly what a trial would look like, but it might be similar to what we know as a trial. They have evidence, they hear witnesses, they determine motive, and then the congregation decides this was an accident. You didn’t hate the person, they weren’t your enemy, it was unintentional, you can stay, second step, but notice the man is not yet free to go. That’s why this system is part safehouse and part halfway house. Because there is one other thing, verse 6, “Until the death of him who is the high priest at the time, then and only then when the high priest dies in the land may the manslayer return to his own town and to his home from which he fled.” So he flees, elders come out, makes sense you can come in. Congregation has a hearing, we think you are innocent, but he is not free to return home til sometime later which may be weeks, months, years, it may be decades until the death of the high priest.

Again, I said we are not meant, we are not under the mosaic covenant, we are under the new covenant, we are more like Israel in exile and Israel in the promised land so this is not meant to be our system for the United States of America, but we can see certain biblical principles for justice. You see number one, everyone had access to the same system. It even says at the end there in verse 9, “For the stranger sojourning among them.” These would have been non-Israelites who were allowed to live in the land. We see the value of human life, the value of human life both to preserve the man who may be innocent and to honor the life that had already been taken. We see that violent crime deserves punishment. We see the necessity of due process and a fair trial, even someone who had been responsible for someone else’s death, he too deserves due process. And we see that God’s people were to make a refuge available. Some extra biblical sources even suggest that roads were built to these cities and signs were put up and the gates were open. In other words, we must make sure that everyone knows how to find the refuge, that there are no obstacles for the manslayer to find his way to the city of refuge.

Imagine the man accidentally killed his neighbor, running as fast as he can for hours, perhaps days to finally make it to Ramoth-Gilead or to Hebron or to Shechem, and he tells the Levite at the city gate, as the man is gasping for breath, “Please, please let me in. This is the only place I can go where I can escape the avenger of blood. Won’t you please have mercy and let me in.” 48 cities for the Levites, six cities of refuge and then finally, and I hope you can already start to make the connections, the number one is the one place where sinners can find safety from the avenger of blood. I trust you can already see that the one place where you have to go is not a place, but a person. We sang about it already. Other refuge have I have none hangs my helpless soul on thee, leave a leave me not alone, still support and comfort me, all my trust in thee is staid, all my help from thee I bring, cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing. And if that manslayer who proved actually to be innocent needed a safe haven, needed a refuge, how much more do each one of you need a place to flee because you know that you are guilty of sins, that you are guilty of crimes if not against the state than against God and notice there is here in the city of refuge still some of that lex talionis, that law of retribution, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and in fact, that’s the way God created the world. He created a just world where sin must be paid for. He has not set that aside. Notice the manslayer removed a man from the land, he killed him, even by accident and so an eye for an eye means that man should be removed from his land. That man was killed and his family was deprived of one of their own and so the man who accidentally killed him, his family would also be deprived of him for a time. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. And to dwell in the city of refuge was safety, but notice even after the Levites let you in, even after the family heads degree that you are innocent, yet you have not been free to go. This city was part asylum and part prison. Because you can’t go back home, not yet, and you say, “Why not?” Not until the high priest dies.

There’s only one high priest in the land at any time. Leviticus tells us what the high priest and the high priest alone does once a year, he alone can enter into the holy of holies on the day of atonement. He alone does the ritual with the goats. He alone goes once a year to make atonement for the people, the whole sacrificial system, but the high priest above all was to make atonement for the people. So why, must the manslayer wait until the high priest dies? Because only when the high priest dies has his crime, even his unintentional offense, been truly paid for. The death of the high priest was necessary for the man to return home, for the man to be truly freed. And if that’s the case for the one who fled and was not truly guilty, how much more so for those of us who are guilty not only of unintentional faults but intentional sins. Maybe some of you are running, running, running and maybe it’s not the law, could be, maybe it’s not a bereaved family member, a jealous spouse, it could be. Maybe you’re simply thinking that you can outrun the avenger of death. You’ll never have to own up to who you are or what you’ve done. Nope, you’re going to exercise, even though you know in a sort of mental way you just think, nope, I will keep living, I’m gonna exercise, I’ve got the best medicine, I’ve got the best diet, look at my parents I even got these lucky genes.

Friends, you will not outrun the avenger of death. Sooner or later everyone of us, unless Jesus returns before then, every single one of us will be chased down just as scripture says, it is appointed for each one to die and then to face judgement. You will not unrun the avenger of death. Where will you go for safety, where will you go to know that you have confidence when you come to breath your last? Where will you go to know that you will be welcomed to an eternal home forever to dwell in safety? Did you notice how the very last paragraph in chapter 21 ends it’s telling us what this whole land allotment has been about. There’s lots of themes, but it’s telling us in big, bright letters the big take home message of all of these tedious chapters, it’s right there, do you see it? The Lord gave to Israel all the land that He swore to give to them. The Lord gave them rest on every side just as He had sworn. Not one of their enemies stood against them. Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made had failed, all came to pass. That’s why we have chapter after chapter of land allotment to come to that conclusion, not one word of all that God had promised failed to come to pass and so the promise for you, found only in Jesus is that when you repent and you flee to Him, you will be safe.

Now some of you, you may have heard this same basic message a hundred times in your life, but just think right now perhaps now for the first time or the first time in a long time it feels like really God, God is speaking to you, do not ignore His voice. He is offering you safety because the avenger will find you, Christ will protect you. He will give you life and peace and forgiveness and eternal life if you run to Him. If you flee to Christ, if you call on Christ and here’s what Jesus tells us, He assured promise that all who come to Him will be welcome, not one will be cast aside if you knock on the door. Jesus says, “I always answer.” In fact Revelation 3 says, “Behold, I stand at the door and I knock Jesus says, will you let me in.” Flee to Christ, ask, seek, knock and the door shall be opened unto you. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runs into it and is safe.

Let’s pray. Gracious heavenly Father we have no other refuge except for Jesus, this great friend of sinners. Would you work in the heart of every sinner in this room then we might run to Jesus for our eternal home. We pray in His name. Amen.