All right, we're going to look
at Numbers 35, the first few verses concerning the subject
of Christ, our refuge. Now, you know how, you know,
the book of Numbers, it's called Numbers because it has to do
with a census, making a record of the tribes
of the children of Israel. The reason that was important
is because They wanted a record of each one and God's purpose
in it was to make sure that we understand that Christ eventually,
the humanity of Christ would come through the tribe of Judah.
And so these tribes, even though it was one nation, they were
set up separately. And before Joshua was to lead
the children of Israel into the Promised Land, I'm gonna talk
about that next week, about Joshua, a type of Christ, and how Moses
was forbidden to lead them into the Promised Land. And you know
why, I won't get into that this morning. But Joshua led them
in, because Joshua was a type of Christ. But before Joshua
led him into the promised land, the Lord commanded Moses how
to arrange the tribes. As they were going through the
wilderness, the tabernacle was at the center. And then he arranged
the tribes. And then he also spoke of how
the tribes, when they got into the promised land, how they would be arranged, and
that each tribe was to be given a parcel of land, a territory
that they were to develop and occupy. And all the tribes had
this except for one, and that was the tribe of Levi. And they
were the priest, and they didn't have land that they were to develop.
Their job was to take care of the tabernacle. and all the duties
of the tabernacle, and that was a daily business. It wasn't just
on Sunday or on Saturday or one time a year, it was daily. And the other tribes were, this
is where the tithe comes in, the other tribes were to give
a tenth of everything, not just money, to support the priestly
tribe, the Levi. But the Lord did tell Moses to
give, the tribes of Levi, the people of Levi, certain cities,
and I think I've got it written down here, they were given like,
I don't remember how many cities, they were not given land, they
were given 48 cities. And they were to go through these
cities and they would do their work. for the people in those
cities, and six of these cities were designated as cities of
refuge. And if you look at it, verse
one, Lord spoken to Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan
near Jericho saying, command the children of Israel that they
give unto the Levites of the inheritance of their possession,
cities to dwell in. You shall also give also unto
the Levites suburbs for the cities round about them where they would
occupy and the cities shall they have to dwell in and the suburbs
of them Shall be for their cattle for their goods and for all their
beasts as this was the things that were given to them by the
other tribes And the suburbs of the cities, which you shall
give unto the Levites shall reach from the wall of the city and
outward a thousand cubits round. And you shall measure from without
the city on the east, 2000 cubits." And he goes on through that.
Verse six, look at verse six. He says, among the cities, which
you shall give the Levites, there shall be six cities for refuge. which you shall appoint for the
manslayer. Now a manslayer was one who unintentionally
killed somebody else. And he says that he may flee
thither. That's this, if a person unintentionally
killed someone. You know, the old covenant law
stated clearly that premeditated murder was to be judged worthy
of death, capital punishment. And let me tell you something,
people talk about that today, about capital punishment, and
they say, well, it doesn't deter crime. Well, it does, but that
wasn't the purpose of it. The purpose of it was justice. The punishment fits the crime.
So under the old covenant, if somebody with malice aforethought
murdered somebody else, there was no escape from the death
penalty. But this, these cities of refuge, were for those who
killed someone unintentionally. Now, you know, people say accidental
murder. We don't believe there's anything
such as accidents, but it was unintentional murder. And verse
six says, and to them you shall add 40 and two cities. So you
had six cities of refuge and 42 cities, 48, that the Levites
could occupy. They didn't have a parcel of
land now, but they could occupy that. And verse seven says, so
all the cities which you shall give to the Levites shall be
40 and eight, them shall you give with their suburbs, and
the cities which you shall give shall be of the possession of
the children of Israel. From them that have many you
shall give many, but from them that have few you shall give
few. Everyone shall give of his cities unto the Levites according
to his inheritance which he inherited. So there's the situation. Now,
beginning in verse nine, he starts talking about the system that
he set up. And listen to this, verse nine,
he says, and the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, speak unto the
children of Israel, saying to them, when you come over Jordan
into the land of Canaan, then you shall appoint cities to be
cities of refuge for you. that the slayer may flee thither
which killeth any person at unawares. That means unintentionally. This
is not premeditated murder. So the crime here is what we
call today manslaughter. Not murder, but manslaughter.
And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger.
This is verse 12. That the manslayer die not until
he stand before the congregation in judgment. In other words,
there was to be a judgment, and the judgment was to determine,
was it really unintentional? That's what they wanted to know.
