Moses Set Apart Three Cities Across The Jordan

So this morning, we're going to be continuing our study of Deuteronomy chapter 4. And in our passage, Moses sets apart the primary. There's two things that are going on in our passage. First is there's an exhortation to serve God. And then there is a section where Moses sets apart three cities as cities of refuge for the tribes that asked to live. east of the Jordan. If you remember back in the early chapters of Deuteronomy, there were tribes that said, hey, we like this land. Can we just stay over here? Can we just make camp over here? And Moses allows them to do that, though he requires their men of war to come with them on the conquest of Canaan. Yet their house is allowed to be back east of the Jordan. And so he sets up these three cities of refuge for them before they go into the land.

The city of refuge is a city that's set apart for those who have unintentionally killed someone else, okay? As we study this text, my goal is to show you that why these cities are necessary and gracious to be given from our God, but also that these cities testified to the wickedness of taking the life of a person who's made in God's image. And my hope is that God will use this sermon to help you see the necessity of the law in restraining evil and also as a gracious protection to all of us. Would you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 39 through 43. Know therefore today and take it to your heart that the Lord, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. So you shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you.

that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time. Then Moses set apart cities across the Jordan to the east, that a manslayer might flee there, who unintentionally slew his brother without having enmity toward him in time past. And by fleeing to one of these cities, he might live. Bazar in the wilderness on the plateau for the Reubenites, and Ramoth and Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan and Bashan for the Manassites. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Our passage starts out, know therefore today and take it to your heart that the Lord, he is God in heaven above and on earth below. There is no other. Very simple statement that if we took to heart as we should, many, many of our troubles and many, many of Israelites troubles would be wiped away. If we would take to heart that there is one God.

and who rules in heaven and on earth, and that there's nowhere else for us to turn, there's nowhere else for us to go, there's nowhere else for us to serve, our life would be much easier. Many of the troubles that we have in our lives are downstream of misunderstanding this very simple thing. We're looking for a God to serve. And what I mean by that is we're looking for a God who will give us what we want. We're looking for a transaction between us and some benevolent being that will give us the things that we want. And in searching for that, we turn away from the one true God, the one who rules heaven, and as Moses helpfully points out, is Lord also on the earth below. There's nowhere else for the Israelites to turn for guidance or for protection because there are no other gods to turn to.

And he continues on and he says, because of this, because there is one God who rules over heaven and earth, there is no other. He says, therefore, so you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I'm giving you today, that it may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time. Now, I want to ask a question about these statutes and these commandments and work to answer it. What was the purpose of God giving statutes and commandments? Why did he have to give us? Give them statutes and commandments. And the reason I'm asking the question is because I believe that we would rather be set free to do what we would like and that that impulse in us is not unique to us, but that that's an impulse that has existed in the fallen heart of man since the fall. And so any talk of being told what to do or not to do or how to do or when to do,

runs contrary to our own desires. All of us would rather be left alone, to have others do what we would have them do, but not to be told ourselves what's required. And in effect, what we're doing is we want to set up a kingdom with us at the top, where we're the ones who are in charge. We're the ones that get to say, this is good and that is bad, and here's the consequences for this or that or the other thing. But God gives us his statutes and his commandments. He gives us his law. Why does he give us these things? Well, the first reason is to instruct us in righteousness, which means that our own impulses and our own desires and our own sense of justice doesn't turn out to be just or righteous. We're biased. We show partiality. We're not upset over many, many sins. There are some that we might get upset about, but if you had to judge, what sins you actually would like to restrain as opposed to God's law, would you be more? Would you have more sins that you would judge or less? It sort of depends on who's the one being judged, if we mean for ourselves or for other people. But generally, I think the consensus would be less. We would want more freedom without considering the result of that freedom. God's law is given.

to instruct us in righteousness. And it does this by showing us our sinfulness. One of the purposes of the law is to show us our own sinfulness. It's to educate us and to show us what's right and wrong because we lack that knowledge in ourselves. We all think we know what's right and what's wrong and what's good and what's bad. And we trust ourselves to live our lives according to our sense of right and wrong, our sense of justice. But this is what Paul says in Romans concerning that impulse. In Romans 7, he says, But I would not have come to know sin except through the law. For I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, You shall not covet. And what he means by that is, I didn't know there was anything wrong with me wanting something that wasn't mine. It never occurred to me that that was sinful. I thought that was normal and okay. But sin.

