Numbers 35:9-21 Bible Study | Episode 830

December 13, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Numbers 35:9-21 Bible Study | Episode #830

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name. Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in numbers, chapter 35. Numbers, chapter 35. And we're dealing with what is known as cities of refuge. I just want to make a little announcement. Last night, for some reason, our Bible study, the Facebook app, just kept recording even after we'd left. So about 09:00, it was on 3 hours of recording, and you really couldn't go back and look at what had happened, and so you couldn't see the actual Bible study for some reason. And so the only way to fix it was to delete it. And so the Bible study last night was deleted. So we're not going to have that available for you because I really don't know why they did that. I'm. I just don't know. So it says sometimes you just. It's just technology. And I know my daughters and son in law, they know all about it, but I don't. And so I just have to operate with what knowledge I have. And that's why we come do Bible study, because I do have knowledge about that. I don't have great knowledge about how all these programs work, but I do navigate them as adeptly as I can. We are in studying the cities of refuge. The cities of refuge are really, really fun for me because I'm an attorney, and these are, there's some forerunners here of a lot of different aspects of the law. So for me, it's just one of those playgrounds that I just love to deal in, because as I study this, I see. Well, I just see that our legal system and its foundations were definitely biblical. Now, whether or not we modern day carry them out in biblical fashions, we definitely have a heritage of biblical faith that is inculcated in our judicial and legal system. And so it just is exciting for me over and over and over again to study it and think about it and look at it. And so the cities of refuge are interesting, both from a legal perspective, but they're also interesting from a biblical perspective and a prophetic perspective, because the cities of refuge deal with also one of the things that is in the Old Testament, and we're going to have to spend a few days on this. It says, then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when you cross into the land of Canaan, then you shall appoint cities to be cities of refuge for you. Now, they're going to be six of them. They're going to be six of them throughout Israel. And those cities are going to be places where you can run to or you can escape to from what is called the avenger of blood. And we'll get into that. But it says that the manslayer who kills any person accidentally may flee there. Now, as far as this goes, in Israel's time, the manslayer is someone who you, by some action, you take a kill somebody, but it is accidental, meaning it was not an intentional act. And I've talked to y'all before about mens rea, and how in order to have a crime, you have to have an action that is criminal, meaning defined by the law as wrong, a wrongful act. And then you have to have, in most criminal activities, you have to have a wrongful intent, or you have to have the mental state that is required. And there are different mental states in the law today, but you have to have the mental state required in the law to commit the act you desired to commit the act. Well, there are things that we can do both wrongfully and accidentally, that would kill someone. Let's say that I am driving my cardinal, and I look away, and the car in front of me stops really fast, and I hit the back of the car, and that causes someone in the car in front of me to be killed. Well, if I'm not speeding and if I'm not doing anything else, that would be wrong, meaning I'm not intoxicated, I'm not anything like that, then that would be. That would be a accidental death. That was not a wrongful death in any way. Sure, my actions or my inaction caused someone to die, but I did not have a wrongful intent, nor did I act wrongfully. I could look over to the side somebody and for just a second, and somebody in front of me slam on brakes or stop really fast, and me plow into them at 20 or 30 miles an hour faster than they were moving forward in their stopping, and I could have I could cause. Cause a death that way. That's not a wrongful act. Now, if I were doing something wrongfully, let's say I was speeding and someone else was going down the road at the right speed, and then they slow down to turn into their driveway, and I continue to be speeding 20, 30 miles an hour over the speed limit, and I plow into them from behind. Then I have committed a wrongful act which led to someone's death, and that would be. That would be some kind of negligent homicide, meaning I acted wrongfully. I was not. I was not. I did not have the intent to kill them, but my actions, which were not right, which had some wrongfulness to them, my actions caused their death. And so that's. That's kind of what we call manslaughter. Or in some places, it would be if you were committing a criminal act, which, by the way, speeding is a criminal act, or running the red light is a criminal act, or doing something like that is when I say criminal, it's not criminal in that it's a misdemeanor or felony, but it is a wrongful act, which caused someone's death, and that would be in the category of manslaughter. All right, that. That is what this is talking about. This is talking. That's not what this is talking about, by the way. That's not a wrongful act that causes someone to die. This is a wrong. This is a action with. Without any intent to do wrong and without any action that would be wrong. And someone gets killed, this is, you know, they slow down, and I'm looking away, and they get killed if that happens. You know how people are, and we know how people are. People are upset when family members die. The. The person who kills them, in the biblical understanding, would be a manslayer. Would be. They would have committed manslaughter. And that means that they killed somebody, but they didn't murder them. They didn't actively intend to murder them. And so families back then would have killed you for that. If they eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, they would have. They would have wanted to kill you. And the person that would represent the family would be the person who represented the family. And a lot of things that. That's the go well, and the Goel is the avenger of blood, and he goes and avenges the family for the death