Last week we were looking at the idea of bloodshed, of blood being spilled. Actually, the Bible has a lot to say about this. We found out that there must be vengeance for every person whose blood is spilt or shed in this world. There must be payment. There has to be satisfaction for that blood.
This goes right back to the very beginning when Cain slew Abel. Jesus says in the Gospel account of Matthew 23, “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar…all these things shall come upon this generation.” God means this.
We live at a time when people are being killed all the time, especially in Philadelphia which is one of the leading cities in the country for murders. We have even gotten to the point where it does not shock or surprise us. We read it in the newspaper or hear it on the news; it is everywhere. Everywhere, man is killing man because the nature of man since the fall into sin is to hate his brother and to slay him.
We read about this in a couple of places in Genesis 9 right after the flood. We read in Genesis 9:4-6:
But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
So God is just laying down the law. This is His commandment. Anyone who is slain, anyone who is physically murdered, the one who is guilty of that crime is to then have his life taken.
Sometimes people get away with this, and we recognize this and know this. People can kill others and they are never caught, or maybe they are not caught for many years later. But really, God is laying down a principle: if you have slain or murdered man, then your life is required. Even if it takes Judgment Day to get the satisfaction and to bring vengeance for that slaying, then that is what God will do. He will bring them into judgment and hold them accountable for that killing.
This is how it is concerning every physical murder in this world, but there is also spiritual murder. Actually, spiritual murder is far worse than physical murder, is it not? If a man kills another man physically, he just killed his body and that is a terrible thing. If he were saved or unsaved, now his destiny is sealed and he will either go to Hell or he will go to be with the Lord in Heaven. Murder is an awful thing, but it is far worse, far worse to kill someone spiritually with another kind of a gospel, and gospels kill.
People teach from the Bible. The Bible is the only way to salvation that there is in this world. It is through the hearing of the Gospel of the Bible that people can come to life and experience eternal life, as God blesses His Word to their hearts. But if people are teaching false gospels or other kinds of gospels, it is, for all intents and purposes, killing the hearers. They are killing those who are hearing that kind of a gospel, because false gospels provide no salvation. There is no way that God can bless gospels that have polluted the truth and turned God’s grace into works.
There is no way that God will bless those gospels so people are killing and murdering, not the body but the soul, and that actually is far worse than physical murder. God had both in view when He said, “Thou shalt not kill.” Of course, we are to not physically slay anyone. Also, we are to be as careful as possible with the message that we bring from the Bible so that an individual does not hear a corrupt message and have that lead to their spiritual death. Remember, it says in Revelation 6, “under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God” were crying out, “How long…dost thou not judge and avenge our blood?,” and God will bring vengeance upon their blood.
But in thinking about how God talks about “innocent blood” in the Bible and how He will require payment for all the blood shed, it makes you wonder and consider what God has to say about the person who slays someone accidentally—the individual who did not mean to kill someone. Someone was killed by accident; it was just something that happened, and this happens today as well as throughout history. Actually, God lays down some laws concerning a “manslayer,” someone who killed someone whom he did not mean to kill.
There are a lot of laws in the Bible concerning this kind of situation. If we go to Joshua 20:1-6, we read:
The LORD also spake unto Joshua, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, Appoint out for you cities of refuge, whereof I spake unto you by the hand of Moses: that the slayer that killeth any person unawares and unwittingly may flee thither: and they shall be your refuge from the avenger of blood. And when he that doth flee unto one of those cities shall stand at the entering of the gate of the city, and shall declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city, they shall take him into the city unto them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them. And if the avenger of blood pursue after him, then they shall not deliver the slayer up into his hand; because he smote his neighbour unwittingly, and hated him not beforetime. And he shall dwell in that city, until he stand before the congregation for judgment, and until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days: then shall the slayer return, and come unto his own city, and unto his own house, unto the city from whence he fled.