This is carrying on Romans 7, verse 8. But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead. You know, when you go to buy a car, I remember a funny story about Levi buying his, I don't know if it was your first truck, that little pickup truck you bought. Remember what color it was? You're colorblind, but no, the blue one that wasn't blue. You know what I'm talking about. You went and bought the truck, and if I remember correctly, he told me we went and looked at it at night, and you're like, oh, it's a nice blue truck. Seems like a good purchase. And they get it home, and in the morning they go outside when the sun's up, and it's not a blue truck. Well, you're colorblind, though, so you don't get a vote. It was purple. And so his first vehicle was purple, and contrary to what my kids tend to think, purple's not generally a color men like to be known as.

You know, like as I look around, there's purple and little girl, and there's purple and there's a little girl, and there's purple and there's a little girl. And as I look out at the men, I don't see any purple. Except for Levi's truck. His first truck was purple. And so, huh? Yeah. The point is, the point is that we don't see as well as we think we do. And we spend a lot of our lives wandering around in the dark, not realizing right and wrong. Thinking we do. and making judgments based on it, sometimes spending money according to it, only to find out later we missed something. And that's the point Paul's making here. He says, I didn't know what coveting was until the law came in. And then all of a sudden I was like, if that's wrong, then there's all kinds of it in my life. The law flips on the light in our hearts and shows us what's in there.

The law instructs us in righteousness by showing us our sinfulness. It does this also by showing us what is good and right. How else would we know? That's not all the law does, though the law also restrains evil. This is the civil use of the law. It's meant to punish sin as crime once it's been committed. And it's also meant to warn us away from sin because of its consequences. As an example, when you're raising children, One of the reasons that consistency of discipline is so important is so that they can make the connection in their brain that if I do this, this is what happens all the time. Not just some of the time or I'm not just warned about it. It actually happens. Okay? And why is it important for them to make that connection in their mind? The reason it's important for them to make that connection in their mind is so that they'll be warned away from it the next time they're tempted to do it. They'll go, oh, I remember that.

Because I saw my brother or I saw my sister or I remember when I did that last time. Here's what happened. Here's what happened. And I don't want that to happen, so therefore I'm not going to do it. That is a restraint of evil. Okay? It's one of the purposes of the law. It's meant to punish sin once it's been committed and to warn us away from sin because we're aware of its consequences. The other purpose of the law is to lead us to Christ. The law is not the sort of thing that we like to, we look at and we go, yes, we like that. Because these are things that it does. It shows us our own sinfulness and how we fall short. And we don't go, yes, yes, just tell me more about how sinful I am. Maybe there's someone in here who's wired in such a way that that's actually what they want. But I don't think...

That's natural or normative. I don't think that's generally how we approach the law. We think, yeah, I don't want to be told what I've done wrong or what I should be doing that I'm not. We'd like to keep that obscure. We'd like to keep that in the dark. Because when we come to see it, all of a sudden we go, oh no, oh no. We turned on the light and it's like, oh no, it's a mess. And we want to just turn the light back off. Or we just want to shove it into the closet and close the door and call it clean. But if we can't turn the light back off, and we can't shove it into the closet and close the door, then we're forced to deal with it. It has to be dealt with. We can't leave it until later. We have to deal with it now. And that's what the law does for us. It says this has to be dealt with now. And in that way, the law leads us to Christ. Galatians 3.24 says, Therefore the law has become our tutor, our instructor, our teacher.

To lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith. The law shows us what we are and furthermore what we deserve. It's meant to show us our sins. To expose us. To lay us bare. To humble us. And then to drive us to Jesus Christ. To his cross for mercy. And so God gave his law to his people here. And since then. Because of the sinfulness of man. God had to deal with our sinfulness. If you let sinful men go without a law, what you get is a statement that God made before the flood or as the impetus for the flood. Do you remember what God said about man? What? Well, he says he was sorry that he was made. But what did he say about men and their hearts? Yeah, the intention of their hearts are only evil continually, perpetually. They're a mess.

and that it's going to go from bad to worse. And so in the flood, God wiped away the wickedness. He judged the wickedness. He preserved a remnant, Noah and his family, and then started again, so to speak. But God gave the law because of the sinfulness of man. Men needed to be restrained. They need to be instructed in how to behave and how to respond to sin. Do you need to be instructed in how to respond to sin, your sin or other people's sin? Well, maybe I could ask you a first question. Do you have a response to your sin or to other people's sins naturally? Oh, we all have responses. If it's our sins, we tend to minimize it. We tend to hide it. We tend to excuse it. We tend to justify it. When it's someone else's sins, though, we may not have those same impulses. Our response then might be to judge it, to react to it, to try to squash it. Neither of those responses are just, though. They're not an execution or demonstration of justice.

We need to be taught how to respond to sin, how we ought to behave. So we're told all of these things. Take this to heart, that the Lord, he is God and there is no other. And then to keep his statutes and his commandments. And then there's this weird shift, you know. If your car shifted between this, you know. That part and the next part, you might think there's something wrong in the transition. It's a bit of a rough, it may seem like an abrupt shift. It says, then Moses set apart three cities across the Jordan to the east. But a manslayer might flee there. And you're like, wait, how are we talking about? I thought we were talking about obeying God's commandments. Now we're talking about manslayers. We're talking about murderers or men who've taken another man's life. How do we make this transition? Well, as they're leaving, you have to remember the context in which this is given. They're all standing.

just to the east of the Jordan. And they're receiving the law. And at the end of this time, Moses is going to pass away. And they're going to go into the land. And the women and the children and those who are not of fighting age, the men, are going to stay in this land because they've asked to dwell there. Okay? And all of the men are going to go into battle along with all the other tribes that are not settling to the east. And so they need some instruction. So Moses goes from telling them the law to actually doing something. He says, okay, listen, we've conquered these kingdoms. We've conquered Og and Sihon, and we've taken over the land of the Amorites and these things, and you guys want to settle here. Okay, so I'm going to tell you right now something they already had known about. We read about the cities of refuge in Numbers chapter 35. He says, we're going to establish those things right now before we go over into the land. You guys are going to need this. Do we need cities of refuge? Did they need cities of refuge? Like, isn't that kind of a crazy thing?

That's what you're going to do. You're going to set up the cities of refuge and then leave. Why do we need those? Well, it's because he knows that there's going to be murder and there's going to be unintentional killing as a part of their life on that side of the Jordan. And they're going to need to be doing what God says in terms of how to process that right then. So who belongs in the city of refuge? Our text calls him a manslayer. Someone who unintentionally slew or kills his brother. This is different than murder, okay? Now, what is the difference between manslaughter and murder? The difference, there are a few of them, but from our text, there are two that we can identify. The first is intent. Did you intend to kill him, okay? If the man intended to kill another, then this is not manslaughter, but murder, okay?

If you went, if you laid in wait, if you set up a scenario, if you went to the man with the intention of killing him and taking his life, this is not manslaughter, and the city of refuge is not for you. This is murder, and it has a different consequence under the law. Death. In our text, it says they set apart these lands for those who unintentionally slew their brother. An accidental taking of life. A providential taking of life. The example in Scripture is that the two men are out in the woods and the axe, the head of the axe flies off of the handle and strikes another so that he dies. That's manslaughter. Okay? It's actually an offense. It's actually a crime. It's completely unintentional. They were out working. And yet one of them took the life of another through their actions. So was there intention? If there was intention, it's not manslaughter. It's murder.

The other thing that the text tells us, it says, if you had enmity toward them in time past, okay? Enmity is an old word. We don't use it anymore. Hatred, malice, a grudge toward someone else, okay? It's an interesting thing because it may be that something happened long ago in the past and then it just kind of just laid dormant. But it was never really dealt with. It was just kind of left there. And then all of a sudden, perhaps years later, There's a confrontation between the two. And you may not have intended to kill him, but you end up killing him. And there was this past conflict. That figures in. That figures in. Have you ever thought in your own mind regarding something that's happened in the past, if I ever see that person, I'm going to get even with them.

