Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Deuteronomy 19:1-13

City shall send and take him from there and hand him over to the avenger of blood so that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel so that it may be well with you.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we do love you. We wish to understand your commandments as they apply to us. We wish to understand this word, Father. Now, in your love for us, may your Holy Spirit teach this word to us, illumine our understanding of our minds to it and open our hands to obey it in Jesus name we ask it.

Amen. Please be seated.

Erin Colby would like to know what translation we’re using. The translation we just used for the unison reading of Deuteronomy 5, the Ten Commandments there was the New King James Version. And you’ll notice again this Sunday, we didn’t read the ands that connect the last four commandments to the sixth commandment. The and is translated neither in the King James version and in the ESV version it’s translated and.

So both the King James and the ESV agree that it should be there and a conjunction of some sort, neither and whatever it is that ties them together in a way that Exodus 20 version of the Ten Commandments don’t. So that’s why I said last week. It’s quite important to understand that the King James version, the textual tradition behind it as well as the ESV ties these commandments together. Unfortunately, I have no idea why the New King James didn’t, but last week we were using the ESV.

And that’s what I typically preach from now is the ESV, although I compare it to the King James and New King James. Translation is important and we saw last week that in terms of the sixth word the word translated kill or murder is a word that is used in very specific ways in the Old Testament. It’s not the general word for kill. Neither is it the word for murder with premeditation. Rather, it’s a word that can apply to either murder or to unintentionally slaying a man.

Very important because what it does there is therefore not just command us not to murder somebody. It commands us to guard life, to be careful, not to inadvertently even produce harm to a human, an image bearer of God, not to take his life inadvertently either, although there’s provision made for that. This is the grace of God’s law to us, right? The sixth word in grace. How does the commandments give grace to us?

Well, they are grace. They tell us how to structure our lives together and how to properly value things and what things to be careful not to do and what things to be careful to do. And so, this is the grace of God to us. And we now live in a culture that has rejected God’s grace, seeks some sort of humanistic grace, and thus has moved away from the clear penalty given in the text today, the death penalty for those who intentionally murder someone else.

Now, we’re going to now be talking for the next few weeks about this portion of Deuteronomy, which is Moses’ sermon, the portion of his sermon specifically on the sixth word. And commentators are agreed on this particular section that it goes from 19:1 through 22:8 generally that’s seen to be the boundary markers for this and that’s what we’ll be looking at in the next few weeks. Today we start with the first of those.

Now it’s interesting that if you remember back to when we talked about Moses sermon on the fifth word honoring parents he began by talking about the appointment of judges and rulers in the cities and in the country. He established courts. And so immediately he showed us the application of the fifth commandment to civil rulers and to ecclesiastical rulers because both civil rulers, judges and priests were talked about in that section.

Well, here in the sixth word, then he talks about how these courts are to function and operate and specifically in reference to inadvertent killing of men or to deliberate slaying of men as well. So, what I’ve given you on your handouts today is an overview of these a little over three chapters of Moses sermon as he articulates and expounds the sixth word. And you can see there that at the head of your first page is an outline by James B. Jordan.

He sees these sections as first relating to violence and we will next week I have a little bit of a tease on the cover of your order of worship today. We’re not actually we’re not actually going to be talking about Naboth today. But we will be talking about him next week. And when we talk about assault by tongue and so you know the relationship of sins of the tongue to the sixth word is talked about in the second half of chapter 19.

Then there’s a whole chapter on war, a chapter on violence and persons and then some very specific uh laws at the end of that section concluding with chapter 22:8 the roof law can’t have a roof on your roof which we entertain on you’re to have a fence now the purpose of that is it sort of ties off Moses’ sermon by giving this kind of riddle verse what’s that got to do with anything and really it’s preventing negligent manslaughter and so his sermon begins with a description of negligent manslaughter and the provision of the cities of refuge for it and concludes with a nice little symbolic implication for preventing negligent manslaughter.

So again, it stresses with the bookends of his sermon on the sixth word, not just the prohibition of murder, but being careful in our lives to protect the lives of other people. So it nicely ties those things off. We’ll be talking next week about verse 14 as well.