This is just one of several passages in the Bible that discusses the manslayer who killed a person unawares, where it was an accident. But what happened was that whoever he killed had family; they had near kinsman. The family would decide who would be this avenger of blood. That kinsman was then obligated to pursue the man who killed his kin. If he found him, he would kill him justly and legally in Israel, according to the Word of God.
We use the term “manslaughter” today but this is still a very similar expression to “manslayer,” and in the Bible, the avenger is sometimes called the “revenger of blood” and sometimes the “avenger of blood” but it is the same thing.
So if the avenger was to pursue this man and catch up to him, then he could kill him—except if this person could make it to a “city of refuge.” If this happened before the avenger caught him, he could have a reprieve.
Getting to the city did not mean that everything was then okay and that this person was then safe and secure. What it meant was that then the elders of the city were going to judge that person’s case. They were going to look at the evidence of what happened. They would see, “Well, you say that it was an accident.”
How many people have killed someone and tried to say that it was an accident? This is pretty common, even today. Especially today, people try to get away with murder all of the time. One way to do this is to say, “Well, I did not mean to shoot him. The gun just went off. It was an accident.”
So we do the same thing today. There is manslaughter. Evidence is gathered. A trial is arranged. There is a judge and a jury who try to decide, “Is this person guilty of murder, or is he telling the truth and that it was an accident?”
As far as these cities in Joshua 20, there were six “cities of refuge” in Israel. There were three on one side of the Jordan and three on the other side of the Jordan. That would be the total number of cities that God had appointed for refuge. We read in Joshua 20:7-9:
And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and Shechem in mount Ephraim, and Kirjatharba, which is Hebron, in the mountain of Judah. And on the other side Jordan by Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness upon the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh. These were the cities appointed for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth among them, that whosoever killeth any person at unawares might flee thither, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.
You can see that just getting to a city of refuge did not mean that they were safe and secure and that no one could harm them. When they got to the city, then they had to stand before the congregation and the elders who would listen to the case. Then at some point, they would pass judgment. They would say, “Okay, we believe you. It was an accident. You can now stay in the city. You are permitted to stay.”
In whatever city he fled to, he would be allowed to stay within the boundaries of that city and the revenger or avenger of blood would not be able to touch him. He would not be able to kill him. Legally, he would not be able to do anything. He could come up to the city and camp outside the city if he wanted to. He could set up a tent and he could watch and wait. Actually, if the manslayer did come out of the boundaries of the city, if he stepped foot outside of the boundaries of the city, even after the congregation believed that the death had been caused by an accident and permitted the person to stay, as soon as he stepped foot outside of the boundaries, then the avenger could kill him. He could shoot an arrow at him. He would then be guilty and subject to death, because he left the boundaries of the city of refuge.
This is why God calls it a “city of refuge.” As long as he stayed within the city, he was secure and safe. No one could kill him. He could live.
We also read in Number 35 some information about these cities of refuge. We read in Numbers 35:2-7:
Command the children of Israel, that they give unto the Levites of the inheritance of their possession cities to dwell in; and ye shall give also unto the Levites suburbs for the cities round about them. And the cities shall they have to dwell in; and the suburbs of them shall be for their cattle, and for their goods, and for all their beasts. And the suburbs of the cities, which ye shall give unto the Levites, shall reach from the wall of the city and outward a thousand cubits round about. And ye shall measure from without the city on the east side two thousand cubits, and on the south side two thousand cubits, and on the west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two thousand cubits; and the city shall be in the midst: this shall be to them the suburbs of the cities. And among the cities which ye shall give unto the Levites there shall be six cities for refuge, which ye shall appoint for the manslayer, that he may flee thither: and to them ye shall add forty and two cities. So all the cities which ye shall give to the Levites shall be forty and eight cities: them shall ye give with their suburbs.
This would be the total number of cities for the Levites. Remember, they did not have land like all of the other tribes. They dwelt within each of the tribes of Israel. They were the tribe that the priesthood came from. So it makes sense that within their 48 cities, six of them would be cities of refuge at various places scattered throughout Israel. That way, if anyone slew someone in Dan, they would have a near city of refuge. Or if anyone accidentally slew someone in Judah, they would have a near city of refuge to flee to.