That's the sort of thing that's being talked about here. There's no ability to act on it. There's frustration. Years may go by until you come face to face with the person and you weren't sitting there like, I'm trying to meet up with them so I can kill them. But in the course of life, you run into them and all of a sudden, that past conflict is reinvigorated. Was there enmity toward him in the past? If there was, if there was retaliation, if this is revenge, then it's not manslaughter, it's murder. And so those who are going to go to the cities of refuge, this is what had to be true of them. This death had to be unintentional, and it can't happen in the context of malice or anger toward the person who was killed. If there is intent, if there is past anger or malice, then it is murder and not manslaughter. Now, when you think of the cities of refuge, do you think of them as a...

A place of law and order or like a city from the wild west? I think many of us would tend to think that they're like a city from the wild west. It's like the murder happens, the death happens, and then it's like a race. That the guy who killed, if he can get there, it's like playing tag. It's like if he can get there and he can say, I touched base, you can't tag me, that he's made it. And that all the other people can't, you know, they can't do anything about it. Now those who would try to avenge their... Their loss, their loved one who's been killed. That's not how the cities of refuge worked. They were a part of the civil government that God was establishing. They actually were places meant to be of law and order. Otherwise, they would be full of murderers. Murderers who fled there to escape the consequence of their actions. Murderers don't belong in the cities of refuge. Murderers deserve to die under God's law.

If someone's life was taken, the whole point was that the circumstances, the murder, the dying, the death, would be adjudicated, and there would be a judgment passed, and then they would be killed if they were found guilty of murder. What happens if they're found innocent of murder, and yet the person is still dead? Now we've got the context where someone would be going to the city of refuge. And it is possible that the man whose axe head flew off using that example immediately flees to the city because, you know, he doesn't want the posse to come after him and kill him. But then you have to realize that God is a God of order and he's not a God of chaos. That then in going to that city, they're going and saying, this is what happened and I need this adjudicated. I need your protection. The cities of refuge would have been a place where a lot of murder trials would take place.

Now, why would it be important that there be judges there and that there be adjudication? Well, do you think the murderers would go there if they knew that's what was going to happen when they showed up at the city gate? I killed a guy. Would you go there if you just intentionally killed someone in anger? I wouldn't go there. I'd be like, they're going to find me guilty of murder. It's meant to be a protection. But not the sort of protection of like, I got to the base first so you can't touch me. The sort of protection that's well-ordered and is a part of God's government that he's setting up and establishing. These cities were supposed to be populated only by those who really didn't mean it. Now, they weren't the only people who lived in the cities of refuge. These cities of refuge were designated as cities among the Levites. They were given amongst the different tribes to dwell in and live among.

And some of the cities that the Levites were given were designated one in each tribe as a city of refuge. So you think of it sort of like a county seat. It's the place where we come to have our stuff sorted out legally. That's the way these cities function in each tribe. These cities provide protection, as I said, both to the manslaughterer and to the family of those who've lost the loved one. The goal of these cities is to produce a just judgment. Either a judgment of this was murder and this is the consequence for it, or this wasn't murder and death for you is not in order. It's meant to be a protection to both the one who has taken the life and to the family of those who've lost a loved one. The manslaughterer, if he's found innocent of murder, is allowed to live without the constant fear of being found and killed. He's not living looking over his shoulder constantly for the person who wants to kill them.

It's important to note, though, that the manslaughter is not allowed, even though his action was unintentional and without malice, he's not allowed to go back to life as normal. He's not allowed to go back to his family right away. He's put in sort of the, like, it's almost a voluntary imprisonment. Because he's allowed to, he can leave the city if he wants. If you read in Numbers 35, if he chooses to leave the city in the blood avenger, is what they're called. which would be the family of the one who was slain. If he's out of the city and they find him, they can kill him without consequence because he was given a place of protection and he decided to wander out, go out of it for whatever reason. The law says that his blood's not on their heads if they kill him and on those consequences. And so it is sort of a voluntary imprisonment. Here's a place you can come and you can live and you can be and we'll protect you. If you leave and you can leave,

You've forsaken that protection. And they're not going to be guilty of murder if they kill you because you, after all, you did take the life of someone else. Would you stay in the city of refuge? What if a family member was passing away? You have to think about what it would be like to live in this time. Life is not nearly as simple as we'd like to make it out to be when we read Scripture. There's hard decisions about whether you'd stay or whether you'd go and whether you'd take your life in hand or not. If you stayed, you were protected for a period of time.