The next on your on your handout again in the first page, I’ve got a couple of different outlines, structures from the Word Biblical Commentary series. This is a good Bible commentary series, although it’s uneven. Some are better than others. The Isaiah commentary wasn’t that good. This one on Deuteronomy is excellent. He does a lot of good analysis in it. And so I’ve given you a couple of outlines. He actually sees another subsection from 19:1 through 21:9 beginning with laws of manslaughter in the cities of asylum and then concluding down with the unsolved murder, the role of elders and judges, which we’ll get to in a couple of weeks.

And then on either side of that, we have the case of intentional murder in 19:11 through 13 and then intentional killing warfare in chapter 20. So he sees the middle beginning with this law of encroachment. Don’t remove the ancient landmark and then followed by a few verses about witnesses in court. We’ll deal with 19:14-21 next Lord’s Day. But at the middle is this section that begins with what this commentary refers to as a riddle in the middle.

And his next structure shows the same riddle in the middle. Looking at chapter 19 as a whole, it begins with six cities of refuge. It ends with the provision of lex talionis, the law of the law, eye for eye, tooth for tooth as a deterrent to false witness. And then it has intentional murders in the middle and following that witnesses laws about witnesses. And he ties those two sections together.

We’ll look at this next week with the phrase purge the evil from your midst. That phrase is used both in terms of the execution of intentional murderers as well as punishing false witnesses. So those two sections are tied together because they will purge the evil from your midst. And that leaves us at the middle then verse 14, the inviolability of boundary markers. So what is that riddle at the middle all about there?

In the middle of a sermon on the sixth commandment and specifically about laws of witness, intentional murders, unintentional murders, cities of refuge, etc. Why is verse 13 thrown in there? Don’t remove the ancient landmarks. You can puzzle about that. And if you’ve got a sharp mind this morning and have had your coffee and you know I gave you a teaser about Naboth on the front of your order of worship, you can begin to stitch some of this together, can’t you?

Landmarks, false witnesses, intentional murder. We’ll see more of that next week in the story of Naboth and Ahab. So, we can make some connections with other parts of the Bible. But again, why I think that what I’m going to say here this morning just by way of brief allusion to it is that I think that probably there is a significance to property of course, but beyond that, I think that what we have in these laws are God’s landmarks.

They’re his setting out what it looks like to have a godly nation. Remember what this is all about. This sermon in Deuteronomy. They’re about to go into a land, dispossess one set of people and set up their own nation. It’s about statecraft. Moses sermon to a large extent. And here talking about civil penalties and what you do with murderers and unintentional murders, God is setting up a system of statehood.

And he’s setting up a system that has some boundary markers to it. The ancient landmark ultimately is God’s law. And when we mess with God’s law and we decide we don’t like capital punishment for instance and we like life imprisonment instead. Now we’re guilty of violating the riddle at the middle moving the ancient landmark. So I think that’s what it is and I’ll reference that again next week.

Let’s look at the text and if you’ve got your handout I hope you do. You know I’m not going to make a big deal out of this but just sort of look at it and see how it falls into these sections that I’ve got marked out for you and we can come to a pretty quick understanding of what the text says and then I’ll make some comments and we’ll be done. Okay.

So, it looks like the first couple of verses sort of form a unit. And so, the whole point of this is it’s about the future. It’s about promised victory in the promised land. When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whom the Lord your God is giving you and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities, in their houses, you shall set apart three cities. So, cities are mentioned twice. You dwell in their cities, set apart three cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

So, this section is all about going into a land that you’re dispossessing one people from and you’re going to possess it in the short term.

Okay? And when you possess it, it’s going to be very important for that possession that you set up these three cities of refuge.

Verse three, you shall measure the distance and divide into three parts the area of the land that the Lord your God gives you as a possession so that any man’s slayer can flee to them. Now in my if you heard what I just said it doesn’t match the ESV translation. I changed it. I changed it to reflect the literal ordering of the words just like I mentioned a couple weeks ago’s literal translation.