God has really given us a lot of information about these cities of refuge. He actually gives us an example case of what He is talking about in Deuteronomy 19:2-6:
Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it. Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither. And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past; as when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the ax to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live: lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.
You can see that the example is two men, two neighbors. Living long ago, people did not have construction companies to build their homes. They had to build their own homes. In this example, they went out and they were cutting wood.
There were probably good craftsmen who developed good tools back then, because they did not have the machines that we have today. Even so, there could have been a problem after awhile of using an axe. No matter how they fashioned it and tied it together, after striking a tree so many times and doing this for years, something could start to loosen.
We also have another example of this in the Bible concerning the man who was cutting a tree near Jordan with a borrowed axe. He was cutting a tree and the axe head fell off and sank into the Jordan River. So this was something that could and did happen to the people of Israel.
Here, God is using an example of a situation where there was no evil intent at all. They could have even been best of friends. They went out into the woods and one of them is using an axe to cut deeply into a tree to fell the tree. All the while that he keeps hitting at the tree, the axe head is getting looser and looser. Then he pulls it out with a violent action with maybe his friend standing behind him and the axe head goes right off the helve and into the man behind him, hits him in the neck, cuts an artery, and he is dead. He is dead.
At this point, what was he to do? What was he to do? He did not mean to do it. He did this ignorantly. He did it unawares. He did not plan it. It was not a premeditated murder at all. It was just something that happened, so God said what he was to do was to run—run for his life. He was to run and escape to the city of refuge, because if he did not, the avenger of blood would soon be after him and kill him.
Is this fair? Is this just? It was an accident! He did not mean to do it. Yet one thing that I think that we will learn from looking at the city of refuge is that sin is sin. Sin is sin, whether you meant to sin or did not mean to sin does not matter. Sin is the breaking of the Law of God. It is transgressing the Law of God, and all sin has to be paid for. It has to be accounted for, so God has a Law. He does have something in place so that this man can flee to the city of refuge. Once inside the city, he will be safe—safe. It is conditional however. It is conditional because he has to stay within the boundaries of the city. Also, he has to wait for the death of the high priest before he could ever leave that city, before he could ever step foot outside the boundaries of the city of refuge.
This is not exactly the same thing, but remember when Shimei, a man from the tribe of Benjamin, cursed David? David said, “Let him alone, and let him curse.” David’s own son was after him, so how was he going to say anything about this Shimei?
Later when David’s son Solomon became king, David mentioned Shimei to Solomon and said, “Thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him.” Solomon’s judgment concerning Shimei was that he was to stay within the city of Jerusalem. He was told to not leave the city of Jerusalem, “For it shall be, that on the day thou goest out…thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die.”
Jerusalem was not one of the cities of refuge, but it is actually very similar; it is the same idea. Solomon laid down the law that if Shimei wanted to live and continue in this life, he was to never leave the city. Shimei listened to this and the Bible says that he “dwelt in Jerusalem many days.”
But then the Bible tells us “at the end of three years, that two of the servants of Shimei ran away unto Achish.” They were probably thinking that they could get away because their master, Shimei, could not leave the city; he was stuck there. The servants probably thought that they could flee from him and get away with it.
We can just imagine the kind of master that Shimei could be after the things that he had said to David. He would not have been a very good person to work for, and Shimei valued his servants because it was money to him.
The Bible tells us, “Shimei…saddled his ass…and Shimei went, and brought his servants from Gath.” However someone told Solomon that he had “gone from Jerusalem,” so Solomon called for Shimei. Then Solomon reminded him that he had commanded that he not leave the city and that the time that he left the city, he would die—and this is what happened. Shimei forfeited his life for leaving the city of Jerusalem.
This is the picture that God is giving us with the city of refuge. We are safe as long as we stay in the city. The thing that we wonder about is why God is emphasizing so much that a man killed another man, unawares, unwittingly and ignorantly. These are the three words that God uses to describe the manslayer who killed someone without foreknowledge.