And if it was, he says, and of these cities, which you shall
give six cities, you have for refuge, you shall give three
cities on this side of Jordan, now three of them were in the
actual promised land, and three cities you shall give in the
land of Canaan on the other side. And what that showed is that
he was making this easier for a manslayer to get to a city
of refuge. In other words, this was not
something that they had to turn on Google Maps to find, all right? It was easy. And he says in verse
15, these six cities shall be refuge both for the children
of Israel and for the stranger, that is a foreigner who had come
into the land, for the sojourner, the traveler for them, that everyone
that killeth any person unawares may flee thither. And that's
the law of the city of Redfield. So the manslayer, if he unintentionally
killed someone, he could flee. You see the family, what we call
the revenger of blood. Now what that was, it was a male
relative or relation to the one who was killed, and he could
kill the person who unintentionally killed his relative. That was
the law of God under the old covenant. This wasn't vigilante
justice now. This wasn't a mob, a lynch mob.
If somebody unintentionally killed somebody else, that person who
was killed, the male relative who was responsible for them,
for their family, could go and kill them. That was God's justice. But the only out for the manslayer
was to flee to one of these cities of refuge. And if he got in that
city, he was safe. The Avenger of Blood could not
touch him. And what happened here, as long as the person stayed
in one of those cities, he was safe until he could be tried
and a judgment was made by the court that he actually did this
unintentionally. And if it was determined that
he did it unintentionally, he could stay in that city of refuge.
And there's one other thing that we read as, and this is in different
parts of the Old Testament, and I didn't wanna turn to all these
verses, but I've got many of them marked on your lesson so
that you can look at them yourself. But he could stay there safely,
and the only way he could get out of that city of refuge and
not be killed was when whoever was the current high priest at
that time, When that high priest died, they'd let him go and he
could go back to his own land. Isn't that interesting? And so
if the attacker left the city of refuse before the death of
the high priest, the avenger had the right to kill him. And
you can read about that on down in the book of Numbers here,
Numbers 35. Well, here's the bottom line. These cities of
refuse obviously are types of Christ. Because where in the
world, and you say, well now, our sins, and I'm gonna talk
about this in just a moment, but our sins, we commit sins,
we're sinners, we commit unintentional sins, we commit intentional sins.
All sin deserves death. But the only refuge that we have
from the avenger of blood, which represents the law of God, is
to flee to Christ. Over in the book of Hebrews,
in chapter six, we read about this. It says that all those
who are in Christ, he describes them this way in verse 18, talking
about two immutable things, that's God's promise and God's oath
in the gospel through Christ. in which it was impossible for
God to lie that we might have strong consolation, strong comfort,
strong safety, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the
hope set before us, and that's Christ. He is our refuge. Well, let me give you these details.
First of all, number one, the sin here is manslaughter, not
premeditated murder. But the crime, the point of this
is this, the crime is no less worthy of death than any sin. Somebody says, well, I committed
this sin, but I didn't do it intentionally. It's still worthy
of death. Sin demands death, that's the point. All sin deserves
death. We have all sinned and come short
of the glory of God. A person has been killed here,
and the law's been broken. So it's sin, and sin is sin even
if it's committed unknowingly and all sin deserves death. Strict
justice must be satisfied in every case. God is a God of justice
and he cannot look over sin. I think about that psalm, I didn't
put it in your lesson here, but I can't remember exactly which
psalm it is. But it talks about how God, hath not dealt with
us, his people in Christ, he hath not dealt with us after
our sins. And I always point out when I
read that verse, notice it doesn't say God hath not dealt with our
sins. He has dealt with our sins. He
dealt with them in the person of Christ as they were imputed
to him on the cross, imputed to him and he went to the cross
and died for those sins. So God dealt with our sins on
Calvary. He put them away by the blood
of his son. But he hadn't dealt with us after
our sins, in that sense. That's the glory of it. And why? Because we fled to the refuge,
Christ Jesus. And so Christ provides refuge. from these things, and it's to
him alone we have to run to find refuge. He's our city of refuge.
There's only one city of refuge spiritually. All these six cities
represent Christ. Now the second thing is this,
the avenger of blood, what does he represent? He represents God's
law, which demands justice. Justice must be done. And again,
the fact is, we're all sinners, we're all transgressors of the
law, and no obedience that we can muster or try can get us
out of this mess of what we're in. There's none righteous, there's
none good. By deeds of law shall no flesh
be justified. And I always say, if the Lord
were to give any of us what we've earned or what we deserve, it
would be eternal damnation. Why? Because sin demands death. Only righteousness demands life. Where are we gonna find righteousness?