If you look at this in the way it reads in your English Bibles is that a man slayer can flee to them. This is the provision for the man slayer who by fleeing there may save his life. But literally the word flee comes first and then man slayer. This is the provision for the man slayer who flees there. Now God is careful about the way he writes the Bible and it’s careful to see the progression of words because they sort of give us a little unit here.

And so this is the provision. This is the landmark. This is what you’re supposed to do when you possess the city is you’re supposed to set up these cities and supposed to do it with a system of roads. You’re supposed to divide the thing into three parts and set these cities up for the man slayer. And this word man slayer is of the same basic word as the word in the sixth commandment. So he flees there either side and this is the provision so that he can flee there.

Now then it describes to us what this man slayer is. So you know, he says, first of all, you’re going to dispossess nations and possess their property. Set up three cities. And then the second section, he says, these cities are for the man slayers who are fleeing. And then in the third section, he describes who these man slayers are by way of an example. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally.

Ah, so now we know that the legal code includes unintentionality. So if there’s not a determination to kill the neighbor, that’s important in describing him. He had not hated him in the past. And then he gives a specific example as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree and the head slips from the handle. He chose that as an example.

Now, I could have chose all kinds of examples of accidental killing of someone, but he chose this one. And it’s interesting to me for a couple of reasons that I’m not sure what to do with. But I’m convinced that as we read the Bible, we’re supposed to think about things and have questions that we don’t necessarily answer right off the top of our heads. Here’s an interesting thing. When it says cut down a tree, that’s the same word cut that he’s just used to talk about cutting off the nations. And cutting down a tree will be the subject of one of the last laws as it relates to warfare in chapter 20.

He’ll give us another riddle verse about not cutting down the trees when you wage war. So, we’ll reexamine this when we get to chapter 20 and the prohibition about cutting down trees when you lay siege to an enemy’s area. But see, it sort of ties the thing together and gives us associations that we first don’t know what to do with. And that’s fine. I love laying in my bed at night meditating on the scriptures now and these connections.

What is it about? I don’t know. But God sets them up to get us curious about the text. The most important part of understanding the scriptures is to think about it and ask questions about it. But in any event, the obvious thing it does for us is it gives an example of the sort of person that is a man slayer who will flee to one of these three cities. And so it gives us him as an example.

The other thing that’s interesting here is that you got neighbor, neighbor, neighbor. And so it gives us this little triadic mention of neighbor. And so these are laws of being good neighbors, of course. And so it perceives us as having a neighborly attitude. Important to recognize.

After it gives us this description, then it talks about the fleeing again. He may flee to one of these cities and live. Okay? So, he’s not just going to flee there. He’s going to flee there so that he can live. It adds information to us. Lest the avenger of blood and hot anger pursue the man slayer and overtake him because the way is long and strike him fatally, though the man did not deserve to die.

Important information. Now, we know in our in our criminal code unintentional manslaughter is not a penalty deserving of death. I mean, it could have been. God could have said that human life is so important that even if you do it unintentionally, you should be put to death. He didn’t say that. He tells us just the opposite here. He had not hated his neighbor in the past. There’s the neighbor thing again. Loving your neighbor, hating your neighbor is behind this.

And we’ll get to that next week. So interesting. The avenger of blood. Now see, it’s not as if God says, “Well, there’s going to be this thing that’ll happen. A family member will get real mad. He’ll rise up and run after you and kill you.” The avenger of blood is a provision of God in this code.

In the New Testament, the avenger of blood is specifically the state. Don’t take your own vengeance. Vengeance is mine. Then he says, “I’m giving you the civil state.” So the avenger of blood, though probably a family member, was someone operating in the context of the civil law. It wasn’t just, you know, some kind of you know, thing. But he was his deal was to go hard after whoever killed this person that he was obliged to take vengeance in relationship to go after him and kill him.

That isn’t a bad thing. That’s a provision that God makes here for the killing of people that do intentionally murder other people. So, this tells us more information as to why this is being set up and why he’s fleeing. He’s fleeing to get away from something that God had established for the punishment of murderers.