We also find in Leviticus 4:27-28:
And if any one of the common people sin through ignorance, while he doeth somewhat against any of the commandments of the LORD concerning things which ought not to be done, and be guilty; or if his sin, which he hath sinned, come to his knowledge: then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he hath sinned.
Do you see what God said? If anyone sinned through ignorance and was guilty of breaking the Law of God, then they had to offer up the sacrifice because all sin must be paid for.
I guess an example today might be when we are in our car and driving 50 in a 25 mile-per-hour zone. Of course, I do not know how much of a sin of ignorance this is. But if someone did not know the speed limit and was just shooting down the road, he broke the law because the speed limit was a lot lower than he was going, so the police pull him over. He got caught so he tells the police, “I am sorry. I did not see the sign.” Maybe there was a tree blocking the sign. For whatever reason, he did not see the sign.
Is the officer going to say, “Oh, you did not know,” and put away his ticket book? Maybe occasionally this might happen, but actually the officer should not do this. The officer should not do this. He should write a ticket because this man broke the law, even though he did not know. So the police officer tells him, “Even though you were not aware of the speed limit, you broke the law.”
This is the same with all of our laws today. There is no excuse. There is no way that you can go to court and say something like, “I did not know that breaking and entering was illegal.” Whatever transgression it may be, you can not say, “I did not know. I was not aware.” The judge is going to find you guilty. He is going to look at the evidence and he is going to say, “Whether you knew it or not, you broke the law and you are guilty for breaking the law.”
This is the problem. We tend to think that sins of ignorance will be forgivable or overlooked or unpunished by God because we did not know. We did not know the Law of God. For many years as I grew up, I did not know that Sunday was the Sabbath. I did not know this and I am sure that a lot of people here did not know that Sunday was the Sabbath. I remember a lot of Sundays watching football and baseball or being out in the street and playing ball. I did this not knowing that Sunday is the Lord’s Day, that it is God’s Day and that it is a Holy Day, yet this was sin.
Whatever transgressions I did over the years on Sunday, on God’s Day, was sin. Whether I knew this or not, unless this sin is paid for, God will hold me accountable on Judgment Day. Of course, this is where salvation and the Lord Jesus comes in because He pays for every one of His elect’s sins.
But there are sins, especially when we are maybe not that familiar with the Bible, that can be more and more sins of ignorance because we do not know the specifics of God’s laws. When we learn them, we see, “Oh, I was sinning when I was doing that. I was really in sin and I did not even know it.”
This has to do with what God says in Ephesians 4:17-18:
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
So man is in spiritual darkness. He is spiritually blind. He lives his life thinking that all is well, yet it is sin upon sin. It is sin upon sin, because he is going contrary to numerous laws of God that he is not consciously aware of. Some of God’s laws God writes on individual’s hearts, so deep-down man knows that he should not murder or commit adultery. But there are laws that God gives more information about in the Bible, yet people are ignorant of them; they are in darkness. Regardless, God is saying that all sin has to be paid for. Whether you knew it was sin or whether you did not know it was sin, it does not matter.
Let us go to another verse in the New Testament, because this really shows how some people believe that sins of ignorance are not really sinful or as sinful as other sins. In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul was in Greece and he was witnessing the Gospel. There were a bunch of philosophers there whom he had gotten into a discussion with. They had a statue to an unknown God, and we read in Acts 17:23:
…Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
The world has a very vague idea and they are in darkness as to who God is. So we have nations and religions that develop false gods, idols made of wood and stone and gold and silver. People ignorantly worship these false gods. They do it out of ignorance, out of not knowing, at least consciously, the truth of the Word of God.
Then a little further on, we read in Acts 17:29-30:
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at…
“God winked at”—is that not something? They were worshipping idols, and we read that God just “winked” at it.
We know how we use this expression today, and I think that it comes from a verse like this. It is like a corrupt policeman or a corrupt judge who sees criminal activity, yet he looks the other way and winks at it. He is part of this so he is going to overlook it and not try to make an arrest in any way.