In Christ, our refuge. He is the Lord, our righteousness.
Here's the third thing. The sinner here is the manslater
who has become aware of his sin. He knows he killed somebody,
whether accidentally or what, as they say, unintentionally. And that illustrates how the
Holy Spirit in the new birth makes every one of God's elect
aware that we're sinners, we're depraved, we're spiritually dead. He convicts us of sin because
we believe not on Christ, of righteousness because he goes
to the father of judgment. Lord, if thou, Lord, shouldest
mark iniquities, who of us would stand? There's the point. And this manslayer, he knows
that he's done the deed. whether unintentionally or not,
and that's us. When God the Holy Spirit opens
our eyes, we see what sin really is. We see what we really deserve
and what we need. Like that old publican, God be
merciful to me, the sinner. And here's the fourth thing.
The cities of refuge represent God's mercy and grace, sovereignly,
freely, fully provided and given to his people in and by Christ.
That's what they represent. Because again, in Christ, we
find safety, we find security. In Christ, we find justice satisfied
by his death as represented in the death of the high priest.
Remember the manslayer could stay in that city, he was safe,
and the only way he could get out is the death of the high
priest. Well, that's us. The only way we can get out of
the mess we're in is by the death of our great high priest, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Seeing them, we have a great
high priest who has passed through into the heavens. Christ is our
high priest, he's our altar, he's our sacrifice, he's our
righteousness. And when he died, that set us
free from any obligation to the penalty of the law that we'd
broken. And so as long as we're in Christ,
he's our refuge. And how long are we gonna be
in Christ? Forever and ever. As long as we're in Christ, God's
mercy abides. God's grace and his love abides.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. God
cannot and will not impute sin to us. Who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. Who
can condemn us? It's Christ that died. You see,
those are all the realities of our city of refuge. Now, there
were six cities, and on the back of your lesson, the names of
these cities are revealed in the book of Joshua. Chapter 20. And listen to what they are.
Every one of these cities, the name represents some blessing,
some benefit that we have in Christ. The first one was Kiddush,
and that means holy place. And sometimes it can mean righteousness.
Christ is our holy place. He's the holy one of Israel.
He's the holy one of God. He is our holiness. He is our
sanctification, and He's our righteousness. He was made sin
for us, Christ who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. In Him we have the perfection
of the righteousness of the law, and the law cannot touch us.
We're dead to the law, Romans 6 says. We're free from the law.
What does that mean? Does that mean that we can go
out and sin as much as we want? No, it means we cannot be condemned.
for our sins. We're justified, we're forgiven
on a just ground, the blood of Christ. We're righteous in God's
sight based upon his righteousness imputed. That's what Kiddush
tells us. The next city is Shechem. And
Shechem means shoulder. Has to do with strength. Christ
is our strength, he's our power. But when I see that word shoulder,
I think about Isaiah 9, 7. You remember in Isaiah 9, 6,
for unto us a child is born, a son is given, and his name
shall be called Wonderful, Mighty Counselor, and all of that. And
it says in verse 7, and the government was upon his shoulder. And what
does that tell us about Christ? That means all the conditions
and qualifications and stipulations and requirements of my whole
salvation was placed squarely on his shoulders and not mine. That's what grace is all about.
Christ carries the burden and he's able to do so. He's powerful. He's the son of God incarnate.
And He is invincible, He's impeccable, and He's able to save to the
uttermost them that come unto the Father by Him. All the conditions
were laid upon Him, and He fulfilled all those conditions. And not
only does He save us, He keeps us, He preserves us. As we're
going through this life, you know, so many things that seem
to put us down, that seem to defeat us. But what did Christ
say? He said, in the world, you'll
have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world.
It's on his shoulders. And I think about, you know,
you see these pictures. I don't like these pictures of Jesus.
I don't like them at all, because nobody knows what he looked like.
But I did see one years ago where it had what they called Jesus
with a lamb on his shoulder. And spiritually, that's it, isn't
it? Christ has taken us and picked
us up off the dunghill of sin and put us on his shoulder, and
he carries us through. The next city, the third one,
is Hebron, which means fellowship. And what is that talking about?