Then he says in verse 7, therefore I command you, you shall set apart three cities. If the Lord your God enlarges your territories as he sworn to your fathers, gives you all the land that I promise to give to your fathers, provided you are careful to keep all this commandment which I command you today by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways, then you shall add three other cities to these three.

So He’s setting up three. There actually already three on the Trans-Jordan. And then if you get more land, you got to set up more cities. So again, he’s pointing them to the future. And what’s going to happen as they gradually dispossess the Canaanites, occupy more land, they need more of these cities of refuge established. And this three cities and three cities box in something at the center of this that again is quite important. It’s at the heart of this little section.

And what’s important is that the commandment is equated, keeping the commandment is equated with loving God. How do you love God? You love him by keeping his commandments. What did Jesus say? If you love me, keep my commandments. Well, here’s one of them. And after we understand how it applies to us, we have an obligation to keep it. That’s what we’re supposed to do. And if we can’t keep it, then we’re not fully loving God, right?

So, it relates the commandment in terms of the sixth word to loving God. And then finally, it describes the case of intentional manslaughter. But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies and he flees into one of these cities, then the elders of his city. It could have been a lot of different people, but it says the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and hand him over to the avenger of blood so that he may die.

And then very importantly, this is the end because the next verse is going to be about boundary markers. Your eye shall not pity him but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel so that it may be well with you.

Oh, we’ve heard that phrase before in the fifth word, right? It may be well with you. Okay, so that’s kind of what he does here. Set up these cities. It’s for man slayers. Man slayers are these guys that kill accidentally. They can go to these cities and live. You can dispossess people so that you can then have a possession.

And oh, and I failed to point this out. Where is it? Okay. Back in verse 10, lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. So there’s a progression as we go through these 13 verses. Dispossess, possess in the short term, and keep as an inheritance in the long term. That’s the progression. And these phrases the Lord your God is giving you, these are repeated throughout this section, and they build on each other.

You’re not just going to possess certain people. You’re not just going to possess this land in the short term. You want to keep it for an inheritance. And these laws, the application of the sixth word in this particular section is how you’re going to keep that as an inheritance so that you can live long on the land. And then as it says here at the end of the whole section, that it may be well with you.

So it relates the sixth word is related back to the fifth word. Okay, let’s make some comments and observations.

One, This is preparation for a victorious future. The meek shall inherit the earth. What shall we do with it? You know Jesus says in the beatitudes, the meek will inherit the earth. So that means that the future is ours. And here we are with these people, the people of God, our people. They’re on the verge of going in and receiving a big possession of land.

What do you do? You have to set up a state. Years ago, I knew a fellow and he said there are only three people who know how to rebuild this country after the collapse comes. That’s R.J. Rushdoony, T. Robert Ingram and Rousas John Hebdon Taylor. And they were great men. They were great men, really from quite different traditions. T. Robert Ingram was Episcopal. Rushdoony of course his background were Presbyterian. Rousas John Hebdon Taylor was actually the son of charismatic missionaries I think in Africa originally more CRC. He became Anglican toward the end of his life.

And these guys have written great books. Anything by Rushdoony and Ingram and Taylor, you ought to get and read. Well, at least some of them. A lot of books they wrote. They’re all dead. What do we do now? Now, who knows? Well, God knows. And he tells us here part of what we’re supposed to do as all this, you know, as a nation is being displaced.

And that’s what’s happening now. We live in a culture that is no longer distinctively Christian. And if you need one big, you know, go home Dorothy sign in the sky to see that. Look at capital punishment. Gone. Gone for all intents. Few little remnants here and there. We’re not a Christian nation anymore. Now, I know from one perspective we are from one, but what I’m saying is, you know, there is a lot of truth to the fact that we’re living now in a different country.

And the question is, how do we replace what’s here long term. They were being taught statecraft. They were being taught how to run a government. They were being taught how to run a criminal justice system, we can say. And so this text tells us what we’re supposed to be able to learn and begin to develop. Some of the people from this congregation long term will be legislators, city councilmen, police. What do you do?