Yet we know that there is something wrong with this kind of understanding. We know this because God tells us that man is accountable for every transgression, as we read in James 2:10:
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
God is a very jealous God for His Law and for His commandments. Mankind is required to walk within His Law perfectly, or else it is sin. There is no excuse. So why does it say, “the times of this ignorance God winked at”?
Well, the word “winked” is found only here in the New Testament. This is the only place that we find this word. By the way, as I was looking this up in the Strong’s Concordance, I read that it said that it means to “overlook, not punish.”
If you can remember, check out this word in your Concordance. When you see Strong’s definition for it, cross it out. Cross it out; it is completely wrong to say that God will overlook sin and that He will not punish sin. This is a very, very grievous error, and it is a wrong idea. God always must deal with the sins of man, so what does it mean?
Well, the Greek word for “winked” is made up of two Greek words; it is a compound word, “hupereido.” “Huper” is a word that means “above, beyond.” “Eido” is a word that means “know, look.”
So when we look at how these words are used and when we put them together, we get a better idea. “And the times of this ignorance,” man’s idolatrous worship, “God (looked beyond).” He looked beyond. He did not overlook it. He did not say that He was not going to punish it. He looked beyond it.
What is He looking to? Look at Acts 17:31:
Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness…
So God is not saying that if a man is worshipping Buddha, it does not bother Him or that He is not concerned about it because that man is living in darkness and is in ignorance since the Gospel has not reached him. No, God is not saying that they are therefore not accountable for their sins. He is saying that He sees the sins of man. He sees the sins of those who worship idols, but He is looking beyond them to Judgment Day when vengeance will be His and when He will hold man accountable for their transgressions of His Law.
In other words, God sees their sin but He is not going to destroy them now. He is going to look beyond that sin to the Day of Judgment when He will pour out His wrath upon man for every one of those transgressions, even though that man was ignorant of much of the Law of God. So this is the way that we have to understand the idea that man is ignorant. It does not provide a way out for the sinner.
We also read in 1 Timothy another verse that can give people trouble about this idea of sinning ignorantly. In 1 Timothy 1, the Apostle Paul is giving an account of his past life. We read in 1 Timothy 1:13:
Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
What does this sound like? It sounds like Paul is saying that he obtained mercy for all his sins of hailing men and women and casting them into prison and being there when Stephen was stoned and consenting unto his death, and all of the other evil things he did as he lived zealous for the Law and zealous for Israel but not zealous for the truth of God’s Word when he lived in times past. It sounds like Paul is saying that he obtained mercy because he did these things ignorantly.
This can not be how it sounds because then everyone could say, “God, you have to be merciful to me because I did not know.” It would be far better then not to hear the Gospel. It would be far better not to hear the Word come into your town, because then everyone could obtain mercy since they are just living their lives in total ignorance. They would then experience salvation.
No, it does not mean this. What it means is that man does sin, at least initially, in ignorance of many of God’s laws, even though God’s laws are written on his heart, and therefore, because man sins ignorantly, he is qualified as a sinner to be a recipient of God’s grace. In other words, Paul did not sin willfully.
Do you remember the sin that God talks about where there is a willful sin that there is no forgiveness for, no possibility? That sin has to do with the end of the Church Age and what is going on today, because there is no more salvation in the churches and congregations.
So the Apostle Paul is just saying, under the inspiration of God, that God had mercy on him in the darkness of his mind as he lived in ignorance of the truth of the Gospel, just like God could have mercy on anyone else who sins ignorantly. It would not mean that everyone who sins ignorantly would become a child of God or experience mercy.
Let us turn back to Joshua 20:3:
That the slayer that killeth any person unawares and unwittingly may flee thither: and they shall be your refuge from the avenger of blood.
You see, God is basically saying that this slayer is a picture of a sinner, because all men sin in ignorance. He broke the Law of God in killing a person in ignorance, yet there is a way of escape, there is a way of salvation. If you can flee to a city of refuge, then there is a possibility that your life can be spared.