I think it's also appropriate to say that there is some punitive aspect to these cities. It's a just punishment. They actually did something, though unintentional, that was very consequential for other people. In that sense, it was a judgment. Their way of life was not able to just go on as though nothing happened. And that's important for us to realize because I think when we fail or when we sin, whether it's not in the context perhaps of murder, we would like for it to just kind of go away. Just kind of, well, that happened and now it's gone. But the cities of refuge don't work that way. They acknowledge for a period of time and sometimes decades what happened. I'll explain to you what I mean by that just here in a second. It was a just punishment. You can't go back to your life. There's not protection offered for you because what you did was unintentional. There actually is a consequence. Your life is upset. It is undone for a good long while. Those who go to the cities of refuge do not stay in them forever though.

They stay in them until the high priest of that time dies, and then they're free to go home. This is what it says in Numbers 35, verses 25 through 38. I thought about reading a much larger section of this, but this is the main point. It says, But if the manslayer at any time goes beyond the border of his city of refuge to which he may flee, and the blood avenger finds him outside the border of his city of refuge, and the blood avenger kills the manslayer, he will not be guilty of blood because he should have remained in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. But after the death of the high priest, the manslayer shall return to the land of his possession. Now, what that means is that there's a time that's undetermined. It's tied to the life of the high priest when he passes away. Then he can go back, and the rules change.

The blood avenger, the one who's lost a loved one, is allowed to kill the manslayer if he's outside the city for a period of time without it being murder. But once the high priest dies, the sentence is over, and the family member, the blood avenger, if he then goes and kills the man, it's now murder punishable by death. So you have to see in this that there's a sentence to it. There's a logic to it. The manslayer's... is punished and his life is in danger for a period of time if he chooses to place it in danger. But at some point that ends and he's able to go back to his life, back to his land, back to his family without fear of someone taking his life without consequence. Now it may be that they would come and kill him anyway, but then they would then face death themselves. So there's a consequence for their actions.

These cities are also, everything I've said up to this point has to do with the protection of the manslayer. These cities are also a protection for the family, the blood avengers. You remember that if someone is allowed to stay in these cities, they're allowed to stay there as a judgment from the judges, from the rulers. They've said, this man is not guilty of murder, therefore he can stay in the city of his appointment until the high priest dies. That's meant to be a protection to the blood avengers. I've had occasion recently to know a couple of people who've had siblings killed in very unfortunate consequences. One, a police officer, was killed while on duty. Another, his sister was just out and about, perhaps in a place she shouldn't have been, nevertheless. She was killed. And so the assailant, the murderer, the trials were recently.

One of the things I found, and I knew to be true, but I saw it firsthand, was that those who've lost loved ones never think that justice is done unless the person is killed. They never think justice is done unless they've been killed. Whatever their politics are, whatever their theory regarding capital punishment or whatnot, when someone that they love has been killed, they want blood. They want a life sentence. They want the worst possible judgment. What they don't want, many times, is justice. And when I say that, what I mean is that someone who's been delegated the responsibility of adjudicating this matter, someone who isn't involved in it personally, is given the task of hearing the case and making a judgment and saying, this is the just consequence for their actions. And those who've been offended really have to fight against grumbling and complaining and being upset at the justice of God.

