God's Justice in Refuge

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're at Deuteronomy chapter 19. We're going to look at about the first 15 verses. This is regarding, or sorry, 13 verses. 13? 15? 13. That's right, 13 verses.
We're going to be looking at the cities of refuge. What do you do when you're setting up a nation and you have Horrible things happen like manslaughter, accidental deaths, and even outright murders. How would they deal with that? Let's have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll get into God's Word. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for your word. Father, we thank you for the blessing it is to have your word and to read how you established a nation, how you gave them a law and how you told them through various sundry and case laws, how they were to handle things. Lord, how you reveal yourself as a God of justice. Lord, we pray that you would please help us to understand your word, teach us to know what it's talking about, but also help us, Lord, to take the principles that are embedded and read it in it from you. We pray that you would help us to understand it in our lives. In Jesus name. Amen. All right. Here we go. Deuteronomy chapter 19, the first 13 verses.
When the word of the Lord your God has cut off the nations whose land is the Lord your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, you shall separate three cities for yourself in the midst of your land, which Jehovah your God is giving you to possess.
You shall prepare roads for yourself and divide into three parts the territory of your land which Yehovah your God is giving you to inherit, that any manslayer may flee there. And this is the case of the manslayer who flees there, that he may live. Whoever kills his neighbor unintentionally, not having hated him in the past, As when a man goes to the woods with his neighbor to cut timber, and his hand swings a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slips off from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies, he shall flee to one of these cities and live. Lest the avenger of blood, while he is hot in anger, pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and kill him, though he was not deserving of death. Since he had not hated the victim in the past, therefore I command you, saying, You shall separate three cities for yourself. now if the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your fathers, and gives you the land which he promised to give to your fathers. And if you keep all these commandments and do them, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and to walk always in his ways, then you shall add three more cities for yourselves beside these three. lest innocent blood be shed in the midst of your land, which Jehovah your God is giving you as an inheritance, and thus blood guilt be upon you. But if anyone hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rises against him, and strikes him mortally, so that he dies, And he flees to one of these cities, then the elders of his city shall send and bring him from there and deliver him over to the land of the avenger of blood, that he may die.
Your eyes shall not pity him, but you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you.
Well, we need to ask ourselves, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So, A, what is this about? They're going to go into the land. They're going to inherit it, right? The Lord's giving it to them. There's people there. They're going to fight against them. The Lord's going to dispossess those people. This is His doing. It's His land. He gets to do with it what He wants. He gives it to the Israelites, not because they're good enough. He just gives it to them.
But when they go in, they need to have a system of justice that sets up even for horrible accidents. If something happens where they're going to go and there's two guys that go out to the woods or cutting down a tree, the head slips off, the axe flies off and accidentally kills someone. We call that manslaughter. They're calling this person the manslayer, right?
Didn't hate his buddy. He didn't have any malice against him. He didn't bad talk him down at the tavern or anything. No, he is friends with this guy. They were co-workers and now they're neighbors. And now the guy's dead. You gotta have a place to go.
A lot of the law that the Lord gives here is just, look, people are going to sin and they're sinful things. So how is God mitigating that damage? He's not saying that all these things are good, that manslaughter is good, anything like that. He's saying, look, this is the real life that you're going to live in because you're a sinful people and you're going to follow me and I'm going to get out of justice.
So here's how I'm going to display it. You're going to have these three cities. Three different outposts and they need to have roads that go to them. And if something like this happens. The guy who accidentally killed his buddy, he's got to be able to get to one of those cities and find it safe haven. He's got to be able to run there and find refuge. And so these are the three cities of refuge. Now, the Goyel, that avenger of blood, right, this family member who might get super hot under the collar, right? You killed my brother. I'm going to kill you. Right. You got to have a safe place for that guy to go.
But the family does have a right to seek justice. And it's in that city of refuge that there's going to be a trial and try to figure out whether this was murder or manslaughter. And if it was murder, and if it was murder, Notice very carefully. If it was actually murder, then the elders of the city shall sin and bring him from there and deliver him over to the hand of the avenger of blood that he may die.
Right. This same commandment that the Lord gave all the way back in Genesis. Right. If a man sheds another man's blood by man's hands, shall his blood be shed? Right. Capital punishment. is still a biblical principle in Israel. If it's not manslaughter, if it's murder, then it's a capital offense. And the man can't just hide behind the lie that, oh, it was an accident. It was an accident. Now, if you were talking bad about this guy to everyone else in town and people knew he had beef with him. They were going to say that this was murder. And capital punishment was the judgment for that.
So what is this about, right? This is about manslaughter and murder, these cities of refuge. But ultimately, it's about what happens with horrible accidents and God's justice, even with manslaughter and murder. And how would God mitigate that potential for injustice?
So that's what I think this is about. The best verse to summarize this. Well, I have in my Bible verse four underlined, but I think I probably better would be verse three. But I also do have verse 12 underlined about it. But if it's murder, what do you do? So maybe verse three and verse 12. But you could disagree with that. Feel free to write in the comments. Let me know. That's fine. Lassie calling. What are we called to do? Well, Do we still hold to justice? Are we slow to avenge blood? Are we careful to make sure there's a testimony of two or three witnesses? Do we know that God is a God of justice?
And that we also live in a fallen world, that there are times that horrible things happen and it's not anybody's fault. It's the definition of an accident. Yeah, God is sovereign, but sometimes there's tragic things that happen. There needs to be a system of justice set up that we can trust. That life is going to be preserved, but so is justice.
I think we're all somewhat and rightly so outraged in our society when we see people who have outright killed other people. It's not manslaughter, it's murder. And our criminal justice system puts them in jail for, you know, what, 15, 20 years, maybe 30 years, and then lets them out of prison. And the recidivism rate is pretty high. murder somebody else or hurt somebody else, injure somebody else.
And you wonder, why was this ever allowed to happen? We have to cry out to the God of justice. But we have to know in this life, there's always going to be injustices like this. There's always going to be mistakes. There's always going to be accidents and tragedies because we live in a fallen world. And so we look forward to that day when Jesus Christ, the just one, will come and make all things right again.
Let's pray. Father, we do pray for our own nation. We pray for our judges, that they would make just judgments. We pray for our legislature, that they would make just laws. We pray for our criminal justice system, that they would do justly. Lord, we pray for each of them, that they would know what is good and what is right, and that they would follow in accordance with your will. Lord, we pray that life would be upheld and preserved, both for those who are involved in tragic accidents, but also for those who would be victims of horrific violence. And for those, Lord, who are the family members who are robbed of loved ones because of violence. Lord, we pray pleading with you in our own country that you would give us justice. We pray in the churches that you would give elders wisdom with justice as well.
Father, please, we live in a fallen world. Help us to look unto you. or that we might cry out, Maranatha. Lord, please come quickly. In Jesus's name, amen. Well, may you know that the King of kings and the Lord of lords is a Lord of righteousness and justice and will someday come again to judge the living and the dead with perfect equity. Look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith. And I'll see you next time. Bye.