Do you just sort of take whatever is given to you from the secular world? No. You should begin to think in distinctively Christian ways. This text tells us how to prepare for the future by understanding what it is to set up a criminal justice system and the importance of the criminal justice system in terms of the sixth word specifically. So, it’s preparation for the future. And of course, like all the Bible, it’s postmillennial.

It says you’re going to be victorious and God’s going to drive them out and that’s the way it’s going to be. And you know, the church today has to learn that that’s the case. Jesus isn’t going to come back and clean up all this mess. He’s going to do it through his church. He’s giving us the earth to dwell in and to live in. And we have to understand how to do it.

Secondly, the meek are those who love God and keep his commandments. So, you know, blessed are the meek. They shall inherit the earth. Who are the meek? Well, this text told us very explicitly that these laws are given to people who are supposed to dispossess, possess, and keep long term. right? Like a counterinsurgency strategy. We take it and then we hold it long term and it’s given to those people. Then it tells us specifically who they are.

What do you have to do to possess and then to inherit the possession? Well, the text told us at verse 9, provided you are careful to keep all this commandment which I command you today by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways. We want to be spirit filled Christians that love God and walk in his ways. That means you got to execute murderers. That means you got to set up something, some sort of application of these cities of refuge. It means you got to keep the commandments.

There’s no split from those two things. Keeping the commandments, loving God, and walking in his ways. They’re tied together in this text as they are throughout the scriptures over and over again. We’re going to inherit the earth, and we are those who are described as those who love God, walk in his ways and keep his commandments.

Third, biblical sanctuary is the principle undergirding these laws, ecclesiastical checks on civil state. Now, sanctuary has a long tradition in western culture. You know, you can watch Hunchback of Notre Dame or whatever it is and sanctuary. And we today have sanctuary cities. Is right. Portland’s a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants. Sanctuary. Well, this is the basis for sanctuary. These laws right here and in Numbers 35 that talk about the establishment of these areas. These are the establishment of cities of refuge that are essentially sanctuary cities.

Now, there’s a difference between God’s way of doing sanctuary, however, and man’s way. We read very explicitly in the text that sanctuary isn’t a get out of jail free card. Not anybody can stay in the sanctuary first of all right the murderer can’t stay there the elders go to that city of refuge and they take him from there so sanctuary is not given to just anybody sanctuary is only given to a particular class of people that the scriptures regulate at least biblical or Christian sanctuary.

But it’s interesting because these cities are Levitical cities. This is made very clear in Numbers 35 that these cities that are established and we’ll look at this next week when we talk about Ahab. These are Levitical cities and specifically it says in Numbers 35:4 that the congregation that is the assembly of people in this Levitical city shall judge between the man slayer and the avenger of blood according to these judgments.

Now, the Avenger of Blood is an agency established for the civil government. And what it says is we’re not going to give 100% of the ability to execute people to the civil government. We’re going to throw in a church component into this system of capital punishment. We’re going to establish ecclesiastical centers, Levitical cities. And there are 48 altogether, but of them six were cities of refuge.

We’re going to have ecclesiastical centers and these ecclesiastical centers will be the places where sanctuary can be obtained. Now you know how does that relate to us? Well, the church in history, Christian history has been seen as the place of sanctuary. You can come in here and this is the Lord’s embassy. This is why the church isn’t taxed because it doesn’t belong to the state. Doesn’t belong to the government of this world.

It belongs to the government of Christ. It’s a different government. And so churches have always been sort of seen as a place of sanctuary. Whether that’s a good application or not, I’m not saying. But I’m saying that these laws tell us that there should be a check and balance on civil government’s ability to punish people and execute them by way of sanctuary. The Levitical cities are involved, we could say, in the whole procedure.

Does that make sense? That’s significant. You know, that’s that’s kind of a sort of moment. And you could there’s lots of literature on this over the last 2,000 years about the role of Christian churches and the Christian church in general as sanctuary. But it seems like one of the ways that we’re supposed to establish biblical statecraft and build a civil government is to have some sort of ecclesiastical churchy limitation on secular power.