Well, in Christ, we're brought into an eternal, unchangeable
fellowship with the Godhead. Second Peter 1.4 talks about
being partakers of the divine nature. Well, what is the divine
nature? That's God. And that word partaker
means fellowship, and it's through Christ, in whom all the promises
of God are yea and amen, that we're brought into fellowship
with God and fellowship with one another. First John says
our fellowship is with the Father and the Son. That fellowship
was broken in the garden when Adam fell. He was alienated from
God. And when we're born into this
world, we're born in a state of alienation in our mind by
wicked works, the scripture says. But when we see the glory of
Christ, what do we do? We run to the city of refuge. We run to Hebron, you could say.
And we're brought into fellowship with the Father and the Son and
the Spirit. We who once, as the apostle Paul
wrote, we who were once afar off have been brought nigh by
the blood of Christ. See, that's the blessing. And
then the fourth city is Bezer, or Bezer, however you want to
pronounce it. And that means stronghold. It means fortress,
a fortified place. And what does, in the book of
Nahum, this verse, Nahum 1 7, the Lord is good, a stronghold
in the day of trouble, and he knoweth them that trust in him.
He is our stronghold. He is our refuge. He is our hiding
place. He's the rock of ages. He's our
foundation. He's our chief cornerstone. He's
our hiding place. God has put us in the cleft of
the rock. And nothing, even though we might
suffer, we might go through trials and temptations, nothing can
separate us from his love. Nothing can condemn us. And so
that's Bezer, Bezer. And then the fifth city is Ramoth,
which means exalted. Has to do with heights. And because
of Christ's work of redeeming us on the cross, he himself is
exalted to the right hand of the Father, ever living, to make
intercession for us. And he exalted us. We're risen with him. We're in
him. And the scripture teaches that.
It teaches that when he died, we died. When he was buried,
we were buried. When he arose again, we arose. When he ascended,
we ascended. Not personally, but legally,
representatively, in the person of Christ. And then the last
city is Golan, G-O-L-A-N. And that means joy. It means
exaltation. We joy in God through Christ
Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord always and
again rejoice You know there's so many times in our lives where
we're unhappy for one reason or another But we can always
rejoice in Christ looking to him. He'll never disappoint He'll
never leave us in the as old Bunyan used to say the slew of
despond He'll never leave us there I know that from experience,
you do too. You've had experiences in your
life where there's been great, great sorrow. And there's probably
more to come. But he'll never leave us there
because there's always joy in him. And so we enter in to the
joy of the Lord. That's spoken when Christ spoke
of the judgment. When we stand before God clothed
in the righteousness of Christ. And that'll be declared before
the whole universe, and he'll say, enter into the joy. Well,
we won't turn over there, but over in Deuteronomy 19, there
are some laws that are spelled out in more detail than we have
here in numbers concerning the cities of refuge. And one of
the things that Deuteronomy 19 teaches us is that God told Joshua,
And this came through Moses, even though Moses didn't go over
into the promised land. To assign individuals, men, to
keep the roads to the city of refuge clear. Prepare the way
to the cities, he said. What does that mean? That means
pave. Now they didn't have blacktop back then, or asphalt. So what
does it mean they paved the road to the city? I know, I think
it's in one of the Revelation verses, which talks about a paved
road. In other words, the way's made
clear. We don't have to work on it. We don't have to fill
in the potholes or anything like that. It's already a done deal. Christ has already paved the
way to God. And in Deuteronomy 19, I've got that listed here.
You can read it yourself. He says, prepare the way to these
cities. Keep the roads clear. Keep all obstructions off of
them so that a manslayer who's guilty of the crime can get there
without hindrance. And you know what that is? That's
a picture of a gospel preacher or a gospel witness. Point sinners
to Christ. That's what we do. And don't
clutter up the way with legalism and works and free willism and
progressive sanctification as they say. Don't clutter it up
with all the things that men and women try to bring. You know,
you got to do this, you got to jump over this hurdle, you got
to crawl under that ditch. Don't do that. Just preach, as
Paul called it in 2 Corinthians 11, the simplicity that's in
Christ. It's all in Him, the glory of
His person, the power of His finished work. Preach the gospel,
be instant, in season, out of season. Let's just talk about
Christ. Somebody said, well, let's talk
about us. Well, I have talked about us. We're sinners. Some old preacher said one time,
he said, well, what part do you have in salvation? He said, well,
I've done all the sinning, Christ done all the saving. And that's
it. The psalmist wrote, the Lord
also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in time of
trouble. Flee to the refuge that's set
before us. And everything else, get out
of the way. Brother Mahan used to say that. He said, preach
Christ and then get out of the way. Just point to Christ. Okay, that's it.