Protecting The Vulnerable

You must set apart three cities of refuge in the land the LORD your God is giving you. . . . Then anyone who has killed someone can flee to one of the cities of refuge for safety.   Deuteronomy 19:2-3

Moses gave an example of the kind of situation when cities of refuge would be used: Two men are out in the forest cutting trees, and there is a terrible accident. The head of one man’s ax flies off the handle, and it hits his colleague and kills him. When the dead man’s family hears about it, they do not believe that it was an accident. They’re convinced it was criminal negligence, and they set out after the hapless woodcutter, intent on vengeance (see Deuteronomy 19:5-6).

The cities of refuge provided a place of protection for vulnerable people until there could be a proper inquiry into what happened. The incident with the ax may have been criminal negligence, or it may have been a terrible accident, but among God’s people there was to be a proper, legal process for determining the truth. The community was to make sure that vulnerable people were protected from those who would take the law into their own hands.

A while back our church hosted some people from a remote part of Venezuela. They had not heard the gospel until some missionaries from our denomination brought the message of Christ’s love to them. Many of the tribal people received Christ, and it transformed their whole culture.

One of the tribal leaders explained, through double translation—first to Spanish and then to English—the difference that the gospel had made. “Before the gospel came to our culture,” he told our congregation, “disputes were always resolved with the sword. Now we have a council to resolve disputes.” That is a wonderful reflection of how God calls a community to function.

There are only two places where we can hope to find a culture in which the vulnerable are protected—in the home and in the church. So when your Christian brothers and sisters are vulnerable, you must protect them. Stand with them in the storm and don’t back off. They need you.

For further reading, see 1 Thessalonians 5