Whoever kills any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. Moreover you shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death. And you shall take no satisfaction for him that is fled to the city of his refuge, that he should come again to dwell in the land, until the death of the priest. So you shall not pollute the land wherein you are: for blood it defiles the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. Defile not therefore the land which you shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.
The only way that the land can be cleansed of blood is by the shedding of the blood of the person who originally committed the murder. Don’t defile the land
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Now, it’s interesting: the land is dirt; we walk on it every day; we live on the land, and the land is something we take for granted. And here is a categorical statement that suggests that murderers—unavenged murderers—actually defile not merely the society, but defile the land. I think that’s kind of curious, in a way, that he should say that, and that it should be presented to us in that way.
You know, it’s been a long, long time since God has spoken to us. The fact is that it’s been some 1900 years since the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation. As far as we know, there has been no direct revelation of God to Man since, that has been conveyed to mankind in general. Maybe he’s talked to one person here or there for their own benefit. But as far as I know, God has been silent for over 1900 years now…and maybe for some little time yet.
But it occurred to me that the land may be speaking to us. Now, I’m not talking today about environmental issues that can be solved by politics. I’m not talking about that at all. I’m talking about something much more serious than that—something where politics is really not the solution. This issue is not political, but moral. The land does figure prominently in Old Testament scripture—the defilement of the land, the effect of the land, and what we have done with the way we’ve lived our lives here. The land does figure strongly to it—but in ways that are not always very apparent. One of the things I’m going to try to do in the sermon is to make these things more apparent.