And I really do mean the justice of God. That's who they're fighting against. That's who we fight against when we say, that's not fair. Don't your kids say, that's not fair. You're fighting against the justice of God. And so it's a protection to those family members. It gives them an outside judgment to submit to. And that's good for them. Have you ever known somebody or maybe you yourselves have had something tragic or something terrible happen and it ruined your whole life because you never could accept. The judgment of God in his working out of the situation. It can ruin your whole life. It could be a sickness. It could be a divorce. It could be a death. And you never get over it. It never settles in. And I'm not saying it doesn't hurt or that there's not work to be done. But there are those who's like when they lose someone, it's like it's now their whole life. It's like it becomes their reason for existing. Many times that's because they won't accept the justice.

True justice and the judgments of God. So it's a protection to them, if they'll have it, to accept a righteous and just answer on what happened, tragic as it may have been. The goal of these cities of refuge was to serve justice and to get everyone involved in submitting to the judgment, both the manslayer and the blood avenger. God gave the sword, the ability to take life and protect it, to the government. This authority to take life does not belong to the private citizen. It did not belong to the blood avenger. They were not allowed to say, I'm going into the city and I'm going to kill him. I mean, they could do that, but in doing that, they would be under penalty of death themselves because they weren't accepting the judgment of God. What does this have to do with us? We don't have these sorts of cities around today. We do have a legal system that distinguishes between manslaughter and various degrees of murder.

It has different consequences that correspond to it. But we do still have this issue of killing, both just and unjust and incidental and intentional and malicious taking of life. That still happens. We have to be careful to submit to the judgments that are made. I think today we're very quick to set ourselves up. I don't even know that we realize it. We set ourselves up as the judge of every situation and every person that we come across. And we just think, well, my judgment is the right judgment. Kids do this with their parents. Parents tell them, you need to go do this. And they're like, no, I don't. Your kids ever tell you, I don't have to listen to you. Any of the kids in your Sunday school class tell you, I don't have to listen to you. Maybe they don't say it with words. Maybe they just say it with their actions. I don't know what to do with what you say. It's how we live. It's like in us, you know? And it's good for us to have judgments made and to be told what we're going to do and not do as a matter of serving God.

Now, here's the harder thing, and this is where it will, it's going to take a little while, but this is the final point I want to make. I want to talk about those who have to make the judgments. I just said we all set ourselves up as those who make judgments. But what I want to now do is say, if and when you actually are the one who has to make a judgment, not about life and death and a murder trial, but when you have to make judgments about someone, if you were the judge in the city of refuge who had to adjudicate this matter, It's exceedingly difficult to be in that position. It's very, very hard. To those involved in the situation, it's easy. Someone I love died, so someone needs to die. Open and shut case. That's how we would think about it. To the one who killed, right? To the mother of the drug addict who was attacking the police officer, it's never his fault.

You realize that we're very biased. It's very simple to us. It's like if I care about the person, then I think that they should not die if they're the one who killed someone. And if my loved one was killed, then I think the person who did it should be killed. And it's just very simple and unjust, that way of thinking. Actually having to enter into what happened and what were the contacts. Can you imagine how hard it is to determine whether or not there was a past grudge between the two people. And whether it had been adjudicated and whether it was a contributing factor in the taking of life, that'd be very difficult to do. Very difficult to do. And so we need to be careful not to criticize the work of other people who've been tasked with these responsibilities by God, thinking that we would do a better job ourselves. We would do better to look in the mirror and say, do I make just judgments?

in the places where I'm supposed to make judgments. And if any, if you're honest, you'll say, no, I try, and if I've been doing it a little while, I can show you the places I've screwed up. And if God's really gracious, I can tell you why I screwed it up, what was going on in my heart. You realize judges are people. They're not perfect. They have hearts. They have intentions. They have stories. They have context in which they process these things. And yet God appoints them. Scripture often reminds us not to show partiality. And in the context of the New Testament, it's often telling us not to show partiality in church, particularly to the rich. But this principle of not showing partiality is something that's incumbent on the judges in these cities of refuge. They're not to show partiality. If they know the family, if they know something going on, if there's consequence to them, all of the stuff that would happen to judges, bribery, threats, withholding of support,

all the things that would go on in our day, you do realize that stuff would have been going on back then too, right? We didn't come up with that sort of wickedness. There's nothing new under the sun. This stuff would have been going on back then. So it would have taken real metal to be a judge and to act justly, to make righteous judgments. It's a very hard thing to do. A silly example in comparison to murder was this last week. We were at a soccer game, and my older boys were playing. And they were up 2-1, and the other team scored, and they tied it. And there was implications for this game, like what your rank was going to be in the tournament that they're going into. It was a consequential game. And so the other team ties this game, the score, right toward the end of regulation. Well, then the referee, who's the judge, you know, there's no clock, so none of us can see when the time's over.