Now, there was a ballot measure down in Oklahoma a couple weeks ago and I don’t know much about it, but what I heard was it was a ballot measure to make sure that they don’t enforce Sharia law down there. Everybody’s upset about Sharia law and it passed. 70% of the people passed it. But now it’s in court and some people are saying, “Well, wait a minute. If we can’t enforce Sharia contracts that people enter into, can we enforce Jewish contracts, Jewish law, or Christian law?”

You know, I don’t know that particular ballot measure. But I do know this. We now live in an in an age at which the civil government’s claim is unlimited. And the civil government doesn’t want any rivals to its power. You know, when people get married at RCC, a lot of them enter into a marriage contract. It’s a binding agreement between two people witnessed by the church and then recorded in the local county courthouse. And up to now the history and tradition of American jurisprudence is they would honor these private contracts.

And this contract may be explicitly Christian. It is. Person’s excommunicated, they lose the kids and the money. That’s the way it works. We believe in fault divorce, not no fault divorce. And more often than not, the civil government has in the past given heed to these kind of private contracts.

So, so be careful what you end up supporting and what think about civil government not, you know, wanting to establish Sharia law. You know, I don’t know what that law is in Oklahoma and I don’t know what they’re trying to fix exactly, but I do know that as Christians, we want the civil government to be checked by Christian law, have some check and balance against it.

It’s not in our best interests, you know, to long-term say, yeah, the civil government and the secular powers of the civil government should brook no rival in terms of the country. That’s not good for us. And this text right here and the long legal tradition based upon this text is a reminder that we’re to have ecclesiastical checks and balances, Levitical cities, Christian sanctuaries, not that give people carte blanche, but that do provide some sort of check and balance against the civil government.

And in this context, you know, it’s important to recognize that this is not like a lot of sanctuary. As I said, the murderer doesn’t get sanctuary there. He gets, you know, they investigate. The Levitical city investigates the matter and then the elders of the murderer’s town comes, retrieves him, and he’s given over to civil punishment. So, it’s not unlimited, but it is an ecclesiastical check and balance against civil power.

Exodus 21, I mentioned this, alluded to this last week, whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, Then I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee. But if a man willfully attacks another to kill him by cunning, you shall take him from my altar that he may die.

That he may die. So again, it’s sort of like the laws we have here in more detail here, but in summary fashion, if you’ve got premeditated murder going on, the guy’s got to be executed, and if necessary, you have to take him from my altar. This is exactly what happens at the end of David’s life.

In First Kings chapter 2, we read that when David’s time to die came near. He commanded Solomon, his son, saying, “I’m about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong. Show yourself a man.” So, David’s going to die. And these are the last words of David. And he’s giving final instructions to Solomon, his son. And it sort of reads like a Godfather sort of story.

You know this guy. You know this guy. Here’s what I want you to do with him. Give him a good thing. Take that guy out. It’s kind of like that. But now this is David. This is righteous Godfather. This is good stuff. And in verse five, he says, “Moreover, you also know what Joab, the son of Zeruiah, did to me. How he dealt with the two commanders of the armies of Israel, Abner, the son of Ner, and Amasa, the son of Jether, whom he killed, avenging the time of peace for blood that had been shed in war, and putting the blood of war on the belt around his waist and on the sandals on his feet.”

And Therefore, according to your wisdom, but do not let his gray head go down to Sheol in peace.

Joab is a fascinating story, a fascinating story. I’ve got a sermon I’ve done on Joab at the conclusion of seven deadly sins where he’s sort of a picture of a number of them. Tremendously gifted man, but gifting used for evil purposes is worse than no gifting at all. He was a tremendous blessing to David. Very skilled warrior. You know, he knew how to kill and do it well. But he also produced much trouble for David when the peace was trying to be made between David and Saul’s men.

Abner was the head of Saul’s army and Joab just kills him. And I think that case was a case of desire for him to get to be the chief guy. He was envious of Abner’s position. He kills him. Amasa. He was taking vengeance for one of his uh kinsmen that had been slain by Amasa and his folks. So Joab was a picture of someone that killed improperly and did it quite deceitfully. I mean, he’s the kind of guy that recorded in the scriptures, he would come up to you, grab you around you, kiss you, and while he’s kissing you, he’d take out the dagger.

