20 | j o s h u a

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A great foreshadowing of the Gospel that was coming through Jesus.

Now that all of the land is set up, God tells Joshua to set up these cities of refuge. They are basically cities where someone can run to if they have accidentally killed someone or I guess just done some kind of offense unknowingly. There, in the city, the person trying to get revenge on them, can’t touch them. The offender needs to stay in the city until the high priest in that city dies then he can go back to his hometown.

This is how it is with a relationship with Jesus. A belief and trust in Christ shields us from the wrath of God. We have all made offenses against God. Many of them, unknowingly. You know, if you’re not a Christian, then you can’t expect people to do right. People who don’t have God, don’t know any better. Why would they be good? So we were all like that once, ignorant murders making God angry. The wrath of God was coming for us but in Jesus, we are safe. Jesus is our high priest. The offenders back then had their identity defined by the life of the high priest. We too have our lives defined by our high priest.
Also, it tells in detail which cities were set up to be the cities of refuge. These cities were strategically placed distances from each other that any person in the country could get to one of these cities in half a day’s time. This shows how accessible a relationship with God is. Also, each city was a Levite city. Remember, the Levites never got any large land of their own for an inheritance, they did, however, receive cities. Each city of refuge spread out through the land of Israel was full of the Levites with priests. They needed to be Levite cities because each city needed a priest and the tribe of Levi was the only tribe that priests came from. Thank goodness that that tribe didn’t receive an inheritance of their own. If they did, they would all be in one area and it would take some people months to get to their cities for refuge. Because they sacrificed receiving an inheritance to help the people, it shows us how Jesus sacrificed his inheritance of ruling as God to help us.

Jesus is our city of refuge. He shelters us from the wrath of God when we stupidly mess up, He is strategically placed in our lives and is never far away, and He sacrificed a lot just to be available to us for help.

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