but they get past regulation, and we know because we know how long the halves are and how long halftime is, and we can look at our phones and go, we're past. And he didn't stop the game. What they were supposed to do is give them 10 minutes session, a 10-minute period, not sudden death, 10 minutes. The ref never stopped the game. He just started that 10 minutes, and he refereed it like it was sudden death. Okay? So the other team scores right at the end of regulation. Tie game. We just kind of wander our way into this other situation, like the sudden death that no one knew about.

And then the other team scores, but it wasn't a clean score. They kicked the ball. This is all just an example for how difficult this stuff is, okay? Before the game, the two soccer goals had been facing each other. They were on wheels, and the grass was not cut around the soccer goals. They pull this one away, okay? So all the grass in front of this goal is, like, long, and the line's not visible, the boundary line, okay? And this is the goal where it happened. The other team comes up the side. They cross the ball into the center. The ball hits the crossbar, bounces down, and Micah clears the ball out. The line judge, if I remember correctly, knew that the game had run over, and he left before the game was over. Is that right? So he just left in the middle of the game. He just said, I was only supposed to be here for a regulation game, and I'm leaving. So he's gone, and he's the one who would have had the best angle as to whether it crossed the line. The net never moved. The ref who's standing, like, you know, these are the goals, who's out here, and he's trying to judge whether the ball went this way.

He calls it a goal, and the game is over. And there's no VAR if you track soccer. There's no virtual assistant referee to, like, judge where the line went. The other team didn't react like they scored. They just reacted like we're playing the game. The ref calls the goal, and it's a goal, and it's the end of the game, and that's it. Now that's frustrating, right? Now it's soccer, but it's frustrating. And all the parents I'm sitting with, I mean, they are angry. Angry. Because this isn't fair. And it's not fair. But what are we going to do? Is there anything more important than whether we score the goal? There really is. What was more important was that that's the ref's job to make that call. Whether he made a right call or a wrong call, I'll never know. I was 70 yards away with a worse angle than him. I was sure they didn't score. But, you know, I'll never know. And what all I said to the parents that were upset, as I said, you know, we had 90 minutes to win this game.

And I could point to a dozen opportunities where we didn't hustle and do what we should have done, and it's always easy to get mad at the very last play, and that's not where we lost the game. And this is really how Christians ought to think, because one of the parents looked at me and was like, biting their lip. They just wanted to yell, and I was like, I am not going to give an inch on this. Like, our kids should have won this game. I really do think they were the better team. But the ref didn't seem to think so. So are we going to accept that or not? Now, that's a soccer game.

There it is. But will you accept the judgments of those that God's placed in that position when you disagree? He had to make a judgment. He made a judgment. The game was over. In more consequential matters, it requires discernment and a willingness to say and do often very difficult things. I want to read to you a section from Calvin's sermon on this text where he talks about the character and reputation of the man on trial. Okay? Listen carefully to this. He says, He's talking about whether or not the man's character should be a consideration. Like, is this guy a notorious bad guy? Or is he known as a good guy? Just in society. He says, I don't mean that a definitive sentence should be given according to that which has been known by a man's past. So I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a trial. But how should men come to the truth of the things to be done?