I mean, literally, this is what he did. This is the kind of guy Joab was. And he brought a lot of trouble to David’s life. David one of David’s major failures in his life was not to deal with Joab appropriately and to take him out. But here at the end he tells Solomon take him out.

Then David slept with his father was buried in the city of David. Verse 28 when the news came to Joab. Now so Solomon is now starting to execute the plan of David and he takes care of the priest thing first and then when news of that happens it comes to Joab.

It says Joab then fled to the tent of the Lord and caught hold of the horns of the altar and when it was told King Solomon Joab has fled to the tent of the Lord, and behold, he is beside the altar. Solomon sent Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go strike him down.” So Benaiah came to the tent of the Lord and said to him, “The king commands, come out.” Joab says, “No, I will die here.”

Then Benaiah brought the king word again, saying, “Thus said Joab, and thus he answered me.” King replied to him, “Do as he has said, strike him down and bury him, and thus take away from me and from my father’s house the guilt for the blood that Joab shed without cause. The Lord will bring back his blood his bloody deeds on his own head. Because without the knowledge of my father David, he attacked and killed with the sword two men more righteous and better than himself. Abner the son of Ner commander the army of Israel and Amasa the son of Jether commander of the army of Judah.

So shall their blood come back on the head of Joab and on the head of his descendants forever. But for David and for his descendants and for his house and for his throne, there shall be peace from the Lord forevermore.”

See, peace is result of properly executing those who need to be executed.

Then Benaiah the son of Jehoiada went up and struck him down and put him to death and he was buried in his own house in the wilderness. So, you know, fitting symbolic end. He’s buried in his own house, but it’s in the wilderness. He’s buried out in the wilderness. The king put Benaiah the son of Jehoiada over the army in place of Joab and the king put Zadok the priest in the place of Abiathar.

That’s interesting too because Joab was an ambitious guy and he wanted to become number one by killing all the competitors. Benaiah is the opposite. He could have killed Joab immediately like Solomon told him to. But he was very careful to follow the king’s instructions thoroughly. And that’s the kind of guy you want as your military commander, not a self-willed sort of guy like Joab.

Joab also by the way, was involved in David’s conspiracy to kill Uriah. Joab was part of that deal. Probably held it over David’s head. The murder of Uriah that he helped execute on the battlefield. But the point here is very literally uh Joab is killed at the horns of the altar. I mean, you know, the cities of refuge represent the altar of the presence of God in these Levitical cities.

And the altar, of course, is the great place of the representation of God in his presence. And even there, the ungodly murderer is cut down and killed. So biblical sanctuary isn’t, you know, anybody that wants to can take sanctuary. If you’ve broken the law, then the Levitical city will turn you back over to the elders of the gate. But in any event, I think it’s very significant that we have here in an application of the sixth word, the establishment of ecclesiastical centers as some sort of counterweight, counterbalance to slow down the civil state as it moves to execution.

Five, manslaughter does not merit the death penalty. I mentioned that before, but this is another implication or observation from the text that’s important for us. How do we know? It’s a violation of the sixth word. The same word is used for manslaughter and murder. How do we know what’s going on there? And well, we know because the text deliberately and explicitly tells us that the man who kills is a manslaughter.

Does not deserve to die.

Sixth, cities are the basic institution of government. So there are cities of refuge set up and the guilty party, the man who murders intentionally, he is retrieved by the elders of his city. It doesn’t say the leaders of his tribe. It doesn’t say the re the leaders of the county or the tribal area. It says city. So city is the basic institution of government. Here in Moses sermon, the same way it is when we get down to the New Testament and the church churches in Ephesus are all referred to as the church in Ephesus.

In the New Testament, the epistles are written to cities for the most part. Cities are the basic unit of government in the church. They’re the basic unit of government in civil government as well. And they have a lot of authority. They have a lot of authority. In our day and age, of course, cities have little authority because everything’s become centralized. But in biblical government, cities are the basic institution of government.

