Levitical Cities

And yet, there were special cities even among all these other cities. They’re described in Joshua 20 and 21. Chapter 21 tells about the towns that were given to the Levites. The Levites, the priests, didn’t have any land of their own; they were not given a tribal territory. Instead, God scattered the priests throughout Israel as a blessing to the whole people. And they were given these priestly cities in which they lived. There were 48 of them, and chapter 21 lists them. And then at the very end, there’s a summation, which says, “The towns of the Levites and the territory held by the Israelites were 48 in all, together with their pasture lands.”

This is where these cities of refuge came in. God appointed in the law that these six cities should be set up throughout the land, equally spaced, so whenever anything like this happened, a person who had unintentionally and accidentally killed another person would have a place to flee to. As soon as the accident happened, this man would get to one of these cities as fast as he could and upon arrival, stand in the gate. He was to present his case to the elders of the city, who were the Levitical priests, and explain what had happened. It says explicitly in these texts that if his case is just, they were to hear it. It was not a device by which a murderer could escape justice; but if his cause was just, if this really was an accidental killing, then they were not to turn him away.

Yesterday we talked about the first important thing from the creation of these cities of refuge, which was the great value on human life, rooted in God’s revealed law. The second thing about them is also quite interesting, and it’s based on what’s mentioned here in Joshua 20:9 about who was welcome to flee to those cities: “Any of the Israelites or any alien living among them who killed someone accidentally could flee to these designated cities.”

Now, let me say that there is an obligation upon us as Christian people who know the way to the refuge that is found in Jesus Christ to make that way plain. If I can use the imagery of these cities, we are to build roads so that people may get to Jesus Christ easily. We are to construct bridges over any chasms in their thinking or that our society might put in the way. We are to erect signs that point to Him. And what is more, we are to stand at the crossroads. We are to point people to Jesus, and we are to say, “Look, this is the way. There is safety. Flee to Him.”

A third parallel about these cities is that they were open to aliens as well as to Jews. It’s easy to apply that. The way to salvation—the way to life through Christ—is open to anyone. It’s open to you, no matter who you may be. You may say, “Well, I’m too old. I’ve lived a whole life and I’m now firmly fixed in my own pattern of behavior.” But why should you die and suffer in hell because of an earlier pattern of behavior? That pattern can be undone. The Apostle Paul was in a rigorous pattern of behavior, but the Lord Jesus Christ reached him on the road to Damascus and turned him around radically. Why shouldn’t He do the same for you?