Let them consider what manner of one the man has been. I see that one is a despiser of God. This is now he's entering into like their judgment about the man, the man's character. He says, I see that one is a despiser of God. I see a lewd unthrift that has neither faith nor honesty in him. I see a drunkard that is full of fury and passes no more to murder than a man who cuts the throat of a chicken. I see this also. I see he is a quarreler. and is ever working of some mischief or other. Yet I see and can point one with my finger that seeks to bring all goodness to decay, and to put all things out of order. I see all of this. Now I pray you, is not this a good inducement to lead me to the truth of the matter? By comparing the fault that he shall have committed with his former life? Doesn't a man's reputation matter? This is what he's asking. As for example, a man is found at some murder.

or apprehended for some other misdeed that he is charged with. And because there is not sufficient witness, he will deny that he knows anything of it. Notwithstanding, by the marks that God showed me of him, I see his whole life as an evidence against him. If I were to take information of the whole matter and had a dozen witnesses that could say unto me, this is the murderer, I could not more clearly perceive the murder than by beholding that the party is a rank and naughty pack, a despiser of God, such a one. as has neither faith or honesty, a cutthroat and a robber, a spiteful stomach, and full of poison. So is he utterly out of square. I pray you, is it meet I should be blinded still when I see such proofs? Now then, let us mark well that whereas Moses speaks here of the time past, in judging whether or not there was a problem in the past, Moses speaks here of the past, it is to show us that God will help us to the knowledge of matters and of the truth of them.

So we on our side shut not the gate nor quench not the light when it is offered to us. Now, that's old language. And believe it or not, I actually cleaned that up to make it more understandable. But he's saying the reputation of a man actually really matters in these situations. Some people get off easier for a crime because of who they are and what they've done than other people. And we would say that's not just. That's not fair. And I would tell you that it is fair and just. An appropriate wrath. Maybe that's a better word. We live in a time where all we want to do is assess the facts of the situation. Just give me the bare facts. We don't want to consider the character of the man. We don't want to consider his past. We don't want to consider his temptations. We don't want to consider anything except just what's right in front of us. And that's a failure of our society. That is opposed to discernment. You all keep tabs of other people in your minds, don't you?

You kind of remember things that have happened and things they've said and things they've done. And sometimes that all amounts to they're trustworthy. And sometimes that all amounts to they're not trustworthy or they're hardworking or they're lazy or they're honest or they're liars, right? We're all doing that sort of stuff. So all I want to say to you is learning to remember those things appropriately and fairly is a necessary part of making judgments. It's a necessary part of making judgments. When we do pastoral care with people and have done it, they often think that we're overreacting. By the time it comes to a head and we're going, no more, this has to stop. They're like, what's the big, I don't understand. And I'm like, this has been going on. This type of thing has been going on for a long time, months or even years. And now it's come to a head and it must stop. And they're like, well, I don't understand what the big deal is. And we go, yes, you're expecting us to not take into account the type of man that you've demonstrated yourself to be.

And we're unwilling to do that because to do so would be unjust. And so our reputations matter. What other people think about us actually matters. And it will have consequence on us as our lives progress. Now, am I saying you should be beholden to what other people think of you and you should live your whole life trying to project a certain image to them? No. I'm saying you should accept the judgment of those who have discernment, and those who've known you for a long time as having some basis in truth about who you are. Many of you are young. You have a lot of life ahead of you. You have aspirations and desires, and you think well of yourself because you haven't lived long enough to have your mistakes come home to roost. But they will come in due time, and how you respond to them will testify to whether or not you have faith in Jesus Christ.

How you respond in adversity, how you respond in difficulty, how you respond in suffering and in humiliation, that's the time where we see what kind of people we are and we learn something about ourselves. Peter exhorts us with these words regarding our reputations and our behavior. He says, Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God. in the day of visitation. Now, you might read that and say, that's going to be evangelistic to them. And I don't read it necessarily that way. I read it as them saying, no, I was wrong. When God comes and judges the things, I'm going to see that I was wrong because your deeds were actually good. They can't both be slandering and saying, he's a good man. But when God comes, the righteous judge comes, they'll say, he was a good man and I was a liar because they saw your deeds and were willing to admit it. So our reputations do matter.

And they'll matter in ways that we won't plan on. The man who got to live in the city of refuge, by definition, didn't mean to kill somebody. And that's when his reputation was going to matter. And you'll have things like that in your life that you won't plan for. And all of a sudden, all of the testimony of the things you've done throughout your life will come to bear on that moment in some way. So give yourself to love and good deeds and to following and keeping the commandments and the statutes of God. Take it to heart, this sermon. Take it to heart. Let's pray.