Seven, failure to implement these laws brings God’s judgment. And we read in today’s text, you know, that you shall add these other cities to these three, lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. And so, the guilt of bloodshed come upon you. And again, in verse 13 in talking about your eye not pitting the murderer, you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from you.

So both in protecting the innocent man slayer as well as in executing the murderer, you’re to purge the guilt of blood guiltiness away from the land. You don’t want innocent blood on the land because that’s not good. Same thing’s true in Numbers 35:33. So you shall not pollute the land where you are, for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.

And then in verse 34, therefore do not defile the land which you inhabit in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.

So it’s important here. We have a really big deal in terms of the establishment of a biblical perspective on civil government. One of the most important things we can do is to recognize that because the death penalty is not carried out or when it’s carried out improperly as it has been in the past in both cases the country accrues blood guiltiness upon it for that offense.

Capital punishment isn’t just one of a series of measures. It is a critical key measure in trying to establish Christian governance again because without it all this innocent blood cries forth from the ground so to speak. The land is cursed to a degree because of it. And so this text tells us and its companion text in Numbers that capital punishment is a big deal that the land is polluted because of the innocent blood that has not been atoned for through the death of those who murder other people.

Eighth, pity must be restrained. How do you accomplish capital punishment? Well, it’s said at the end of the section dealing with the murderer. You got to deliver him so that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him. You shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel. Your eye shall not pity.

Did you know that you can decide whether you pity somebody or not? You know, pity isn’t just an emotion that we don’t have control of. Empathy. We’re not supposed to do that in some cases. Do you know that? I mean, you know, we’re supposed to have discretion and discernment as Christians. This text tells us over whom we’re supposed to pity and whom we’re not supposed to pity.

Oh, but you know, he was a boy. He had a mama, right? He was a little kid. He had hopes and dreams. You start down that road and you end up in opposition to this verse. This verse says, “Don’t pity him.” Best way to love him is to bring God’s penalty upon him. And who knows what God will do with him.

That movie against the death penalty, Dead Man Walking, it wasn’t until the reality of the death penalty was coming upon that convicted murderer that he came finally to repentance. Funny movie because the whole point was supposed to be against capital punishment, but capital punishment is the one thing that brought him to true repentance. It’s not grace to a murderer not to take and execute him.

You’re not supposed to pity. You’re not supposed to pity. You have control over who you pity and whom you don’t pity.

Ninth, the promise of the fifth word. Oh, I missed one here. Justice is supposed to happen speedily, right? The avenger of blood is a governmental institution established by God, and it’s supposed to be fast. Ecclesiastes 8:11 says, “Because punishment isn’t carried out speedily, the people’s hearts are fully set to do evil.” When justice is delayed, as it is in this country for months and years and years, people the deterrent effect, the punishment goes away.

These test, these laws tell us there is deterrence. We’ll see that next week more. The point is judgment is supposed to happen speedily. It’s not supposed to be a long drawn out deal.

And then finally, the promise of the fifth word is attached to the sixth, the good life. Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel so that it may be well with you. The good life is a result of celebrating in life, of honoring life, the fifth word with the promise, but also of guarding life.

Guarding life is an essential component that it may be well with us that we may not just temporarily possess what we’re given but that it may be an inheritance for us and this is assured as we walk in obedience. Paul says that the fifth commandment is the first commandment with a promise is the first commandment with a promise as if there were others. There really aren’t the ten commandments but the sixth commandment as we find out in Moses’s sermon also is a commandment with a promise.

Obey the implications and you’ll move from dispossessing to possessing to inheriting and you’ll inherit and have long life in that land and it’ll be well with you as well. God wants us to have as a huge priority in our lives guarding life and being careful about it restraining our pity when necessary, guarding life and valuing human life as the image bearing capacity of God so much that we’re willing to execute the death penalty on those who strike out deliberately at the image of God in their neighbor.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the grace of it. We thank you for the direction that it gives us. Bless us, Lord God. Help us to see how this can apply to our lives. Help us to establish priorities in terms of civil legislation. And help each and every one of us, Lord God, as we come together now to bring our offerings to you, to pledge ourselves anew to protecting each other, and to guard life that it may be well with us.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Amen. Amen.