Moses is given instructions for some areas of the Land that
are to be set aside for particular purposes.
The tribe of Levi, the Levites, were chosen from among the people as a
possession of the Lord, serving Him.
They were, in essence, no longer part of the nation properly, but the
Lord’s own possession. They didn’t
contribute to the economic well-being of the nation, so they were not allotted
a portion of the Land but rather each tribe set apart some of their inheritance
for the Levites who were among them.
Cities of refuge for those who were accidentally responsible for the
death of others were set up so that the families could not take vengeance on
them. The same concept exists in some
places today in the idea of being given sanctuary by the church, kept from the
reach of the law. Murder is a capital
crime, period, end of sentence and as such requires multiple witnesses in order
to convict a person. The reason it is so
important reaches back to the idea that we are created in the image of God, and
murder, then, is destruction of the image of God.
For those who say that Jesus had nothing to say about the
tithe, He certainly affirms it as an important part of the Law to be kept. It is a lesser matter than justice,
righteousness and mercy, but He says that they should all be kept, not just the
things that are easiest to understand and determine like a tenth of your
possessions. In all these arguments
Jesus makes here He is showing that there is a hierarchy among things, and that
they have ignored the hierarchy and made the lesser things great. This would have been a very difficult
teaching to refute but it would also have been offensive as these things are
the subject of many of the tractates of the rabbis, they spent many hours
talking about cleanliness and washing and Jesus says that those things are of lesser
importance than the care and maintenance of the heart and soul. All the law points to the truly important
thing being an understanding of creation in the image of God and the attendant
responsibility for its care and maintenance.
Did the Lord stop caring about those created in His image
because of sin? Has He rejected His own
image? No, Paul says that nothing shall
separate those created in the image of God from the love of God in spite of the
cosmic and spiritual forces that seek to destroy us. Satan is our enemy and the accuser who has
chosen the role of prosecutor with respect to us, and his desire is that we
should fall from grace as he has fallen.
Jesus was the perfect image of God, and He reveals God to us and also
man to us, who we could have been and should have been had we not fallen into
sin. The work of the Spirit in the life
of the believer is restoration of the image of God.
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