The “avenger of blood” is really a description of God Himself, because who is the One who is greatly offended? Who is our “near kinsman”?
Jesus qualifies as this. He is the One who pursues man because of man’s transgression against the Law of God, and it is God who is going to kill us eternally in Hell with the second death if He catches us outside of the city of refuge. Of course, we know that when God is talking about the “city of refuge,” it has to be Christ. It has to be the Lord Jesus Christ. It can not be anything else.
But does not the Bible say that you have to remain in the city and that you can not ever leave the city and that there is also a possibility that you can still come under judgment and that you can still die if you leave the city? Yet the Bible tells us that when we become saved, we have eternal life and we can never lose our salvation. We can never die, once we are a child of God. So how can we understand these things?
We just have to learn what God means by “city” and what He means by “the avenger of blood,” all of these terms that He is using. Actually for today, why do we not just look at the solution of what God is saying? Then maybe at another time we can go a little bit more into this whole idea of the city of refuge.
We read in Joshua 20:6, it says:
And he shall dwell in that city, until he stand before the congregation for judgment, and until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days: then shall the slayer return, and come unto his own city, and unto his own house, unto the city from whence he fled.
So if we stay in the city until the death of the high priest, once the high priest dies, we can leave and go back home and go back to the land of our possession. This is a picture of salvation.
Let us also go to Numbers 35:26-28, where it says:
But if the slayer shall at any time come without the border of the city of his refuge, whither he was fled; and the revenger of blood find him without the borders of the city of his refuge, and the revenger of blood kill the slayer; he shall not be guilty of blood: because he should have remained in the city of his refuge until the death of the high priest: but after the death of the high priest the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.
Also, Numbers 35:32:
And ye shall take no satisfaction for him that is fled to the city of his refuge, that he should come again to dwell in the land, until the death of the priest.
So God is indicating and saying that the sinner, who in ignorance and in the blindness of his heart has comment sin, may flee to the city of refuge and find temporary safety. He can stay in that city once the elders pass judgment and the congregation passes judgment that he accidentally killed and that it was not murder. He can stay there, conditionally, until the death of the high priest. Then he can be free to go.
Remember, the Bible tells us in 2 John to abide in Christ, to abide “in the doctrine of Christ.” What God is basically saying is that when you find out and when you gain knowledge of your sin, where previously you were in ignorance, and now you have learned that you broke the Law and that you have to escape and run, run to Christ and flee to the Lord Jesus who is the “city of refuge.”
How do we do that? There is no actual city today in Israel that God has assigned as a city of refuge. The city is spiritually Christ Himself, so we flee to the “city” and we flee to the Word of God. As long as we stay within the boundaries of the Scriptures, there is safety and there is refuge. This would be abiding in Christ and keeping His commandments, and it would be giving evidence that we are a child of God.
But the moment that we put even a toe outside of the boundary of the Word of God and outside of the boundary of the Gospel that God has given us, then we are subject to the revenger of blood and we are just as guilty as anyone else in the world for our sins.
There is no deceiving God. He will judge anyone who does not remain in the Lord Jesus Christ, who does not remain in the Gospel of the Bible. We have to have the true Gospel of the Bible. So we stay in the boundaries of the Word of God. You stay within the truth of the Scriptures until the High Priest dies for you, until the High Priest has passed away, until the Lord Jesus Christ has saved you, until He has given you a new heart and a new Spirit and has applied His death to your soul so that you can now be a child of God.
This is why it says in Numbers 35:32:
And ye shall take no satisfaction…
In the previous verse, it spoke about a murderer being put to death, but:
And ye shall take no satisfaction for him that is fled to the city of his refuge…until the death of the priest.
The death of the High Priest is the satisfaction for his crime, for his killing, for his accidental slaying of his neighbor. Again, this is pointing to the death that Christ died for His people. Then there can be freedom and then you can return to the land. You can enter into the Kingdom of God. You can enter into Heaven itself.
We will stop here and maybe we can come back to this and look a little bit more at the city of refuge at another time.