of that individual. And the way that would happen, if it's not in a city of refuge, is they would go and kill that person. He is also the kinsman, redeemer meaning he redeems kinsman back to God's promises. So you've got the Goel being both the avenger of blood and the kinsman redeemer. And so this manslayer who kills any person accidentally may flee to these cities of refuge. They shall be cities of refuge for you from the Avenger, that the manslayer may not die until he stands before the congregation in judgment. And this is another one of those sections that is. Is really good for me. This is the beginning of a jury system or a yemenite, a system of justice, where the weight of the evidence is going to be determined, not by a single person, not by priest, not by a king, not by a prophet in Old Testament terms, not by a judge, which, by the way, Moses acted as a judge and then appointed those to be judges in his place, not a judge. These are. These are issues that are determined by a group of people or by the congregation. It's determined by the people, and that is a hallmark or cornerstone of our judicial system today, that a jury of peers makes decisions about facts, the truth or the. Or the lack of truth of a factual situation. And so right here, you've got. You've got the manslaughter, you've got the refuge taking refuge in the law. You've got a picture of the forerunners of what we call our jury system and all that in just one little passage here. So you could see, as an attorney, I would really, really love this. It says, and the cities which you give, you shall have six. Six cities of refuge, meaning that it's not. It's not going to be impossible to find justice. It's not going to be impossible to seek a place where you can actually have justice. And so the sick cities would have been spread out all over Israel. They'd have been on both sides of the river, and they would have been places where you can go and seek justice when something terrible happens that you didn't intend to happen that way. And, you know, there's. There's. There's the opportunity to be heard, which is really, really important in the judicial system. In fact, that's another cornerstone of the judicial system, is not only that we take refuge in the law, but that we have an opportunity to be heard, that our side is rightly heard before some governmental entity that can decide whether or not what we say is true or not. And being able to be heard is not something that's common in most judicial systems. It says, in the cities which you give, you shall have six cities of refuge. You appoint three cities on the side of the Jordan. And three cities you shall point on the land of Canaanite, which will be the cities of refuge. And he says, these six cities shall be the refuge for the children of Israel. Notice they're the places to run to, to get, um, well, to get justice. He says, for the stranger and for the sojourner among you. Notice everybody gets a right to be heard. Not just, not just, um, uh, the people that we know, not just the people that are citizens of the nation. Not just, not just people that have influence and power. The stranger gets to be heard. Meaning if, even if they're not from your area, they're from northern Israel and they're down in southern Israel and they do something terrible, they get to be heard. Just because they're not known to you doesn't mean that they don't get the opportunity to be heard. And then the sojourner among you, meaning people who are aliens to Israel, they're not, they're not people that are a part of the body of the family of God, the body of Christ for the New Testament. They get to be heard too, the soldier among them. Those people get to be heard. Everyone gets a right to be heard in the city of refuge. Now that is a, these are hallmarks to our judicial system and make what we have as a system the best in the world, really one of the best systems in the world, because we allow for these things. We make sure that we have these things. So many times we complain about what we have and what we don't have or how things are going and we don't. We fail to recognize that we have pillars and cornerstones of strength that have been passed down for us, to us for, for 250 or even way farther back than that years of biblical, biblical foundation that God has allowed us to operate in. We should protect these things. We should always protect these things. We should always protect. Because it wasn't just the founding of our nation that started these things. They were passed down through british common law, they were passed down through biblical history, they were passed down through the church history, and they were passed down all the way through from the book of Genesis and even numbers. Numbers gives us things that allow us to see that we have a heritage of God's goodness, a heritage of order, a heritage of governmental systems that operate to our benefit and for our protection. And we should always recognize that they're important. They're really, really important for us and that they should be protected. They, they should, they should be allowed, I remember so many times growing up hearing people say they just ought to take him out and shoot him. Well, no, they shouldn't. This is not. This is not the wild, wild west. This is. This is a place of. Of justice and truth. And sure, should. Should there be the death penalty in certain situations? Well, the Bible says there should be a. And. And that there are situations where that is appropriate, but it should be appropriate after everyone is heard. And what, after a trier of fact determines that the facts in that case necessitate those actions. And it all comes from God. We didn't come up with these things. God came up with these things, and they are powerful and they are for our benefit. Three great institutions that God created, the family, which is the most important and should be always protected, the. The church or the body of God, the people of God. And those are really, really important, too, because they build up and strengthen the family, and they. They lead folks to a knowledge and understanding of God. And so we should do church well, and then government, which is to keep societal norms proper and right and cause us to live in harmony with each other, even if you're not a believer. And these, these things are spelled out in scripture, and God instituted them for us. And so we should always, always, always stand up for the protection. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today, in Jesus name.